This article on the Deepwater Horizon disaster was written about one month ago. The time elapsed has not brought the relief and solution to the resulting greatest ecological disaster in the history of the US, which the ruling class had promised. Instead, it has sadly confirmed the premise of the article: capitalism in its death throes cannot offer any perspective to humanity and the planet. In fact, the longer the oil continues to gush, the clearer the bankruptcy of the system becomes. The Obama administration had just lifted a ban on drilling in protected areas when the oil rig exploded. After this latest capitalist disaster happened, it became clear that the administration had no means to address it.  Most notably, the utter lack of any plan as to what to do in the face of a disaster has become widespread public knowledge. This has so exposed the ruling class to shame, embarrassment, and the truth about its bankruptcy, that it had to pass a six-month moratorium on the ban on off-shore oil drilling it had just lifted. Of course, it did so in an effort to refurbish its image as an ‘environmentally aware' state, and not out of any real concern for the planet or human lives! It is amply evident that this ridiculous measure will do nothing to change the damage already inflicted on the environment and human lives. It also cannot stop American capitalism's reckless and furious search for cheap oil in the politically stable waters of its homeland as it reckons with its desperate necessity to be competitive on the world market.  The six-month moratorium will do nothing to address the obvious disregard for even the minimum of accident-prevention, safety, or emergency measures, as we have observed in the Mineral Management Service's practice of rubber-stamping the oil companies' requests for approval for drilling. It's a well-known fact today that BP provided phone numbers of defunct agencies and deceased ‘experts' in environmental protection and intervention whom the MMS was to contact in case of an emergency! This latest capitalist disaster has exposed the truth about the system: its drive for profit overrides any human or environmental consideration, which is why we can only expect more such disasters to happen in the near future and as long as capitalism exists.

 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 labor, 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 labor - 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 modernization 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 penalizing BP's worst behavior 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 fill 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 19/5/10

California is the epicenter of the developing student movement against cuts to public education.[1] The March 4 (M4) demonstrations were a manifestation of the response by the various actors involved in the movement. This article will analyze the specific origins of M4 and tendencies involved in the movement, which were only briefly enumerated in the previous article [6]. These aspects are presented so as to better understand the formulation, direction, weaknesses and strengths of the California student movement.

Origins of M4

The selection of the March 4 date as the proposed "Day of Action and Strike" came out of the October 24 2009 conference held at UC Berkeley. The conference was called after a coordinated state-wide protest on September 24. It was organized almost entirely by various union organizations[2] and their Trotskyist allies (ISO, LMV, SO[3]); with the participation of Trotskyist influenced student groups like Advance The Struggle (AtS)[4] and Student Unity & Power (SUP).

Two clear factions among the 700 - 800 delegates around the question of what precisely to call the "day of action," with the union allies calling for a "diversity of tactics" ("Day of Strike and Action") and AtS/SUP calling for more militant action ("Day of Strike"). The argument used by the Trotskyist camp was that by being restricted to strike efforts this "would limit participation dramatically and give the unions an excuse to remain passive."[5] In the end, the union current won out and M4 became a "day of strike and action." The Trotskyists celebrated the victory because now, with the encouragement of actions such as letter writing campaigns to the state legislature, union participation could be maximized. However, AtS/SUP - who've been angered at the tactics adopted by the ISO -- have still been actively involved in spreading the idea that the unions should come to the ‘defense' of the struggle and help in the mobilization.

Here again we are provided stunning clarity with how the union apparatus and its leftist appendage continually derail class struggle. Their role is to sabotage working class militancy and efforts at autonomous organization. One way in which this is accomplished is through the continuous funneling of working class struggles into the coffin of bourgeois electoralism and blocking the development of its consciousness with the bourgeois ideologies of nationalism and inter-classism. As this neurotoxin courses through the veins of the class, workers' struggles become isolated behind one camp of the bourgeoisie in rivalries which the proletariat have nothing to gain from. The unions are active agents in this process and leftists are their willful servants in this.

Since M4: The movement fractures

After M4, a conference was held in Los Angeles on April 24 to discuss the next proposed "Day of Action" (slated for October 7) as well as to formulate the principles of the movement. The conference was poorly attended, with between 70 - 100 participants, and was unable to vote on anything other than the next proposed "Day of Action" due to the poor attendance and fractious nature of the groups present-just as well since several groups spoke against the inclusion of "anti-capitalist" as a principle of the movement!

The student movement itself has been winding down as the school year ends but two additional pressures are also putting a drain on organizing efforts: coordinated harassment on the part of university administrations and failure on the part of the movement to garner wider support from the working class. These two pressures are interconnected and reflect on the movement's significance and weaknesses. Across the state, university administrations have coordinated their targeted harassment of student activists. The violent brutalization and hostage taking of a student at UC Davis by police forces on M4 is one extreme example of this. Since M4 there has been a pernicious abuse of the "student conduct" hearings to threaten students with academic sanctions so as to deter further action. On at least one campus, university administration conducted disciplinary hearings against students for an action initiated on another campus![6]

The movement was largely unable to significantly extend beyond narrow confines of the union apparatus and selected groups of radicalized students. And thus, the student movement fell prey to all manner of leftist derailment of class struggle-unsurprisingly; "diversity of tactics" really just means one thing to a unionist: any response besides class struggle!

