Throughout the United States in recent months there have been a number of important strikes. The working class’ refusal to accept austerity is expressing itself in its increasing willingness to struggle. While these struggles have remained largely within the control of the unions and have mostly ended in defeat, revolutionaries should salute these signs of increasing combativity in the class and follow them closely. With public debt crisis and struggles against austerity in Europe, major struggles in India, South Africa, and Latin America, and China, the recent strikes in the U.S. are part of an international dynamic of the working class’ recovery of solidarity and self-confidence in the world working class beginning around 2003. This dynamic was interrupted by the worldwide financial crisis in 2008 (despite impressive struggles in Greece, Britain, and other countries), but since the beginning of the year, the working class has been returning to the path of class struggle, and shown that it will no longer accept austerity without a fight.

Since late spring, workers have gone on strike in Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Illinois, Washington State, New York State, and nationally in the aeronautics industry, and as we go to press an unofficial illegal dockworkers strike movement is spreading throughout the East Coast port cities. Significantly, these struggles have taken up many of the central issues of the pre-2008 strikes: health care, benefits, pensions, layoffs, and the general perspective of the future that capitalism has to offer. In 2003, for instance, the grocery workers strike movement in Southern California was concerned primarily with the creation of new tiers of health and pension benefits for new hires, and in 2005 the NYC transit strike over the future of a pension plan for new hires expressed major step forward in the development of inter-generational solidarity in the working class over these same questions.

With the onset of the crisis, workers were at first somewhat paralyzed, like deer in the headlights, with the very real threat of unemployment and plant closure. The decision to go on strike and confront the bosses was not taken lightly -- no one can afford to be laid off in a country with over 10% official unemployment and over 16% real unemployment[1] -- most workers retreated from the class struggle, sometimes expressing hopes that the next generation could recover lost ground when the time for struggle was better.

Another factor delaying the working class’ response to the attacks associated with the recent financial crisis was undoubtedly the democratic mystification and tremendous hope people had in the newly elected Obama administration to deliver on its promise of “change.” On election night there were parties in the street with elated voters banging pots and pans in celebration. Instead, what we have seen from almost two years of the Obama presidency is no real drop in unemployment, a real economy that continues to stagnate despite massive injections of credit from the State, health care “reform” that is already beginning to raise workers’ health care premiums, and the return of dramatic increases in the cost of living while employers continue to take advantage of the crisis to attack wages, pensions, benefits, and staffing levels across the board. By and large, the unions had put their hopes in the new Obama regime, hoping for the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (now dead in the water), selling the health care reform and promising all kinds of other reforms for workers from the new administration. Today workers’ discontent is no longer able to be channeled entirely toward the governmental reforms and the electoral circus—workers are more and more ready to struggle to defend their future.

The first signs of struggle on a massive scale were in the education sector in California this spring. When in the face of the state’s bankruptcy, tuition fees were raised 30% and staff faced serious attacks on their living and working conditions, students occupied universities, blocked roadways and attempts were made at creating assemblies and drawing teachers and staff and other parts of the California working class out in support[2] .

But this was only the beginning. Shortly afterward nurses in Philadelphia struck against employer provocations of removing tuition benefits and instituting a “gag clause” against criticizing their hospital’s administration, drawing significant sympathy from other workers throughout the region. In early June, 12,000 nurses from 6 hospitals in Minneapolis-St. Paul engaged in a one-day work stoppage and voted to authorize an open-ended strike that would have been the largest nurses’ strike in U.S. history. Here nurses were fighting primarily for the restoration of staffing levels and for specific nurse-to-patient ratios to be written into their contract, whereas the hospitals were seeking to institutionalize the low staffing levels they’d had since the onset of the 2008 recession. After the strike authorization, just as the contract was set to expire, the nurses’ union (Minnesota Nurses Association) agreed to non-binding federal arbitration and a 10-day “cooling off period,” during which they announced more than a week in advance their plan for a one-day strike on June 10. Despite the real militancy of the nurses and their willingness to defend their working conditions, the union was given a free hand to conduct the struggle, and immediately after this one-day strike they announced a tentative agreement that dropped the central demand of mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios, took the hospitals’ pay offer, and made no changes to health and benefit plans. Leftists and unionists throughout the country continue to hail this is a major class victory, but the nurses’ own Facebook page revealed a real dissatisfaction at the abandonment of the central demand in exchange for no real gains.[3]

