We are publishing a call to arms to workers of the world by participants in the "General Assembly Gare de l'Est and Île de France" against the worldwide wave of imposed austerity measures.

To the workers, unemployed, and students of Europe

We are a group of workers from different industries and sectors (railway workers, teachers, tech workers, casuals...), both in work and unemployed. During the recent strikes in France, we came together to form an All Trades General Assembly, first on one of the platforms of the Gare de l’Est (mainline station in Paris), then in a room at the “Bourse du Travail”. Our aim was to bring together as many workers as possible from towns in the Paris region. Because we had had enough of the unions’ class collaboration, leading us yet again to yet another defeat, we wanted to organise by ourselves to try to unify the different sectors on strike, to spread the strike, and to have the strikers themselves control their own movement.

Against the capitalists’ social war, the workers must wage a class war

In Britain, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Greece, France... everywhere we are under heavy attack. Our living conditions are getting worse.

• In Britain, the Cameron government has announced that 500,000 jobs are to go in the public sector, £7bn of cuts are planned in social budgets, university fees have tripled, etc...

• In Ireland, the Cowen government has just lowered the minimum hourly wage by 1 euro (more than 10%), and pensions by 9%.

• In Portugal, workers are facing record unemployment. In Spain, the thoroughly “socialist” Zapatero is cutting everywhere: unemployment benefit, social security, health...

• In France, the government continues to break up our living conditions. After our pensions, comes the health service. Access to health care is getting more and more difficult and expensive: more and more drugs are no longer reimbursed, health care plans are increasing their charges, hospitals are cutting down on staff. Like all the other public services (the Post Office, gas and electricity, telecoms), the health service is being broken up and privatised. As a result, millions of working class families are unable to get care!

This policy is vital for the capitalists. Faced with the development of the crisis and the collapse of whole sectors of the capitalist economy, they find it more and more difficult to find markets where their capital can make a profit. They are therefore all the more in a hurry to privatise public services.

However, these new markets offer fewer productive outlets than do the pillars of the world economy like construction, oil, or the car industry. Even in the most favourable circumstances, they will not allow the economy to take off again.

In this context of general collapse, the fight for markets between the great international trusts will be ever more bitter. It will be a question of life or death for the investors of capital. In this struggle, every capitalist will take refuge behind his state to defend himself. In the name of the defence of the national economy, the capitalists will try to drag us into their economic war.

In this war, the victims are always... the workers. For behind the defence of the national economy, every national ruling class, every state, every boss will try to reduce “costs” in order to maintain their “competitiveness”. Concretely, they will not stop attacking our living and working conditions. If we let them get away with it, if we agree to “tighten our belts”, there will be no end to these sacrifices. They will end up putting our very lives in question!

Workers, let us refuse to let ourselves be divided by trade, by branch, or by nation. Let us refuse to wage this economic war within or across national borders. Let us fight together, and unite in struggle! Never were Marx’s words more urgent: “Workers of all countries, unite!”

It is up to us workers to control our own struggles

Today, it is the workers in Greece and Spain, the students in Britain, who are in struggle against governments which – whether right or left – are the servants of the ruling classes. And just like us in France, you are up against governments which do not hesitate to use violent repression against the workers, the unemployed, the university and school students.

This autumn in France, we tried to defend ourselves. We went into the streets by millions to refuse to accept this new attack. We fought against the new law on pensions, and against all the austerity measures which we are subjected to. We said “No!” to the rise in poverty and casualisation.

But the Intersyndicale (joint committee of the unions at national and local level, translator’s note) intentionally led us to defeat by fighting against any extension of the strike movement:

-          instead of breaking down the barriers between trades and branches to unite workers, it kept the mass meetings in each workplace closed to other workers;

-          it undertook spectacular actions to “block the economy” but did nothing to organise strike pickets or flying pickets which might have drawn other workers into the struggle – which is what some workers and casuals tried to do;

-          it negotiated our defeat behind our backs, and behind the closed doors of cabinet ministries.

The Intersyndicale never rejected the law on pensions, it even repeated over and over again that it was “necessary” and “inevitable”! To listen to the unions, we should have been satisfied with demanding “more negotiations between government, unions, and employers”, or “more measures to make the law a fairer reform”...

To struggle against all these attacks, we can count on nobody but ourselves. As far as we are concerned, we defended in this movement the necessity for workers to organise in their workplaces in sovereign mass meetings (“general assemblies”), to coordinate the strike nationally and to have it run by elected, immediately revocable delegates. Only a struggle led, organised, and controlled by all workers – both in terms of its methods and its aims – can create the conditions necessary for victory.

We know that the fight isn’t finished: the attacks will continue, conditions will be more and more difficult, and the consequences of the capitalist crisis will only get worse. Everywhere in the world, we will have to fight. And for that we must once again find confidence in our own strength:

-          We can take control of our own struggles and organise collectively.

-          We can discuss together openly and fraternally, we can speak freely with each other.

-          We can control of our own discussions and our own decisions.

Our mass meetings must be controlled not by the unions, but by the workers themselves.

We will have to fight to defend our lives and our children’s future!

The exploited of the whole world are brothers and sisters of one and the same class!

Only our unity across all national borders can overthrown this system of exploitation.

Participants of the AG InterPro “Gare de l’Est et Île de France”

Contact us at [email protected] [6]

INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY OF THE WHOLE WORKING CLASS!

For several weeks now we’ve seen an uprising in Tunisia against the misery and unemployment which is particularly hitting the young. All over the country, street demonstrations, meetings, strikes have spontaneously broken out protesting against the regime of Ben Ali. The protestors are demanding bread, work for the young and the right to live in dignity. Faced with this revolt of the exploited and youth deprived of a future, the dominant class has responded with a hail of bullets. These protestors are our class brothers and these are their children who are massacred in the demonstrations and whose blood flows today in Tunisia as in Algeria! The killers, and those that command them at the heads of the Tunisian and Algerian states, reveal in all its horror the real face of our exploiters and of the domination of the capitalist system across the earth. These assassins are not content to make us die of misery and hunger, it’s not enough for them to push into suicide dozens of youths reduced to despair, no, they also kill us with volleys of bullets fired at the demonstrations. Police units deployed at Thala, Sidi Bouzid, Tunis and above all Kasserine, have not hesitated to fire into the crowd killing, in cold blood, men, women and children, making it dozens of deaths since the beginning of the confrontations. Faced with this carnage, the bourgeoisies of the ‘democratic’ countries, and notably France the faithful ally of Ben Ali, have not raised a finger to condemn the barbarity of the regime and demand that the repression stops. Nothing surprising there. All governments, all the states are complicit! The world bourgeoisie is a class of murderers and assassins.

What’s really happening in Tunisia and Algeria?

It all began Friday December 17, in the centre of the country, following the self-immolation of a young unemployed graduate of 26 years old, Mohamed Bouazizi, after the local police of Sidi Bouzid confiscated his sole means of support which was a cart and some fruit and vegetables he was selling from it. Immediately a vast movement of solidarity and indignation developed in the region. From December 19, totally peaceful demonstrations broke out against unemployment, misery and the cost of living (protestors brandished baguettes!). Straightaway the government responded with repression which only accentuated the anger of the population.

A two-day strike of non-urgent medical staff started on December 22 by university doctors protesting against their lack of means and the degradation of their conditions of work. It also involved the medical-university centres of the country. Also on December 22, another young man, Houcine Neji, killed himself in front of the crowd at Menzel Bouzaiane, by gripping hold of a high tension cable “I don’t want any more misery and unemployment” he cried. Other suicides strengthened the indignation and anger still more. December 24, a young demonstrator of 18, Mohamed Ammari, was killed by police bullets. Another, Chawki Hidri, was seriously wounded and died on the first of January. To date the provisional list of deaths by bullets numbers 65!

Faced with the repression, the movement very quickly spread to the whole of the country. Unemployed graduates demonstrated on December 25 and 26 in the centre of Tunis. Meetings and demonstrations of solidarity developed throughout the country: Sfax, Kairouan, Thala, Bizerte, Sousse, Meknessi, Souk, Jedid, Ben Gardane, Medenine, Siliana... Despite the repression, despite the absence of freedom of expression, demonstrators brandished placards reading: “Today, we are no longer afraid!”.

December 27 and 28: lawyers joined in the movement of solidarity with the population of Sidi Bouzid. Faced with the repression meted out to them, arrests and being beaten up, the lawyers called for a general strike on January 6. Strike movements also affected journalists in Tunis and teachers in Bizerte. As Jeune Afrique of January 9 indicated, the social movement of protest and the coming together in the streets was totally spontaneous and was outside of the direction and control of political organisations and the unions: “The first certainty is that the movement of protest is above all social and spontaneous. This is confirmed by credible sources. ‘No party, no movement can pretend that it is directing the street or that it’s capable of stopping it’, declared the regional section of the Tunisian general union (UGTT)”.

A total blackout of information was organised. In the region of Sidi Bouzid, several localities were placed under a curfew and the army was mobilised. At Menzel Bouzaiane, the wounded could not be transported to hospital, the population lacked provisions and schools were used as lodgings by police reinforcements.

In order to try to restore calm, Ben Ali broke his silence and made a 13-minute long public declaration in which he promised to create 300,000 jobs in 2011-12 and to free all the demonstrators except those who had committed acts of vandalism. He dismissed his interior minister using him as a safety-trip and at the same time denounced the “orchestrated” politics of a minority of “extremists” and “terrorists” who were trying to harm the interests of the country.

This provocative speech, which criminalised the movement, could only galvanise the anger of the population and particularly its youth. From January 3rd, schoolchildren mobilised themselves and used mobile phones and the internet, notably Facebook and Twitter, to call for a general strike for all pupils. They demonstrated on January 3 and 4 and were joined by unemployed graduates at Thala. The young demonstrators were faced with truncheons and tear gas from the forces of repression. During the course of these confrontations the seat of government was invaded and the centre of the party in power was set on fire. The call for a national strike of pupils, relayed through the internet, was followed in several towns. At Tunis, Sfax, Sidi Bouzid, Bizerte, Grombalia, Jbeniana, Sousse, schoolchildren joined up with the unemployed. Meetings of solidarity also took place in Hammamet and Kasserine.

The revolt spreads to the universities

At the same time, in Algeria on January 4, in the small town of Kolea to the west of the Algerian capital, a number of impatient and angry workers and unemployed came onto the streets. The same day, dockers at the port of Algiers began a strike against an agreement between the port authority and the union cutting out supplementary payments for night work. The strikers refused to give in to an appeal by union representatives to suspend the strike. Here also the anger rumbled on; for these workers having a miserable wage, feeding themselves and their families is a daily preoccupation with the same content as unemployed youth in Tunis or Alger. The next day, the movement of revolt spread in Algeria notably to the coastal region and in Kabylia (Oran, Tipaza, Bejaia...) around the same social demands: they too are faced with endemic youth unemployment and the lack of lodgings, forcing them to live with their parents or to be crowded into unsuitable rooms (in the suburbs of Algiers these are found in profusion in the city quarters built in the 1950s and now resembling shanty-towns where the inhabitants are regularly harassed by the aggressive forces of the police). The response of the government wasn’t long in coming: immediately the forces of repression hit and hit hard. In the quarter of Bab el Oued in Algiers alone the wounded counted in the hundreds. But here also the ferocious repression of the Algerian state contributed to increasing the anger. In a few days, the demonstration spread to twenty departments (wilayas). Official reports were of 3 dead (at M’Silla, Tipaza and Boumerdes). The demonstrators are angry: “We can’t carry on like this and we don’t want to”, “We have nothing to lose”. These are the cries that you hear most often on the streets of Algeria. The immediate detonator for these outbursts was the brutal increase in the price of basic necessities announced on the first of January: the price of cereals increased by 30%, oil 20% and sugar shot up 80%! After 5 days of repression and lies about the demonstrations, Bouteflika took a step back to try to lower the tension: he promised a reduction of prices in the products that had been put up.

In Tunisia on January 5, during a funeral of the young vegetable seller who killed himself at Sidi Bouzid, anger was overflowing. A crowd of 5000 people marched being the funeral cortege crying in indignation “We won’t cry today, we will make those that caused his death cry”. The procession turned into a demonstration and the crowd stressed slogans against the cost of living which “led Mohamed to kill himself” and shouted “Shame on the government!” The same evening the police proceeded with heavy-handed arrests of demonstrators at Jbedania and Thals. Some youths were arrested or chased by armed police.

January 6, the general strike by lawyers is 95% solid. Elsewhere, in the centre, the south and the east of the country, strikes, street demonstrations, confrontations with the police are taking place and the agitation even spreads to the wealthier towns of the eastern coastal region.

The police are deployed in front of schools and all the universities in the country. At Sfax, Jbeniana, Tajerouine, Siliana, Makhter, Tela demonstrations of schoolchildren, students and inhabitants are brutally dispersed by the police. At Sousse, the faculty of Human Sciences is assaulted by the forces of order which proceed to arrest students. The government decides to close all schools and universities.

Faced with the repression of the movement, on January 7, in the towns of Regueb and Saida close to Sidi Bouzid, confrontations between demonstrators and police result in 6 wounded. Some demonstrators launch missiles at a security post and police fire into the crowd. Three youngsters are seriously injured.

January 8, the official UGTT union finally ends its silence, but doesn’t denounce the repression. Its General Secretary Abid Brigui, contents himself with saying, under pressure from below, that he supports “the legitimate claims of the population of Sidi Bouzid and the regions inside the country. We cannot be outside this movement. We can only range ourselves alongside the right to necessities and the demands for jobs”. Faced with the violence of the repression, he timidly declared: “It is against nature to condemn this movement. It is not normal to respond with bullets”. But he launched no call for a general mobilisation of all the workers, no appeal for the immediate end to the repression which was unleashed with a growing violence during the week of the 8th and 9th of January.

At Kasserine, Thala and Regueb, the repression of demonstrations turns into a massacre. Cold-bloodily the police fire into the crowd killing more than 25 people. In the town of Kasserine, terrorised by the exactions of the police who have even fired on funerals, the divided army not only refused to fire on the population but stood up in order to assure its protection against the anti-riot police. For his part, the high-command of the land army is dismissed for having given an order not to fire on the demonstrators. Moreover, if the army was deployed in the main towns to protect public buildings, it placed itself aside from the operations of direct repression, including in the capital where it ended up withdrawing. Faced with the bloodbath, hospital personnel of the region, although overflowing with emergencies, walked out in protest.

Since the bloody weekend of January 8 and 9, anger has spread to the capital. January 12, struggles exploded in the outskirts of Tunis. The repression results in 8 deaths with one youth killed by a bullet in the head. The government imposes a curfew. The capital is patrolled by the security forces and the official UGTT union ends up by calling for a general strike for two hours on Friday the 14th. Despite the curfew and the deployment of the forces of repression in the capital, confrontations are vigorously pursued in the heart of Tunis and everywhere portraits of Ben Ali are burnt. On January 13, the revolt spreads to the resorts on the coast and notably the great tourist centre of Hammamet where shops are smashed and portraits of Ben Ali torn apart while confrontations continue between demonstrators and police in the heart of the capital. Faced with the risk of tipping the country into chaos, faced with the threat of a general strike, and under the pressure of the ‘international community’, notably the French state which, for the first time, begins to condemn Ben Ali, the state strives to save something from the situation. 12/13 January Ben Ali declares to the population: “I’ve understood you” and he affirms that he would not be standing at the next elections... in 2014! He promises to lower the price of sugar, of milk and bread and finally asks the forces of order not to fire bullets and affirms that “there have been some errors and some have died for nothing”. 

The complicity of the ‘democratic’ states

Faced with this savage repression, all the ‘democratic’ governments have for several weeks limited themselves to expressing their ‘concern’, calling for ‘calm’ and ‘dialogue. In the name of respect for the independence of Tunisia and non-interference its internal affairs, none of them condemned the police violence and the massacres carried out by Ben Ali’s thugs, even if they have hypocritically deplored the ‘excessive’ use of force. After the bloody weekend of 8 and 9 January, The French state was still openly offering support for this ruthless dictator. The French foreign minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, in his speech to the National Assembly of 12 January, offered to lend a hand to Tunisia’s security forces: “We contend that the savoir-faire of our security forces, which is recognised throughout the world, would make it possible to resolve the security situation in this country”

The “savoir-faire” of the French security forces: we’ve seen that at work in the police persecution which resulted in the electrocution of two teenagers who had been chased by the cops in 2005, provoking the riots in the banlieues. We also saw this “savoir-faire” at work at the time of the youth revolt against the CPE, when anti-riot brigades invaded some universities with dogs to terrorise the students who were fighting against the prospect of unemployment and casualisation. The “savoir-faire” of our fine French cops was also revealed when they fired the flash-balls that injured a number of high school students during the demonstrations against the LRU in 2007. And more recently, in the movement against the reform of pensions, the repression meted out in particular to the young demonstrators in Lyon once against showed the efficiency of the security forces of the French democratic state. Following this demo, hundreds of young people were condemned to heavy penalties or are threatened with them. Of course, the ‘democratic’ states are not yet using live bullets against demonstrations, but this is not because they are more civilised, less barbaric, more respectful of the rights of man and freedom of expression, but because the working class in these countries is stronger, has a longer experience of struggle and is not prepared to accept such a level of repression.

When it comes to criminalising social movements in order to justify repression, the Ben Ali government has little to envy in its French accomplice, which was the first to use the term ‘terrorists’ to denounce the students in 2006 or the transport workers in 2007 when they came out in defence of their pension provisions.

It is clear that the only thing that really concerns the ruling class in all countries is the need to efficiently strengthen the police state in order to maintain capitalist order, an order which has nothing to offer the younger generations. All over the world, faced with an insurmountable crisis of capitalism, this ‘order’ can only engender more poverty, more unemployment and more repression.

The obvious complicity of the world bourgeoisie exposes the fact that it is the whole capitalist system which is responsible for the bloodshed in Tunisia, and not just Ben Ali’s corrupt regime. The Tunisian state is just a caricature of the capitalist state!

A revolt which is part of the struggle of the world working class

Although Tunisia is dominated by a highly corrupt, totalitarian regime, the social situation in this country is not an exception. In Tunisia, as everywhere else, young people face the same problem: the lack of any perspective. This ‘popular’ revolt is part of the general struggle of the working class and its younger generations against capitalism. It is in continuity with the struggles which have been developing since 2006 in France, Greece, Turkey, Italy and Britain, where all generations have come together in a huge wave of protest against the degradation of living conditions, against poverty, youth unemployment and repression. The fact that the social movement was marked by a vast expression of solidarity beginning with events of 17 December shows that, despite all the difficulties of the class struggle in Tunisia or Algeria, despite the weight of democratic illusions which are a product of a lack of experience and of the extremely repressive nature of these regimes, this revolt against unemployment and the high cost of living is part of the struggle of the world working class.

The conspiracy of silence which surrounded these events for weeks doesn’t just come from the censorship imposed by these regimes. It has to some extent been breached by the activity of young people who have made use of internet forums, blogs, Twitter or Facebook as a means of communication and of spreading information about what’s going on, linking up not only inside the country but also with family and friends abroad, especially in Europe. But the bourgeois media have everywhere contributed to installing a black-out, especially about the workers’ struggles which have inevitably accompanied this movement and about which we have heard only fragmentary echoes[1].    

As they do with every workers’ struggle, the media have done all they can to deform and discredit this revolt against capitalist poverty and terror, presenting it to the outside world as a ‘remake’ of the revolt in the French banlieues of 2005, as the work of a bunch of irresponsible wreckers and looters. Here against they have been in full complicity with the Ben Ali government: a number of demonstrators have denounced certain acts of looting as being the work of masked cops aimed at discrediting the movement. Amateur videos showed plain clothes cops smashing windows in Kasserine on 8 January to provide a pretext for the terrible repression which was to descend on this town.

In the face of capitalist barbarity, in the face of the wall of silence and lies, the working class in all countries has to show its solidarity towards our class brothers in Tunisia and Algeria, And this solidarity can only be affirmed effectively through the development of the struggle against the attacks of capital in all countries, against this class of exploiters and murderers which can only maintain its privileges by plunging humanity into the depths of misery. It is only through the massive development of its international unity and solidarity that the working class, especially in the most industrialised ‘democratic’ countries, can offer society a perspective for the future.

Refusing to pay for the capitalist crisis all over the world, fighting against impoverishment and terror, this alone can offer the prospect of an end to capitalist exploitation and the construction of a society founded on the satisfaction of human need.

Solidarity with our class brothers and sisters in the Mahgreb!

Solidarity with the younger generation of proletarians, wherever they struggle!

To end unemployment, poverty and repression, we have to end capitalism!

WM 13/1/11

For weeks, all the democratic states, with France at their head, have been supporting Ben Ali’s blood-soaked regime. There was an almost total black-out of information even though all these governments knew exactly what was happening in Tunisia. All the bourgeois media justified this disinformation by letting on that the country was experiencing riots but was in a confused, chaotic situation which was very difficult to understand. We were supposed to think that no one really knew what was going on. Lies! The savagery of the repression was known about all over the world. Thanks to the video footage put out on the internet by the young demonstrators, by tourists and journalists, all this information was by no means hidden. The reign of silence regarding the crimes of Ben Ali’s murderers was deliberately imposed by the governments and their tame media. The strikes, street demonstrations, revolts in high schools and universities were blacked out so that proletarians in the democratic countries would not feel concerned about the repression of the movement and show their solidarity. Now, after the fall of Ben Ali, tongues are untied and all the cameras are focused on the ‘revolution’ in Tunisia. Immediately after the official announcement of Ben Ali’s departure, when a state of emergency was being imposed and the army was being deployed all over the country, the French TV networks showed us pictures of the Tunisian community celebrating, especially in Paris. But prior to that, for week after week, nothing was shown of the daily demonstrations which were being repressed by the police, whereas images of the immense crowds thronging Bourguiba avenue in Tunis on 14 January are suddenly being broadcast by all the TV networks.   Representatives of the political class, experts and special envoys are now being invited to join a grand democratic debate about the situation in Tunisia. And now of course this whole crew is taking its distance from the Ben Ali regime and glorifying “the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people”, to use Obama’s own words. The fall of Ben Ali is now on the front pages of the newspapers whereas for weeks previously the torment of the Tunisian population was not seen as being worthy of much ink. This kind of hypocrisy is not gratuitous. If the media are now inundating us with real time information after weeks of black-out, it’s certainly not because the ruling class of the democratic countries is now “on the side of the Tunisian people”, as the French government declared with such boundless cynicism , three days after offering its services to Ben Ali’s repressive forces! If the bourgeoisie of the democratic countries, with its whole apparatus of media manipulation, has now changed its tune and is praising the “jasmine revolution” in Tunisia, it’s because it is in its interests to do so. The fate of Ben Ali has given it the opportunity to unleash a huge campaign about the benefits of democracy.

The bourgeois media continue to lie when they present the lawyers’ strike of 6 January as the motor force behind the revolt. They lie when they claim that it is an educated youth belonging to the “middle class” which brought the dictator down. They lie when they claim that the only aspiration of the exploited class and the younger generation who were at the heart of the movement is to obtain freedom of expression, They lie when they hide the deeper reasons for the anger: poverty, the near 55% unemployment which affects young graduates and which provoked a number of suicides at the beginning of the movement. It is this reality, a result of the aggravation of the world economic crisis, which the media campaign around the fall of Ben Ali is now trying to mask. The only objective behind the media enthusiasm for the “Tunisian revolution” is to intoxicate the minds of the exploited, to derail their struggles against poverty and unemployment onto the terrain of defending the democratic bourgeois state which is just another, more insidious and hypocritical  form of capitalist dictatorship          

Safiane  15/1/11

 Part of the media campaign surrounding the mid-term election results in the US has been a revisiting of the theme of the supposed “conservatism” of the working class in the US. According to many bourgeois analysts of the left, the Republican victories in the Mid-Term elections were largely the result of white working class voters deserting the Democrats in droves and voting for Republicans and the Tea Party. According to this meme, the Democrats suffered their most devastating losses in the old industrial Rust Belt of the Upper Mid-West. These traditionally Democratic areas, where union density has traditionally been high, have been an increasingly difficult electoral constituency to predict. Republican George W. Bush’s two election victories were made possible in large part by his ability to win Ohio’s electoral votes; a state with a large concentration of industrial workers, many of whom are union members. According to the dominant narrative on the bourgeois left, the working class is suffering from a profound case of “false consciousness” in which it votes for politicians who act against its economic interests. The conclusion is that the industrial working class cannot be trusted to act in a socially responsible manner. It is open to manipulation by right-wing demagogues. For the bourgeois left, the working class is potentially very politically dangerous.

This argument is not particularly new and has its roots in the New Left of the 1960s and 70s, when many politically radicalized students grew frustrated with the working-class’ supposed quietism and decided to take matters into their own hand in a series of “exemplary actions.” Today, this theme has been expressed primarily by the left of the Democratic Party who have trouble accepting the purported reality that many working-class people vote Republican instead of Democratic, just as the Republican Party has turned hard to the right and advocates many openly anti-working-class policies, such as abolishing unemployment benefits, privatizing Social Security, busting the unions and redistributing income upwards through tax cuts to the rich.

At the time of writing, the tense stand-off in the Ivory Coast, which contained the risk of a direct conflict between former president Gbagbo and the UN troops protecting the (UN’s) officially recognised winner of the elections, Ouattara, has eased somewhat. Various local African leaders have interceded to persuade Gbagbo to lift the siege of his rival and enter into negotiations without preconditions. But the situation remains extremely unstable. The following article, published by our French section at the beginning of December, provides some of the background to the conflict between the two presidents and in particular to the imperialist machinations going on behind the scenes. 

The day after the second round of the presidential election on November 28, the Ivory Coast awoke to find it had two presidents. One of them, Alassane Ouattara was proclaimed the winner by the electoral commission and the UN with 54% of the votes; the other, Laurent Gbagbo was named the winner by the Ivorian Constitutional Council with 51.4% of the votes. We thus have two big crocodiles ready to devour each other over control of Ivory Coast’s water-hole.

According to the UN Security Council, this was a “normal” election process. It welcomed “the announcement of the results of the second round of the presidential election which was held in a democratic climate...these were free, just, transparent elections”.

Obviously the reality is a bit different. This election was just a sinister farce which had already resulted in 55 deaths and 504 wounded by the end of the first week in December (Le Monde, 8.12.10). In the wake of Congo, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Togo, Gabon and Guinea, it’s now the turn of the Ivory Coast to enter the bloody arena of these kinds of elections, where the future winner is designated in advance by himself or with the complicity of his imperialist backers. And as always in such cases, the protagonists settle their scores through mutual massacres.

The current situation in the Ivory Coast cannot fail to bring to mind the morbid sequence of events in 2002, when the presidential election ended up with mass killings and a military coup, resulting in years of terror and the country being cut in two, between north and south. During this period the various factions, pro-government or rebels, confiscated the resources under their respective control, using the profits to buy huge numbers of weapons so that they could carry on the struggle for power. It goes without saying that this happened at the expense of the population, 50% of which lives on less than 2 dollars a day. This is a population which is constantly exposed to racketeering and murder. Today, with these new elections, all the conditions are coming together for a slaughter on an even more massive scale.

“The scenario which everyone feared was produced on the evening of 3 December. Laurent Gbagbo had himself declared winner. At the risk of plunging the country into crisis, indeed into war....No doubt Gbagbo could win a gold medal for pugnacity. But someone who has up till now presented himself as the ‘son of elections’ and a ‘child of democracy’ will now have a hard time keeping up this image. At whatever cost, he has decided to go to the bitter end of an approach which has nothing to do with the ballot box... The perspective of a new partition, a new north-south clash, doesn’t bother him: most of the country’s resources (cocoa, coffee, oil) are in the centre or the south; and exports of these materials go through the port of San Pedro. The Ivory Coast has been functioning in this way since 2002. Why shouldn’t it continue to be the case? The real Gbagbo, after these useless elections, is showing his face: arms in hand, ready to withstand a siege from the ‘external enemy’[1] as he never tires of repeating. The Ivory Coast has gone back to square one” (Jeune Afrique 5.12.10)

As for Alassane Ouattara, he has been ready to turn to his partisans, the ‘new forces’, who have said that they won’t stand idly by if Gbagbo remains n power. Similarly, Guillaume Soro, Ouattara’s prime minister, has stated his intention to ‘dislodge’ Gbagbo (whose prime minister he was until the beginning of the elections). In short, each camp is readying its guard dogs – the death squads and machete-wielders. But above all each side is counting on the support of the big imperialist powers, especially France.

When you see how much the question of the Ivory Coast animates the French bourgeoisie, you can get an idea of the importance of what’s at stake in this former hunting ground of French imperialism. Since the shattering of the democratic shop-window at the beginning of the 2000s, resulting in France losing control of its local agents, French imperialism has been trying its damnedest to maintain an influence in the country, in particular through big companies like Bouygues, Total, Bolloré, etc. These companies are the real backbone of ‘Françafrique’ in the Ivory Coast, with state interests and private interests fused together, as shown by the particularly incestuous relationship between Bolloré and the French state.

“It’s difficult to separate the multiple connections between this group, the worthy heir of the colonial trusts and the Françafricain networks, and the French political apparatus. As with other conglomerates, it benefits from the support of the public power in its conquest of the continent’s markets. The President of the Republic or its ministers happily go to Africa to act as lobbyists among their opposite numbers. While Bolloré’s friends on the right are well known, we can see that the Socialist deputy Jean Glavany[2] is, alongside Alain Minc, part of the group’s strategic committee. When France sends - or repatriates – its troops into Africa, as for the ‘Licorne’ operation in the Ivory Coast, the many tentacles of the Bolloré group seem to be indispensable. ‘All the operations are carried out in the greatest security and confidentality’, as we can read superimposed on pictures of armoured cars in a prospectus distributed by the ‘Defence’ branch of the SDV (Manière de Voir, Le Monde Diplomatique, December 2009).

But France is badly equipped, lacking sure supporters on the ground. This is why it is now officially giving its support to Ouattara, the democratically elected candidate; but in the corridors, right up until the final result, Sarkozy didn’t stop ‘reassuring’ Gbagbo, trying to make sure he would continue to serve French interests if needed. And it is in perfect knowledge of the fragile nature of France’s situation that Gbagbo, traditionally close to the Socialist Party, decided to blackmail the French authorities by brandishing his Chinese connections in front of them. In the end, therefore, France had to publicly declare its ‘neutrality’ saying that it didn’t have its own ‘candidate’. In sum, it was trying to bet on two horses, but without any guarantee of success either way. 

Françafrique under the eye of the US, and the rise of Chinafrique

Behind all the headlines, the fact is that France’s position in Africa is really under threat as it faces sharp competition from the American and Chinese bourgeoisies in particular. The battle is already raging in the UN Security Council between the partisans of Gbagbo and the supporters of Ouattara: the first is defended by China and Russia, the second by the US, Britain and France. We can’t fail to note the hypocrisy of these bandits: all of them talk about ‘peace’ while supplying weapons and ammunition to their armed agencies on the ground.

In France, Alassane Ouattara was at one point described as being ‘pro-American’, but more recently he has developed links with the French government, enjoying coffee and aperitifs with Sarkozy. But he is also hanging on to his friendships in US circles, notably in the IMF in which he has been a vice president. No doubt he will choose the backer who makes him the best offer, above all in the perspective of future confrontations in the Ivory Coast. And, on the continental level, Ouattara can count on a good deal of support in West Africa and from the African Union.

As for Laurent Gbagbo, Angola remains his main supplier of arms and on the diplomatic level he can rely on South Africa, which was his main supporter in his clash with France in 2004.

At the end of the day, behind all the manoeuvres and calls to respect the decision of the ballot box, we are seeing a bunch of criminals preparing to plunge the country into mass slaughter and spread bloody chaos throughout the region.

Amina, 8/12/2010. 

A tide of revolt is sweeping through Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, and Yemen. The Syrian regime has cut off the internet in fear that the contagion will spread to them.

These are not Islamist movements, as apologists for Mubarak have been claiming. The whole population has taken part, irrespective of their exact stance on matters of religion. In Egypt thousands defied the instructions of their imams not to go onto the streets; there have also been examples of a conscious rejection of sectarian divisions between Muslims and Christians, in a country where the latter minority has been subjected to massacres very recently.

But neither are they movements for parliamentary democracy, for the cosmetic political reform of a moribund social system, even if many of the movement’s participants may be hampered by such democratic illusions.

They are not ‘middle class’ movements: as with the student revolt over here, the majority of university students in Tunisia, Egypt, France, Greece, are today part of the working class.

These rebellions are part of a worldwide movement of the working class, the proletariat, the exploited. The same class movement that has appeared in Greece, in France, and here in the UK, in response to the capitalist economic crisis, to the despicable corruption and hypocrisy of the ruling class, and to the ruthless austerity drive of all governments, right wing or left wing.

This is why we must proclaim our total solidarity with the workers, unemployed, students and others who are leading these rebellions, and our opposition to all the forces seeking to block their evolution, from the open police violence of ‘dictators’ to the false promises of the democratic or Islamist politicians who seek to use the revolt for their own ends.

These movements are important to discuss at public meetings, demonstrations, and wherever we take up our own struggles.

To discuss what initiatives might be possible or useful, you can email us, post on the forum on our website, or raise the issue on other class struggle forums, such as libcom.org [18]

WR, 29/01/11.

We have just received news from Korea that eight militants of the “Socialist Workers’ League of Korea” (Sanoryun) have been arrested and charged under South Korea’s infamous “National Security Law”.1 They are due to be sentenced on 27th January.

There can be no doubt that this is a political trial, and a travesty of what the ruling class likes to call its “justice”. Three facts bear witness to this:

• First, the fact that South Korea’s own courts have twice thrown out the police charges against those arrested.2
• Second, the fact that the militants are charged with “forming a group benefiting the enemy” (ie North Korea), despite the fact that Oh Se-Cheol and Nam Goong Won, amongst others, were signatories of the October 2006 “Internationalist Declaration from Korea against the threat of war” which denounced North Korea’s nuclear tests and declared in particular that: “the capitalist North Korean state (...) has absolutely nothing to do with the working class or communism, and is nothing but a most extreme and grotesque version of decadent capitalism's general tendency towards militaristic barbarism”.3
• Third, Oh Se-Cheol’s speech leaves no doubt that he opposes all forms of capitalism, including North Korean state capitalism.

These militants are accused of nothing other than the thought crime of being socialists. In other words, they stand accused of urging workers to defend themselves, their families, and their living conditions, and of exposing openly the real nature of capitalism. The sentences required by the prosecution are only one more example of the repression meted out by the South Korea ruling class against those who dare to stand in its way. This brutal repression has already targeted the young mothers of the “baby strollers’ brigade” who took their children to the 2008 Candlelight demonstrations and later faced legal and police harassment;4 it has targeted the Ssangyong workers who were beaten up by the riot police who invaded their occupied factory.5

Faced with the prospect of heavy jail sentences, the arrested militants have conducted themselves in court with exemplary dignity, and have used the opportunity to expose clearly the political nature of this trial. We reproduce below a translation of Oh Se-Cheol’s last speech before the tribunal.

Military tensions in the region are on the rise, following the provocative shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in November last year and the killing of civilians by the North Korean regime’s canon, answered by the despatch of an American nuclear aircraft carrier to the region to conduct joint military exercises with the South Korean armed forces. In this situation, the statement that humanity today faces a choice between socialism and barbarism rings truer than ever.

The propaganda of the US and its allies likes to portray North Korea as a “gangster state”, whose ruling clique lives in luxury thanks to the ruthless repression of its starving population. This is certainly true. But the repression meted out by the South Korean government to mothers, children, struggling workers, and now socialist militants shows clearly enough that, in the final analysis, every national bourgeoisie rules by fear and brute force.

Faced with this situation we declare our complete solidarity with the arrested militants, notwithstanding the political disagreements we may have with them. Their struggle is our struggle. We address our heartfelt sympathy and solidarity to their families and comrades. We will gladly forward on to the comrades any messages of support and solidarity that we may receive at international [at] internationalism.org.6

Oh Se-Cheol's final speech in court, December 2010

(what follows is the text of Oh Se-Cheol's speech, translated by us from the Korean)

Several theories have sought to explain the crises that have occured throughout the history of capitalism. One of these is the catastrophe theory, which holds that capitalism will collapse of its own accord at the very moment that capitalist contradictions arrive at their highest point, making way for a new millennium of paradise. This apocalyptic or extreme anarchistic position has created confusion and illusions in understanding the proletariat’s suffering from capitalist oppression and exploitation. Many people have been infected by such a non-scientific view.

Another theory is the optimistic one that the bourgeoisie always spreads. According to this theory, capitalism itself has the means to overcome its own contradictions and the real economy works well through eliminating speculation.

A more refined position than the two mentioned above, and which has come to prevail over the others, considers that capitalist crises are periodic, and that we need only wait quietly until the storm is over in order to sail on.

Such a position was appropriate for the scene of capitalism in the 19th Century: it is no longer so for capitalist crises in the 20th and 21st century. The capitalist crises in the 19th century were crises of capitalism’s phase of unlimited expansion, which Marx in the Communist Manifesto called the epidemic of overproduction. However the tendency of overproduction resulting in famine, poverty and unemployment was not because of a lack of commodities but because there were too many commodities, too much industry and too many resources. Another cause of capitalist crises is the anarchy of capitalism’s system of competition. In the 19th century, capitalist relations of production could be expanded and deepened through conquering new areas to win new wage labour and new outlets for commodities and so crises in this period were understood as the pulses of a healthy heart beat.

In the 20th century such an ascending phase of capitalism came to an end with the turning point of World War I. From this point onwards, capitalist relations of commodity production and of wage labour had been expanded throughout the world. In 1919 the Communist International named capitalism in that period as the period of “war or revolution”. On the one hand, the capitalist tendency of overproduction pushed towards imperialist war with the aim of grabbing and controlling the world market. On the other hand, unlike the 19th century, it made the world economy dependent on the semi-permanent crisis of instability and destruction.

Such a contradiction resulted in two historical events, the First World War and the world depression of 1929 at the cost of 20 million lives and an unemployment rate of 20% – 30%, which again paved the way for the so called “socialist countries” with state capitalism through nationalisation of the economy on one side and liberal countries with a combination of private bourgeoisie and state bureaucracy on the other side.

After the Second World War world capitalism, including the so called “socialist countries”, experienced an extraordinary prosperity resulting from 25 years of reconstruction and increasing debts. This led government bureaucracy, trade union leaders, economists, and so called “Marxists” to declare loudly that capitalism had overcome its economic crisis definitively. But the crisis has continuously worsened as the following examples show: the devaluation of the Pound Sterling in 1967, the Dollar crisis in 1971, the oil shock in 1973, the economic recession of 1974-75, inflation crisis in 1979, credit crisis in 1982, crisis of Wall Street in 1987, economic recession in 1989, destabilisation of European currencies in 1992-93, crisis of the “tigers” and “dragons” in Asia in 1997, the crisis of the American “new economy” in 2001, the sub-prime crisis in 2007, the financial crisis of Lehman Brothers etc and the financial crisis of 2009-2010.

Is such a series of crises a ‘cyclical’, a ‘periodic’ crisis? Not at all! It is the result of the incurable illness of capitalism, the scarcity of markets with the ability to pay, the falling rate of profit. At the time of the big world depression in 1929 the worst situation did not occur because of an immense intervention of the states. But recent cases of financial crisis, economic crisis show that the capitalist system cannot survive any more with the help of such instant measures as the bail-out money from states or state debts. Capitalism is now facing an impasse as a result of the impossibility of the expansion of productive forces. However capitalism is in a struggle to the death against this impasse. That is, it depends endlessly on state credit and finds outlets for over-production through creating fictitious markets.

For 40 years world capitalism has been escaping catastrophe through immense credits. Credit for capitalism is the same as drugs for a drug-addict. In the end those credits will return as a burden demanding the blood and sweat of workers throughout the world. They will also result in workers’ poverty throughout the world, in imperialist wars, and in ecological disasters.

Is capitalism in decline? Yes. It is heading not for sudden ruin but for a new stage in the downfall of a system, the final stage in the history of capitalism which is drawing to its end. We must seriously recall the 100 year old slogan “war or revolution?” and once again prepare the historical understanding of the alternative “barbarism or socialism” and the practice of scientific socialism. This means that socialists must work together and unite, they must stand firmly on the basis of revolutionary Marxism. Our aim is to overcome capitalism based on money, commodity, market, wage labour and exchange value, and to build a society of liberated labour in a community of free individuals.

Marxist analyses have confirmed that the general crisis of the capitalist mode of production has already reached its critical point because of the falling rate of profit and the saturation of markets in the process of production and realisation of surplus value. We now find ourselves facing the alternative between capitalism, meaning barbarism, and socialism, communism meaning civilisation.

First, the capitalist system is becoming one which cannot even feed the slaves of wage labour. Every day around the world one hundred thousand people are starving and every 5 seconds one child under 5 years old starves to death. 842 million people are suffering from permanent undernourishment and one third of the 6 billion world population is struggling every day for its survival because of rising food prices.

Second, the present capitalist system cannot maintain the illusion of economic prosperity.

The economic miracles of India and China have proved illusions. During the first half year of 2008 in China 20 million workers lost their jobs and 67,000 companies went bankrupt.

Third, an ecological disaster is expected. On the point of global warming, the average temperature of the earth increased 0.6% since 1896. In the 20th century the northern hemisphere experienced the most serious warming for the last 1000 years. The areas covered with snow shrank by 10% since the end of the 1960s and the layer of ice at the North Pole has shrunk by 40%. The average sea level rose by 10-20% during the 20th century. Such a rise means 10 times an increase higher than that of last 3000 years. The exploitation of the earth during the last 90 years appeared in the form of reckless deforestation, soil erosion, pollution (air, water), usage of chemical and radioactive materials, destruction of animals and plants, explosive appearance of epidemics. The ecological disaster can be seen in an integrated and global form. So it is impossible to foresee exactly how seriously this problem will develop in the future.

How then has the history of class struggle against capitalist suppression and exploitation developed?

The class struggle has existed constantly but has not been successful. The 1st International failed because of the power of capitalism in its ascending period. The 2nd International failed because of nationalism and its abandoning of its revolutionary character. And the 3rd International failed because of the Stalinist counterrevolution. Especially the counterrevolutionary currents since 1930 misled the workers about the nature of state capitalism which they called ‘socialism’. In the end, they played a supporting role for the world capitalist system, suppressed and exploited the world proletariat through disguising the confrontation between two blocs.

Further, according to the bourgeois campaign the fall of the Eastern Bloc and the Stalinist system was an “evident victory of liberalist capitalism”, “the end of class struggle” and even the end of the working class itself. Such a campaign led the working class into serious retreat on the level of its consciousness and militancy.

During 1990s the working class didn´t give up completely but it had no weight and ability commensurate to those of trade unions as struggle organisations in a previous period. But the struggles in France and Austria against the attacks on pensions provided a turning point for the working class since 1989 to start its struggle again. The workers’ struggle increased most in the central countries: the struggle at Boeing and the transportation strike in New York in the USA in 2005; Daimler and Opel struggles in 2004, medical doctors’ struggle in the spring of 2006, Telekom struggle in 2007 in Germany; London airport struggle in August, 2005 in GB and Anti-CPE struggle in France 2006. Among the peripheral countries, there were the construction workers’ struggle in the spring of 2006 in Dubai, the textile workers’ struggle in spring of 2006 in Bangladesh, the textile workers’ struggle in spring of 2007 in Egypt.

Between 2006 and 2008 the struggle of the world working class has been expanding to the whole world, to Egypt, Dubai, Algeria, Venezuela, Peru, Turkey, Greece, Finland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Russia, Italy, Britain, Germany, France, the USA, and China. As the recent struggle in France against pension reforms showed, the working class struggle is anticipated to become more and more extensively offensive.

As the above showed, the final tendency of decadence of world capitalism and the crisis which has burdened the working class have inevitably provoked struggles of workers throughout the world, unlike those we have experienced before.

We stand now before the alternative, to live in barbarism not as human beings but like animals or to live happily in freedom, in equality and with human dignity.

The depth and the scope of the contradictions of Korean capitalism are more serious than those of so-called advanced countries. The pain of Korean workers seems to be far bigger than those of the workers in European countries with their achievements of previous struggles of the working class. This is a question of the human life of the class, which cannot be measured by the empty pretence of the Korean government playing host for the G20 summit meeting, or the display of quantitative economic indexes.

Capital is international by its nature. Different national capitals have always been in competition and conflict but they have collaborated together in order to maintain the capitalist system, to hide its crises and attack workers as human beings. Workers struggle not against capitalists but against the capitalist system which moves only for the increase of its profits and unlimited competition.

Historically Marxists have always struggled together with the working class, the master of history, by revealing the nature of the historical laws of human society and that of the laws of social systems, presenting the orientation towards the world of real human life, and criticizing the obstacles of inhuman systems and laws.

For that reason they constructed organisations like parties and participated in practical struggles. At least since the 2nd World War such practical activities of Marxists have never experienced any judicial constriction. Rather their thought and practice have been highly valued as contributions to the progress of human society. Such masterpieces of Marx as Capital or the Communist Manifesto have been read as widely as the Bible.

This SWLK case is a historical one which shows to the whole world the barbarous nature of Korean society through its suppression of thought, and would be as a stain in the history of socialist trials in the world. In the future there will be more open and mass socialist movements, Marxist movements will be widely and powerfully developed in the world and in Korea. The judicial apparatus will handle cases of organised violence but cannot suppress socialist movements, Marxist movements. Because they will continue forever as long as humanity and workers exist.

Socialist movements and their practice cannot be the object of judicial punishment. Rather they must be an example for respect and confidence. Here are my closing words:

• Abolish the national security law which suppresses the freedom of thoughts, of science and of expression!
• Stop the repression of capital and power against workers’ struggles to be the subject of history, of production and of power!
• Workers of the whole world, unite in order to abolish capitalism and construct a community of free individuals!

One hundred years ago, a Dublin-born socialist named Robert Croker, also known as Robert Noonan and, most famously, as Robert Tressell, died in Liverpool, England and was buried with 12 others in a pauper’s grave. He was barely 40 years old.

He’s rightly remembered today for his only novel, ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’, generally hailed as a classic literary endeavour, which describes aspects of Edwardian English working class life from a Marxist perspective.

It’s a posthumously published book that, without resort to preaching or pedagogy, encapsulates the robbery that is the capitalist mode of production through an engaging story of employers and employees in a small English seaside town. Its narrative implies that social change is both necessary and possible, without ever being explicit enough about the means to achieve this.

One of its highlights, which unfolds in a naturalistic and humorous manner, is the exposition of ‘The Great Money Trick’, described by English playwright Howard Brenton as: “nothing less than Karl Marx's labour theory of value, a cornerstone of socialist thinking.”[1] This is the scene in which the book’s central character, a decorator called Owen, explains to his workmates in the building trade how ‘a fair days work for a fair days wage’ in fact produces profits for the bosses at the expense of the workers. It’s an unsurpassed set-piece which has been translated for film, theatre and television.

Before proceeding, a brief explanation of the book’s title. ‘Ragged Trousered’ implies those meagre garments worn by the poor or workingmen. An earlier period in France might use the phrase ‘sans culottes’. ‘Philanthropists’ is a satire on the ‘great and the good’ who gave money to the ‘deserving poor’. In Tressell’s view, it’s the proletarians who are the ‘philanthropists’ because it is their unpaid labour in the form of surplus value which supports the collective class of capitalists.

After his death, it’s thanks to the efforts of his daughter Kathleen that Tressell’s handwritten, 1,600-page manuscript was eventually published, at first in a heavily-edited form (because of its socialist content, according to the original publisher, who, despite his prejudices, nonetheless recognised the literary worth of the work). It appeared in England and Canada in 1914, in revolutionary Russia in 1920, and in its full version in the 1950s.

Because the work so movingly describes the plight of the proletariat as an exploited class, it has become a treasured icon of the left whose function is to keep the proletariat in precisely that condition.

Written in the interregnum between capitalist ascendency and its decadence, by an author whose membership of the Social Democratic Federation gives free reign to today’s trade union and Labour Party (Social Democratic) politicians to claim continuity with its content, the revolutionary kernel of Tressell’s work has been buried in the tomb of recuperation.

At a centenary event in Hastings (South East England), where Tressell toiled and on which the fictional town of ‘Mugsborough’ in the novel is based, one could find local and national Labour Party politicians, trade unionists and other, more well-meaning folk, all laying claim to his legacy.

In a UK left-leaning national newspaper, the Guardian, the aforementioned left-wing playwright Howard Brenton could declaim: “The party Tressell joined, the SDF (Social Democratic Federation), was revolutionary. We know that path led to the disaster of the Soviet Union.”[2]

But the SDF, despite being the UK’s ‘first Marxist-based’ party, was riddled with programmatic and practical ambiguities which saw the likes of Eleanor Marx and William Morris quit its ranks. And contrary to Brenton’s assertion, the ‘disaster’ of the ‘Soviet Union’ was not the result of the workers’ revolution there, but of its international defeat.

The support the majority of the SDF – including Tressell’s inspiration, the ‘Mugsborough rebel’ Alf Cobb - gave to British imperialism in World War One – and the relative failure of its members like British communists John McLean and Willie Gallagher to reinforce their internationalist attitudes with a corresponding organisational practice – only underlines the importance of coherent, Marxist revolutionary organisation, then and now.[3]

The richness of Tressell’s literary and Marxist masterpiece –  despite a certain sentimentalism evident in the ending – remains a challenge to today’s communists and sympathisers: how to communicate what we believe and fight for into forms –  words, music ,film, whatever – which convey meaning without cliché or cant.

KT 31/1/11

The tide of rebellion in North Africa and the Middle East shows no sign of abating. The latest developments: demonstrations and clashes with the police in the Libyan city of Benghazi following the arrest of a lawyer involved in a campaign demanding an investigation into the brutal massacre of hundreds of prisoners after a protest in 1996. Qaddafi’s regime again displays its ruthless brutality – there are reports of snipers and helicopters firing into crowds, killing many; in Bahrain, thousands of demonstrators occupy the Pearl Roundabout in Manama, hoping to emulate the occupation of Tahrir Square. They raise slogans against sectarian divisions (“No Shia, no Sunni, only Bahraini”) and against self-appointed leaders (“We have no leaders”). At the time of writing, riot police have now cleared the area with considerable violence – many demonstrators have been injured and some killed. In Iraq, there have been new demonstrations against the price of necessities and the lack of electricity.  

But perhaps the most important development over the last week or so has been the explicit development of mass workers’ struggles in Egypt. As Hossam el-Hamalawy[1], put it in an article published by The Guardian on 14 Feb, the upsurge of the workers fighting for their own demands was a potent factor in the decision of the army to dispense with Mubarak:    

“All classes in Egypt took part in the uprising. Mubarak managed to alienate all social classes in society. In Tahrir Square, you found sons and daughters of the Egyptian elite, together with the workers, middle-class citizens and the urban poor. But remember that it's only when the mass strikes started on Wednesday [31] that the regime started crumbling and the army had to force Mubarak to resign because the system was about to collapse... From the first day of the January 25 uprising, the working class has been taking part in the protests. However, the workers were at first taking part as ‘demonstrators’ and not necessarily as ‘workers’ – meaning, they were not moving independently. The government had brought the economy to halt, not the protesters, with their curfews, and by shutting down the banks and businesses. It was a capitalist strike, aimed at terrorising the Egyptian people. Only when the government tried to bring the country back to ‘normal’ on 8 February did the workers return to their factories, discuss the current situation and start to organise en masse, moving as an independent block”.

An article by David McNally[2] on www.pmpress.org [32] gives an idea of how widespread this movement has been:

“In the course of a few days during the week of February 7, tens of thousands of them stormed into action. Thousands of railworkers took strike action, blockading railway lines in the process. Six thousand workers at the Suez Canal Authority walked off the job, staging sit-ins at Suez and two other cities. In Mahalla, 1,500 workers at Abul Sebae Textiles struck and blockaded the highway. At the Kafr al-Zayyat hospital hundreds of nurses staged a sit-in and were joined by hundreds of other hospital employees.

Across Egypt, thousands of others – bus workers in Cairo, employees at Telecom Egypt, journalists at a number of newspapers, workers at pharmaceutical plants and steel mills – joined the strike wave. They demands improved wages, the firing of ruthless managers, back pay, better working conditions and independent unions. In many cases they also called for the resignation of President Mubarak. And in some cases, like that of the 2,000 workers at Helwan Silk Factory, they demanded the removal of their company’s Board of Directors. Then there were the thousands of faculty members at Cairo University who joined the protests, confronted security forces, and prevented Prime Minister Ahmed Shariq from getting to his government office”

We could add numerous other examples: about 20,000 workers in Al-Mahalla Al-Kobra, more than 100 kilometres north of Cairo, who have re-launched a strike after a three-day break in the largest spinning and weaving factory in Egypt. Workers in the tourist industry, like the 150 who staged a well-publicised demo against their miserable wages in the shadow of the Great Pyramid; bank workers demanding the sacking of their corrupt bosses; ambulance drivers using their vehicles to block roads in a pay protest; workers who demonstrated outside the HQ of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation denouncing it as a “den of thieves” and “a group of thugs” and called for its dissolution – their words received instant verification as ETUF goons responded with beatings and missiles. The police have also been publicly protesting against the way they have been used against demonstrators, a clear indication of plummeting morale among the lower echelons of the force. No doubt there will be many more examples to be added to these.

As McNally notes, this movement shows many of the characteristics of the mass strike as analysed by Rosa Luxemburg:

“What we are seeing, in other words, is the rising of the Egyptian working class. Having been at the heart of the popular upsurge in the streets, tens of thousands of workers are now taking the revolutionary struggle back to their workplaces, extending and deepening the movement in the process. In so doing, they are proving the continuing relevance of the analysis developed by the great Polish-German socialist, Rosa Luxemburg. In her book, The Mass Strike, based on the experience of mass strikes of 1905 against the Tsarist dictatorship in Russia, Luxemburg argued that truly revolutionary movements develop by way of interacting waves of political and economic struggle, each enriching the other. In a passage that could have been inspired by the upheaval in Egypt, she explains,

‘Every new onset and every fresh victory of the political struggle is transformed into a powerful impetus for the economic struggle. . . After every foaming wave of political action a fructifying deposit remains behind from which a thousand stalks of economic struggle burst forth. And conversely. The workers condition of ceaseless economic struggle with the capitalists keeps their fighting spirit alive in every political interval’”.

As both McNally and Hossam el-Hamalawy point out, the power of this movement was not acquired overnight. For the past seven years, it is the workers who have been at the frontline of resistance against the poverty and repression imposed on the entire population. There were a number of strike movements in 2004, 2006-7 and 2007-8, with the textile workers of Mahalla playing a particularly significant role, but with many other sectors joining in. In 2007 we published an article [33] which already discerned the “germs of the mass strike” in these struggles, because of their high degree of self-organisation and solidarity. As Rosa pointed out, the mass strike is something that matures over a period of years – the struggles of 1905 which she wrote about had been fermenting in successive struggles over the previous two decades – and 1905 was also a bridge to the revolution of 1917.

But despite all the talk of revolution in these countries – some of it honest if flawed, some of it part of the mystifying discourse of leftism which always seeks to banalise the very concept of revolution – this movement towards the future mass strike faces many dangers:

-          the danger of repression. Now that the massive protests have dispersed, the army which has ‘assumed power’ (in fact it was always there at the heart of it) is issuing urgent calls for Egypt to get back to work. After all, the revolution has won its victory! There have been hints that workers’ meetings will be banned. We already know that throughout the period when the army was claiming to be protecting the people, hundreds of activists were being arrested and tortured by this very same ‘popular’ institution, and there is no reason to expect that this kind of ‘quiet’ repression will not continue, even if head-on clashes are avoided;

-          the illusions of the combatants themselves. As with the illusion that the army belongs to the people, these illusions are dangerous because they prevent the oppressed from seeing who their enemy is and where the next blow will come from. But illusions in the army are part of a more general illusion in ‘democracy’, the idea that changes in the form of the capitalist state will change the function of that state and make it serve the needs of the majority. The call for independent trade unions which is being raised in many of today’s strikes[3] is at root a variant of this democratic myth: specifically, it is based on the idea that the capitalist state, whose role is to protects a system which has nothing to offer the workers or humanity as a whole, can allow the exploited class to maintain its own independent organisations on a permanent basis. 