The influence of the ‘occupationist' tendency

However, if one end of the derailment came from leftist organizations seeking to impose their "united front" ideology on the movement another came from within the groups which positioned themselves in opposition to them: the radical students associated with the "occupationist" tendency-a trend most vocal and theoretically centralized in Santa Cruz. One of the opening lines of The Coming Insurrection[7] states "'The future has no future' is the wisdom of an age that ... has reached the level of consciousness of the first punks." This text had an indelible impact on the development of the occupationist trend in the movement. This is expressed throughout their literature. One of the pivotal texts produced by this tendency is entitled "Communiqué from an Absent Future."[8]

Within Absent Future, the failure of the "occupationists" to adequately grasp the nature of the capitalist crisis becomes apparent. Their increasing isolation stems precisely from their classless analysis encapsulated in statements such as, "[calls] for unity are fundamentally empty. There is no common ground between those who seek to uphold the status quo and those who seek to destroy it." Along with the correct rejection of "united frontism," they also reject the basis for the evolution of a proletarian movement: the mobilization of the class in general assemblies for the widest possible discussions and the election of revocable delegates. They then go on to provide the anti-CPE struggle as an example of a movement which began as an expression of "a rebellion that starts in the classrooms and radiates outward to encompass the whole of society" but, despite successfully forcing the bourgeoisie to reverse their hand and repeal the CPE, "the movement was unable to transcend the limitations of reformism." It's difficult to understand precisely how the authors understood the anti-CPE movement, which from the beginning represented the very unity they seem to reject, i.e. class unity rallied to the defense of the working class[9].

The a-historical analysis in Absent Future does not stop there, however, as the text goes on to herald the 2008 Greek uprising as "[breaking] through many of these limitations" represented in the burning, looting & rioting-all the while lamenting the lack of broader working class solidarity with the uprising of the Greek youth. This is simply not true as the framing of the youth revolt was always, even among most of the anarchist groupings, on the terrain of class struggle. The violence expressed in the months following December 2008 certainly cannot be denied, but the authors of Absent Future fail to grasp the class nature of the uprising by being obsessed with the violence itself. Nowhere is there mention of the general assemblies held in the midst of the flames so celebrated by Absent Future; or the expressed occupation of GSEE, the largest union, headquarters not to simply burn it down but to "to disperse the media-touted myth that the workers were and are absent from the clashes" and further to expose the role of the unions in undermining class struggle.[10] A far cry from the claim that they made almost no demands! The demand was class struggle and working class solidarity, both of which are lacking from the arguments presented within the article and increasingly within the tendency. The Greek anarchists themselves are reorienting their tactics after the tragic death of three bank workers during the May 5 riots; in this event World Revolution's article "Anti-authoritarians in Greece: reflection on violence" is particularly illuminating[11]. As capitalism's primal crisis deepens, violence certainly will occur but minority violence will always derail a class response.

Returning to California, the mobilization for the "defense of public education" is currently caught within a quagmire. The union chokehold over the students' movement remains in place, while some of the student groupings have begun descending into isolation, due to the twin impacts of police harassment and a limited and very confused political praxis. The struggle needs to expand beyond the university. The crisis of education is part of the ever worsening crisis of capitalism and the assault on the public sector is just one part of a broad array of austerity measures being forced upon the working class; and the inability of capitalism to reform itself in the face of its own crisis necessitates a response that goes beyond simply defending one part of that class. The only response is a struggle waged on a working class terrain which extends to all sectors of the class and the fight for this continues on.

AS 8/6/10.

 

[1]    "Students in California Fight Back Austerity Attacks," Internationalism 154

[2]    For endorsements see: https://www.savecapubliceducation.org/?page_id=7 [7]

[3]    International Socialist Organization (Socialist Worker), Socialist Organizer (The Organizer), Labor's Militant Voice

[4]    Advance the Struggle, https://advancethestruggle.wordpress.com [8]

[5]    See Socialist Worker's article: "March 4th and the next steps," May 29 2010

[6]    See Occupy CA's article: "First Student Conduct letter issued at UC Irvine," 19 April 2010.

[7] tarnac9.wordpress.com/texts/the-coming-insurrection

[8] https://wewanteverything.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/communique-from-an-absent-future/ [9]

[9] See the ICC's ‘Theses on the spring 2006 students' movement in France'  [10]

[10]  See ICC's article: "The youth revolts in Greece confirm the development of the class struggle [11]," International Review no. 136 - 1st quarter 2009

[11] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/334/reflections-on-struggles-in-greece [12]

In April, the Arizona state legislature passed a bill (SB 1070), since signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer, unprecedentedly brazen in its attack on both illegal immigrants and workers generally. The immigration issue, which had been gaining importance in the United States for some years, has grasped the head of the bourgeoisie and tugged the bourgeoisie's rhetoric around itself. The various factions of the bourgeoisie, in turn, have endeavored to drag the working class into its discourse on immigration by means of sponsored demonstrations and rallies, all of which play to some nationalism or other and all of which can only be destructive to the working class' actions in its own defense.