One month later, more than 15,000 construction workers in two different unions struck in the Chicago area for much needed wage increases to cover health care costs and make up for rampant unemployment and decreased hours in one of the industries hit hardest by the recession. In the month of July alone, the Illinois construction industry lost 14,900 jobs.[4] A statement from International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 President-Business Manager James Sweeney during the strike reported that hours for their members have been reduced by 40%, and that out of 8500 members, 1000 depend on food banks and 1200 have lost their health care benefits.[5]   After 19 days, workers ended the strike accepting the lowest pay increase in 10 years and no attempts at offsetting rising health care costs or dealing with unemployment and decreased hours. Still, despite the stranglehold of the unions, many workers in other trades honored picket lines and refused to work on struck projects in solidarity. Interestingly, the Illinois Department of Transportation informed the building contractor’s association threatening to refuse deadline extensions for state projects and indicating that it may invoke no-strike requirements against future struggles. Also in Chicago in early September, Hyatt hotel workers staged a one-day strike (just as the nurses’ union had) in protest at layoffs and demanded concessions in their upcoming contract.

The summer also saw 700 workers in Delaware striking for the first time against Delmarva Power and Conectiv Energy against cuts in pension benefits and the elimination of retiree health for new hires, returning to work with a split contract vote and repeated calls for a recount. Teachers struck in Danville, IL, for the rehiring of those laid off in recent emergency budget cutbacks and against a contract including a pay-freeze and the institution of bonuses based on student-performance, and in Bellevue, WA, for wages and against standardized curricula. Also in Bellevue, Coca-Cola workers staged a week-long strike over a new contract requiring them to pay 25% of all health-care premiums as opposed to their previous flat rate, but returned to work after the company cancelled their health insurance and the union filed a class-action lawsuit, insisting it was better to go back to work. Bellevue is also home to one of the Boeing plants on strike this summer (plants in St. Louis, MO, and Long Beach, CA also struck) where workers returned to work after 57 days with no changes to the company’s proposed contract except $1/hr increases for some of the lowest paid.

The longest strike this summer (and the one receiving perhaps the most sympathy from the rest of the class) was at a Mott’s Applesauce plant in Williamson, NY, where the company determined that even though they’d been making record profits, the wage they paid to their 300 employees was out of line with industry standards and demanded $1.50/hr wage cuts in the new contract. The strike drew national attention as a particularly savage and unnecessary attack by the company and after an isolating, demoralizing 16 week attrition battle, the union “won” a contract that left wage and pension levels for existing employees alone, but eliminated defined pensions for all new hires, cuts matching payments to retirement health plans, and requires workers to pay 20% of health care premiums and half of any increases above the first 10%. Despite the union’s cry of “victory,” even dyed-in-the-wool unionists have asked whether the strike was really a success.[6] 

Most recently, in the final days of September, longshoremen in Camden, NJ, and Philadelphia engaged in an unofficial two-day strike against Del Monte who had moved 200 jobs to a non-union port in Gloucester, NJ which was joined by dockworkers all the way up New Jersey into Brooklyn refusing to cross the informal picket line. Right at the start of the strike, the New York Shipping Association got an injunction from a federal judge in Newark declaring the strike illegal and on the second day of the action, the International Longshoreman’s Association disavowed any association with the strikers, calling on union stewards to send the pickets back to work, and promising that they had convinced shipping associations and industry heads to meet with them a week later to “discuss” the eliminated positions.

