The Chinese proletariat is showing signs of militancy and combativity on its own class terrain, against the Communist Party of China and the state unions. Unfortunately, the Western trade unionists and leftist activists are taking notice. Similar to the Polish workers struggles' of 1980-1981, the Chinese workers erupted into self-organized strikes and protests against the company, outside of and against the official All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). Starting in May 2010, workers at parts plants for Honda went on a 2 week strike in Guangdong province. Workers elected their own representatives from among themselves at general assemblies (one of their demands was that all workers be given time off to attend these assemblies during every shift).

Labor Notes, the central magazine for the business union reformers, rank-and-file unionists and their leftist activist allies, wrote a front page piece concerning the Honda workers. The title of the article, ‘Do Spreading Auto Strikes Mean Hope for a Workers' Movement in China? [1]' shows the excitement at the prospect of a spreading 'independent' unionism. The article early on makes a startling confession:  "...the ACFTU in practice has worked in line with the government and employers to enforce labor discipline and mediate labor-management conflicts to keep production running smoothly."  However, if we believe Labor Notes' supporters, this characterization only applies to business unions in the West and state unions in the so-called 'socialist' countries and other authoritarian regimes -- not the rank-and-file, 'independent' unions. Labor Notes goes on to say, "The peaceful resolution of the Honda strikes may invite the opportunity to establish a real collective bargaining system in China."  To union reformers and 'independent' unionists, the goal of working class militancy and self-organized organs (general assemblies, worker-delegates, strike committees) is the establishment of an 'independent' union to represent them, the purpose of class struggle is to get better economic conditions within the 'independent' union system.

The last sentence of the article speaks to the future hopes of the rank-and-filers:  "International labor allies should take cheer."  The history of the Polish proletariat is one of nostalgia for all manner of union leftists, anarcho-syndicalists and revolutionary syndicalists. For the working class it is full of lessons [2]. The Polish Solidarnosc union was founded after the workers established class organs: strike committees, general assemblies, worker-delegates. The environment of statified unions led the workers to reject the official unions, but the mystification of 'independent' and 'free' unions was very strong, leading to the founding of Solidarnosc. With the rise of Solidarnosc, the 'independent' and 'free' union, the workers militancy was funneled into the union struggle. The influence of the class organs declined. Given the similar statified unions that exist in China as in Poland, it isn't beyond imagining that pressure from Western unionists, leftist activists and Chinese democratization advocates could grow the strength of the 'independent' and 'free' union mystification among the Chinese proletariat. Despite this, the self-organization and the struggle on their own class terrain by the Chinese workers should be recognized as a very positive development.

Hough, 7/17/10.

"The English Defence League's summer of protests to target Muslim communities is to continue with a demonstration against a ‘super mosque', even though the development is no longer going ahead. The far-right group will return to Dudley next Saturday to demonstrate against the abandoned mosque and community centre project." (Guardian 9/7/10).  This is the latest in a line of planned and actual protests by the EDL which has resulted in a degree of publicity in the national media.

The Guardian newspaper has also recently undertaken some investigations into the rise of the English Defence League (EDL). The organisation was formed in June 2009 in Luton and has organised demonstrations and protests in various large cities, several of which have ended in violent clashes with anti-fascist counter demonstrators and / or groups of Muslim youths. In the wake of the crushing general election defeat of the British National Party which, again, is going through an internal faction fight, the EDL has served to recruit people who are discontented with the main parties' stance on issues such as immigration and the preservation of an 'English identity'.

In the report it states that "Undercover footage shot by the Guardian reveals the English Defence League, which has staged a number of violent protests in towns and cities across the country this year, is planning to ‘hit' Bradford and the London borough of Tower Hamlets as it intensifies its street protests. Senior figures in the coalition government were briefed on the threat posed by EDL marches this week. Tomorrow up to 2,000 EDL supporters are expected to descend on Newcastle for its latest protest. MPs said the group's decision to target some of the UK's most prominent Muslim communities was a blatant attempt to provoke mayhem and disorder ‘ (Guardian, 28/5/10)

There are several points of interest here. First of all, the EDL seems to represent a return 'to the streets' by the far right. This was a common sight in the 1970s and 80s by groups such as the National Front (NF). This tends to help create a 'pogrom' kind of atmosphere, which emboldens individuals and groups to further action, such as the recent attacks in Belfast, especially against people of Romanian origin and attacks against Gypsies in Italy. The response to this tends to be a counter resurgence in anti-fascist groupings intent on 'fighting fascism' and supporting the victims.

There is a need for the working class to defend itself against racist attacks, as one component of all the attacks reigning down on it. Following the attacks on Romanians in Belfast, there were practical efforts made to guard potential victims' homes by local residents acting together with some politicised elements, students and so on. In a higher stage of the class struggle it would be possible to develop a more organised and massive defence of working class or immigrant neighbourhoods from pogromist attacks, as we saw for example in the great strikes of 1905 in Russia, or in the opposition of the London dockers to Moseley's planned march through the Jewish East End in 1936. But anti-fascist fronts drown out class solidarity in what is, fundamentally, a defence of the democratic system. There are two elements to this. The first is the desire to 'confront' right wing elements be it at demonstrations or particular events. Such  'exemplary' actions by individuals and small groups tends to act as a substitute for real class solidarity, which is based on widening the collective struggle.

Secondly, there are strong connections between the radical left of the state - organisations such as the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and some trade unions - and the anti-fascist fronts. Again, these tend to act either as fronts for recruiting (mainly) younger workers worried by the fascists or enrolling workers into broader coalitions which aim to provide 'radical opposition' within the framework of capitalism.

The leftists' anti-fascist fronts are based on the idea that fascism is the number one danger to the working class. But it wasn't the BNP or EDL that have been breaking down people's doors at 3am, or locking up women and children in detention centres where they suffer traumas and abuse, but the democratically elected Labour Party, which used the issue of immigration as and how it suited its needs. Phil Woolas, the last Labour immigration minister said: "This is a deliberate attempt by the EDL at division and provocation, to try and push young Muslims into the hands of extremists, in order to perpetuate the divide. It is dangerous." But the Labour Party has certainly driven many more young Muslims into the hands of the jihadists with its war policies  in Iraq and Afghanistan and its increasingly repressive arsenal of laws aimed at ‘fighting terrorism' at home.  The fundamental problem with anti-fascism is that it aims to convince us that we should ally with ‘democratic' bourgeois parties who are no less our enemy than the fascists.  