One need not read very far into the bill to find what has ignited so much controversy. SB 1070 is a collection of amendments to Arizona's existing collection of immigration laws. The first amendment it makes gives new powers to any Arizona law enforcement official. It states that, "where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person"[1]. SB 1070 also mandates the sharing of information gathered about illegal immigrants with Federal agencies, and makes it a crime to obstruct the, "receiving, sending, or maintaining"[2] of information about immigration status. The information can affect applications for Federal or Arizona welfare benefits, drivers' and business licenses, or other government services. Finally, "a law enforcement officer, without a warrant, may arrest a person if the officer has probable cause to believe that the person has committed any public offense that makes the person removable from the United States"[3]. All of this can be found in the first two pages of the bill. The dominant faction of the bourgeoisie in Arizona has certainly been up front with its policy!

That the right faction of the bourgeoisie in Arizona chose to represent its bill as "cooperative enforcement" of Federal immigration laws within Arizona speaks to its intentions. SB 1070 is not intended merely as "an indispensible tool for the police in a border state that is a leading magnet of illegal immigration"[4]. It's meant to provide a model for other states that have been revising their immigration laws since 2007, the last time a federal effort to reform immigration law collapsed[5]. More than that, it is one model that new Federal efforts at the revision of immigration law would have to consider. Certainly SB 1070 has inspired the Congressional leadership in both houses to revisit the issue: Democratic leader Harry Reid acknowledged that, from the bourgeois point of view, "our immigration system is broken", and invited Senate Republicans to work with Democrats in creating comprehensive immigration legislation[6]. Whatever proposals they might bring will certainly be influenced by SB 1070, as Republicans have been forced, under pressure from primary challengers, to line up in support of the bill[7]. Clearly, the right wing of the American bourgeoisie wants immigration law more restrictive, wants greater police power, and wants these increases codified in Federal law. However, in order to understand the situation fully, it is necessary to grasp the reasons why the right wants these things.

The need for a new policy is something on which the whole of the bourgeoisie can agree. Apart from any other considerations, the bourgeoisie knows very well that their system is always at a rolling boil, and that the conditions of 1986-the last time the Federal government has comprehensively overhauled immigration law-are not the conditions of 2010. The provisions of the Immigration Reform and Control Act made it illegal to knowingly hire illegal immigrants, gave amnesty to certain long-term-resident illegal immigrants, and provided a path toward legalization for some illegal immigrants who worked as seasonal workers. However, since then, the number of illegal immigrants has grown to an estimated twelve million.  Objectively, this is not a bad thing for the bourgeoisie, for various factions of which this is variously a pool of laborers to be exploited, competitors with which to threaten other workers, and potential union dues-payers[8]. However, it would be even better for the bourgeoisie if they could keep this group of people in their current condition-cowed, desperate, and afraid to struggle-as well as countable and regulated. This reflects the need of the bourgeois state to bring all social life under its oversight.

That objective, to turn a useful and exploitable group into a useful, exploitable, and controllable group, is at the heart of any bourgeois immigration strategy. The right's turn towards police repression and tightening of border controls allows the state to invade the lives of illegal immigrants, putting them "in the system", as well as making them even more afraid of the state than they are now. This fear will, the right hopes, deter further illegal immigration, drive illegal immigrants away from claiming welfare benefits, and most importantly, make them docile in the workplace[9]. The left of the bourgeoisie, however, is concerned that repression will have other consequences. An actual decrease in illegal immigration would, as already seen, be harmful to the bourgeoisie in its war against the proletariat. They worry also that the United States could be cutting off its nose to spite its face. For this section of the bourgeoisie, the history of segregation, which was useful in the labor market in the same way SB 1070-style immigration reform would be useful, weighs heavily on their minds. They remember the damage that discrimination did to the reputation of the United States, both internationally and internally, as a champion of democracy and "human rights"[10]. At the same time, they remember how useful the movement against segregation was to them politically as a faction, and have speculated that "an immigration debate could help energize Hispanic voters and provide embattled Democrats seeking re-election in November"[11]. These double priorities help explain the energy of the anti-SB 1070 demonstrations, whose members are animated by "anti-racism" and anti-fascism-comparisons to Nazi-era demands for "papers" are rife at their rallies[12]-and whose organizers are backed financially by the movers and shakers on the bourgeois left.