While all of these strike movements have remained either mostly or completely within the union straitjacket, and as such, have been defeated (usually with the declaration of “victory” by the union), the return of the class to the path struggle is helping the class regain the necessary confidence and relearn the lessons of past struggles. This will throw the role of the unions into stark relief. As the ‘victories’ they are able to win with pre-announced one-day strikes, isolated battles of attrition, federal arbitration, class-action lawsuits, and the rest of the union rulebook are shown to be defeats, the working class through its struggles will have to re-learn the lessons of self-organization and extension that the ruling class has tried so hard to make it forget. These struggles are an expression of the same international movement of the working class that has brought strikes in Britain, Spain, Turkey, and Greece in the face of state austerity measures, a nation-wide strike in India, wildcat strikes in auto plants in China, and important strike movements in Latin America. The return to struggle and recovery of solidarity, the preoccupation with the future and the willingness to strike to defend it are an expression of the international working class’ return to its historic struggle and should be hailed as such by revolutionaries everywhere. 

JJ, 10/10/10.

Spurred on by the deepening economic crisis, the aggravation of imperialist tensions to a point of paroxysm, and the more and more apparent inability of the bourgeoisie to offer any viable solution to the worsening deterioration of the environment, a maturation of class consciousness has been brewing below the surface for a number of years. This maturation is following a difficult and non-linear path, and in the last few years it has manifested itself not only in the return of the class to the path of struggle, but also in a veritable world-wide explosion of discussion circles, reading groups, internet discussion forums, and individuals in search of political answers and clarification. We have seen this phenomenon surge virtually in every continent, from Latin America to the Philippines and Korea, from Australia to Russia, Turkey, Great Britain, and, finally, here in the US. We think this is a very significant development, deserving great attention and putting great responsibilities on the existing revolutionary organizations of Left Communists. We would like to pay special attention to the emerging discussion groups. As they surge and develop, it is important that they pose the question of who they are, what their role is vis-à-vis the working class, what perspectives they can pose for their future. It is in response to these preoccupations about the discussion circles’ nature and function that we decided to write this article.

Why do discussion circles form?

Discussions circles are not a new phenomenon in the working class. They existed during the ascendant period of capitalism alongside the mass parties and the trade unions, as in France and Great Britain, when both structures were true organizations of the workers. But the entrance of capitalism in its decadent phase transformed once and for all the aims, means, and forms of working class organization by turning these organizations which were once instruments of the working class into instruments of the ruling class. Today, there are no permanent political organizations that have a proletarian nature which the working class can turn to or claim their own. Discussion circles re-appeared at the end of the 1960’s, with the massive return of the class struggle, marking the end of the counter-revolutionary period which followed the defeat of the great revolutionary wave of 1917-1921. At the end of the 1960’s the return of the open economic crisis provided the material conditions for the reappearance of the class on the historic scene. This is the first historic condition for their existence: the class must have weakened the ideological yoke of the bourgeoisie and re-entered the terrain of class confrontations. However, when the class first returned to the path of the struggle at the end of the 60’s, it found a fragmented and dispersed revolutionary movement and the break in the organic link with the revolutionary organizations of the past effected by 50 years of counter-revolution. The small communist fractions that left the degenerating International and which survived the defeat and preserved the lessons of the past were all but wiped out by the counter-revolution. Deprived of their traditional apparatus of support such as it existed during the ascendance of capitalism, i.e. the trade unions and the mass parties, and of their natural framework of organization and debate such as it was the International, workers felt the need to come together to discuss and reflect. This is the second historic condition for the emergence of discussion groups today: the inexistence of the revolutionary party.

The appearance of discussion circles today happens in the same historic context of class confrontations that existed at the end of the 60’s, and at a time when the specific conditions and dynamics of the crisis and, more generally, of the life of capitalism in all its aspects have obviously worsened. The Midland Discussion Forum in Great Britain, for example, formed around discussions on the war in Kosovo.   The Manchester Class Struggle group, also in Great Britain, formed just over a year ago in the context of the aggravation of the economic crisis. But of course there are also the groups formed in Turkey around the Tekel workers struggles, and many more around the world. 