Graham 29/6/10

Since the summer of 2007, the United States federal government has extended benefits under the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program to unprecedented levels amidst the most serious unemployment crisis the nation has experienced since the great depression of the 1930s. As a result of the collapse of the housing bubble in 2007 and subsequent Wall Street meltdown the following year, official unemployment in the United States has stubbornly hovered around 10 percent.[1]

Under current provisions of the emergency extension, unemployed workers in states with the highest unemployment levels are eligible for up to 99 weeks of benefits, including their regular state benefits, EUC and separate Extended Benefits program. During both the late Bush administration and the new Obama presidency, ensuring federal funding for extended unemployment benefits was considered the cornerstone of economic recovery and stimulus in a broad Keynesian policy of attempting to prop up consumer demand through government spending. As any good Keynesian would tell you, unemployment benefits are among the best stimulus tools available, as unemployed workers generally spend their benefits right away in the local economy rather than stashing them away as savings. From the middle of 2007 to about midway through 2009, the American bourgeoisie was more or less united, across partisan lines, on extending unemployment benefits as an appropriate measure to respond to an economy all regarded as in deep recession. The goal of this policy was to prop up consumer demand and convince an increasingly frightened and cynical public that the state cares about workers who were unfortunate enough to lose their jobs due to the malfeasance of the banks and “irresponsible homeowners.”

Fast forward to the summer of 2010: Official unemployment has barely dropped at 9.5 percent[2], the average length of unemployment is now a stunning 34 weeks (more than the 26 weeks of unemployment benefits available under regular state programs) and hundreds of thousands of workers have already exhausted all the benefits for which they are eligible under the federal extensions, leading to the coining of a new term on the unemployment internet message boards—the “99 weeker.”[3] However, now—unlike the previous two years—the political consensus for further unemployment extensions in Washington has evaporated. For the last six months, Democrats and Republicans have been going at one another over the twin threats of the national debt and a possible double dip recession, using the plight of the unemployed and the further extension of unemployment benefits as ideological clubs.

According to the Republican line, the unprecedented extension of unemployment benefits has only served to subsidize unemployment by giving the long term unemployed an incentive to veg out and skip looking for work, at the same time that it has contributed to a swelling national debt that threatens the long term health of the national economy. Meanwhile, Democrats berate the cruelty of their Republican foes who want to turn their back on the nation’s unemployed by cutting off their benefit checks, simultaneously threatening economic recovery by stifling consumer spending, ultimately risking a new round of home foreclosures—leading to a double dip recession.

This debate has played itself out in high drama several times over the past sixth months in the U.S. Senate, with that body only agreeing to a series of last minute compromise emergency benefit extensions just as previous extensions were set to expire threatening to cut off the flow of unemployment benefit checks. However, this pattern has now come to a screeching halt with Republicans putting up a supposedly principled fight to filibuster any further benefit extensions citing their concerns about the spiraling national deficit. Since June 2nd, workers have been unable to advance to any new tiers of unemployed benefits as Republican Senators have stubbornly refused to approve any new extensions that aren’t “paid for.” As this article goes to press, the Senate has just rejected a series of bills that would have extended unemployment benefits until November and has now gone home for the July 4th recess without approving any extensions.[4] As a result of the Senate’s inaction, the National Employment Law Project (NELP) now estimates that 3.2 million unemployed workers will see their benefits cut off over the next month. [5]

So what is behind this abrupt change in policy for the American bourgeoisie? How should unemployed workers—and indeed the entire working class given that in the midst of this crisis even those of us with a job could be without it at a moment’s notice—interpret the debate over the unemployment benefits extension that has seemingly pitted Democrats against Republicans over the last several months? Are Democrats really looking out for us against the cruel heartless Republicans? Is the rhetoric about the national debt just political posturing and an ideological ploy to convince workers to accept “inevitable austerity”?

Debt crisis fuels austerity plans

The Republican Party’s actions—and certainly its rhetoric—in blocking the further extension of unemployment benefits do reveal that in fact the Grand Old Party now regroups some of the most ideologically driven right-wing factions of the bourgeoisie. Under the influence of the Tea Party, the Republican party has become home to all types of right-wing ideologues who really seem to believe their own rhetoric about the unemployed being lazy free loaders, and who would—if they had their way—abolish whatever remains of American state capitalism’s social “safety net” immediately, regardless of the effects on the wider economy and society. For these Republicans—and their Tea Party allies—unemployment insurance is nothing more than an unfair subsidy to the lazy and inept paid for out of the tax proceeds extracted from hard working Americans, most notably the small businessmen that supposedly form the backbone of American society in their idyllic vision of the shopkeeper’s utopia.[6]

The fact that American politics is capable of producing a bourgeois faction with considerable sway within one of the two major political parties, operating with such an ideological view of the world, is clear evidence of the accelerating decomposition of the American state, in which important factions of the bourgeoisie have simply lost the capacity to strategize in the interests of the national capital itself, but instead take their orders from naked ideologues and demagogues concerned only with short-term partisan interest. In the short to medium term, the Republican Party’s action in blocking the further extension of unemployment benefits compromises the position of the national state to address the immediate needs of the total national capital to prop up demand, shore up local economies and ward off the danger of a double dip recession.[7] Moreover, in acting to cut off the benefits of so many unemployed workers in one fell swoop at the national level, the Republicans’ actions threaten to alienate an entire swathe of workers who have now been introduced to the brutality of the American state in the most direct way possible: the immediate cutting off of the measly unemployment benefit checks that have so far just barely kept them and their families from foreclosure, eviction, bankruptcy and even homelessness. [8]

Nevertheless, despite the apparent short-term inanity of the Republican position on unemployment benefit extensions—and while we can debate whether their concern over the growing national deficit is genuine or merely staged for short term partisan goals—the underlying debt problem is in fact very real for the American bourgeoisie. A growing consensus is in fact emerging among the entire bourgeoisie that the national debt cannot be allowed to continue to grow out of control and that national austerity is in the offing. It is in this context that even some Democrats have started to come around to the Republican position on unemployment extensions: they are just too costly.[9] Let us workers not forget that it was actually a Democrat—Senator Ben Nelson from Nebraska—who cast the deciding ‘No’ vote on the latest extension bill, ensuring that over 3 million of our unemployed brethren will lose benefits in the weeks ahead, baring a dramatic change of course following the July 4th recess.[10] Moreover, on the eve of the latest vote on the extension, the Majority leader in the House of Representatives, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, gave a foreboding address to the Third Way—a supposedly centrist Washington think-tank—laying out the growing consensus of concern about the spiraling national debt, which he said would make further extensions of unemployment benefits difficult, if not impossible.

At the end of the day, workers must recognize the simple fact that, regardless of ideological and partisan commitments, the bourgeoisie is in the last instance always driven by the cold hard logic of the state and capital. With the failure of the ‘expansionist’ policies to jolt-start a sustained recovery, and with the debt-crisis in Europe threatening to destabilize the whole capitalist system, this logic at the present juncture more and more dictates austerity over Keynesianism[11]. Simply put, whether it is run by Democrats or Republicans, the state cannot continue to extend unemployment benefits forever. Whether they cut us off after Tier 4, Tier 5 or Tier 8,[12] the state will eventually have to respond to the dictates of capital and phase out further benefit extensions for long-term unemployed workers. Whether gradually, or in one fell swoop—if the most retrograde factions of the Republican Party have their way—millions of our working class brothers and sisters will face the reality of being permanently sidelined from the official labor market and forced to make a living through other means.