Both factions of the bourgeoisie have appealed to the working class in the language of nationalism. The Right speaks the language of crime and culture, exhorting ‘native' Americans to mobilize against illegal immigrants in defense of their safety and way of life. The Left speaks the language of common humanity, but also the language of ‘pride'. The various Latin American nationalisms are all given play when the Left of the bourgeoisie demonstrates on this issue. One speaker remarked, un-ironically, that Arizona was "Mexican land", a variation on the common Leftist theme that the land was stolen from Native Americans. All these tactics are meant to destroy any relationship between immigrant and ‘native' workers, and to build up nationalist barriers even between citizens. This ultimate aim of dividing the working class, even mobilizing ‘native' workers so that they might police their ‘illegal' fellows, is one of the few things on which the bourgeoisie can agree.

From the point of view of the dominant class there is a pressing need for some kind of 'immigration reform'. However there is no guarantee that they will be able agree on and implement a common policy. As we have seen during the 'debate' over health insurance, and the previous attempt at a comprehensive immigration reform, the ideological polarization within the right and left factions of the bourgeoisie can obstruct policies that are obviously in the best interest of the national capital as whole. Whatever the outcome of the American bourgeoisie's current ideological squabbles on the issue of immigration, one thing is for sure: the only 'solutions' they can offer to the massive displacement of impoverished workers and peasants from the periphery of capitalism will involve more repressive policies, in all their forms. They will continue to have no qualms about taking advantage of this particularly vulnerable sector of the working class for capitalism's benefit.

The only possible solution is for the working class to recognize, not the "common humanity" of all its members, but their common social situation. Against the ideological and material attacks of the bourgeoisie, the working class can only resist by building its own solidarity amid its own struggles, slow as they might be to develop in the current climate.

RW, 6/25/10.

---

[1] SB 1070, Section 2

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Archibold, ‘Arizona Enacts Stringent Law on Immigration', New York Times, 23 April, 2010

[5] Ibid.

[6] Hulse, Herszenhorn,, ‘Democrats Outline Plan for Immigration', New York Times. 29 April, 2010.

[7] Archibold, op. cit.

[8] Immigrant Demonstrations, Internationalism 139

[9] Alexander, From SB 1070 to J.D. Hayworth's Book on Illegal Immigration, "Whatever it Takes", Intellectual Conservative, 2 May, 2010.

[10] Archibold, op. cit.

[11] Ibid.

[12] https://nuevaraza.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/austin-counterprotest-rally-against-supporters-of-sb-1070-june-12/ [15]

We welcome this leaflet  addressed to the striking nurses in Philadelphia, in order to help organize and extend the struggle that the unions wanted to sabotage. We want to salute wholeheartedly these kind of initiatives.

What is REAL Solidarity?

The Nurses' Strike Rally today is not the first time that various unions throughout the city have called on their members to attend the rallies of other workers in struggle.  When city workers' contracts expired last July, workers represented by TWU, AFSCME, and the SEIU had a joint rally downtown in Love Park as they all had either been without a contract, or were having a contract expire-and they were all facing similar attacks.  The bosses and the politicians want to push the effects of the crisis onto working people, to make them pay for the system's failure by giving up things they, their parents, and their grandparents had been fighting for decades to win.  Today again, various unions throughout the city representing a variety of workers have called on their members to come to the Temple Nurses' & Health Professionals rally to support them. 

Yet this is as far as the unions' call for solidarity goes.  Despite the fact that city workers and the Temple nurses were without a contract during the SEPTA strike, we were not encouraged to help that struggle, we weren't attending demonstration, pickets, or mass meetings, and the SEPTA workers were basically "on their own" (even the suburban train workers continued to work because they are under a different contract!)  Now that the Temple nurses are on strike, workers in other sectors and workplaces are called to attend a short rally in support of the nurses.  Yet there is no talk of what other workers are going to do about the fact that they are facing the same attacks Nurses are: our bosses want us to pay more for benefits, accept raises that don't keep up with inflation, and happily work in worse and worse conditions.  City workers still don't have a contract and are facing massive attacks from the mayor, and there's no talk of trying to get solidarity from other workers at Temple (both in the hospitals and the Universities).  Why do workers attend each others' rallies, yet struggle and strike at different times throughout the year all alone except for the extra head counts at the rallies?

Despite what we all may hope, one group of workers against a rich and powerful employer has the deck stacked against them.  Real solidarity means struggling together, not just as this or that sector of workers, but as the working class, fighting together against the attacks to our living standards that we all face.  Real solidarity means uniting our struggles, it means taking decisions together about how to push the struggle forward, it means mass meetings open to every worker to discuss and decide how to struggle together, it means sending delegations to other workplaces to convince others to join the struggle for their own demands and our own!  The unions can't do this-as the legally recognized negotiators of the price of our labor, they have to conduct "respectful" struggles and be on good terms with the bosses-yet what would scare our employers into backing off from their attacks more than a movement that spread?  Workers need to meet together and discuss for ourselves how we can struggle together; we can't just wait for the union to do the struggling for us or to tell us how to struggle.  And we need to struggle together-to reach out to other workers to join our struggle.  Maybe some workers cannot go on strike with us, maybe they can do a sick-out, or take a long lunch to meet together, demonstrate, or some other action.  The point is we need to struggle together to win.  We need to do this ourselves, deciding what to do together-we can't let the unions do this for us, or we will keep having the same kind of half-hearted solidarity and support.  We need real solidarity!