Groups forming on the West Coast of the US come from a reflection on the bankruptcy and dead end of capitalism, and the California students’ movement. In some instances they form as a result of working class struggles, or sometimes come from a critique of leftism. They come from many different political backgrounds and form a heterogeneous terrain. The groups in the US show similar characteristic to those in other parts of the internationalist milieu: they are animated by similar questions and concerns as their class brothers’ and sisters’ across the oceans, ranging from a desire to resist the present attacks against the working class, to concerns about workers self-organization, the question of solidarity, the culture of debate, the role of the left of capital, but also questions around the party, the different conceptions of the party in Left Communism and Trotskyism, the organizations of revolutionaries, the heritage of the ICC in the Communist Left and how Trotskyism obscured this history (see the article in the present issue for a more in-depth presentation and discussion of this summer’s ICC public forums). It is clear that their emergence, observed in other parts of the globe, has spread to the US as well, confirming the inscription of this country in the larger dynamic of the working class internationally.

What are the nature and function of discussion groups?

These groups are animated by the need they feel to link up to the struggles of the working class, to understand what the working class has to do in order to take its struggles to the level of political preparedness for its ultimate historic task of overthrowing capitalism. They want to know how the class struggles and how revolutionaries can contribute to the development of class consciousness. This shows that they are motivated by a militant need the class feels to question capitalism and fight back. As such, they are a product, a secretion of the class itself.

The resurgence of discussion circles show that we are in a period favorable to the development of class consciousness. They express the need the class has to not only clarify political positions through discussion, but also to arm itself politically for its task to offer the revolutionary perspective. In this sense, it is important that they do not get stuck in endless discussions about Marxism, risking becoming academic talk-shops or never develop politically, but rather sharpen their theoretical deepening the better to intervene in the practical, concrete aspects of the class struggle and what it needs to be armed, theoretically and politically, to fulfill its historic task. In other words, discussion circles are fundamental in the effort and process by which the class achieves class consciousness if they are capable of uniting theory and practice, rather than staying locked in academicism. Discussion circles express the necessity and the tendency the class has to form a political organization, not an academic school of Marxism. As we said in International Review 7, in an article devoted to drawing a balance sheet of a discussion circle that had emerged in Naples, Italy in 1975, “In general, discussion or study circles cannot be seen as ends in themselves. One does not search out ‘ideas’ for their own sake, but as the expression of a social activity. These circles are part of a whole social process within the working class by which the class tends to secrete a political organization.” This article was written 35 years ago, but its approach is still valid today.

It is important here to underline that while circles express the class’ tendency toward the formation of the party, they are neither the ‘ante-chambers’ of the party, neither ‘schools of the party’. They are not the property of any political organization, and they are not, and neither should they try to be, political organizations themselves. An article in World Revolution 207 expressed this idea very well: “The goal of a discussion circle is the political clarification of the individual participants. The framework of discussion is a common one, corresponding to the collective nature of the working class. The direction and pace of political clarification however, vary according to each person. Since a circle is not an organization regrouping with a political platform, a circle is not a permanent or stable entity. Rather, it is a moment of political clarification, allowing the militants, through participation in a collective discussion process, to find out where they stand politically in relation to the major questions of proletarian politics and in relation to the already existing and international currents of the Marxist proletarian milieu…A political organization of the proletariat is necessarily an internationally orientated organ, a product of the historical effort of the working class fighting for its political clarity. It doesn’t arise locally, but is a direct continuation of the political and organizational traditions of the Marxist movement. A circle, however, is a phenomenon that is limited geographically and in time. It is restricted to one area. Elements come together in one area in order to discuss matters of relevance to the proletariat and clarify them…” We should add that while the temptation to form a political organization may be strong, these groupings should not confuse the process of political clarification with its final goal of political decantation and crystallization in a political organization. This would result into a short-circuiting of the process of clarification and an attempt at creating a ‘semi-platform’, or setting up local, ’isolated ‘organizations, or intervening as a political body in the class struggle without any clear political or organizational framework for doing so.   Rather than ‘defending’ their existence as such, the task of discussion circles is to question everything and sift everything through the test of the most open, yet rigorous and fraternal debate. This is how discussion groups can develop an ability to recognize the criteria which unite revolutionaries in spite of their differences.