Workers Must Reject Calls to Defend the State

Whatever the motivations of the Republican Party, its rhetoric over the last several months—egged on by conservative talk radio, Fox News and Tea Party activists—has clearly been designed to drive a wedge between workers who still have jobs and the unemployed. They want to paint the unemployed as lazy freeloaders who do not really want to work and who just want to live on the government dole—in other words, off of the labor of other workers extracted as taxes. As frightening, and as completely wrong, as this ideology is, workers must not fall for the opposite side of the coin as Democrats execute the classic ideological division of labor by painting the state as the generous provider of benefits that helps the unfortunate through tough economic times. This side of the ideological coin is clearly designed to trap workers behind a defense of the state as the protector of the values of social solidarity, epitomized by unemployment insurance.

Workers must be clear about this unemployment insurance system that the bourgeois left want us to defend. Unemployment insurance in the United States was never meant to be permanent. In “non-emergency” conditions regular state benefits only last for 26 weeks. Moreover, only a fraction of unemployed workers actually meet the very strict eligibility requirements to qualify for unemployment benefits, which generally hinges on complex monetary formulae designed to establish a workers’ “long-term connection” to the labor market. Most unemployed workers receive no benefits whatsoever. In addition, even unemployed workers who may be technically eligible for benefits are often denied on dubious grounds and lose subsequent appeal hearings, which they do not understand and in which the rules of a court of law apply. And for those who do qualify for benefits? They generally receive only fraction of their pay while they were working—amounts that often do not even allow recipients to keep their heads above water anyway.  Is this the epitome of social solidarity? Hardly! Is this system an overly generous subsidy that gives workers an incentive to milk the dole? Not even close!  In the minutiae of its eligibility and procedural rules and the paltry benefits it provides, the capitalist state’s unemployment insurance system is revealed for what it really is: an arbitrary, bureaucratic monstrosity designed to pacify the working class at the least cost possible for the state and employers.

Workers must not fall for either side of the bourgeois ideological coin when it comes to the debate regarding the extension of unemployment benefits. Those of us who are lucky enough to remain employed in the midst of this unprecedented crisis must not be baited into attacking our class brothers and sisters who have been forced to utilize the unemployment insurance system to eek out a subsistence living. On the other side, unemployed workers must not fall for the trap of looking to the state for our salvation. We waste our time when we stay up late at night watching C-SPAN[13], following the progress of each unemployment insurance extension bill as it winds its way through the tortured halls of Congress. We dilute our real class anger when we allow ourselves to be mobilized behind email and telephone campaigns to Congressional offices, imploring members of Congress to extend benefits just one more time.  All this will do is increase our anxiety and demoralize us even more when the eventual final cut-off comes. We must recognize that our struggle, if it is to be successful, must confront the state, rather than beg for the pittances bourgeois legalism might or might not grant. How much longer will we accept seeing our lives, our very well-being reduced to a pawn in a cruel, calculated, heartless political game between bourgeois factions, all with the same ultimate prerogative to enact austerity?

Only the path of class struggle on our own class terrain, through our autonomous class organs can unite the employed and unemployed and challenge the very society which produces the want, poverty, anxiety and desperation which currently grips our class. While the bourgeoisie will seek to divide the working class amongst itself, the increasingly harsh and full-frontal attacks on living and working conditions by the state will provide the fertile ground for struggles to develop where workers will be able to express their solidarity with the unemployed and rediscover their historic class identity. Only the road of struggle can provide the antidote to despair.

--Henk

07/02/2010

Here we are publishing a letter from a sympathiser in South Africa which gives his impressions of the massive hype surrounding the World Cup

Feel it. It is here!

So goes the catch-phase/cum call to party and spend beamed to every South African TV for the past three weeks. The message is clear - enjoy this celebration of football and show the world what a capable, multicultural, and business-friendly butterfly the old, divided apartheid caterpillar has become. Nevermind if the metaphor doesn't really work (since when was a caterpillar divided?), this insect metaphor was employed by none other than Desmond Tutu himself at the Cup's opening ceremony.

 For my money, from a footballing perspective, this has been a great World Cup. After a lack-lustre and stale beginning featuring a kill-yourself-with-a-rusty-croissant 0-0 draw between Uruguay and France (more on this below), we've seen the dwarf collective (i.e. Messi and Maradona aka Argentina) play some exquisite stuff, Brazil dance to an intriguing new tune (a catchy fusion of Samba and Nazi marching band) and England get their just desserts. By the way, some people might blame the lack of FIFA qualified coaches in England, or the overly busy Premier League season, or the advancing years of key players. I prefer to disregard most of my anthropological training and blame it on the mainstream of English psychology, which, brutalized and bored by two centuries of industrialization and manically tidy front rooms, is left with brute force and conformity (which paradoxically is manifested as individualistic selfishness) as its only means of expression. I'm sure some nit-picking naysayer will find holes in this sophisticated theory.

To get back to my main point. The World Cup South Africa 2010, is, beyond the playing field, in almost every aspect a horrific spectre of contemporary capitalism kitted and booted with the FIFA stamp of approval. I was lucky and unfortunate enough to go to the above -mentioned Uruguay-France draw. The Greenpoint Stadium itself is spectacular - an exquisite example of an industrial kind of craftsmanship put together by workers earning what would be considered a pittance in the ‘developed' world.  And this in a city where supermarket food prices often outstrip those of London and Paris.

Looking around the stadium, I saw advertisements for all the key FIFA-approved companies: Budweiser (whose beer Monty Python would have said was like ‘having sex in a canoe'), McDonalds, Visa, Coca-Cola...the usual suspects. Even the grounds of ‘ethical business' which would benefit ‘Africa' upon which this World Cup was supposedly built has in quick measure proven to be a bold-faced lie. Of course, even if local/African companies were given advertising space in the stadium, this would have only benefited a certain bourgeois minority. But the way in which international gigantabusiness, led by FIFA, has so blatantly gone back on its promise of an African World Cup, for the benefit of ‘the people', just shows up the real purpose of the Cup and capitalism in general: to make lots and lots of money for a small number of people.  

Shuffling out of the stadium, rusty croissant in hand, I noticed the huge number of police shepherding the Budweiser-filled crowds. Putting this down to the usual high security of South African life, I thought nothing more of it. Later on, speaking with people who work within the stadium and reading The Mail and Guardian I discovered that the overload of Old Bill was down to a security guard strike. Having been promised R300-400 for a 12 hour shift, security guards had refused to work for their actual pay of R190 for the same shift. The Local Organising Committee and FIFA share joint responsibility for stadium security and yet neither were willing to fork out a decent wage for those people taking the job on. In the end, the South African state has had to pay for police to take over the security guards' positions, at rates double the R300-400 originally promised. Given that FIFA will make something like $2,500,000,000 from the World Cup, security guards are justifiably aggrieved. However, incidents like this should not really be seen as ‘unfair play' on the behalf of FIFA, as suggested by some quarters (see for example www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/hosts-see-red-as-world-cup-bill-soars-ndash-but-fifa-is-163-1-7bn-in-black-1994958.html [12]). Rather, this is simply business as usual in a country and a world which is supremely unequal and by definition unfair. If the rules of the game itself favour the rich and powerful, FIFA is simply playing the game well. This is the same game that the many many South African businesses which exploit cheap black and ‘coloured' labour thrive upon.