We are a long way from revolution in the only sense it can have today –the international proletarian revolution. The authentically revolutionary consciousness required to guide such a revolution to victory can also only develop on a world scale, and it cannot come to fruition without the contribution of the workers of the most advanced capitalist countries. But the proletarians (and other oppressed strata) of the Middle East and North Africa are here and now learning vital lessons from their own experience: lessons about how to take charge of their own struggles, as exhibited in the strikes being spread from below, in the neighbourhood protection committees that sprang up after Mubarak unleashed the police and the dregs of society to loot their homes; in the daily ‘direct democracy’ of Tahir Squre. McNally again:

“Developing alongside these forms of popular self-organization are new practices of radical democracy. In Tahrir Square, the nerve centre of the Revolution, the crowd engages in direct decision-making, sometimes in its hundreds of thousands. Organized into smaller groups, people discuss and debate, and then send elected delegates to consultations about the movement’s demands. As one journalist[4] explains, ‘delegates from these mini-gatherings then come together to discuss the prevailing mood, before potential demands are read out over the square’s makeshift speaker system. The adoption of each proposal is based on the proportion of boos or cheers it receives from the crowd at large.’”

Lessons too in how to defend yourself collectively against the onslaughts of police and thugs; in how to fraternise with the army; in how to overcome sectarian divisions between Sunni and Shia, Muslim and Christian, religious and secular. Lessons in internationalism, as the revolt spreads from country to country, taking its demands and its methods with it, and as proletarians everywhere discover that they face the same declining living standards, the same repressive ‘regime’, the same system of exploitation.

Perhaps most importantly, the very fact that the working class has affirmed itself so emphatically precisely at the moment of ‘democratic triumph’, after the departure of Mubarak which was supposed to be the true goal of the revolt, reveals a capacity to resist the calls for sacrifice and renunciation on behalf of the ‘nation’ and the ‘people’, which are always central to the bourgeoisie’s patriotic and democratic campaigns. Interviewed by the press over the past few days, workers in Egypt have frequently pointed to the simple truth that motivates their strikes and protests: they cannot feed their families, because their wages are too low, prices are too high, or they have no prospect of jobs at all. This is increasingly the condition facing the working class in all countries, and no ‘democratic reform’ will go any near alleviating it. The working class has only its struggle as its defence, and the perspective of a new society as its solution.

Amos, 16.2.11

This contribution is based largely on the book The Politics of Heroin (CIA Complicity in the Global Drugs Trade) by Alfred W. McCoy. It deals with the period around World War II, the US state’s use of the Mafia domestically, its use in the invasion of Italy and the subsequent explosion of heroin production up to the late 1950s. McCoy’s is a brave book whose detailed research put him in danger both in the 'field' and back home in the USA. If anything, the analysis in the book is somewhat understated and this makes it all the more effective.

In 1980, US President George Bush Senior, ex-head of the secret services, declared his 'War on Drugs' when the CIA were up to their necks in the drugs business through a whole mosaic of alliances and the protection that they afforded it. Nixon had already declared a 'war on drugs' in 1972 and Reagan after him. Clinton followed with his own expanded version in 1996 and then Bush Junior in 2002. Through all these wars on drugs, opium, hashish, coca and their derivatives, as well as synthetic stimulants (amphetamines, MDMA) increasingly traded like major global commodities according to the laws of the market. This in itself is nothing new. Early European merchants and colonial adventurers, including the British, Dutch, Spanish and French, discovered opium’s potential in the seventeenth century.

More recently, in the 40 years of the Cold War (up to 1989), the USA’s prohibition on drugs went hand in hand with using and protecting major drug dealers in the 'fight against communism'. Through the 50s to the 80s, the Central Intelligence Agency (created by Truman in 1947) used tribal armies that under its protection became major drug lords in Burma, Laos, Afghanistan and Nicaragua. The financing of these armies through the drugs trade relieved the CIA of paying for their costly upkeep (this was in contrast to French imperialism’s role in the drug trade after the war which was much more 'hands on' in the trade itself – see below).

The drugs trade expanded across Asia, Central and Latin America involving Corsican, Italian, nationalist Chinese, Honduran, Haitian, Panamanian and Pakistani gangsters in the CIA 'enforced' non-enforcement areas; generally speaking this went hand in hand with the expansion of the arms trade. After the CIA’s intervention in Burma opium production in this country increased 40-fold; in Afghanistan it was up 460-fold a year or so ago. In 2000, the CIA’s main covert battlegrounds – and thus of the greatest interest to US imperialism – were Afghanistan, Burma and Laos; in that order the three leading opium producers in the world.

In the late 1940s, heroin addiction looked like falling to insignificant levels in the USA which wasn’t surprising given years of world war. Today its prisons are full of drug-related offenders. Five to 10% of all HIV cases are reported to be down to intravenous drug use. The prohibition of drugs, like that of alcohol, facilitated the expansion of the industry and the expansion of corruption where even 'war on drugs' money was channelled into production in some cases. Local suppression turned into global stimulus. The consequences of increased prices and no reduction in demand could only encourage increased production which is pushed back and forth across the globe but always expanding to meet demand. Prohibition has been a major factor in turning the drugs industry into one of the world’s biggest, larger than textiles, steel and automobiles. According to a 1997 UN report “highly centralised” transnational crime groups, with nearly 4 million members (or “associates”) world-wide control most of the drug trade within which police and state corruption and protection are extensive. Despite all these 'wars' on drugs, US diplomats and the CIA have been involved in the drugs trade in what McCoy calls “coincidental” complicity, condoning, concealment and active involvement in transportation.

The USA and the Mafia

World War Two had seen the Mafia in Sicily smashed by Mussolini. Surviving only in outposts in the mountainous areas and in Marseilles, the Corsican Mafia was weakened by their collaboration with the Gestapo. Both these structures, and their drugs businesses, were revived and given new life by the US from the beginning of the Cold War as imperialism reacted to the new realities of American and Russian rivalry. In the 1930s, the 'new guard' of Salvatore C. Luciana, aka, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, turned the American Mafia into a centralised, relatively peaceful national cartel ready to take over the prostitution and narcotics rackets, including the Don’s once-forbidden drug, heroin. Luciano was arrested and convicted in the late 1930s Mafia clampdown. In 1942, in order to exert control over the New York waterfront, the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) approached Mafia boss Joseph “Joe Socks” Lanza, also a union agent, for his help. Lanza arranged a meeting with an ONI go-between and Luciano who was residing in Albany prison. Apart from helping with the imposition of domestic repression on the docks and on dockworkers, Luciano also helped in the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943, providing maps, charts and Mafia contacts in the region. ONI operatives reported that the Mafia were “extremely cooperative”.

In the invasion of Sicily local mafiosi were responsible for the rapid speed of General Patton’s advance through the mined roads into Palermo. Further, there is no doubt about the relationship between the US military occupation of Italy and the Mafia, whose representatives were selected as mayors by the Allied Military Government (AMGOT). The commander of this force, Colonel Charles Poletti, appointed Luciano’s lieutenant and New York gangster Vito Genovese (now living in Naples and doing very well after working with the fascists) to assist the US war effort. Genovese was soon using military transports to move all sorts of contraband goods around, reminiscent of Milo Minderbinder in Catch 22. In the meantime Luciano and his cohorts were beginning to integrate all the aspects of the global heroin trade.

Whether you get your news from the papers, TV or online you won't have missed headlines about an 'Egyptian Revolution.' What's happened in Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Yemen has shown that people from many social strata are fed up with the conditions they live in and are rebelling en masse against those who enforce them. The fact that this movement has affected a number of countries is very exciting, but it does not amount to a revolution, i.e. the replacement of one class by another. Despite the scale and heroism of the uprisings, despite the promise they contain, most of the explicit demands being made only amount to an adjustment of the capitalist political system: bourgeois rule has not been consciously challenged.

In Egypt, for example, the move to get rid of Mubarak now has the support of the army and US imperialism, so as a demand it is clearly no challenge to capitalist rule. Yet the leftists go along with the idea that a revolution is taking place. “Victory to the Egyptian revolution” is the front page headline of Socialist Worker (5/2/11). In the same issue the SWP say that “The overthrowing of Mubarak would fundamentally challenge the status quo in the oil rich region.” In reality the replacement of Mubarak has become part of US policy which it is undertaking through its links with the Egyptian army.

The SWP see the uprising in Egypt as a blow against Israel and ultimately the control of the US in the region who rely on Israel to act as its policeman in the Middle East: " a revolutionary transformation of the region would throw this arrangement into question and give hope that Arab people can win their fight for freedom." Not only is the talk of a 'revolutionary transformation' a misleading description of the immediate potential of the situation, but the genuine struggles of workers and other oppressed strata are obscured by the nationalist jargon about the “Arab people.”

It is not surprising that, in an article in which the SWP says Egypt is “on the verge of revolution”, it refers to “the memory of the Iranian Revolution of 1978-9.” Back then, during the period of upheaval which led to the replacement of the Shah by the regime headed by Khomeini, as well as the popular demonstrations there were also militant workers' strikes. In October 1978 the strikes of tens of thousands oil workers, steel workers and rail workers were major factors in the Shah's exit. But that didn't mean there was a revolution. The Islamic regime which came to power in the wake of these events is perhaps even more repressive than the rule of the Shah.

And today the leftists, for all their talk of the importance of the working class, still look to other forces and ideas as the key element in the situation. For example, the SWP describes the Muslim Brotherhood as a “contradictory force”. By this it means that although it is a conservative force and “its leaders include factory owners and rural landlords” it also “has the respect and support of millions of Egyptians.” While revolutionaries are straightforward in denouncing any party that wants to take its place in the capitalist state apparatus, leftists pick out their favourites from the contending bourgeois forces.

The SWP also says that “the hold of Nasser and nationalism remains a strong force.” But instead of exposing the influence of the current generation of Nasserites the SWP claim that they too have an 'ambiguous' role: “They are deeply hostile to neoliberalism―not because they oppose capitalism, but because they believe all industry should be under state control. They support some peasants’ and workers’ demands, yet believe these should be limited by the needs of national unity. This means that the role they will play in the coming period remains unclear.”

Why would we expect any more from a group that thinks (as they did in the 1950s!) that “Nasser’s radical reforms inspired the Arab masses, and threatened imperialist domination of the Middle East.” The truth is that many had illusions in Nasser, but that far from threatening imperialism he was an integral part of the imperialist conflicts in the region. During his rule and that of his successors Egypt became an outpost of Russian imperialism prior to switching sides in the conflict between the two blocs.

The promotion of Arab nationalism is widespread throughout the left. The ‘Communist Party of Great Britain’ that publishes Weekly Worker (quotes from nos 850 and 851)is particularly strong on pan-Arabism, in a way that is reminiscent of Bakunin's pan-Slavism. Avoiding a class analysis the CPGB says that Mubarak's Egypt is “An everyday living insult, and humiliation, to ordinary Egyptians and the very idea of pan-Arabism in general” and that “Arab reunification remains an urgent but unfulfilled task.” Instead of a marxist understanding of the international unity of the working class the CPGB argue that “the Arab masses have a shared problem. The answer should be a common solution, which, of course, there is - revolutionary pan-Arab unity.” Referring to the “Arab masses” and making pseudo-scientific pontifications about the “objective and cultural-psychological conditions for pan-Arab unity exist in abundance” does not change the class reality of capitalism, where only a conscious working class can overthrow bourgeois rule, and where all forms of nationalism stand in the way of class consciousness.

The CPGB claim that “A free Egypt, as part of a pan-Arab revolution that rages across the entire region, would challenge the hegemony of Israel.” This shows where their position leads. The expression “challenge the hegemony” ultimately means 'go to war with'. This is where the leftists' ideas lead. The CPGB's idea of a 'revolution' raging across the Middle East means plunging it into an imperialist war in which many of the 'Arab masses' will lose their lives. In the past support for the Palestinian 'revolution' by SWP founder Tony Cliff meant support for Nasser's Egypt in 1967's Six Day War. Not only do leftist ideas hamper the real movement of the working class toward a real revolution, they also lead to imperialist war.

Car 5/2/11

At the time of writing, the social situation in Egypt remains explosive. Millions of people have been on the streets, braving the curfew, the state regime and its bloody repression. At the same time the social movement in Tunisia has not gone away: the flight of Ben Ali, the government reshuffle and the promise of elections has not succeeded in damping down the deep anger of the population. In Jordan thousands of demonstrators have expressed their discontent with growing poverty. In Algeria the protests seems to have been stifled but there is a powerful international black-out and it seems that there are still struggles going on in Kabylia.

The media and politicians of all kinds talk non-stop about the ‘revolts in the Arab world’, focusing attention on regional specificities, on the lack of local democracy, on the exasperation of the population with seeing the same faces in power for 30 years.

All this is true. Ben Ali, Mubarak, Rifai, Bouteflika and co. are true gangsters, caricatured expressions of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. But above all, these social movements belong to the exploited of all countries. These explosions of anger are rooted in the acceleration of the world economic crisis which is plunging more and more of humanity into grinding poverty.   

After Tunisia, Egypt! The contagion of revolt in the Arab states, especially in North Africa, which the ruling class has feared for so long, has arrived with a bang. Populations who have been faced with the economic hardships caused by the world economic crisis have also had to deal with ruthlessly repressive regimes. And faced with this explosion of anger, the governments and rulers have shown their true colours as a class which reigns through starvation and murder. The only response they can come up with is tear gas and bullets. And we are not just talking about the ‘dictators’ on the spot. Our own ‘democratic’ rulers, right wing and left wing, have long been the friends and allies of these same dictators in the maintenance of capitalist order. The much-vaunted stability of these countries against the danger of radical Islamism has for decades been based on police terror, and our good democrats have happily turned a blind eye to their tortures, their corruption, to the climate of fear in which they have lorded it over the population. In the name of stability, of non-intervention in internal matters, of peace and friendship between peoples, they have supported these regimes for their own sordid imperialist reasons.

The social revolt in Egypt

In Egypt we have seen dozens, perhaps hundreds of deaths, thousands wounded, tens of thousand more wounded or arrested. The fall of Ben Ali was the detonator. It stirred up a huge wave of hope among the population of the Arab regimes. We also saw many outbursts of despair, with a series of suicides in Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, western Sahara, Saudi Arabia and Sudan, particularly among young unemployed people. In Egypt, we heard the same slogans as in Tunisia: “Bread, Freedom, Dignity!” This was clearly a response to the principal effects of the world economic crisis: unemployment (in Egypt it affects 20% of the population); insecurity (in Egypt, 4 out of 10 live below the poverty line and several international documentaries have been made about the people who live by sorting through the Cairo rubbish heaps); the rising price of basic necessities. The slogan ‘Mubarak, dégage’ was taken directly from the Tunisians who called for the departure of Ben Ali. Demonstrators in Cairo proclaimed “It’s not our government, they are our enemies!” An Egyptian journalist said to a correspondent from Figaro: “No political movement can claim to have started these demonstrations. It’s the street which is expressing itself. People have nothing to lose. Things can’t go on any longer”. One phrase is on everyone’s lips: “we are no longer afraid”.

In April 2008, the workers of a textile factor in Mahalla to the north of Cairo came out on strike for better wages and working conditions, To support the workers and call for a general strike on 6 April, a group of young people had organised themselves on Facebook and Twitter. Hundreds of demonstrators were arrested. This time, and in contrast to Tunisia, the Egyptian government blocked internet access in advance.     

On Tuesday 25 January, so-called ‘National Police Day’, tens of thousands of protestors hit the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, Tanta and Suez and came up against the forces of order. Four days of confrontations followed; state violence only fuelled the anger. During these days and nights, the riot police used tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition. Standing by was an army of 500,000, very well equipped and trained, a central pillar of the regime, unlike in Tunisia. The power also made extensive use of the ‘baltageyas’, thugs directly controlled by the state and specialising in breaking up demonstrations, as well as numerous agents of the state security wearing civilian clothes and merging with the demonstrators.

On Friday 28 January, a day off work, around noon, despite the banning of public gatherings, demonstrators came out of the mosques and onto the streets in huge numbers, everywhere confronting the police. This day was named ‘The Day of Rage’. The government had already cut off internet and mobile phone networks and even landline telephones. Still the movement swelled: in the evening, the demonstrations defied the curfew in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez....Police trucks used water cannon against the crowds, made up largely of young people. In Cairo, army tanks were at first welcomed as liberating heroes, and there were a number of attempts to fraternise with the army; this was given a lot of publicity and in one case at least it prevented a convoy of armoured cars from supporting the forces of order. Some policemen threw off their arm bands and joined the demonstrators. But very soon, in other areas, armoured cars opened fire on the demonstrators who had come to greet them, or mowed them down. The head of the army, Sami Anan, who led a military delegation to the US for talks at the Pentagon, came back in a hurry to Egypt on the Friday. Police cars and stations, as well as the HQ of the governing party, were torched and the Ministry of Information ransacked. The wounded piled up in overworked hospitals. In Alexandria, the government building was also burned down. In Mansoura on the Nile Delta there were violent confrontations that left several dead. A number of people tried to take over the state television station but were rebuffed by the army.     

Around 11.30 at night Mubarak appeared on TV, announcing the dismissal of his government team and promising political reforms and steps towards democracy, while firmly insisting on the need to maintain the “security and stability of Egypt against attempts at destabilisation”. These proposals merely increased the anger and determination of the protestors.

A worry for the imperialists

But although for the demonstrators Tunisia was a model, the stakes involved in the situation are not the same for the bourgeoisie. Tunisia is a relatively small country and it holds an imperialist interest mainly for a second rate power like France[1]. It’s very different with Egypt which is easily the most densely populated country in the region (over 80 million inhabitants) and which above all occupies a key strategic position in the Middle East, especially for the American bourgeoisie. The fall of the Mubarak regime could result in a regional chaos that would have heavy consequences. Mubarak is the USA’s principal ally in the region next to Israel, playing a preponderant role in Israel-Palestine relations as well as relations between Al Fatah and Hamas. This state has up till now been seen as a stabilising factor in the Middle East. At the same time the political developments in Sudan, which is on the verge of splitting in two, makes a strong Egypt all he more necessary. It is therefore a vital cog in the US strategy towards the Israel-Arab conflict and its destablisation risks spilling over into a number of neighbouring countries, especially Jordan, Libya, Yemen and Syria. This explains the anxieties of the US, whose close relations with the Mubarak regime put it in a very uncomfortable position. Obama and US diplomacy have been trying to put pressure on Mubarak while saving the essentials of the regime. This is why Obama made it public that he had spent half an hour talking to Mubarak and urging him to throw off more ballast. Before that, Hilary Clinton had declared that the forces of order needed to show more restraint and that the government should very quickly restore the means of communication. The next day, probably as a result of American pressure, General Omar Suleiman, head of the powerful military security forces, responsible for negotiations with Israel, was brought in as Vice President.   The army has gained in popularity for having remained in the rear during the demonstrations and for having on numerous occasions taken a friendly attitude towards the crowds. This allowed it to argue in a number of cases that people should go back to their homes to protect them from looters.

And in other Arab countries...

Other expressions of revolt have appeared in Algeria, Yemen and Jordan. In the latter, 4,000 people gathered in Amman for the third time in three weeks to protest against the cost of living and to demand economic and political reforms, in particular the resignation of the prime minister. The authorities made a few gestures, some small economic measures were taken and some political consultations held. But the demonstrations spread to the towns of Irbid and Kerak. In Algeria, on 22 January, a demonstration in the centre of Algiers was brutally repressed, leaving 5 dead and over 800 injured. In Tunisia the fall of Ben Ali has not put an end to the anger, nor to the repression. In the prisons, summary executions since the departure of Ben Ali have added up to more deaths than during the clashes with the police. A ‘liberation caravan’ from the western part of the country, where the movement first started, has defied the curfew and been camped outside the PM’s offices demanding the resignation of a government still made up of the cronies and chiefs of the Ben Ali regime. The anger has not gone away because the same old people are holding onto the reins of power. A government reshuffle finally took place on 27 January, chucking out the most compromised ministers but retaining the same PM. This still didn’t calm things down. Ferocious police repression continues and the situation remains confused.

These explosions of massive, spontaneous revolt reveal that the population is fed up and no longer wants to put up with the poverty and repression doled out by these regimes. But they also show the weight of democratic and nationalist illusions: in numerous demonstrations, the national flags are being brandished very widely. In Egypt as in Tunisia, the anger of the exploited has been quickly pushed towards a struggle for more democracy. The population’s hatred for the regime and the focus on Mubarak (as on Ben Ali in Tunisia) has meant that the economic demands against poverty and unemployment have been relegated into the background by all the bourgeois media. This obviously makes it possible for the ruling class in the democratic countries to sell the idea to the working class, especially in the central countries, that these ‘popular uprisings’ don’t have the same fundamental causes as the workers’ struggles going on here: the bankruptcy of world capitalism.

Towards the development of the class struggle

This eruption of the social anger engendered by the aggravation of the world crisis of capitalism in the countries at the peripheries of the system, which up until now have almost exclusively been dominated by war and imperialist tensions, is a major new political factor which the world bourgeoisie will have to reckon with more and more. The rise of these revolts against the corruption of leaders who are pocketing vast fortunes while the great majority of the population goes hungry, can’t lead to a solution in these countries on their own. But they are signs of the ripening of social conflicts that cannot fail to burst to the surface in the most developed countries in response to the same evils: falling living standards, growing poverty, massive youth unemployment.   

We are already beginning to see the rebellion of young people in Europe against the failure of world capitalism, with the students’ struggles in France, Britain and Italy. The most recent example is Holland: in The Hague on 22 January, 20,000 students and teachers gathered in front of the parliament building and the ministry of education. They were protesting against the sharp rise in university entrance fees, which will in the first place hit those repeating their second year, which is often the case with students who have to work to pay for their studies. They will have to pay an extra 300 euro a year, while the latest budgets envisage cutting 7000 jobs in this sector. This was one of the most important student demos in the country for 20 years. It was also brutally attacked by the police.

These social movements are the symptom of the international development of the class struggle, even if, in the Arab countries, the working class has not yet clearly appeared as an autonomous force and is mixed up in a movement of popular protest.

All over the world, the gulf is widening between a ruling class, the bourgeoisie, which displays its wealth with indecent arrogance, and on the other hand the mass of the exploited falling deeper and deeper into deprivation. This gulf is tending to unite proletarians of all countries, to forge them into a common front, while the bourgeoisie can only respond to the indignation of those it exploits with new austerity measures, with truncheons and bullets.   

Revolts and social struggles will inevitably take on different forms in the years to come and in different regions. The strengths and weaknesses of these social movements will not be the same everywhere. In some cases, their anger, militancy and courage will be exemplary. In others, the methods and massive nature of the struggle will make it possible to open new perspectives and establish a balance of forces in favour of the working class, the only social force that can offer a future to humanity. In particular, the concentration and experience of the proletariat of the countries at the heart of world capitalism will be decisive. Without the massive mobilisation of the workers in the central countries, the social revolts in the peripheries of capitalism will be condemned to impotence and will fall under the domination of this or that faction of the ruling class. Only the international struggle of the working class, its solidarity, its unity, its organisation and its consciousness of what’s at stake in its combat will be able to draw all the oppressed layers of society into a fight to put an end to dying capitalism and build a new world in its place.  

RI 30/01/11

As well as this article we have produced a shorter leaflet here [47], which can be downloaded and distributed by our sympathisers.

Over 200,000 public sector workers and students have taken to the streets and are occupying the state capitol in Wisconsin to protest proposed changes to collective bargaining agreements between the state government and its public employee unions. The state’s rookie governor, Tea Party backed Republican Scott Walker, has proposed a bill removing collective bargaining rights for the majority of the state's 175,000 public employees, effectively prohibiting them from negotiating pension and health care contributions, leaving only the right to bargain over salaries. Moreover, according to the legislation, public employee unions would have to submit themselves to yearly certification votes in order to maintain the right to represent workers in future scaled down negotiations. Firefighters not affected by the proposed changes (because their union supported Walker in the November election) have shown their solidarity with those under attack by joining the protests, which many say have taken inspiration from the wave of unrest sweeping Egypt and the wider Middle East. Many Wisconsin protestors proudly display placards giving the Governor the ominous moniker Scott “Mubarak” Walker, while others hold aloft sings asking, “If Egypt Can Have Democracy, Why Can’t Wisconsin?” Protesters in Egypt have even shown their solidarity with workers in Wisconsin!

Meanwhile, although the U.S. State Department has repeatedly called on Arab leaders to show restraint against protestors these past weeks, Gov. Walker has threatened to bring in the National Guard to suppress if necessary! Some veterans groups have responded that the guard’s job is to respond to disasters not serve as the Governor’s personal goon squad. The political situation in Wisconsin is said to be fragile, as a constitutional crisis looms. All 14 Democratic state senators have fled the state, denying the Republican controlled state legislature the quorum it needs to pass the Governor’s bill. It is said that if they are found within the state, the state patrol will arrest them and bring them back to the capitol! On the other hand, union and Democratic leaders openly talk of recalling the Governor and any state senators who support his legislation. American politics just keeps getting more and more cartoon-like with each crisis!

Source: Politico.com [48]

The crisis in Wisconsin has been framed by the national media as the first real clash of a Tea Party backed Republican executive using his newly found political power to enact an ideological agenda of destroying the public employee unions that many Tea Partiers and Republicans blame for the virtual bankruptcy of state governments across the country. These Republicans say that enacting austerity is necessary in order to balance a state budget crippled by a massive $137 million deficit. On the other hand, Democrats and their friends in the unions are making a hue and cry over the Republican governor and his national Tea Party allies making good political use of a real fiscal dilemma to push their union busting ideology. Who's right?

It is true that, just as in Europe, the American states are in effect facing insolvency. While at the national level the federal government can still indulge in quantitative easing (in effect printing more dollars), the states have no such privilege and therefore face an urgent need to push through drastic austerity measures if they are to balance their budgets and remain financially viable in the bond markets. At this level, Gov. Walkers’ legislation appears to fit a vital need of the bourgeoisie to lower the state’s labor costs and gain a lasting advantage in future negotiations by limiting the scope of future contracts. He would seem to be setting a model to be followed in other states, as they struggle to come to grips with their terrible fiscal situations.

However, on a more global level, the bourgeoisie is also well aware of the political and social risks of launching heavy attacks on workers already hammered by high unemployment, pay freezes, furloughs and the collapse of the real estate market. Hence the tried and true American strategy of pushing attacks through in a piecemeal fashion at the state and local level, rather than launching a direct and immediate frontal assault on federal entitlement programs. Still, there is a risk that Gov. Walker’s legislation would go too far in destabilizing the unions—which act as the shop floor police to control workers’ anger, as well as the state Democratic Party itself, which relies on the unions for much of its campaign fundraising. Gov. Walker’s policy could not only risk emasculating the unions when the bourgeoisie needs them the most, it could also threaten to upset the two-party system in a vital swing state that President Obama won in 2008.

Last year saw protests in California against cuts to education budgets and earlier last week workers in Ohio protested a bill that would limit collective bargaining for state employees there, as did teachers in Indianapolis. When the need for further attacks come, the bourgeoisie will need the union apparatus there in order to contain the workers’ militancy and make sure the struggle remains within the scope of bargaining over wages and benefits rather than threaten the state itself.

The perilous state of Wisconsin's finances isn't uncommon. It's facing a $137 million budget deficit this financial year, and a whopping $3.6 billion over the next two years. The most drastic aspects of Gov. Walker's cuts demands that most state and local employees contribute half the cost of their pensions and at least 12.6 percent of their health insurance premiums. However, this is only projected to save the state $30 million by this June, rising to $300 million over the next two years, only 10% of the deficit. The rest of the bill proposes to save $165 million this year by simply refinancing state debt. Thus the biggest savings have nothing to do with public employees. This is of course cold comfort to the workers facing crippling increases in pension contributions and health care costs. One estimate says the proposal amounts to an effective pay cut of 10% for the average Madison teacher.

With the average contract negotiation taking 15 months, the Governor has refused to meet with the unions, instead calling for drastic measures, threatening the layoff of 1,500 state workers if his plan isn't accepted. He certainly seems to be staying true to his reputation of playing hardball. But is this just another case of a Republican trying to out 'right-wing' the right of his party by busting the unions? Walker himself is very clear: “For us, it’s simple. We’re broke. It’s not about the unions. It’s about balancing the budget.” (NY Times [49]) From the union side, David Ahrens, of the UW-Madison's Carbone Cancer Center, disputes the emergency nature of the situation saying, “That would be more believable if he had ever bothered to meet with the unions to begin with.” (Wisconsin State Journal [50])

President Obama also weighed in on the union’s behalf, repaying the $200 million they spent on his November election campaign and calling Mr. Walker’s proposals “an assault on unions.” However, the House speaker, Rep. John Boehner, of Ohio, praised Mr. Walker for “confronting problems that have been neglected for years at the expense of jobs and economic growth.” As would be expected, the Left has come to the defense of the unions as the workers’ best protection in tough times, while the right descries them as historical anachronisms that stunt economic growth and kill jobs. What are workers to make of all this?

It's important to understand the key role the unions play as part of the state apparatus. They are 'social firefighters', acting as a safety valve at the economic and political levels. The kind of collective bargaining agreements under attack today were introduced by the likes of President Kennedy who saw their benefits in terms of social control offered by the unions, especially when the kinds of 'victories' the unions were winning included no-strike clauses! In the late 60s and early 70s these 'concessions' were certainly more affordable in economic terms than they are today. Forty years of economic crisis has led to great erosions in the social wage enjoyed by the post-war baby boomers. But while the unions are expensive in economic terms, they are also effective tools in imposing austerity on the working class. For example, in Wisconsin the unions [51] “already negotiated a deal with the previous administration for $100 million in cuts to benefits along with an outright 3% pay reduction.” One gets the sense that unions’ anger at the Governor’s plans is not so much about the cuts to the workers they are supposed to represent, but at the prospect of no longer be regarded as partners with the state in managing the economy. In fact, Marty Beil, head of WSEU/AFSCME—the Wisconsin public employees’ union argued that the union was perfectly willing to go along with certain cuts, but could not stand for the Governor’s brazen power play: “We are prepared to implement the financial concessions proposed to help bring our state's budget into balance, but we will not be denied our God-given right to join a real union... we will not - I repeat we will not - be denied our rights to collectively bargain.” In a conference call with the media she continued, "This is not about money (…) We understand the need to sacrifice." (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel [52])

All the talk of union busting is at bottom an attempt to derail the discontent shown by the workers against the attacks on their living condition into the dead-end of the defense of unions themselves and the democracy they supposedly embody and away from effective strike action to defend their living and working conditions. Already, in the movement in Wisconsin, the unions have been very effective in couching it in terms of the defense of “democracy” (hence the linking to Egypt), even though it is their allies, the Democratic Senators who appear, for the moment, to have obstructed the functioning of the bourgeois democratic apparatus by absconding from the state. Already, national Tea Party activists have bused in counter-demonstrators coming to the “democratically-elected” Governor’s defense and to protect the “majority of Wisconsinites” who voted for his tough actions against the unions. If your main goal is to defend “democracy,” it’s not clear which side you would support!

In a sense, the hunt of the state troopers for the missing senators is emblematic of the deeper hunt the US bourgeoisie is having for a solution to its economic crisis. As that solution proves ever more elusive, the bourgeoisie on all levels—federal, state and local—will have to resort to further attacks against the working class. Public employees—civil servants, firefighters, highway workers and above all teachers—will be on the front line of this assault. It is no accident, or simply an ideological penchant of the right wing, that Tea Partiers and Republicans have put public employees in the cross hairs. It is their wage and benefit bill that most immediately impacts the fiscal solvency of the state.

Moreover, attacks against public employees have not been limited to states governed by Republicans. In New York, Democratic Gov. Cuomo has threatened nearly 10,000 layoffs if union negotiations stall, while Democrat Jerry Brown in California has talked about the need for painful cuts to solve that state’s perennially budget woes. On the federal level, President Obama himself has frozen federal employees' salaries and his budget commission has threatened to lay off 10 percent of the federal workforce! Nevertheless, the zealousness with which Tea Party Republicans like Walker have carried their crusade against the very foundation of the unions (as distinct from the workers they are supposed to represent) has the potential to backfire if it is carried to its ultimate conclusion. The bourgeoisie will inevitably need to call on the unions as the class struggle continues to heat up. The attempt by a rookie Republican Governor to wipe out the unions in his state is yet another example of the difficulties the U.S. national bourgeoisie is having in controlling its political process as a result of the social decomposition that deepens every day this system still stands.

Colin, 02/20/11.

We are starting a thread on our forum [54] on the nightmarish situation in Japan following the huge earthquake in the north of the country. The first post is translated from the opening post of a thread on our French web page. We encourage others to contribute, to express their horror and anger, and to develop a discussion about the degree to which we can hold capitalism responsible for this so-called natural disaster.
 

We have received the following information concerning the sentencing of the Korean militants which we have already reported in these pages [57].

The judge sentenced as follows;
 
1) Oh Se-cheol, Yang Hyo-sik, Yang Joon-seok and Choi Young-ik : imprisonment of 1 1/2 years, but conditional delay of imprisonment for 3 years for violation of National Security Law, and a fine of 500,000 won ($500)each for violation of Assembly-Demonstration Law.
2) Park Joon-seon, Jeong Won-hyun, Nam-goong Won and Oh Min-gyu : imprisonment of 1 year, but conditional delay of imprisonment for 2 years for violation of National Security Law, and fine of 500,000 won each for violation of Assembly-Demonstration Law.

The meaning of the decision is as follows: 

1) The SWLK (Socialist Workers League of Korea) is judged to be an organization for propaganda and agitation for national disturbances, violating Article 7 of the National Security Law.

It shows the political nature of Korean judicial branch, which is a part of state apparatus serving for the capitalist class.

2) The conditional delay of imprisonment can be recognized as the result of Korean and international protest movement. The conditional respite for 3 years means that the imprisonment is suspended for 3 years on the condition of that there will be no other sentence for another crime, and after 3 years the validity of imprisonment sentence expires. But if there is another sentence during the next 3 years, imprisonment from this sentence will follow independently of any imprisonment for further convictions. So, the conditional respite of imprisonment is only a bit better than immediate imprisonment.

3) We, the 8 accused will appeal this sentence to the high court. We will live and act confidently as revolutionary socialists without regard to the political oppression of the Korean state apparatus.

Thank you to all socialists and workers in the world who supported the judicial struggle of Korean socialists.

Please transmit our gratitude to the comrades of the world.

We are publishing here an analytical text from the ICC’s section in Turkey on the current wave of revolts and protests in North Africa and the Middle East. The text aims to provide a general overview of these movements, as did the text ‘What is happening in the Middle East? [58]’. The text by the Turkish comrades offers a somewhat different analysis on certain points, particularly regarding the level attained by the class struggle in Egypt, and whether or not the current inter-bourgeois ‘civil war’ in Libya was preceded by a form of social revolt from below.  Since the situation is still very fluid and is still raising a lot of questions, it is all the more important to develop the discussion about the significance and perspectives contained in these events.

1. What is going on and why it is important to understand it.

‘Revolution’, today with the events currently going on in the Arab world this seems to be the word on everybody’s lips. The first thing that it is necessary to understand when discussing the subject is that not everybody means the same thing by it. The term revolution seems to have been completely devalued today so that any change of bosses is deemed a revolution, from the ‘Rose Revolution’ in Georgia to the now called ‘Lotus Revolution’ in Egypt, where not even the bosses have changed, with seventeen of the old twenty-seven cabinet members still in government, we have been treated to a whole series of so-called ‘revolutions’ by the media; the ‘Orange Revolution’ in the Ukraine, the ‘Tulip (or Pink) Revolution’ in Kyrgyzstan along with the ethnic cleansing that accompanied it, the ‘Cedar Revolution’ in Lebanon, the ‘Purple Revolution in Iraq (this one was actually a term used by Bush, which didn’t catch on at all), and the ‘Green Revolution’ in Iran, the list goes on and on.

For us as communists, a revolution is not just the change in management of the current system. It means a fundamental, the overthrow of the capitalist class, not just a change of faces. That is why we completely reject the idea that what is happening today in the Arab world and Iran are in any way revolutions. If they are not revolutions though, it raises the question of what the nature of these events actually is. It is not only the mass media that is talking about revolutions but also many of those on the left as well. Are they all wrong? And if they are wrong what do these events mean for the working class? 

1. Putting the events into a historical context.

If we are to try to understand current events, it is necessary to be able to place them in a historical context. It allows us to understand the balance of power between different classes, and the dynamic of the situation. Certainly over the last decade the working class has began a slow return to combativeness after the dreadful years that were the nineties. However, it would be a terrible mistake to think that class struggle today is at the same level that it was in the 1980s, let alone the 1970s.

While the past ten years has shown the beginning of a return to class struggle, it must be recognised that it is a very slow process. To put it into context we must look back a few years. The wave of international struggles that began in 1968 were reaching a crescendo at the end of the 1970s. The mass strike was a very real possibility internationally. Possibly the three high points of the period, in chronological order, were the ‘Winter of Discontent’ in the UK in 1978-799,  the mass strike in Iran in 1978-79, and the Polish strikes of 1980-81. The defeat of these movements was catastrophic for the working class, and led to the years of the 1980s being years of, not a general class offensive, but of defensive actions. The struggles of the 1980s although at times very intense, essentially involved different groups of workers being picked off, isolated, and defeated.

The period also saw the rise of neo-conservatism, represented internationally by Reagan, Thatcher, and Kohl, and in this country by Turgut Özal. The end of the decade saw the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the whole ideological campaign, which accompanied it, with bourgeois academics and ideologues proclaiming the end of both class society and even the end of history. How wrong they were, yet for a very, very short while it could have seemed like that, and the lack of class activity in the 1990s only emphasised the point.

By the turn of the century it was becoming obvious that things were not the way they imagined. After Saddam had been defeated for the first time, and this new era of global peace had broken out, the rest of the decade, after the end of history brought over fifty wars across the world, and as the crisis deepened, not openly as in the past few years, but slowly, creeping up, hitting some countries like ours Argentina dramatically, we began to see the working class return to struggle.

Of course it came slowly, ten years without class struggle, after ten years of defeat had taken a terrible toll on the working class. A lost generation, remember how people said in Turkey “Don’t talk about politics, it is dangerous”, meant a loss of vital experience within the class.

Although the last decade has seen this slow increase in struggles, they had still until very recently still been generally struggle of isolated groups of workers. The past few years, however, have seen a growing realisation that in order to win, workers have to fight together. Witness the TEKEL movement here, or even in America, for so long a backwater of class struggle, generalised attacks are leading to a generalised with masses of workers supporting Wisconsin teachers, and many calls for a general strike. It is in this framework of understanding that we have to try to comprehend the events going on today, and to do this we need to look at a couple of recent large scale struggles.

2. Putting the events into the context of recent struggles.

The current struggles in the Arab world are, in our opinion, certainly not struggles where the working class is the leading force. This does not mean that masses of workers are not participating in them, but that the working class has not been able to assert itself as a class, and has ended up being dragged along within an agenda set by others, and in Libya today we see the disastrous consequences of this,with workers on both sides enthusiastically joining up with what is effectively a civil war on behalf of different bosses. We think that it would be instructive at this point to try to situate the events in relation to the recent movement in Greece and Iran.

3. Greece

The movement in Greece in December of 2008 erupted after a fifteen year-old anarchist was shot dead by two policemen on a Saturday night. Within an hour of the murder violent confrontations with the police had begun in the area around Exarcheia Square in Athens, an area which is traditionally a stronghold of the anarchist movement. By the end of the evening confrontations had occurred in nearly thirty different locations across Greece. The next day the demonstrations continued, and on Monday morning thousands of high school students walked out and demonstrated outside of police stations.

On the Wednesday following the shooting there was a general strike involving over a million workers. This strike, however, was not in response to the murder or the demonstrations, but had been organised prior to these events. In fact the country at the time was also in a period of large scale labour unrest due to the government’s economic policies. It is in this context that we need to try to understand the weakness of the Greek movement.

Despite their being widespread anger against the government’s policies and the mass protests over the murder of a child, the two never seemed to connect. The only strike in support of the protest movement was a half day strike of primary school teachers. Although there were of course many workers involved in the protests, the workers did involve themselves as workers, but on an individual level. This is not to say that attempts weren’t made to link the struggle to the working class. Militants occupied the HQ of the General Confederation of Greek Workers in Athens and called for a general strike. And yet the working class didn’t move as a class, and ultimately the protests died out.

We see this as a recurring theme in today’s struggles, large scale protest movements without any real input from the working class. If we go back to the struggles that we mentioned earlier, in the UK, Iran, and Poland, it is clear that the working class played a central role. In these struggles today that is not the case. Why it is not the case and what it means for struggles in the current period is a crucial question. Before we attempt to analyse it, we will first look at another example, the struggles in Iran following the elections of the summer of2009.

4. Iran

In June 2009, following allegations of electoral fraud, mass demonstrations broke out in the streets of Tehran, and rapidly spread across the entire country. The state reacted viciously and unleashed its repressive forces resulting in hundreds of deaths. Whilst the initial protests were clearly fermented by anger caused by the obvious fraud in the elections, more radical slogans quickly began to emerge.

Similar to the movement in Greece we saw massive violent clashes with the forces of the state, this time on an even larger scale, but again we saw workers involved as individuals and not as workers. Although information was hard to come by, it seems that there was only one strike, at the Khodro car factory, which is the biggest factory in Iran, all three shifts walked off for an hour each,  in protest against state repression.  As in Greece the movement on the streets lasted for a few weeks and then faded out.

In March of 2007 there were massive workers struggles, which started with a 100,000 strong teachers strike, and spread to many other sectors continuing for months. Yet two years ago the working class didn’t move despite the massive repression the state unleashed against the demonstrations, in which most of the participants were working class people.

Without the strength of the working class behind them, movements such as this have a tendency to wear themselves out. If we look back to the period at the end of the 1970s in Tehran, by the autumn of 1978 the movement seemed to have exhausted itself. A popular movement, similar to those we see today, including all of the disposed, but also other classes seemed to be running out of steam. It was in October when the working class entered the struggle with massive strikes, particular those in the vital oil sector, that the situation changed, and revolution seemed to be a real possibility, workers councils were formed and the government fell. After Khomeini power, the state spent the next few years struggling against the workers committees in the factories.

Of course, we could have talked about other popular struggles, the ‘Red Shirt’ movement in Thailand being a prime example, again another mass movement mobilising tens, even hundreds of thousands of people, many of them workers, against the state, another movement that lasted a few weeks, and then burnt out, and another movement where workers weren’t involved as a class.

5. What were our perspectives before the movement in the Arab world?

How did we characterise the period before the recent series of revolts that has spread across the Arab world, and to what extent were we right? Basically we perceived of the current period as one in which the working class was slowly recovering its will to struggle. The reopening of open economic crisis across the world in 2007, certainly changed this dynamic somewhat, but not substantially. It is very clear that it caused a momentary dip in working class confidence with workers being afraid to struggle due to the possibility of losing their jobs. However this can be counterbalanced by the vast number of workers who were forced to struggle due to the severity of the bosses’ economic attacks. Also important was the lack of experience within the working class itself, and the lack of workers consciousness of their power as a class.

The mass outburst of struggle in countries including, but not only, Greece and Iran were seen in this context. The mass austerity programmes taking place across the world were seen as likely to force the working class into struggle and not only the working class, but also other disposed classes, witness the mass food riots in various countries across the world in 2007-08. However we believed that the working class was not yet strong enough to take a definitive role in these struggles. Of course, it was always possible that something could happen and the working class would impose itself on a struggle.  “The day before a revolution nothing seems more unlikely. The day after the revolution nothing seems less likely” said Rosa Luxemburg. However we felt that the development of working class consciousness and strength would be a slow process, punctuated by mass revolts where the working class would be unable to play the central role. 

Then on 17thDecember last year a young man burnt himself to death in idi Bouzid in Tunisia, and the world seemed to change.

6. Tunisia

Following Mohamed Bouaziz’ self-immolation outside the town hall hundreds of youths gathered to protest and were met by tear gas and violence. Riots broke out. As the scale of the protests increased the town was sealed off by the state. It was too late though the fire had already begun to spread. Four days later there was rioting in Menzel Bouzaiene, and within a week in the capital Tunis. After 28 days President Ben Ali had run off to Malta on the way to his new refuge in Saudi Arabia.

The thing that we need to analyse here as communists is the class nature of this revolt. Many commentators in the mainstream press have drawn an analogy with the events of Eastern Europe twenty years ago when the bosses were changed across eastern Europe, and with the more recent ‘colour revolutions’. For us the class nature is of central importance.

The causes of the revolt seem to be widespread discontent amongst the working class, mass unemployment and low wages as well as anger against a kleptocratic government. Certainly the demands of the movement were centred on working class demands concerning jobs and wages, and of course anger at the resulting police repression played a huge part. Mass youth unemployment and a overwhelmingly young demographic lead to much of the movement being centred around rioting and street protest of, mainly, unemployed youth. However, there were also big workers strikes particularly amongst teachers and miners as well as a general strike in Sfax. The state also used lockouts in the attempt to stop the strikes spreading, a tactic that we will see used again in Egypt. Also we saw the UGTT, the regimes union confederation, taking the side of the struggles and seeming to ‘radicalise’, a sure sign that there was widespread struggle amongst the working class.

It seems clear to us that in the events in Tunisia, although not exclusively, represented on the whole a working class movement. In Egypt this would be less so with the working class still playing an important role, and in Libya the working class would be conspicuous by its absence.

To return to the events in Libya though, after the fall of Ben Ali, a ‘Unity Government’ was announced, with 12 members of Ben Ali’s RCD, plus the President and Prime Minister who had just quit the party in an attempt to gain credibility, , three representatives from the trade unions and a few individual representatives of small opposition parties. Despite the Prime Minister’s assurance that all members of the RCD in the government had ‘clean hands’, the protests continued. The union representatives resigned after a day in office, obviously keen on keeping their new found credibility, and the rats started to leave the RCD like a sinking ship with its central committee disbanding itself on the 20th.

And as protests continued in Tunisia and people continued to protest, and governments continued to fall, a spark had been lit.

7. Egypt

Algeria saw the first signs of flames with large scale rioting hitting many cities in early January, but it was in Egypt that the fire really started to burn. The first protests were held on National Police Day, 25thJanuary. The protests were widely advertised on social media, and particularly through Asmaa Mahfouz’ , a female journalist, youtube video going viral. The media have picked up on all this calling it a ‘FaceBook revolution’, but it is worth remembering that hundreds of thousands of leaflets were also distributed by various groupings.

The protests on the 25thdrew tens of thousands of people in Cairo, and thousands of others in cities across Egypt. As the movement grew there became a real possibility of Mubarak falling just as Ben Ali had done. The government closed workplaces with a clear intention of stopping workers strikes breaking out. There seemed to be splits within the state as the military as an organisation, not individual troops on the ground, refused to fire live ammunition. Mubarak promised to form a new government, then promised that he would step down at the next elections in September. Meanwhile the protests continued. On 2ndFebruary, the ministry of the interior organised an assault of the demonstrations by Mubarak loyalists. The army stepped in, although at times somewhat half heartedly, to divide the two sides, clearly preparing the way for if Mubarak was forced to go. The next week, the reopening of workplaces meant the reopening of workers strikes Workers in many different industries in Cairo and across the delta began strikes. These strikes and the very real possibility of them spreading seemed to be the final point that convinced the military that Mubarak had to go.

On the 11thof February, the military’s representative new Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that Mubarak had resigned and two days later the military enacted a constitutional coup. Strikers were instructed to go back to work, and strikes were forbidden. For a while they continued, but then went back to work mostly after winning wage increases and concessions.

The class nature of the Egyptian events seems different from those in Tunisia. While the movement in Tunisia seemed to have a mostly working class character the events in Egypt seemed to have a wide cross class character encompassing all social classes. Whilst the working class played an important role, possibly even a crucial one, it was never the leading force.

Many on the left talked about their being a mass strike in Egypt. The protests in Egypt saw many more workers strikes than the struggle in Tunisia. We can put this down to Egypt having a more experienced and militant working class. While we believe that the potential for the mass strike was there, and that it was quite possibly this that scared the military into dumping Mubarak when they did, we don’t believe that it materialised. All in all around 50,000 workers were involved in strikes, over 20,000 of them at one factory. While this demonstrates an important movement it was not the mass strike, and was not even on as big a scale as the strike wave in Egypt a few years earlier. The speed with which the movement dissipated showed that it was not as strong as many on the left were saying.

8. Libya

The protests in Libya began on 15thJanuary, and from the start it was clear that these were very different in their nature. The thing that started the protest was the arrest of Fathi Terbil, a lawyer representing Islamicist militants murdered in a massacre in a prison, in Benghazi. Police violently broke up the protests in Bengahzi, but that didn’t stop them from spreading to nearby al-Bayda, as well as Az Zitan near to Tripoli in the West. In an effort to make concessions as the demonstrations spread the state accede to some of the protestor’s demands and realised 110 members of al-Jama’a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah bi-Libya, a Jihadi group from prison. Still the protests continued.

The state reacted in an extremely violent way with death squads used to demoralise the protestors. Massacres were reported on both sides as senior Islamic figures and tribal leaders issued declarations against the regime, and called for the government to step down. By now protests had spread to the west where demonstrations in Tripoli were crushed viciously by the state. In the South the Tuareg people were called into the revolt at the request of the powerful Warfalla tribe.

On the 22nd Gaddafi appeared on state TV to deny reports that he had fled to Venezuela, and vowed to fight “until the last drop of his blood had been spilt”. The next day as demonstrations grew in size and many tribal leaders, who had been previously silent started to call for Gaddafi to go, William Hague the British foreign minister, first started to talk about ‘humanitarian intervention’. By this point the situation had clearly developed into a civil war.

And where was the working class in all of this? To a large extent Libya, like many of the Gulf oil states, relies on foreigners to do the majority of its manual jobs. The vast majority of the working class in Libya was desperately trying to get out of the country as the situation deteriorated and the violence increased. Unlike in Tunisia, and Egypt, the working class didn’t appear to play a significant role in any way. The movement from the start seemed to be dominated by Islamicism and tribalism. There were no workers strikes that we know of, and the one report of an oil strike in the Arab media was later shown to be just the management closing down production. 

Of course there are Libyan workers too. Evidently though they were too weak to play any role in these struggles as a class. That doesn’t mean that workers had no role at all in the events. The demonstrations that took place in Tripoli all seemed to occur in working class districts. However the working class was too weak to assert its own interests and have basically been used as cannon fodder in a civil war in which they had no interest, and are now dying under the bombing raids of the US and its allies. Before we continue with the story of how the war developed and how the imperialist powers became involved, we will quickly look at what was going on in other Arab states.

9. Events in other States and Reaction in Bahrain

The first country to follow Tunisia’s lead was neighbouring Algeria. Protests started there on 3rdJanuary in response to increases in the price of basic foodstuffs. Whilst isolated riots have been common in Algeria over the past few years, these were different in that they spread over the entire country within a week. The protests were virtually entirely around class demands, and were beaten back by a mixture of repression and concessions.

In January large scale protest also began in Jordan and Yemen. In Jordan protests against high prices inflation and unemployment were organised by the Muslim brotherhood. It ended up in the King changing a few faces in the government, and having to make wide-reaching economic concessions.

The protests in Yemen are still continuing as we write. It currently seems that the military is in the process of changing sides with Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, a leading generalfor massacres in the 1994 civil war switching to the side of the protestors.

Outside of the Arab world Iran and TRNC have also seen protests with a revival of the ‘Green Movement’ in Iran and protestors shot dead in the streets. Bahrain has also been another focal point of demonstrations eventually resulting in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf co-operation council sending in troops to help to ‘stabilise’ the situation as the Bahraini state unleashed its repressive forces against demonstrators. The movement in Bahrain seems to have taken more and more of a sectarian dimension with members of the Shia majority which was the leading force in the protests against the Sunni monarchy, now openly calling for Iranian intervention. Also protests in the Northern Shia majority areas of Saudi Arabia have been held in support of the Bahraini rebels. Bahrain has also seen attacks launched upon foreign workers, mostly from South East Asia by the demonstrators. Events of this sort have also been reported in Libya.

Finally the Syrian army has just massacred 15 protestors outside a mosque in the small southern town of Daraa, which has been the centre of the protest movement due to local anger about the arrest of a group of children in a school for writing pro-Egyptian revolt graffiti on a school wall.

Virtually unnoticed amongst all of this have been the protests in Iraq, where a minimum of 35 people have been murdered by the state. Of course Iraq is already a ‘democracy’ occupied by US military advisors, which is probably why these murders received less news coverage than others.

10. Libya and the Descent into All Out War

Now to return to Libya where today we have a full scale NATO bombing campaign going on. Of course it isn’t the first time that Libya has been bombed by the Western powers. Nor was the 1986 bombing of Tripoli by the US the first time. In fact the first time aerial bombing was used in history was 1911 by the Italians in the Italo-war. The Italians soon upgraded from using bombs to chemical weapons.

At the end of February it looked like Gaddafi had lost the initiative, but by the middle of March, he had regained the upper hand with thirteen of the country’s twenty two districts back under state control, and two more seeming that they were about to be retaken. The road to Benghazi to be open, and the end of the rebellion in sight. It was at this point on the 17thof March that United Nations resolution 1973 was passed authorising a ‘no-fly zone’. After getting a poorly attended Arab League meeting, with only about half of its members present,to back to bombing campaign to give it some sort of ‘legitimacy’, the military operations are now under NATO control with the Arab League criticising the bombings that they called for. It seems like they, like much of the world, had somehow imagined that a ‘no-fly zone’ would just involve shooting down any aircraft trying to bomb civilians, and not a mass bombing campaign murdering civilians. It almost as if Iraq had never happened. For those with short memories 110 Tomahawk missiles and bombing raids by the British and French air forces on March 19thwould have acted as a sharp reminder.

Now it is clear, beyond any doubt, that the events in Libya have degenerated into an all out civil war with workers on both sides being massacred on behalf of those who control, or would control Libya.

11. Where are we now?

It seems now that the reaction has firmly set in. The events in Libya show only the worst extent of where the weakness of the working class, and its inability to impose itself on the situation have left us. How resilient the Gaddafi regime will be and whether it can hold on remains to be seen. We think that it should be remembered that back in the middle of February people were only giving Gaddafi a few days, yet he is still in power in Tripoli. We suspect that he will hold on for longer than the West imagines. At the moment he is appealing to the idea of protecting the homeland and national defence. The Warfalla tribe, over a million strong and nearly 20% of the population are nowfor reconciliation, claiming almost unbelievably that no significant tribal figures are involved in the rebellion. As loyalties shift to and fro large amounts of cash are said to be changing hands. 

In Yemen it is becoming increasingly clear that whoever ends up on top it will just be a reshuffling of leaders. Bahrain has seen another rebellion crushed just as the one back in the 1990s was. Syria will probably manage to ride out the protests even if it takes a few more massacres. After all those who remember the tens of thousands of civilians murdered in the city of Hama at the start of the 1980s know that the Assad regime isn’t adverse to a bit of blood.

And so it seems that a movement which began in Tunisia is now drawing to a close. That isn’t to say that there won’t be more murders of protestors, or even the odd dictator falling, such as Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, to be replaced by a military strong man. However the movement that erupted at the end of last year with such promise seems to be over, or at least dead to the working class.

12. What conclusions can we draw?

For us our general analysis of the period remains unchanged. The working class is returning to struggle slowly but surely, but is not yet strong enough to stamp its imprint firmly onto the times. We expect that the future will show us more struggles along the lines of the revolts in the Arab states and those previously in Greece and Iran. As the economy continues to stagnate, a process that cannot but be aided by the increase in oil prices caused by an ongoing war in Libya, and the massive withdrawal of capital to Japan that is almost bound to happen in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami of March 11th, states will have no other solution but to resort to increasing austerity and increasing repression.

The working class in some of the Arab states, most notably Tunisia and Egypt, but also Algeria, has made a step towards recovering its experience of how to struggle. In others the weakness of the working class has been brutally exposed and the resulting repression and increase in sectarian tensions, not to mention Libya being dragged into a civil war will almost certainly act as a weight around the neck of the working class. 

Those on the left who talked of workers’ revolution in the Arab world have been shown to be wrong. The working class is still too weak to assert itself. The road to rebuilding the lost experience and class consciousness will be long. Yet there are reasons to hope. The speed with which the Egyptian military jettisoned Mubarak after workers strikes broke out shows that the ruling class, at least, is still well aware of the potential that the working class holds, and in a faraway country where working class struggle has for years been conspicuous by its absence, workers in Wisconsin fighting against cuts in the largest struggle the US has seen in years raised banners supporting Egyptian workers implicitly recognising that the class struggle is an international one of workers across the world facing the same sort of attacks. 

