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

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

The crisis of profitability in the airline industry

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

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

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

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

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

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

Class struggle in the air

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

North 12/06/10

 

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

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

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

The so-called right to strike

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

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

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

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

‘Anti-union' laws help unions control workers

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

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

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

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

Alex  10/6/10

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welfare Cuts

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

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

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

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

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

The Campaigns on Public Sector Pay

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

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

Worse to Come

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

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

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

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

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

Ishamael 8/6/10

 

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[1]  www.theguardian.com/society/2010/may/24/cuts-local-government-loses-2bn [6]

[2]  www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/jun/10/spending-cuts-public-sector-staff-thinktank [7]

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

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

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

Spreading strikes

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

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

Labour and capital

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

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

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

Organising - in or out of the unions?

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

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

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

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

There is also a passage which, although part of a document that asserts "It is the duty of the trade union to defend workers' collective interests and provide leadership in workers' strikes" shows that there are other ideas developing as well. "All of us fellow workers in Honda Auto Parts Manufacturing Co., Ltd. should stay united and not divided by the management. We understand that there are, inevitably, different opinions amongst us. We appeal to all fellow workers to express their views to the worker representatives. Although these representatives do not cover workers in all the departments, they take the opinions of all workers in the factory seriously and equally. Production line workers who are motivated and would like to participate in the negotiation with the management can join the delegation through election. ... Without the endorsement given by the workers' assembly, the representatives will not unilaterally agree to any proposal of standard lower than the demands stated in the above." This is from the translation that appears on libcom.org [11]. It is interesting to note that the passage on the need for workers' unity is translated on businessweek.com as "We call all workers to maintain a high degree of unity and not to allow the capitalists to divide us".

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

Car 11/6/10

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

Jute Workers Strike Every Year

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

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

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

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

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

The Present Strike

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

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

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

Role of Political Parties

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

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

Workers' Militancy Derailed by Trade Union

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

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

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

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

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

Workers' Anger Explodes in Violence

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

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

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

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

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

How to Move Forward

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

Nero 2/5/10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Car 12/6/10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amos/Sabri 31.5.10

American imperialism is increasingly beset with problems all over the globe, from foe and so-called friends alike. Following the ‘go it alone' policies of the Bush administration, the election of Barack Obama 18 months ago was supposed to buy it time in order to establish firmer ground for its manoeuvres on the international arena. Obama's image as a ‘peacemaker' and his administration's approach of ‘co-operation', ‘conciliation' and diplomacy was an attempt to associate all the other major but secondary powers to its military enterprises and supposedly ‘hold out a hand' to its foes. As the international situation resolution in International Review 138, Autumn 2009 [20]says, despite the election of Obama, the USA's "objective is still the reconquest of US global leadership through its military superiority. Thus Obama's overtures towards increased diplomacy are to a significant degree designed to buy time and thereby space out the need for inevitable future interventions by its military which is currently stretched too thinly and is too exhausted to sustain yet another theatre of war simultaneously with Iraq and Afghanistan".

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

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

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

Diplomacy as war

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

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

Trouble, trouble, trouble

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

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

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

Baboon, 9/6/10

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mulan  8/6/10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ana 22/6/10