I believe people are aghast (though probably not surprised) by the huge financial loss the World Cup is turning out to be. The by now common criticisms of FIFA are intermingled with a national mood of patriotism and African pride which is sweeping the nation. These latter phenomena do not come in for criticism. South African flags adorn bars, restaurants, cars, billboards. This may be fine and well for those of us lucky enough to hang out in fancy bars, side-by-side with our equally well-fed and drunk German friends. Such patriotic fervour takes on a different complexion in those parts of the country where people compete for homes, for extremely low-paying jobs, and where xenophobic violence saw some 40,000 people chased out of their homes just two years ago. In these places, rumours abound that when the World Cup is over, foreigners - poor Zimbabweans, Mozambiquans (i.e. probably not those expounding the harmlessness of patriotism in Cape Town's chic cafes) will be kicked out once and for all. Whether these rumours express real intentions, and whether or not these intentions turn into actions, it is clear that patriotism serves more than to sell South African-made products. The most exploited of society identify themselves with the nation, an imagined unifying force which gives them rights to homes, to benefits, to work above those who happen to have been born outside of the borders which history and politics have arbitrarily drawn up. Of course, the reality is far more complicated - when the attacks of 2008 were still happening, many township residents came out to publicly denounce the xenophobia, to welcome their neighbours back to their homes.

To return to where I started, the rainbow nation is, for the majority of the population, anything but a beautiful, multicultural butterfly. I am not a pessimist - I don't think that humanity can ever be entirely lost or defeated, and I do think that a world human community is possible. I think that South Africa is a beautiful, fucked up place and that people should be angry at multi million and billionaire capitalists and national ruling elites selling them division, exploitation, and poverty dressed up as unity, opportunity and wealth.

JWS 1/7/10

On 31 May, Israeli troops raided a flotilla of ships, backed by Turkey to bring ‘humanitarian aid' to the Gaza strip, which is being strangled slowly by Israel's blockade. The results were extremely shocking: marines from one of the best equipped and most highly trained armies in the world killed a number of unarmed members of the flotilla, most of them Turks. The Israeli authorities, as cynical as ever, claimed that they acted in self-defence against militants armed with iron bars and Swiss army knives....

There has been a whole polemic about the real number of victims, with many witnesses saying that there were more than the nine killed and sixty injured (many of them still in Israeli prisons) originally claimed, and that some of the wounded were thrown overboard. But whatever the actual numbers, the violence of the Israeli army was totally out of proportion to the real ‘threat' posed by the convoy.

To justify this raid, Benyamin Netanyahu declared that Israeli soldiers "were mobbed, they were clubbed, they were beaten, stabbed, there was even a report of gunfire. And our soldiers had to defend themselves, defend their lives, or they would have been killed". At the same time he claims that "We want to move as quickly as possible towards direct discussions because the kind of problems we have with the Palestinians can be resolved peacefully if we sit down together round the table". Such statements are pitiful and the State of Israel is making itself look ridiculous in front of the entire ‘international community'.

Meanwhile, continuing in this brazen manner, the head of Gaza District Coordination office, colonel Moshe Levi, said: "The flotilla is provocative, the humanitarian situation there is good: there is no lack of humanitarian products in the Gaza Strip". Levi claimed that access is denied only to products that could help the terrorist activities of Hamas.

The Palestinian population, hostage to war

1.5 million people live in the 378 square km of the Gaza strip. They are forced to wash and cook in used, soiled water, often to drink it as well; they are subjected to regular bombardments by the Israeli army, which tests its drones and its most up-to-date weapons on the area.[1] The rubbish bins are so full that, in what passes for schools in the area, children are being taught how to recycle rubbish into toys - to reduce the amount of rubbish piling up everywhere, to keep the kids occupied and to help them earn a few pennies in the local economy.

Whether in Gaza or the West Bank, the soil and the sub-soil and thus underwater springs are heavily polluted. First of all because waste water is not being treated, and secondly because of the residues of thousands of tons of phosphorus bombs and low-grade uranium and about thirty other kinds of toxic heavy metals which Israel has been raining down for years. The bodies of the victims of the offensive on Gaza in January 2009 showed high levels of uranium, zinc, mercury, cobalt and other carcinogenetic products. For many years, agricultural production has been irreversibly contaminated as have the few trees the army has not burned down with white phosphorus. All this has given rise to numerous cancers, renal problems and deformed births. This is the dramatic humanitarian situation facing those who live in Palestine. They are hostage to all the warring cliques that have fought over the region for decades. Expecting each day to be worse than the one before, anger is growing among a generation of young people who have only known the Israeli occupation. For many of them, a favourite ‘pastime', for lack of any other perspective, is to throw stones at Israeli troops or enlist as suicide bombers for the terrorist groups.

Turkish imperialism fans the flames

What happened on 31 May was a new episode in a war that has been going on for over fifty years, not only between Israelis and Palestinians, but also and above all between the various powers, large or small, who have an interest in the region or in supporting this or that faction.

The main organisation behind the flotilla was the IHH, an Islamist charity that is very well implanted in Turkey in the districts controlled by the AKP, the Islamist party that has been in power since 2002; and the Turkish state provided its services to the IHH to equip the flotilla. The IHH is an organisation close to Hamas. It even has an office in Gaza and has organised other convoys to the Palestinian territories.

Thus, this ‘humanitarian convoy' was also acting in a provocative manner and it was receiving a lot of media publicity. Israel was thus faced with a dilemma; either let the boats pass through and thus concede a victory to the Islamists of Hamas, or intervene by force and assert its will to maintain complete control over the Gaza strip. For the Israeli government, this was to be an exemplary show of force. But its net result was to further isolate the Israeli state on the international stage. It all ended up very badly for the credibility not only of Israel but also its main backer, the USA.

The USA's diminishing political credit, especially in the Arab world, was dealt another blow by this fiasco. It was only able to come out with a feeble protest against the actions of its principal ally in the region. As for the vision of a pro-American Greater Middle East from North Africa to Pakistan, as dreamed up by George Bush, who saw himself as some kind of latter-day Lawrence of Arabia, all this has simply melted away.

The Turkish state has played a preponderant role in this affair. To all intents and purposes it organised the ‘humanitarian initiative' of the flotilla, and following the raid we have had some very aggressive speeches and threats from Ankara. Prime Minister Erdogan said that "the actions of Israel should not go unpunished. The international community must act". More recently, Turkey has threatened to cut off diplomatic relations with Israel. Turkey is of course pretending to be helping the Palestinians, but its present stance is dictated entirely by its own imperialist interests.