25/03/11

“Expressing grave concern at the deteriorating situation, the escalation of violence, and the heavy civilian casualties…

Condemning the gross and systematic violation of human rights, including arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, torture and summary executions…

Considering that the widespread and systematic attacks currently taking place in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya against the civilian population may amount to crimes against humanity…

Expressing its determination to ensure the protection of civilians ….

 Authorizes Member States that have notified the Secretary-General….to take all necessary measures…. to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack”

From UN Resolution 1973,17 March 2011 

Once again, the great leaders of this world are full of fine humanitarian phrases, ringing speeches about ‘democracy’ and the safety of populations, but their real aim is justify their imperialist adventures.

Since 20 March an ‘international coalition’[1] has been carrying out a major military operation in Libya, poetically named ‘Operation Dawn Odyssey’ by the USA. Every day, dozens of war planes have been taking off from powerful French and US aircraft carriers, or from bases inside the UK, to launch a carpet of bombs at the all the areas containing the armed forces loyal to the Gaddafi regime[2]. In plain words, this is war!

All these states are just defending their own interests

Obviously Gaddafi is a bloody dictator. After several weeks of retreat in the face of the rebellion, the self-proclaimed ‘Guide’ of Libya was able to reorganise his elite troops to make a counter-attack. Day after day, his forces were able to gain ground, crushing everything in his path, ‘rebels’ as well the population in general. And without doubt, he was preparing a bloodbath for the inhabitants of Benghazi when the Operation Dawn Odyssey was launched. The air strikes by the coalition took a heavy toll of Gaddafi’s forces and thus in effect prevented the massacre.

But who can believe for a moment that the real goal of this use of force by the coalition really has the aim of ensuring the welfare of the Libyan population?

Where was this coalition when Gaddafi slaughtered over 1000 prisoners held at Abu Salim jail in Tripoliin 1996? The fact is that for 40 years this regime has been jailing people, terrorising them, making them disappear, executing them…with complete impunity.

Yesterday, where was the coalition when Ben Ali in Tunisia, Mubarak in Egypt or Bouteflika in Algeria were shooting at crowds during the uprisings of January and February?

And what is the coalition doing today when massacres are taking place in Yemen, Syria or Bahrain? Oh yes, it’s closing its eyes to Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Bahrain – to help the state repress the demonstrations there.

Sarkozy, Cameron, Obama and Co. can present themselves as saviours, as defenders of the widow and the orphan, but for them the suffering of the civilians of Benghazi is just an alibi to intervene and defend their sordid imperialist interests. All these gangsters have a reason for launching this imperialist crusade:

-          This time, unlike in recent wars, the USA has not been at the forefront of the military operation. Why? Why is the American bourgeoisie playing a balancing act over Libya?

On the one hand it can’t allow itself to carry out a massive land intervention on Libyan soil. This would be seen by the whole Arab world as an act of aggression, a new invasion. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have greatly increased aversion to ‘American imperialism, the traditional ally of Israel’. And the change of regime in Egypt, a long-term ally of Uncle Sam, has further weakened its position in the region.

But at the same time, they can’t stay outside the game because this would risk totally discrediting their status as a force fighting for democracy in the world. They obviously can’t give a free hand to the Britain and France tandem

-          Britain’s participation has a dual objective. It is also trying to polish up its tarnished image in the Arab world following its interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it is also trying to get its own population used to the idea of foreign military intentions which are bound to get more and more frequent. ‘Saving the Libyan people from Gaddafi’ is a perfect opportunity for that[3]

-          The case of France is a bit different. This is the only big western country which still has a certain popularity in the Arab world, acquired under De Gaulle and amplified by its refusal to take part in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

By intervening on behalf of the ‘Libyan people’, president Sarkozy knew very well that he would be welcomed with open arms by people there and that this would be seen in a good light by neighbouring countries, for whom Gaddafi is a bit too unpredictable and uncontrollable for their taste. And we have indeed heard the cry of ‘Vive Sarkozy’, ‘Vive la France’ in the streets of Benghazi. France has, for once, taken good advantage of the USA’s difficulties[4].

Sarkozy has thus made up some of the ground lost by his government’s gaffes in Tunisia and Egypt (supporting the dictators that were eventually kicked out by the social revolts, allowing its ministers to stay too close to their regimes while the struggles were in full flow, even offering to send its police forces to help with the repression in Tunisia….).

We can’t go into all the details about the particular interests of each state in the coalition now at work in Libya, but one thing is sure: there’s nothing humanitarian or philanthropic about it! And the same goes for those who abstained from voting for the UN resolution or did so with great reluctance:

-          China, Russia and Brazil are very hostile to this intervention, simply because they have nothing to gain from Gaddafi’s departure;

-          Italy actually has a lot to lose from it. The present regime has, up till now, assured it easy access to oil and a draconian control of its borders. The destabilisation of Libya could put all this into question;

-          Angela Merkel’s Germany is still a military dwarf. All its forces are tied up in Afghanistan. Participating in this operation would have made its weakness at this level even more obvious. As the Spanish paper El Pais put it on March 21, “We are seeing a rerun of the constant balancing act between Germany’s economic giantism, demonstrated during the euro crisis, and France’s political strength, which is largely based on its military power”.

In sum, Libya, like the whole of the Middle East, is a huge chessboard on which the great powers are trying to advance their pawns.   

Why are the great powers intervening now?

For weeks Gaddafi’s troops were advancing on Benghazi, the rebels’ fiefdom, slaughtering everything in their path. Why did the great powers, if they had so many interests in intervening in the region, wait so long to do so?

In the first days, the tide of revolt originating in Tunisia and Egypt also hit Libya. The same anger against oppression and poverty was welling up in all layers of society. At this point it was out of the question for the ‘world’s great democracies’ to really support this social movement, despite their fine speeches condemning the repression. Their diplomacy hypocritically rejected the idea of interference and proclaimed the right of peoples to make their own history. Experience shows that it’s the same with every social struggle: the bourgeoisie everywhere closes its eyes to the most horrible repression, when it’s not directly lending a hand with it! But in Libya what seems to have begun as a real revolt by ‘those at the bottom’, by unarmed civilians who bravely attacked military barracks and torched the HQs of the so-called ‘Peoples’ Committees’, quickly turned into a bloody ‘civil war’ between bourgeois factions. In other words, the movement escaped the control of the non-exploiting strata. The proof for this is that one of the leaders of the rebellion and the Transitional National Council is al Jeleil, Gaddafi’s former minister of justice! This is a man whose hands are equally as bloodsoaked as those of his former Guide, now rival. Another indication: while the proletarians have no country, the provisional government has adopted the flag of the old Libyan monarchy. Finally, Sarkozy has recognised the TNC as the “legitimate representatives of the Libyan people”.                  

The revolt in Libya thus took a diametrically opposed turn to what happened in Tunisia and Egypt. This was mainly due to the weakness of the working class in this country. The main industry, oil, almost exclusively employs workers from Europe, the rest of the Middle East, Asia and Africa. From the beginning these workers took no part in the movement of social protest. The result was that the local petty bourgeoisie stamped its mark on the revolt – hence the ubiquity of the national flag for example. Worse, the ‘foreign’ workers, who could not therefore identify with these struggles, fled the country. There were even persecutions of black workers by ‘rebel’ forces, following numerous rumours about the regime’s use of mercenaries from black Africa to repress the demonstrations, casting suspicion on all black workers.

Workers’ struggles vs imperialist wars

This turn-around in the situation in Libya has consequences which go well beyond its frontiers. First Gaddafi’s repression, then the intervention of the coalition, is a blow against all the social movements in the region. This has permitted other dictatorial regimes to embark on a course of bloody repression: in Bahrain where the Saudi army has come to the assistance of the regime in dealing brutally with the demonstrations[5]; in Yemen where on 18 March government forces fired on the crowd, killing 51 people; and now in Syria where scores have also been gunned down.

Having said this, it is not at all certain that this will be a fatal blow. The Libyan situation is like a ball and chain on the world proletariat’s feet, but there is so much anger against the development of poverty that it will not paralyse it completely. In Egypt and Tunisia, where the ‘revolution’ is supposed to have triumphed already, confrontations continue between demonstrators and the now ‘democratic’ state administered by more or less the same forces who ran it under the ‘dictators’. Demonstrations have also continued in Morocco, despite King Mohammed VI declaring a constitutional monarchy.   

Whatever happens, for all the populations facing the most terrible repression, or the bombs of this or that international coalition, the sky will not clear until the proletariat of the central countries, particularly western Europe, develops its own massive and determined struggles. Armed by its experience, especially with the traps of trade unionism and democracy, it would then be able to show its capacities for self-organisation and open up a genuinely revolutionary perspective, the only future for the whole of humanity.

To be in solidarity with all those today falling under bullets and bombs does not mean supporting Gaddafi, or the ‘rebels’, or the UN coalition. On the contrary: we have to denounce all of them as imperialist bloodhounds!

To be in solidarity is to choose the camp of proletarian internationalism, to struggle against ‘our own’ exploiters and killers, to participate in the development of workers’ struggles and class consciousness all over the world!

Pawel 25/3/11 

"Fear the worst!" That's the message now splashed across newspaper front pages, in all the media, and on the lips of the world's leaders too. But it can't get any worse! Because from the earthquake, to the tsunami and then the nuclear accidents, and it's not finished there, it means the current predicament of the Japanese population is horrific. And because now there are millions of people on the planet living under the Sword of Damocles of the nuclear cloud released by the reactors at Fukushima. This time round, it is not a poor country like Haiti and Indonesia that is being hit hard but the heart of one of the most industrialised countries of the world, one that specialises in cutting-edge technologies.
It's a country that has first-hand experience of the devastating effects of nuclear energy, having suffered the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Capitalism makes humanity more vulnerable to natural disasters

Once again, the madness of capitalism and irresponsibility of the bourgeoisie has become front page news. Only now is the world finding out that millions of people have been crammed into wooden houses, along coastal shores, permanently threatened by the risk of earthquakes and giant waves that can consume all before them. And this in a country that's the world's third largest economic power!
As if this were not enough, they have also built nuclear power stations, which are all real time bombs, at the mercy of the earthquakes and the tsunamis. Most of Japan's nuclear power plants were built 40 years ago, not only in densely populated areas but also near the coast. They are therefore particularly vulnerable to flooding. Thus, of the 55 Japanese reactors spread over 17 sites, 11 have been affected by the disaster. As a direct consequence, the population is already exposed to radiation levels that have officially[1] risen to more than 40 times the norm as far away as in Tokyo, 250 km from Fukushima, a radiation level which the Japanese government nonetheless declared to be of “no risk”! And it’s not only nuclear power stations that have been hit but also petrochemical plants built by the coast, and some of these have set on fire, which will only make the disaster worse and add to the existing ecological catastrophe.

The bourgeoisie is still trying to make us believe that it is all the fault of nature, that we cannot predict the power of earthquakes and the magnitude of tsunamis. This is true. But what is most striking is how capitalism, after two hundred years in which it has produced phenomenal scientific knowledge and technical know-how that could be used to prevent this kind of disaster constantly increases the monstrous danger to humanity. The capitalist world of today has enormous technological machinery but is not able to use it to benefit humanity, as it is only concerned with the profits of capital... to the detriment of our livelihoods.
Since the Kobe earthquake disaster in 1995, the Japanese government has, for example, developed a policy of constructing earthquake resistant buildings that have withstood the quake, but which are intended to house the very rich or to serve as city office blocks. 

The bourgeoisie tells big lies

Today, comparisons abound with previous major nuclear accidents, especially with the melt-down of the reactor at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979. Officially no-one died in that one. In comparison, all the political leaders are saying that the current disaster is not "for now" as serious an incident as the explosion of the Chernobyl power plant in 1986. Should we be reassured by these outrageously optimistic remarks? How do we assess the real danger to the populations of Japan, Asia, Russia, the Americas… and the world? The answer leaves us in no doubt: the consequences will be dramatic in every sense. There is already major nuclear pollution in Japan and the TEPCO officials who operate the Japanese nuclear plants can only deal with the risk of an explosion by fiddling with the problem day by day and shamelessly exposing hundreds of employees and fire-fighters to fatal levels of radiation. Here we see the fundamentaldifference between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. On the one hand there is a ruling class that has no hesitation in sending ‘its’ people to their deaths and, more generally still, endangering the lives of tens of millions of people in the name of its sacrosanct profits. On the other hand, there are workers ready to sacrifice their lives and to suffer the slow and unbearable agony of exposure to radiation on humanity's behalf.Today, the impotence of the bourgeoisie is such that after a week of desperate attempts to cool the damaged reactor, its specialists are forced to play the sorcerer's apprentice, trying to reconnect the different systems for cooling the reactor's core onto the electricity network. Nobody knows if this will work: either the pumps work properly and succeed in cooling the reactor, or the cables and equipment are damaged which could create short-circuits, fires and... explosions! The only solution then will be to cover the core of the reactor with sand and concrete, like... Chernobyl.[2] Faced with such atrocities now and in the future, our exploiters will always respond in the same way: with lies!

In 1979, Washington lied about the radioactive effects of the meltdown of the core of the reactor, while still evacuating 140,000 people; if no actual deaths were reported, the cancers still multiplied one hundredfold in the population, something which the U.S. government never wanted to acknowledge.

With regard to Chernobyl, when the problems mounted with the plant and its maintenance, the Russian government hid the urgency of the situation for weeks. Only after the reactor exploded and an immense nuclear cloud was dispersed miles up in the air and thousands of miles around did the world come to see the magnitude of the disaster. But this kind of behaviour is not just peculiar to Stalinism. The western officials behaved exactly the same. At the time, the French government excelled itself with a whopping great lie about this cloud coming to a full stop right at the western border of France! Another interesting fact, even today, is that the WHO (World Health Organisation), no doubt colluding with the IAEA (International Agency for Atomic Energy), produced a derisory and even laughable review of the Chernobyl explosion: 50 people dead, 9 children deaths from cancer, and a possible 4,000 more cancer fatalities! In fact, according to a study by the New York Science Academy, 985,000 people perished due to this nuclear accident.[3] And today these very same agencies are responsible for producing a run-down on the situation at Fukushima and informing us of the risks! How, after that, are they at all believable? For example, what is going to become of those they call "the liquidators" (those who are now dealing with the emergency) at Fukushima when we know that at Chernobyl "of the 830,000 liquidators brought onto the site after the event, between 112,000 and 125,000 are dead."[4] Even today, the bourgeoisie tries to hide the fact that this reactor is still highly dangerous as there is still an urgent necessity to continue enclosing the reactor core under more and more new layers of concrete, just as it hides the fact that there have been no less than 200 incidents at the Fukushima power stations during the past ten years!

All countries lie about the dangers from nuclear power! The French State expresses unerring confidence that the 58 nuclear reactors of L'Hexagone, the company in charge, are perfectly safe, when most of these power stations are either in seismic zones, or in coastal areas, or on rivers vulnerable to flooding. During the stormy weather of 1999, when gales inflicted serious damage across France and left 88 dead in Europe, the power station at Blaye, near Bordeaux, was flooded and this nearly caused the melt-down of a reactor. Few people knew about it. And then there's the power station at Fessenheim that was so obsolescent that it had to close-down for a few years. But by using replacement parts (many of which aren't the approved standard), it is somehow still in operation, and no doubt the maintenance staff will suffer the consequences of exposure to the radiation. That’s what they mean by "being in control" and “transparency”!

From the beginning of the earthquake in Japan, on Friday, March 11th, the media advisedly reassured us that the Japanese nuclear power stations were among the "safest" in the world. Two days later it contradicted itself and recalled that the company, TEPCO, which manages the power stations in Japan, had already hidden incidents of nuclear radiation leaks. How can it be that the power stations in France, where "in the space of ten years, the number of minor incidents and faults at nuclear sites has doubled"[5], like they have elsewhere in the world, "are any "safer"? In no way at all. "Around 20% of the 440 commercial reactors in operation worldwide are located in areas of ‘significant seismic activity’, according to the WNA, World Nuclear Association, a grouping of industrialists. Some of the 62 reactors under construction are also in areas of seismic risk, just like many of the 500 other projects especially in countries with emerging economies. Several nuclear power stations - including the four reactors at Fukushima damaged by the tsunami on March 11th - are on or near the ‘Ring of Fire’, a 40,000 km arc of tectonic faults around the Pacific."[6]

Thus, reliable information "suggests that radioactive elements are more and more around us. For example, while plutonium did not exist naturally before 1945, we are now finding it in the milk teeth of British children."[7], and this despite the fact that Britain has ended its commercial nuclear programme.

Capitalism is pushing mankind towards more and more disasters

And Japan is not just suffering from the nuclear catastrophe but from another humanitarian disaster too. Thus, the world's third largest economic power has been plunged into crisis, unprecedented since the Second World War, in the space of a few hours. The same terrifying ingredients are present: massive destruction, tens of thousands dead and to top it off, radiation, like that from the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Millions of people in north-eastern Japan are having to live without electricity, without drinking water, with diminishing supplies of food, supplies which may already be contaminated. 600,000 people have been uprooted by the tsunami that has devastated entire towns close to the Pacific Ocean, and have been left destitute, out in the cold and the snow. Contrary to what the Japanese government says – it has continued to downplay the seriousness of the situation, and the numbers affected, providing small details of the increase in people dead, day after day - we can already, without hesitation, begin to count the deaths in the tens of thousands for the country as a whole. The sea is continually depositing dead bodies along the shores. This against a backdrop of massive destruction of homes, buildings, infrastructure, hospitals, schools, etc.

Villages, buildings, trains and even entire towns were swept away by the power of the tsunami that struck the north-eastern coast of Japan. For some towns, located in what are usually narrow valleys like at Minamisanriku, at least half the 17,000 people were swept away and perished. With the warning given by the government of only 30 minutes, the roads were quickly congested, putting the "laggards" at the mercy of the waves.

The population has been saluted by all the Western media for its "exemplary courage" and "discipline", and has been called on by the Japanese Prime Minister to "rebuild the country from scratch", i.e. in plain language, the working class of this country must now expect fresh hardship, increased exploitation and worsening poverty. Admittedly, all this fits in nicely with the propaganda abouta servile population that exercises with the company boss in the mornings, who are silent and submissive, and who remain quite stoical and carry on as normal while the buildings are crashing down on top of them. For sure, the Japanese population is extraordinarily courageous, but the reality is completely at odds with the "stoicism" described in the papers. Apart from the hundreds of thousands who packed into gyms and other communal areas, and whose anger rose to a fever pitch and rightly so, hundreds of thousands of others tried to flee, including a growing number of the around 38 million people in Tokyo and its suburbs. And those who remained, did not do it to brave the dangers but because they had no choice. With no money, where can you go? And who's going to take you in? In every sense, being an ‘environmental refugee’ isn't acceptable in the eyes of the bourgeoisie. About 50 million people are forced to migrate every year for reasons connected to the environment but they have no status under the UN Convention, even if they are victims of a disaster, be it "nuclear" or whatever. Clearly, the Japanese with no money who wants to try to escape the nuclear disaster, or simply to relocate elsewhere in the world, is going to be denied the ‘right of asylum’ all round the world.

This insane system of exploitation is moribund and shows itself to be more barbaric with every passing day. Although immense knowledge and enormous technological power has been acquired by mankind, the bourgeoisie is incapable of putting it to work for the good of humanity, to protect us all against natural disasters. Instead of this, capitalism is a destructive force, not just here and there, but all over the world.

"We have no other choice, faced with this capitalist hell: it's Socialism or Barbarism. We must fight it or die"[8].

Mulan 19/3/11

On 23 March the Egyptian state passed a law banning strikes and demonstrations. How many people, reflecting on the upheavals there in January and February, thought that it had turned out to be just an '18-day wonder'?

In reality, the events that led up to the resignation of Mubarak were not just a flash in the pan, but had roots going back years and involved forces that are still intact today. For a start it should be underlined that the removal of Mubarak came about after working class action. For all the activities by the many social strata gathered in Tahir Square, it was workers' strikes that convinced the dominant faction of the Egyptian ruling class that it had to dump an unpopular figure.

As we said in an article first published online in mid-February “the power of this movement was not acquired overnight. For the past seven years, it is the workers who have been at the frontline of resistance against the poverty and repression imposed on the entire population. There were a number of strike movements in 2004, 2006-7 and 2007-8, with the textile workers of Mahalla playing a particularly significant role, but with many other sectors joining in.” But also, as we said in ‘What is happening in the Middle East?’ published in mid-March, referring to the various recent movements throughout the region, “we can characterise them as movements of the non-exploiting classes, social revolts against the state. The working class has, in general, not been in the leadership of these rebellions but it has certainly had a significant presence and influence.”

So, although the working class in Egypt is a powerful force it is not the only non-exploiting class. And all sorts of ideas that have been floated in recent years as offering 'alternatives' to Mubarak still have the potential to be employed by the ruling capitalist class.

Observations from the barricades

In a complex situation there will always be a range of explanations available. In late 2009 Zed Books published Egypt: The Moment of Change. Earlier on this year Zed re-publicised the book in the light of events saying that “With many of the chapters written by Egyptian academics and activists who are now on the very first line of the barricades, this is the one book that has all the answers.” The 'answers' are familiar enough – opposition to 'neo-liberalism', support for reforms – but some of the observations give a good impression of the complexity of the situation.

The book describes how there were, for example, many competing currents in the opposition to Mubarak but they were able reach a consensus: “People with radically different aspirations – ranging from the secular socialist state to the Islamist theocracy – have agreed on the need to end Mubarak's rule” (p98). The way the opposition operated allowed for groups with “different ideological leanings, class interests and long-term projects to work together” (p98). This was indeed the view of an opposition that saw the removal of Mubarak as the number one priority. Although the working class has shown its strength and ability to organise outside the official unions, it would be wrong to ignore workers' many illusions. At the moment the possibility of free trade unions or the potential for post-Mubarak capitalism are particularly significant. In the past there were also illusions in what the state could offer. There have been “Popular slogans like 'In the days of defeat, the people could still eat' (raised by strikers in 1975) or 'Nasser always said “take care of the workers” (heard in 1977)” (p71) which show the hold that modern myths and ideology can have. There is a claim that during a 2005 strike “workers believed that they and the broader public were the real owners of the enterprise, not the state mangers” (p78). Although this is just an impression by the author, it does correspond to ideas that many workers have accepted from state capitalist demagogues.

The actions of other groups in society show the situation in which workers find themselves. In 2006 when dissident judges who had criticised corruption and malpractices were taken to court a crowd chanted “Judges, judges, save us from the tyrants” (p99). Whatever the social makeup of the crowd it clearly had illusions in the possibility of an independent judiciary, in the legal process rather than in a struggle against the state.

The book outlines another incident where in 1986 “thousands of police conscripts abandoned barracks and marched on Cairo and Alexandria, destroying many hotels, shops and restaurants in protest against their slave like conditions.... the regime was compelled to bring tanks onto the streets to defeat what was in, in effect, an uprising of peasants in uniform” (p32).

In 2007, alongside protests over food shortages were protests over shortages of drinking water. “For several months demonstrations across the Nile Delta involved large numbers of the country's poorest people in what Cairo newspapers called a 'revolution of the thirsty'”(p32-3).

Overall, all the expressions of protest, all the actions by different social forces are described as “different forms of contention.” These include “social movements, revolutions, strike waves, nationalism, democratisation, and more” (p101).

What makes a revolution?

The listed forms of 'contention' cover a wide range of phenomena. When groups of workers struggle they can inspire others, one strike leading to others until a whole wave of strikes has unfolded. This is not a workers' 'policy' but an expression of the solidarity and the common interests of the working class. When workers struggle they come up against nationalist and democratist ideas that can only undermine the struggle for their own interests. When the social movements of other strata emerge workers have to relate to them, while appreciating that the class dependent on wage labour is the only class that can challenge capitalism.

The working class has only two weapons, its consciousness and its capacity for organisation. Every question it faces has to be seen in terms of the development of consciousness and the implications for its self-organisation. How does the working class organise? What ideas assist the development of the struggle and which hold it back? What institutions and ideologies does the ruling class use against workers' struggles and the development of its consciousness? How do workers relate to other non-exploiting social strata? And, as we are now inundated with glib references to 'revolutions' as just another 'form of contention', what is a revolution in reality?

Over the last couple of decades all sorts of social phenomena have been called 'revolutions', despite the fact that capitalist rule has nowhere been overthrown and the capitalist state is entrenched everywhere. If we take a contribution from someone who could draw on the experience of a real revolution, that of Russia in1917, Lenin's remarks on revolutionary situations are particularly relevant. “For a revolution to take place it is not enough for the exploited and oppressed masses to realise the impossibility of living in the old way, and demand changes; for a revolution to take place it is essential that the exploiters should not be able to live and rule in the old way. It is only when the 'lower classes' do not want to live in the old way and the 'upper classes' cannot carry on in the old way that the revolution can triumph”(Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, 1920).

If we look at Egypt we can see that, for all the changes that have happened and are promised for the future, the ruling capitalist class remains secure in its position. The nationalist, democratist and Islamist opposition have their differences, but they do not challenge the rule of the bourgeoisie. As for the working class, it has shown its strength, especially in contrast to other strata, but is not yet challenging the rule of its exploiters. As everywhere else in the world, the more we see outbreaks of workers' struggles, developments in the organisation of the struggle, and evidence of the discarding of illusions, the more we can look forward towards mass strikes and open confrontation between the working class and the ruling bourgeoisie.  

Barrow 29/3/11

Since this article was written by the ICC’s section in France, it looks as though the presidency of Laurent Gbagbo is nearing its end, as the ‘rebel’ forces led by Alassane Ouattara strengthen their grip on the capital. But this does not diminish the accuracy of its description of this barbaric conflict.

The murders with small arms fire which began the day after the proclamation of the Presidential election results on 28 November 2010, have given way to large-scale massacres right out in the open. According to diverse sources (such as the spokesman of Ouattara on French TV), there have already been a thousand deaths, tens of thousands of injured and hundreds of thousands of refugees, 300,000 of whom fled the town of Abidjan. Fighting is unfolding in most areas of this town, particularly in the densely populated suburb of Abobo

The population is caught in the cross-fire of both camps of assassins who don’t hesitate to march over the bodies of their victims, including women and children. These are not only assassinations and sudden assaults by death squads, there are also tanks, helicopters and other heavy weaponry stepping into this danse macabre. Now the war is moving from Abidjan to the official capital Yamoussoukro and is spreading to the Liberian border where these bloodthirsty gangs are settling accounts. Elsewhere, those that escape death inevitably come up against the misery of a state of war with its scarcity, mass unemployment and permanent insecurity.

“Here, a woman, ‘housewife, a mamma’ as the people affectionately and tenderly refer to the mothers of families, had her head taken off by a soldier shooting in Abobo, the insurgent quarter of Abidjan. About six or seven other women were mown down with bursts of gun fire from an armoured vehicle of the defence forces (FDS) loyal to Laurent Gbagbo which came, according to the crowd, from a neighbouring camp of the Republican Guard, supported by men of the Anti-Riot Brigade (BAE). Diabolical columns are crossing now hostile zones, followed by ambulances and hearses in order to get rid of the corpses (...) Thursday 3 March, the march of women who thought that they could demonstrate peacefully in the style of Egypt or Tunisia with placards saying ‘Gbagbo go!’, turned out not to be the beginning of a ‘revolution’ called for by Guillaume Soro, ex-chief of the rebellion and now first minister of Alassane Ouattara, the President recognised by the international community. The FDS fired on the women with heavy machine-guns whose bullets were capable of tearing off heads, arms and legs. Seven deaths” (Le Monde, 10/3/11).

And the carnage continued on 8 March (during another march on the occasion of International Woman’s Day) at the end of which we saw the extreme barbarity in which the forces loyal to the criminal Gbagbo excelled. But we also shouldn’t ignore the responsibility of the no less criminal camp of Ouattara which has knowingly sent these women to their death without any protection. This same Soro, the right-hand man of Ouattara, has profited from the revolts in the Arab world to push these women into an abattoir under the pretext of unleashing a 'revolution' against the power of Gbagbo. This really monstrous procedure consists of manipulating civilians and women with the single aim of satisfying the politicians’ criminal ambitions. But these two camps of vultures don’t stop there; they enrol the population in absolute horror:

“The unthinkable is happening: each in their own camp, an ill-wind for the neutrals. There are more and more armed civilians; more and more situations where innocents are killed, burnt alive, wounded, martyred, in the two camps. The Ivory Coast is falling apart and the meeting organised by the African Union for Tuesday in Addis-Ababa to communicate a solution ‘constraining’ the two rivals for the presidency of November 2010, doesn’t give rise to great hopes... At the same time, the scale of the violence diversifies. Three mosques have been burnt in the last few days. Groups of militias have also sacked the homes of the leaders of the RHDP of Alassane Ouattara, who is holed up in the Hotel du Golf, discretely tucked away in the country. Eighteen houses have been ransacked based on the growing fears of seeing a new wave of atrocities hitting those that their neighbours suspect of being pro-Ouattara. On the other hand, the inhabitants of Anokoua, an area of Abobo peopled by the ethnic Ebrie, supposedly belonging to the Gbagbo camp, have been attacked the night before. Three deaths, including a woman burnt in her house and numerous injuries. Arms have been distributed to the Ebrie. If the spiral of violence is not stopped it will affect everyone (Le Monde, ibid).

This is the hell in which the populations live their daily lives, unfortunately without hope of escaping. Given the protection given to the killers the most likely outcome is for the entire country to end up in a conflagration.

Facades of sanctions, but real imperialist confrontations

In order to support Alassane Ouattara, designated the winner (by them) of the second round of presidential elections last November, the United States and the European Union announced a series of economic and diplomatic 'sanctions' against the Gbagbo clan to force him to cede power to his rival. But three months later, Laurent Gbagbo is still there and openly mocks the sanctions because he knows that they have been implemented with a double language and there is unity on nothing. On the contrary, behind the scenes there is a battle to defend the respective interests of those countries involved.

Faced with the attempted blockade of Ivorian cocoa, Gbagbo decided on a reorganisation of the commercialisation of the raw material, calling into question “all powerful western groups” and looking for new outlets. His entourage boasted: “Gbagbo has paid the wages for February; he will pay them for March and April (...) International condemnation of his regime persists, but Laurent Gbagbo is not giving up. He hopes to profit from the disagreements appearing within the international community and thinks that time is on his side. Pharmacies are beginning to run out of medicine because of an unannounced maritime embargo. But European businessmen continue to knock on his door, even if Gbagbo only receives them when the indiscreet cameras are out of the way” (Jeune Afrique, 6/12 March 2011).

The case of France is particularly edifying. In fact, on one side, Monsieur Sarkozy publicly announces a series of measures to sanction the government of Gbagbo, including the threat of an economic boycott, whereas, on the other, he is taking care not to incite the big French companies present (Bouygues, Bollore, Total, etc.) to leave the country. On the contrary, all these groups continue to do business with the Gbagbo regime, mitigating and skirting around the so-called 'economic sanctions'. Yet again, we see the odiously hypocritical character of the 'African policy' of the French in the Ivory Coast. In reality, French imperialism is above all concerned for its capital and cares nothing for the fate of the population, the first victims of this butchery; moreover, the guard dogs of its military operation “Licorne” will be released if French interests are threatened. Clearly, in this business of 'sanctions', no gangster can leave an advantage to the profit of its rivals.

The UN and the African Union let the assassins loose

At each big explosion of violence in the Ivory Coast since the beginning of the bloody electoral process at the end of 2010, the Security Council of the UN has been quick to meet up to pass resolutions, but never to stop the massacres. On the contrary, each one of its members more or less openly supports one or the other of the armed camps on the ground. That clearly shows the sordid behaviour of these gentlemen of the Security Council; so cynical that their 11,000 soldiers on the ground do nothing other than record the numbers of victims; worse still, they cover up the fact that armed groups, even when surrounded by Blue Helmets, bombard and fire on the population with impunity.

Thus, not only do the UN authorities remain scandalously indifferent to the suffering of the victims of war, but they have also put in place a black-out on the killings.

Once again, the French president, addressing the entire world, launched an ultimatum to Gbagbo, giving him the 'order' to leave power before the end of 2010. Since then? Nothing... He has observed a scrupulous, total silence on the horrors unfolding in front of his interests and the 'soldiers of peace' on the ground.

As to the African Union, it adopts an attitude that’s just as wretched as the UN. In fact, given all its links with the respective butchers involved in the dispute for Ivorian power, it leaves it to its members to support and arm one bloody clique or the other (like South Africa and Angola for Gbagbo, Burkina Faso and others for Ouattara). In order to mask this reality, it is making out there is a 'reconciliation' of the belligerents by creating commission after commission, the latest of which (meeting in Addis-Ababa 10/3/11) found nothing better to do than nominate yet another “high representative responsible for enacting forceful solutions linking up with a close committee of the representatives of the Economic Community of the States of Western Africa and the United Nations”.

Behind this diplomatic jargon, lies the cynicism of all these imperialist gangsters! All these 'reconciliators' are none other than the real executioners of the Ivorian population.   

Amina 17/3/11

There has been no shade of bourgeois opinion that has hesitated to use the term 'Arab Revolution' to describe what's currently going on in the Middle East. Subtle commentators can make out an 'Arab spring', but 'revolution' is the word of the moment.

All sorts of social forces are involved, as well as a range of contradictory ideas, but this use of 'revolution' to describe very disparate phenomena is not new. Modelled on examples such as the 'Velvet Revolution' of 1989 in Czechoslovakia, here are ten from the 21st century.

2000 Serbia, Bulldozer Revolution.

Post-election protests that started with miners led to the removal of Slobodan Milošević. He was replaced by Vojislav Koštunica, a firm nationalist chosen to lead the parties of the opposition. A leader of this coalition said "We could make a revolution but it wouldn't be good. It would create too much instability." The vehicle that was used to charge Serbian state TV station was not a bulldozer, or an excavator, but a wheel loader.

2003 Georgia, Rose Revolution.

Protests following elections led to the replacement of Eduard Shevardnadze by Mikheil Saakashvili (who had once been Shevardnadze's Minister of Justice). Under Saakashvili troops were sent to Iraq, only the US and Britain having more there than Georgia, and Georgian troops were maintained in Kosovo and Afghanistan. Protests against Saakashvili in 2007 were met with the declaration of a state or emergency and police violence against protesters.

2004-5 Ukraine, Orange Revolution.

Demonstrations and other protests after presidential elections resulted in the victory of Viktor Yushchenko over Viktor Yanukovych. Yuschenko was just as concerned to get the crowds off the streets as his rival.Yanukovych served as Prime Minister for 18 months under Yuschenko in 2006-7, before becoming president of Ukraine in 2010.

2005 Lebanon, Cedar Revolution.

After the assassination of the Lebanese Prime Minister in February there were massive demonstrations about the Syrian military presence in the country. Syria ultimately yielded to international pressure and withdrew its final troops in April. Life in Lebanon continues to be marked by violence and conflict.

2005 Kyrgyzstan, Tulip Revolution.

President Askar Akayev fled the country after post-election demonstrations. Under his successor, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, there have been murders of political opponents, corruption and economic decline. In 2010 protests over unemployment, electricity blackouts and other shortages, which were met with police repression and dozens of deaths, led to Bakiyev fleeing the country. Capitalism,corruption and a US military base continue.

2007 Burma, Saffron Revolution.

Protests over fuel price rises, including a significant role for thousands of Buddhist monks. Met with violent repression. Regime supported by China, opposition by the West. The majority of monks in Burma wear maroon not saffron robes. So, neither saffron nor a revolution.

2009-10 Thailand, Red Shirt Revolution.

Against the backdrop of protests by the poor and dispossessed the demands of the Red Shirts are for improved democracy, fresh elections and the reinstatement of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. A social movement has become entangled in a battle between different factions of the ruling class.

2009-10 Iran, Green Revolution.

Following the 2009 presidential elections there were maybe 2 million on the streets in protests at some moments. Workers have been involved as individuals but not as a class. There are enormous illusions in democracy. In the past the working class in Iran has shown itself a force to be reckoned with.

2011 Tunisian Revolution.

Non-Tunisian media have tried to christen recent events as the Jasmine Revolution, but this has not caught on. A wave of protest on basic questions of living conditions led to the departure of President Ben Ali. Protests continue and have inspired others in the Middle East.

2011 Egyptian Revolution.

Known by a number of names, including the Lotus Revolution. People from all parts of society were involved in the events that led to the removal of Mubarak. Two essential elements were the strikes of workers and the behind the scenes manoeuvrings of the US. Mubarak has gone but the capitalist state retains its dominant position in society.

None of these situations warrant being described as revolutions: capitalism, the exploitation of the working class and the oppression of non-exploiting social strata continue. But they do have things in common. For example, genuine material suffering has affected people in all the countries touched. The conditions in which we live continue to worsen, sometimes with rapid lurches. At the same time a focus on elections, nationalism, or the particular personnel in the ruling capitalist team has detracted from the importance of the struggle against material deprivation. Also, these focuses take away from an understanding of what are the real forces in capitalist society. The bourgeoisie can only defend the decaying status quo, and the working class is the only force with the potential to challenge and overthrow capitalism. While there has yet to be a revolution in the twenty first century, the proliferation of workers' struggles, expressions of self-organisation and the development of class consciousness mean that a revolutionary perspective is still realistic. 

Barrow 1/4/11

Humour's a funny thing. Some people love Charlie Chaplin, others prefer Buster Keaton. For some slapstick's the thing, for others witty wordplay.

Eddie Izzard is a divisive figure: some acclaiming him as one of the greatest ever standups, with references to the Cat Drilling Behind The Sofa or the Cake Or Death routine, while others sit blank faced at a guy who just seems to ramble on about stuff. Some of his latest material might just convince the doubters.

As the campaign around the AV Referendum fails to interest anyone, with even hardened politicians openly confessing that it's a really boring subject, both sides have started saying just about anything to generate some interest. Enter, stage left, Mr Izzard on behalf of the Yes to AV campaign.

He claims that the AV system of voting “will mean MPs will have to work harder to get your vote.” The AV system will “put power in the hands of the people." Ultimately the Yes to AV campaign was "pushing for civilisation".

Against this typical product of Izzard's whimsical comedy stylings there are some snappy come-backs. The Tories have warned that AV is crazy, undemocratic, unBritish and favours extremists (although the right-wing extremists of the BNP are actually campaigning against AV.) On the left you can read that “A vote for AV is a vote for cuts” and see opposition from Trotskyists, many unions, and the Socialist Party that says that AV will “entrench the power of the Tories and the Liberal Democrats.” Meanwhile the Weekly Worker is campaigning for Yes because it will help parties that are marginalised by the existing system. Alan Thornett of Socialist Resistance says “A yes vote should be seen as a small step in the direction of further reform.” The PCS and CWU unions recommend a Yes vote.

No one is talking about the distinctions between the D'Hondt and Sainte-Laguë [75] methods or CPO-STV against Schulze STV; it's all very crude stuff. David Cameron says that First-Past-The-Past is used by half the world, without mentioning that Britain's system is unique in Europe. Everyone is devoted to fairness and democracy, and how individuals can best get to express their preferences.

Have you heard the one about class society?

For or against electoral reform, they all talk about power. And in capitalist society the ruling class, the class that exercises power, the class that holds state power, is the bourgeoisie, the class that is dependent on the exploitation of the labour power of the working class. In different countries there are many ways that the bourgeoisie has evolved for its domination over all aspects of social life, but all are concentrated in the dictatorship of the capitalist state.

Dictatorship? The ideologues of democracy will throw their hands up in horror. Dictatorship is the word they use for the regimes of North Korea, Turkmenistan and Saudi Arabia. In Europe we have democracy.

But democracy has always been a form of class rule. In Ancient Athens democracy meant the rule of a (male) slave owning class to the exclusion of the majority, that is women, slaves (even when freed), and resident foreigners. In modern democracy all the important decisions that affect our lives are made behind closed doors by a class that uses elections as just one of the spectacles that conceal the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The sanctity of the individual's right to express themselves and participate in the democratic circus goes along with a decision-making process which is only concerned with the interests of the bourgeoisie, in response to the economic crisis, its imperialist interests and against the threat posed by the working class. The bourgeoisie takes nothing else into account, not in parliament, nor in the corridors of real power.

The central division in capitalist society is not between AV and FPTP, not between constitutional monarchies, republics and parliamentary democracies, not even between democracies and various 'authoritarian' regimes.

The big split in contemporary society is between the working class and the ruling capitalist class. The working class can not take over the state apparatus that exists for its repression and continuing exploitation, it needs to destroy the capitalist state, democratic or otherwise, and establish its own domination. Instead of democracy what is needed is the open and frank domination of the working class, a class with no new relations of exploitation to introduce. Where democracy depends on individual alienation, separation from each other and with no control over our lives, a future classless society can only be based on a fundamental human solidarity in all relations.

To conclude on a banal note: when even politicians think the AV referendum is boring, who are we to disagree? Capitalism will continue until the development of the collective struggles of the working class make it a force that can confront the capitalist class, rather than voting for its figureheads.  

Car 3/4/11

Transport workers all over India are severely exploited. Whether drivers, conductors or workshop workers, all suffer the same conditions: low wages, long and irregular working hours, tough conditions of work, relentless oppression and persecution by bosses. This is daily grind of their daily life. This is true of workers of state road transport corporations as well, of Delhi Transport Corporation workers in the capital where the bourgeoisie has no qualms in spending any sums for exhibition of its ‘prestige’ in spectacles like Commonwealth games. The conditions of Uttar Pradesh road transport workers are no different from others.

Capitalist crises and policies of austerity of the bourgeoisie

Capitalist crisis is further worsening living and working conditions of workers. This crisis has shaken up the whole world since 2008. Tens of millions of workers have lost jobs in different parts of the world under the lashes of the crises. USA, leader of world capitalism, is ahead of all in this. The jolts of crises have pulled down economies of a whole series of countries like Greece, Ireland, and Portugal. Everywhere the bourgeoisie is imposing austerity and poverty on the working class.

This is the context in which working class and young exploited populations have been developing their struggles against policies of austerity of the ruling class.

In 2010 alone workers and students have waged struggles against policies of austerity in Greece, Turkey, France, Britain and Italy. Although efforts are being made to derail popular revolts and workers struggles in Tunisia and Egypt by democratic mystifications, there is no doubt that these struggles express explosions of anger of the exploited populations against worsening living conditions.

In India the effects of the crises are expressed in intensification of a series of attacks by bourgeoisie and its state:

-          Firing huge number of workers from every part of the economy. Stoppage of recruitment.

-          Offensive of state and private sector bourgeoisie against permanent jobs and their substitution everywhere by temporary and contract work;

-          The objective of these steps is to lower wages and living conditions of workers. Bourgeoisie is using all tricks, including privatizations, to fulfill its objectives.

Another tool in the hands of the bourgeoisie to worsen living conditions of workers is price rises. By statistics of the government itself, the food inflation has been 18% since several years. This is in fact an average which hides even higher inflation of some of the basic necessities of life. The impact of all the steps is that despite so-called boom in the economy, conditions of living of the working class has gone from bad to worse.

Development of class struggle

Different sections of the working class have tried to fight against these attacks. There are many examples of this: in Gurgaon workers of Hero Honda, Honda Motor Cycles and Scooters and of many other factories. In Chennai, struggles of workers of Hyundai and other companies. Elsewhere, struggles of banks, airlines and airport workers. Strikes of road transport workers in different states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu etc are also expressions of this. In this, strikes of road transport workers in Kashmir between 2008 and 2010 have special importance. Here workers not only went on strikes several times in the middle of violent fights between separatist and Indian state, their movement also impulsed a ten days strike by all state workers in Kashmir in 2010.

Struggles of Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (UPSRTC) workers against attacks by the management are part of this general developing trend. In July 2006, permanent and temporary workers of UPSRTC in Varanasi, Gorakhpur and Kanpur went on strikes for better wages and regularization of temporary workers. Government of UP suppressed this strike by imposing ESMA (Essential Services Maintenance Act) and by repression. Hundreds of permanent and temporary workers were fired from their jobs as part of this campaign of repression. In 2009 UPSRTC workers of Allahabad region went on strike. In April 2010, 15000 temporary workers of UPSRTC throughout UP went on strike for regularization of their jobs and for better wages and working conditions. This was suppressed by repressive steps by the state government.

One of the more militant struggles of UPSRTC workers was in 2008. 25,000 workers participated in it. The government suppressed this by violence. On 5 February 2008, state police attacked UPSRTC workers with batons, tear gas and by bullets. In these attacks one worker was fatally wounded and 20 others were seriously injured. Hundreds of workers were arrested.

Workers' struggles defeated by union sabotage

But one thing needs to be remembered is that unions played as big a role as the state government in beating down these workers’ struggles.

All the struggles were controlled by the unions and were initiated by them in the face of anger by workers and under their pressure. Before these struggles, unions fanned all types of divisions among workers: divisions between drivers and conductors, between bus workers and workshop workers, between permanent and temporary workers and divisions on the name of castes and on the name of affiliations to competing bourgeoisie political factions (BSP versus SP, Congress versus BJP etc). Thus before the start of workers struggles, instead of strengthening workers unity, unions did everything to wreck it. If the unions still called for strikes under workers pressure, they tried to maintain them at the level of ritual actions of one or two day strikes. Before these strikes could develop, unions put an end to them on the name of fake agreements. These maneuvers by the unions not only sabotaged these struggles, they did everything to weaken workers will to fight.

But this is not a particular character of unions active among UPSRTC workers. Today unions have the same character and role everywhere. This is the character of all the unions, whether they are controlled by Congress, BJP and BSP or unions controlled by CPI, CPM and Maoists or ‘independent’ unions. Not only in India but everywhere in the worlds unions play the same role: to divide the workers, to stop their struggles from developing and, if these struggles cannot be stopped, to turn them into ritual struggles and thus ensure the smooth working of capitalist exploitation.

Way forward for workers' struggle – struggles outside union controls

That is why when we look at workers struggle in different parts of the world today, we note certain things. Workers struggles have been able to advance only where workers have been able to make efforts to get out of unions control and take struggles in their hands. Workers have tried to do this by organising general assemblies. General assemblies are places for workers to discuss and decide about their struggles, its path and their demands. In addition to setting up general assemblies, another step important for their development is to extend the struggles. For transport workers and other sectors of workers to extend a hand toward others sectors of workers. This is a lesson of recent workers struggles throughout the world.

The latest effort of UPSTRC unions to derail workers anger and demoralize them was displayed recently. A strike was declared for 7 Feb 2011. Before the strike took place, on 5 Feb 2011 unions declared – the government has promised to look into their demands.

With this they took back the strike. It was natural for workers to get angry against this. In Kanpur depots, workers assembled to oppose this sabotage by the unions. The meeting called for this discussed how to develop the struggle by taking it out of union control. It proposed to work for calling general assemblies of depots and others workers and instead of fighting separately, workers of UPSTRC should fight along with other workers of Kanpur. This was effort of a small minority and about 200 workers took part in these discussion. But this is an expression of a developing questioning. Only strengthening of this tendency of questioning the unions and taking struggles in their own hands can open the door for the development of workers struggles.

Alok/RB, 14/2/11

A contribution to the discussion about the distant past of humanity, by a sympathiser. 

Cave of Forgotten Dreams by the celebrated film director Werner Herzog has just been released in the UK. Hertzog was given access to what, up to now, alongside Lascaux possibly, has been the most dramatic discovery of Upper Palaeolithic cave (parietal) art: the Chauvet Cave in the Ardeche region of southern France. The access given was necessarily restricted in both space and time and the director and 3 or 4 crew had to work with special battery powered lighting. The result is worth seeing. Herzog had previously dismissed out of hand films made in 3D but he uses the process here to good effect. It does a little to enhance the engravings and paintings but it’s in the overall effect of the cave interior and related topography that it shines.

Even the capitalist media and politicians had to admit it: the street battle in Bristol wasn't a race riot. It was an elemental revolt by a whole sector of the population against bad housing, high unemployment, spiralling prices, the all-pervading boredom of life in today's cities. Above all, it was against the brutality and arrogance of the police, whose high-handed raid on a local café provoked the revolt.

The fact that most of the 'rioters' were young blacks simply expresses the fact that capitalism always hands out slightly different levels of misery to its slaves. Blacks tend to get shoved down to the bottom of the shit-heap. But the disintegration of this vile society is pushing more and more of us down to the same place. That's why the young blacks were joined by young whites – punks, skinheads, etc, etc, most of them unemployed proletarians with about as rosy a future as the blacks.

That's why white-skinned building workers in St Pals cheered at the sight of the police cars going up in flames: perhaps they remembered the police violence against building workers' pickets a few years back.

That's why white-skinned old age pensioners, fed up with seeing shops full of things they can't afford, were seen calmly filling their trolleys with looted food at the local ransacked supermarket.

Capital in crisis exploits and oppresses all of us with increasing 'equality', with an admirable lack of racial discrimination.

The sight of such spontaneous violence, of the police being booted out of a neighbourhood, of banks going up in flames, or of the streets temporarily falling into the hands of those who live in them, sends shivers down the spines of our rulers.

'Race riots', clashes between black and white, may cause damage, may disturb the tranquillity of everyday profit-production, but they do have the advantage of keeping the oppressed divided against each other. But when the oppressed begin to get together and openly defy the forces of law and order – that's something much harder for capitalism to use to its own advantage. And when you bear in mind that the St Pauls revolt was happening in the same week as angry steelworkers were occupying ISTC headquarters and marching on BSC offices in South Wales, you can see why the ruling class is feeling so jittery.

Right now the various factions of the bourgeoisie are racking their brains trying to find a way of preventing other areas going up like St Pauls, of keeping these tempestuous forces under control. There are three main currents of bourgeois thought on this.

First, there's the 'law and order' brigade: those who think that answer is simply more police repression. Other more astute members of the ruling class know that if you do this too nakedly, too openly, you'll just provoke further rebellions. That's where the other two schools of thought come in: the recuperators, those who claim to 'sympathise' with the plight of young black proletarians or the working class in general, but whose real function, whether they know it or not, is to make sure that this society continues to function.

On the one hand you have the liberal recuperators. The earnest spokesmen for the state's Commission for Racial Equality, the well-meaning local bureaucrats of the Community Relations Councils, the 'responsible' leaders of the 'black community'.

These people condemn violence and looting of course, but they also condemn bad housing, lack of job prospects, police 'abuses' and all the other social evils which give rise to the violence. They call on the government to pump more money into the local communities in order to create job opportunities and get more youth clubs set up. They try to establish closer relations between the police and the 'community organisations'. And they try to get the most dynamic, rebellious elements of the black youth to become high-minded community leaders through the 'grass roots' community set-ups.

In other words: they want to preserve this society by touching up some of its more odious features with a few cosmetic 'reforms'. They want to channel social revolt into organisations and activities that are tied to the capitalist state.

But the reality of a society that's falling to pieces soon shatters these nice liberal dreams. There's no government money to plough into the worst of the decaying inner city areas. Unemployment keeps going up. Unable to do anything but preach sickly sermons about good community relations, the liberals find themselves being despised by the very people they want to help. And when their precious community organisations are no longer able to keep the 'community' under control, they have no choice but to call the police. Like all liberals, faced with spontaneous violence from below, they always run to the forces of repression, to the law and order brigade, to the real guardians of this system.

So, when the schemes of the liberals fall apart, capitalism's last line of defence moves in: the 'extreme left' (SWP, IMG, etc). The leftist organisations write ecstatic hymns to the Bristol revolt. They present themselves as part of the struggle. But in which direction do they try to steer the struggle? Into a series of traps.

- The trap of black nationalism. By presenting such movements as revolts against 'white society', the leftists hide the fact that the enemy is capital, whatever colour skin the capitalists happen to have. A fact that the leftists 'forget' when they cheer the coming to power of black-skinned capitalist leaders like Mugabe, who's just been telling strikers to get back to work in Zimbabwe.

- The trap of inter-classism. Revolts that take place at the level of the 'community' suffer from the fact that the community is generally divided into different classes and social strata. By simply flattering such revolts and omitting to point out their weaknesses, the leftists obscure the fact that the only perspective for unemployed proletarians is to organise and fight on a class basis, and to link their resistance with the working class struggle at the point of production.

- The trap of anti-fascism. For the leftists, the number one enemy is the National Front and similar racist gangs. That's why they have been trying to use the Bristol events to win support for their anti-fascist campaigns. But the enemy number one for black workers and the unemployed isn't the NF: it's the state and its official agents of repression. As one young black worker in London told the Daily Mirror: “We haven't got time to go fighting the skinheads or the National Front. First we've got to protect ourselves from the police”.

Already the St Pauls community has begun to reject the leftist liars. Three weeks after the eruption in Bristol, the Anti-Nazi League rerouted a 'commemorate Blair Peach' march through the St Pauls district. They tried to involve the defence committee which has sprung up in the area to organise the defence of those arrested, especially after the hundreds of dawn raids that have been taking place since the police re-asserted their presence in the area.

The defence committee, having experienced the leftists' cynical recruiting campaigns, was opposed to the march going through St Pauls. But the march went ahead. During the course of the march, a group of black youths spontaneously put themselves at the front of it. In order to regain control of the march, the ANL lectured the youths through a microphone with their particular brand of capitalist liberalism and anti-fascism.

Once again the leftists demonstrated that presenting the NF as the danger diverts attention from the main enemy and is an attempt to drum up support for the more 'reasonable' and 'democratic' factions of the bourgeoisie. Thus the leftists, for their radical talk, end up canvassing support for the liberals, and the liberals have a direct line to the police.

Against all these forces of recuperation, revolutionaries affirm their total solidarity with the 'rioters' against bourgeois law and order, and with the defence committee's fight against repression in the aftermath of the revolt.

To the defence committee we: continue to resist the efforts of liberals and leftists to take you over, but don't see that as a reason for rejecting politics, for refusing to analyse the Bristol events in political terms. Revolutionary working class politics has nothing to do with the distortions of the liberals and leftists!

To all black workers and unemployed, young and old, we say: your identity isn't 'black' or 'British' or 'African' but working class. To all white workers and unemployed, young and old, your identity isn't 'white' or 'British' but working class. The common struggles of black and white in areas like St Pauls, in industries like Ford and British Leyland, show that our fight is as workers, proletarians, against capitalism and all its defenders.

We are a world class, with nothing to lose against a system with no improvements to offer.

Link the revolt in the neighbourhoods to the revolution of the entire working class!

WR30, May 1980

see also Bristol 1980/2011: repression and revolt [85]

ICC Introduction

We are publishing here a contribution sent to us by the anthropologist Chris Knight on the relationship between marxism and science. Chris was invited to the 19th congress of the ICC, held in May, in order to participate in the debate on this same topic, which we have been developing within the organisation for some time. This debate has been reflected in articles we have published on Freud, Darwin, and indeed on Chris’ own theory of the origins of human culture[1]; at the same time we intend to publish some of the internal discussion texts that have been produced to take this debate forward. We will also be writing in more detail about the work of the congress.

Our aim in this debate, which followed logically from prior discussions about ethics, human nature and primitive communism, is not to arrive at a single, homogeneous view of the relationship between marxism and science, or to make adherence to a particular psychological or anthropological theory the equivalent of a point in our platform. Neither does our interest in engaging in discussion with scientists like Chris Knight, or the linguist Jean-Louis Desalles who spoke at our previous congress, require that we share with them a high level of agreement on the political positions that our organisation exists to defend. Rather we are seeking to continue a tradition in the workers’ movement which consists of being open to all authentic developments of scientific inquiry, particularly when they focus on the origins and evolution of human society. This is essentially what motivated Marx and Engels’ enthusiasm about the theories of Charles Darwin and LH Morgan, Trotsky’s recognition of the importance of Freud’s ideas, and so on. And despite the decadence of capitalism and the profoundly negative impact it has had on the advance and utilisation of science, scientific thought has by no means come to a complete halt in the last century or so. At the congress itself, as well as taking part in the general discussion about marxism and science, Chris also made a succinct but extremely well-argued presentation of the anthropological theories he has elaborated in the book Blood Relations and other works. This presentation and the discussion that ensued from it provided a concrete demonstration that fruitful scientific research and reflection about the origins of humanity and the reality of ‘original communism’ is certainly still going on today.