If you're are interested in discussing how we can fight back together as workers, talk to your co-workers, other workers in struggle you know, and if you want, feel free to email:

phillyworkersdiscussiongroup@yahoo.com [20]

On April 5th, 2010 a deadly explosion of methane gas ripped through the Upper Big Branch coal mine near Montcoal, West Virginia. Early reports from the authorities stated that 25 miners had been killed, but 4 were unaccounted for, and could possibly have survived had they made it to the underground survival chambers that are supposed to offer a safe haven of clean air and fresh supplies to any miners trapped below ground.

One can only imagine the collective exasperation that gripped the mining towns of southwestern West Virginia, and indeed the entire Appalachian coal belt, as they were once again forced to faced the grim reality of the brutal demise of family, friends and loved ones deep in the mines. One can hear the resounding cries of "Not again!" emanating from mining families across the region, as the Upper Big Branch disaster follows on the heels of a similar catastrophe in Sago, West Virginia just four short years before, in which 12 miners were killed in another explosion of combustible methane gas.

Much like Sago four years earlier, the media from across the nation and globe descended on the small West Virginia town pursuing yet another ‘disaster story' that promised to pump up ratings and keep a worried nation enthralled with the suspense surrounding the rescue the efforts for the 4 missing miners. Over the next several days, we were treated to televised press conference after press conference from local politicians, the state Governor, rescue authorities and company officials encouraging us to keep up hope that the missing miners would be found alive.

However, regardless of the media-driven suspense, anyone with an objective view of the situation could only conclude that after an explosion of such magnitude so far underground, the missing miners would not be found alive. Indeed, as the days passed, the tone from the official press conferences grew more and more grim. On April 9th, four days after the explosion, officials announced that there were in fact no survivors. Apparently, the damage inside the mine has been so great that rescuers had passed by the bodies of the four missing miners in their initial searches several times without even recognizing them. The underground survival chambers-another supposed marvel of modern technology to eliminate the ancient perils of underground labor-utterly failed to do anything to stop a violent explosion of methane gas.

Another mine tragedy has this time taken the lives of 29 miners. Combined with similar recent mine disasters in Russia and Mexico, the world is once again grimly reminded that even in the so-called ‘post-work information age', significant numbers of workers continue to make their living putting in long hours in a dark hole dug into the side of a mountain filled with poisonous gasses than can ignite at any time and where the risk of a deadly cave-in is omnipresent.

However, despite the media's perpetual desire to exploit the suspense of the rescue efforts-a theme common to all disaster stories-there was nevertheless something a little different about the media's response to the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion compared to how it treated the Sago disaster four year earlier. Now, the political climate is different. George W. Bush-a fellow known for his close connections to the energy industry-is no longer President. The new President is none other than Barrack Obama, a man elected on a solemn pledge of ‘bringing change'. Moreover, this disaster takes place in a climate of anti-corporate rhetoric emerging from the Wall Street collapse and subsequent bailouts in 2008. The dominant narrative of bourgeois ideology is that the state is now the working man's friend-his only real protection against the greed of the banks on Wall Street that have the power to wreck the entire economy, and the vicious pursuit of profits by reckless companies such as Massey Energy (the Upper Big Branch Mine's owner) that skimp on costly safety measures in order to increase their bottom line.

Keeping in line with this narrative, the media subjected us to a barrage of "investigative reporting" in the week of so after the disaster documenting the numerous and repeated safety violations at the mine and the outrageous political conduct of Massey Energy in pursuit of maximizing its profits-conduct, we were told, that included the effective purchase of a seat on the state Supreme Court for a barrister friendly to Massey's corporate vision.

As a result of this reporting, we learned an entire slew of disconcerting facts such as that in the month prior to the explosion the Upper Big Branch Mine had been cited for 57 safety infractions by federal inspectors, including 2 citations just the day prior to the explosion. Similarly, we learned that in 2009, Massey Energy had been fined a total of $382,000 for "serious and unrepentant" violations for lacking proper ventilation as well as failing to follow through with its safety plan. In the year prior to the explosion, federal regulators had ordered portions of the mine closed over 60 times. Finally, as if to reassure us that the state was on the case, we were informed that the FBI has opened a criminal probe into the explosion, investigating charges of criminal negligence by Massey Energy and the possible bribing of federal regulators. Then, as if to show us his profound difference of character with Bush, President Obama himself attended the memorial service for the dead miners, eulogizing them with the gift of eloquence his predecessor sorely lacked.

So how did the dominant media narrative explain the apparent powerlessness of federal government regulators to do anything to stop yet another mine explosion of an almost identical cause as that which caused the Sago disaster four years earlier? They blamed it on Bush. According to this narrative, under George W. Bush, a ruthless conservative, free-market ideology fell over the federal government, through which big business was able to ‘capture the state' and effectively neutralize its power to regulate the private accumulation of wealth when it comes into conflict with the overall interests of society.

