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

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

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

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

States faced with their own insolvency

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

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

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

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

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

Tino 3/3/10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally, the party offices of PASOK in the town of Arta were smashed by what it is believed to be people enraged by the measures" (from the blog by Taxikipali a regular contributor to libcom.org: https://libcom.org/news/mass-strikes-greece-response-new-measures-04032010 [7]).

Soon after these lines were written, another post by the same blogger wrote about the long running battles that broke out at the Athens demonstration following a police assault on Manolis Glezos, an icon of the anti-Nazi resistance during the war (https://libcom.org/news/long-battles-erupt-athens-protest-march-05032010 [8]). At the time of writing a whole number of further strikes and demonstrations have been planned.

Unions radicalise to keep control

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amos 6/3/10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Melmoth 6/3/10

see also

Unions use ‘anti-union' laws against the workers [11]

 

This article, from the printed edition of World Revolution, has already been published online here [14]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Como 6/3/10

see also

Expenses scandal: cynicism is not enough [17]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Car 3/3/10

see also 

SWP open letter to the left: Reviving the electoral corpse [20]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Car 5/3/10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pawel 28/1/10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

anon 3/3/10

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

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

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

A process unwinding through history

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

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

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

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

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

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

The rise of capitalism

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

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

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

Rejection of marxism

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

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

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

Baboon 19/02/10

see also:

Copenhagen shows that capitalism has no solutions [32]

This article, from the printed edition of World Revolution, has already been published online here [37]

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

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

Caught in the middle

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

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

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

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

Prospects for success

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ishamael 4/3/10

see also:  

Afghanistan's War: The Road to Hell Is Paved With Bad Intentions [41]

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

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

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

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

2pm, 27 March, Friends of the Earth, 54 Allison St, Digbeth, Birmingham B1

and

2pm, 17 April, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1, nearest tube Holborn