The text that follows is not directly about anthropology, but about the more general relationship between marxism and science. It offers a way of approaching the relationship between the two which is fundamentally revolutionary, affirming the essential internationalism of real science, the dialectical manner in which it moves forward, and its necessary opposition to all forms of ideology. We invite our readers to make use of the discussion forum on this website to send us their views on Chris Knight’s text, and indeed on his anthropological theories. Chris has said that he would be very willing to take part in any discussions that his contributions may generate on this site.

ICC, June 2011

Marxism and Science

Part I

"Science," according to Trotsky, "is knowledge that endows us with power."[2] In the natural sciences, Trotsky continued, the search has been for power over natural forces and processes. Astronomy made possible the earliest calendars, predictions of eclipses, accurate marine navigation. The development of medical science permitted an increasing freedom from and conquest of disease. The modern advances of physics, chemistry and the other natural sciences have today given humanity an immense power to harness natural forces of all kinds and have utterly transformed the world in which we live.

Potentially at least, the resulting power belongs to all of us – the entire human species. Science is the self-knowledge and power of humanity at this stage of our evolution on this planet – and not merely the political power of one group of human beings over others. To Trotsky, as for Marx before him, it is this intrinsic internationalism of science – the global, species-wide nature of the power it represents – which is its strength, and which distinguishes science from mere local, national, territorial or class-based (i.e. religious, political, etc) forms of consciousness. Ideologies express only the power of certain sections of society; science belongs to the human species as such.

By this yardstick, social science has always been a paradox: on the one hand, supposedly scientific, on the other, funded by the bourgeoisie in the hope of buttressing its political and social control. Even the development of natural science itself – although intrinsically international and of value to humanity – has necessarily taken place within this limited and limiting social context. It has always been torn between two conflicting demands – between human needs on the one hand and those of particular corporations, business interests and ruling elites on the other.

Sectional interests and species interests – science has always oscillated between these conflicting forces. Between the two extremes, the various forms of knowledge have formed a continuum. At one end have been the sciences least directly concerned with social issues – mathematics, astronomy and physics, for example. At the other have been fields such as history, politics and (relatively recently) sociology – fields whose social implications have been immediate and direct. The more direct the social implications of a field, the more direct and inescapable have been the political pressures upon it. And, wherever such pressures have prevailed, knowledge has been distorted and blown off course.

Social conditions of scientific objectivity

Is Marxism ideology? Or is it science? In an intense attack penned at the height of the Cold War, Karl Wittfogel – author of Oriental Despotism – denounced Marx as an ideologist. He conceded that Marx would have indignantly rejected that description of himself, and would have been outraged at the use made of his work by Stalin and his followers. The Soviet authorities, wrote Wittfogel in 1953, always cited Lenin's concept of "partisanship" (partiinost) to justify 'bending' science – even to the point of falsifying data – in order to render it more suitable for political use. This idea of "utility" or "manipulation" seemed to follow naturally, according to Wittfogel, from Marx's initial premise that all knowledge was socially conditioned – produced by social classes only to suit their economic and political needs. To the Soviet authorities, scientific truth was always something to be manipulated for political ends. But Wittfogel continues:

"Marx, however, did not hold this view. He not only emphasised that a member of a given class might espouse ideas that were disadvantageous to his class – this is not denied by Lenin and his followers – but he also demanded that a genuine scholar be oriented toward the interests of mankind as a whole and seek the truth in accordance with the immanent needs of science, no matter how this affected the fate of any particular class, capitalists, landowners or workers. Marx praised Ricardo for taking this attitude, which he called 'not only scientifically honest, but scientifically required'. For the same reason, he condemned as 'mean' a person who subordinated scientific objectivity to extraneous purposes: '... a man who tries to accommodate science to a standpoint which is not derived from its own interests, however erroneous, but from outside, alien and extraneous interests, I call mean (gemein)'.

Marx was entirely consistent when he called the refusal to accommodate science to the interests of any class – the workers included – 'stoic, objective, scientific'. And he was equally consistent when he branded the reverse behaviour a 'sin against science'.

These are strong words. They show Marx determined to maintain the proud tradition which characterised independent scholarship throughout the ages. True, the author of Das Capital did not always – and particularly not in his political writings – live up to his scientific standards. His attitude, nevertheless, remains extremely significant. The camp followers of 'partisan' science can hardly be blamed for disregarding principles of scientific objectivity which they do not profess. But Marx, who accepted these principles without reservation, may be legitimately criticised for violating them."[3]

Karl Marx, writes Wittfogel, played two mutually incompatible roles. He was a great scientist, but he was also a political revolutionary. He championed – as every scientist must do – "the interests of mankind as a whole", but he also championed the interests of the international working class. The self-evident incompatibility (as Wittfogel sees it) of these two activities meant that "Marx's own theories ... are, at decisive points, affected by what he himself called 'extraneous interests'".[4]

Wittfogel is cited by the social anthropologist Marvin Harris, whose views on this issue appear to be quite similar. Harris counterposes Marxism's "scientific" component against its "dialectical and revolutionary" aspect, his aim being to render the former serviceable by decontaminating it of all traces of the latter. According to Harris, "Marx himself took pains to elevate scientific responsibility over class interests." But this was only in his scientific work. Much of Marx's work was political, and here, science was subordinated to political ends – and therefore misused. If science is championed for political reasons, this must lead to the betrayal of science's own objectivity and aims, says Harris: "If the point is to change the world, rather than to interpret it, the Marxist sociologist ought not to hesitate to falsify data in order to make it more useful."[5]

Wittfogel's point that Marx tried to base his science on "the interests of mankind as a whole" is a valuable one. We may also agree with Harris that Marx "took pains to elevate scientific responsibility over class interests" – if by "class interests" we mean sectional, as opposed to universal human, interests. But the difficulty lies precisely here. Like Einstein, and like all great scientists down through the ages, Marx believed that it was his responsibility as a scientist to place before all sectional interests the general interests of humanity. The question he faced is the one which still faces us today: in what concrete form, in the modern world, are these general interests expressed?

Marx came to the conclusion, on the basis of his scientific studies, that the general interests of humanity were not represented by the various ruling classes of 19th century Europe. These interests conflicted not only with one another, but also with those of the human species as such. They could not, therefore, form the social basis for a genuinely objective social science.

The weakness in the position of both Wittfogel and Harris is that they have nothing to say on this issue. They are in the peculiar position of both agreeing with Marx's basic premises and yet refusing even to discuss the possibility that his conclusions might have been correct. They fully agree that science must base itself upon general human interests. Marx, basing himself on this idea, reached the conclusions (a) that science was itself politically revolutionary to the extent that it was genuinely true to itself and universal; (b) that it was this kind of 'politics' (i.e. the politics of science itself) that the modern revolutionary movement required; and (c) that the only possible social basis for such a science-inspired politics was the one class in society which was itself a product of science, which was already as intrinsically international as scientific development and whose interests countered all existing sectional interests. But neither Wittfogel nor Harris mount any argument on all this. They simply take it as self-evident that the interests of humankind are one thing, whereas working class interests are another.

Karl Marx knew – and every Marxist worthy of the name knows – that it is not worth committing oneself to a social force unless it genuinely does represent by its own very existence the wider interests of humanity. And every Marxist worthy of the name knows that it is only real science – the real discoveries of scientists working independently and for science's own autonomous ends – which can be utilised by humanity as a means to self-enlightenment and emancipation. From this standpoint we can see the absurdity of Harris's argument that if the point is to change the world the Marxist sociologist "ought not to hesitate to falsify data in order to make it more useful". How can 'falsified data' conceivably be of value to humankind? How can it be useful to anyone interested in changing the world?

Harris is right to insist that when a sectional political interest – be it 'Marxist' or not – takes hold of scientific work, science itself will suffer. A particular nationaland therefore limitedpolitical party or a particulargroup ruling a particular state (as, for example, the Soviet bureaucracy and 'communist' apparatus during the cold war) may well feel itself to have particular interests of its own, which it sets above the wider interests it claims to represent. In that case, to the extent that scientists are involved, science will certainly be distorted. But a distortion of science (i.e. its partial transformation into ideology) can only involve a limitation of its long-term ultimate appeal and human usefulness. Wherever such things happen, therefore, the particular group concerned reduces rather than enhances its power to "change the world".

All distortions, falsifications or mystifications express the power only of sectional social interests in opposition to wider ones. Marx at no time advocated tailoring science to suit the felt needs of this, that or the other sectional interest – whether working class or not: "It is not a matter of knowing what this or that proletarian, or even the proletariat as a whole, conceives as its aims at any particular moment. It is a question of knowing what the proletariat is, and what it must historically accomplish in accordance with its nature".[6]

For Marx, to know "what the proletariat is" constituted a scientific question, which could only be given a scientific answer in complete independence of any immediate political pressures or concerns. Far from arguing for the subordination of science to politics, Marx insisted on the subordination of politics to science.

Autonomy and class interest

Engels wrote: ".... the more ruthlessly and disinterestedly science proceeds, the more it finds itself in harmony with the interests of the workers."[7] We can be confident that this accurately expressed Marx's own views. Science, as humanity's only universal, international, species-unifying form of knowledge, had to come first. If it had to be rooted in the interests of the working class, this was only in the sense that all science has to be rooted in the interests of the human species as a whole, the international working class embodying these interests in the modern epoch just as the requirements of production have always embodied these interests in previous periods.

There was no question here of any subordination to sectional needs. In being placed first, science was destined to cut across sectional divisions and become the medium of expression for a new form of political consciousness. In this sense, science was even destined to create'the international working class' itself. Without science, there can only be sectional working class political movements; only through scientific analysis can the generalinterests of the class be laid bare.

Admittedly, science – as itself a social product - cannot (in Marx's view) add anything to the strength of the working class which is not already there. It cannot impose itself upon the workers' movement as if from outside.[8] It is in and through science alone that workers internationally can become aware of the global, species-wide strength which is already theirs. And it is only in becoming aware of its own power that the 'international working class' can politically exist.[9] There is no question, therefore, of science being subordinated to a pre-existing political force. The political force is science's own and cannot exist without it. The previously prevailing relationships between science and politics are reversed.

For Marx, social science – including his own - is as much a product of class relationships as any other form of social consciousness. His general formulation is well-known:

"The ideas of the ruling class are, in every age, the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the dominant material force in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual force. The class which has the means of material action at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that in consequence the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are, in general, subject to it. The dominant ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant relationships grasped as ideas, and thus of the relationships which make one class the ruling one; they are consequently the ideas of its dominance."[10]

For this reason, Marx did not consider it possible to change the prevailing ideas of society – or to produce a universally agreed science of society – without breaking the material power of those forces which distorted science. It was because Marx saw social contradictions as the source of mythological and ideological contradictions that he was able to insist that only the removal of the social contradictions themselves could remove their expressions in ideology and science.

This is what Marx meant when he wrote: "All social life is essentially practical. All the mysteries which lead theory towards mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice".[11] Or again: "The resolution of theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of man. Their resolution is by no means, therefore, the task only of the understanding, but is a real task of life, a task which philosophy was unable to accomplish precisely because it saw there a purely theoretical problem."[12]

So from the standpoint of Marx and Engels it was in order to remain true to the interests of science – to solve its internal theoretical contradictions – that they felt obliged, as scientists, (a) to identify with a material social force which could remove the "extraneous interests" distorting the objectivity of science and (b) to take up the leadership of this material force themselves. Their idea was not that science is inadequate, and that politics must be added to it.[13] Their idea was that science – when true to itself – is intrinsically revolutionary, and that it must recognise no political project but its own.

Marx and Engels believed science could acquire this unprecedented political autonomy for a social reason: there had come into existence within society for the first time – and as a direct result of scientific development itself – a 'class' which was not really a class at all, which had no traditional status or vested interests to protect, no power to dispense patronage, no power to divide man from man and therefore no power to distort science in any way. "Here," wrote Engels of the working class, "there is no concern for careers, for profit-making or for gracious patronage from above."[14] Only here could science be true to itself, for only here was a social force of a truly universal kind, capable of uniting the species as a whole.

This was the condition for a truly independent, truly autonomous, truly universal science of humankind – the existence of "a class in civil society which is not a class of civil society, a class which is the dissolution of all classes, a sphere of society which has a universal character because its sufferings are universal, and which does not claim a particular redress because the wrong which is done to it is not a political wrong, but wrong in general". "There must be formed", Marx continued, "a sphere of society which claims no traditional status but only a human status, a sphere which is not opposed to particular consequences but is totally opposed to the assumptions of the .... political system, a sphere finally which cannot emancipate itself without emancipating itself from all other spheres of society, without therefore emancipating all these other spheres, which is, in short, a total loss of humanity and which can only redeem itself by a total redemption of humanity."[15]

Validation of Marxism

Much of the preceding argument may itself seem tendentious. Almost any political or social philosopher will claim, after all, that their theory expresses general human interests rather than narrow sectional ones. To use 'fidelity to the interests of humanity' as a yardstick by which to measure the scientific value of a conceptual system is therefore not possible – unless some objective test for this can be found. But what kind of test could this possibly be? In the final analysis, no doubt, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. What happens when we try out a new hypothesis? Does it prove to be empowering? Does it lessen mental effort in solving intellectual problems? In other words, does the hypothesis add to the power – be it purely intellectual or practical as well – of scientists in the relevant field?

If it does, then everyone should ultimately come to recognise the fact. Assuming intellectual efficiency to be our criterion (and we will not be scientists otherwise), support for the theory will spread. Internal coherence (agreement between the theory's parts) will find expression in widespread social agreement. Such a capacity to produce agreement is the ultimate social test of science.[16]

In the long term, for Marxism or for social science, a similar test must be undergone. Science differs from mere ad hoc knowledge, technique or common sense by virtue of its abstract, symbolic, formal characteristics. Science is a symbolic system. Like any such system, its meaning depends on agreement.The figure '2' means 'two' only because we all say it does. It could equally well mean 'nine'. All symbolic systems – including myths and ideologies – depend in this sense upon social agreement. But, in the case of myths and ideologies, the scope of agreement extends only so far. A point is reached at which disagreement arises – a disagreement rooted in social contradictions. And, when this happens, the need to reconcile incompatiblemeanings leads to contradictions of an internal kind – within the symbolic system itself.

Mythology and ideology are expressions of social division. This is the essential feature which distinguishes these forms of knowledge from science. Science expresses the power and the unity of the human species – a power which, in class-divided societies, human beings have increasingly possessed in relation to nature even though not in relation to their own social world. A science of society, in order to prove itself as science, would have to prove that it was without internal contradictions, and that it was consistent with natural science and with science as a whole. In the long term, it could only prove this practically. It would have to demonstrate its internal consistency by demonstrating its roots in social agreement of a kind uniting the human race. It would have to demonstrate in practice, in other words, that it formed part of a symbolic system – a global 'language' woven out of the concepts of science – which was capable in practice of embracing and ultimately politically unifying the globe.[17]

Yet this is not the only test. In the case of every scientific advance, the first test is theoretical. Copernicus knew that the earth moved. And he knew it long before this fact had been proven to the satisfaction of others and universally agreed. Einstein knew that light was subject to gravitational laws. And he knew this long before it was demonstrated in 1919 during an eclipse watched from observatories in Cambridge and Greenwich (when it was shown that lightrays from a star were deflected by the gravitational pull of the sun). In scientific discovery it has always been the same. A scientific revolution is validated on the level of pure theory long before passing the final test of practice.

The only ultimate validation of Marxism as science would be the demonstration of its power to produce agreement on a global scale – its power to unify humanity. But if Marxism is genuine science, it ought to be possible to demonstrate this potential in purely theoretical terms in advance. The question arises: how? I shall examine this problem in the second part of this article.

Part II

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

In Part I, I showed how Marx and Engels viewed science. They saw it as humanity's only genuinely internationalist form of knowledge. The idea of subordinating science to a political party – even to a party calling itself 'communist' – would have been anathema to them. It is not that science must be subordinated to the Communist Party. On the contrary, the Communist Party must be subordinated to science. It would not be a Communist Party otherwise.

Thomas Kuhn

One of the most important achievements of 20th century historical scholarship was Thomas Kuhn's book, The structure of scientific revolutions.[18] It would be difficult to overstate Kuhn’s influence on the sociology and philosophy of science.

Predictably, postmodernist cynics have used Kuhn to justify their claim that there is no such thing as science – that everything boils down to politics and power. In fact, Kuhn's work leads us to the opposite conclusion: real science is possible only where scientists are in a position to resist external political pressure. The struggle for such autonomy, if this logic is pursued, turns out to involve simultaneously the struggle for human liberation from inequality and class rule.

 In his great book, Kuhn's focus is not the relationship between scientific development and social or political events. His work concerns the internal structure of science. Nor does Kuhn accept any absolute distinction between science, on the one hand, and myth or ideology, on the other. For him, this distinction is always a relative one – a matter of the degree to which one conceptual system can produce agreement and prove fruitful in comparison with alternatives.

His main point is that a form of knowledge only acquires the status of 'science' by demonstrating that it can produce very fundamental levels of agreement between thinkers which are beyond the scope of rival systems of knowledge. Schools of thought which prove to be incapable of producing enduring levels of agreement – in scientific communities which cut across local or national barriers – tend not to be accorded the status of science. It is for this reason that 'social science' is so suspect. It seems to be incapable of producing any real agreement at all.

Setting the paradigm

In explaining how he came to work on the subject matter of his book, Kuhn writes: "... I was struck by the number and extent of the overt disagreements between social scientists about the nature of legitimate scientific problems and methods. Both history and acquaintance made me doubt that practitioners of the natural sciences possess firmer or more permanent answers to such questions than their colleagues in social science. Yet, somehow, the practice of astronomy, physics, chemistry or biology normally fails to evoke the controversies over fundamentals that today often seem endemic among, say, psychologists or sociologists."[19]

Kuhn's point is that in the social sciences thinkers not only cannot reach agreement with each other on fundamental issues – they cannot even find a common language of rules or concepts through which to communicate with each other in a rational way. There is a point at which rational debate breaks down and the opposing schools seem to each other to be breaking the rules and resorting to illegitimate techniques of persuasion, including even material inducements or force. In fact, it is not just that the rules are broken – it turns out that there are no rules. Each camp only obeys its own rules. This is in stark contrast to the normal situation among, say, nuclear physicists, who, even when they do disagree with each other on fundamental issues, nevertheless possess a shared language – a set of agreed rules of procedure, concepts, traditions and ideas through which fruitful communication can be achieved.

But Kuhn's most significant point is that the natural sciences themselves were once in a position similar in essentials to that of the social sciences today. They, too, in their early stages of development, were incapable of producing any enduring agreement or language on the basis of which a unified scientific community could form. And they, too – like the social sciences today – were divided by disagreements over fundamentals; disagreements which often seemed to be of a political or even violent kind.

On June 21 1633, Galileo de Galilei was interrogated by the pope and by a tribunal made up of cardinals and high officials of the Catholic church who threatened him with torture unless he withdrew his allegation that the earth circled the sun. In those times, the conflict between the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems of astronomy was a political one and anyone supporting Copernicus risked persecution, imprisonment or even death by being burned at the stake. If this example seems historically remote, we should remember that Charles Darwin was considered to be putting forward a theologically dangerous and politically subversive theory when he argued that humanity was descended from a kind of ape.

In the case of both Galileo and Darwin, it was only the political and ideological defeat of the church on the issues concerned – defeats which formed part of a wider process of social and political change – which eventually lifted science from the realm of political controversy. But, conversely, it is only once its initial political coloration has faded away that science produces sufficient general agreement for it to be recognised simply as science. Borrowing from Marx, we might say that science has to "conquer politically" before it can "shed its political cloak".

Achievements such as those of Copernicus and Darwin are termed by Kuhn "paradigms". Paradigms are "universally recognised scientific achievements that for a time provide model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners".[20] Such achievements are products of scientific revolutions. A revolution of this kind is not simply an addition to pre-existing knowledge. It is, within any given field, "a reconstruction of the field from new fundamentals ..."[21] It is a complete demolition of an old theoretical and conceptual structure and its replacement by a new one based on entirely different interests, aims and premises.

During the course of a scientific revolution, nothing is agreed, there are no common rules of procedure, everything seems to be ideological and political, and other issues are decided by 'unconstitutional' means. The old paradigm is not defeated on the basis of its own rules, but is attacked from outside. It cannot be defeated on the basis of its own rules, for these rules are not only inadequate to solve the new problems which have begun to arise – they actually preclude any discussion of these problems at all.

For Kuhn, the parallelism with political and social revolutions was profound. He explains: "Political revolutions aim to change political institutions in ways that those institutions themselves prohibit. Their success therefore necessitates the partial relinquishment of one set of institutions in favour of another, and in the interim, society is not fully governed by institutions at all. Initially it is crisis alone that attenuates the role of political institutions ... In increasing numbers individuals become increasingly estranged from political life and behave more and more eccentrically within it.

Then, as the crisis deepens, many of those individuals commit themselves to some concrete proposal for the reconstruction of society in a new institutional framework. At that point the society is divided into competing camps or parties: one seeking to defend the old institutional constellation; the others seeking to institute some new one. And, once that polarisation has occurred, political recourse fails. Because they differ about the institutional matrix within which political change is to be achieved and evaluated, because they acknowledge no supra-institutional framework for the adjudication of revolutionary differences, the parties to a revolutionary conflict must finally resort to the techniques of mass persuasion, often including force. Though revolutions have had a vital role in the evolution of political institutions, that role depends upon their being partially extra-political or extra-institutional events."[22]

It is just the same, writes Kuhn, when, in the course of a scientific revolution, scientists polarise into opposite camps. The opposing camps cannot communicate. They talk 'past' each other, questioning each other's most elementary premises and refusing to submit to each other's logical or procedural rules. In periods of 'normal science' – ie, in periods of consolidation which follow scientific revolutions, and during which all scientists in the field concerned accept the paradigm of the victorious party – everything can seem 'rational'. Because a community exists which bases itself on a set of shared assumptions and traditions, scientists can appeal to certain written or unwritten agreements as to what constitutes 'correct' or 'rational' procedure and what does not. Disputes internal to a single paradigm can be settled in an orderly way, on the basis of the rules laid down by that paradigm itself. This is what 'normal science' is all about.

But when an entire paradigm is being challenged from outside, there is no purely logical way to proceed. The supporters of the new paradigm may feel that their own framework is far more powerful, far simpler, more elegant and more logical than the old one of their opponents. But they cannot convince their adversaries on the basis of those opponents' own rules. If the old guard are to be won over, they must make a leap in abandoning their former conceptions as to what constituted 'proper' procedure:

"Like the choice between competing political institutions, that between competing paradigms proves to be a choice between incompatible modes of community life. Because it has that character, the choice is not and cannot be determined merely by the evaluative procedures characteristic of normal science, for these depend in part upon a particular paradigm, and that paradigm is at issue. When paradigms enter, as they must, into a debate about paradigm choice, their role is necessarily circular. Each group uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm's defence.

"The resulting circularity does not, of course, make the arguments wrong or even ineffectual. The man who premises a paradigm when arguing in its defence can nonetheless provide a clear exhibit of what scientific practice will be like for those who adopt the new view of nature. That exhibit can be immensely persuasive, often compellingly so. Yet, whatever its force, the status of the circular argument is only that of persuasion. It cannot be made logically or even probabilistically compelling for those who refuse to step into the circle. The premises and values shared by the two parties to a debate over paradigms are not sufficiently extensive for that. As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice – there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community."[23]

Normal science and anomaly

It is not until a paradigm has been generally accepted that 'scientific research' in the normal sense can get underway. As Kuhn puts it, "Effective research scarcely begins before a scientific community thinks it has acquired firm answers to questions like the following: What are the fundamental entities of which the universe is composed? How do these interact with each other and with the senses? What questions may legitimately be asked about such entities and what techniques employed in seeking solutions?"[24]

Once – following a scientific revolution – a paradigm has become accepted, a period of conservatism sets in. This is a period of "mopping-up operations"– a period in which, over and over again, the validity of the new paradigm is 'proven'. Kuhn writes:

"Mopping-up operations are what engage most scientists throughout their careers. They constitute what I am here calling normal science. Closely examined, whether historically or in the contemporary laboratory, that enterprise seems an attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies. No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new phenomena; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all. Nor do scientists normally aim to invent new theories, and they are often intolerant of those invented by others."[25]

The paradigm validates itself again and again, in ever greater detail, by in effect forbidding scientists to investigate any problems other than those for which the paradigm offers a solution. Only problems whose solutions, like those of a crossword puzzle, are already "built in by their method of formulation are allowed". Other problems, as Kuhn writes, "including many that had previously been standard, are rejected as metaphysical, as the concern of another discipline, or sometimes as just too problematic to be worth the time."[26]

After about 1630, for example, and particularly after the appearance of Descartes' scientific writings, most physical scientists assumed that the universe was composed of microscopic corpuscles and that all natural phenomena could be explained in terms of corpuscular shape, size, motion and interaction. Hence the solar system was believed to function mechanically, like a clock. The same applied to all other systems, including living ones, such as animals. This paradigm was extremely powerful and led to immense advances of scientific knowledge, but it was also extremely narrow and limiting.

Anyone in Descartes' time who had drawn attention to, say, such phenomena as are nowadays associated with radioactivity simply could not have communicated in a coherent way. In that time, all the problems which today form the subject matter of nuclear physics would have seemed irrelevant, illegitimate, metaphysical and unscientific even to discuss. And, of course, none of these problems wasdiscussed or even seen as a problem at all. Among scientists, it was 'known' what the universe was composed of. It was composed not of curved space-time nor electromagnetic fields, but very small, hard objects colliding in accordance with mechanical laws.

However, it is not for us simply to condemn the rigid, conservative paradigms which scientific revolutions eventually produce. Kuhn presents instead a subtle, dialectical argument, showing that it is precisely through such conservatism that new scientific revolutions themselves are prepared. Only a rigid, conservative, but extremely detailed and precise theoretical structure can be disturbed by some small finding which seems 'wrong'. It is only a community of scientists who confidently expect to find everything 'normal' who will genuinely know what an 'abnormality' or 'novelty' is – and who will be thrown into a crisis by it. A more easygoing, open-minded community which never expected precise regularities in the first place would not let themselves be bothered by such things. The precious anomaly in that case would be missed and science would not be in a position to learn from it or advance.

Just as state rigidity can build up pressure for social revolution, so normal science in its predictability and rigidity tends to stoke up pressure for scientific revolution. Every historian knows that a social revolution is often sparked by some apparently trivial incident in the workplace or street. In much the same way, some officially forbidden yet persistent laboratory result can trigger an explosion demolishing an entire scientific paradigm.

As Kuhn explains, "Without the special apparatus that is constructed mainly for anticipated functions, the results that lead ultimately to novelty could not occur. And even when the apparatus exists, novelty ordinarily emerges only for the man who, knowing with precision what he should expect, is able to recognise that something has gone wrong. Anomaly appears only against the background provided by the paradigm. The more precise and far-reaching that paradigm is, the more sensitive an indicator it provides of anomaly and hence of an occasion for paradigm change.

In the normal mode of discovery, even resistance to change has a use ... By ensuring that the paradigm will not be too easily surrendered, resistance guarantees that scientists will not be lightly distracted and that the anomalies that lead to paradigm change will penetrate existing knowledge to the core."[27]

All scientific revolutions are precipitated by anomalies. A planet is in the wrong part of the sky. A photographic plate is clouded when it should not be. A fundamental law of nature is suddenly found to be wrong. A piece of laboratory equipment designed and constructed merely to add precision to a familiar finding behaves in a wholly unexpected way. To normal science, such anomalies are merely an irritation or a nuisance. In attempts to defend the old paradigm, efforts are made to suppress, obliterate or ignore the bothersome findings or events. New observations are made, new experiments are set up – with the sole intention of eliminating the anomaly concerned.

But it is precisely these attempts to defend the old paradigm which now begin to shake it to its foundations. Had the old, rigid paradigm not had its ardent defenders, the anomaly concerned would probably not even have been noticed. Now, however, an entire community of scientists begins to feel challenged by it, and more and more attention is focused upon it. Attempts are made to explain it away. But, the more such attempts are made, the more inconsistent and inadequate the old paradigm appears, the more strange the anomaly seems, and the more dissatisfied a section of the old scientific community becomes.

It is the internal inconsistencies now apparently permeating the old theoretical structure which convince some scientists – at first only a small number – that something is fundamentally wrong. Writing of astronomical observations, Copernicus complained that in his day astronomers were so "inconsistent in these investigations ... that they cannot even explain or observe the constant length of the seasonal year". He continued: ""it is as though an artist were to gather the hands, feet, head and other members for his images from diverse models, each part excellently drawn, but not related to a single body, and, since they in no way match each other, the result would be a monster rather than man."[28]

In the period immediately preceding every scientific revolution, similar complaints are made. There is no neat, logical proof that the old paradigm is wrong. Rather there arises a general sense of dissatisfaction, a feeling – on the part of some – that absolutely everything is wrong, and a gradual splintering of the scientific community into schools and factions between whom communication is difficult or even impossible. Few things – not even the most elementary principles – seem to be agreed upon any more. Everything is questioned, anything is allowed.

"The proliferation of competing articulations," writes Kuhn, "the willingness to try anything, the expression of explicit discontent, the recourse to philosophy and to debate over fundamentals – all these are symptoms of a transition from normal to extraordinary research."[29] All these are signs that the old theoretical edifice is crumbling and that a new one is about to take its place.

'Madness' of the new

But how does the new paradigm arise? Kuhn argues that it cannot arise logically out of the premises of the old one, because logic is a matter of symbolism – of the meaning of figures, equations and terms – whereas what is required is a complete restructuring of the semantic field itself. In fact, at first, logically it is unquestionably the old paradigm's defenders who are right:

"The laymen who scoffed at Einstein's general theory of relativity because space could not be 'curved' – it was not that sort of thing – were not simply wrong or mistaken. Nor were the mathematicians, physicists and philosophers who tried to develop a Euclidean version of Einstein's theory. What had previously been meant by space was necessarily flat, homogenous, isotropic and unaffected by the presence of matter. If it had not been, Newtonian physics would not have worked. To make the transition to Einstein's universe, the whole conceptual web whose strands are space, time, matter, force and motion had to be shifted and laid down again on nature whole. Only men who had together undergone or failed to undergo that transformation would be able to discover precisely what they agreed or disagreed about.

Communication across the revolutionary divide is inevitably partial. Consider, for another example, the men who called Copernicus mad because he proclaimed that the earth moved. They were not either just wrong or quite wrong. Part of what they meant by 'earth' was fixed position. Their earth, at least, could not be moved. Correspondingly, Copernicus's innovation was not simply to move the earth. Rather it was a whole new way of regarding the problems of physics and astronomy, one that necessarily changed the meaning of both 'earth' and 'motion'. Without those changes the concept of a moving earth was mad."[30]

So it is only in a sort of 'madness' – by the old standards – that a new paradigm can be conceived. It is not logically constructed, step by step. It is unusual for the new structure of thought to be consciously anticipated or viewed in advance:

"Instead, the new paradigm, or a sufficient hint to permit later articulation, emerges all at once, sometimes in the middle of the night, in the mind of a man deeply immersed in crisis. What the nature of that final stage is – how an individual invents (or finds he has invented) a new way of giving order to data now all assembled – must here remain inscrutable and may be permanently so.

Let us here note only one thing about it. Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change. And perhaps that point need not have been made explicit, for obviously these are the men who, being little committed by prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, are particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game and to conceive another set that can replace them."[31]

In other words, even on the level of individuals and personalities, according to Kuhn, the attack on the old paradigm is an external one. Certain individuals or groups from outside the field manage to penetrate it and set about undermining and demolishing the structure around them, using the experience and the materials gained in doing so to build a more stable structure on new foundations in its place. The development is not a gradual or evolutionary one; the 'revolutionaries' possess, right from the beginning, a firm conviction of the necessity of what they are doing and a firm plan – however intuitive or embryonic – of the essentials of the structure they are about to build.

And they themselves have been converted not gradually, "but by a relatively sudden and unstructured event like the gestalt switch. Scientists then often speak of 'scales falling from the eyes' or of the 'lightning flash' that 'inundates' a previously obscure puzzle, enabling its components to be seen in a new way that for the first time permits its solution".[32]

The same applies to the gradual conquest, by the revolutionaries, of the scientific field. Before the scientists can talk to each other again, every scientist in the old camp who is capable of it must undergo the same 'sudden' conversion as that experienced by the revolutionaries themselves:

"... before they can hope to communicate fully, one group or the other must experience the conversion that we have been calling a paradigm shift. Just because it is a transition between incommensurables, the transition cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and neutral experience. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all."[33]

In this, as in all other respects, scientific development is dialectical and revolutionary to the core.

Conclusion

Kuhn correctly sees all human knowledge as socially constructed. To work within a branch of science, he points out, is to help reproduce and define the identity of a particular community – the community of specialists concerned.

In addition to the obvious practical tests of a scientific theory, there is also an internal test. It is this: how much consensus can the theory generate? A theory which can get only this or that sectional interest to mobilise behind it is not likely to be as influential in the long run as one which can cut across sectional interests, building a community of truly universal scope.

Marx and Engels were interested in assembling the big picture – uniting the natural and social sciences to form a single science. Theirs was a revolutionary new scientific paradigm which failed only in the sense that its natural constituency – the working class – was materially defeated on each occasion when it attempted to bring freedom and reason to the world.

Today, rampant and unrestrained capitalism threatens not only freedom and reason, but the very existence of a habitable planet. Meanwhile scientists aware of the dangers of climate change are struggling against heavy odds to defend their intellectual autonomy, threatened as they are by corporate interests bent on concealing and distorting the facts.

In a world currently dominated by grotesquely wealthy state terrorists politically in league with religious fundamentalists, humanity needs autonomous, free-thinking, self-organised science as never before. Our survival as a species depends on it. Across the world, scientists – and that must include all marxists – need to get politically active precisely in order to defend the autonomy of science. For the scientific community to link up and overcome its internal divisions, it must realise where the true source of disunity lies.

In climate research, for example, it is only scientists in the pay of Exxon-Mobil or other such oil corporations (building on techniques developed previously by the tobacco companies) who make it appear that there are 'two sides' on the issues which matter. There are not two sides. Instead, there is science on the one hand; corruption and irrationality on the other. Following the example of the vast majority of climate scientists, scholars in other areas of research may begin to question their political allegiances, learning to speak out against the very corporate interests which stifle inconvenient truths, yet which unfortunately provide the bulk of funding for scientific research.

In order to find the necessary moral courage and social support, the scientific community will have no choice but to identify with the only truly internationalist, truly incorruptible, truly revolutionary political alternative to market insanity and corporate power. Science will have no choice but to align itself with our class. A Communist Party which did not represent this intellectual and social force would not be worthy of the name.

The social movement that has swept Spain since mid-May is of historical significance. The poor and the working class, especially its youth, are now reacting to the massive onslaught brought on by the economic crisis. But even more than the immense anger being manifested, it's the organisation of the struggle in general assemblies and the reflection that drives the debates that demonstrate a real advance for the struggles of our class. That is why the bourgeoisie, with an iron fist, have ochestrated an incredible media blackout on an international scale. Information about what is really happening on the streets of Madrid, Barcelona, Terrassa isn't filtering out. This collection of articles therefore intends to contribute to breaking this silence. We will try to update it as often as possible with translations of articles, videos and eye-witness reports.

We are publishing this article even though it was written before the fall of Gbagbo and the victory of the forces led by Outtara. But its denunciation of the brutality of this conflict and the cynicism of the imperialist powers lurking behind it remains as valid as ever.

The murders with small arms fire which began the day after the proclamation of the Presidential election results of November 28, 2010, has given way to large-scale massacres right out in the open. According to diverse sources (such as the spokesman of Outtara on French TV), there’s already a thousand deaths, tens of thousands of injured and hundreds of thousands of refugees, 300,000 of whom fled the town of Abidjan. Fighting is unfolding in most areas of this town, notably Ababo. The population is caught in the cross-fire of both camps of assassins who don’t hesitate to march over the bodies of their victims, women and children mostly. These are not just targeted assassinations and sudden assaults by death squads, there are also tanks, helicopters and other heavy weaponry stepping into this danse macabre. Now the war is moving from Abidjan to the political capital Yamoussoukro and is spreading to the Liberian frontier where these bloodthirsty gangs are settling their accounts. Elsewhere, those that escape death inevitably come up against the misery of a state of war with its lot of scarcity, mass unemployment and permanent insecurity.

“Here, a woman, ‘housewife, a mamma’ as the people affectionately and tenderly refer to the mothers of families, had her head taken off by a soldier shooting in Abobo, the insurgent quarter of Abidjan. About six or seven other women were mown down with bursts of gun fire from an armoured vehicle of the defence forces (FDS) loyal to Laurent Gbagbo which came, according to the crowd, from a neighbouring camp of the Republican Guard, supported by men of the Anti-riot Brigade (BAE). Diabolical columns are crossing now hostile zones, followed by ambulances and hearses in order to get rid of the corpses (...) Thursday March 3, the march of women who thought that they could demonstrate peacefully in the style of Egypt or Tunisia with placards saying ‘Gbagbo go!’, turned out not to be the beginning of a ‘revolution’ called for by Guillaume Soro, ex-chief of the rebellion and now first minister of Alassane Ouattara, the President recognised by the international community. The FDs fired on the women with heavy machine-guns whose bullets were capable of tearing off heads, arms and legs. Seven deaths” (Le Monde, March 10 2011).

And the carnage is reproduced on March 8 (during another march on the occasion of “International Woman’s Day”) at the end of which we saw the extreme barbarity in which the forces loyal to the criminal Gbagbo excel. But we also shouldn’t ignore the responsibility of the no less criminal camp of Ouattara which has knowingly sent these women to their death without any protection. It’s this same Soro, the right-hand man of Ouattara, who has profited from the circumstances of revolts in the Arab world in order to push these women into an abattoir under the pretext of unleashing a “revolution” against the power of Gbagbo. This really monstrous procedure consists of manipulating civilians and women with the single aim of satisfying the criminal ambitions of the politicians . But these two camps of vultures don’t stop there; they enrol the population in absolute horror:

“The unthinkable is happening: each in their own camp, an ill-wind for the neutrals. There are more and more armed civilians; more and more situations where innocents are killed, burnt alive, wounded, martyred, in the two camps. The Ivory Coast is falling apart and the meeting organised by the African Union for Tuesday in Addis-Ababa to communicate a solution ‘constraining’ the two rivals for the presidency of November 2010, doesn’t give rise to great hopes... At the same time, the scale of the violence diversifies. Three mosques have been burnt in the last few days. Groups of militias have also sacked the homes of the leaders of the RHDP of Alassane Ouattara, who is holed up in the Hotel du Golf, discretely tucked away in the country. Eighteen houses have been ransacked based on the growing fears of seeing a new wave of exactions hitting those that their neighbours suspect of being pro-Outattara. On the other hand, the inhabitants of Anokoua, an area of Abobo peopled by the ethnic Ebrie, supposedly belonging to the Gbagbo camp, have been attacked the night before. Three deaths, including a woman burnt in her house and numerous injuries. Arms have been distributed to the Ebrie. If the spiral of violence is not stopped it will affect everyone (Le Monde, Ibid).

This is the hell in which the populations live their daily lives, unfortunately without hope of escaping; given the protection given to the killers, the most likely outcome is for the entire country to end up in a conflagration.

Facades of sanctions, but real imperialist confrontations

In order to support Alassane Ouattara designated the winner (by them) of the second round of presidential elections November last, the United States and the European Union announced a series of economic and diplomatic “sanctions” against the Gbagbo clan to force him to cede power to his rival. But three months later, Laurent Gbagbo is still there and openly mocks the “sanctions” because he knows that they have been implemented with a double language and there is unity on nothing. On the contrary, behind the scenes there is a battle to defend the respective interests of those countries involved.

Faced with the attempted “blockade” of Ivorian cocoa, Gbagbo decided on a reorganisation of the commercialisation of the raw material, including calling into question “any powers of western groups” and was looking for new outlets. His entourage boasted: “Gbagbo has paid the wages for February; he will pay them for March and April (...) The grip of international reprobation towards his regime persists, but Laurent Gbagbo is not giving up. He hopes to profits from the disagreements appearing within the international community and thinks that time is on his side. Pharmacies are beginning to run out of medicines because of an unannounced maritime embargo. But European businessmen continue to knock on his door, even if Gbagbo only receives them when the indiscreet cameras are out of the way” (Jeune Afrique, 6/12 March 2011).

The case of France is particularly edifying. In fact, on one side, Monsieur Sarkozy publicly announced a series of measures to so-called sanction the government of Gbagbo, including the threat of an economic boycott, whereas, on the other, he is taking care not to incite the big French companies present (Bouygues, Bollore, Total, etc.) to leave the country. On the contrary, all these groups continue to “do business” with the Gbagbo regime, mitigating and skirting around the so-called “economic sanctions”. Yet again, we see the odiously hypocritical character of the “African policy” of the French in the Ivory Coast. In reality, French imperialism is above all concerned for its capital and cares nothing for the fate of the population, the first victims of this butchery; moreover, the guard dogs of its military operation “Licorne” will be released if French interests are threatened. Clearly, in this business of “sanctions”, no gangster can leave an advantage to the profit of its rivals.

The UN and the AU let the assassins loose

At each big explosion of violence in the Ivory Coast since the beginning of the bloody electoral process at the end of 2010, the Security Council of the UN has been quick to meet up to take “resolutions”, but never in the sense of stopping the massacres. On the contrary, each one of its members more or less openly supports one or the other of the armed camps on the ground. That clearly shows the sordid behaviour of these gentlemen of the Security Council; so cynical that their 11,000 soldiers on the ground do nothing other than “record” the numbers of victims; and, worse still, they cover up the fact that armed groups, even surrounded by Blue Helmets, bombard and fire on the population with impunity.

Thus, not only do the UN authorities remain scandalously indifferent to the suffering of the victims of war, but they have also put in place a black-out on the killings.

Once again, the French president, addressing the entire world, launched an ultimatum to Gbagbo giving him the “order” to leave power before the end of 2010. Since then? Nothing... He has observed a scrupulous, total silence on the horrors unfolding in front of his interests and the “soldiers of peace” on the ground.

As to the African Union, it adopts an attitude that’s just as wretched as the UN. In fact, taken by the throat by the respective partisans of the butchers involved in the dispute for Ivorian power, it leaves it to its members to support and arm one bloody clique or the other (like South Africa and Angola for Gbagbo, Burkina Faso and others for Ouattara). In order to mask this reality, it is making out there is a “reconciliation” of the belligerents by creating commission after commission, the latest of which (meeting in Addis-Ababa March 10 2011) found nothing better to do than nominate yet another “high representative responsible for enacting forceful solutions linking up with a close committee of the representatives of the Economic Community of the States of Western Africa and the United Nations”.

Behind this diplomatic jargon, lies the cynicism of all these imperialist gangsters! All these “reconciliators” are none other than the real executioners of the Ivorian population.

Amina (March 17 2011)

We are publishing here a brief article from a sympathiser of the ICC regarding the explosion at the Chevron oil refinery.

On the evening of June 2nd an explosion at the Chevron oil refinery at Pembroke dock in West Wales killed 4 workers and another is in hospital with serious injuries. The time it took to indentify the bodies suggests that the unfortunate workers were blown to bits. The following night the BBC reported a “huge” blaze at the Eco-oil storage plant near Kingsnorth power station in Kent. The times of both incidents suggests that the majority of workers, 1400 at Chevron, wouldn’t have been on site. A police spokesman initially called the Pembroke explosion “a tragic industrial accident” which was then changed to a “tragic industrial incident”, and a further statement said that it was “thought not to pose any threat” (from contamination). Incident or accident, one thing for sure is that in Britain, just as elsewhere, capitalism is becoming more and more of a mortal threat to the workers as well as to working class districts close to industrial installations and conurbations. A number of factors will ensure this: the primary one being that capitalism puts profits before lives and working class living and working conditions every time. With the unstoppable development of its economic crisis the ruling class will more and more cut back on safety measures, safety inspections, regular maintenance and the replacement of worn out and dangerous plant. And all this while the usual rot is pronounced about “condolences”, the “inevitability of accidents” and “lessons will be learnt” as one disaster follows another.

The explosion and fire, with the resulting contamination, at the Coryton refinery and depot in Essex in 2007, shows us the way the wind is blowing. Here, 20 health and safety compliance orders are still outstanding from the event, with one very serious safety factor still in the design stage: this will be in place in December 2012, so they say (Thurrock Gazette, 13.5.2011). Along with continuous non-compliance there have been further serious failures at the plant with the latest recorded in January this year. In a 2006 analysis of workplace disasters, Dave Whyte writing in ‘Working disasters’, talks of the “supine collusive ideology that dominates the regulatory landscape”.

Coryton follows the explosion at the Chevron/Total oil facility at Buncefield, Hertfordshire in December 2005 which was called “the largest peace-time fire in Europe” (Wikipedia). It was a fuel-air explosion and the effects of the contamination and the environmental damage remain unknown over five years later. Just like many other instances the state got around the initial contamination of ground water by simply raising the allowed limits of contaminants allowed in drinking water (Hemel Hempstead Today May 2006). The explosion, similar in effect to the fuel-air bombs used in the first Iraq War, registered on the Richter scale and occurred early on a Sunday morning. Had it happened while the plant was fully manned the casualties would have been far worse than the 42 injured. A year later all of the fire stations that were first to respond to the Buncefield blaze (and praised by Tony Blair at the time as “great public servants”) were facing closure and cuts in manpower (Guardian, 12.5.2006).

A similar fuel-air explosion happened at the Flixborough chemical plant near Scunthorpe in 1974. Again this occurred at the weekend and killed 18 workers; had it happened on a working day most, if not all, of the 500 workers would have been incinerated.

And this after “lessons would be learnt” from the still shocking case of the Piper Alpha explosion on a North Sea oil rig, when 167 of the 226 workers on board were killed in the most horrific circumstances in summer 1988. Here again HSE enforcement and improvement notices are ignored or strung out, while scores of workers have been killed in the North Sea oil industry over the subsequent 20 odd years and workers are intimidated or dismissed without cause or comeback and are blacklisted as “troublemakers” if they make any sort of fuss about safety issues. And as Whyte says above, the “collusive ideology” runs through the companies, the HSE and the unions. Twenty years after Piper Alpha the HSE found 50% of platforms had “poor” safety conditions and there was a 15 thousand hour backlog of “critical safety issues” to be put in place.

The Coalition government has shown that it will follow Labour and the Tories in complicity around the threats to workers’ lives and giving the green light to unsafe, cost-cutting procedures. Recent budget cuts show that the 98 North Sea off-shore inspectors have been reduced to 83 at the turn of this year (Hazards no. 113). Companies’ safety procedures are to remain secret and no-one, except top management officials can have full access to these documents. Throughout the whole oil industry, as pipework corrodes, oxidises and remains unreplaced, as valves and connections become more vulnerable to dysfunction and decay, maintenance is being cut, safety measures are subverted and cut, vital components are overlooked; and while company and union lawyers get rich over claim and counter-claim, workers are more and more put at risk. The coming budget cuts along with the already existing primacy of profits and secondary concern for workers’ lives and wellbeing will ensure that these explosive risks to the working class become ever greater.

Baboon. June 7th 2011

We have received the information published below from comrades in Korea. Independently of the events in themselves, their significance is also determined by the fact that they are taking place simultaneously with the movements in Spain and Greece, and reveal a certain number of similar features.

Gatherings for the reduction of tuitionfees by half are taking place everyday in Korea but they have not been growing as big mass gatherings as Candlelight gatherings in 2008.

It is partly because the mass does not have yet enough force for going out to the streets, and partly because leading elements of the gatherings are limiting the issue only to the problem of tuition fees. In addition to these reasons, the participation of bourgeois parties such as Democratic Party in the gatherings prevents those gatherings from growing to mass struggles, too.  

On 26th June there was a gathering in the Seoul City Hall Square and the Kwanghwa Gate Square with ten thousands of participants, because KCTU (Korean Confederation of Trade Unions) organized an all people meeting in which every social stratum was expected to join. All strata including Workers, Peasants and Students came to the gathering, and even it was daytime the streets of the Kwanghwa Tor Square were once occupied by the gathering participants.

In South Korea it was first time since long time to witness occupations of streets and gatherings in the centre of Seoul in daytime.  This gathering was possible because there have been the gatherings of university students for the reduction of tuition fees by half. Though in this sense, the gatherings for the reduction of tuition fees by half have to some degree a certain, limited meaning but it remains limited because it the movement has not (yet) expanded.

Meanwhile a new type of movements is being formed at almost the same time in South Korea.  In South Korea there is a ship constructing company with the name of Hanjin Heavy Industry. This company is located in Pusan, the second biggest city in South Korea. The Korean ship constructing industry is marking the first place in the world but the company, Hanjin Heavy Industry is middle to small sized, being pushed aside in the competition with other ship constructing companies.  This company constructed a new dockyard in the Philippines and is exploiting there Philipine workers by paying them very low wages. In order to eliminate its dockyard with high wage and Trade Unions in Korea, it is giving many orders for construction to Subik dockyard in Philippines. Early this year Hanjin Heavy Industry laid 400 workers off. In order to stop this, a woman worker occupied a crane and is struggling. Ordinary citizens and workers created a way to show solidarity to her, by now it is called “bus of hope”.  They determine a certain day, rent buses and go to the company, Hanjin Heavy Industry. Normally there is no workers´s struggle without gatherings organized by Trade Unions. But now a current is rising, a current which shows spontaneously their solidarity with the struggle in Hanjin Heavy Industry. On 11th June, even 3000 workers went to Pusan and entered into the factory. In this struggle not only workers but also ordinary citizens are taking part. Among those people there are famous actors and actresses. An actress named Yeojin Kim went there and happened to be taken to the police station. This news was reported through Twitter in real time base and is drawing attention of the people who did not participate in this struggle. The second ´bus of hope´ is now being prepared on the 9th July. Then 185 buses will be used.  

Like gatherings for the reduction of tuitionfees by half, this struggle is not a socialist struggle. Workers are not leading the struggle. The conservative tendency of Lee government is leading even Liberalists to be interested in workers´problems. Among them quite many people will turn their back to workers after the change of government.

Even with such a limit, we think, such processes are preparing a new but different form of movements to the 1980- 90´s.

We recently received this text from the comrades of the TPTG (‘Children of the Gallery’) in Greece, and are very pleased to publish it, because it represents one of the first clear statements on the ‘assembly movement’ in Greece, written by comrades who have been taking part in the movement. Their analysis of recent events in Greece corresponds very closely to what we have been saying about the ‘indignant’ movement in Spain which provided an immediate catalyst for the mobilisations in Athens and other Greek cities. Just as we identified a struggle ‘inside’ the movement in Spain between a ‘democratic wing’ which aims to recuperate the assemblies for the benefit of a project of capitalist reform, and a proletarian wing which stands for the development of self-organisation and a fundamental questioning of capitalist social relations, the TPTG text concludes by saying 

“One thing is certain: this volatile, contradictory movement attracts the attention from all sides of the political spectrum and constitutes an expression of the crisis of class relations and politics in general. No other struggle has expressed itself in a more ambivalent and explosive way in the last decades. What the whole political spectrum finds disquieting in this assembly movement is that the mounting proletarian (and petit-bourgeois) anger and indignation is not expressed anymore through the mediation channels of the political parties and the unions. Thus, it is not so much controllable and it is potentially dangerous for the political and unionist representation system in general… the multiform and open character of this movement puts on the agenda the issue of the self-organization of the struggle, even if the content of this struggle remains vague”.

In short: despite its many weaknesses (and the movement in Greece seems to suffer more heavily than its counter-part in Spain from the dead weight of nationalism), this whole experience is a very important moment in the emergence of a deeper form of proletarian class consciousness and organization, and one in which revolutionaries need to be actively involved.

Whatever disagreements may exist between our organisations, it is clear from this text that the principles we hold in common are even more significant: opposition to the manoeuvres of leftists and unions, complete rejection of nationalism, and a determined effort to contribute towards the emergence of what the comrades of the TPTG call a “proletarian public sphere” which will make it possible for growing numbers of our class not only to work out how to resist capitalism’s attacks on our lives, but to develop the theories and actions that lead to a new way of life altogether.         

ICC, July 2011

Preliminary notes towards an account of the “Movement of popular assemblies”

The movement of the assemblies in the squares started completely unexpectedly on the 25th of May in Athens. It’s unclear which was the initial group of people that took the initiative to post a call for a rally in Syntagma square on Facebook to express their “indignation” and anger at the government’s austerity measures. It seems though that some people around a political group influenced by the later Castoriadis’ democratic ideology were involved among others in that initiative. The call was publicized favourably by the mass media and during the first days there was a reference in the media to a banner that allegedly appeared in the Spanish mobilizations: “Shhh, do not shout, we will wake up the Greeks” or something like that. Of course, no one could expect what would follow.

The initial call was a declaration of independence and separation from political parties, representation and ideologies. It also declared the will to protest peacefully against the state management of the debt crisis and “all those who led us here”. Furthermore, a main slogan was the call for a “real democracy”. The slogan of “real democracy” was quickly replaced after a couple of days by the slogan of “direct democracy”. The initial effort of the organizers to set a body of specific democratic rules for the assembly was rejected by the participants. However, certain regulations were established after some days concerning the time-limit of the speeches (90 sec), the way that someone can propose a subject for the discussion (in written form, two hours before the beginning of the assembly) and the way that speakers are being chosen (through a lottery).. We should also mention that around the core of the general assembly there are always plenty of discussions, events or even confrontations among the participants.

In the beginning there was a communal spirit in the first efforts at self-organizing the occupation of the square and officially political parties were not tolerated. However, the leftists and especially those coming from SYRIZA (Coalition of Radical Left) got quickly involved in the Syntagma assembly and took over important positions in the groups that were formed in order to run the occupation of Syntagma square, and, more specifically, in the group for “secretarial support” and the one responsible for “communication”. These two groups are the most important ones because they organize the agenda of the assemblies as well as the flow of the discussion. It must be noted that these people do not openly declare their political allegiance and appear as ‘individuals’. However, these politicos are unable to completely manipulate such a volatile and heterogeneous assembly since the delegitimisation of the political parties is prevalent. It is very difficult to participate as an individual in these specific groups though, since you have to confront the shadow party mechanisms of the leftists.

The rallies organized on a daily basis gradually became very massive and expressed the complete delegitimisation of the government and of the political system in general. In the most massive rally maybe 500.000 people participated (on Sunday 5/6).

The social composition of the mixed crowd that rallies everyday ranges from workers, unemployed, pensioners and students to small entrepreneurs or former small bosses hard hit by the crisis. In these rallies in the Syntagma square, a divide was formed from the first days between those who are “above” (near the Parliament) and those who are “below” (in the square proper). In the first category, some nationalist and extreme right-wing groups have been active from the beginning influencing the more conservative and/or less politicized people who participate in the demonstrations (being either proletarians or proletarianised former small entrepreneurs). It is quite common for most of them gathering outside the Parliament to wave Greek flags, make the open palm gesture against the MPs, cry out populist and nationalist slogans like “Traitors!” or “Thieves!” or even sing the national anthem. However, the fact that these people are more politically conservative does not necessarily mean that they are more controllable when the conflicts with the police escalate or that they can be counted to the lines of the organized extreme right-wing groups. On the other hand, the second group which forms the constituency of the assembly is much more oriented to the democratic left (patriotic, antifascist, anti-imperialist) as it can be seen by the voted communiqués (see https://real-democracy.gr [106]) and is also proletarian in composition (unemployed workers, civil servants, university students, workers from the private sector, etc.)

The leftists have managed to organize a series of discussion events about the “debt crisis” and about “direct democracy” with invited speakers coming from the left academia (e.g. left political economists like Lapavitsas) who are connected to various left political parties (mainly SYRIZA and ANTARSYA). The organization of these events reproduces and reinforces the divide between “experts” and “non-experts” and the content of the presentations of the invited speakers has been centred on an alternative political and economic management of capitalist relations and the crisis. For example, the main views expressed with regard to the issue of debt vary from proposals for the “debt restructuring” and the cancellation of the “odious part of the debt” to calls for an immediate suspension of payments on the part of the Greek state or exit from the Euro-zone and the EU. In any case, the political content expressed in these events is that of an alternative and more patriotic path for the “development of the country” and the creation of a real social-democratic state. In other words, these events try to direct the discussions towards an alternative path for the reproduction of capitalist relations in Greece that will be implemented by a different government in which the leftists will have assumed the role they deserve... Occasionally there have been criticisms by participants in the assembly of the prominent role of experts in panels as well as of the conception of the debt as a logistical, national issue. However they have been too weak to change the whole direction. The most well-known proposal for a left management of the “national debt” is coming from the Greek Audit Commission which consists of various left politicians, academics and union bureaucrats and favours the idea of the cancellation of the “odious part of the debt” following the Ecuador model. This Commission’s presence was established in the square in the first days against voted resolutions for the exclusion of political parties and organizations with the pretext of being a “citizens’ association”!