This narrative of corporate domination of the state under the auspices of Bush and his Republican buddies is being carted out to explain just about every disaster that the Obama administration has had to deal with since taking office. The collapse of Wall Street and the subsequent necessity of the mega corporate bailouts is blamed on the gutting of banking regulations under Bush, which allowed the development of banks ‘too big to fail'. Similarly, the mine disaster (and now the giant oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico) is blamed on the evisceration of regulatory agencies during 8 years of Republican rule, in which the conservatives pursued a devastating strategy of ‘starving the state', resulting in the loss of competent regulatory personnel, deflated budgets for regulatory agencies and the development of a cozy relationship between industry and government in which government regulators looked forward to a giant pay day upon retirement from public service in the very industries they were supposed to regulate. "Surely," the narrative goes, "Obama can't be expected to fix this mess in just two short years in office. But he's on the right track. For starters, he really cares enough to show up to your funeral and make a nice speech."[1]

Of course what this narrative fails to mention is that the process of selling off the job of essential state functions to private businesses and neutering federal regulatory agencies-while it may have been the ideological brain child of the Regan/Thatcher Revolution of the 1980s-has been pursued with as much fervor by Democratic administrations as Republican ones. Clinton himself was a champion of the so-called ‘entrepreneurial state', a stance shared by his Vice President turned anti-global warming activist Al Gore. Moreover, despite paying lip service to some of the anti-corporate rhetoric sweeping the country, Obama's own connections to big business interests, particularly Wall Street is well known-a fact the media has found difficult to conceal, necessitating some tepid criticism of his administration as "too close to the banks."

What does this all mean for the working class who bear the brunt of such disasters as the Upper Branch Mine explosion in the form of lost lives, lost jobs, shattered families and economic ruin? Who are our friends and enemies? Where can we turn for protection against the big greedy corporations who obviously show little hesitation to put our lives on the line when it comes to making a profit? Well, for one thing, it should be clear from the Upper Branch Mine disaster and those like it, that we cannot rely on the state. Despite pledges and promises to increase safety following the Sago disaster in 2006, the explosion at the Upper Branch Mine belies the futility of relying on the state to protect us on the job, or even to make simple changes that could save lives, such as ensuring the proper ventilation of methane gas, which experts all agree could have prevented this explosion. Obviously, Massey Energy has more to fear from its shareholders for not making a profit than it does from the federal government for failing to comply with tepid safety standards. This has proven the case as much under the Obama administration as under the previous Bush regime.

The question of the increasing privatization of essential state functions and the idea of the ‘capture of the state' by various corporate interests in the most powerful state in the world is a question that is ripe for theoretical deepening for the workers' movement. To what extent is this idea an actual reflection of the dynamic in decomposing capitalism? What are the implications for the state's ability to do its job of advancing the overall interests of the national capital against narrower sectoral interests? What are the implications of this for the tactics and strategy of the workers' movement? These are all questions that demand further clarification. However, the point of departure for this remains the perspective defended by revolutionary Marxism: the state is the executive arm of the bourgeois class; it is not a neutral organ, which the working class can use to protect itself from greedy corporations. The state is an organ of the very same social system that produces that corporate greed: world capitalism.

We will hear a lot about this in the period ahead. The bourgeois media will continue to work the theme of the state against the corporations as long as it can.[2] Workers must recognize this for what it is: an ideological ploy to tie the working class to the state, to make it see its future in defending the state from corporate seizure. Workers must realize that in reality there is no fundamental difference between the corporations that exploit them and the state agencies that are supposed to regulate those corporations. This is true even when the state takes action against a particular corporation whose actions call the credibility of the state as the protector of society into question. [3]

As for the miners of West Virginia, this disaster is one more example of the assault on their living and working conditions, which has already been declining for decades. These workers have suffered between the Scylla of a declining coal industry in a state which offers few other employment opportunities on the one side, and the Charybdis of speed- up and declining safety standards on the other, as the coal companies struggle to make their remaining operations profitable. However, regardless of the desperate state of the working class in the coal belt today, we should be careful not to fall into an uncritical nostalgia for the early twentieth century when the miners of West Virginia fought numerous pitched battles with the coal companies' hired goons in an effort to win the right to organize. These episodes took place in a different historical period, during the transition between the ascendant and decadent phases of capitalisms, when the integration of the unions into the state had not yet been fully completed. Moreover, almost without exception, these actions were eventually defeated-often violently crushed-generally with the generous assistance of the federal state. [4]

Today, the future of the class struggle lies not in pitched armed battles, but with the extension of mass struggles across sectors, eventually unifying the entire working class behind a decisive confrontation with the capitalist state.

Henk 18/06/10

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[1] Consequently, this line has proven much more difficult to maintain during the continuing carnage resulting from the explosion of the oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, with the media now talking about "Obama's Katrina," in the wake of the federal government's inability to do anything to stop the release of oil into the ocean. See article in this issue.