Up till recently, Turkey was one of Israel's rare allies in the Muslim world. Today it is presenting itself as leader of the war chorus against Zionism. It is doing this because it wants to play a more important role in the Middle East as the loss of US authority pushes the lesser states to seek a new place in the games of imperialism.

The Iran-Syria axis, which has been an important source of support to Hizbollah and Hamas, is now being joined by Turkey - a Turkey that is looking with growing disfavour on the idea of independence for Iraqi Kurdistan[2] and on US support for the Iraqi Kurds, as well as for the Iranian Kurds. To rein in the imperialist ambitions of Ankara, the US is also giving greater latitude to the Turkish Kurds, especially those closest to the east of Anatolia, whom Turkey has been trying very hard to subdue. The USA's current policy is creating a rapprochement between Turkey, Syria and Iran, all the more because these three countries have been kept out of any decision-making with regard to Iraq, whether we are talking about the invasion in 2003 or the management of the crisis there today and in the future. What's more, joining up with this axis gives Turkey a shot of oxygen in the face of the European Union's reluctance to accept its request to become a member.[3]   

The Middle East, a vultures' nest

To this new axis must be added Russia, which has been only too willing to offer its services to counter the big US bully. Russia has played a key role in the decision of these three states to intensify cooperation, open their borders and liberalise trade among themselves. Ankara and Moscow have also abolished the need for visas between their countries. A Turk can now enter Russia without any formalities, something he cannot do either in the US or the EU, even though Turkey is a member of NATO and a candidate for the EU. Moscow is also acting as a go-between for Hamas and Fatah, and, better still, is selling them RPG missiles and S-300s which can be used to pierce Israeli tanks (they will also be sold to Iran for use against any future American bombardments). The Russian companies Rosatom and Atomstroyexport have just completed a civil nuclear power station in Iran (at Bushehr) and are discussing the construction of new ones. They are also going to build a 20 billion dollar plant in Turkey. Stroitansgaz and Gazprom are going to ensure the transport of Syrian gas towards Lebanon, now that Beirut has been prevented by Israel from exploiting its important offshore oil reserves.[4] But Russia has above all consolidated its military position by establishing a new naval base in Syria. This will allow it to re-establish a presence in the Mediterranean which it lost in the wake of the collapse of the USSR.  

Threats against Iran

The US retreat from Iraq is not finished, while the war in Afghanistan goes on and on, and has spread to Pakistan. Iran today is more and more in the US' line of fire. As one failure follows another and both Israel and the US become more isolated, history is accelerating. Things that seemed unlikely a year or so ago are now becoming more tangible. Two weeks after the attack on the IHH flotilla, there has been no attenuation of warlike tensions, despite Israel's pledge to ease the blockade of humanitarian goods bound for Gaza. Far from it: 12 US warships are heading for the Persian Gulf via the Suez Canal, while several Israeli nuclear submarines capable of hitting any target in Iran are making for the same destination. For the moment these are just gestures aimed at backing up Obama's speechifying against Tehran. But the international context is such that we cannot exclude the possibility of things slipping out of control, or even a more ‘planned' episode which would equally be a product of capitalism's delirious slide towards war.

Wilma 28/6/10

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[1] The weapons, especially drones like the Heron, which Israel has been selling to the European Union or the USA for the war in Afghanistan, or those which were used in the war between Georgia and Abkhazia in 2008, are advertised as having been "war tested", i.e. in the occupied territories

[2]. What's more, at the economic and even at the military level, Israel is now taking on the role of champion of Iraqi Kurdistan, thus making it a direct rival of Turkey.

[3]. The attack on the flotilla also meant that the second summit of the Union for the Mediterranean, so dear to the French president, was postponed until November. Among other things this Union advocates Israel being integrated into the task of keeping the peace in the Mediterranean. The first summit was completely undermined by the Israeli attack on Gaza. The French right is certainly one of the stupidest in the world.

[4] The ‘energy war' is taking on an increasingly dramatic tone around the question of Iran and this is forcing Washington to make further mistakes. Tehran has signed an agreement with Pakistan, worth 7 billion dollars, launching the construction of a gas pipeline from Iran to Pakistan. This project goes back 17 years but has so far been blocked by the US. Despite this, 900 of the 1500 km of the pipeline have been completed, going from the South Pars gas field to the frontier with Pakistan, which is going to build the remaining 700 km. This energy corridor will, from 2014, bring 22 million cubic metres of gas from Iran to Pakistan. China is also ready to import Iranian gas. The China Petroleum Corporation has signed an agreement with Iran worth five billion dollars to develop the South Pars gas field. For Iran this is a strategically important project: the country possesses the second biggest reserves of natural gas after Russia, and they are largely waiting to be exploited. With this energy corridor to the east, Iran could get round the sanctions being demanded by the US. It does however have a weak spot: its biggest gas field, the South Pars, is offshore, situated in the Persian Gulf. It is thus vulnerable to a naval blockade, which the US could impose by calling on the sanctions agreed by the UN Security Council.     

The following article by James Connolly was sent to the Left Communist group forum on www.revleft.com [20] by a comrade in the US who has begun posting under the name Stagger Lee. We suggested that it could be published on our website and asked him to write a short introduction, and also asked him about his political ‘history'. He provided both and we found the personal history worthy of publishing as well, so it appears here in an appendix with the author's permission. 

Introduction

This article by the Irish socialist James Connolly (1868 - 1916) was first published in The Workers' Republic in 1899. It lays out the marxist, hence internationalist, case for proletarian liberation. In this piece, Connolly presents the slogans of national "liberation", then juxtaposes them with a short remark highlighting the shortfalls of nationalism as a path for working class liberation. He shows how romantic calls of "freedom" in the context of nationalism have no class character nor can they ever. Connolly ends with a call for unity, not as a nation, but as a class. He calls not for the liberation of the Irish bourgeoisie, but for the working class. Workers have no country, but one struggle. Connolly's words ring as true today as it did then.

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Let us free Ireland!

Never mind such base, carnal thoughts as concern work and wages, healthy homes, or lives unclouded by poverty.

Let us free Ireland!

The rackrenting landlord; is he not also an Irishman, and wherefore should we hate him? Nay, let us not speak harshly of our brother - yea, even when he raises our rent.

Let us free Ireland!

The profit-grinding capitalist, who robs us of three-fourths of the fruits of our labor, who sucks the very marrow of our bones when we are young, and then throws us out in the street, like a worn-out tool, when we are grown prematurely old in his service, is he not an Irishman, and mayhap a patriot, and wherefore should we think harshly of him?

Let us free Ireland!

'The land that bred and bore us.' And the landlord who makes us pay for permission to live upon it.

Whoop it up for liberty!