Some of us have been involved in a thematic assembly that has been formed by the general assembly around the issues of labour and unemployment called Group of Workers and Unemployed. In cooperation with other comrades, this assembly has tried to promote the self-organized practice of the proletarian “suspension of payments” from below for the direct satisfaction of our needs. Of course, the latter is completely at odds with the left political proposals for the “suspension of payments of the sovereign debt”. Towards this aim some interventions in unemployment offices have been organized calling the unemployed workers to join the group in Syntagma square and attempting to initiate discussions aiming at the organization of local assemblies of unemployed workers (the latter aim was unfortunately not successful). Also 3 direct actions in the metro station of Syntagma square have been organized where, in cooperation with a collective that is already active on this issue, the so-called “I don’t pay” coalition of committees, the ticket validating machines were blocked. The leftists who participate in this assembly have tried to confine its activities to left political demands of “the right to work”, “full, decent and stable work for all”, etc. without any real interest to communicate their struggle experiences (if they had any) and engage in collective direct action. The results of this confrontation are depicted in the communiqué which was produced and is available in http://real-democracy.gr/ [107]. But, the main problem is that apart from us, some anti-authoritarians/anarchists and the leftists, the participation of other people both in the discussions and the actions is almost non-existent, although the actions which were organized have been agreed upon by the general assembly.

This leads to another important observation about the assembly of the Syntagma square. Notwithstanding that the assembly has taken all these days decisions involving the organization of direct actions, in the end very few people really participate in them. It seems that the direct democratic process of just voting for or against a specific proposal in such a massive assembly tends to reproduce passivity and the role of the individualized spectator/voter.

This passivity and individualization of a significant part of the people was transcended on the day of the general strike (15/6) when the need to struggle against the attempts of the state to disband the demonstration and to reoccupy Syntagma square not only led practically to the participation of thousands of people in the conflicts with the police but also led to the expression of real solidarity between the demonstrators: people were freed from the hands of the cops by other protesters, the medical team helped anyone that was in danger because of the tear gas and the brutal strikes of the cops, the joyful dance of thousands of people amidst the tear gases, etc.

However, there were certain forces, i.e. the mass media, the left parties and the fascists, who tried to promote separations between the demonstrators around the issue of violence and through the accusation against some violent demonstrators of being instigated by police agent-provocateurs. When the anarchist/antiauthoritarian block and the blocks of the base unions arrived in Syntagma square and some of the comrades moved to the area in front of the parliament, a group of fascists exploited the throwing of a few (2-3) Molotov bombs by some individuals and started to shout through bullhorns to the demonstrators that the “kukuloforoi” (hooded persons) are undercover police provocateurs that should be isolated. This group started the attack against the anarchists/antiauthoritarians and managed to get other demonstrators involved in the attack as well. The anarchists/antiauthoritarians managed to face the attack and to respond successfully. However, the media exploited this incident by portraying it as an attack of the anarchists against the “indignants” (as the crowds demonstrating in the square are called) in order to promote the separation between “violent” and “peaceful” protesters within the movement. The video of this incident was played again and again for the rest of the day. However, on the level of street politics, this attempt was largely unsuccessful since when the police attacked later the demonstration they were confronted by a totally mixed crowd.

Apart from the media, the left parties tried as well to promote the separation between “violent” and “peaceful” protesters through their “provocateurology” and the continuous accusations and propaganda against the anarchist/antiauthoritarian milieu. Their aims are of course different: they want to restrain the movement to the limits of legality and peacefulness so that they will be able to capitalize on it politically according to their wishful thinking to participate in a future government that will follow an alternative left path for the development of Greek capitalism. We should add here that the Group of Workers and Unemployed of Syntagma square where some of us participate issued a resolution condemning provocateurology and false divisions within the movement but the text was never voted as a subject for discussion. This was the result of the leftist organizers’ intervention and manipulation combined with the weak support from other participants.

However, a lot of different views have been expressed concerning the issue of “provocateurology” and also the “violent or pacifist character of our movement”. The dynamic and contradictory character of the assembly can be traced to some of the assembly’s decisions two days before the 48-hour general strike on 28-29 of June. The left organizers managed to win a vote calling the police forces to “show respect to people's will and the constitutional right of people's sovereignty [...] and not to prevent the people from protecting its own Constitution”!At the same time, there was another resolution which condemned “the professionals of violence who serve the system and not the movement”, reflecting the leftist provocateurology against those who do not act according to the ideology of obedience to “law and order”. On the contrary, a day after, in another decision the assembly voted in favour of “those who clash with the repression forces. Nobody with a loudspeaker should speak against them”. On the same day, the proposal for “condemnation of any kind of violence during the coming 48-hour strike” was disapproved.

It must be noted that till now the “movement of the squares” has been really effective in the sense that it managed to widen the field of opposition to the government’s policy, something that the conventional general strikes and the isolated sectional strikes had not managed to do. It obliged the discredited GSEE to call for a 24-hour strike on the 15/6 and a 48-hour strike when the second “memorandum” was going to be voted and many workers took the opportunity to participate in the demos from morning till night. Although it did not manage to cancel the voting of the memorandum, it nonetheless managed to create a deep cabinet and political crisis. Never before, not even during the December 2008 riots, was the political system of representation so irretrievably delegitimised. However, the leftist organizers managed to preserve the mediatory role of unions -at least on an ideological level- through a common poster calling for the 48-hour general strike.

A first observation about this strike is that it’s impossible to make an accurate estimation of the number of people that took part in the events during these two days. There was a continuous inflow and outflow of people to and from the terrain of the struggle in the centre of Athens (i.e. the Syntagma square and the surrounding streets) and the number of demonstrators fluctuated from a few thousands to as many as 100.000 people. However, the participation in the strike, in the rally and in the conflicts was far lower on the first day than in the second day: the number of demonstrators in Syntagma square on Tuesday 28/6 did not exceed 20.000 people.[1] Both days, fierce clashes took place between demonstrators and the riot police over a large part of the centre of the city around Syntagma square. Thousands of chemical weapons were thrown by the riot police creating a toxic and suffocating atmosphere. Certainly, in the second day, the mobilization was more intense and more massive.

According to the police, 131 cops were injured, 75 persons were busted and charges were pressed against 38 people. According to the medical team of the Syntagma square, more than 700 people had been provided with first aid at the improvised medical centres in the square and inside the metro station of Syntagma and around 100 were transferred to hospitals. There were damages on banks, ministry buildings, luxurious hotels, the post-office of Syntagma square and a few commercial shops and restaurants.

There is no doubt that from the beginning the aim of the state was to evacuate the square, to terrorize and disperse the demonstrators.[2] However, the persistent and spirited stance of the demonstrators may be perfectly expressed by the slogan: “we won’t leave the square”. As a result, the confrontation with the police, material and verbal, was almost continuous. On the first day, most of the people were pushed further back in the streets surrounding the square, giving longer or shorter battles, until the police managed to create a cop-boundary around the square, preventing anyone from approaching. Despite that, a few hundreds remained in the square until late in the night.

On the second day, apart from the gathering in the Syntagma square, there were efforts to make blockades early in the morning in order to prevent the MP’s entrance into the parliament. This plan was voted by the Syntagma assembly as well as by the assemblies that have been formed in other neighbourhoods of Athens outside the centre. Unfortunately, only a few hundreds of demonstrators participated in those blockades which were immediately attacked fiercely, pushed away and quickly disbanded by the police. So, the plan to prevent politicians from getting into the parliament didn’t work. In the case of the blockade in Vasileos Konstantinou avenue, the demonstrators were pushed back to nearby streets were they erected barricades and after a few hours and some mild confrontations with the riot police they started a long demonstration that passed through the touristic parts of the centre to finally reach the big rally in Syntagma square. It must be noted that the organization of the blockades was totally inefficient since the leftist organizations that played an important role through their control of the main groups of the Syntagma assembly did nothing to ensure a greater participation and a real confrontation with the police. Of course, the leftists’ attitude is not an excuse for the inability of the assembly itself to implement its decisions and the passivity of a great part of its participants.

As far as the conflicts around the parliament are concerned, similar scenes of the first day took place on the second day as well but it was much more difficult for the police to accomplish its aims. Thousands of demonstrators participated in the clashes of the second day. Most of the demonstrators were prepared for the clashes wearing gas masks or other improvised protection equipment; many carried anti-acid solutions while some were fully equipped for fighting the cops. In most cases, there was a “front zone” where the battles evolved and a “rear zone” where people yelled slogans, gave help to those in need and even “provided” the “front zone” with new people.

The “peaceful people” backed those clashing with the police: the physical presence of the huge crowd itself was an obstacle to the manoeuvres of the police. Protesters blocked a group of motorcycles of the police infamous “DIAS” and “DELTA” forces by standing in front of them while the policemen were ready to launch an attack. “Peaceful” protesters weren't scared by the clashes and only the continuous massive and violent attacks of riot police and motorcycle police forced them to abandon the streets surrounding Syntagma. Contrary to what many were preaching during the previous days and especially during the clashes with the police on June 28th, the clashes didn't “frighten” the “people” but in a sense these clashes expressed the accumulated anger against a largely delegitimized government, the brutality of the police and the worsening of the living conditions of the working class.

Especially this day, there reappeared the insurgents of December 2008 (anarchists, anti-authoritarians, students, ultras, young precarious proletarians) in the streets of Athens alongside a considerable part of the more “respectable” and stable working class that protested against the austerity measures clashing with the police. It was the first time after May 5, 2010 that such a thing happened.

The 48-hour general strike had another similarity with the December 2008 rebellion: playfulness. Many slogans or chants of the protesters against the government and the IMF are based on slogans or chants from the terrace culture while during the confrontations with the police drummers encouraged the protesters and incited them to keep their positions.

Both days, the police eventually “cleared” the surroundings and the central streets late at night, and only few determined ones remained in the square overnight.

The thousands of people that participated in the clashes and their diversity defied in practice the conspiracy theories of the left organizations/parties and the media about “provocateurs” or “para-statal gangs” and proved how ridiculous similar mainstream propaganda about those “specific” groups who always “create chaos” is. Many people realized the necessity of throwing stones, lighting fires and barricading streets against armed, furious and ruthless cops who execute the orders of capital and its state.

This change was also the result of the overcoming of the (usually verbal) confrontations between the “non-violent” and the “violent” protesters during the last month’s mobilizations. Many “non-violent” protesters, especially the elder ones, realized at last that behind the “masks” of the “provocateurs” were mostly common young people, filled with rage. In a case, a sixty-year lady was talking in a friendly way with a “masked” 16-year old about the “right to fight back the cops” while at the same time well-dressed “indignant” protesters were disputing with “rioters” on similar matters. In other cases, “non-violent” people with breathing problems were helped by well-prepared “masked” demonstrators. Violence is just one issue in the continuous social and political discussions and disputes that emerge inside the mobilized crowd and play an important role in the shaping up of the mobilizations and the contradictory attitudes of many demonstrators. We can say that these disputes create a limited proletarian public sphere where theoretical and practical issues are posed.

Another prominent feature of the days of rage was the combination of rioting and celebration. During the fights there was live music, people sang and, as we mentioned before, in some cases drum players accompanied counter-attacks against the riot squads! During the afternoon of the 28th a concert was given despite the fights and chemical gases and the protesters were dancing while the police was tear-gassing the square. Expropriations of pastries, cakes and ice creams from a chain café in the square gave the struggle a sweet flavour on the 29th, although the food supply group later condemned lootings from the loudspeakers, probably after having been scolded by some left “organizers”. Later that afternoon a big group mainly of SYRIZA members tried to prevent people from piling up stones to be used against a possible attack by the riot squads, however, having no alternative plan to face the attack, they soon gave up their effort. Shortly after, the microphone equipment with the loudspeakers was removed from the square on the pretext that they could get damaged. The choice to take away the “voice” of the mobilization at that particular time, when clashes with the police in the surroundings of the square were still raging, was clearly undermining the defence of the square. Some minutes later a lot of riot squads invaded the square and in a particularly violent sweep operation managed to disperse the crowd down the metro station. Only some hundreds would return again and even less stayed in the square until late in the night.

We should also mention that the feeling of rage against politicians and the police is really growing. Except for the widespread clashes, this rage is also reflected in the verbal condemnations that one can catch here and there: “we should burn the parliament”, “we should hang them high”, “we should take up arms”, “we should visit the MP’s homes” etc. It’s remarkable that most of these declarations come from elder people. Several cases of “arrests” of undercover cops by loads of people are also revealing of the degree of anger mounting: in the evening of the 29th demonstrators got hold of an undercover cop inside the Syntagma metro station trying to detain him when the Red Cross rescuers intervened and helped him escape (according to some rumours, he had no gun when he left…).

As far as the role of the unions (GSEE-ADEDY) is concerned, except for their call for the 48-hour strike, which was more or less a result of the pressure of the “square’s movement”, they didn’t really play any important role. It is characteristic that their blocks attracted only few hundreds and on the second day, when the new austerity package would be voted, GSEE arranged its rally late in the afternoon in another square of the city centre (which was just a short stroll towards Omonia square which is in the opposite direction!)! In addition, on 30th of June, GSEE, faithful to the conspiracy theories, published a press release which condemned “the destructions and the pre-decided riots between “hooded people” and the police who co-operate against the workers and the demonstrators […] GSEE condemns any kind of violence wherever it comes from and calls the government to assume its responsibilities…”. On the other hand, ADEDY kept a more cautious stance: in its press releases on the 29th and the 30th of June, it condemned the “barbarism of the government” and “the police brutality” against the demonstrators and it even called for a rally on the 30th June on Syntagma square which it never organized!

Some general points concerning the movement against the imposition of the harshest austerity measures since the 2nd World War:

1) Nationalism (mostly in a populist form) is dominant, favoured both by the various extreme right wing cliques as well as by left parties and leftists. Even for a lot of proletarians or petty-bourgeois hit by the crisis who are not affiliated with political parties, national identity appears as a last imaginary refuge when everything else is rapidly crumbling. Behind the slogans against the “foreign, sell out government” or for the “Salvation of the country”, “National sovereignty” and a “New Constitution” lies a deep feeling of fear and alienation to which the “national community” appears as a magical unifying solution. Class interests are often expressed in nationalist and racist terms producing a confused and explosive political cocktail.

2) The manipulation of the main assembly in Syntagma square (there are several others in various neighbourhoods of Athens and cities in Greece) by “incognito” members of left parties and organizations is evident and really obstructive in a class direction of the movement. However, due to the deep legitimization crisis of the political system of representation in general they, too, have to hide their political identity and keep a balance between a general, abstract talk about “self-determination”, “direct democracy”, “collective action”, “anti-racism”, “social change” etc on the one hand and extreme nationalism, thug-like behaviour of some extreme-right wing individuals participating in groups in the square on the other hand, and all this in a not so successful way.

3) A significant part of the antiauthoritarian milieu as well as a part of the left (especially the Marxist-Leninists and most of the trade unionists) keep their distance from the assembly or are openly hostile to it: the former accuse it mainly for showing tolerance towards the fascists in front of the parliament or the members of the defence group of the assembly and for being a petty bourgeois, reformist political body manipulated by certain left parties. The latter accuse it for being apolitical, hostile to the Left and the “unionized, organized labour movement”.

One thing is certain: this volatile, contradictory movement attracts the attention from all sides of the political spectrum and constitutes an expression of the crisis of class relations and politics in general. No other struggle has expressed itself in a more ambivalent and explosive way in the last decades. What the whole political spectrum finds disquieting in this assembly movement is that the mounting proletarian (and petit-bourgeois) anger and indignation is not expressed anymore through the mediation channels of the political parties and the unions. Thus, it is not so much controllable and it is potentially dangerous for the political and unionist representation system in general. Therefore, the role of provocateurology is crucial: it serves as an exorcism, a slander against a growing part of the population which exiled in the no man’s land of “para-statal activity” should be rendered inert. On another level, the multiform and open character of this movement puts on the agenda the issue of the self-organization of the struggle, even if the content of this struggle remains vague. The public debate on the nature of the debt is a thorny question since it could lead to a movement of “refusal of payments” to the Greek state (an issue well beyond the political horizon of the parties, the unions and the vast majority of the extra-parliamentary left, statist as it is). After the bloody voting of the Medium-term Programme it is uncertain what direction the movement of the assemblies will take in an era where all certainties seem to melt into the air.

TPTG, 11/7/2011. 

We are publishing here the statement on the war in Libya put out by the KRAS, the Russian section of the anarcho-syndialist International Workers’ Association. The ICC warmly welcomes the internationalism which animates this statement. This doesn’t surprise us, because in the past the KRAS has consistently defended internationalist positions: in 2008 against the war in Georgia, and before that against the wars in Chechnya in the 1990s, rejecting any political support for the different warring bourgeois camps.

What we have in common, and what really counts for us, is the fact that an organisation like the KRAS places itself without any doubt in the camp of the international working class on a question of such fundamental importance : imperialist war.

While the war between the Russian and Georgian states, a great power and a micro-state, openly revealed its imperialist character as a confrontation between bourgeois gangs, the imperialist character of the war in Libya is veiled behind the lie that this is a ‘humanitarian’ intervention. The bourgeoisie of the states who have been intervening for weeks through massive bombing raids against the brutal and irrational Gaddafi regime have been taking advantage of workers’ sympathies for the revolts in North Africa in order to justify a war supposedly aimed at supporting the democratic wave against ‘dictators’ sweeping North Africa and the Middle East. This is a complete lie, as the KRAS statement clearly shows. Nevertheless, we want to make two short comments on the statement, essentially to stimulate discussion within our class.

We agree with the KRAS that in North African countries like Tunisia and Egypt there has been no proletarian revolution of the kind that came out of the First World War, when the working class was able to constitute itself as a class and, as in Russia, to take power. The situation in Egypt, for example, presented in the bourgeois press as a grand ‘revolution for democracy’, shows clearly that the bourgeoisie has held onto power by using an adroit strategy of dumping the Mubarak clan in favour of a government with a more democratic face. On the other hand, we think that even if the working class in these countries is still tied to illusions in democracy, nationalism and even religion, it has still been through an experience of struggle which is of considerable historical value. The methods of the working class had a real impact on the social revolts in the Arab world : tendencies towards self-organisation, occupation of central squares to assemble and organise on a massive scale, organisation of defence against thugs and police, rejection of gratuitous violence and looting, an effort to overcome religious divisions, attempts at fraternisation with rank and file soldiers… "It is no accident that these tendencies developed most strongly in Egypt where the working class has a long tradition of struggle and which, at a crucial stage in the movement, emerged as a distinct force, engaging in a wave of struggles which, like those in 2006-7, can be seen as “germs” of the future mass strike, containing a certain number of its most important characteristics: the spontaneous extension of strikes and demands from one sector to another, the intransigent rejection of state trade unions and certain tendencies towards self-organisation, the raising of both economic and political demands. Here we see, in outline, the capacity of the working class to come forward as the tribune of all the oppressed and exploited and offer the perspective of a new society"[1]

On the basis of political weaknesses, especially democratic and nationalist illusions, the situation in Libya went from an initial uprising of the population against the Gaddafi regime to becoming a war between various bourgeois cliques for the control of the Libyan state; and upon this was grafted the bloody imperialist action of the great powers. This transformation into a war between bourgeois factions was all the easier because the working class in Libya is very weak. Essentially made up of an immigrant work-force, it was mainly concerned to flee the slaughter because it could hardly recognise its own interests in a movement so dominated by nationalism. The example of Libya is a tragic negative example of the need for the working class to take centre stage in any popular revolt : its disappearance from the scene largely explains the way the situation evolved.    

Secondly, the statement from the KRAS calls on the workers of western Europe and the USA to demonstrate against this so-called humanitarian war. This call is fundamentally correct because only the working class in the countries taking part in the war in Libya could stop this massacre. For the moment however it has to be said that this option unfortunately doesn’t exist. Even if there have been protests against the NATO intervention, they have only been by a small minority. In France for example, the country most strongly involved in this war, the bombing has not been widely questioned. The war is also well supported by the parties of the left of capital. For the moment it is easy for the bourgeoisie to win acceptance for this war by speaking in the name of solidarity with those oppressed by the Gaddafi regime.

ICC, July 2011.

Down with the new war in North Africa! Declaration of Russian anarcho-syndicalists KRAS-IWA against the war in Libya

The "humanitarian" intervention of NATO states in Libya, aimed at providing military assistance to one party in a local civil war, has once again proved: there are no “revolutions” in North Africa and in the Middle East. There are only a stubborn and bitter struggles for power, profit, influence and control over oil resources and strategic areas.

Deep discontent and social-economic protests by the working masses in the region generated by global economic crisis (attacks on the living conditions of workers, increase of unemployment and poverty, spread of precarious work) are used by oppositional political groups to carry out coups, overthrowing the tyranny of the corrupt, senile dictators and rising in their place. Mobilising the unemployed, the workers, the poor as cannon fodder, discontented factions of the ruling class distract them from their social and economic demands, promising them "democracy" and "change". In fact, the coming to power of this motley bloc of "backbenchers" of the ruling elite, liberals and religious fundamentalists, will not bring the workers any changes for the better. We know well the consequences of the victory of the liberals: new privatizations, strengthening of market chaos, emergence of the next billionaires and further aggravation of poverty, suffering and misery of the oppressed and the poor. The triumph of the religious fundamentalists would mean the growth of clerical reaction, the ruthless suppression of women and minorities, and the inevitable slide towards a new Arab-Israeli war, bringing hardships that would again lay on the shoulders of the working masses. But even in the "ideal" option of establishing of representative democratic regimes in North African and Middle Eastern countries, the working people will not win anything. The worker ready to risk his life for the sake of "democracy" is like a slave who vows to die for the "right" to choose his slaveholder. Representative democracy is not worth a drop of human blood.

In the struggle for power unfolding in the region, the European NATO states and the United States even more openly side with the oppositional political groups in the hope that the victory of these forces and the "democratization" model of political domination will bring them new benefits and privileges. Supporting "democracy" in Tunisia and Egypt, they hope to strengthen its influence there, to deliver their capitalist "investors" from the corruption of dictators and to take part in the upcoming privatization of the riches of ruling clans. Helping the liberal, monarchist and religious-fundamentalist opposition in Libya, which acts in conjunction with a number of former senior officials of the Gaddafi regime, they expect to take control of rich oil reserves. Along with them, some Arab states enter into struggle for influence, having their own ambitions in the region.

The powers-that-be are going in again with bombs and shelling to "save" lives of people and to "liberate" them from dictatorships, killing more people. The governments of Western European countries and the U.S. are lying and hypocritical: yesterday they helped dictators, hugged them and sold them weapons. Today they are demanding that dictators go, "listen to the demands of the people", but do not hesitate to suppress the protests of the population in “their own” countries completely ignoring its demands. When the vast majority of the inhabitants of France or Britain, Greece or Spain, Portugal or Ireland say they do not want to pay from their pockets for state aid to banks and businesses, and demand to cancel the austerity measures, anti-social pension and labor reforms, the authorities answer to them that democracy "is not ruled by the street".

A "humanitarian" intervention gives the rulers of Western Europe and the United States a great opportunity to distract the population of countries-in-their-power from the consequences of the current crisis. The “short victorious” war for “saving people and democracy” is designed to make the European and North American workers forget about the anti-social policies of governments and the capitalists and to experience again the pride in their "humane" and "fair" rulers in a new edition of the "holy alliance" between the oppressors and the oppressed .

We call on workers of the world not to yield to the "democratic"and "humanitarian" fraud and to oppose strongly a new escalation of capitalist barbarism in North Africa and the Middle East.

If we could bring our voice to the oppressed and exploited poor in the region, over thousands-kilometres-long distances and language barriers, we would encourage them to return to the initial social and economic motives and themes of their protest, to rebel, to go on strike and demonstrations against low wages, high prices and unemployment, for social emancipation - but not to allow  themsleves to be involved  in the political games of a power struggle between different factions of the ruling classes.

We call on the workers of Europe and America to go into the streets to protest against the new "humanitarian" war in the interests of states and capitalists. We appeal to sections of the International Workers Association to increase their internationalist and anti-militarist agitation and to initiate anti-war demonstrations and strikes.

DOWN WITH WAR!
DOWN WITH ALL STATE AND ARMIES!
NOT A SINGLE DROP OF BLOOD FOR DICTATORSHIP OR DEMOCRACY!
NO TO ALL GOVERNMENTS AND “OPPOSITIONS”!
FOR SOLIDARITY WITH WORKING PEOPLES STRUGGLE FOR SOCIAL EMANCIPATION!
LONG LIVE THE GENERAL SELF-ADMINISTRATION OF WORKING PEOPLE!

Confederation of Revolutionary Anarcho-Syndicalists,
Section of the IWA in the Russian region
July, 2011.

2011 Introduction

Thirty years ago this summer over 40 British towns and cities were hit by a wave of social revolts as young people –often black but also white, mainly working class – fought back against police racism and repression. In Toxteth, Liverpool, police deployed CS gas for the first time in mainland Britain after almost losing control of the city. 

The following article, first published in WR 38 in May 1981, analyses the international significance of these events as a response by young people – one of the hardest pressed sectors of the proletariat – to the effects of the crisis and mass unemployment hitting the most advanced capitalist countries. As such they were ‘harbingers of the future’. This makes them of far more than just historical importance to us today, when the ‘spectre of social revolt’ has indeed returned with a vengeance to haunt the capitalist system; in North Africa and the Middle East, in Greece and Spain, France, in Britain itself with the student struggles last year...   

Of course a full comparison of the revolts and those of today would reveal many differences, not least in the depth and extent of the capitalist crisis, which despite 15 years of deepening in 1981 had yet to enter its final phase of decomposition; the Berlin Wall had yet to fall and the threat of a direct confrontation between the American and Russian blocs was still a real one. 

The sheer scale of the more recent social revolts – which in the case of North Africa and the Middle East is the most widespread, simultaneous wave since 1917-19 or even 1848 – also puts the events of 1981 into perspective. But some of the similarities are striking: for example, the tendency shown in some of the earlier revolts towards self-organisation, with the appearance of general assemblies and revocable delegates in Amsterdam and Zurich, has today become a much more widespread feature.

The article was right to emphasise the importance of the workers at the heart of industry to provide a way forward. In Britain, the extremely militant struggle of the miners in 1984-5 followed the ‘riots’ of 1981. This was eventually defeated of course, and the capitalist state mounted a concerted counter-attack on the working class that, along with the negative effects of mass unemployment, atomisation, the flood of cheap drugs into working class neighbourhoods, etc., helps to explain why we did not see further waves of similar revolts. Internationally the working class struggle suffered a deep reflux following the collapse of the blocs and the deafening ideological campaigns that accompanied it. 

But the article was absolutely right to focus on the threat of mass unemployment as the key underlying factor in the struggles. The reality of unemployment has become a central issue in today’s struggles, and a key factor in the explosion of revolts in North Africa and the Middle East. Perhaps the most positive difference between 1981 and today is the even greater potential for social revolts to link with the struggles of workers at the heart of production, and to generalise in a movement against the effects of the now chronic crisis of a decrepit world system.

ICC 7/7/11

Far from being a purely local phenomenon, or something uniquely derived from racial problems, the Brixton riots were another episode in a series of social revolts which have erupted in the advanced western countries in the last few years: the ‘autonomous movement’ in Italy in 1977; mass confrontations between squatters and the police in Amsterdam and a dozen West German cities; the uprisings against police racism and repression in Miami, Bristol and Brixton; the ‘youth revolt’ in Zurich and other Swiss cities, which has been echoed in Oslo, Copenhagen, Vienna...

Despite all their particularities, all these revolts are a response to the effects of mass unemployment in the major western economies. Among the more concentrated sectors of the working class, really massive unemployment is a relatively ‘new’ experience. With certain important exceptions (e.g. the steelworkers in France and Britain, the miners in Britain), its initial effect has often been to intimidate workers, who fear that going on strike will only provoke further lay-offs. This is one of the reasons why working class struggle in western capitalism has yet to reach the heights of the gigantic class battles that are now going on in Poland.

But the fact that profound social tensions are building up in the west as well as the east is indicated by this series of revolts away from the point of production. In the absence of massive strike movements, the centre of social unrest has momentarily shifted towards those categories of the population who have been feeling the full blast of unemployment for many years, and who are most vulnerable to the bourgeoisie’s general assault on living standards: blacks, immigrants, youth, elements from intermediate strata (students, intellectuals etc), The problems facing these categories can be seen by looking at the immediate grievances behind the revolts:

• they can’t get decent housing, and so are forced to live in crumbling inner city areas, and many have no choice but to squat. Thus, in Holland and Germany, where rents are astronomically high, the housing question has been the main preoccupation of these elements;
• poorly paid or jobless young people are provided with the most miserable benefits and facilities, and are given no space to live their own lives. Hence the demand for an ‘autonomous youth centre’ in Zurich;
• people who are pushed to the margins of society are constantly confronted with police harassment. This is especially true for blacks, who have to put up with all kinds of racist treatment from the police, but resistance against police repression has been a central theme in all these movements. On every occasion that these movements have taken the form of riots, the immediate issue was the brutal intervention of the police, whether to evict squatters in Amsterdam, disperse demos in Zurich, or ‘clean out’ black districts in Britain.

In short, these categories constitute a sector of the population which is becoming more and more aware that it has NO FUTURE in this society, to use one of the slogans of the German squatters. Since capitalism has nothing to offer them but poverty and repression, they are beginning to feel that they have nothing to lose from violently resisting the present order.

A re-run of the Sixties?

Certain bourgeois commentators, observing the efforts to build a ‘counter-culture’ that have been particularly prevalent in the Zurich movement, have tried to write off these revolts as no more than a re-run of the student and hippy movements of the sixties.

It’s true that the Zurich rebels have revived the old situationist slogan “we don’t want a society in which the risk of dying of hunger is exchanged for the risk of dying of boredom”, which is a little passé in a world that really is threatened by starvation. But Switzerland is a relative newcomer to the crisis, and just as the youth rebellions against the ‘consumer society’ of the sixties actually signalled the onset of a crisis of the entire mode of production, so the protests against consumerism in ‘prosperous’ Zurich express the fact that no corner of the planet can escape the consequences of this crisis.

Besides, even in Zurich the movement is largely made up of young workers and apprentices who have little hope of enjoying the wealth of Swiss capitalism. In nearly all cases, the most militant protagonists of these revolts are made up of a sector of the working class: a sector that is weak, dispersed, inexperienced, but part of the proletariat nonetheless. This is clearly the case with the black youth who led the revolts in Bristol and Brixton: most of them are either unemployed children of workers, or workers themselves. And even if some of the European movements have a strong core of elements from intermediate and petty bourgeois strata, the fact remains that the majority of these elements are being made unemployed, and unemployment is itself a factor which tends to proletarianise the petty bourgeoisie and other strata, at least in countries where the working class has a preponderant weight.

The weaknesses of these revolts - and their strengths

These revolts cannot be written off as petty bourgeois convulsions which are no more than a diversion for the working class: they are essentially based on a sector of the class itself. But this isn’t to deny that these movements are strongly influenced by the attitudes and ideologies of the petty bourgeoisie, of the intermediate strata being driven towards the proletariat by the generalisation of unemployment. In Germany, for example, the ideology of terrorism still has a certain weight, and many elements in these movements still cling to the illusion of building islands of autonomy, of free relationships, within the existing system. Above all, since many of the young people involved in these movements have little experience of associated labour, they have great difficulty in seeing their struggle in class terms, and tend to identify themselves simply as members of a particular category: blacks, youth, squatters, etc. These weaknesses are not merely ideological; they have a material basis in the social position of these elements. Separated from the centres of production, they lack the means to decisively paralyse the mechanisms of the capitalist system. Lacking the focus of the workplace, it is extremely difficult for revolts away from the point of production to generate organisational structures which can unify the struggle against the state.

There can be no question of communists hiding the weaknesses of these movements, and still less of falling into the trap of theorising these weaknesses, as has been done by Toni Negri and other theoreticians of ‘autonomy’ in Italy. According to this current, the diverse categories involved in these revolts are the new revolutionary subject, replacing the ‘guaranteed’, employed workers who have been seduced into defending the system. Thus, the divisions between employed and unemployed, between the more concentrated and the more marginal sectors of the proletariat, are seen as something positive. So are the divisions within the marginal sectors themselves, because according to the autonomists, each category  ­– workers, women, gays, youth, etc. -  should be encouraged to organise itself ‘autonomously’.

Communists and workers have to fight these ideas, because they are a pernicious barrier against the unification of the class. It is important to point out the limitations of movements divorced from the point of production, to insist that there has to be a link-up with the workers in Industry. Otherwise these revolts will indeed have NO FUTURE: isolated from the most powerful battalions of the proletariat, they will remain vulnerable to police repression and could easily degenerate into nihilism and despair. As the Polish example has confirmed, the workers at the heart of industry are still the key to the whole situation. It is not the simple generalisation of revolts away from the point of production that will lead towards the revolution; rather it is the mass strikes of the industrial proletariat that can provide an organized and politically coherent framework for the struggle in the neighbourhoods and the streets.

Nevertheless, we can discern a number of positive aspects in these revolts:

• their practical rejection of legalism and pacifism;
• their hostility to the left parties, who, like the unions, tend to have a weak implantation among the elements involved in these movements. In fact, a number of these revolts have taken place in municipalities controlled by left parties, and the point has not been lost that it was the social democrats in Holland and Germany who used riot police and armoured cars against the squatters, just as the Communist Party sent in the tanks to crush the ‘disorders’ in Bologna in 1977;
• their refusal to delegate power to others, and their attempts at self-organisation: general assemblies with revocable delegates in Amsterdam, Zurich etc. The often quoted slogans NO LEADERS and NO POWER TO NO-ONE may reflect anarchist and apolitical prejudices, but they also show a healthy distrust of leftist manipulators and hierarchical approaches to organisation.

Above all, these movements are important as harbingers of the future. When Thatcher said that the issue behind Brixton wasn’t unemployment because there had been mass unemployment in the thirties, but no such riots, she was of course wrong on a number of counts. One of the main issues behind Brixton was unemployment, and there were unemployed riots in the thirties. But the general picture in the thirties was of a class that had been defeated and was allowing itself to be further pulverised by the crisis and marched off to war. Today, although capitalism objectively needs another war, it is going to have a hard time convincing black youth in Brixton, already bitterly hostile to the state, that their interests lie in fighting for Queen and Country. It will be equally hard to make good soldiers out of the German youths who recently scandalised the bourgeoisie by demonstrating against public ceremonies at which recruits to the army are sworn in. The violent insubordination shown by these hard-pressed sectors of the proletariat provide capitalism with a grim warning about what will happen as the most powerful concentrations of the class also come to the conclusion that capitalism has no future to offer them.

C D Ward 5/81

The capitalist ruling class, the bourgeoisie, is often called “Machiavellian” after the Florentine writer, philosopher and republican diplomat of that name who lived around the turn of the sixteenth century. The word is used as shorthand to describe elements, in this case a class, that knowingly plots and intrigues against its enemy or enemies. There is nothing surprising about this as all ruling classes since the beginning of civilisation have adopted and adapted this characteristic of intrigue to their politics and rule, and, with the development of state capitalism, this is even more so with the Lords of the Earth today. In fact, Machiavellianism, shorthand though it is, doesn’t even begin to describe the scheming, conspiratorial nature of the bourgeoisie, a class that has gone well beyond the works of Niccolo Machiavelli and whose actions leave his works looking quite insipid and dated[1].

Machiavellianism doesn’t go anyway far enough in describing the deviousness, the lies, manipulations and ruthlessness of the bourgeoisie that is the daily practice of this class, which has “become the central mode of functioning for the modern bourgeoisie which, utilising the tremendous means of social control available to it under the conditions of state capitalism, takes Machiavellianism to a qualitatively higher stage” (International Review no. 108, Winter 2002, “Pearl Harbour 1941, Twin Towers 2001, Machiavellianism of the US Bourgeoisie”).

 There are other historical examples which can be added to these[2]. Of course the bourgeoisie doesn’t and can’t control everything – nothing like it; particularly when the world is moving into more chaotic times economically, military and socially and  when, in the first two, centrifugal tendencies become stronger and stronger with both affecting the third. And the bourgeoisie, from its very nature as a class based on cut-throat competition, is riven by faction fights and tensions within itself. But “even with an incomplete consciousness, the bourgeoisie is more than capable of formulating strategy and tactics and using its totalitarian control mechanisms of state capitalism to implement them. It is the responsibility of revolutionary marxists to expose this Machiavellian manoeuvring and lying. To turn a blind eye to this aspect of the ruling class offensive to control society is irresponsible and plays into the hands of the class enemy” (ibid). At many levels, and particularly in relation to the proletariat, even though this system is built on sand, capitalist decomposition can only sharpen up and concentrate the conspiratorial nature of the bourgeoisie within the framework of state capitalism, militarism, ideology and repression. The open development of its economic crisis means that the working class should take the ability of the ruling class to manoeuvre against it very seriously indeed. 

One historical example: the French Connection

During and towards the end of the Second World War we see the murderous intrigue that the bourgeoisie uses against the working class. We have the example of Winston Churchill, who with others actively conspired against the Russian Revolution and in the rise of the Nazis to power in order to confront the working class. Having learnt the lessons of World War One and how the working class, even in such unfavourable conditions could still be a major threat, the British and American bourgeoisies developed their massacres of workers through the terror of ariel bombardments. In Italy 1943, the Allies stopped their advance in order, in Churchill’s words, to let the Italian proletariat “stew in its own juice”, i.e., be slaughtered by the Nazis. In a different tack, again in 1943, US imperialism worked with the Italian and American mafia in order to facilitate its invasion and advance through Italy and used them to attack workers’ demonstrations and meetings. Just after the war, the population of Germany was subjected to a regime of forced marches, terror and starvation all planned, organised and executed by the ruling class. The conspiratorial nature of the bourgeoisie is here for all to see but we want to look to the French Connection, Marseille just after the war, to discern some more elements of the nature of this imperialist conspiracy against the working class.

The context is victorious US capital in a bipolar world and the need to confront its Russian rival, secure war-torn Europe against Soviet imperialism and smother any attempts at independent class struggle that could or couldn’t favour the interests of Russia. In Marseille, the CIA joined forces with the Corsican underworld in order to undermine the city’s Communist-led government and to break the 1947 and 1950 dock strikes. Concerned about Russian gains in the Mediterranean and the growth of Russian-backed communist parties in Western Europe the Truman administration came up with the multibillion-dollar European Recovery Plan, later known as the Marshall Plan. The city of Marseille and its docks were vital for US imperialism’s interests and its imperialist reach – including the war in Indo-China. The Corsican mafia had the protection of the French intelligence unit, the SDECE (the French equivalent of the CIA), not least from their cooperation in helping to break the spontaneous outbreaks of class struggle in February 1934 by dockers and other workers in the city by firing into the crowd. The French fascists also used the syndicate to counter workers’ demonstrations in the 1930s. There was continuity in their later use by the Resistance[3], the Gestapo and the CIA. Like the Italian mafia, the Corsican “milieu” was fiercely nationalist, had their own business interests and was happy to work for any paymaster in the interests of the state; they were a major force in the politics of the city. Their cohesiveness, ruthlessness and organisation made them an ideal partner for democracy in the late 40s in the face of workers’ struggles and/or possible Russian influence. When the US occupied Marseille in August 1944, the Resistance was largely infiltrated by thousands of Corsican gangsters and hoodlums[4]. The newly-formed national police reserve, the CRS (Compagnie Republicaine de Securite), had a high number of its officers recruited from the Communist side of the Resistance and they had the task, under the new left-wing coalition, of restoring order and sorting out the gangsters. The clandestine intervention of the CIA subsequently toppled the Communists, purged the Communist elements from the CRS’s ranks and, on the back of working class defeats, a Socialist/underworld CIA-inspired alliance was in charge of the city’s politics: “The CIA, through its contacts in the Socialist Party, had sent agents and a psychological warfare team to Marseille, where they dealt directly with the Corsican syndicate leaders through the Guerini brothers. The CIA’s operatives supplied arms and money to Corsican gangs for assaults on Communist picket lines and harassment of important union officials. During the month-long (1947) strike the CIA’s gangsters and the purged CRS police units murdered a number of striking workers and mauled the picket lines. Finally, the CIA psychological warfare team prepared pamphlets, radio broadcasts and posters aimed at discouraging workers from continuing the strike”[5].  

All elements against the working class

De Gaulle’s RPF won a mandate in the French elections of 1947 and in Marseille their first act was to raise transport prices thus piling increased misery on the working class. The unions organised a boycott of the trams and workers attacked any that were running. Four young sheet-metal workers were arrested for attacking a tram and, early in the morning of November 12, thousands of workers met up in front of the courthouse, attacked the police and freed the young workers.  Guided by their US advisors, successive French cabinets had held down wages and increased working hours. Industrial production was restored to pre-war levels but wages had fallen well below the depths of the depression[6], while taxes rose (le Monde called them “more iniquitous than that which provoked the French Revolution”[7]). Workers were eating nearly 20% less in 1947 than 1938. Following the freeing of the young workers in Marseille, demonstrations and repression followed in and 40,000 workers demonstrating in front of City Hall against the Mayor’s Corsican “muscle” were demobilised only by frightened Communist Party officials calling for calm. Corsican gangsters, who later developed an informal “understanding” with Gaullist governments over their heroin production, opened fire on bands of demonstrators several of whom were wounded, with a young metal worker later dying, and a general strike broke out. Spontaneous wildcats and demonstrations erupted in the rest of France and the Communist leadership, which had some credibility in the working class and which had got the latter to swallow draconian austerity measures, was reluctantly forced into action. One US State Department official analyst, showing that the US was just as much concerned with the proletariat as with Russian expansion, wrote in mid-46, that the Communist leadership “could no longer hold back the rank and file”[8]. By late 1947, 3 million French workers were on strike against the worsening conditions imposed on them by the state’s austerity measures. The US sped up its Marshall Plan and the CIA moved to help to break the strike using the Socialists and the unions – with similar moves in Greece, Turkey, Italy, etc.

In June 1948, the US set up a CIA offshoot, the Office of Policy Coordination, which was more independent, more clandestine than the CIA and its brief was to develop “a covert political action capability” including active clandestine trade union infiltration[9]. With this organisation any enemy of the working class or Russian imperialism, ex-Gestapo officers, Corsican gangsters, “free” trade unions, “socialists”, etc., became allies of the US. Working through the American Federation of Labour (AFL), which was operating its own secret networks in Europe, the CIA/OPC indentified its friends and foes. The French Socialist Party was a friend (de Gaulle was too independent for the US) and US trade union money and activity was directed towards setting up their unions. The SP was also bankrolled through these conduits and police repression against striking workers was directed through the Socialist Interior Minister, Jules Moch[10]. Victory in Marseille was essential for the US and the CRS was purged of CP members and began its new life by violently attacking 80,000 strikers, demonstrators and pickets. The US psychological warfare unit did its job and the CIA worked in the city in hand with the Corsican syndicates, the trade unions, the Socialists, in order to mete out propaganda, assaults and murder to the working class. In the face of this relentless onslaught the workers abandoned their strike in December along with most other French workers. Three years after the 1947 strikes and, if anything, things had got worse for the working class. A new wave of strikes broke out across France against austerity and it was particularly well supported by the proletariat in Marseille. This demanded the further attention of the CIA and $2 million of its funds were channelled through the OPC and the AFL delivered blackleg labourers from Italy where they worked alongside local Corsican criminals. By 1950 the CIA/OPC backed Corsican gangsters controlled the Marseille waterfront allowing scabs and military personnel in despite sporadic strikes. A not insignificant side-effect of this was the growth of the gangster’s expert heroin processing which was to become the USA’s main supplier and whose high-grade number 4 product was responsible for the deaths and addictions of many US users.

In May 1968, when General de Gaulle’s government came close to collapsing faced with generalised class struggle; French intelligence organised 5000 French and Corsican gangsters into the Service d’Action Civique (SAC) breaking up demonstrations, silencing hecklers, providing bodyguards, etc.,  with top police and intelligence officers in charge[11]. When President Georges Pompidou inspected the Concorde supersonic aircraft at Toulouse in 1971, 500 SAC members turned out as bodyguards presumably because of the close proximity of proletarians[12]. They were further used in “dirty” missions.

The idea that the bourgeoisie doesn’t continually conspire against the working class, the idea that it’s just reactive or stupid, that “things just happen”, that it’s not a class of organised gangsters, not only underestimates our class enemy but even more so underestimates the capacity of the working class and the needs of the class struggle overall. The capitalist economic system is breaking down, or threatening to break down at a pace and all the conspiring, planning, plotting and scheming will not alter that in the main; what it will accentuate though is the bourgeoisie’s drive to war and its organisation and plots against the working class. It will defend its imperialist interests against all and sundry and show a unity of interest faced with a working class fighting against the effects of the crisis. It’s got nothing else but ideology, organisation and weapons and it will use them against the working class.

Baboon 8/8/11 

In Israel, over the last three weeks, hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets to protest against the dizzying cost of living, the growing impossibility for the average person to afford accommodation, the dismantling of welfare services. The demonstrators are calling for “social justice”, but many are also talking about “revolution”. They make no secret of the fact that they have been inspired by the wave of revolts in the Arab world, now spread to Spain and Greece. Israel’s premier Netanyahu, whose brazenly right wing policies appeared to have had gained a popular following, is suddenly being compared to the dictators of Egypt (Mubarak, now facing trial for gunning down protesters) and Syria (Assad, now ordering atrocious massacres against a population increasingly exasperated with his regime).

Like the movements in the Arab world and Europe, the demonstrations and tent cities now springing up in numerous towns in Israel, but Tel Aviv in particular, seem to have come out of nowhere: messages on Facebook, a few people pitching tents in town squares... and from this, on one weekend there have been between 50,000 and 150,000 marching in Tel Aviv, (with more than 200,000 on the most recent Saturday) and perhaps three or four times that number have been involved in the country as a whole, the majority of them young.

As in the other countries, demonstrators have clashed frequently with the police. As in the other countries, the official political parties and trade unions have not played a leading role in the movement, even if they are certainly present. People involved in the movement are often associated with ideas about direct democracy and even anarchism. A demonstrator interviewed on the RT news network was asked whether the protests had been inspired by events in Arab countries. He replied, “There is a lot of influence of what happened in Tahrir Square… There’s a lot of influence of course. That’s when people understand that they have the power, that they can organise by themselves, they don’t need any more the government to tell them what to do, they can start telling the government what they want.”. These views, even if they only express the conscious opinions of a minority, certainly reflect a much more general feeling of disillusionment with the entire bourgeois political system, whether in its dictatorial or its democratic form.

Like its counterparts elsewhere, this movement is historic in its significance, as noted by an Israeli journalist, Noam Sheizaf: “Unlike in Syria or Libya, where dictators slaughter their own citizens by the hundreds, it was never oppression that held the social order in Israel together, as far as the Jewish society was concerned. It was indoctrination - a dominant ideology, to use a term preferred by critical theorists. And it was this cultural order that was dented in this round of protests. For the first time, a major part of the Jewish middle class - it’s too early to estimate how large is this group - recognized their problem not with other Israelis, or with the Arabs, or with a certain politician, but with the entire social order, with the entire system. In this sense, it’s a unique event in Israel’s history.

This is why this protest has such tremendous potential. This is also the reason that we shouldn’t just watch for the immediate political fallout—I don’t think we will see the government fall any time soon—but for the long term consequences, the undercurrent, which is sure to arrive”. ‘The real importance of the tent protest [119]’

Playing down the significance of these events

And yet there are those who are only too happy to play down the significance of these events. The official press has to a large extent ignored them altogether. There is an 800 to 1,000-strong foreign press corps in Jerusalem (second in size only to that in Washington) which only began to show any interest after the movement had already been under way for a couple of weeks. You would have to search long and hard for any mention of this movement in ‘progressive’ papers like The Guardian or Socialist Worker in the UK.

Another tack is to label this as a ‘middle class’ movement. It’s true that, as with all the other movements, we are looking at a broad social revolt which can express the dissatisfaction of many different layers in society, from small businessmen to workers at the point of production, all of whom are affected by the world economic crisis, the growing gap between rich and poor, and, in a country like Israel, the aggravation of living conditions by the insatiable demands of the war economy. But ‘middle class’ has become a lazy, catch-all term meaning anyone with an education or a job, and in Israel as in North Africa, Spain or Greece, growing numbers of educated young people are being pushed into the ranks of the proletariat, working in low paid and unskilled jobs where they can find work at all. In any case, more ‘classic’ sectors of the working class have also been involved in the demonstrations: public sector and industrial workers, the poorest sectors of the unemployed, some of them non-Jewish immigrants from Africa and other third world countries. There was also a 24-hour general strike as the Histradut trade union federation tried to deal with the discontent of its own members.

But the biggest detractors of the movement are those on the extreme left. As one of the posters on libcom [120] put it: “I got in a big argument with one of the leading SWP people in my union branch, whose argument was that Israel did not have a working class. I asked her who drove the buses, built the roads, looked after the children, etc and she just dodged the question and ranted about Zionism and the occupation.”

The same thread also contained a link to a leftist blog [121] which put forward a more sophisticated version of this argument: “Certainly, every level of Israeli society, from trade unions to the education systems, the armed forces and the dominant political parties, are implicated in the apartheid system. That was true from the very inception, in the very germinal forms of the Israeli state built up in the British Mandate period. Israeli is a society of settlers, and this has enormous ramifications for the development of class consciousness. As long as it thrives on building colonial outposts, as long as people identify their interests with the expansion of settler-colonialism, then there is little prospect of the working class developing an independent revolutionary agency. Not only is it a settler-colonial society, it is also one supported with the material resources of US imperialism”.

The idea that the Israeli working class is a special case leads many leftists to argue that the protest movement should not be supported, or should only be supported if it first takes up a position on the Palestinian question: “The social protests have been dubbed Israel’s largest since the 1970s and are expected to result in reformed policies or even reshuffled governmental authority. But until the reforms address all of the issues at the core of Israel’s oppressive and discriminatory housing situation, until the policy changes put Palestinians at an equal footing with Israelis, until eviction notices are no longer dealt out on a whim, then the reforms are baseless and the protests are useless” ‘Israel’s one-sided, ‘liberal’ housing protest is not a movement worth joining or even championing’, Sami Kishawi, Sixteen Minutes to Palestine blog.

In Spain, among participants in the 15M movement, similar debates have been taking place, for example around a proposal “that the Israeli protesters should only be supported if they "take a position as a movement on the Palestinian question, denouncing clearly and openly the occupation, the blockade of Gaza and [calling for] the end of the settlements" (from the same thread on Libcom,)

These leftist arguments are being answered in practice by the movement in Israel. For a start, the questioning taking place in the Israeli streets is already challenging the division between Jews and Arabs and others. Some examples: in Jaffa, dozens of Arab and Jewish protesters carried signs in Hebrew and Arabic reading "Arabs and Jews want affordable housing," and "Jaffa doesn’t want bids for the rich only."

Arab activists set up an encampment in the centre of Taibeh and hundreds of people visit it every night. "This is a social protest stemming from profound distress in the Arab community. All Arabs suffer from the cost of living and housing shortages," one of the organizers, Dr. Zoheir Tibi, said. A number of Druze youngsters set up tents outside the villages of Yarka and Julis in the Western Galilee."We're trying to draw everyone to the tents to join the protest," said Wajdi Khatar, one of the protest initiators. A Jewish and Palestinian joint camp was set up in the city of Akko, as well as in East Jerusalem where there have been ongoing protests of both Jews and Arabs against evictions of the latter from the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood. In Tel Aviv, contacts were made with residents of refugee camps in the occupied territories, who visited the tent cities and engaged in discussions with the protesters[1].

At Levinsky Park in southern Tel Aviv on Monday 1 August, where the city’s second largest tent city has stood for nearly a week, over a hundred African migrants and refugees gathered for a discussion [122] on the ongoing quality-of-life protests taking place across Israel.

No reason to put up with austerity

Numerous demonstrators have expressed their frustration with the way the incessant refrain of ‘security’ and of the ‘threat of terrorism’ is used to make people put up with growing economic and social misery. Some have openly warned of the danger that the government could provoke military clashes or even a new war to restore ‘national unity’ and split the protest movement[2]. As it happens, the Netanyahu government seems to be on the back foot at the moment, taken by surprise and trying offer all kinds of sops to take the heat out of the movement. The point remains that there is indeed a mounting awareness that the military situation and the social situation are very closely linked.

As ever, the material situation of the working class is key to the development of consciousness, and the current social movement is greatly accelerating the possibility of approaching the military situation from a class standpoint. The Israeli proletariat, often portrayed by the left wing of capital as a ‘privileged’ caste living off the misery of the Palestinians, actually pays very heavily for the Israeli war effort in lives, psychological damage, and material impoverishment. A very precise example linked to one of the key issues behind the current movement, housing: the government is pouring a highly disproportionate amount of money into building up settlements in the occupied territories rather than increasing the housing stock in the rest of Israel.

The significance of the present movement in Israel, with all its confusions and hesitations, is that it has very clearly confirmed the existence of class exploitation and class conflict within the apparent national monolith of Israel. The defence of working class living standards will inevitably come up against the sacrifices demanded by war; and as a result, all the concrete political issues posed by the war will have to be raised, discussed, and clarified: apartheid laws in Israel and the occupied territories, the brutality of the occupation, conscription, right up to the ideology of Zionism and the false ideal of the Jewish state. Certainly, these are difficult and potentially divisive issues and there has been a strong temptation to try to avoid raising them directly. But politics has a way of intruding into every social conflict. An example of this has been the growing conflict between the demonstrators and representatives of the extreme right – Kahanists who want to expel Arabs from Israel and fundamentalist settlers who see the demonstrators as traitors.

But it would not be an advance if the movement rejected these right wing ideologies and adopted the positions of the left wing of capital: support for Palestinian nationalism, for a two state solution or a “democratic secular state”. The present international wave of revolts against capitalist austerity is opening the door to another solution altogether: the solidarity of all the exploited across religious or national divisions; class struggle in all countries with the ultimate goal of a world wide revolution which will be the negation of national borders and states. A year or two ago such a perspective would have seemed completely utopian to most. Today, increasing numbers are seeing global revolution as a realistic alternative to the collapsing order of global capital.

Amos 7/8/11.

Since writing, the unions and bosses at Verizon have decided to re-open negotiations and the strike has ended (shortly before the 2 week period after which workers were entitled to strike pay!) This article was distributed amongst the strikers on their picket lines by our comrades in the US, who had many discussions with them.

For the first time in 11 years, 45,000 Verizon workers across the Mid-Atlantic region have returned to the class struggle, courageously refusing to submit to the bosses’ logic of making the working class pay for the deepening economic crisis of capitalism!  Our exploiters say we should sacrifice to help the economy get going again, or to support the profitability of a company in order to safeguard jobs. But the latest draconian assault on pension benefits is proof that the more workers give in, the longer they delay their response to the boss’s attacks, the more emboldened and brutal the next round of attacks will be. This is evident in Verizon’s inhuman characterization of its wireline workers as ‘obsolete’. When the sacrifices already made are no longer enough to satisfy the boss’s insatiable hunger for profit, they simply dispose of us, as if we were mere commodities.  Contrary to what the ruling class says, the sacrifices they want us to make do not pave the way for a better future. The truth is, the only future the capitalist system has to offer is one of vanishing pensions, no benefits, speed-ups, frozen wages, increasing unemployment and savage attacks on our living conditions as workers. 