[2] The emerging dominant narrative of the state as the protector against greedy and socially irresponsible corporations is not without challenge. As we showed in on our article on the "Tea Party" in Internationalism #154, capitalist ideology in decomposition is also capable of producing a bizarre anti-corporate ideology, which is simultaneously, if somewhat inconsistently, anti-state.

[3] Somewhat luckily for the U.S. bourgeoisie, the recent oil rig catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico has taken place on the watch of British Petroleum, giving the U.S. the chance to convince the world that not all greedy irresponsible corporations are American.

[4] This included the now infamous use of the United States Army Air Core to bomb rebelling miners during the "Battle of Blair Mountain" in 1921

"Brothel, fortress, hospital, miserable death: this is the gift that will be received by the family members of those heroes who die for the fatherland, while the rich and the politicians will binge away the gold that has been sweat by the people in the factory, the shop, and the mine."

-Ricardo Flores Magon on WWI (from Regeneracion, 9th October, 1915)

Ricardo Flores Magon is a well known figure in Mexican history. Although an anarchist until his death, the Mexican authorities were able to recuperate his martyrdom and integrate his image to the social order by baptizing him as one of the spiritual authors of the modern Mexican constitution. So, today in Mexico, a politically sanitized Flores Magon is recognized as one of the first vocal adversaries of Porfirio's Diaz dictatorship. However, communists and anarchists, and people well acquainted with the labor history of Mexico, are well aware of his anarchist-communist convictions, his roots in workers' organizations, and his numerous and failed attempts to spark a workers' revolution in Mexico.

He and the bulk of the leadership of his political organization, the Partido Liberal Mexicano (Mexican Liberal Party), were for most of their political lifespan, situated in the United States. Most of the PLM's political activities in Mexico were coordinated in exile. However, little is ever mentioned about the PLM's relationship to the American workers' movement, or their belief that a workers' revolution in Mexico was important in so far that it is part of a worldwide struggle against international capital and in a sense, part of the international project to end the exploitation of man by man. In fact, if it wasn't for the continuous support of workers' organizations both in the U.S. and other countries, the PLM would not have been able to accomplish what it did politically (or pay prison bailout - Magon spent more than half of his exile years in prison). The PLM, with all their flaws, confusions, and quite honestly, some very big mistakes, were ultimately part of a workers' movement increasingly receptive to the idea of world communist revolution. There are lessons to be learned about their tribulations. Therefore this article will be about the PLM as part of not only the class struggle in Mexico, but in the United States and the rest of the world.

The story starts in October of 1903, when Ricardo Flores Magon was released from prison in Mexico City. Well aware that the Diaz regime was losing its patience with him - to the point that he might get killed if he continued with his political activities - Ricardo, his brother Enrique, and a group of his collaborators crossed the Mexican-American border. In the early years, Ricardo's group exposed through their paper Regeneracion (Regeneration) a brand of anti-Diaz liberalism. They illegally smuggled the liberal paper to Mexico and at one point it became the most popular newspaper in Mexico. However, increasingly but assuredly, the group's liberalism diminished as they got immersed in the American workers' scene. In St. Louis Missouri, the soon-to-be PLM militants studied Marxism and anarchism, and befriended all sorts of political exiles, from both anarchist and Marxist affiliation. Their class perspectives increasingly burgeoned in 1906 in the Cananea and Rio Blanco strikes in northern Mexico. In both strikes, PLM members participated. In the early 20th century, the class struggle in northern Mexico and the southwest of the United States was particularly intense due to the nature of the border. At that time - while in formal political terms there was a border - economically the border seemed tenuous at best. Workers from America and Mexico crossed the border all the time to participate in the area's mining and railway projects. So the region was particularly fertile for class struggle and the radicalization of the PLM. PLM militants participated in the 1906 strikes of Rio Grande and Cananea, both situated in Northern Mexico, strikes that eventually ended in bloodbaths.

The strike experiences would eventually lead the PLM to entertain the idea of armed insurrection. In July of 1906 the PLM officially solidified into a party by publishing their first manifesto. It called to use "whatever means possible" to overthrow Porfirio Diaz[1]. By this time, the PLM leadership was anarchist, but due to a fear of repression and alienating their audiences, they pretended a liberal façade by speaking in terms of "political liberty", but identifying that such liberty cannot come without a solid economic base. The manifesto identified the PLM's cause with that of the "workers of the world" observing that the workers' cause has no frontiers. In their attempts to use "whatever means to overthrow Diaz", the PLM organized an insurrection by conducting raids into Mexico using El Paso Texas as a base. The insurrection got thwarted due to treason and bad logistics.