'Let us free Ireland,' says the patriot who won't touch Socialism.

Let us all join together and cr-r-rush the br-r-rutal Saxon. Let us all join together, says he, all classes and creeds.
And, says the town worker, after we have crushed the Saxon and freed Ireland, what will we do?

Oh, then you can go back to your slums, same as before.

Whoop it up for liberty!

And, says the agricultural workers, after we have freed Ireland, what then?
Oh, then you can go scraping around for the landlord's rent or the money-lenders' interest same as before.

Whoop it up for liberty!

After Ireland is free, says the patriot who won't touch Socialism, we will protect all classes, and if you won't pay your rent you will be evicted same as now. But the evicting party, under command of the sheriff, will wear green uniforms and the Harp without the Crown, and the warrant turning you out on the roadside will be stamped with the arms of the Irish Republic.
Now, isn't that worth fighting for?

And when you cannot find employment, and, giving up the struggle of life in despair, enter the Poorhouse, the band of the nearest regiment of the Irish army will escort you to the Poorhouse door to the tune of 'St. Patrick's Day'.

Oh, it will be nice to live in those days!

'With the Green Flag floating o'er us' and an ever-increasing army of unemployed workers walking about under the Green Flag, wishing they had something to eat. Same as now!

Whoop it up for liberty!

Now, my friend, I also am Irish, but I'm a bit more logical. The capitalist, I say, is a parasite on industry; as useless in the present stage of our industrial development as any other parasite in the animal or vegetable world is to the life of the animal or vegetable upon which it feeds.
The working class is the victim of this parasite - this human leech, and it is the duty and interest of the working class to use every means in its power to oust this parasite class from the position which enables it to thus prey upon the vitals of Labor.

Therefore, I say, let us organize as a class to meet our masters and destroy their mastership; organize to drive them from their hold upon public life through their political power; organize to wrench from their robber clutch the land and workshops on and in which they enslave us; organize to cleanse our social life from the stain of social cannibalism, from the preying of man upon his fellow man.

Organize for a full, free and happy life FOR ALL OR FOR NONE

James Connolly, The Workers' Republic, 1899

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Appendix: one individual's journey towards left communism

My interest in politics began shortly after 9/11, where I was a hardline neo-conservative who thought the United States should go around the world bringing freedom to countries that need it. A few years later, I watched an 8 hour video lecture by 2004 Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik about the U.S. Constitution, which turned me towards right wing libertarianism. I held consistent libertarian views for a good while until I found out that my sister was feeding my nephews with welfare and collecting unemployment. She was doing her best everyday to find a job, she went to school, and certainly not lazy. Libertarianism provided a veil that explained the crimes in the world without having to experience it. Libertarianism, unlike socialism, is a simple, pleasant sounding ideology that tells you what you want to hear.

When basic reality hit me that social ills were, shockingly, social and not individual failings, I was your typical American liberal. I soon found out about this Senator we have in this country called Bernie Sanders, who calls himself a "democratic socialist." Now I still regarded socialism as meaning everybody gets paid the same wage, government owns all the businesses, Stalin etc. I learned that nearly every country except the United States has a significant political party affiliated with the Socialist International. My (quick) revulsion at the weakness of American liberals to support single payer health care and other social reforms pushed me to democratic socialism.

My conversion to communism was pretty much by accident. In high school I chose to check out from the school library a biography on Leon Trotsky. The sole reason I did so was A. His facial hair B. Cool name and C. I wanted my teachers to freak out. Totally superficial reasons, but I still read it. I learned what socialism and communism actually are, a basic understanding of class society, and the rejection of reformism as a method to bring about socialism. I didn't consider myself a marxist yet because I still didn't know what it was, but I considered myself a communist. I was also an avid reader of Noam Chomsky, and he mentioned the Spanish Civil War as an example of "anarchism in action", so I decided to read up on it. The Spanish Revolution and the anarchist's story was so enthralling and inspirational, I became an anarchist. This is when I truly started reading leftist texts, by Kropotkin, Malatesta, Berkman, Goldman etc. Due to this I held typical anarchist misconceptions about what marxism is. I began reading about the debates between Bakunin and Marx, and instead of strengthening my anarchism, I tended to relate more with Marx. I chose to learn more about marxism, namely the critique of political economy, historical materialism and class theory. I then considered myself an "anarcho-marxist": someone who hailed from the anarchist tradition but held a marxian conception of society and history.

Many things happened at once that made me be attracted to Left Communism. One, I was a big supporter of Palestinian "liberation." I guess I had some sort of epiphany and realized that people have been fighting for Palestinian "liberation" for almost 50 years with absolutely no positive results. Imperialists arm the Israelis, but the Fatah party is under the auspices of imperialists as well, not to mention the outright reactionary character of Hamas.

I read the ICC's article about the state in the dictatorship of the proletariat, what it is and what it isn't. It cast aside my anarchist knee-jerk reaction against the word "state" by clearing up misconceptions and filling in blanks that I didn't consider. It made sense, and even more convincing was the analysis not based on the moralism that most critiques of the state are based on.

I read left communist literature about national liberation and it made a lot of sense to me, and put the ideas that I had floating around in my head in writing and in an organized manner.

I restarted my study about the Russian Revolution, the Bolshevik party, and Vladimir Lenin. My old rejection of the Revolution evaporated when I actually learned the facts. I realized the necessity for a vanguard party, not to lead or substitute the class, but to uphold a consistent proletarian position amongst the class. My old hatred of Lenin as a "corrupter" of socialism went away as well. There are many things he got wrong, and anybody who has any concern for socialism ought to level criticism against anyone when it is justified (something Lenin did frequently). There are also many things he was right about, and he was no doubt a true revolutionary to his dying day. Removing my biases allowed me to identify with ideas I would have irrationally rejected earlier.

I am a marxist, a communist, and an internationalist. The solution to our ills is world wide revolution. Workers don't have a country, but we do have each other. There is one struggle - the class struggle, and this struggle unites us together. Long live internationalism!

Stagger Lee 7/10

While the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico has become the biggest environmental pollution in the history of one of the most developed countries, the USA, and while it has made the consequences of the failure to protect the environment apparent, the pollution of the environment in a gigantic scale has almost become part of daily life in Nigeria. "In fact, more oil is spilled from the delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a major ecological catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the explosion that wrecked BP [25]'s Deepwater Horizon rig last month." (The Guardian, 30/05/10).