In order to do so, it is extremely important that they be open to anyone who is willing to discuss working class political positions, including the existing revolutionary organizations. It is vital for the class today to deepen the reflection on the historical impasse of capitalism, what it means for the future of humanity, and the challenges this presents to the class. Clarification occurs through the most open debates among different and even divergent viewpoints. This means that in order to fulfill their function of being spaces for debate and confrontation of different ideas, discussion circles should not start by establishing criteria for joining, and should not create or adapt a platform, which would transform the circle into a semi-organization neither able to fulfill the task of an organization nor that of a circle. This would short-circuit the very process of clarification they were created for. Instead, we urge them to continue deepening, debating, and opening up to the confrontation of ideas which can lead to the clarification of the aims and means of the class struggle. This is the true contribution discussion circles can make to the class. 

Ana, 9/29/2010

This past summer the ICC held a number of public forums across the US, which provided the opportunity for comrades from the ICC to meet a wide range of people and discuss a variety of issues with them. On the West Coast there were two forums in Los Angeles (one organized by the ICC, one by the IDP[1]) and one in Oakland, SF, where the central concern was to discuss the student movement in France against the CPE in 2006 and the lessons it may have for the contemporary student movement in California. On the East Coast forums were held in Philadelphia on the lessons of the Tekel strike in Turkey, and finally in New York on the economic crisis. None of these events would have been possible without the practical support and collaboration between our sympathizers. Their efforts, and those of other comrades who participated in the forums, ensured there was a real debate between revolutionaries. 

West Coast: Lessons from the student movements

Both forums in LA were attended by student organizers who had participated in the recent struggles in the universities of California. They reported the militant change of mood amongst the students, how they felt that the recent proposal of the authorities were a straightforward attack on their future. As such, the questions were primarily gained at learning more about the anti-CPE movement at the tactical level. The discussions centered first on the importance of the autonomy of General Assemblies (GAs) in order to wage a successful struggle. Many of those present had experienced the typical tactics and proposals of Trotskyists -- proposing ‘co-ordination committees’ for example – that effectively take the decision-making powers away from the mass meetings of the GAs, undermining their autonomy. In the anti-CPE movement in France the leftists were not very successful at this, and that was the movements’ strength. In California the leftists had succeeded in dividing the movement and downplayed the role of the GAs. So, the movement wasn’t yet strong enough to prevent this sabotage.

There was also a reflection on the differences with 1968: today the generation gap is not as large as it was back then. Several generations have experienced years of economic crisis since the 1970s so there is more scope for solidarity. Also, there is a far more equal participation of male and female students, and a effort to make demands that concern the whole of the young generation in relation to the workforce, since a lot of them are working during their studies. There is also a greater concern to reach out to and make contact with the wider working class in struggle. At all the meetings the question was raised: What initiatives were taken towards the urban youth of the suburbs and did it result in anything positive? We were able to give examples of where the students in France sent delegations to the urban youth, linking their problems in the general demands. And slowly but gradually this youth started to join the demonstrations, first the girls then the boys.

On two occasions there was a lively exchange of opinions about how to interpret the struggles in Greece and the difference between the revolt of the youth back in 2009 with efforts towards self-organization and the present movements dominated by the left and the Greek Communist Party and the Unions turning the anger into dead ends. There was also some discussion on the use of violence on the part of some anarchists and terrorists that also derails class activity and autonomy.

There was also an interest in the role of transit strikes (always called for by unions) in derailing struggles and preventing their extension. We discussed about this general type of union tactic, one that claims to support a strike movement but then boycotts and sabotages it in a subtle way, such as forgetting to distribute solidarity leaflets at all, or distributing them just days or hours before the strike. But above all, declaring strikes in transport and communication sectors when there is a threat of extension of the struggle towards other sectors risks cutting transport and information links for those joining the demonstrations. This did not succeed in France. The students wanted their demonstrations on days and times when the workers were not at work. This explains the mass participation of the working class in the student demonstrations: over 3,000,000 in the final demonstration! Finally, there was a discussion on the strong ability of the American bourgeoisie to manipulate its media, making it a master in the black-out of proletarian movements and being capable of changing the agenda through the media manipulation. An example was give about the 1st of May 2010, when 1,000,000 people participated in the demonstration in LA and not one single word was said on TV!!