When the CWA and the IBEW put forth that Verizon should not ask for the current deep concessions to workers’ health care, pensions, sick days, disability leave, etc., because of the company’s estimated $6 billion profit for the rest of the year (it has made $9.6 in the first half), they actually hide the seriousness of the capitalist economic crisis. In doing so, they consciously weaken the workers’ ability to confront the attacks with a clear idea of the perspectives ahead. The seriousness of the economic crisis and the reality of competition, which imposes that every company will ask, time and again, for more and deeper concessions today as well as tomorrow.  As companies lose their competitive edge to the ravages of the capitalist economic crisis, their operations lose profitability. To keep pace with the competition, companies have had to modernize their technology or go out of business. Verizon, like all other capitalist companies, has done so with the sacrifices imposed on its workers, with pension deals and health care benefits negotiated most notoriously at the time of the 2000 strike.  As an illustration of how, in this period of capitalist decadence aggravated by the current economic crisis, the unions work hand in glove with the bosses to broker a deal in favor of the latter and demoralize the workers the better to weaken their combativeness in future struggles, we need to remember what the CWA and the IBEW did in 2000. Then, when 86,000 Verizon workers struck over benefits and wages, the CWA and IBEW spilt the membership in two first, then negotiated two separate contracts, each giving in to the demands of management with the result that even the Financial Times hailed the new contract as helping Verizon gain a competitive edge on the developing wireless market. One of the most notorious stipulations of that contract allowed Verizon to transfer 800 of its wireline workers a year to its wireless division, where workers already worked without a pension package. The contract also did nothing to address the workers’ grievances regarding forced overtime. The unions play the role of a broker in negotiations that always favor the bosses, and it traps our struggles by keeping us to the strict guidelines laid down in the trade union rulebook: no mass meetings, no secondary pickets or attempts to spread the strike. In fact, the present strike vote was called by the CWA not because of any specific part of the proposed attacks, but only because the company wasn’t “bargaining in good faith.”

The CWA and the IBEW point at the money Verizon and its CEO’s make as the reason why workers should not give anything back, they further push the bosses’ idea that a strike has legitimacy only when a company is not bankrupt and that workers cannot fight back when a company is not doing well—they must “go down with the ship” so to speak. Workers in the public sector are told the same thing by both the government and the unions: that sacrifices are unavoidable because states are bankrupt. From the perspective of the working class, however, it is clear that the bosses’ interests, driven by profit, stand in open conflict with the workers’ interests, driven by the necessity to safeguard our means of livelihood. 

So, if the unions are the bosses’ foils, what are the perspectives for the present strike? Verizon workers should be under no illusion that this struggle will win by simply following the union’s lead. But what workers can do is use it as a means to come together and discuss how to make the movement more widespread and effective.  Clearly, other workers are sympathetic to the Verizon strike, but to really win, workers need to spread the strike and really make it a movement for the whole working class. A basic example of this is the picket line. Historically, when workers were on strike they would encircle the struck workplaces to physically prevent machines and replacement workers from going in or out, and to appeal to the workers hired to replace them not to take their jobs. Today, the picket line is behind a fence from which workers are told to simply shout at scabs. Workers need to discuss ways how they can use the picket line creatively and make it effective—to encourage solidarity push Verizon back from its draconian cuts. Union workers should try and convince non-union workers of the necessity of the strike. They should stop them and talk with them explaining the reasons for the strike, spreading the idea that it is only through the widest possible unity among workers that the attacks by the bosses can be resisted. Flying pickets could be created to go and talk with the workers in the Verizon wireless stores (who already work with very poor benefits and almost no pension) during their lunch breaks, to discuss what their grievances are, what we can do to integrate them in the struggle, and to point out that the present strike is also for the protection of their own interests, which could inspire more working people to stand up for themselves across the country and across the world. In this way, even if the bosses win this particular strike (which they are likely to if workers follow the union’s lead and give them complete control) the workers would have gained experience and self-confidence, necessary ingredients to wage the future struggles which the capitalist crisis will inevitably force us to wage. 

In the context of the deepest economic crisis of capitalism, with the risk of losing their job or enduring even more oppressive working conditions, the struggle of the Verizon workers is a beacon of hope for the entire working class. But workers in all sectors and in every country are hurting because of attacks on living and working conditions. Cuts in healthcare and increased, lay- offs, wage freezes, endemic unemployment, speed-ups, and increased exploitation at work have been going on for a long time already, and more and more, the working class is looking for ways to resist. Workers, students, and the unemployed across the US and the whole world are looking for ways to give voice to their grievances. In this sense, the current strike by Verizon workers is in continuity with the California student strikes and demos of only one year ago, the Philadelphia and Minneapolis hospital nurses strike, the Mott’s workers strike upstate, the East Coast dock workers strike last fall, and the Madison, Wisconsin public sector workers sick-outs and demonstrations this spring, and also internationally with the tide of revolt that has swept across North Africa and the Middle East, which has reverberated now across Greece and Spain. But it is only when workers are able to take the struggle into their own hands, and out of the hands of the unions, that their resistance becomes really effective.

Internationalism, August 2011.  

After four months of protest, generalising from the region’s popular protest against unemployment, repression and a lack of a future, events in Syria are taking a distinctly darker and more dangerous turn. Under the guise of fighting “armed gangs” and “terrorists” the Syrian regime has unleashed its own brand of terror on the population: air-strikes, tank-fire, anti-aircraft fire, sniper fire, torture, deprivation of water, electricity and baby food and, reminiscent of the most sinister regimes of Africa and Latin America, herding whole numbers of people into sports stadia for “questioning”. At least 2000 mostly unarmed protestors have been killed to date, with tens of thousands of refugees and many more made homeless in their own country. These events have been accompanied by large numbers of deserting soldiers refusing to fire on their own people.

Just a few years ago politicians like David Milliband (as British Foreign Secretary) and Nicolas Sarkozy were sucking up to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and his regime of murderers and torturers; but now the democracies of the west are lining up to tell him to quit. The powers of the US, Britain, Germany and France have all played a very cautious hand up to now, all but directly complicit in the repression and the atrocities of the Syrian military, allowing the smaller regional powers to exert pressure – while also backing their own “oppositional” forces within the regime (Britain, for example, backing the leading dissident, Walid al-Bunni and his connections). In mid-August, the major powers above, along with the EU, jointly called on Assad to stand down and threatened many of the leading figures in the regime with possible arrest. Reports say that the US told Turkey not to press ahead with its “buffer zone” between the two countries, to stand back from such a provocation. In the meantime the US has considerably strengthened its naval build up in the Med opposite Syria’s coast, in the Aegean, the Adriatic and the Black Sea, with a particular concentration on carrying anti-missile missiles and large numbers of marines. The democracies of the west are not interested in the suffering of the population in Syria; Britain amongst others has been supplying the Syrian military with weapons of repression for years. What they fear most, and this is played on by Russian and Chinese imperialism, is Assad’s possible removal creating further instability and dangers from the “devil you don’t know”: Iran in particular looms large in this nightmare of the foreign ministries of the west. Meanwhile Saudi Arabia, which sent its troops and British-supplied APC’s to Bahrain to crush protests and protesters, is increasingly concerned with the growing strategic relationship between Syria and Iran, including their backing of Hezbollah and Hamas. Further, “It has been rumoured for some time that the Saudis, with the UAE and Kuwait, are quietly financing elements of the Syrian opposition”[1].

The chaos of imperialist relations and growing tensions between the US and Iran

In the bi-polar world of NATO and the Warsaw Pact everything was relatively easy in imperialist relations; but the collapse of the Russian bloc has unleashed centrifugal forces where alliances between or against nations are contingent and change with prevailing imperialist winds. Even if the Turkey/Iran/Israel/Syrian relationships, in their different combinations, have shown some changes in the recent past, the abiding cornerstone of US policy, and its necessary war plans, is to protect Israel and target Iran. An Iranian/US rapprochement is not impossible but, with the course of events, military confrontation looks much likelier, particularly given the aggressive policy that American imperialism is driven to undertake in order to maintain its role as the world’s Godfather.

Continuing US difficulties in Iraq, as well as a tendency to US weakening overall, are being kept on the boil by Iranian influence in that country, primarily from the most powerful force in Iran, the al-Quds Revolutionary Guard Corps. According to a report in The Guardian (28.7.11), the above force is virtually pulling the strings of the Iraqi government in what has really been a proxy US-Iranian war in Iraq over the last 8 years. Last year, at the meeting in Damascus that formed the present Iraqi government, General Suleimani, the leader of the al-Quds Corp, “was present ... along with the leaders from Syria, Turkey, Iran and Hezbollah: ‘He forced them all to change their mind and anoint Malaki as a leader for the second term’”. The report goes on to say that “all but two US troops killed in Iraq in June – the highest number for two years, were killed by client militias under ... (the Revolutionary Guard’s) control, the Keta’ib Hezbollah and the Promised Day Brigades”. The US ambassador to Iraq had already reported that Iranian proxies accounted for roughly a quarter of US casualties in Iraq (1,100 deaths and many thousands of injuries).

Growing Iranian influence in Iraq and in Syria too; according to the Wall Street Journal, 14.4.11, unnamed US officials said straightaway that Iran was helping Syrian security forces in their repression against a whole range of protesters. Syria has long been a conduit for Iranian arms and influence towards Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon where it has increased its role since the Syrian withdrawal in 2005 and alongside the weakening of pro-US forces in the country. While they have their own national interests to defend, and while there are some differences – over Israel for example -  the Damascus-Iranian alliance is stronger than ever and though the latter would prefer the Assad clique to stay in power, if it fell then their “partners” would work to install an even more pro-Iranian regime.

As long ago as May 2007, the US Institute of Peace reported that Iran-Syrian relations have deepened. Even allowing for bias here there is no doubt about the stronger imperialist stamp of Iran over the country. A mutual defence pact was agreed in 2006 (the protocol being unreleased), plus an additional military cooperation agreement in mid-2007. Investment and trade between the two countries has also deepened and Syria’s economic woes – worsening with the effects of the crisis – can only strengthen the Iranian hold over it. In fact the development of the economic crisis would seem to make it more unlikely that the US will be able to flip Syria away from Iran.

Turkey’s role

None of this is good news for the interests of Turkish imperialism and its aspirations to play a major role in the region. The waves of Syrian refugees have been a big headache for the Turkish bourgeoisie and Prime Minister Erdogan had condemned the Syrian regime’s “savagery”. Just as worrying for it is the blow to its efforts to suppress the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in its south-east region. The Guardian reports (Simon Tisdall, World Briefing, 9.8.11) that many of the PKK fighters in the region encompassing Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq are of Syrian origin and recalls the 1990s flashpoints when Turkey and Syria almost went to war over the same issue. PKK attacks on Turkish troops and the resulting air strikes over the 17th/18th of August in northern Iraq are surely not unrelated to a larger and potentially more destructive increase in tensions. Tehran has also rebuffed all Turkish attempts to act as a mediator towards the west.

Even though, beyond the manoeuvres of all the major powers around Syria with its cliques and clans, there is still a strong and extremely brave social struggle going on in the country, it stands to be completely overwhelmed and torn apart, not just by Iranian assisted repression, but by the existing and developing imperialist tensions involving much wider areas of the region.

Baboon, 20.8.11.

The most natural immediate response to Anders Behring Breivik's killings is one of horror. The bombing and shootings that killed 77 people (including 55 teenagers) have provoked expressions of revulsion from the mainstream media and politicians across the world. But while the different parts of the ruling class unite in their condemnation of this particular example of terrorism, they offer many different explanations for what happened. 

Not just a matter of abnormal psychology

The response of the Right has been to describe Breivik as insane, a monster, and maniac, a psychopath and perpetrator of evil. Ultimately he is presented as an individual who has done something that needs a psychological or moral explanation. From Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, we get a simple narrative that goes from denying to employing a variety of psychology. The headline to his column in the Telegraph (31/7/11) says “There is nothing to study in the mind of Norway’s mass killer”. However, because “some girl he had a crush on jilted him in favour of a man of Pakistani origin” there were appalling consequences. “Sometimes there come along pathetic young men who have a sense of powerlessness and rejection, and take a terrible revenge on the world.”

The idea that this is madness divorced from any social reality needs to be rejected. The extent of Breivik's alienation from the rest of humanity is certainly exceptional. To shoot down dozens of young people in cold blood because you believe that only the forced deportation of Muslims from Europe can rectify society's wrongs clearly shows a personality with profound problems. But no individual acts in isolation from the society in which they've grown up

To take the most relevant aspect: we live in a world where every faction of the capitalist class participates in a perpetual campaign intended to incite racial and religious divisions. From the fascist groups that openly preach race hate and violence against minorities, to the liberal/leftist insistence on the need for us all to be loyal to an ethnic identity, the bourgeoisie has created an ideological web using the watchwords of assimilation and separatism, nationalism and multiculturalism, to sustain the idea of humanity divided along racial rather than class lines. The distance between a member of a Swedish anti-immigrant party saying of the Norway attacks that "this was caused by multiculturalism" to David Cameron saying that “multiculturalism has failed” is not far. When the Left leap to the defence of the status quo in the name of 'multiculturalism' the jigsaw is complete.

Breivik seemed to have spent a long time in the online twilight and immersed himself on some its furthest shores. He'd clearly been exposed to all sorts of expressions of the disintegration of the most basic of human solidarity. His actions demonstrated the most extreme alienation, but it has to be seen against the background of the bourgeoisie's ideology of racial and religious divisions, which is supposed to be taken as 'normal' and just 'common sense'.

In particular, the propaganda that depicts Muslims as an ever-present threat is only the latest phase of capitalist scapegoating. Over the decades this has embraced anti-semitism, the portrayal of darker skinned immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean as a 'menace' to civilisation, and the arrival of any group speaking a different language or having a different religion as having the potential to disrupt social order. Across Europe there is a consensus among the bourgeois political parties and throughout the capitalist media that immigration is inherently a threat. The lies change, and the propaganda can be more or less sophisticated, but capitalism has found a way to constantly focus on the danger of the 'other', of the alien. This ideology can have an impact on many personalities; in that sense Breivik is not at all unique. 

Living in an irrational world

For the Left Breivik is seen as a typical Christian conservative, as evidence of the danger of growing fascist and racist extremism, and a product of Islamophobia. They confront the psychological explanations head on. In the words of Socialist Worker (30/7/11) “These murders were not the act of a psychopath - they were the actions of a man following the logic of a racist ideology which demonises Muslims.” In following this 'logic' “Breivik wanted to start a race war and he thought the conditions were right.” This does follow a certain logic, but it is the logic of the irrational.

Against the Left's rejection of psychological explanations it is necessary to state the obvious – the attacks in Norway were not the actions of a rational being. They do indeed flow from following an ideology that is inherently irrational. How do you 'start a race war' by attacking your fellow Norwegians?

Breivik's actions were not rational, but that puts his behaviour in line with the rest of bourgeois politics. For example, many Palestinian groups have for decades believed that attacking Israel will provoke a vicious response that will finally persuade Arab states in the region to deploy their military forces against the Jewish state. It's not rational, it sounds like it's based on the Book of Revelation, but it passes for a policy. In economics, a hundred years of experts providing solutions to capitalism's permanent crisis that never work will not deter economists, so drenched are they in the dominant ideology. In the US, it's not just the Tea Party and the fringes of Republicanism, but a whole range of Christian, fundamentalist and other ideologies that weigh on the functioning of the bourgeoisie and on the minds of much of the rest of the population.

Wherever you look, capitalism, for all its inherent drive for profit, for keeping out of the red in its balance sheets, is more and more in awe to the cult of unreason. The Left might think that contemporary capitalism is still set on a rational basis, but the actual experience of modern society reveals an increasing decomposition, part of which is expressed in a growing irrationalism in which material interests are not the only guide to behaviour.

In the case of Breivik it is of course possible that he's an unconscious pawn in a larger strategy, but the experience of Columbine, Virginia Tech and all the other massacres show that you don't need a political motive to start randomly killing your fellow creatures.

What we see with events like the attacks in Norway is something which, at a number of levels, demonstrates the decomposition of capitalist society. You can see the depth of alienation in one individual's behaviour, which unfortunately is not that unusual. There's the conscious attempt by the bourgeoisie to impede basic solidarity and foment hatred. Irrational behaviour marks groups and individuals. The ruling class encourages divisions; capitalist culture promotes and reinforces fear of others.  

Many commentators have pointed to the response of the Norwegian Prime Minister as being exemplary, especially in the way that he specifically said that he would not use the attacks to strengthen the repressive powers of the state. He didn't need to. In the name of opposition to the atrocities there has been a whole campaign for Norwegian national unity. This is one of the strengths of democracy. The reality of class society is supposed to be put to one side as all come together under the 'protective' gaze of the capitalist state. As a class the bourgeoisie is still capable of using the evidence of social disintegration against the working class's potential for developing a real class unity and solidarity.

In the early stages of the events in Norway much of the media tried to convince us that we might be witnessing an Al-Qaida like attack, but had no difficult in changing tack when it turned out to be a 'home-grown' terrorist. This talent for propaganda is one of the few weapons that the bourgeoisie has left, that and capitalist terror.  

Barrow 2/8/11

How do we respond to the recent riots from a working class point of view? As well as the statement put out by the ICC [130], there have been statements from the International Communist Tendency, Solidarity Federation and others, and there has been lively and sometimes heated discussion on various discussion forums, including libcom. Here we will try and take up the main issues rather than look in detail at any particular contribution.

First and foremost, the statements by the three organisations all start by denouncing both the bourgeoisie’s hypocritical campaign to demonise the rioters in the media, which also prepares the ground for the harsh sentences meted out, and the worsening conditions faced by the working class today that underpins the tensions that erupted in rioting. This is absolutely basic regardless of the fact that the riots took place – causing disruption and sometimes danger – in areas where workers and the most disadvantaged live. These are also the areas which suffer most from poverty, unemployment and police repression – the police shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham being the spark that set the whole thing off.

An effort to understand

“It is not for communists to condemn the riots. They are a sign of capitalism’s crisis and decay. Neither do we romanticise the riotous act as an effective form of struggle against capitalist exploitation” (ICT, https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2011-08-09/riots-in-britain-the-fruit-of-forty-years-of-capitalist-crisis [131]). And SolFed “will not condemn or condone those we don't know for taking back some of the wealth they have been denied all their lives” (https://libcom.org/article/anarchists-respond-london-riots-solidarity-federation?page=1 [132]). This does not mean the working class has nothing to say on the question of behaviour. SolFed, finding the riots blamed on anarchism, their political heritage, say clearly “there should be no excuses for the burning of homes, the terrorising of working people. Whoever did such things has no cause for support” and “people should band together to defend themselves when such violence threatens homes and communities”.

The Solfed statement was generally well received among the anarchists, and in general the question of behaviour, of ‘proletarian morality’ (even if not called that), came up in a lot of the online discussions in the libertarian milieu. The dominant mood was of reflection and concern, not one of blindly cheerleading the riots.

Illusions in the looting

However, there remains a widespread uncritical attitude to the issue of looting in particular. Posts such as “we shall critically sympathise the rioters, showing what is good (bourgeoisie rule and property contested) and also what is bad (hurting working class fellows) in the riots” (piter on libcom) see something positive in the looting, and others that tell us that as revolution will not be ‘pure’ we should accept the riots in their entirety, divisive and anti-proletarian behaviour included. Socialism and/or barbarism goes even further and, while recognising that this is not the negation of capitalism, looks at “the insurrectionary aspect … the fact that many of those rioting are getting themselves organised” and then extends the positive to include shopkeepers defending their property with baseball bats “taking action without waiting for the mediation of the police” (https://socialismandorbarbarism.blogspot.com/2011/08/open-letter-to-those-who-condemn_10.html [133]). As if the bourgeoisie, and the British in particular, had not spent hundreds of years honing the art of divide and rule, of setting different groups against each other and using it to their advantage!

A number of people have argued that looting somehow undermines commodity relations – if not subjectively then objectively as one poster on libcom put it. But this view fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the communist revolution and the role of consciousness within it. Under capitalism, commodity relations dominate everything, like a natural force. They can only be overcome by the ‘subjective’ determination of the working class to organise itself, expropriate the ruling class, and redistribute the social product on the basis of need. In massive struggles of the working class that have fallen short of the revolution itself we have seen clear tendencies in this direction. But looting, even when carried out in large groups, does not lead towards such a collective, social awareness: if anything it reinforces the grip of the commodity over the individual. Thus the ICT are correct to argue that “Far from being a liberating form of activity, this sort of ‘expropriation’ is simply a reflection of capitalist ideology”. The nature of the riots was put to the test in practice by several contributors to libcom when they first started. They went to see what was happening, and left because the situation was dangerous and there was no opportunity for any positive intervention. A more successful initiative was the one taken by Solfed members in Deptford, who called a street meeting that attracted about 100 people with the concern to put out any fires - an act of solidarity - but also to discuss the causes of the riots: “Many people spoke of the problems that young people and the whole working class is facing and the need to act collectively to make changes. Out of the discussion came a decision to hold an emergency demonstration the next day against the cuts and to highlight some of the causes behind the riots” (https://libcom.org/article/deptford-hackney-tottenham-respond [134]).

The Deptford meeting was focused on discussing the situation and trying to understand it. It  did not participate in the riot.

We do not look for a ‘pure’ class struggle. Wherever there is proletarian life and struggle this is always contested by the bourgeoisie. For instance in the assemblies in Spain we confronted the Real Democracy Now ideology aimed at reforming the capitalist state; in any strike workers come up against union efforts to keep them within the legal restrictions on pickets, solidarity and extension – but the key thing is that there is a real workers’ struggle being expressed, a struggle that by its very nature can open out to other sectors of the working class and draw them in. In the riots there was no such possibility. On the contrary, the very methods used by the riots tended to create fear and division within the working class, providing an alibi for increased repression and further austerity.

The question of perspective

“We believe that the legitimate anger of the rioters can be far more powerful if it is directed in a collective, democratic way and seeks not to victimise other workers, but to create a world free of the exploitation and inequality inherent to capitalism” (SolFed). True the rioters have much to be angry about, but riots are not the way to do anything about it, quite the reverse. But it is not enough just to address the legitimate anger of rioters – what about the legitimate indignation of the whole working class? Here we agree with the ICT: “unless and until the working class begins to see there is an alternative to capitalism and begins to struggle politically there will be more outbursts from those who have no stake in this society…”. It is the struggle of the working class as a whole that will provide a perspective for all those in society who have no stake in capitalism. Riots express the lack of perspective that results from the absence of a clear proletarian alternative.

Capitalism has repeatedly faced the working class with situations where worsening conditions become increasingly unbearable. At certain moments the exploited have responded by launching a collective revolutionary assault on capitalism, as in Paris in 1871, Russia 1917, or Germany 1919-23. In the 1930s, when the revolutionary wave had already been defeated, there were hunger marches of unemployed workers as well as other struggles and strikes – but all the time the working class was being tied more closely into the bourgeoisie’s ideology and perspective, the insane, murderous perspective of imperialist conflict on a global scale. Today the bourgeoisie cannot provide any perspective for society, they cannot even agree on whether they should emphasise austerity or quantitative easing. Nor, as the ICT point out, has the working class struggle reached the level where it can pose the alternative to capitalism (except for the tiny minority that is convinced of the possibility of communist revolution).

In a post on the ICC forum, a member of the CWO, Jock, makes this comment: “Everyone of us who commented had expected and ICC response that it was "all down to decomposition" but instead we find a materialist analysis which most of us agree with. Ironic therefore that Baboon should then criticise our statement for not mentioning decomposition when we were relieved to find that the ICC had not done so either! After 40 years of capitalist stagnation it is not surprising that social disintegration is taking place…” In fact, the last sentence accords entirely with our analysis of decomposition: it is precisely the long-drawn out nature of the crisis which is at the root of the present tendency towards “social disintegration”. The whole ICC statement on the riots is framed in our materialist analysis of “capitalism’s crisis and decay” in circumstances in which the bourgeoisie cannot impose any perspective on society, however destructive and insane, and where “the race is on for the revival of a really liberating movement of the working class to present an alternative to capitalist barbarism” to use some of the ICT’s words. It is no surprise that the ICT recognise so many aspects of the decomposition of capitalism, even if they do not share our analysis, because that is the reality of the world today. 

Alex, 29/8/11

Quite a significant part of the various sectors of the population in this part of India i.e. West Bengal, seems to be agog with the possibility of change. They are celebrating the decisive electoral defeat of the ruling leftist combine and the landslide victory of the rightist combine. Some are excited simply by the thought and fact that the Stalinist ruling combine has at last been ousted from governmental power. People were so much disgusted with the unlimited arrogance and corruption of almost everyone linked in one way or other with the ruling Stalinist clique. Some people said openly, “we don’t bother about what is going to happen in the coming period. We bother only about ousting the Communist Party of India (Marxist) from governmental power. They are unbearable.” Thus this instant jubilation of this part of the masses of people including the working class and the exploited sectors is quite understandable. These people seem to be relishing a profound sense of relief.

Almost the whole media, print as well as electronic, is leaving no stone unturned in propagating and strengthening the notion of change. They are depicting the CPI (M) as the most notorious villain of the whole episode, the embodiment of everything negative, the root of all evils. On the other hand the victorious rightists combine and particularly its supreme leader is being presented as the symbol of honesty and heroism. They are also never tired of singing paeans of praise for the unlimited power of democracy and particularly that of the purity and maturity of Indian democracy. Quite a significant part of the population seems to be swallowing with relish all such materials circulated by the press in this context. It seems to be working overtime to bring home this point to everyone. The new ruling alliance is  not only enacting scenes of high dramatic populism to show that it is fundamentally different from the previous regime, on every occasion, almost every day, but also seems to be enjoying it wholeheartedly. The bourgeoisie seems to have been quite successful at least temporarily in the task of mystification.

But it has failed to mystify and befool each and everyone. A significant part of the population has not at all been moved by this propaganda of change. A lot of young people who have been eligible to vote for the first time have refused to cast their votes according to some reliable survey reports.

It is urgently necessary to pause for a while to reflect on the real form and content of the change and stop being swept over simply by the dreamy idea of it.

We cannot but point out that whatever the hype about the virtue and power of democracy, this particular election has shown very clearly the dying condition of democracy. Without the direct protection and prop of the bureaucratic military machine it is absolutely unable to stand steadily and function. In its youthful phase of life in the nineteenth century, capitalism had the upper hand and full control of the bureaucratic military machine. But now in its phase of senility it is under the full control and protection of the latter. What a great fall! The centre of gravity of capitalist power is not in the parliament now; it has shifted more and more to the permanent bureaucratic, military and judicial machinery. Various sectors of the bourgeois think tanks are lamenting over this inevitable transformation and degeneration of democracy.

In this context it should be mentioned that democracy, including the purest, oldest and the maturest varieties, is based on three things. These are use of money, muscle and mystification power. In the backward countries like India the use of money and muscle power is predominant. In addition to this, the power of mystification of the working class and toiling masses plays also a very important role. Every political party and leader participating in the electoral battle resorts to random lying and mystification. It is something like a competition in lying. Those who are able to make the people believe the lies as truth are victorious in the electoral game. In the more advanced countries the use of the power of mystification is very much predominant. Nevertheless, in these days accusations of intimidation of the electorate are also being made even in the USA.

Illusion and reality of change

The now ousted leftist combine came to governmental power after a landslide electoral victory way back in 1977 dealing a crushing defeat to the Congress, the rightist ruling party of that time. The leftist combine then claimed to be most determined crusader against the repressive methods and all-out corruption of the then ruling party. They clamored for change and economic development. They pledged to work for the defense of the interest of the working class and the exploited strata of society. They asked their cadres not to be revengeful against those of the previous ruling party who terrorized them and drove them out of their houses and compelled them to flee away. People then, like now, were disgusted with the extreme arrogance, corruption and terrorizing methods of, and the terrorized environment created by, the goons sheltered and used by the Congress party. Then, like now, they were eager for the change of the unbearable, suffocating social atmosphere. They thought and took the election as a means to oust the Congress party and bring the leftist combine to governmental power. Then also there was much hype about the wave of change sweeping over various parts of India. But it did not take much time for the cloud of illusion to be gradually dispersed and the actual reality of the then new leftist regime to be more and more exposed. The protagonists and defenders of that regime gradually began to resort more and more to the same repressive methods and drowned deeper and deeper into the same sea of corruption. They played not only an active but also leading role in the massacre of the masses of peasantry and killing of the working class struggling against the attacks on their living and working conditions in various parts of west Bengal. All such movements have been severely repressed not only by the official police force but also by the unofficial regiment of hired goons. Socio--economic problems, particularly the living and working conditions of the working class and various sectors of the toiling masses of people, began to worsen with each passing day. The problem of unemployment also has worsened.

Today’s victorious parties are very vocal against the all-out corruption and the repressive methods of the crushingly defeated leftist combine. They have claimed themselves to be the vanguard of change. Their most important slogan is “change not revenge” and economic development. They are also pledging to work for the interest of the poor.

But these very parties are the offspring of the Congress party which resorted to repressive methods since the transfer of political power to it by the British in 1947, and particularly in the early seventies. People were afraid of even casting their votes according to will. The members of the Congress party then were the vanguard of the biggest massacre of the sympathizers of the Maoist movement in 1971 in the heart of Calcutta. The state machinery was brazenly used for this massacre by the then Congress chief minister. Lots of leaders, young militants and supporters of the Maoist movement were then killed just after arrest even without the farce of any trial. Many were killed in fake clashes. The houses of lots of poor and landless peasants in various parts of west Bengal who supported the Maoist movement were demolished forcibly by the goons of the then Congress party. Lots of people fled away from their residential places out of fear.

Quite a significant portion of the leaders who were directly involved in those killings and massacre are still leaders of the now victorious rightist combine. But the massacre of the common people struggling for their various demands against a government which has been resorting to more and more repressive methods and all sorts of corruption at all levels has  given a good opportunity to those rightist leaders to wipe out the accumulated blemish and polish their political image to a great extent. This may be repeated in course of time in the case of the severely disgraced and humiliated leftists in the opposition now. After some period of time it is quite likely in the present national and international situation that the new ruling combine will be compelled to resort similar repressive measures with one excuse or other against the inevitable movements of the working class, various sections of the peasantry and the unemployed. It may even surpass all past limits. This is likely to provide the necessary conditions to the disgraced leftists of today to wipe out the thick blemish and polish their political image. In this way the left and the right of capital will help each other and keep capital alive.

The working class and bourgeois democracy

According to the thoughts of Marx and Lenin also, the working class and toiling, exploited masses of people are given the right every four or five or six years to choose by whom they would like to be exploited and repressed in the next five years. So whoever wins it is basically the same for the working class and exploited people. History has proved the validity of this assertion again and again. There can not be any end to the exploitation and repression of the working class by the change of the ruling team or party. The political management of the capitalist socio-economic and political system is only changed through the election. The real dictatorship of the capitalist system remains unchanged and intact. Again according to the concepts of Marx democracy is the best form of bourgeois dictatorship. This dictatorship lies hidden in the relation of production of capital based on exploitation and repression of the working class and toiling masses of people. This relation has nowhere and never been determined by democratic methods. Factories are nowhere run by the democratic method. All aspects of production including prices are not determined democratically.

The bureaucratic military machine, the permanent, most important and strongest pillar of the state, the sole weapon for carrying out exploitation and repression, remains the same. The “parasitic excrescence on the social body” will not only remain intact but it will be much more swollen in the coming period. That means nothing but further intensification of the exploitation of the working class and toiling people in the coming period. This can never be lessened in a single country or part of a country.

There is no fundamental difference between the leftist and rightist political apparatus so far as the defense of the interest of capital is concerned. And for this the leftist political apparatus of capital is indispensable, particularly in this historical phase in the life of global capital when it has been transformed into the biggest obstacle in the way of further progress of humanity and proletarian revolution is so urgently needed. Not only that, the present advanced phase of senility and decadence of the capitalist system will lead humanity gradually towards total destruction if there is absence of world proletarian revolution. This only can destroy capitalism and save humanity. In such a situation the leftist apparatus including each and every Stalinist, Trotskyite or Maoist variety without any exception has been and will be the sole savior of the global capitalist system.

The world bourgeoisie has realized very clearly and profoundly that the leftist political apparatus is indispensable to it in this historical period of unlimited barbarism, where the historic choice is between total destruction of humanity or world proletarian revolution opening the door for the creation of a borderless world communist society free from any sort of exploitation and repression. They can point to the Stalinist and Maoist regimes and the ruling ‘communist parties’ to discredit and attack the perspective of communism. They know very well that if this is grasped by the masses of working class their existence will be fatally endangered. They needed and still need the ‘socialist states’ very urgently only to discredit scientific socialism which for the world working class and toiling people had and still has a great attraction. Their sole aim is to deal a fatal blow to this attraction. In this reactionary task for the defense and prolongation of the life of the totally anachronistic and historically needless capitalist system, the leftist political apparatus is absolutely indispensable. With this end in view they openly abuse the Stalinists, Maoists and Trotskyites in a very calculated way so that the latter can present themselves as the true defenders of the interest of the masses of the population against the attacks of the bourgeois state and thus can derail their struggle for liberation from all sorts of exploitation and repression.

Individual goodwill vs material conditions      

The course of history has not been determined by the goodwill or not of this or that individual, male or female or group or political party at the helm of affairs. It has been determined by the material conditions of the predominant relation of production in a particular historical phase and the conditions of class struggle in that phase. The latter has been the determining factor in the political goodwill or lack of it or its change.

Whatever tall promises are made in the time of election propaganda, whatever goodwill for the masses of people are shown in words, the new government will have to serve the interest of the capitalist system in West Bengal. It may shout aloud that its only aim is to serve the interest of humanity (Manush) as a whole. The victorious rightist combine never tires of asserting that their victory is the victory of mankind (Manush), undifferentiated and classless. But can the interest of capital and that of humanity as a whole and particularly that of the working class and exploited masses of people be the same and defended simultaneously, particularly in this historic phase?

The global capitalist system entered its   phase of senility or decadence since the beginning of the last century. The First World War was the definitive proof of this. Since then it is passing through permanent crisis which was expressed in the outbreak of the great depression of 1929. This led to the breaking out of the Second World War. This was suppressed to some extent after the war in the new international imperialist configuration of the division of the world into two imperialist blocks led by two victorious superpowers, US and USSR. The crisis raised its head again in the end sixties putting an end to the so-called glorious thirty years. Since then the crisis has been intensifying more and more with the passage of time as the relative saturation of the world market gets deepened. In such an international situation the only condition for the existence of capital is more exploitation and repression of the working class and toiling masses. The more any government of any capitalist state will be able to ensure this the brighter will be the possibility of continued existence of the historically needless capitalist system at least in that state. The task of any leftist or rightist government is to ensure this. The task of the new government in west Bengal can never be otherwise. Whatever its good will, real or fake, it will be compelled by the evolution of material conditions of global capital and class struggle to further intensify exploitation and repression of the working class and toiling masses and resort to more fascist methods. Attacks on the living and working conditions of the working class cannot but be further intensified in the coming period. There is little hope for any resolution of the problem of unemployment. This is likely to worsen in the days ahead. There is every possibility that the roles of the political parties and alliances will be interchanged. The right in government will demonstrate their true colors in reality and the left in opposition will also show their original colors. They will leave no stone unturned to present themselves as the true defenders of the working class and toiling people and thus try their best to derail their class struggle from the class terrain and the process of coming to consciousness. There is fundamental unity between the left and right of capital so far as the cause of the defense of basic interest of capital is concerned. There is of course a difference—that of methods.

Task of the working class

The working class should not be swept away by the hype, hysteria and illusion of change. They should not take sides in the dogfight between the rightist and leftist political apparatus of capital for capturing the covetable post of top political management of the affairs of capital. Both are the sworn enemies of the working class.

It should rather focus its whole attention on the intensification of its class struggle against each and every attack of capital on its living and working conditions, developing the self-organization and control of the struggle, its extension to all sectors and its unification. Constant collective struggle against all sorts of mystification by the left and right of capital and for coming to proletarian consciousness is indispensable. This is the only way to resist the attacks and defend its class interest.

Saki 16/7/11        

It has been calculated that between December 2006 and April 2011 the “war on drugs” cost more than 40 thousand deaths (amongst drug dealers, military and civilians). The cost in torture and robbery is incalculable. This is a war waged as much by the politicians and military as the mafia gangs. The bourgeoisie tries to pretend that this is a problem outside of its system, but the truth is that the spread of drugs and crime stems from the same root as any war around capitalist competition to win markets. At the same time it shows the difficulty of the ruling class to act in a coherent, unified manner.  The bourgeoisie’s lack of political control, the growing conflicts within the ruling class itself, brutally and clearly express the advance of capitalism’s decomposition.

 The weight of decomposition has certainly taken on growing dimensions in the least developed countries, where the bourgeoisie is less able to control its differences. Thus we see in countries such as Colombia, Russia or Mexico that the mafia has merged into the structures of government in such a way that each mafia group is associated with some sector of the bourgeoisie and defends its interests in confrontations with other fractions, using state structures as their battlegrounds. This exacerbates the whole struggle of “each against all” and accelerates the rot in the social atmosphere.

This does not mean that the more industrialised countries are immune to the process of decomposition. Although the bourgeoisie in these countries, for the moment, can to a large extent push some aspects of decomposition onto the periphery and act in a relatively more orderly way to damp down its differences, it is not exempt from this dominant tendency. If the specter of drug trafficking has not become a dead weight for them, there are other aspects of the advance of decomposition that effect them, for example terrorism. It is important to understand that the advance of decomposition, even though it dominates the whole capitalist system, does not unfold in a homogeneous way. Nonetheless, given the circumstances affecting the whole world, we can still affirm that the social disintegration we are seeing in countries like Mexico is the horizon towards which the rest of the world is heading.

Without a doubt it is the advance of barbarism that dominates the present world situation. This is deeply connected to the impoverishment that is being accelerated by the crisis.

The advance of capitalism’s decomposition

At the beginning of the 90s we said: “Amongst the most important characteristics of the decomposition of capitalist society, it is necessary to underline the bourgeoisie’s growing difficulty in controlling the evolution of the situation at the political level”.[1]The reason for this lies in the difficulty that the ruling class is having in ensuring its political unity. The diverse fractions into which the bourgeoisie is divided are confronting each other, not only at the level of economic competition, but also (and fundamentally) politically. Faced with the drawn out economic crisis, there are some unifying tendencies, which are mediated by the state; but they only take place around short-term economic aims. At the level of political leadership, the worsening of competition caused by the crisis provokes the widespread dispersal of the bourgeoisie’s forces. On the international scale there is a growing tendency towards the struggle of “each against all”, a generalised lack of discipline at the political level, which prevents the imposition of the order that the old imperialist blocs were able to maintain during the Cold War. The atmosphere of “every man for himself” which defines the international situation is repeated in the activity of the bourgeoisie in each country. It is only in this framework that we can explain the enormous growth in drug trafficking.

Decomposition did not begin on this or that day, but is a series of phenomena that were already present in the previous phases of capitalist development and which have increased during the period of capitalism’s decadence. But it is in the last decades of the 20th century that they were magnified and became dominant. Drug trafficking is a graphic example of this “progress”.

 In the middle of the 19th century, during the phase of the ascendancy of capitalism, the business of drug trafficking had an impact. The trade in opium created political difficulties that led to wars, but in these cases the state was directly involved and the ruling class was not threatened by any resulting instability. The “Opium Wars” directed by the British state are a historical reference point, but were not in themselves a dominant element during that period.

The importance of drugs and the formation of mafia groups with an underground life (with connections of the state, but secret ones) has taken on increasing importance during the decadent phase of capitalism, although at the beginning it did not have the same dimensions it has today. In the first decades of the 20th century the bourgeoisie certainly tried to limit and control through laws and regulation the cultivation, preparation and traffic of certain drugs, but only because it wanted to gain better control of these commodities.

If you think that “drug dealing” is something that the bourgeoisie and its state repudiate, you would be wrong. It is this class that has encouraged the spread of drugs and has made good use of them. Methamphetamine, for example, was developed in Japan in 1919, but it was in the Second World War that its production and use expanded as the Allied and Japanese armies used it to hype up their soldiers and to exacerbate aggressive attitudes.

Until the last quarter of the 20th century the state did not have too many problems controlling drugs. But in the 60s, with the war in Vietnam, some derivatives of cocaine were given to attack-dogs, and then heroin was distributed amongst the troops to placate demoralisation and to make use of the ferocity that it can awaken. With this use Uncle Sam incubated a demand for the drug, and it was the same North American government which encouraged drug production in the countries of the periphery, even supplying its own laboratories.

And although the effect of social degradation began to spread in the US, this still did not worry the bourgeoisie very much. President Nixon did declare the “War on Drugs” in 1971 but he knew that most drug production and sale was still under the direct or indirect control of the US state and of the states that were allied to the bloc under its command.

The states in control of drugs

In the middle of the 20th century in Mexico, the production and distribution of drugs was still not important. Nevertheless it was strictly controlled by part of the state. Not only did the police guard and protect the incipient mafia (as was the case of “Lola La Chata” famous drug dealer in the Federal District during the 40s), but there was a whole confusion between state structures and the mafias. For example, a character like Mazario Ortiz, who stood in as the governor of Coahuila and was a founding member of the PNR and Secretary of Agriculture, made good use of his “investiture” in order to freely distribute opium. The DFS (Direccion Federal de Seguridad, which functioned as a political police) began life headed by military men who controlled drugs as personal businesses.

In the 80s it was the North American State, once again, which wanted to increase the production and consumption of drugs. In the “Irangate” affair (1986) it came to light that the Reagan government, facing limitations on the  budget for aid to the military opposition groups in Nicaragua (known as the “contras”), used resources provided by the sale of arms to Iran, but above all, by CIA funds derived from the sale of drugs. In this tangle, the US government pushed the Colombian mafias to increase production, at the same time assuring material and logistical support from the governments of Panama, Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia and Guatemala. The same government, in order to “expand the market”, produced “derivatives” of cocaine that were cheaper and therefore easier to sale, though more destructive.

This is what the big boss did in order to bankroll similar adventures in the rest of Latin America. In Mexico the US was behind the “dirty war”, which was the war of extermination that the state carried out during the 70s and 80s against the guerrillas, led by the army and paramilitary groups, who were given carte blanche to kill, kidnap and torture. Much of this was funded by money from drugs. Projects such as “Operation Condor”, presented as operations against drugs production, were used in order to attack the guerrillas and protect the cultivators. During this period, according to figures obtained by Anabel Hernandaz, it was the same army and Federal Police who, in association with the mafia groups, controlled the operations to do with drugs[2].

As the above demonstrates the production and distribution of drugs has been constantly under the control of states: what has changed though is that there have been a quantitative and qualitative growth in the indiscipline amongst the different bourgeois groups that have been integrated into the state apparatus. In Mexico the period of the Cold War was associated with the monolithic power of the PRI, which from its foundation (1929) had the task of holding together the “revolutionary family” by distributing sinecures and fragments of power in order to ensure harmony between bourgeois fractions. With the ending of the Cold War, the breakdown of the alliances of the various imperialist powers has been replicated within each country (with their specificities). In Mexico’s case this has been generally expressed through open disputes between fractions of the bourgeoisie. In order to try and overcome this situation there was a change of the governing party and the “decentralisation” of the reins of power. This meant that the state governors and municipal presidents consolidated their own regional power bases, and according to their interests, each of them linked up with one of the mafia gangs, leading to the growth of these groups and at the same time feeding the confrontations between them.

Is there a solution to capitalism’s decomposition?

The acceleration of the barbarity that marks drugs trafficking and the “war” associated with it, which brings death and suffering to the many and higher profits to the few has been generated by capitalism. The entire ruling class is undoubtedly involved in this conflict, which does not mean that it suffers the consequences. However it does know that the worst effects fall upon the workers and it is more than willing to use this in order to assure its control over the exploited. Thus it is the exploited masses that are being killed or are abandoning the land due to fear or direct threats. The bourgeois uses this atmosphere to spread fear, to paralyse all discontent or push it towards desperate actions.

The bourgeoisie, cosseted in its own mystified world, believes that the existence of this problem can find a solution through political action and strategies against drugs. An example of this is the “Global Commission on Drugs Policy” which criticises the policies sponsored by the USA since the 70s, and instead proposes as a solution the revision and reform of the classification of drugs, with the aim of legalising the use of some drugs and ensuring better control of their production and distribution. There are other proposals, even put forwards by sections of the non-exploiting classes, such as the peace movement led by Javier Sicilia[3], which although reflecting real discontent and a rejection of the present barbarity, also expresses a dead-end desperation. Javier’s 4th June declaration exemplifies this, talking about the need... “to reach out and touch the head of the political class, those of the criminals and to get them to transform their lives into ones of human beings in our service. They have the possibility of change if they change their hearts”. Thus despite the reality of Javier’s pain and discontent, as that of many of those who participate in his caravan, this approach ends up placing confidence in the bourgeoisie’s ability to carry out compassionate actions and to solve the system’s growing putrefaction

In reality, the only solution open to the bourgeoisie in seeking to limit the further explosion of barbarism is to cohere around one of the mafia groups and thus to marginalise the rest. This is what happened in Colombia where the crimes and outrages were reduced. The bourgeoisie, through the government, backed the dominance of one of the cartels in order to gain a better control of the situation. This did not mean a solution to the barbarity, only that it was pushed into a region which the state did not control and onto other countries. In Mexico’s case, the bourgeoisie will try to find a conciliation of interests, but in the context of the approaching elections (2012), which will produce even greater struggles over economic and political control at the national level, these differences and the struggle of “each against all” will only get worse, there is no possibility that the bourgeoisie will find a solution to the growing decomposition and corrosion of its system. only the revolutionary activity of the working class can put an end to the nightmare we are living in. what engels (1892) said about the choice facing HUMANITY - “socialism or barbarism” - IS truer than ever.

Tatlin 6/11 (First published in Revolución Mundial 123 [138], the ICC’s publication in Mexico).

Hurricane Irene slammed a vast region of the US from North Carolina to Maine over the course of the last weekend and into Tuesday, dragging away homes and bridges, cutting off roads, submerging neighborhoods underwater, killing at least 35 people, and leaving at least 5.5 million homes and businesses across the region without power in the worst hurricane in decades (still 1,700,000 as of Wednesday, August 31). In New York City alone, some 100,000 customers were without electricity. Utility companies said it would take days to restore electricity in more accessible areas and weeks in the hardest hit and more remote regions. As of Tuesday, August 30 floods were expected to wreak yet more devastation as some rivers in Vermont, upstate New York, and New Jersey were still expected to crest. While homeowners are left to their own devices as to how to repair damage or relocate altogether as they discover that their insurance does not cover flood damage, they, and the rest of the population, are treated to a shameless display of political exploitation and disregard for human suffering by our exploiters. Whether they are to the right or the left or at the center of the capitalist state’s political apparatus, they are trying to reap political benefits from the devastation. Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said that disaster relief money should be paid for with cuts to other programs. He was immediately rebuked by the White House when Jay Carney took the opportunity to try and win brownie points for the Democratic Party by saying, “I wish that commitment to looking for offsets had been held by the House majority leader and others, say, during the previous administration when they ran up unprecedented bills and never paid for them". The ruling class, be it the right, extreme right wing of the Tea party, or the democrats, are making use of this event to fuel their respective rhetoric in the developing electoral campaign, as each political actor poses either as the champion of a ‘fiscally responsible’ government with a ‘balanced’ approach to budget deficit reduction that includes some ‘revenues’ – the democrats – or one that ‘helps the middle man’ by not including rising taxes – the right. The media, those mouthpieces of the ruling class, help either this side or the other as they frame the aftermath of the hurricane in terms of whether and how much aid the government should be prepared to give. Cantor and Carney may well pose as ‘opponents’ in the debate as each vies for power for their respective parties. The fact of the matter, however, is that the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) contingency fund dipped to about $800 million earlier this year and that the damage by Hurricane Irene is estimated at anywhere between $10 and $20 billion. The Republican-led House has already approved annual funding legislation to replenish FEMA’s contingency fund in which additional dollars for disaster aid were offset by cuts elsewhere. The Democratic-held Senate has yet to act on that measure, but the new emergency, coming at the tail-end of a year full of ‘natural disasters’ in the US and in the midst of a ferocious recession, will likely resolve the apparent hesitation by the Democrats in the Senate by giving them a reason to pass the legislation, notwithstanding their raucous blame-game at the present time. Cantor and Carney may disagree as to who is to blame for the current financial dire straits of US capital, but they cannot disagree that cuts will have to be implemented. Facing an unprecedented economic crisis, accompanied by enormous budget deficits which more and more states are unable to finance and sustain, certainly the ruling class has reasons to worry about how it will manage to provide the least possible relief while maintaining its credibility and boost people's confidence in its state apparatus. By contrast, for a great number of the victims of the hurricane, facing the costs of repairing the damage is a real tragedy which may bring with it total financial bankruptcy, not to mention the human loss. Looking at each side from the perspective of the working class, it becomes obvious that the mud-slinging in which the ruling class is currently engaged is proof of their utter failure to address the population's most urgent needs. In an attempt to shore up the tattered image of a quarreling ruling class, the media campaign turned to gathering kudos for the actions of the several governors, mayors, federal agencies, CEO’s of transit systems involved in the evacuations and rescue efforts. Indeed, the pre and post-hurricane media blitz serves several purposes: 1. By imposing a virtual black out on all other news and conducting a veritable media barrage in the days building up to Hurricane Irene’s landing, the media subtly suggested images of a violent and catastrophic ‘natural event’ against which our rulers could not humanly do enough to protect the population in case the hurricane’s impact would have been even more devastating than what it actually was; 2. By giving extensive coverage to the ‘plans of action’ put forth by the various governors and mayors of the cities and states impacted by the hurricane the media helped strengthen the image of a caring, prepared, and efficient state apparatus, thus suggesting that any grievance directed against it regarding the ensuing human suffering is unreasonable and unfounded, while tying the destiny of the affected population to the presence and intervention of the state. The conclusion that the population should draw from all of this is that another ‘Katrina’ will not be repeated.

Cantor and Carney are not the only politicians who see in a human tragedy the opportunity for political advantage. Mayor Bloomberg of New York City, that other reckless capitalist, sees in Hurricane Irene an opportunity to boost his own public image, which was battered at the time of the snow storm of last winter. On Friday, August 26th Mr. Bloomberg ordered mandatory evacuation of 370,000 people from low-lying areas most prone to flooding and ordered the Metropolitan Transit System shut down as of noon of Saturday, August 27th, until Monday. Metro-North, the LIRR, the PATH train to Jersey City, and AMTRACK were also shut down. This was an unprecedented action by a mayor of the city. The three metropolitan airports were also shut down. Measures of this kind have been studied ever since the notorious failure by FEMA and all other federal agencies to prepare for and provide relief in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina put the question to the credibility of the capitalist state in facing up with emergency situations. Therefore, Mr. Bloomberg did nothing ‘extraordinary’. What is indeed extraordinary, are the fame and glory he claims for himself and his ability to ‘save the lives of New Yorkers’, an easy claim to make, given the fact that Hurricane Irene left New York City comparatively unscathed! Had the hurricane hit the city with the same or similar violence as it did the rest of the region, the problems that the latter is experiencing – i.e. power shortages, homelessness, loss of lives and belongings, dirty water – would necessarily be tenfold. Why? Because capitalism has no ability to update the rotting infrastructures of its decaying cities to face up to the demands put on them by a changing climatic situation, ultimately the cause of the innumerable ‘natural disasters’ of the recent times, themselves caused by capitalism. Furthermore, the way in which capitalist production is organized requires the reckless and chaotic concentration of human labor in the megalopolis of the planet. The urban ‘planning’ of cities like New Orleans and Haiti, or the very urbanization of an archipelago like Japan, are a direct result of capitalism’s need to concentrate the population wherever it is the most profitable for its own needs, with no consideration for risk factors to the population it exploits. The catastrophes that ensued in those areas are the total responsibility of capitalism. This kind of urban ‘planning’ makes preparing for emergency situations and rescue operations extremely difficult and inefficient. The need for profit further aggravates the situation by significantly curtailing any serious attempt at evacuations. It also demands that, when evacuations do occur, workers are ordered back to work well ahead of the stabilization of the situation. This is what both Governor Christie of New Jersey and mayor Bloomberg did. In New York City, workers were expected back to work last Monday, even though the transportation system was not back to full operation. In New Jersey, Governor Christie ordered all state employees back to work in a similar fashion. Mr. Christie too, like Mr. Bloomberg, exploited the situation to his own political advantage as his popularity wanes in the face of the draconian austerity measures he has recently imposed on the workers in his state. In a display of total hypocrisy and political calculation he for once edited his right-wing Republican rhetoric of ‘small government’ and started to call on the administration and FEMA for total involvement as he declared the state of emergency for New Jersey!

As it has been the case for every emergency situation in recent memory – from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, to the infamous BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, to the tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri a few months ago, just to mention a few events and just in the US – it will be left to the victims themselves and their neighbors, relatives, and friends to pick up the slack and piece together the tattered remnants of their existence. It has become evident that in the face of what they like to call ‘natural disasters’ all our exploiters have to offer us is ineptitude and the inability to either prepare before an emergency or organize effective rescue and repair after it, effectively turning every ‘natural disaster’ into a human catastrophe. Rather than being just an accidental occurrence, their political maneuvering, lack of adequate planning , and disregard for human suffering are symptomatic of a system that has reached its historic limits, with all this implies in terms of the urgency to finally overcome it.

Internationalism, US

The movement of the Indignados: A report of the demonstrations in Madrid at the end of July

The movement of the ‘Indignados’ in Spain provides us with some rich lessons. It shows a gradual rise in combativity of the exploited faced with the relentless deterioration of their living conditions and a deepening reflection about how to struggle, how to respond collectively to the economic crisis and the attacks of Capital. The movement has moreover seen expressions across Europe, notably in Greece, but also further afield, in countries like Israel and in Chile.

And the recent events at the end of July have confirmed this deep social discontent and the maturation of working class consciousness. Indeed, while the international media have largely ignored the events that hit Madrid at the heart of the summer, preferring to shine their spotlight on the removal of the remaining camps of protesters and proclaiming the death of the movement, the militants of the ICC who were present in the square have found instead that the tens of thousands of ‘Indignados’ who occupied the streets were motivated by a genuine desire to continue the struggle, knowing that the crisis would only create furher havoc and that the struggle would of necessity resume. But it was above all the quality of discussions about the real nature of bourgeois democracy, the trap of reformism, sabotage of the movement by "Real Democracy Ya" (DRY), the importance of the assembly debates... that have truly excited our comrades. They immediately reported their intervention to all the militants of the ICC around the world to inform them of what they had witnessed and experienced. We are publishing this text below as it is, almost in its entirety, which explains its very direct and sometimes telegram-like style.

On the rallies in Madrid in July

Friday, July 22nd: The first columns of marching workers arrived from the working class towns on the outskirts of Madrid. According to many accounts, the arrival of these marchers resulted in massive assemblies and people being very happy together; they hugged, sang and discussed animatedly.

Saturday 23rd: Plaza Puerta del Sol and the surrounding streets were occupied. Maybe 10,000 or more, far more than was reported by the press and TV who spoke only of "hundreds of the Indignados". We were there and we distributed our supplement[1]. It was very well received. Small groups gathered around us. What was striking was the desire of people to talk and how they expressed themselves spontaneously against capitalism and in favour of the assemblies as the most valuable tool. The general assembly began after 10 o clock at night and was devoted entirely to the accounts from the marches. There were some very moving moments as the speakers were very excited and almost all spoke of revolution, of denouncing the system, of being radical (in the sense "going to the roots of the problem" as one of them said) .

Sunday 24th: In the morning in Retiro Park, the assemblies were devoted to specific themes: international coordination, national coordination, political action, using the web ... In the international coordination assembly there were individuals from Italy, Greece, Tunisia, France and also some young Spanish expatriates. A ‘European Day of Indignados’ was proposed and there were also two interventions talking about a World Day, with the axis being on "the fight against the cuts in social spending that is taking place everywhere today." One of us intervened to insist on the fact that more and more people are “in the same boat”. Someone else took up an initiative which arose in Valencia for an "international day of debate on the 15M" in which collectives would be invited not only from Spain but from other countries too [2]. This initiative was given explicit support by the moderator of the assembly.

That said, in the general assembly that followed, there was some manipulation. The focus was solely on the reports from each of the "themed" assemblies, preventing any unscheduled interventions. In addition, the reports from the speakers were too long. The report from the International Coordinating Committee was relegated to last place when many participants had already left. The spokesperson - who we hadn’t seen in the committee - didn’t say anything about the proposed day and we weren’t able to intervene to rectify this.

In the afternoon there was a massive demonstration (100,000 people). There was a lively atmosphere; we succeeded in distributing our press and there were many discussions. At a given point, the police erected a roadblock in the Paseo de La Castellana. Instead of chosing confrontation, the demonstrators divided themselves onto several adjacent streets and then regrouped, encircling the police. The police plan was made to look ridiculous as they found themselves surrounded on all sides with no possibility of reacting [3].