Daily oil slicks with disastrous consequences

In the wetlands of the Niger delta, which with a size of 20,000 square kilometres is the biggest of its kind in Africa, oil companies extract on average 2 million barrels oil every day. Nigeria is the seventh biggest oil exporting country of the world and one of the main suppliers of the USA. Because of its low sulphur contents the product of this African oil producing country is very much in demand. Around 95% of the income of the country stems from the oil production in the southern region. Most of the 7,000km of pipelines that link the 1,000 pumping stations in the 300 onshore-oil-sites in the Niger delta, were built in the 1950s and 60s. Between 1976 and 2001 some 6,800 oil leaks were reported. In 2009 alone, over 2,000 leaks from oil drilling and, above all, from pipelines, were registered. Each year some 300 leaks of some kind occur. About 50% of the oil leaks occur because of corroded pipelines and tanks, approximately 30% because of 'sabotage' and 20% during regular operations. The scale of pollution is unbelievable. The national authority (NOSDRA) in charge of the investigation and cleaning of oil pollution says that between 1976 and 1997 more than 2.4 million barrels of oil contaminated the natural environment.

Independent oil experts and environmental organisations assume that during the last 50 years between 9 and 13 million barrels of oil were spilled into the environment, ending up in the mangrove forests and swamps of the densely populated Niger delta instead of pipelines and tankers. This corresponds to more oil than leaked during the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 into the shores of Alaska.  Fields and the tributaries of the river are chronically polluted. There are areas where the ground water has become black, and others where the sky has been dark for years due to the burning of the petroleum and natural gasses emitted during oil production. Respiratory diseases, skin rashes and eye diseases are widespread amongst the local population. They are attributed to dioxin and other carcinogenic agents, which are emitted during fires close to the soil.

The damage to both humans and the environment is very high in the delta. Innumerable river courses, mangrove forests, fertile cropland and waters formerly rich in fish have been heavily damaged or destroyed. Overland pipelines cross villages or often run in front of houses, so that the residents of the houses have to climb over them to reach their homes. The oil trickles into the ground water or forms lakes as big as football pitches. In many cases the drinking water is poisoned and vegetation destroyed. Life expectancy has fallen to 46 years for women and 45 years for men

With reserves of 6.5bn cubic meters, Nigeria is the seventh biggest producer of natural gas. According to the State run oil company NNPC every year 23 billion cubic meters, or 40% of the gas extracted in Nigeria is burnt-off; sometimes the entire quantity of gas that is generated during oil production is burnt-off. During this process a lot of methane gas is generated, which is one of the main causes of the green house effect and 64 times more dangerous than CO2 for global warming.

Which explanation for the hell in the Niger delta?

How is it possible that a country so rich in raw materials has created possibly the worst polluted eco-system on earth? Why is it that the existence of such large amounts of precious raw materials does not lead to prosperity but instead to the strangulation of nature and to a living hell for human beings?

"In 1958 oil was discovered in Nigeria above all in the Niger delta near Port Harcourt. Particularly large amounts were discovered in Ogoni land, in the north-eastern Niger delta. Ever since oil has counted for about 90% of the export income of the country. Often it is estimated that in this area some 900 million barrels of oil have been extracted (...). It is estimated that since 1960 the oil income amounted to 600 billion dollars, and yet 70% of the Nigerians have an income of less than one dollar a day. (...) 35% live in extreme poverty."

Enrichment through oil for the ruling class, poverty and diseases for the oppressed

Life expectancy in Nigeria, where at least half of the population has no access to drinking water, has been falling during the past two generations to just over 40 years. The local population in the Niger delta or near the pipelines and oil drilling stations is ruined. The people have not gained anything from the oil riches, on the contrary. Driven into poverty, tormented by terrible diseases due to pollution, many people are forced to tap the oil pipelines every day - putting their lives at risk. At the same time in the background of increasing poverty, more and more people are driven into the fold of armed gangs, which kidnap employees of the oil companies and hold them for blackmail or ransom and sow terror in daily life.

Despite the gigantic oil revenues of more than $300bn that have fallen into the hands of the Nigerian state, no significant industrial zones have arisen, nor has any solid infrastructure been developed. After an initial 50/50 division between the foreign oil companies (Shell, which initially held a monopoly position, later Gulf, Mobil and Texaco) and the ruling Nigerian class, around half of the oil revenues were usurped by foreign capital. Nigerian rulers, and above all the army, snatched the lion's share of the revenues, without investing money in the development of production, so there is no industry worth mentioning. Nigeria has been prevented from becoming a competitive industrial power. A similar situation exists in several other oil producing countries, whose oil resources were plundered for decades (e.g. Venezuela, Iran) and where no modern, competitive industry has arisen. The local population has never benefited from the oil riches; instead more and more people have been driven into migration. After the collapse of the oil prices in the early 1980s Nigerian oil revenues fell from $26bn in 1980 to $5bn in 1986. The response of the Nigerian government was to kick out migrant workers from the neighbouring countries. Some 700,000 Ghanaians were forced out and in 1985 a quarter of a million people were expelled.

Within the country several factors drove people into migration. Desertification, environmental pollution, pauperisation all spurred a rural exodus and drove people into migration abroad. Nigerians form a large part of the African refugees living in Europe and the USA.

Thus the country has not become an industrial power but a cemetery for nature and a hell for most of the people. How can we explain the contrast between wealth and poverty, between the potential and reality?

The country in the grip of war and militarism

Some claim that the whole calamity is due to the corruption and incapacity of the army. If the army was not corruptible, bribable and so ‘selfish', the whole country would be better off. Indeed the influence and the weight of the army since the discovery of oil have increased tremendously. But the development of Nigeria results from much stronger forces in society than the mere parasitic life of the military.

Barely 10 years after the beginning of the oil exploitation in 1958 the land was ravaged in a disastrous war from July 1967 to January 1970.

The Nigerian State - an artificial national construct with a religious-ethnic mosaic - in the context of militarism

As with many other African countries, Nigeria is an artificial nation constructed by the former colonial power, in this case Britain. Nigeria, which in October 1960 gained independence from Britain, counted some 60 million inhabitants with about  300 different ethnic and cultural groups. In many other parts of the former British empire, Britain governed through the practice of  "divide and rule" (e.g. on the Indian subcontinent through the partition of India and Pakistan/Bangladesh that led to war a short time later). In Nigeria too it sought, to maintain a fragile equilibrium between the most important ethnic-religious groups on the one hand, while, on the other, it exploited divisions to set them against each other. The new African rulers inherited and continued these practices after independence in October 1960. Ever since, the struggle for power and a balancing of the interests and positions of the respective groups has dominated daily life in the multiethnic state. The different ethnic groups were coexisting and fighting with each other, while the religious divides were mainly between Christians (most of them living in the south) and Muslims (mostly living in the north). After the end of colonial rule there was no ‘united' national ruling class that could have acted in a unified manner for the defence of the interests of a ‘united' country and the country was split into many regions, where the local rulers depended on a specific source of income, such as a particular agricultural product, and the interests of regional groups (who often belong to an ethnic and/or religious group) collided. In short, the country was a fragile construct with a number of ethnic, religious and regional provincial chiefs and it was only a question of time before this formation was shaken and torn apart.