During the LA forums (but more so at the Oakland forum) there were discussions of the historical challenges of the present period and the activities of the ICC: What are the conditions for the creation of a ‘culture of debate’ and what does it really means? We stressed the importance of creating an atmosphere of open and fraternal debate and collaboration between internationalists -- be they other left communists, anarcho-syndicalist groups like the KRASS in Russia, the joint intervention of the ICC and two anarchist groups in Mexico during the electricity workers strike, fraternal meetings with anarcho-syndicalists in the South of France, etc. Of course, the question of the ‘Party’ came up and the different meaning it has for Left Communism in contrast to the leftist concepts of the party serving for manipulations of the movements and their strive to power. The ICC strives for the power of the workers’ councils.

Another point brought forward in Oakland was how the existence of discussion circles all over the globe demonstrated the need for open non-sectarian debates internationally. We underlined the efforts of the ICC to create arenas for proletarian debate. In this sense, the discussion and collaboration between left communists and internationalist anarchists is one expression of the same striving of the class towards unifying its forces against capitalism. In order to destroy capitalism the working class must have the broadest and widest reflection possible to achieve a level of class consciousness that will ensure it is politically armed for its task to offer its revolutionary struggle as a perspective to humanity. In this sense the aspect of solidarity (shown at the most radical strikes today in China and other places) plays an important role in the working class regaining its identity, which has been weakened after the endless anti-communist campaigns following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc.

After all the meetings there were friendly chats with those present, during which one of the organizers said: ‘The ICC has a big shadow’, pointing that the ICC is much more known than even the we are aware of! We want to thank the comrades who made these debates possible and invite them to continue the discussions by writing or through our Forums on the website. 

East Coast: Lessons from the class struggle

Moving over to the East Coast, our forum in Philadelphia was on the topic, “Lessons of the Tekel workers’ struggle in Turkey: How to struggle from below?” Right from the start the discussion took an historical and global approach when one of the audience members, who was in the process of reading Rosa Luxemburg’s “Mass Strike” for a reading group, started with a question on 1905, so we could deepen on the real meaning of the soviet form of organization, the mass strike (as opposed to the planned general strike), and the general assemblies, which have been the shape which every radical strike movement has tended to take ever since.

We also discussed more about the strikes in Tekel as examples of the present strike wave which brings the question of ‘solidarity’ to the center of struggles much more drastically than in the past: not only solidarity with workers of other sectors, but also between different generations, as shown by the student movements in France who invited pensioners and unemployed to their general assemblies, the NYC and Toronto Transit strikes who fought also for decent contracts for the next generations and were greeted by the public. In the Tekel strike, we saw new expressions of solidarity such as German workers who went to Turkey and Tekel workers who made a tour through Germany, Italy and even to Greece, which was a real blow to the ‘nationalists’ who have tried their utmost to separate Greek and Turkish workers ever since the beginning of the 20th century. In Turkey itself Turkish and Kurdish workers refused to be separated and overcame heavy cultural borders during the Tekel strike movement.

Another topic was the situation of the working class in the US and if it is weaker here than elsewhere. We said that maybe the ruling class was stronger and able to use the unions, the mass media and the rule of law in a very sophisticated way to quell class anger. This inevitably strengthens the influence and the ‘confidence’ in the state as an ‘impartial’ body above class conflicts and ultimately weakens the class identity of the workers.

There was a lively discussion on the union question and the difference between unions in the 19th and the 20/21th centuries. In the 19th century, workers saw the unions as their own organizations and sacrificed for them willingly and enthusiastically, whereas now unions are often hated because dues are paid involuntarily in many workplaces and workers, feeling that they derive no real benefit from the unions and see the dues as a kind of tax. Ever since the beginning of the decadent period of capitalism around the turn of the 20th century unions went gradually over to the other camp, supported the nationalist reformist framework, ended up mobilizing the workers for the First World War and ever since have belonged to the class enemy. The audience admitted that the unions certainly have a role in leading workers to defeat, but still wondered about the situation of workers in the US Southeast, where unions are illegal and workers are exploited very harshly. The question was asked whether the unions, despite their conservative and counter-revolutionary nature, could help those workers as an intermediate step before self-organization. Comrades responded that generally you have unions where the ruling class needs them and that better conditions are not the result of having a union but rather that both the existence of a union and better conditions are results of workers’ combativity in a given sector. The example of the recent wildcat strikes in the automobile industry in China was given as ample evidence that workers don’t need a union in place to struggle. In this country the unions are explicitly part of the state and workers were still able to struggle and win on their own.