In the evening there was an assembly dedicated to discussing "state and economy." A Catalan who seemed to clearly defend the positions of ATTAC[4], made a very long speech of 30 minutes, in which he said we needed a "cooperative system", that the state was "disappearing" under the weight of the "markets" and also that nations were being "crushed". He suggested that the state and the nation were "revolutionary alternatives to capitalism today, that defending the state and the nation is revolutionary today." A number of interventions, including ours, vigorously opposed these views.

Monday 25th: There was a forum discussing several topics: ecology, feminism, politics, cooperatives . We had arranged a table for selling the press and decided to participate in one of these forums. We chose the one on For or against a new constitution.

A woman gave a long presentation. She spoke about a development of "representative" democracy towards a "participatory" democracy that the assemblies were spearheading. There should be assemblies for everything: to select the candidates of the political parties, to elect the union leaders, to approve the municipal budgets ... It would be, in her words, "a new order, an order of assemblies". All this, she presented as a new contribution to "political science" (sic) ...

The assembly wasn’t impressed by this "discovery". One young person said frankly that the problem was capitalism and that it was impossible to "reform" it or "democratise" it. Another spoke of revolution and wanted to return to the teachings of Lenin to form a revolutionary party. This provoked the anger of an anarchist who, while defending the need to destroy the state and establish the power of the assemblies (or, he added, Soviets) said that Lenin wanted to form a party without workers, with only intellectuals. Another speaker said that we need a revolutionary party which does not participate in the parliamentary or electoral game, but "only accepts the law of the assemblies."

Other interventions denounced the proposed new constitution. "We were wrong in 1978. Why fall into the same error today?". A youth from Ciudad Real spoke about "dual power": the power of the assemblies and the power of "so-called democracy" and he added that we should have "a strategy to achieve the triumph of the former." One girl expressed her thoughts thus: "They want to combine assemblies and constitution, but this is impossible, the assemblies have nothing to do with the constitution, they stand in total opposition to it". Some interventions were made in defense of a new constitution, but a guy who at first read a long text on a "draft new constitution provided by a group from Granada" came back in a second intervention to say that he was only speaking on behalf of the group, but that he preferred "the power of the assemblies". Interventions on the impossibility of reforming capitalism were loudly applauded as was the need to talk not about democracy in general but about the state. One of our comrades responded by saying that the state was the organ of the ruling class, that it was its repressive and bureaucratic apparatus with its troops, its police, its courts and its prisons, and all hidden by the democratic facade: "We, the exploited, have nothing but the assemblies to unify us, for enable us to think collectively and to make decisions together; the power of the assemblies - even if it is a long struggle – is not a utopia if this fight is part of a world-wide process." Several people came to congratulate us for this intervention.

Sensing that the wind was turning, the Catalan from the previous day changed his tune: he was in favour of "all the power to the assemblies" and for a "world government" and that "in this context, we would have enough force to establish new constitutions"(sic). A "marxist" speech, this? Maybe, but in the "Groucho tendency"[5]!

In the afternoon we went to Móstoles - an industrial town on the outskirts of Madrid - to visit the coordination of the assemblies of the South, the one that called the demonstration on June 19th. This was a very combative collective that had participated in 15 M with a class approach. A youth who was a very active participant expressed his joy about the 15M movement and discussed with us the analysis he had made of it: the denunciation of democracy, the shenanigans of DRY on which he made some very specific points, the revolutionary perspective, the awakening of the proletariat, the trap of immediatism, the need to develop consciousness ... The only point on which he disagreed with us was the analysis of Spain in 1936 which he saw as a self-management revolution. He was very happy to welcome us and we decided we would send our press to this location; he was also going to propose to the collective that it should participate in the meeting in Valencia in October.

Some thoughts

These three days were very intense, showing a movement of great depth.

It seems that there is still a large amount of discontent within the movement but there are other important aspects too: a desire to discuss and clarify, a sense of togetherness, a continual search for links ...

From the beginning, DRY and its satellites have done their best to keep the movement inside the straitjacket of a series of "specific demands"- the famous catalogue of democratic demands. There was always muted resistance in a large section and open opposition from a large minority.

However, two months have passed and "the confrontation between classes" has not yet come about[6]. Is this is a weakness? Is it a sign that the movement is running out of steam? If we review the reasons why class movements have ended in recent decades, we see that one of the causes is the physical defeat but the most common cause was the ideological defeat. Led away from its class terrain, the class has found itself locked in a combat with no way forward, which eventually led to deep demoralisation. But the exhaustion of the movement in France in autumn 2010 was not exactly a result of any of these factors. It was mainly due to the fact that the government would not give way despite the massive protest and, faced with that, it was difficult for the core of the assemblies to confront the unions. What we find in Spain, is a characteristic that’s even more "original" and certainly still a bit disorienting for some politicised minorities but also for the bourgeoisie itself: the movement avoids a direct confrontation and devotes itself to reflection and to developing links and solidarity ... We could say that the movement prefers to prepare for future confrontations by "building up its forces."

On the one hand, a degree of consciousness is emerging of the huge stakes on the immediate horizon[7] But there is also a degree of consciousness of the class’s own weaknesses, an awareness of  its lack of confidence in itself, the need to rediscover its class identity, in short, a recognition of the lack of maturity in being able to react to the ongoing situation of brutal attacks and deteriorating living standards.

In this context, this attempt to "build up its forces" also shows a certain foresight. This is probably a necessary and inevitable phase in a period in which the perspective of widespread class confrontations is looming. The movement of the 15M renewed and developed a whole range of features that were present in embyonic form in the movement in 2006 against the CPE: assemblies, the emergence of a new generation, giving specific attention to ethical and subjective factors, wanting to establish new links, starting a conscious battle ...

Reflecting on the days in Madrid, a series of observations are striking:

- people spoke quite freely about "revolution", because they saw "the system" as the problem;

- "all power to the assemblies" emerged from the ranks of a small minority and became more widespread and popular ([8]).

- The push for the "international expansion" of the assemblies was quite remarkable, as is indicated by growing support for a proposal for a "world day of assemblies."

It's true that this was all taking place in the midst of great confusion. All sorts of things were added to the cocktail of "revolution": self-management, cooperatives, nationalistion of the banks ... On internationalisation, we had a conversation with a young Valencian: he reproached us for our scathing denunciations of DRY and pointed to the proposal from DRY for a "European day of struggle that could become worldwide" as evidence against this. At the same time, he added: "I do have a problem with the agenda for that day. If the goal is democracy, why is it that no country has a true democracy? "

The proletariat suffers from the weight of the dominant ideology with DRY and other bourgeois forces([9]) present in the assemblies supported by the politicians and the media. At the same time the communist minorities are small in size and influence. In this context how can we not expect a debate taking place in the midst of enormous confusion with a proliferation of the most diverse theories and the most ridiculous proposals? Consciousness has to forge a way through this chaotic and dizzying situation.

The proletarian collectives

In the assemblies, we saw that DRY - the tentacle of the state in our midst - was confronted with muted resistance and by an increasingly active minority[10]. We should differentiate its two parts: the first one, much larger than anyone would imagine, passively resisted DRY’s proposals, let it go ahead, not daring to remove it from its leading roles, but expressed a variety of objections to its proposals.

By contrast, a minority element did oppose the democratic, citizenship and reformist politics, opposing it with support for class politics and for adopting a revolutionary perpsective of the struggle against capitalism, and for the power of the assemblies.

This minority generally organised itself inside "collectives" that became widespread and devoted lot of work to reflecting on things, most notably, to our knowledge, those in Valencia, Alicante and Madrid, even if, for now, these collectives are dispersed and scattered without having succeeded in breaking away from a concern with local actions.

ICC 1/8/11

For some weeks now, among the posters for L’Oréal, Décathlon, Dior etc there’s a new one from UNICEF: “Hunger Emergency: two million children threatened by the food crisis in the Horn of Africa”. They display graphic pictures of anguished mothers holding undernourished children. But the careful work of the publicity experts is all in a good cause. We the consumers are enjoined to put our hands in our pocket, while at the same time letting us know that the democratic state has set up structures which will allow good citizens like ourselves to come to the aid of the underprivileged.

We reject this way of seeing things because it is an insidious way of making us think of ourselves as “privileged”, as people who are spared the worst kind of misery and should not therefore complain too much about the minor austerity measures being introduced by the governments of the central countries. 

 What is happening in the Horn of Africa?

It is true that the situation in Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Kenya is particularly dramatic and disgusting. An unprecedented drought (the UN is talking about the worst drought for 60 years) has hit the Horn of Africa with merciless force – and this is a region which has been a theatre of war for over two decades. In an interview published in Figaro.fr, Andrée Montpetit, quality controller for the NGO Care in Ethiopia, puts it like this: “I am hearing things that I have never heard before. A villager from Dambi, in the Morena region, explained to me on Friday that even camels are dying of thirst, whereas in the great drought of 1991 the camels survived. In Borena, you have to walk six hours there and back to reach a source of water. This has never been seen before. There is no water, no grass. The cows are dying like flies”. The UN has estimated that more than 12 million people are in a desperate situation. In Somalia, the situation is unbearable. Since 2006 it has been the scene of conflict between the Ethiopian army and the al-Shabab militias which control up to 80% of the country and have imposed a very harsh version of Sharia law. More than 9 million inhabitants are living in a daily hell, deprived of food, wracked by disease and heat, with no water to wash themselves. As for humanitarian aid, the NGO’s themselves are denouncing the lack of any real provision. Even worse, when aid does arrive, it is often blocked or stolen by the Islamist rebels fighting the government, or by the Somali army for the same military reasons. “The most recent example, last Friday (12 August), was the looting of two trucks of food aid by Somali soldiers, just before it was due to be distributed to starving families in a neighbourhood of the capital. The fusillade that followed left five dead” (Courrier International no 1085, 18-24 August 2011). You hardly dare imagine what happened to these families in Mogadishu, or to the thousands of other families who have fled the capital, and have been parked in refugee camps under a burning sun, with no more food and water than needed to survive from one day to the next. “Mahieddine Khelladi, executive director of the NGO Islamic Aid, prefers to talk about ‘the serious risk’ of supplies being stolen. ‘In a hospital that I visited, one which had been sent medicine, the pharmacy was empty’, he said” (‘Somalie: l’aide humanitaire détournee?’ 20 Minutes, 22 August 2011). And the intervention of the great powers is not going to make anything better, far from it. “Since the collapse of the government in 1990, the USA has been in military occupation of part of the terrain. This was pushed through by the ‘Restore Hope' operation in 1992. This was also the time when France's Bernard Kouchner arrived in Somalia carrying sacks of rice on his shoulder, discretely followed by some French army contingents!” , as we wrote in February 2010, in ‘Yemen, Somalia, Iran, the drive to war accelerates [146]’. Acting solely in defence of their capitalist interests in this important geostrategic zone[1], the great powers have done nothing to help the impoverished inhabitants of the region. In fact, the exacerbation of imperialist tensions in the region makes the whole situation worse. Among other things it is pushing the armed groups to recruit more and more young people. “According to a recent report by Amnesty International, al-Shabab, which has lost a lot of fighters since the beginning of the year, has been reduced tor recruiting more and more children” (Courrier International, ibid).

The faces of so many children in the cradle of humanity are cracked with heat, tormented by flies, bleeding and emaciated; or else they are marked with the scars of war, eyes empty yet full of hatred, a machine gun in their hands. Faces sculpted by decades of capitalist barbarism. Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution are being put into question by the survival of this utterly cynical system. We should be lucid about this: what is happening in Africa and in all countries ravaged by war and poverty is the future that capitalism is shaping for all of us. No government, no armed force or NGO can hold back the destructive dynamic dictated by the laws of profit and the interests of imperialism. In the central countries, galloping inflation and austerity packages announce where things are going. Only the overthrow of capitalism, the work of a majority seeking for authentic solidarity, can free humanity from the talons of his dying system.

Maxime 27/8/11       

Our comrade Claude died in July 2011 from respiratory problems at the age of 60.

It was in the 1970s that she had her first political experiences, in the frenetic post-68 period at the University of Vincennes, where she was initially a member of the Trotskyist LCR. Like many students at that university, even in those days, she had to take on a number of temporary jobs in order to support her studies in psychology. Along with other students, mainly from Vincennes, she took part in a political discussion group and discovered the positions of the ICC. These discussions led her to break with the LCR and Trotskyism. She joined the ICC in September 1975, along with a number of others from the discussion group. She was a member of the ICC’s section in France until 1990, having been somewhat isolated from the organisation over the previous two years following her move to the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean.   

When she decided to come back and live in the capital of France, in 1992, it was partly in order to be more closely associated with the activities of the ICC. After a whole period of difficulties when she returned to France, she took part in a number of activities (particularly interventions) alongside the ICC, and the question of rejoining the organisation was then under discussion. However she hesitated to take this step, largely because of the rapid deterioration of her health which was both a physical handicap and a challenge to her morale. For this reason, despite a growing involvement in our work and knowing that she would be very welcome in our ranks, she never formally rejoined the ICC.

In any case, whether as a member or as a very close sympathiser, we can testify to her powerful attachment to the struggle of the working class, to the revolution, and to the ICC, as underlined by her support for the organisation in its political struggles at the end of the 90s and beginning of the 2000s. We thus pay homage to her as a militant devoted to the proletarian cause.

We have many warm memories of her as a militant and a woman of great heart – spontaneous, vivacious, intelligent, extremely generous and sensitive and always willing to offer help and support.

In the life of the organisation, when the comrade was convinced of something, she did not keep it to herself. In her early years as a militant she could even be somewhat opinionated in the defence of her ideas. But this didn’t stop her from listening and learning, from enriching her point of view through discussion. She took part in a number of hard political conflicts in our ranks but never developed any resentments or rancour.

What struck many of us, who were often with her at demonstrations and other interventions, was her ability to establish contact with workers and stimulate discussion among them, even in difficult circumstances of indifference or hostility. She was often involved in carrying on discussions with small groups at the end of demonstrations, while continuing to distribute our press. She was able to put herself in other people’s shoes and find simple and convincing words which struck a cord with them without conceding anything of her convictions. No one was immune to the warmth which accompanied her words. This was a comrade known for her great depth of human feeling.

None of these qualities went unnoticed by those close to her, which of course includes militants but also her family, colleagues and friends, to whom she always showed the greatest loyalty.

We join all of them in sending you a last greeting, Claude. You leave a great gap in or hearts, and we will always hold a magnificent picture of you in our minds.

ICC 10/10/11             

We are publishing here a contribution to the discussion within the ICC on the significance of the events of 9/11. The comrade has some concerns that the majority position of the ICC on 9/11 accepted rather uncritically that it was an ‘inside job’, thus leaving the organization open to being associated with the ‘Let it Happen on Purpose’ wing of the ‘Truthers’ movement. Instead he thinks that the incompetence of the Bush administration had a larger role to play before and during the events. Nevertheless, we think the following text is a valuable contribution to the discussion and we hope other comrades can join in with it via the forum on our website.        

Readers of Internationalism will undoubtedly be familiar with the “9/11 Truth movement,” a major sub-cultural phenomenon that has developed in response to the official explanation of the events surrounding the 9/11 attacks. For much of the last decade, it has not been possible to attend a major demonstration or protest march without encountering a contingent of so-called “9/11 Truthers.” Bumper stickers and posters declaring, “9/11 was inside a job” are a frequent site in Manhattan and elsewhere. Jesse Ventura, former Minnesota Governor, navy seal and professional wrestler and current TV host of the cable show “Conspiracy Theory,” has raised the possibility that the Twin Towers and the infamous Building 7 were destroyed not by the molten fire resulting from the collision with the jumbo jets, but by a “controlled demolition.”[1]

The “9/11 Truthers” are a diverse bunch, ranging from serious academics and researchers who do not accept the official version of 9/11 at face value to paranoid individuals and groups at the very fringes of bourgeois society who believe all kind of crazy nonsense and who never heard a conspiracy theory they didn’t believe. While most 9/11 Truthers would seem to hail from the left of the bourgeois political spectrum, there are right-wing versions of the phenomenon as well, such as that spewed by über conservative former judge and current Fox News host Andrew Napolitano. On the other end of the spectrum, Paul Zarembka—Professor of Economics at SUNY Buffalo and self-described Marxist, whose academic work included editing a book on Rosa Luxemburg’s legacy[2]—has recently emerged as a leading figure of the movement.

Over the last decade, 9/11 Truth has developed a considerable weight within the culture in the United States and beyond.  Left wing and liberal radio talk shows are often interrupted by callers defending 9/11 Truth, often to the dismay of the embarrassed host. Left/liberal comedian Bill Maher, host of HBO’s popular show “Real Time with Bill Maher,” has reported being stalked by 9/11 Truthers, several of whom managed to disrupt an episode of his live show in 2009.[3] Just as the spectre of association with “Birther” and other wild conspiracy theories surrounding the legitimacy of Obama’s Presidency haunts Republicans, the threat of being identified with 9/11 Truth is a constant danger for anyone who has the audacity to publicly question whether the US government always tells the truth to its citizenry.

As we all know, the official story on 9/11 offered up by the US government and parroted back by the mainstream bourgeois media is powerful in its simplicity: A group of Islamic extremists, almost all of them from Saudi Arabia, were sent on a daring suicide mission inside the United States by Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network in order to pull off the “big spectacular,” an attack on the United States homeland so brazen and destructive that it would cower the world’s only remaining superpower into submission.

According to this narrative, the plan was hatched in a small apartment in Hamburg Germany, where ringleader Mohammed Atta and others devised an ingenious plan to exploit the US’s lax immigration laws to obtain jumbo jet flight training at American flight schools and then use that training to crash hijacked jets into important landmarks in New York and Washington, DC. In the official story, the 19 hijackers were able to live in the United States for months or years at a time, without harassment from law enforcement or the security services, due largely to the Byzantine nature of US immigration laws and the inability of multiple intelligence services to “connect the dots.” The 9/11 attacks were thus the result of a determined and ruthless enemy’s ability to exploit an open and democratic society to achieve their horrific ends. The lesson of 9/11 was that faced such a persistent foe without any scruples, Americans would have to learn to live with enhanced security measures, scaled back civil liberties and the fear of future attacks indefinitely.

It’s not surprising that this story is questioned by many who simply cannot accept that the world’s last superpower, with military and intelligence assets that dwarf almost all other world powers’ combined resources, could prove so blatantly incompetent as to not know these attacks were coming.[4] For many, it is a short leap to the conclusion that given the events that followed the attacks—the rapid launch of the war against Afghanistan, the quick transition to the invasion of Iraq (a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11) and the rush to curtail civil liberties—that the US government probably knew more about the attacks beforehand then admits. Not willing to fall for the myth that the US is always a benevolent democratic power, the 9/11 Truthers generally agree that the attacks were a pretense for the US to launch an imperial project in the Middle East, with many concluding the goal was to control the region’s massive oil supplies.

While most 9/11 Truthers share the belief that the attacks were foreseen by the state as an excuse to launch a war effort in the Middle East and militarize domestic society—a so-called “False Flag” operation by the US intelligence services—the movement has remained bitterly divided over whether the attacks were actually carried out by US agents themselves—such as planting explosives in the Twin Towers beforehand (a so-called “controlled demolition”)—or whether the attacks were an Al Qaeda operation that was allowed to go forward by the US state with the aim of exploiting the aftermath for military and domestic political purposes. The debate between “MIHOP” (Make it Happen on Purpose) and “LIHOP” (Let it Happen on Purpose) has consumed the bulk of the movement’s energy, resulting in a number of splits and the development of several competing factions that continue to characterize it today.

Bourgeois Machiavellianism and the Role of Revolutionary Organizations

Long-time readers of Internationalism will probably recall the series of articles that we published on the 9/11 attacks earlier in the decade. In fact, our most extensive article on the topic “Pearl Harbor 1941, Twin Towers 2001: The Machiavellianism of the US Bourgeoisie”[5] has been among the most read articles at www.internationalism.org [152] over the years, most likely owing to the similarity of the title to 9/11 Truther David Ray Griffin’s book A New Pearl Harbor. [6]

Readers of those articles will likely conclude that there is much that is similar in the analysis we published and the “LIHOP” version of 9/11 Truth theory. Indeed in the above article it was argued: “We do not have the benefit of investigations after-the-fact by review boards that might reveal secret evidence on whether elements of the ruling class had some complicity in the attacks, or had advance knowledge but permitted the attacks to occur. But as ruling class history demonstrates, particularly the events at Pearl Harbor, such a possibility is far from unthinkable, and if we examine recent events, based solely on what has been reported in the media—a media that incidentally is completely enrolled in, and supportive of, the government’s current political and imperialist agenda—we certainly find circumstantial evidence for such an hypothesis.”[7]

Later in 2004, following the report by the 9/11 Commission put together by the Bush administration to supposedly conduct a thorough investigation into the events that led to the attacks, we published an article that went further: “Public Testimony in the 9/11 Commission’s investigation of the alleged ‘intelligence failings’ offer ample confirmation of the analysis of these events developed by the ICC in the fall of 2001, immediately after the attacks. While bourgeois politicians finger point and try to outdo each other in proposing a revamping of the intelligence apparatus and repressive legislation to strengthen the domestic spying and police powers of the state, the real lesson of the hearing is never mentioned: The American government knew that an attack was coming and consciously permitted it to happen for political and ideological purposes, much the same as the Roosevelt administration permitted the Japanese attack that it knew was coming at Pearl Harbor in 1941, to give it the pretext to mobilize a reluctant population for entry into World War II.”[8]

Still later in an article on the fourth anniversary of the attacks, we published an article with the firmest stance yet: “Our alleged conspiracy theories and paranoia notwithstanding, there is no longer any factual dispute that the American capitalist state was aware in advance that attacks were coming, knew who the specific leaders were, and was aware that they were in the US. For the bourgeoisie and their media, the debate is about how such terrible errors, poor judgment, lack of communications, incompetence, etc, could occur. For us, as revolutionary Marxists, the question has been to understand the political purpose behind the government’s policy to permit the attacks to occur.”[9]

Readers may be wondering at this point what relation the ICC might have with the 9/11 Truth Movement? Are we going to see ICC militants participating on panels at 9/11 Truth conventions? Will Internationalism be contributing to future 9/11 Truth publications? The answers to these questions are: none, no and no! First, the ICC does not have a litmus test for its militants regarding their position on the events surrounding 9/11. While some militants may be convinced—in a manner similar to the LIHOP theories advanced by the 9/11 Truthers—that elements in the US government allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur in order to exploit them for imperialist and domestic purposes; others may be ambivalent or more likely to believe the attacks were a result of the utter incompetence of the Bush administration and thus a function of the growing decomposition of US state capitalism. It is not uncommon that some views expressed in ICC articles—when they do not concern a fundamental class position—reflect the personal take of the author, rather than an official position of the organization.

However, what we all do agree upon is that lies, distortions, manipulations, ideological campaigns and Machiavellian maneuvers are fundamental weapons employed by the bourgeoisie in its struggle to control capitalist society—weapons whose use are only amplified in the period of capitalism’s sheer and utter decomposition. Therefore, what becomes of the utmost importance in the analysis of the events surrounding the 9/11 attacks is not whether or not the US state was involved in carrying them out or allowing them to happen, but to what use it was able to make of the attacks in the aftermath. For if the 9/11 attacks were a function of a completely incompetent Bush administration and the degradation of the intelligence services, they were certainly able to recover from this incapacity with enough rapidity to implement a grand strategic plan that saw the United States launch two new wars in two years. This simply would not have been possible without a massive imperialist offensive in which the US was able to use its victimhood on 9/11 as a club to bludgeon the other major powers into acquiescing to its war aims in Afghanistan accompanied by a major domestic ideological campaign to unite the working class behind its war drive in the Middle East. This latter ideological campaign was initially so successful that on the eve of its attack on Iraq in 2003 a majority of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks!

Quite simply put, regardless of one’s personal opinion on what really happened in the lead up to the 9/11 attacks, what happened afterwards seems quite clear: The US bourgeoisie launched a major Machiavellian campaign to exploit the attacks for its imperialist and domestic advantage. Is the rapidity with which the US state was able to recover from the attack to launch these campaigns sufficient evidence to conclude it was involved in the attacks or allowed them to occur? Reasonable people can differ on this account, but for us it is not a class line issue. However, as we have argued in our previous articles, it is far from out of the question. History gives us many instances in which the bourgeoisie of a particular state has consciously allowed an attack on its soil to take place in order to manipulate the aftermath to its advantage. As we have pointed out—along with authors in the “LIHOP” camp of 9/11 Truth—there is some historical evidence that the Roosevelt administration was not taken by surprise by the Japanese attacks at Pearl Harbor and allowed them to proceed with the aim of enrolling a reluctant population in the Second World War. But we digress; we are now on the terrain of the Truthers and they know the details better than we do!

As a revolutionary organization we lack the capacity to carry out the kind of investigation that might ultimately get to the precise “truth” of what happened on 9/11; however, we need no such resources to understand the period following the attacks and to appreciate how the ruling class employed them to its full advantage. With or without malice aforethought of the actual attacks, the bourgeoisie is still a class of liars, thugs and murderers. Its rule is still historically obsolete, ready to be replaced by the power of the workers’ councils.

9/11 Truth and The Ideological Fracture of Society

What then of the 9/11 Truth movement itself? Of what significance is it that there has developed a somewhat considerable sub-cultural movement within decomposing capitalism that takes as its central precept the belief that the state is capable of and willing to murder thousands of its own citizens and then construct an elaborate lie to cover it up? Does this reflect a growing questioning within society of the nature of the state or is the 9/11 Truth movement more likely to trap those with serious questions about what happened that day in the dead-end of bourgeois legalism and a fruitless search to get the “truth” from the capitalist state?

From the Marxist standpoint, we think 9/11 Truth most likely performs the latter function. The notion that the “truth” about 9/11 can ever be won from the capitalist state is a sheer an utter illusion. The model of “9/11 Truth” ultimately presupposes an exercise in bourgeois legalism, the appointment of an impartial jury with access to all the relevant documents, witnesses and evidence (to use the legal parlance “full discovery”) that independently judges the evidence and arrives at the “truth” beyond a reasonable doubt. However, anyone familiar with the American criminal justice system knows that this model doesn’t work so well in practice. But even if it did, it is doubtful that in a world marked by ideological decomposition, competing “truth narratives” and magical thinking, society could ever arrive at a genuine consensus of what truly occurred in the lead up to events so historically momentous as the 9/11 attacks. Just as the right-wing conspiracy theorists refuse to accept Obama’s legitimacy regardless of what “evidence” they receive, it is unlikely that many of those who believe 9/11 was an inside job could ever be convinced otherwise. If official evidence were ever to emerge that supported a “LIHOP” interpretation of the attacks, would the proponents of “MIHOP” be convinced? Unlikely.

Moreover, there remains a significant percentage of the population who are simply unwilling to accept the idea that the government is capable of such an exercise in self-injurious barbarism. Is there any document that can be discovered that will change their minds? Let’s face it: The only way we will ever get the “truth” about 9/11 is if the bourgeoisie wants us to have it, and even then we can be assured we will only ever get half-truths and distortions, most likely in the context of a campaign that serves the interests of one part of the ruling class against another in its incessant factional disputes (i.e. Watergate).

Perhaps it is for this reason that the bourgeoisie is so uncomfortable with the 9/11 Truth movement and wastes no opportunity to slam it as just another wacko conspiracist phenomenon to be assimilated to grassy-knoll theories, moon landing skeptics and fluoridation critics.[10] Maybe it is the inability of the bourgeoisie today to forge a lasting social consensus that is proving so frustrating at the moment, so much so that phenomena like the 9/11 Truth movement are summarily dismissed as crazy talk in the bourgeois media and so heavily derided by capitalist society’s official intellectual spokespersons, despite the work it does in trapping critical minds in the dead end of bourgeois legalism. “The problem with 9/11 conspiracy theories is that they presuppose a state that is actually competent enough to pull something like that off,” is a refrain we have heard time and again when this topic has been discussed by pundits supposedly in the know.[11] In order to try to recreate the social consensus it had in the immediate aftermath of the attacks—a consensus that evaporated into nothing in the span of just a few years as a result of the Iraq quagmire and a developing economic catastrophe—the state has been forced to plead incompetence!

At the end of the day, the 9/11 Truth movement leads us nowhere, except back onto the terrain of bourgeois legalism and a fruitless search for a “truth” that is simply impossible to win from the bourgeois state. Perhaps someday, when human society is reconstructing itself in a communist direction, historians of the future will resolve this burning question and a consensus that represents the “truth” of what actually happened in the lead-up to that fateful day can be forged. But for now—in the absence of the ability to conduct the kind of investigation this would require, in the context of a society in which a consensus about the “truth” seems impossible—we must focus on the essential lessons of 9/11 that are detectable today. For whatever else, these attacks stand as prime evidence of the galloping decomposition of capitalist society and the willingness of the bourgeoisie to exploit tragedy for its own imperialist and domestic ends.

--Henk

09/05/2011

We are publishing below an article by the ICC's section in Turkey on recent developments in imperialist tensions in the Middle East.

The ruling class has had its hands full lately as imperialist conflict in the Eastern Mediterranean continues to intensify. The five-point strategy package announced after the publication of the UN's Palmer Commission report into the Mavi Marmara incident[1], the renewal of relations with Israel, and the tension over Cyprus' oil exploration in the Mediterranean, are set to dominate coming talks between Turkey and Israel. Our aim here is to analyse the background to these imperialist tensions and their implications for the working class.

The relations between Turkey and Israel go back to the formation of Israel and have had their ups and downs ever since. A similar version of the recent Turkey-Israel crisis took place in 1980 with the occupation of Eastern Jerusalem. Afterwards, with a series of military agreements and secret protocols, the relationship improved throughout the 1990s. For Turkey, the most important partner of its foreign policy US-oriented was Israel and it is evident today that this creates certain problems for Turkey, and an uncertainty about what will come next. Nevertheless, if we read between the lines of the political messages, it seems that the situation will continue to be determined by the attitude adopted by the dominant partner in the relationship – the USA – and it is unlikely that the relations between the three countries will change fundamentally.

When we look at the history of the relations between Israel and Turkey, we see that Israel lived many of its "firsts" with Turkey. For example Turkey was the first country with a Muslim majority to recognize Israel. Again Turkey is the first country with a Muslim majority where an Israeli president, Simon Peres in 2007, spoke in its parliament. In reality, the fate of this relationship seems pretty much sealed. This relationship determined by the multi-national monopolies or their national governments is extremely significant for the bourgeoisie in the Middle East.

The latest crisis was provoked by the leaking to the press of the UN report about the Gaza flotilla, and the absence from the report of any mention of sanctions against Israel, which forced the AKP government's hand and obliged it to make a move. On September 2nd, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced a strategy package of sanctions. The leaking of the UN report and its results being far from what the AKP government wanted could have reversed the political influence the Turkish government built in the region. This political influence gained especially thanks to Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's public rebukes against Israel, had rewarded the AKP with prestige both in Turkey and in the Arab world. The package of sanctions announced did not actually add any new dimension to Turkey-Israel relations. No military agreements or sharing of information was in question anyway since 2009. We can conclude that the sanction package of the AKP was merely a manoeuvre made to avoid the loss of prestige.

One of the five points in the package which declares “Turkey, as the state with the longest shore in the Eastern Mediterranean, will take every precaution it deems necessary for the safety of maritime navigation in the eastern Mediterranean” aims to demonstrate that Turkey, with its military presence in the Mediterranean, is a regional power and a rival for Israel. Turkey claims to be the fastest developing economy in the region, and wants a political presence to match. In this sense too, the only power which can rival Turkey is Israel. This is the main concern underlying all the conflicts. The fact that the Turkish bourgeoisie, in its eagerness to become the regional power, shows sympathy towards Gaza, takes steps which increase its presence in the Arab world and signs more economic agreements with the Arabs compared to the past are all results of its imperialist aims.

This constitutes one of the main points of tension in the Turkey-Israel relations.

The tension over oil exploration in the Eastern Mediterranean added a new dimension to the Turkey-Israel crisis. It was announced by the Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Taner Yildiz himself that Israel is behind the efforts of Southern Cyprus to search for oil in the Mediterranean. The Minister connected the issue to Israel further by claiming it is a taunt and a provocation. Soon after, Turkey declared with a hastily signed agreement with the Northern Cypriot Turkish Republic that it too was to look for oil in the Eastern Mediterranean. This tension over oil exploration is another product of the race to be the regional power mentioned above and course has heated the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean even further.

Another situation aside from this race to become the regional power is the war which began with the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In these projects, Turkey is a strategic partner for the United States. For the Americans, Turkey is the ideal country in this project. Of the US' two strategic partners sin the region, Turkey is a better choice then Israel for the Americans, especially in the Arab world where the Palestinian question and the occupation of Gaza makes Israel undesirable. Israel's aggressive stance and bloody actions ever since its formation makes it easy for Israel to be seen as the country of evil in the Middle East.  For the US, which wants to dominate the region, being the strategic partner of a country with such a bad record is an embarrassment. Given Israel's position, it seems the US has preferred Turkey, and this would appear to offer Turkey the material possibility of gaining the regional power status to which it aspires.

Turkey's increasing influence in the Arab world in recent years has resulted in the creation of economical and political relations between the political tradition of the AKP and the Arabs. AKP's moderate Islamic or the secular Islamic model, is followed with interest in the Arab world. This rise, starting with the clash between Erdogan and Israel's Shimon Peres at the Davos summit, accelerated with the Mavi Marmara affair and led to demonstrations that reached a peak during the last crisis with Israel. Following the Davos summit, there were demonstrations in Gaza, Egypt, Syria and other Arab countries in which posters of Tayyip Erdogan appeared prominently. The interest shown in Erdogan in his recent trips to Egypt, Tunisia and Libya is again a result of the same policy. For the first time, a Turkish prime minister was greeted with the chant “Saviour of Islam, Saint of Allah”. The fact that such an effect has been created in the Middle East and North Africa makes partnership with Turkey an important issue for the US. Again, the fact that the Ikhwan movement (Muslim Brotherhood) which comes from the same political tradition as the AKP has formed a party called “Freedom and Justice Party” and became the largest partner of power in Egypt sheds light on the background of the mentioned partnership. The construction of the moderate or secular Islamic model in Turkey and its export to other countries in the region is a definite possibility for the project of the US in the region.

With the moderate Islamic model, the new political vision of the AKP and Turkey increase the chances of Turkey being a more effective regional power in the Arab world compared to Israel. However, the US does not want this crisis with its two regional historical partners to deepen further. The statements made in the UN meetings are generally reflective of this situation. It seems that the Turkey-Israel crisis will go back to its normal stance without deepening further with a different intermediary coming in between.

While all this is going on, Turkey is trying play up nationalism at home in order to justify the imperialist conflict. They are making propaganda using Islam to claim to be the friends of the Palestinian people. Through anti-Semitism, they are trying to create further divisions in the working class of the region by adding religious divisions to nationalist ones. Looking at the history of the Turkey-Israel relations would suffice to see what sort of a friendship the Turkish state feels towards Palestine. Turkey is only and exclusively a friend to its own interests. And its actions serve to create illusions in the working class and the masses and acts as an obstacle to the international struggle of the proletariat. The leftist servants of the bourgeoisie support this anti-Zionist atmosphere either openly or discreetly. As in all imperialist conflicts, in the current period also nationalism is an argument of the Turkish bourgeoisie too. Against it the working class has a single weapon: international unity and struggle.

Ekrem 

The text below is largely based on an article of Internacionalismo, the ICC’s paper in Venezuela and published on our website in Spanish https://es.internationalism.org/ [162] this summer. The facts that our comrades relate here once again shows that every country is being hit by the same economic crisis and the same measures of austerity. The factions in power can easily pretend to be “liberal”, “progressive” or “revolutionary” but they are part of the same “wild” capitalist attack faced by workers all across the globe.

The world economic crisis is also hitting the “socialism of the XXI century”

The state led by Chavez totally denies the existence of the economic crisis in Venezuela, but that doesn’t prevent the hard reality pitilessly hitting the population. The “Socialist” policy conducted in this country causes no less havoc than that of American “liberalism”. And there’s nothing surprising about this since it’s really a question, in both cases, of the same state capitalism; only the mask changes. In Venezuela, state capitalism is only more of a caricature than elsewhere and performs less well, since it has succeeded in weakening both private and state capital.

Today, the country has to import practically all current consumer goods, which is a bit paradoxical for a country that says that it’s developed a continental “revolution” by exporting its label: “Socialism of the 21st century”. But things are even more ironic: playing up to the gallery, Chavez conducts permanent confrontations with the United States which is designated as the Great Capitalist Satan. Meanwhile, in the corridors, very tight links are maintained between the two countries. The USA is thus the main commercial client of Venezuela[1].

The official figures themselves and those of ECOLA (Economic Commission of Latin America) and of the IMF, are all obliged to recognise the gravity of the economic crisis in the country: Venezuela and Haiti (one of the poorest countries in the world!) have been the only Latin American and Caribbean countries not to have had any growth in 2010. For Venezuela it’s the third year of a decrease in its Gross Domestic Product. The country has the highest inflation of the region and one of the highest in the world; for each of the last three years, it has been 27% on average and it is estimated that for 2011 it will go beyond 28%. That’s a rate of inflation that really hits the wages and pensions of the workers, as well as the social assistance granted by the state.

Evidently, Venezuela is suffering from the world economic crisis. But the measures taken by Chavez are basically no different from those taken by the “right wing” and “reactionary” regimes all over the planet:

* Oil revenues, which have increased considerably in 2011 following the Libyan crisis, are not enough to satisfy the voracity of the state; they are vanishing into “alternative” budgets to the national budget, directly and arbitrarily manipulated by the Executive (with the excuse of making more active “social investment”). This form of management by the regime has facilitated the creation of a vast network of corruption involving several levels of the public and military bureaucracy.

* Whereas a good number of workers just about survive on a little more than the minimum wage (equivalent to about $150 per month), the highest levels of the state bureaucracy, civil and military, receive the highest of salaries and “profits” in order to guarantee their loyalty to the regime.

* Military expenses continue to increase, with the excuse of countering the threat of invasion by “Yankee imperialism”; and this results in a firmer grip on the monopoly of energy resources.

And, as with the other economies of the world, Venezuela’s state debt is exploding. This debt of 150 billion dollars, a little above 40% of GDP, is still manageable today but economic experts note that if it continues to rise at the present rhythm, there will be a risk of default of payment (the impossibility of paying back the interest on the debt) in three years time! Thus, Venezuela could find itself in a situation identical to that of Greece, a situation which demands the assistance of the EU and has given rise to a policy of unprecedented austerity.

Chavism has recourse to the same “remedy” as all the other bourgeoisies of the world: austerity!

 Here’s the reality of the “socialist” policy of Chavez:

- devaluation of the Venezuelan Bolivar by 65% in January 2011, after another of 100% at the beginning of 2010;

- a permanent attack on wages and social assistance;

- drastic reductions in food and health programmes;

- increases in electrical charges with the excuse that it’s aimed at ending “the waste of electricity”, which will dramatically affect the cost of living;

- increases in the price of fuel, VAT and various other taxes.

Because of inflation wages have suffered a strong deterioration. According to the ECOLA and the International Labour Organisation, wages of Venezuelan workers have fallen, in real terms, more than 8% in the first 3 months of this year compared to the same period in 2010. As in many other countries precarious, temporary employment has increased in the public and the private sector; according to one recent study made by the Catholic university “Andres-Bello”, 82.6% of the Venezuelan workforce has a precarious job. In short, despite the determination of the Chavez regime to fake the figures, the reality is that poverty continues to get worse.

At the social level, even the “Missions”, the social organisations invented by Chavism to give the illusion of a “conquest of socialism” through distributing crumbs to the most poverty-stricken sectors, have been reduced. Today, programmes for health, education, the distribution of food, etc., are about to be abandoned or severely reduced. It is a fact that the totality of the public services is deteriorating at a growing rate. To all this we can add the almost permanent shortages of several basic food products and the constant increases in the price of food and of other basic products.

The most revolting thing without doubt is that fact that, as always under capitalism, this terrible daily reality is suffered by the proletariat and the poor whereas the big bosses of the regime and those close to them live in the greatest opulence. Any resemblance to certain Arab and African countries is not by chance!

An important growth of struggles and social protest

But there are some rays of sunshine coming through the clouds and which give hope for the future. The proletariat of Venezuela itself is taking part in the slow but noticeable rise of class struggle at the international level. The Venezuelan bourgeoisie is well aware of it since it has suspended a great part of its attacks after having seen the workers stand up in Bolivia. In fact, last December, in this other country of Latin America, the government of Evo Morales, after having decreed an increase in the price of fuel, had to do a U-turn faced with the breadth of protest which badly affected his popularity.

In Venezuela, the proletariat in the oil industry, which had suffered the blow of almost 20,000 lost jobs in 2003, led demonstrations against the non-respect of the collective convention. There were also mobilisations of the public sector workers, health and central administration in order to demand pay increases and better conditions of work.

More important still are the huge struggles undertaken for more than two years by workers in the Iron Zone in Venezuelan Guyana in the south of the country, where some twenty enterprises of heavy industry and more than a hundred thousand workers are concentrated. In order to try to mystify the workers of this zone and derail their militancy, the government has tried to put in place several schemas of “socialist” production; after trying “self-management” in ALCAS (aluminium production firm) and having nationalised the Sidor metal works, they are now trying to introduce “workers’ control” of production.

All this shows the significant increase of social protest in 2011, which without any doubt will surpass the 3000 incidents of protest accounted for in 2010 – and which themselves had overtaken records from previous years. This is leading to an important erosion in the support for Chavez given that these protests are taking place among the most impoverished layers which were the main basis of support for this regime. A recent and dramatic example of these protests has been that of families of prisoners of several prisons of the country who have been ruthlessly repressed by the forces of the state when they demonstrated against overcrowding and the repression of prisoners. The barbarity seen in prisons is only an extension of that seen on a daily basis throughout the entire country, above all in the poor quarters. There were more than 140,000 killings during the 12 months of the “Bolivarian revolution”. And Chavez, with indecent aplomb, dared to call it the “pretty revolution”!

The struggles and mobilisations taken up by the proletariat are the best contradiction to the so-called “revolution”, a revolution which has led to new bourgeoisie elites who govern Venezuela. Only the resistance of the workers against the attacks of the state, in the defence of their conditions, in basing themselves on assemblies which tend to unify the workers of different sectors, can develop a reference point for the pauperised masses which are already beginning to lose their illusions in the proposals both of Chavez and the opposition.

These struggles are fully part of the movement opened up by the exploited masses of North Africa, Greece and Spain.

Internacionalismo 30/7/11

We are publishing here the translation of an article from Internacialismo, our paper in Venezuela

Subjecting the workers of Guayana[1] to a precarious existence, as has already been done to the oil workers, has become a priority for the national bourgeoisie, and especially for the Chavist faction in power. This is because the reduction of costs, especially in the primary industries of the region - iron, steel, aluminium, etc - is an imperative necessity to face up to international competition, which is being sharpened by the deepening economic crisis.

To this end, the workers of the province of Guayana have been the subject of a campaign in which they are being accused of being a ‘labour aristocracy’, earning wages and bonuses which the industry can’t afford to pay and which are threatening to bankrupt it. The oil workers were told exactly the same thing.

However, with the workers of Guayana, the bourgeoisie has a much bigger problem, because of the great concentration of the workers and their traditions of struggle, often against the state. The huge concentration of industrial, service and commercial activities in this area make any workers’ response against attacks on its living conditions all the more powerful. 

What strategy is the state using?

The Venezuelan state has come up with a strategy known as the ‘Socialist Guayana Plan’, which is based on the Trotskyist slogan of ‘workers’ control of production’. The state is aiming to convince the workers that they themselves control production, and that therefore the strengthening of industry depends on their efforts and their sacrifices. So they should no longer be coming out on strike because according to official propaganda industry is already in their hands. The defence of this Plan is a step towards ‘21st Century Socialism’, the big fraud dreamed up by Chavez and co.

It’s worth recalling that this Plan was preceded by the failure of another plan aimed at bringing in co-management at ALCASA, the state enterprise for producing aluminium. The objective of this plan, directed by the sociologist Carlos Lanz Rodriguez, is to make the workers believe:

-         “That the state run by Chavez is carrying out policies leading to socialism”. In reality, the workers of Guayana have already sensed that such a ‘socialism’ is not very different from control by the capitalist state under previous governments;

-         “That co-management means a change in the relations of production”. The only ‘change’ here is that workers are persuaded to exploit themselves to consolidate the management of the capitalist state-boss;

-         that “justice will be done” with regard to the industrial relations. In fact we know that the only thing this regime can carry through is making labour power more precarious than ever;

-         finally, that “ we can humanise the working day and reduce hours, that we can overcome the division of labour and despotism in the factory”. The reality of this humanisation is a cocktail of jailings, trials, tear gas, live ammunition, injuries and deaths, all carried out by armed bands sent in to terrorise the workers .

This plan has been a failure because in general the workers, given that all this is contrary to their real interests, have not swallowed the fine words which Carlos Lanz has fed them in order to get the workers to renounce their own demands and submit to the needs of the capitalist state. The resistance of the aluminium workers has shattered the shop window carefully installed by the Venezuelan state to prove the magnificence of its ‘21st Century Socialism’ to the workers of other countries.

Is the ‘Socialist Guayana Plan’ the product of the workers? 

The new ‘Socialist Guayana Plan’, which basically consists of an attempt to:

-         convince the workers, once again, that the enterprises are under their control and that exploitation has disappeared;

-         make the whole working class of Guayana pay for the very serious financial situation and the deterioration of the infrastructure in basic industries, which means demanding sacrifices to restore their competitive edge. In other words, accepting a degradation of living conditions

-         as a result, get the workers to give up fighting for their own demands

This plan was presented as the result of the particapation of some “600 workers representing the working class in Guayana” at “round tables” led by the existing “worker-directors” of the primary industries, Elio Sayago and Rada Gameluch, among others. This group of workers, chosen from those who had taken part in an indoctrination course on ‘21st Century Socialism’ and ‘endogenous development’, were thus convinced of the fact that they had to combat those who opposed the plan because they were part of the ‘labour aristocracy’.

After that, an attempt was made to mystify the workers by polarising them between those who support the unions, of whatever tendency (even the party of the official Chavist party, the United Socialist party of Venezuela) and those who supported so-called ‘workers control’.

What obstacles are there in the way of the proletariat rediscovering its class identity?

The state will use any means to create divisions among the workers. In the first place by creating a polarisation between the leaders defended by the unions and the representatives of so-called ‘workers’ control’. And also, between the workers who are part of the supposed ‘labour aristocracy’, who are supposedly only defending their ‘egoistic interests’ and who are only looking to preserve or improve their wages, and on the other side, those who encourage the workers to join up with the defenders of the fatherland, those who defend nationalisation as a decisive step towards ‘21st Century Socialism’, who are not egoistic and who are ready to make sacrifices for the ‘land of Bolivar’.

Recently, the state has deployed an armada of armed gangs, mafia and other thugs to sow terror among the workers. This is a consequence of the fact that the judicial pressures exerted against workers put on trial has not been enough to make the workers cease their actions in defence of their interests: rather the opposite. The ineffectiveness of ‘criminalising protest’ was shown when the state was forced to free some of those arrested in order to dampen the workers’ anger, an anger that led the pro-government unions, especially those of the current around Maspero, an ‘official’ union leader, to support the struggle for the liberation of the union leader Ruben Gonzalez who had been in prison for several months. The state wanted to show its ‘workerist’ face and hide its tendency towards totalitarian dictatorship.

This action did have the result of restoring the image of certain unions, who were thus better able to exert their control over the workers, above all by imprisoning them in the confines of corporatism, in a struggle for the defence of this or that collective agreement or the fight against corruption, whose unpleasant stench is making the atmosphere at work unbearable.

There is also the will to trap the workers in an internal battle between union mafia and those who advocate ‘workers’ control’, who are also part of the various power blocs around the governor of the Bolivar province, the mayors, the military and sectors of private capital, who have been doing their own wheeling and dealing, taking their own kick-backs, which has contributed to the growing sickness of the industry of the region.

What can we do to contribute to the development of class consciousness?

For the representatives of the state, whether they call themselves, ministers, mayors, directors or trade unionists, the slogan is: “if you can’t convince them, mystify them”. However, the main result of the intervention of different state organs, whether acting for their own personal interests or the interests of a mafia clique, whether through direct repression or hired killers, has been a bloody chaos which has become, in this phase of capitalist decomposition, a typical expression of the relationship between bosses and workers.

For revolutionary minorities, the question is how to help develop the class consciousness of the workers. In the first place, against the blackmail which claims that when workers fight against wage-cuts or the loss of bonuses they are acting as part of an aristocracy with no class consciousness. We have to insist that, on the contrary, the struggle for immediate demands is part of the process through which class consciousness develops. This is the way the class unifies itself, discovers who its class enemy is, whether it’s a private boss or a state boss, realises its role in society as the only class capable of putting an end to the chaos of capitalism. At the same time, it’s not in fact a question of fighting for a ‘fair wage’ – in reality it’s the state which determines what’s fair. In the final analysis it’s a question of fighting against wage labour, which is the very essence of capitalist exploitation.

If the proletarian powder-keg in Guayana hasn’t exploded yet this is in large part due to the polarisation of proposals put forward by the different union and state ‘representatives’, each one defending its own fief, doing all they can to ensure that the discussions in the assemblies cancel out any action the proletariat might take to fight against the chaos in the region. It is above all necessary to take back the discussions in the assemblies and put forward the need for the unification of struggles.

What perspectives?

The working class in Guayana has not stopped struggling. Very often in front of the big enterprises, assemblies are organised to respond to this or that attack against living conditions. Very often these assemblies manage to neutralise the attacks, while the powers that be seek to place the interests of the ‘collectivity’ against those of the workers, as was the case when the ‘communal councils’ were used against the assemblies.

The emergence of minorities within the working class, seeking to renew links with the historic movement of the class, is being strengthened by the breadth and persistence of the struggles. These minorities fight against a deformed vision of socialism, not only the Trotskyist version with its critical support for Chavism, but also the ultra-reactionary version of ‘21st Century Socialism’, really a form of exacerbated nationalism based on anti-Yankee hatred and a semi-religious ‘Bolivarian’ fundamentalism. 

The new generations of the working class in Guayana are seeking to make their own experience of struggle and to learn from previous generations of workers who confronted the state with great determination in the 60s and 70s. Despite the obstacles the bourgeoisie has put in the way of the Guayana workers, they are about to show to other sectors of the class that they are no less determined to struggle against Chavist capitalism with its camouflage of ‘socialism’.

Internacialismo 7/11

See also: ‘Guayana is a powder-keg [166]’.

                 "Bolivarian Socialism": Aleftist version of "wild capitalism" https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201111/4575/bolivarian-socialism-leftist-version-wild-capitalism [167]

Last September, a discovery hit the scientific world and its news was rapidly spread throughout the media of the entire globe. In the Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy, a scientific team observed some elementary particles called “neutrinos”[1] sent from the particle accelerator of CERN, a laboratory close to Geneva and situated almost 730 km away[2]. The “Opera” experiment, which has unfolded over a period of more than 3 years, consisted of studying the propagation of these particles as well as measuring their speed to the order of nanoseconds[3]. Once the results were verified and re-verified and the experiment repeated from the beginning, the scientists had to admit the reality of the facts as they were shown: these particles travelled at a speed which was a little greater than the speed of light[4]. If correct, this discovery would overthrow the fundamental laws of physics such as the law of relativity as put forward by Einstein, which defined the speed of light as an insuperable, universal constant. The announcement of this discovery immediately fell prey to the rapacious press who tried to outdo each other in looking for a “scientific” scoop: “Has the neutrino finished off Einstein?” “Einstein contradicted!” “Einstein is busted!” And so it goes on... This vision of science where different theories are essentially competitive and ready to eliminate each other like predators in a permanently mortal struggle is typical of bourgeois ideology and fundamentally inherent to its mode of social functioning. This discovery effectively implies (if it is proved to be correct, which previous similar discoveries have proved not to be) the calling into question of the very basis of modern physics. If correct, it is a discovery whose consequences are presently unimaginable. We could happily hazard a guess about developing theories on what that would mean for our perception of the universe, but such a totally empirical approach would take us into the realms of science-fiction.

Such is not our aim. What appears immediately and in a very clear manner, and what all capitalist propaganda strives to distort and obliterate, is that in any scientific approach, no theory is carved in stone in a permanent and incontestable manner. The perception of scientific reality is eminently historical and in a state of constant evolution. Such a discovery would oblige us to review our previous conceptions and to confront them with this new representation of reality. It’s in this way that the overcoming of past ideas leads us to new questions and to new scientific progress and techniques. And this progress, in its turn, allows us to go beyond certain problematics and bring in new elements without however denying the contributions of those preceding. It is this dialectical character of evolution which makes each stage, each progression (as small as it may be), absolutely necessary as a link in the chain in our process of evolution.

This vision, which appears to be the basis of all honest scientific work, does not however form part of the dominant ideology. At least that’s what one finds when one looks at the facts in front of us: at the time when it is perfectly capable of sending a robotised engine to explore the surface of the planet Mars, the economic specialists of capitalism are almost incapable of foreseeing the subsequent development of our economy for a few days into the future... and, as a consequence of that, we are incapable of supplying the most basic needs of a growing part of the world population! This is for one simple reason: according to the ideology of the dominant class (capitalist ideology), the present system with its democratic ideal based on the production of surplus value, on rivalry and on competition between individuals, is fundamentally the system which corresponds best to the character of the human species and human nature, past, present and future. The everlasting nature of capitalism itself is seen as a real and incontestable absolute. In this view the political ideal of this system, capitalist democracy, is the sole perspective towards which humanity could evolve. Any other perspective is automatically labelled “utopian”, even dangerous, and for good reason! If the greater mass of humanity, the exploited class, in understanding that the scholarly equations of the economic specialists have long since ceased to be a motor for human progress; if today these calculations of charlatans were denounced as being the basis for the extortion of surplus-value which justifies the immense privileges which a minority of exploiters enjoy; if in order to save ourselves, we aim to create a world without states where productive activity is organised exclusively in relation to human needs and with respect to natural resources ; then, effectively, the capitalist class would be completely out of date; its privileges and its ideology would be profoundly called into question. In a society founded on solidarity and social progress, the role and the place of science would be completely different to those that we’ve know so far.

Make no mistake: the scientific world does not escape capitalism’s laws and its reactionary ideology. The milieu of scientific research is impregnated with a spirit of ferocious and permanent rivalry. Most of the time, researchers are in competition one with the others, and cooperation between different teams rapidly reach their limits. The races to publish, the quest for individual prestige, social and financial recognition are so many fetters which are considerable handicaps for humanity in its march towards consciousness and progress[5].

Today, no scientific discovery, as brilliant as it is, could bring humanity out of the obscure prehistory in which capitalism entraps it up to its last breath. The greatest experiment standing in front of us now is nothing other than the profound transformation of society which alone can bring humanity into its real history.

Maxime 23/10/11

We are publishing here the calls from the Occupy Oakland General Assembly for a general strike on 2 November. This is a significant development in the ‘Occupy’ movement in the US, which while generally critical of ‘capitalism’ has also been hampered by a very confused view of what capitalism is, and in particular about the only way to oppose it: through the class struggle. But this appeal, coming after a number of very bitter experiences of police repression, marks a real step forward in that it is a direct call to the local working class to support the movement through striking. The response to the call by the GA was very impressive, not so much in the number of work places shut down, which seems to have been uneven, but by the willingness of thousands of workers to join the demonstrations even if it was after work. The evening demo to the port was planned in order to allow those at work to participate and drew in several thousand people (some estimates put it as high as 20,000). Although the port had more or less remained open during the day, the demonstrators succeeded in persuading dockers and truckers to join them and the port was closed for the night. This is how the LA Times described events: "As thousands of protesters flowed toward the port, truckers struggled to drive out. Others, like Mann Singh, stuck around with smiles on their faces. The 42-year-old Pittsburg resident said he arrived at 4:30 p.m. with an empty truck, hoping to park it and go home, but as the demonstrators gathered, he said, ‘I stopped to support them’".

Whatever secondary criticisms we may make of the texts that follow, we can only support their overall spirit and approach:

1.   PROPOSAL:

We as fellow occupiers of Oscar Grant Plaza propose that on Wednesday November 2, 2011, we liberate Oakland and shut down the 1%.