In the United States, the socialistic political tendencies of the PLM started to become evident. In 1907 Ricardo Flores Magon and some of his collaborators where imprisoned for violating neutrality laws. In the trial, all sorts of socialists and anarchists and trade-unionists publicly defended the militants of the PLM. The anarchist Emma Goldman published their manifesto in her journal Mother Nature. Eugene Debs argued that the imprisonment of the PLM militants was part of an international attack against working class militants. The Western Federation of Miners financed the PLM's defense. Mother Jones collected thousands of dollars to aid the PLM in the trials. The popular socialist journal The Appeal to Reason argued that the PLM's activities were part of a global struggle that could lead the United States to a workers' revolution. Finally, several PLM members were known to distribute IWW propaganda. In the eyes of the state, the issue quickly became more dangerous than mere violations of neutrality laws - the PLM was intimately tied with the American anarchist and socialist scene.

After Ricardo stepped out of jail in 1910, he became increasingly disillusioned with the mainstream American left. He called many socialists cowards and he ridiculed the AFL. Furthermore there was a recurring racist attitude about them. American leftists sometimes stereotyped the Mexican worker as a dumb, illiterate peasant. Most of the members of the PLM were workers, including Ricardo Flores Magon, who was very poor for most of his life, thus he naturally resented the stereotype. He found anarchist support more acceptable: Emma Goldman routinely spoke about Mexican affairs in Mother Nature and concluded that Mexico was an important region for the hypothesized world revolution. Nevertheless, Flores Magon thought that the PLM should solidify relations with various international workers' groups, in order to spark a broader workers' movement in the American southwest and the Mexican north.

In September 1911, the PLM released another manifesto. At this time, Mexico was burning with the so called "revolution", so the PLM leadership felt that it was necessary to make explicit their revolutionary goals. The new manifesto transcended the liberalism of the first one, arguing to transcend the so called "1857 Constitution" which was liberal in - the latter which the PLM initially professed to defend from Diaz' authoritarianism. In the new manifesto, Ricardo wrote:

"Against Capital, Authority and the Church the Mexican Liberal Party has hoisted the Red Flag on Mexico's fields of action, where our brothers are battling like lions, disputing victory with the hosts of bourgeoisdom, be those Maderists, Reyists, Vazquists, Cientificos or what not, since all such propose merely to put in office someone as first magistrate of the nation, in order that under his shelter they may do business without any consideration for the mass of Mexico's population, inasmuch as, one and all, they recognize [sic] as sacred the right of individual property."[2]

The PLM leadership, well aware that different factions of the boss class were trying to dominate the anti-Porfirio sentiment, formulated a plan for action. The PLM leadership, still based in the United States, thought that in order to engage effectively in a military campaign, it would be easiest to start by a takeover Baja California, a thinly populated border state in Mexico. By January 29th of 1911, the PLM, with the help of numerous American militants, took Mexicali, the capital of Baja California. The success was followed by other takeovers of northern Mexican towns by PLM insurrectos, including Tijuana.

The PLM's military campaign was truly an international phenomenon. The PLM had some grounding in the American workers' scene at that time, and several of its fighters where "Anglos". From this international perspective, the takeover of Tijuana was the most interesting - the American town of San Diego, which was an IWW stronghold, was situated north of Tijuana. Wobblies filled the PLM's insurrecto army to the extent that Americans became the majority of "liberal" fighters in Tijuana. Unfortunately, the fact that there was a large American presence in the insurrectos' ranks was used by the PLM's political enemies to discredit them. The main myth that came out from these propaganda attacks was that the PLM was engaging in filibustering - a myth that still lingers today.

The PLM's strategy proved ineffective in the end. The "revolutionary" soldiers under the control of the reformist and liberal Madero eventually crushed the PLM insurrectos. The PLM never recovered politically from this. It was a victim of its confusions and political weaknesses: in particular its conspiratorial vision of a worker's revolution, despite the break the PLM had made with liberal bourgeois politics. That this break with liberalism was influenced by anarchist ideology did not help either, but this is a secondary question here.

After 1911 the PLM entered a downward spiral of political dissolution and irrelevance. Its political mistakes and the military defeat of the Baja "adventure" have already been referred to. But also, historically, there is also this fact: the working class in Mexico had failed to build a class movement independent from the warring bourgeois factions and was ideologically or militarily engaged with one or the other ‘revolutionary' armies. To weather this period would have required a lot more organizational strength and political clarity than the PLM already had.

After the PLM lost its influence in Mexico, two more historic events in the period proved his class allegiance: the First World War and the Russian Revolution. In March 1918, Ricardo wrote for the last issue of Regeneracion an internationalist manifesto calling for the workers of the world to oppose WW1 and to overthrow their bosses. Ricardo and his brother Enrique Flores Magon were thrown into an American jail for opposing the war effort, where Ricardo died in 1922. He was an unmistakable supporter of the Russian Revolution, despite his criticisms of it. These two positions by themselves prove his loyalty to the principles of the proletariat, and we can say without a doubt that despite his political weaknesses he died as a true militant of the world working class. And that we honor. 

RS 28/6/10

 

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[1] www.archivomagon.net/Periodico/Regeneracion/TerceraEpoca/PDF/e3n11.pdf [25]

[2] www.archivomagon.net/Periodico/Regeneracion/CuartaEpoca/PDF/e4n56.pdf [26]