In the mid 1960s ethnic tensions had sharpened so much that in 1966 ferocious pogroms against the Christian Ibo, who lived in the Muslim dominated north, were perpetrated. Some 30,000 of the 13 million Ibo lost their lives, which provoked a wave of 1.8 million refugees from the North towards the South-East. On May 30th 1967, with the support of civilian political forces of the South-East, parts of the army declared the south-eastern region of Nigeria to be an independent state - Biafra. The Nigerian government, with the support of Britain, the USA and the Soviet Union opposed this split with all its force. More than two million people lost their lives in the fighting or starved to death.

But the cancer of militarism stretched far beyond the fighting over Biafra, because since then violence and marauding gangs have become a daily phenomenon that is not limited to Nigeria but constantly ravages the neighbouring states of the Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Congo etc.

Instead of equipping the local population with energy and capital for investment in infrastructure and oil production sites, the exploitation of oil has led not only to a disaster for the environment and to a spiral of misery for most of the people in the region, but has also stimulated the rapacious appetite of other vultures, which in turn take the local population as hostage. In the meantime ‘rebel movements' have also arisen. "The biggest rebel movement (Mend - Movement for the emancipation of the Niger delta) after the first military clashes proclaimed ‘total war' and the ‘general mobilisation of all men in fighting age'. This made it easier for the army to consider the entire civilian population as enemies. And Mend has announced it will block all water ways, in order to strangulate Nigerian oil exports. [In 2009] oil production has fallen to 1.2 million barrels a day, compared to 2.17 million barrels in 2007." (www.counterpunch.org/watts08122009.html [26]).

Nigeria could produce 2.6 million barrels a day. But in reality only around 2 million barrels are produced. At least 600,000 barrels are lost due to political turmoil and other problems. The UN-Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that in Nigeria every year some 55 million barrels of oil are stolen. This helps to feed a shadow economy upon which many high-ranking officers and politicians thrive. Now armed gangs are waging a war against the oil multi-nationals and against their own government.  The rebels destroy oil installations, attack company headquarters, and destroy businesses linked with petrodollars. 10,000 highly radicalised fighters have swollen their ranks. Attacks, hostage taking and acts of sabotage have made large areas of the oil production zone inaccessible - and the oil production of Nigeria has fallen behind that of Angola. Moreover, in this region pirates spread terror, much as on the shores of Somalia. "America tries to protect the oil. Along the Nigerian coast US-troops train African special troops who are supposed to prevent an extension of the struggles. The ‘war against terror' has also reached the oil producing country Nigeria." (www.3sat.de/page/?source=/boerse/magazin/94491/index.html [27])

This is what daily life in the seventh biggest oil producing country of the planet looks like. The population suffers not only from environmental pollution but is repeatedly taken hostage by marauding soldiers and the by the police, who regularly extort money. This decomposing state drives more and more people into flight. Militarism and war are becoming an increasing plague. Since 1988 the OPEC states have spent 18% of their state budgets or about 6% of their GNP for military purposes. According to SIPRI in recent years military expenditure has doubled.

Even if the situation has not yet deteriorated as far as in Somalia, all the elements exist which could turn Nigeria into a ‘failed-state'. The country, which gained independence more than half a century ago, and which is always gnawed by pogroms between different groups, contains the risk of a ‘lebanisation' or ‘balkanisation', where it falls apart into hostile different groups that wear eachother down through endless fighting. Nigeria thus may join the chain of decomposing countries such as Sierra Leone, Congo, Somalia etc.

And the conclusions?

If we draw all these elements together - the incredible ecological destruction, the strangulation of the economy under the weight of militarism, the permanent threat of ethnic-religious pogroms, the pauperisation of the population and the extremely low life expectancy, and a nation state, in the grip of militarism and the opposing interests of different groups - we have to see the deeper explanation in the imprisonment of society within the capitalist mode of production. While the bourgeois media always report, sometimes very clearly, the almost apocalyptical, conditions, they never establish a link between the different elements. This task must be accomplished by revolutionaries. 

Dv.    21/6/10

The people who came to The Commune day school, "Beyond Resistance", were all keen to discuss revolutionary politics, and many interesting points were made, both in the presentations and the discussions. However, the points were often dispersed. In the discussion on the crisis, one of the three discussions during the first session, the very important point that the present crisis is the result of the developments from the crisis in the 1960s and 70s was made in one of the presentations, together with points on the way that class antagonism in capitalism has become more impersonal and on the defence of Marx against academic ‘marxism' amongst others. State capitalism was one of the themes of the discussion, with a range of views expressed, from the idea that it is a step towards socialism, to the position that it is a tendency expressing the growing barbarity of capitalism since the First World War. Someone from the "Wine and cheese appreciation society" criticised this as not a real discussion, since we first of all needed to clarify what we mean by various terms. And in fact the discussion showed just how difficult it is and just how far we have to go in order to have a real meeting of minds.

The discussion on "imperialism and the national question" later in the afternoon showed the difference in positions even more sharply. This was a very well attended meeting, with people standing and listening from the doorway, perhaps because one of the speakers, Tom, was from the Anarchist Federation which has written a pamphlet taking a clear position against national liberation, which is so dear to all the leftist groups. He began his presentation posing the question of whether, since we are discussing as communists, it progresses or impedes the development of class-consciousness. He went on to defend Rosa Luxemburg's position that imperialism is not the policy of this or that government but results from the relationships among them, something no nation can stand apart from. And he showed the way nationalism, even in conditions of occupation or colonialism, is a weakness that can only undermine the class struggle. Quite so.

The other presentations took the opposing view. Andy from the Columbia Solidarity Campaign denounced not only the superprofits of British corporations but also the labour aristocracy. This is a theory that tends to make workers here feel guilty for their wages because other workers earn less. And in Columbia he tells us they say "we are poor because you've taken our natural resources", encouraging the workers there to see the nation's resources as their own, and to identify workers over here with the British ruling class. A very clear example of Tom's point about the negative effect of nationalism on class-consciousness.

From The Commune, David Broder began by emphasising the question of hierarchies within the world working class, which seemed to be supporting Andy's points on the labour aristocracy. In the discussion, despite the fact that everyone wanted to oppose imperialism, diametrically opposed views were expressed. On the one hand there were the views that Luxemburg was reactionary to oppose Polish nationalism and that if Hezbollah are fighting Israel, however reactionary they are in other ways, they are objectively fighting imperialism and so must be supported. On the other hand, the ICC, for example, said you can't oppose imperialism by taking sides in imperialist war.

In the closing plenary session that followed, we were asked to think about "where next for communists?" The proposal was for a pluralist organisation, a new Communist League, to unite us for activity. Given the totally incompatible views that had just been expressed this was totally unrealistic. Internationalists can never unite with supporters of Hezbollah or any other nationalist organisation, because it is a fundamental principle of the working class. What we can do is continue the debate, as in the Midlands discussion forum or the class struggle forum in Manchester, where internationalists and those who want to discuss internationalist positions come together. Continuing the discussion doesn't prevent groups and individuals getting together for particular activities, in fact it is the only way to create the level of agreement and the level of trust needed. 

May 9/7/10