This led to a discussion of how workers can organize outside the unions and the question of the IWW. We detailed also more about the IWW in the past and today: being an expression of radical class activity through its mass activities in the past and today being torn between 2 tendencies: one that seems to want the IWW to act as a union, represent workers in negotiations, sign contracts, etc., and another that wants the IWW to act more as a struggle committee aimed at stimulating solidarity in the class. All the audience agreed that this debate has to be deepened more in future discussions, and that the issue of the IWW will come up more and more both among revolutionaries and potentially among the working class at large as it looks for historical alternatives to the traditional union-controlled struggle.

In New York where the presentation was given on the latest phase of the crisis, the discussion tended to move very quickly toward the struggle against austerity. The first comments on the crisis asked: ‘Does it have to get worse for workers to react?’ as the leftists say, and all agreed that the answer is NO -- misery is not a good condition, that’s why we have to fight back, but why is the working class’ level of struggle not corresponding to the level of the attacks? The discussion advanced various reflections: first we have to look at the struggle from an international perspective; second, we have to take in account that there is a certain fear compared to the 1970s and 80s, when wildcat strikes were a common phenomenon and a much smaller rate of structural unemployment meant that workers risked much less by engaging in struggle, as they could quickly find other work if victimized by employers; third, the setback after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc is still present

Another discussion was about the loss of class solidarity. Also this question was deepened from different angles. Globally strikes now increasingly start for reasons of solidarity: the New York transit strike for a decent contract for future workers, the Tekel strike in Turkey, and solidarity strikes in Spain in support of immigrant workers. Also, historically, there was a difference in mood between the period around 1968 and since class struggle 2003. Back then the feeling was that revolution was possible, but maybe not necessary, and now that it is more obviously necessary, but might not be possible. There is a fear to overcome and a class identity to regain and his passes necessarily through to expression of solidarity, a capacity only the proletariat can develop.

Another discussion was on the role of leftists, who approach the working class struggle in order to derail it to hopelessly ‘reformist’ perspectives that lead ultimately to defeat. Also discussed was the upsurge of Capital reading groups and discussion circles, in many places in the US, which are part of an international phenomenon and a sign of revival of the reflection on how to overcome capitalism

JZ/AS/JJ, 14/10/10.

On the morning of Tuesday, October 5, 2010, communists in the San Francisco Bay Area lost a comrade who was our direct link to multiple generations of past class struggle. That comrade was Ben Epstein, who passed away at the age of 92. He embodied the history of those fights, having participated in them himself, and was one of the last in the tradition of self-educated working class militants. When the current crisis hit in the summer of 2008, our study group was groping for historical references. Ben told us inspiring stories of the early Depression when workers and farmers joined in his hometown of Sioux City, Iowa to thwart auctions of foreclosed homes and farms, returning them to their former owners in “penny sales.” His town had been the epicenter of the movement of farmers’ councils that spread throughout the Midwest, in some places becoming near-insurrections. Most of us only knew Ben in the last 5 years of his life, but his influence went well beyond those few years and will always stay with us. But it was reciprocal. There were times when Ben would get giddy with excitement while we were reading texts like Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts or Luxemburg’s The Mass Strike. When asked why, he’d say “because it’s been such a long time since young people understood Marx and its implications for class struggle.” Ben always helped us see the concrete ways those theories could inform the struggles of our class. I will never forget the wisdom he so generously shared.  

HH, 10/17/10.<?xml:namespace prefix = o />

Latin America is still America’s Backyard

US imperialist policy in the “new world order”