We propose a city wide general strike and we propose we invite all students to walk out of school. Instead of workers going to work and students going to school, the people will converge on downtown Oakland to shut down the city.

All banks and corporations should close down for the day or we will march on them.

While we are calling for a general strike, we are also calling for much more. People who organize out of their neighborhoods, schools, community organizations, affinity groups, workplaces and families are encouraged to self organize in a way that allows them to participate in shutting down the city in whatever manner they are comfortable with and capable of.

The whole world is watching Oakland. Let’s show them what is possible.

The Strike Coordinating Council will begin meeting everyday at 5pm in Oscar Grant Plaza before the daily General Assembly at 7pm. All strike participants are invited. Stay tuned for much more information and see you next Wednesday.

2.   How YOU can participate in the General Strike!

November 1, 2011

WAYS TO PARTICIPATE ON NOVEMBER 2 GENERAL STRIKE & DAY OF ACTION
called for by Occupy Oakland

Occupy Oakland is calling for no work and no school on November 2 as part of the general strike. We are asking that all workers go on strike, call in sick, take a vacation day or simply walk off the job with their co-workers. We are also asking that all students walk out of school and join workers and community members in downtown Oakland. All banks and large corporations must close down for the day or demonstrators will march on them.

The Occupy Oakland Strike Assembly has vowed to picket and or occupy any business or school which disciplines employees or students in any way for participating in the Nov 2 General Strike. Please email [email protected] [172] if you are the subject of any disciplinary action.

Occupy Oakland recognizes that not all workers, students and community members will feel able to strike all day long on November 2, and we welcome any form of participation which they feel is appropriate. We urge them to join us before or after work or during their lunch hours.

Below are some action ideas for strike participants to consider:

Gather in Downtown Oakland to help Shut Down the City

• Join the Mass Gatherings at 14th & Broadway 9:00am, 12:00pm, 5:00pm. Strike Rallies will be held at these times with political speakers as well as time for open mic so that everyone can make their voices heard. There will also be action announcements made from the stage on this intersection for those who are interested in participating in pickets and shut downs of banks and large corporations.

Lead a march from your neighborhood, workplace, school, community center, place of worship etc into downtown Oakland to join one of these three mass gatherings. Have fun and be loud along the way to let people know why you are marching downtown!

Form a mobile blockade or flying picket that can take over important intersections in downtown with street parties and other creative ways to make our voices heard and shut the city down.

There will be numerous pickets and actions at banks and corporations across downtown but we need more! Get a group of friends, family members, co-workers or fellow students together to form an affinity group and make your voice heard and your presence felt at any of these locations in downtown. Let the stage on 14th & Broadway know about your action so they can announce it to the crowd.

There are many other autonomous actions planned for the day that will be occurring throughout downtown. One of them is the anti-capitalist march at 2pm meeting at the intersection of Telegraph & Broadway and another is the Feminist & Queer bloc against capitalism that will meet at 4:30 at 14th & Broadway.

Join the marches from downtown to shut down the Port of Oakland. These marches will be leaving at 4pm and another will be leaving at 5pm for the 2 mile march out to the port to stand in solidarity with the longshore workers and shut down the evening shift of the port.

Join the 4pm Critical Mass ride from 14th & Broadway out to the Port to join the shut down

Best not to drive into downtown: It is likely that many streets will be blocked to traffic so please bike or take public transportation if possible. It will also be useful to have a bicycle to move between actions or to march to the port.

Take Action in Your Own Neighborhoods and Communities

• Gather neighbors, co-workers, or fellow students together and organize group walks and small marches around the neighborhood to have fun, raise awareness and encourage others to join you in the streets! Bring noise makers, signs, banners and let your community know why you are participating in the strike.

Stop at banks, large businesses, chain stores, gas stations, corporate headquarters, large commercial media outlets, etc. to protest and picket

Gather in neighborhood centers and on the corners of main intersections to hold speak outs, BBQs and street parties – make your voice heard and raise awareness by reclaiming space where fellow community members can join you and talk about the issues that affect them most and how we can organize together to build a powerful movement

If you must shop, only spend money at locally owned stores and as much as possible purchase locally-produced goods

Nonprofit and Community Organizations

• Use your personal and organizational social media accounts (websites, facebook, linked-in, electronic newsletters, etc) to support the actions and keep your constituencies updated about what is going on in the streets of Oakland.

In the event of police violence, use your organization to denounce police repression and call for the release of all arrested strikers.

Provide resources for your staff to participate: allow time away to participate in direct actions; encourage work on projects aligned with general strike and occupy goals, host sign and banner making parties!

Be Prepared

• Bring materials to make signs: Banner material. cardboard, poster paper, markers, paint, spray paint tape, dowels, etc

Bring food and water to share!

Bring noise makers, instruments, sound systems and other ways that we can transform downtown into a celebration of our collective power

Write this legal number down on your body in case of arrest: 415.285.1011 The number will be staffed all day long and will coordinate legal support for those arrested in the strike.

Remember these four common points that the General Strike Assembly has agreed upon:

Solidarity with the world-wide Occupy movement!

End police attacks on our communities!

Defend Oakland schools and libraries!

Against an economic system built on colonialism, inequality and corporate power that perpetuates all forms of oppression and the destruction of the environment!

A Few Chants For the Strike

• “Strike, Occupy, Shut it Down! Oakland is the People’s Town”

“Every Hour, Every Day! The occupation is here to stay!”

“Occupy Everything! Liberate Oakland”

“Politicians & Bankers, Liars & Thieves, We’re taking it back! We’re not saying please!”

“No more cops, we don’t need ‘em! All we want is total freedom”

“Shut Down OPD! Not the Public Library!”

“Let’s Go Oakland! Let’s Go!” [clap] [clap]"

See also: "Occupy Wall Street Protests: The capitalist system itself is the enemy [173]".

             Occupy London: the weight of illusions   https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201111/4569/occupy-london-weight-illusions [174]

The Anarchist Bookfair, held in London every October, is an event that attracts people who want to struggle against capitalist society. This year they could find “more class struggle themes than previous years, although 'anarchism and spirituality' drew as a large a crowd as workplace organising, which is slightly worrying” (Chilli Sauce, on libcom). Here are our impressions of some of the meetings that sounded most interesting.

The discussion of primitive communism, organised by the Radical Anthropology Group, presented Chris Knight’s theory about the role of women’s solidarity and menstruation in the development of culture (see here [177] for a discussion of this theory). An understanding that humanity lived without either private property or the state for most of humanity’s time on the earth has long fascinated and inspired communists, and all who work to see the end of class society. Naturally the meeting was also interested in the occupations and assemblies going on at the moment, although this discussion did not get very far, and notably only a speaker from the ICC raised the very important experience of the Indignant in Spain.

‘UK Youth Rebellion’ was introduced by two young people from the Anarchist Federation talking about the difficult situation faced by young people today: lack of funds, unemployment, poor education, lack of public spaces to gather. This young generation will be worse off than their parents. The student struggles a year ago were discussed, and the question of how these struggles can link up with other young people, whether at work or unemployed, was a theme in the discussion. A comrade from the ICC emphasised that last year’s student struggles were an inspiration to all generations as an important part of the class struggle.

‘Why do we call ourselves Class Struggle Anarchists?’ had three speakers, but all were brief and to the point, allowing over 30 minutes of discussion – not nearly long enough, but much better than many meetings at the bookfair. The first speaker from ALARM, the All London Anarchist Revolutionary Movement, began by pointing out that the ruling class engages in class warfare – workers don’t have enough to live on, the repression and propaganda after the riots, lack of communal space, shit housing, schools designed for failure… He was in favour of any form of ‘kicking back’, including Occupy Wall Street (although he thinks there is more than 1% we have to fight), riots in spite of much antisocial behaviour, workplace struggles, although ALARM don’t do that. The recession is bringing out the rage although it is not about one night of rage but the need to change society. The IWW speaker described itself as not an anarchist organisation but one that organises in an anarchist way. It is a legally established union. Dealing only with workplace struggles it is growing and having success eg with migrant cleaners who have not been paid for the work they do, which can be sorted by writing letters, daily pickets, etc. The speaker from the Anarchist Federation was best. She began by alluding to the materialist analysis of who is in the working class, according to their relationship with the means of production. Capitalism has been amazingly successful in trying to impose divisions. Laws passed in the 1970s and the procedures they enforce have made struggle harder in the UK, the US and elsewhere. Unions have to be legalised, and they are not revolutionary, but they can be a jumping off point. We cannot unite around the ‘cultural’ working class but only the structure in relation to means of production. All in all we had three very different, and in our opinion contradictory, contributions on the nature of the class struggle.

The facilitator posed the following questions: what constitutes the working class? What is the anarchists’ role? Why be a class struggle anarchist? The discussion concentrated on the first question, and defended a class struggle approach against identity politics. In particular, as a left communist pointed out, the crisis and austerity mean that all workers, even in so-called professional jobs in health or education, will be faced with cuts.

Many more questions had been posed: what is the nature of working class struggle? Is it any kind of disturbance, protest or riot, as the speaker from ALARM thinks? In our view things such as the recent riots are definitely not a way for the working class to struggle, precisely because of the antisocial behaviour the speaker pointed to. Antisocial behaviour reflects the dog eat dog values of capitalist society and has no part in the struggle to overthrow it (see en.internationalism.org/wr/347uk-riots [130]). Can we use legal union structures to defend workers within capitalism today, as the IWW proposed? Unions inevitably keep us locked up in this industry, this sector, leading them to tell their members to cross the picket lines of other unions (for instance UNISON workers to cross NUT pickets and vice versa) undermining the struggle against austerity and cuts. And lastly, the question raised by the AF speaker – what is the relation of defensive struggles to the revolutionary struggle.

The class struggle has a history and several of the meetings addressed this. ‘Red Rosa and the Arab Spring’ organised by the Marxist Humanists in Hobgoblin had two presentations, one on a biography of Rosa Luxemburg and the other on her fight against reformism and her criticism of the ‘authoritarianism’ of the Russian Revolution. Although there was little time for discussion, we made contributions situating her fight against reformism alongside others on the left of social democracy who opposed the First World War, including Lenin, Pannekoek and John Maclean. In addition, as Engels pointed out, we cannot have any illusions in revolution being anything but an act of authority.

‘Is capitalism destroying itself? And can we replace it?’ aimed to take up the most important questions facing us today: “Our rulers are worried. Austerity is not reviving the economy… How did we get here and what are the prospects for anti-capitalist revolution?” The debate that could have been the highlight of the day ended in disappointment. Neither presentation took up the crisis going on today, which lies behind all the austerity measures, and the discussion was unable to make up for this. Even worse, one of the speakers, Selma James, sang the praises of various left wing governments and states – Stalinist Cuba which sends doctors to Africa (let’s forget about the troops sent to Angola), Chavez, Tanzania – and was to a large extent allowed to get away with it by the meeting as a whole. 

Many vital questions were raised: the discussion must continue throughout the year. 

May 30/10/11

Unions predict that maybe two or three million workers will be on strike on 30 November, from education, health, local government, the civil service, and more. The main issue of the strike – the future of public sector pensions – is a very real one because we are all being asked to work longer and pay more for less to retire on. And that’s just for a start. In Greece existing pensions are already being cut. The logic of this system is to make us work till we drop.

And pensions are not the only issue, and it’s not just the public sector. Unemployment is soaring, especially among the young: latest figures put youth unemployment at 20%. More and more young people are effectively working for nothing. It’s becoming more expensive to stay on at college and go to university.

Government austerity plans envisage cuts in social benefits of all kinds, and wages are also under attack: the electricians are fighting against new building industry contracts involving a 30% reduction in pay.

All this is the product of an economic meltdown which didn’t just begin in 2007, which wasn’t caused by greedy bankers or lazy Greeks, but is the culminating point of a world wide, historic crisis of the capitalist system. Today’s deepening depression is the return of the same underlying crisis which broke out in the 1930s. And the rulers of this world have no solution to it. If they go for ‘growth’, it plunges them deeper into debt and inflation. If they go for ‘austerity’, they further reduce demand when the crisis is already a result of glutted markets.

How to fight back?

The question facing workers, students, pensioners, and the unemployed everywhere is not whether we need to resist. If we just passively accept these attacks, the bosses and the state will just come back for more. The question is how to fight back. Already this year we have had two big official days of action – 26 March and 30 June – but did they really make our rulers worried? The government has even suggested we should make do with a nice 15 minute general strike, but is a 24-hour stoppage, marshalled from start to finish by the union machinery, any more effective? In fact, such token gestures have the overall effect of sapping our energies and making us feel that we have been wasting our time.

The experience of history has shown that the ruling class only begins to take notice when the exploited class starts to take things into its own hands and unite its forces from the bottom up. And the experience of the last year or so has confirmed that there are indeed other ways of fighting back than marching from A to B, listening to some celebrity speeches, and going home.

All across the world, from Cairo to Barcelona, from New York to London, the occupation and defence of public spaces, and the organisation of general assemblies, have shown the possibility of more massive, self-organised ways of struggling. In the UK, the electricians have taken new forms of unofficial action, using demonstrations to call other workers to join their strikes and holding open mic street discussions. These movements point to the need for general assemblies in the workplaces, uniting us across trade and union divisions.

November 30 provides an opportunity for working class people from many different areas to come together, to discuss and even to put into practice the best methods for resisting the bosses’ offensive. But we need to make the debate as open as possible, which means rejecting passive rallies and instead organising all kinds of public meetings where everyone can speak their mind.

And it can’t all be focused on one day. We are faced with a prolonged period of crisis, and therefore with a growing assault on our living and working conditions. This is why many workers are already sceptical about what can be achieved on 30 November. Many more, faced with mounting bills or redundancies, question the usefulness of strikes and occupations. It’s difficult enough knowing how to resist when your firm is about to go under. The problem is magnified a hundred times when entire national economies seem to be going down the pan.

But that emphasises that not only do we need to find better ways to fight back here and now – we also need to develop a long term perspective. The capitalist system is on its last legs and can offer us only depression, war, and ecological disaster. But the working class can use its struggles to form itself into a real social power, to develop its political understanding of the present system, and create a different future: a global community where all production is organised for human need and not the inhuman laws of the market.

International Communist Current, 25/11/11

Without a doubt the most important eviction took place in New York’s Zuccotti Park—the place that started it all—where Mayor Bloomberg’s police evicted the “Occupy Wall Street” (OWS) protestors in the early morning hours of November 15th. This touched off a curious legal fight in the bourgeois court system, with lawyers for the occupiers arguing that the eviction violated their first amendment rights of free expression. The decision of the bourgeois judge was a pyrrhic victory for the protestors allowing them to return to the park to engage in lawful protest, but refusing to block the city’s prohibition on tents and camping gear. Thus, OWS finds itself deprived of its modus viviendi. With the bourgeois state no longer willing to play nice, it is now an occupation movement without the ability to occupy anything of consequence. 

Could this work to extend the movement? Deprived of the right to legally encamp in the park, might the protestors be moved to create a different mode of struggle—one that focus less on the occupation of a particular geographic space and more on developing organs for clarification and theoretical deepening such as discussion groups? At this time it is not possible to say, but it is often the nature of social movements that actions of the state have these kinds of unintended consequences. 

Although many in the occupy movement vow to continue their fight against corporate greed, income inequality and the supposed corruption on the United States’ democratic process, it is clear at this point that the initial phase of the occupation movement has come to a close. Throughout the first several weeks of the occupations, the protestors could generally claim the support of public opinion obliging the authorities to operate with some level of restraint towards them. This is no longer the case. While polls continue to show that the population holds tremendous sympathy for the protestors’ goals and grievances, support for the occupations themselves has declined. The sense that the occupiers have overplayed their hand is widespread. Pressure is now being put on the occupiers to find ways to work within the system to voice their grievances. 

While we can’t predict where this movement will go from here, or even if it can survive as an independent social movement outside of the institutions of bourgeois politics, it is appropriate at this juncture for revolutionaries to attempt to make a balance sheet of this movement in order to draw the lessons for the future of the class struggle. What was positive in this movement? Where did it go wrong? What can we expect from here? 

Despite these unanswered questions and the general ambiguity expressed by this movement, we feel that is a manifestation of the desire by certain sectors of the working class, among other social groups, to fight back against the massive attacks the capitalist system is carrying our on its conditions of life. Even if this movement featured much of the same activist dominated politics we have seen since the late-1990s with the anti-globalization movement, it nonetheless appears to have been carried out on a fundamentally different dynamic than these previous movements, one that might contain the seeds for further radicalization, even if these have yet to fully sprout. 

Thus, while we cannot provide a definitive statement on the nature of this movement at this just yet; however, we can attempt to situate it within a class perspective and draw some of the major lessons for the period ahead. 

The International Context

The Occupy Movement in North America constituted a clear link in the chain of protests and social movements that have swept across the far corners of the world over the course of 2011. These movements have overwhelmingly sought to respond to the effects of capitalism’s crisis on the conditions of life of the working class and society in general. From the revolts in the Arab world in the spring, to the outbreak of massive struggles in China, Bangladesh, France, Spain, Israel and Chile, the Occupy Movement was clearly inspired by events that took place far from American shores. Not since the period of the late 1960s/early 1970s, have we witnessed such a broad series of movements across the globe all seeking to respond to the same fundamental provocations: the attack on the population’s working and living conditions resulting from the global recession and the massive austerity attacks unleashed on the social wage in the wake of the sovereign debt crisis and the financial meltdown of 2008. 

All these movements have been characterized by the desire of ever increasing numbers of people to do something in response to the mounting attacks on their living and working conditions, even if there is little clarity as to what needs to be done. The Occupy Movement is an important manifestation of this international trend within the “belly of the beast” itself. Like the massive movement in Wisconsin earlier in the year, the Occupy Movement has refuted the persistent idea that the North American working class is totally integrated with capitalism or unwilling and unable to resist its attacks. However, whereas the events in Wisconsin took place within one state, the Occupy Movement has spread to hundreds of cities across the continent and even the world beyond. Moreover, while the Wisconsin protests were very quickly recuperated by the unions and the Democratic Party, the Occupy protestors have been keen to assert their autonomy, believing that meaningful change can only flow from a “new type” of movement. They have shown a very healthy distrust of official parties and programs, demonstrating their increasing suspicion that the official parties only exist to co-opt their struggles. 

Like the movements in other parts of globe, the Occupy protests have been characterized by the influx of new generations of workers, many of whom have little experience in politics and carry few preconceived ideas about how to organize a struggle. What unites these participants is an almost precognitive desire to come together with others and feel the experience of active solidarity and community made real—to pose an alternative to the existing society through the lived experience of making the struggle. Undoubtedly, these desires are fueled above all by the increasing sense of social alienation in the face of capitalist decomposition, as well as the tremendous difficulty the younger generations have in gaining admittance to the labor process itself. The absence of the experience of collective labor and the accompanying sense of isolation, atomization and despair is today propelling more and more workers—particularly the young and those who have been kicked out of the production process—to seek solidarity through the struggle. Also present in these struggles are people from other social strata: all sorts of people deeply frustrated and worried about the direction of society. However, in North America, these protests have been dominated by the younger generations of workers and those most deeply affected by the crisis of long-term unemployment. 

Of course, this does not mean that the Occupy Movement itself—in particular the tactic of occupying specific geographic spaces—represents the form that the class struggle will take in the future. On the contrary, this movement—like all of its sister movements across the globe—have been marked by fundamental weaknesses, which it will be necessary for the working-class to transcend if it is to go forward. We can conclude that the Occupy Movement represents an important attempt by sections of the proletariat to respond to capitalism’s aggressive attacks on its conditions of life, even if it does not represent a direct model for future struggles. 

The Importance of the General Assemblies

One of the most important features of the Occupy Movement has been the emergence of general assemblies (GAs) as the sovereign organ of the struggle. The rediscovery of the GA as the form best capable of ensuring the broadest participation and the widest exchange of ideas has marked a tremendous advance for the class struggle in the current period. In the Occupy Movement, the GAs appear to have been adopted from prior struggles—particularly that of the indignados in Spain—demonstrating that in this period there is a tendency to learn from struggles in other parts of the world in quick succession and adopt the most effective tactics and forms. The speed with which the GAs have spread across the globe this past year has indeed been quite impressive. 

Like the GAs elsewhere, in the Occupy Movement the GAs were open to everyone, encouraging all concerned to participate in shaping the movements direction and goals. The GAs operated on an ostensible policy of openness. Minutes were circulated. A clear desire was expressed that the GAs remain distinct from any party, group or organization that may seek to usurp their autonomy. The GAs thus represented an incipient realization that the existing parties and institutions—even the parties of the left and the unions—could not be relied upon to run the struggle on behalf of the masses. On the contrary, the protestors themselves would remain sovereign; they alone could determine how to go forward. 

Nevertheless, despite these very positive features, the experience of the GAs in the Occupy movement was marked by a profound weaknesses not seen to the same extent elsewhere. From the start, the Occupy Movement framed itself as an occupation of a piece of geographic space. While OWS may have initially set out to occupy the financial district of New York City itself, or set up a symbolic place of protest on Wall Street, once it became clear that the state would not tolerate this, the protestors turned to occupying a nearby park, almost by default. (1)  At the foot of the mountain, but not quite the mountain itself, the model was thus set for the movement in other cities, which overwhelmingly took the form of an encampment in a city park. While there is some precedent for this kind of occupation in US history, (i.e. the Bonus Army’s occupation of fallow land in Washington, DC to protest the living conditions of World War One veterans during the Great Depression); the decision to define itself as a movement occupying a specific geographic location constituted a profound weakness that contributed to the Occupy Movement’s isolation.

Rather quickly—particularly in New York—the Occupy Movement became dominated by a sentiment that it had to defend the park that had become the movement’s home and in fact had come to serve as a kind of community for many of the individual protestors. Undoubtedly, the positive sense of solidarity that many of the protestors felt as participants in a movement for change contributed to a tendency to define the limits of the movement as the park’s boundaries and to seek to defend those boundaries against attack by the state or dilution from mainstream politics. 

However, this tended towards the production of a tension in the Occupy Movement, between, on the one hand a movement for broad social change and on the other a new experiment in communal living. From a temporary encampment made as a result of tactical necessity, Zuccotti Park tended to be seen by the occupiers as a new kind of “home” within capitalist society. Rumors of imminent police repression only reinforced the desire to “defend the park.” While the occupiers made occasional forays outside the park to protest the banks or demonstrate in bourgeois neighborhoods, the longer the movement persisted, the more the tendency to try to constitute a kernel of an alternative way of life in the park predominated. No real attempt was ever made to carry the struggle to the broader working-class beyond the boundaries of the park. 

By contrast, this fetish on occupying a specific geographic space did not characterize the movements in Spain, Israel and the Middle East. In contrast, the public squares were seen more as a meeting point where protestors could come together for a specific purpose, discuss, hold rallies and decide tactics. The desire to hold onto public spaces with permanent encampments has been a peculiarly North American feature of the recent movements, one that demands further examination. 

However, perhaps even more damaging than the fetish for occupation, the GAs in the Occupy Movement were ultimately unable to fulfill their function of unifying the protestors, as over the course of the struggle they were transformed from decision making bodies of the struggle to increasingly passive objects of activists and professional leftists—mainly through the activities of the working groups and committees. Rather than constituting the organ of the most widespread debate, the GAs omnipresent fear of working out concrete demands—because they were seen as divisive and polarizing rather than unifying—rendered them powerless in the face of the need to take concrete decisions in the heat of the moment. 

Democratic Illusions And The Trauma of the Past

One feature of the Occupy Movement that has been common to most of the protest movements we have seen over the past year has been the preponderance of tremendous illusions in “democracy” as an alternative to the present system. In one form or another, the sentiment that some kind of authentic democracy can serve as an effective corrective to, or buffer against, the worst forms of oppression and suffering that the population is experiencing has emerged in Egypt, Spain, Israel and elsewhere. 

In the Occupy Movement, these ideas were expressed with a typically American flavor. For the most part, this took the form of an underlying assumption that the problems facing the world could all be traced back to the domination of economic and political life by a parasitic clique of financiers, bankers and large corporations who put their own immediate financial interests above that of society as a whole. In the United States, this phenomenon is said to have corrupted the U.S. democratic process, such that corporations are effectively able to dictate policy to Congress and the President through their control of campaign funds. 

Thus, the Occupy Movement has tended to pose the solution to oppression and suffering as the revitalization of democracy against corporate greed and financial speculation. While the precise definition of “democracy” may differ from protestor to protestor—some may be content with an amendment banning corporate campaign contributions, while others have a more radical definition of self-government in mind, the underlying sense is nevertheless that “democracy” is somehow opposed to economic oppression and exploitation. 

Moreover, while many protestors are now willing to say that “capitalism” is either part of or at the root of the world’s economic problems, there is no consensus on what “capitalism” actually is. For many, capitalism simply equates to the banks and big corporations. The Marxist understanding that capitalism is a mode of production associated with an entire epoch of human history characterized by the exploitation of wage labor is only broached on the margins of this movement. As such, while many protestors recognize that Marx had something important to say about capitalism’s problems, there is little clarity about the relevance of Marxism and the workers’ movement for their project of building a new world today. These hesitations have also been seen in other movements around the world, constituting a limitation that is vital for future movements to transcend. 

If these illusions in democracy remained at the ideological level, we could justly write them off to the immaturity of the movement, as an expression of an opening phase in the class struggle, which the working class would transcend in the light of experience. This may ultimately prove to be the case, but for now the Occupy Movement has turned its view of the nature of democracy into a fetish that came to serve as a fundamental barrier to its ability to move forward. In addition, it provided the basis for precisely what the movement did not to happen in the first place: its co-optation by pro-democracy, reformist ideology in the context of the approaching Presidential election campaign of 2012. 

From the beginning, taking the mandate to create a new form of democracy in the course of the struggle seriously, the GAs attempted to function on the basis of a “consensus” model of democracy. In many ways, this was a healthy response designed to ensure the widest possible participation and to make sure nobody felt excluded from the decisions taken by the GAs. Undoubtedly this model was adopted as a response to the bad experiences of previous movements dominated by professional activists and political organizations, in which the average participant was made to feel like little more than a foot solider in a movement led by professionals. 

In this sense, the desire to make sure everyone felt included is perfectly understandable. However, in reality, the insistence on operating on a consensus model prevented the movement from moving beyond its limitations by blocking the necessary confrontation of ideas and perspectives that would allow the movement to break out of its isolation in the park. In the absence of being able to take any real decisions, to respond to the immediate needs of the movement—by neglecting to develop an executive organ—the GAs very quickly fell under the influence of the various working groups and committees, many of them dominated by the very professional activists they originally feared. In a way, the insistence on making every decision based on consensus ensured that no real decisions could be made and that the various “parts” (working groups, committees, etc.) would begin to substitute themselves for the “whole” (the GA). Thus, the GAs’ fear of exclusion allowed substitutionism to creep in through the back door—a situation that ultimately led to numerous distortions of the GAs’ sovereignty. 

The a priori insistence on consensus based functioning was also evident in the very difficult question of the raising of concrete demands. From the beginning, the Occupy Movement seemed proud of its refusal to specify precise demands or formulate a program. This is an understandable concern for those who wish to avoid being recuperated into the same old reformist politics offered up by the state, but as the fate of the Occupy Movement shows, reformism cannot be blocked by refusing to put forward demands. The movement has been characterized by an extreme heterogeneity of demands. The most radical vision for a total recreation of society on egalitarian terms co-exists with totally reformist demands that remain within the purview of bourgeois legalism, such as the passage of a constitutional amendment to end “corporate personhood.” In the name of excluding no one, the Occupy Movement has been unable to advance and thus unable to fulfill its ultimate goal of transforming society. 

With such a plethora of often-contradictory demands circulating, and with the movement consciously refusing to specify which demands would define it, the movement thus allowed others to step-in and speak for it. Unsurprisingly, the Occupy Movement was very quickly adopted by bourgeois celebrities, left-wing politicians and union officials who wasted no time stepping in and declaring themselves the movement’s voice. By refusing to specify demands, the movement ensured that it would characterized in the media—and thus in front of the rest of the working class—by only those demands that fit the immediate agenda of this or that faction of the bourgeois political apparatus. 

The refusal to take up the question of demands, the avoidance of the trauma of “exclusion,” served to prevent the movement from figuring out how to move forward. With no ability to undertake a real process of clarification, the Occupy Movement was unable to determine to which social force it should turn to. It was thus doomed to turn inwards on itself in an ultimately fruitless attempt to defend the “communities of consensus” they thought they had built in the parks. 

Without question the Occupy Movement’s focus on consensus functioning was a response to the trauma of previous movements and represented, on some levels, a healthy instinct to try to transcend leftist and bourgeois modes of functioning. However, beyond this, the insistence on consensus represented the fundamental penetration of democratic ideology into the functioning of the GAs itself. Thus, the Occupy Movement—and indeed most of the social movements we have seen recently—are characterized by more than mere ideological illusions in the bourgeois democratic state; on the contrary the insistence on democratic functioning have completely distorted the unitary forms of struggle that are merging in response to capitalism’s attacks.

The traumas of the past—of which Stalinism and leftism are paramount—have created a fetish for attempting to create a new kind of democratic-consensus functioning that can avoid exclusion, confrontation and hurt feelings. While this may be understandable on one level, ultimately it comes to function as a roadblock to the development of a real alternative to the present system. In the end, the consensus model proved totally illusory as the GAs’ ultimate inability to live up to the tasks of the moment allowed the committees and working-groups to ultimately assert their hegemony. 

One of the most important lessons of the Occupy Movement therefore is that future movements must take up the question of how to develop a competent executive organ that remains responsible to the GAs: A real decision making body that operates with an immediately revocable mandate from the GAs. Such an organ is necessary if the movement is to make decisions in the heat of the struggle and forge solidarity, trust and unity among all participants. As this movement shows, the development of a real executive organ cannot be avoided if the movement wants to advance beyond a very elementary stage. How can tactical decisions be made in the heat of the struggle? How can the GAs maintain their sovereignty over whatever committees and organs will be necessary? These are the vital questions that must be taken-up. 

Of course, it is also true that an executive organ cannot be proclaimed ex nihilio. An executive organ that does rest on the basis of the widest discussion and the broadest exchange of ideas between all participants would be at best a total farce and at worst another avenue for substitutions to creep in through the back door. An executive organ can only function as a concretization of the vitality of the GAs—it cannot substitute itself for them. Therefore, while the failure to take up the question of an executive function may have been a key factor in the Occupy Movement’s ultimate demise—this does not mean that an executive organ declared in a purely voluntarist fashion by the most active elements in the struggle would have saved it. 

More than anything, what was missing from this movement was a real desire to discuss the roots of the crisis itself. Rather than attempt to engage in what has become an inevitable discussion about the nature of society’s troubles, the Occupy Movement focused instead on a fetish around the mode of decision making itself. Bogging down in process, the movement never broached the fundamental substantive questions: Are the banks to blame for society’s impasse or are their shenanigans a mere symptom of a wider failure of the economic system itself? Can we make meaningful change by prodding the state to act in society’s interests or must we think about ways to transcend the state? While it was possible to find participants on both sides of these questions (and a few more to boot!), the movement never figured out to go about deciding which positions were “right.” Under the guise of “all positions are welcome here,” the Occupy Movement never moved beyond a simplistic faith in its own ability to point the way forward by the example of a new form of consensus living. 

The Need to Extend the Struggle

One aspect of the Occupy Movement that figured prominently in its ultimate failure was its inability to effectively extend the struggle beyond the various encampment sites. Many factors figured into the movement’s ultimate isolation: the tendency for the occupiers to see the encampment sites as a community, the tendency for the various parks to be seen as fortresses of liberated space that must be defended, etc. However, the most important factor has been the inability of the movement to effectively link up with the broader struggle of the working class to defend its living and working conditions faced with capitalism’s aggressive attacks. 

Outside of the controversial general strike in Oakland that shut down the city’s port operations for a day, the Occupy Movement has been unable to inspire a broader response by the working class to capitalism’s attacks against it. (2)

For the most part, the working class at the point of production remains disoriented in the face of capitalism’s broad offensive against its conditions of life and has been unable to launch a mass struggle to defend itself. Outside of a few scattered union-controlled strikes, the broader working class remains largely absent from the struggle at the moment. 

On some level, this should not be surprising. The current crisis and the present stepping up of the assault on the working-class is coming after over 30 years of open attacks on the working-class’s living and working conditions and the very basis of class solidarity itself. Moreover, the current attacks are remarkably brutal in their ferocity at both the level of the point of production and the social wage. In addition to this, the ongoing political crisis of the U.S. bourgeoisie must be factored in to any analysis of the working class’s apparent passivity. The insurgent right wing’s aggressive attacks on the union apparatus, as well as the increasingly bizarre rhetoric emerging from the Tea Party have undoubtedly had a disorienting effect on working class consciousness. Under these conditions, many workers remain on the level of seeking to protect what they still have through the existing institutions of the unions and the Democratic Party. Others have become so disoriented that they sympathize with whatever politician sounds the angriest—even if he/she happened to be from the Tea Party. 

Nevertheless, despite the difficulties and barriers it faces to recovering class identity and the working-class terrain of the struggle, the broader working-class has not been totally silent. The examples of the mobilizations in Wisconsin earlier this year, are evidence that we have entered a phase—opened up by the New York City Transit Strike in 2005/2006—where the tendency will be towards increasing class confrontations—towards the recovery of solidarity and a will to resist the paralysis instilled by capitalism’s attacks. If the trauma of the escalation of the attacks in the wake of the financial meltdown of 2008 and the current political chaos of the U.S. ruling class are currently weighing heavily on the working class and dampening its militancy, a memory of these struggles still brews on the subterranean level. 

However, while public opinion polls have consistently shown a high level of sympathy for the Occupy protestors throughout the populace, this has not translated into any effective mass action. There were of course instances in which this prospect was raised. Mostly, this occurred around the issue of police repression. In New York, Oakland and elsewhere, each time the state appeared to go too far in its repression of the protestors, a massive outrage in public opinion forced the state into restraint. However, while the New York unions were obliged on several occasions to call the workers out to show sympathy with the protestors in the face of imminent repression, only in Oakland did police repression evoke a broader response from the working class. 

It is not surprising then, that the Occupy protests have done little to slow down the attacks against the working class, which just keep coming. American Airlines’ bankruptcy petition, the ongoing lock-outs at American Crystal Sugar and Cooper Tire and the massive austerity planned at the U.S. Post Office are just some examples that show the bourgeoisie has not been cowed by the Occupy Movement to lessen its attacks on the working class. Clearly, the tactic of occupying parks on the edge of financial districts has not proven effective in fighting back against capitalism attacks. Rather than camping out on the fringes of Wall Street, Bay Street and other financial centers, would the protestors have been more effective if they would have taken their efforts to working class districts, showing the workers—still too disoriented to struggle—that they were not alone? 

We cannot say for certain, but clearly, a serious conversation about tactics has become necessary for all those seeking to struggle against the current degradation of human life represented by capitalism’s ongoing assault on society. Unfortunately, for the Occupy Movement, it’s a priori fetish for consensus, its almost principled desire to refrain from tactical discussions and its privileging of pluralism above concrete action; have prevented it so far from effectively taking up these questions. Above all, in the face of state repression, it has not been able to effectively ponder the questions, “To whom do we turn for support?” and “Where do we go if we can no longer live in the park?” Unable to consider these questions deeper, the Occupy Movement has for now turned back in on itself and faces an uncertain future. 

From our perspective, even if the Occupy Movement represents a very important first step by a portion of the working class most affected by capitalism’s crisis, it is clear that going forward will require a fundamental reconsideration of the goals of the struggle and the method for carrying it out. Above all, there is a need to reexamine the attachment to consensus functioning, which appears to us to ensue from the traumatic wounds emanating from the negative experiences of past movements. How can a social movement advance in a way that avoids the pitfalls of the past, but which allows it to function in a truly effective way in the heat of the struggle? How can a social movement committed to the idea that another world is possible remain true to this goal, but still have the tactical fortitude to confront the bourgeois state?  These are all important questions, which revolutionaries and all those committed to a different world will need to consider in the period ahead. 

--Internationalism

12/05/2011

Notes:

(1) A similar chain of events occurred in Toronto, where plans were made for protestors to meet in the heart of the city’s Bay Street district, only to later move to a small park on the outskirts of downtown. The Toronto Police Department—still reeling in the court of public opinion over their aggressive crackdown on G20 protestors the previous year—were more than willing to allow the occupiers to take over the park. 

(2)  See our article, “Oakland: Occupy Movement Seeks Links With the Working Class [184]”

ICC Introduction

The comrades who have written the statements below, instead of being locked up in their sector as usually happens with struggles dominated by the unions, have launched a struggle open to all workers without distinction of sector or situation: in short, a united struggle.

And, in the second place, instead of the struggle being led by a minority of organising and negotiating “professionals” – again, as in the union way of thinking- they have made the centre of decision-making an Open Assembly held in a square, offering a public space where workers from other sectors can unite with their demands, bring their initiatives, and discuss together the measures to be taken.

Confronted with a situation of generalised social cuts, defaults and arrears in the payment of wages, of rampant unemployment, where no government or union can put forward any solutions - in fact, they are part of the problem- the only solution can lie in the united mobilisations organised by assemblies of all workers, of the oppressed and exploited. We do not have any illusions; we know that this road is difficult, that we will make many errors, suffer from traps and repression. But it is the only road that can take us forwards! The other way - having confidence in governments, in elections and the unions - offers no “road” apart from that leading into a bottomless pit.

WE ARE MOBILISING FOR THE DEFENSE OF OUR JOBS AND THE CONTINUATION OF “THE SOCIAL/SOCIAL CARE” (centres and services paid for by public funds but with private or third sector management)

To “Social care” workers, to all workers,

In our sector cuts, defaults, closures, the worsening of working conditions,... are increasing: as they are for all workers. Rare is the centre or services that is not threatened by closure or cuts, or is already closed.

Over recent weeks comrades from several firms in this sector have spontaneously got in contact with us asking “what to do”. In response we have invited them to the next meeting of the Platform[1]. Given that this interest has been growing we have decided to call an OPEN ASSEMBLY with the intention of testing the situation and assessing the possibility of a united struggle against the cuts in order to maintain jobs and services (the services that are most necessary for those most in need).

We know that it is difficult to envisage such a struggle but we take hope from the unprecedented situation in which we are living, and above all from the demands from various areas “to do something”. We believe that it is possible to try and mobilise ourselves and a good number of our comrades; and with a large movement we could face up to the attacks that we are suffering. We understand that this appears illusory and utopian, but we think that it is illusory and utopian to think that something or someone, other than ourselves is going to “save” us.

We invite everyone to participate and to spread this invitation:

Wednesday 9th November at 18.00 in the Plaza de la Montaneta (Alicante)

Workers’ Open Assembly

Against the cuts, unemployment, the closure of social services and the worsening of working conditions

Unite in order to struggle for ourselves

Plataforma de Trabajadores de AFEMA

(an Independent and assemblyist collective)

This call, though centered on our sector, is open to all workers and those who are interested, because we think that we are all the same and that solidarity is essential.

Alicante 10th November 2011

COMMUNIQUE TO THE COMRADES CONCENTRATED IN VALENCIA

Dear comrades, we are mainly workers and users of the “social” sector, education and health, (although there are also comrades of other sectors), and we are mobilised and organised through open assemblies against the attacks, which we have been suffering for some time.

We know about the mobilisations of the comrades of Parque Alcosa in Valencia and we are in profound solidarity with them, since we know they are trying to do the same as we are and that we have the same interests.

Yesterday at our first assembly we called for a gathering/demonstation and open assembly for Wednesday the 16th November, against the cuts, unemployment, precarious working conditions and the closure or worsening of services in the social sector. We also want to make you aware of this call in order that on the same day you could also have a gathering and assembly in Valencia (we do know not anyone in Castellon but if you do, it would be great if they could participate). We believe that a joint call would be more effective and visible.

We think that this would be the beginning of a future cooperation and coordination that could bring about unified actions faced with the outrages of the Generalitat Valencia.

We await your response and please accept our cordial greetings.

Workers’ Open Assembly (Alicante)

We invite you to a gathering and after an Assembly next Wednesday 16th November in the Plaza de la Montaneta (Alicante) at 18.00 and would ask you to make this as widely known as possible!!

Attached is the agenda, thanks!!!

AGAINST CUTS AND NON-PAYMENTS BY THE GENERALITAT VALENCIANA IN THE “SOCIAL” SECTOR, EDUCATION AND HEALTH

NO TO LAY-OFFS

NO TO SERVICE CLOSURES

WORKERS AND SERVICE USERS’ OPEN ASSEMBLY

WE PROPOSE FORCEFUL AND COORDINATED ACTIONS TO AVOID THE DISAPPEARANCE OF SOCIAL SERVICES AND THE WORSENING OF THE CARE IN EDUCATION AND HEALTH

WEDNESDAY 16TH NOVEMBER AT 1800 IN THE PLAZA DE LA MONTANETA (ALICANTE)

WORKERS’ OPEN ASSEMBLY OF VALENCIA

[email protected] [185]

The announcement is open to users, to families and workers from other sectors of workers, faced with trying to stop the economic policies that are daily worsening the living conditions and basic rights of everybody.

The proposed agenda for the Workers’ Open Assembly of Alicante 16th November:

Manifesto of the assembly of workers, users and other sectors of workers. To evaluate the outline drawn up by the responsible work group.

1. Mailing of the protest to the Generalitat. To evaluate the outline drawn up by the responsible work group.

2. Proposal to create a commission against unemployment and the closure of services. To evaluate the proposal.

3. Actions against the Generalitat.

4. Coordination with the comrades of Valencia and Castellon, preliminary information on the tasks carried out.

5. Organisation of work, the possible creation of a work commission.

6. Next assembly (a calendar of the next assemblies) and the name of the assembly (the name used so far has been provisional).

If a comrade or workers’ collective wishes to propose another point, please let us know:

[email protected] [186]

Today those involved in the riots that arose in several cities across England between 6th and 9th of August continue to appear before the courts, with many given exemplary sentences that far exceed those usually handed down for the particular offence. They are being punished for their participation in a riot as much if not more than for any crime they committed.

In the immediate aftermath of the riots a discussion developed within the revolutionary movement about the class nature and dynamic of the riots. Left communist organisations and anarchist groups, such as Solfed, saw the riots as arising from the nature and contradictions of capitalist society but criticised the attacks on other workers, whether directly or as the result of setting fire to shops above which workers are living. Others saw the riots as an attack on the commodity and on capitalist relations of production. Some have drawn a distinction between these riots and those of the 1980s, arguing that the latter were more clearly against the forces oppressing and attacking the working class, in particular the police. The following article attempts to contribute to this discussion by looking at the relationship between the riots and the class struggle by placing them in the framework of the nature and evolution of the class struggle. The first part, published here, considers the question in the context of the history of the workers’ movement and the general nature of the class struggle. The second part will look more specifically at the summer riots in the UK.

The relationship between riots and the class struggle

Those who side with the working class cannot accept the language and framework given by the bourgeoisie. The confrontation between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie inevitably involves the working class appropriating goods and property from the bourgeoisie and confronting its forces of control, at times with violence, whether this be the food riots of the 18th century, the struggles to organise and win wage increases in the 19th or to overthrow capitalism of the early 20th. For the bourgeoisie anything that threatens its rule and that imposes on the sanctity of property is rioting, looting, criminal and immoral and calls forth a desire for revenge that leads to repression, incarceration and at times massacres. Thus when the ruling class talks of “riots” we should not be too quick to follow them.

Nor should we be too ready to dismiss any action as that of the lumpenproletariat. While the Communist Manifesto analysis of “the dangerous class” which “may…be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution” but whose conditions of life “prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue” correctly describes a process that has existed throughout capitalism, and which may be increasing under present circumstances, it is also clear that this is not an immutable category.

Those who side with the working class must judge any event by the extent to which it advances or retards the struggle of the working class to end its exploitation. This is above all a historical perspective; immediate gains may not always translate into long term acquisitions. Thus evaluating any particular event means understanding its impact on the working class’ weapons of struggle: its organisation and its consciousness.

Marx and Engels outline the dynamic and unity of these two aspects in the Manifesto of the Communist Party. On the one they hand they describe the development the unions (the form that the mass organisations of the working class took at that time) and the struggles they engaged in and comment: “Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of battle lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers”. On the other, they describe how “The bourgeoisie itself…supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education” before going on to argue that the communists are “practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others…theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march…” Organisation and consciousness; consciousness and organisation; these are the mutually reinforcing qualities of the working class, the fruit of its historical and international being and struggle. They are not identical and arise and manifest themselves in different, but related, rhythms. Elements can and do come to the proletariat from other classes and contribute to its development, but the origin, dynamic and strength of that development arises from within the working class.

In considering the general question of how the working class struggles and the specific question of the place that riots have in that struggle, there are two aspects to the critique the workers’ movement makes: theoretical analysis and practice.

Theoretical analysis

In the Condition of the Working Class in England published in German in 1845 Engels set out the position in which capitalism places every worker (regardless of gender despite the language of the following quotes): “…the working man is made to feel at every moment that the bourgeoisie treats him as a chattel, as its property, and for this reason, if for no other, he must come forward as its enemy…in our present society he can save his manhood only in hatred and rebellion against the bourgeoisie”. He then sketched an outline of the development of the revolt of the working class: “the earliest, crudest, and least fruitful form of this rebellion was that of crime. The working-man lived in poverty and want, and saw that others were better off than he. It was not clear to his mind why he, who did more for society than the rich idler, should be the one to suffer under these conditions. Want conquered his inherited respect for the sacredness of property, and he stole…The workers soon realised that crime did not help matters. The criminal could protest against the existing order of society only singly, as one individual; the whole might of society was brought to bear upon each criminal, and crushed him with its immense superiority.” The working class moved on to oppose the machines that excluded some and dominated others and then to develop unions, first in secret and then openly, to defend their interests by keeping wages up as much as possible and preventing the bourgeoisie from dividing the class with differing rates of pay for the same work

In this analysis Engels made clear that the working class had both to challenge bourgeois legality and be ready to use force when necessary. He gives an example of a strike by brickmakers in Manchester in 1843 when the size of the bricks produced was increased without any increase in wages. When the owners posted armed guards “the brick-yard…was stormed at ten o’clock one night by a crowd of brickmakers, who advanced in military order, the first ranks armed with guns” and the workers succeeded in their purpose of destroying the newly produced bricks. More generally, he comments that “the working-men do not respect the law, but simply submit to its power when they cannot change it” and gives the example of the attacks on the police that he states take every week in Manchester.

However, neither Marx nor Engels saw violence and law-breaking as revolutionary in themselves and were ready to criticise actions that went against the development of the class struggle, even when they appeared spectacular and confrontational. Thus in 1886 Engels strongly attacked the activity of the Social Democratic Federation in organising a demonstration of the unemployed which, while going through Pall Mall and other rich parts of London on the way to Hyde Park, descended into attacks on shops and looting of wine shops. Engels argued that few workers took part, that most of those involved “were out for a lark and in some cases were already half seas over” and that the unemployed who participated “were mostly of the kind who do not wish to work – barrow-boys, idlers, police spies and rogues”. The absence of the police was “so conspicuous that it was not only we who believed it to have been intentional”. Whatever one might think of some of Engels’ language his essential criticism that “These socialist gents [ie the leaders of the SDF] are determined to conjure up overnight a movement which, here as elsewhere, necessarily calls for years of work” is valid. Revolution is not the product of spectacle, manipulation, (deleted: ‘violence’) or looting.

The practice of the working class

For all the theoretical critique developed by leading figures within the workers’ movement, the most eloquent critique was that which flowed from the actual practice of the working class. In the history of the class struggle, the question facing the working class was not simply whether any particular moment was violent and “riotous” or not but the extent to which it took place on a working class terrain and was controlled by the working class. Amongst the many instances of unrest, riot and insurrection that took place in the last decades of the 18th and the first of 19th it is possible to distinguish between those where “the mob” was manipulated by the bourgeoisie and those where the emerging working class struggled to defend itself and to survive. 

Amongst the former, were various incidents intended to stir up religious antipathy, whether it be against Catholics or dissenters and also ‘popular’ political movements, such as that led by Wilkes in the later 18th century. An example of the first are the Gordon Riots of 1780 which began with marches to the House of Commons in protest at concessions given to Catholics and led on to attacks on Catholic churches and the property of rich Catholics and was only stopped when the mob turned its attention to the Bank of England. This loss of control highlights one of the dangers facing the bourgeoisie in its efforts to use the mob: it may slip out of its control. This is illustrated in the movement led by Wilkes, which was essentially a struggle between different factions of the ruling class, when the movement created to back his campaign began to merge with industrial action, and revolutionary slogans were raised.

Amongst the latter, can be seen the food riots that took place in many parts of Britain, which were often characterised by the seizing of food from merchants and its forced sale at a lower price. These movements could be very organised, lasting several days without violence, with the merchants being given the money that the people deemed to be a “fair price”. The latter also included the Luddite movement that took place at various times in the Midlands and north of England and which sought to protect the wages and working conditions of the working class in the face of rapid industrialisation and the reorganisation of patterns of life and work. The movement was characterised as much by its organisation and popular support as by the machine breaking popularly associated with it. The bourgeoisie responded with a mix of force and concessions. At its height in 1812 more than 12,000 troops were deployed between Leicester and York and the total value of the property destroyed has been estimated at £100,000 at contemporary prices. 

In The Condition of the Working Class in England Engels traced the development of unions and above all of Chartism that flowed from these first efforts of the working class. For Engels Chartism was “the compact form of the opposition to the bourgeoisie”; “In the Unions and turnouts opposition always remained isolated, it was single working-men or sections who fought a single bourgeois. If the fight became general, this was scarcely by the intention of the working-men…but in Chartism it is the whole working class which arises against the bourgeoisie…” Chartism may have been the first political organisation of the working class and it may have struggled for goals such as universal suffrage that were later given as reforms to contain the struggle, but in its time its struggle was revolutionary and in that struggle it was ready to use violence when necessary. The general strike and armed insurrection were discussed and found expression in the Newport rising of 1839 and the general strike of 1842.

Throughout its history working class struggles have been faced with the necessity to use violence at times. The liberals and pacifists who denounce violence never see that ‘ordinary’, ‘peaceful’ life under capitalism is a continual act of violence against the exploited. This is not to praise violence in itself but to recognise that it is an unavoidable part of the class struggle. In his history of the class struggle in the US Louis Adamic shows how the particularly brutal exploitation and repression meted out by the bosses in the US sometimes prompted an equally forceful response.

We can return to Britain to look at the particular example of the Tonypandy riot of November 1910. This was part of the wider Cambrian Combine dispute and arose after the miners were locked out by the mine owners who alleged that they were deliberately working slowly. Other mines came out in support and 12,000 miners took part, closing nearly all the mines in the area. The bourgeoisie responded by sending in police and troops with violent confrontations resulting between the police and the workers. The riots broke out when workers attempted to stop strike-breakers from entering one of the mines to keep the pumps working, leading to hand to hand fighting between the workers and the police. By midnight, after repeated baton charges by the police, the workers were forced back into the centre of Tonypandy where they faced further attacks by the police. During the early hours of the morning shops were smashed and some were looted. The police were not present during the period of looting and it was used by the bourgeoisie as a pretext to call for military intervention. Many workers were injured and one killed as a result of the clashes. The wider dispute prompted reflection amongst miners in the South Wales Miners’ Federation and contributed to the development of a current that challenged the leadership of the Federation and advanced syndicalist ideas in the pamphlet The miners’ next step, published in Tonypandy in 1912.

Time and again the essential question is not how violent a struggle is – whether one uses that as a measure of its proletarian or non-proletarian nature - but the context in which it took place and its dynamic. Thus alongside the history of struggles that advanced the interests of the working class there is another strand of actions that did the opposite and took the working class off its terrain. To give a few examples:

-           In the summer of 1919, ‘race riots’ broke out in Liverpool and Cardiff following the discharge of black and white sailors. Trade unions that later became the National Union of Seamen complained about black sailors being given jobs when whites were unemployed, and in May 1919 five thousand unemployed white ex-servicemen complained to the Mayor of Liverpool about black workers competing with whites for jobs. In June black ex-serviceman and their families and homes were attacked. In Liverpool crowds of two to ten thousand people attacked black people on the streets and in Cardiff Arab and black areas were targeted and three people were killed with many more injured.

-           In May 1974 the Ulster Workers Council organised a general strike of Protestant workers in opposition to supposed concessions to catholic workers. The strike was controlled by loyalist political and paramilitary organisations and while there is some evidence that workers were reluctant to participate, it successfully divided the working class. 

The assault on the heavens

The critique made by the working class is at its most eloquent when it challenges the power of the bourgeoisie and begins to assert the human society it carries within it against the inhuman regime of the bourgeoisie as it did in the Paris Commune of 1871, in the revolution of 1905 in Russia and in the revolutionary wave initiated in Russia.

The basic question of these movements was not so much the direct appropriation of property but the question of power, expressed in the struggle against the bourgeoisie and for the reorganisation of society.

This lies at the heart of the analysis of the Paris Commune made by Marx in The civil war in France, issued by the International Working Men’s Association in 1871. He emphasises the Commune’s opposition to the organisation of the state, expressed in its first measure that suppressed the standing army and replaced it with the National Guard. Under the conditions of siege in which it existed the Commune could but indicate the direction of the social reconstruction it aspired to “The great social measure of the Commune was its own working existence. Its special measures could but betoken the tendency of a government of the people by the people. Such were the abolition of the nightwork of journeymen bakers; the prohibition, under penalty, of the employers’ practice to reduce wages by levying upon their workpeople fines under manifold pretexts… Another measure of this class was the surrender, to associations of workmen… of all closed workshops and factories…” The elected members of the Commune - the majority of whom were working men - and its administrators were all paid average worker’s wages. The church was disestablished and education made available to all: “the priests were sent back to the recesses of private life… the whole of the educational institutions were opened to the people gratuitously, and at the same time cleared of all interference of Church and State. Thus not only was education made accessible to all, but science itself freed from the fetters which class prejudice and governmental force had imposed upon it.” (p.71). Attempts by the French government to starve the Commune failed and a regular supply of food was maintained.

The revolution of 1905 saw the appearance of strike committees across large parts of Russia to control the struggle in individual factories and their development, by coming together and becoming permanent elected bodies, into soviets. In short, a movement from the immediate economic struggle to the more general struggle and its fusion with the political struggle for power. Questions of immediate survival were addressed within this wider context: thus workers fired during strikes at the Putilov works “established relief measures, among which were four soup kitchens” The centre of the revolution, the St Petersburg Soviet became involved in the organisation of daily life, including preventing censorship of the press by the state and giving instructions to the railways and post office. In Moscow, the soviet issued directives “regulating the water supply, keeping essential stores open [and] postponing rent payments for workers…”

In 1917, this situation was repeated and then went further as the working class took power from the bourgeoisie: “in many cases the collapse of the central government and local bureaucracies turned these instruments of revolution into governmental bodies that intervened in and arrogated to themselves administrative functions.” When the disruption of revolution led to food shortages in urban areas “local soviets independently adopted stringent measures of alleviation. In Nizhni Novgorod, for example, exportation of bread was curtailed; in Krasnoyarsk, the soviet introduced ration cards; in other places ‘bourgeois’ homes were searched and goods confiscated.” In The history of the Russian Revolution, Trotsky wrote “In the Urals, where Bolshevism had prevailed since 1905, the soviets frequently administered civil and criminal law; created their own militia in numerous factories, paying them out of factory funds; organised workers’ controls of raw materials and fuel for the factories; supervised marketing; and determined wage scales. In some areas in the Urals the soviets expropriated land for communal cultivation.”

Even in struggles less dramatic than those already mentioned the methods of the working class come to the fore. Thus, during the first days of the mass strike in Poland in 1980 representatives from the striking factories came together to form the Inter-Factory Committee (MKS in Polish), which “controlled the entire region and resolved transportation and food distribution problems.” 

Thus, we can draw a number conclusions about struggles that take place on a class terrain, whether it be a single strike or a revolutionary movement. Firstly, violence is not an end in itself nor a simple expression of frustration, but a means by which the working class takes and defends power in order to change the world. Secondly, when commodities are appropriated this is done above all as a means of maintaining the collective struggle and it is the use value of the commodity that dominates rather than its exchange value. Thirdly, they are marked by and strengthen collective action and solidarity. The perspective of the such struggle is always towards the future, towards the transformation of society. 

North 11/11

A second part of this article on the riots that took place in August will follow.