The thunder in Tunisia and Egypt is being echoed in Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Gaza, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain and Yemen. Whatever flags the demonstrators carry, all these protests have their root in the world wide crisis of capitalism and its direct consequences: unemployment, rising prices, austerity, and the repression and corruption of the governments who preside over these brutal attacks on living standards. In short, they have the same origins as the revolt of Greek youth against police repression in 2008, the struggle against pension ‘reforms’ in France, the student rebellions in Italy and Britain, and workers’ strikes from Bangladesh to China and from Spain to the USA.

The determination, courage and sense of solidarity being displayed in the streets of Tunis, Cairo, Alexandria and many other cities are a true inspiration. The masses occupying Tahrir Square in Cairo or similar public places have fed themselves, fought off attacks by pro-regime thugs and the police, called the soldiers to fraternise with them, nursed their wounded, openly rejected sectarian divisions between Muslim and Christian, between the religious and the secular. In the neighbourhoods they have formed committees to protect their homes from looters manipulated by the police. Tens of thousands have effectively been on strike for days and even weeks in order to swell the ranks of the demonstrations.

Faced with this spectre of massive revolt, with the nightmare prospect of its extension across the ‘Arab world’ and even beyond, the ruling class all over the world has been responding with its two trustiest weapons: repression and mystification. In Tunisia, scores were gunned down in the streets, but now the ruling class proclaims the beginning of a transition to democracy; in Egypt, the Mubarak regime alternates between beating, shooting, gassing and running down protestors and issuing similar vague promises. In Gaza, Hamas arrests demonstrators trying to show solidarity with the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt; on the West Bank the PLO has banned “unlicensed gatherings” called to support the uprisings; and in Iraq protests against unemployment and shortages are fired on by the regime installed by the US and British ‘liberators’. In Algeria, after stifling the first signs of revolt, concessions are made legalising timid forms of protest; in Jordan the King sacks his government.

Internationally, the capitalist class also alternates its language: some – especially those on the right, and of course the rulers of Israel – openly support Mubarak’s regime as the only bulwark against an Islamist takeover. But the key note is given by Obama: after some initial hesitations, the message is that Mubarak must go and go quickly. The ‘transition to democracy’ is put forward as the only way forward for the downtrodden masses of North Africa and the Middle East.

The dangers facing the movement

The mass movement centred in Egypt thus faces two dangers. One is that the spirit of revolt will be drowned in blood. It seems that the initial attempts by the Mubarak regime to save itself with the iron fist have been stymied: first the police had to withdraw from the streets in the face of the massive demonstrations, and the unleashing of the pro-Mubarak thugs last week has also failed to sap the demonstrators’ will to continue. In both rounds of confrontation, the army has presented itself as a ‘neutral’ force, even as being on the side of the anti-Mubarak gatherings and protecting them from assaults by the regime’s defenders. There is no doubt that many of the soldiers sympathise with the protests and would not be willing to fire on the masses in the streets; some have already deserted. Higher up in the army, there are certainly factions that want Mubarak to go now. But the army of the capitalist state is not a neutral force. Its ‘protection’ of Tahrir Square is a also a form of containment, a huge kettle; and when push comes to shove, the army will indeed be used against the exploited population, unless the latter succeeds in winning over the rank and file soldiers and effectively dissolving the army as an organised part of the state power.  

But here we come to the second great danger facing the movement: the danger that resides in its widespread illusions in democracy. The belief that the state can, perhaps after a few reforms, be made to serve the people; the belief that ‘all Egyptians’, perhaps with the exception of a few corrupt individuals, have the same basic interests. The belief in the neutrality of the army. The belief that the terrible poverty facing the majority of the population can be overcome if there is a functioning parliament and an end to the arbitrary rule of a Ben Ali or a Mubarak.  

These illusions, expressed everyday by the demonstrators’ own words and banners, disarm the real movement for emancipation, which can only advance as a movement of the working class fighting for its own interests, which are distinct from those of other social strata, and which are above all diametrically opposed to the interest of the bourgeoisie and all its parties and factions. The innumerable expressions of solidarity and self-organisation that we have seen so far already reflect the genuinely proletarian element in the current social revolts; and, as many of the protestors have already said, they presage a new and more human society. But this new and better society cannot be brought about through parliamentary elections, through putting el Baradei or the Muslim Brotherhood or any other bourgeois faction at the head of the state. These factions, who may be carried to power by the strength of the masses’ illusions, will not hesitate to use repression against these same masses later on.

There is much talk about ‘revolution’ in Tunisia and Egypt, both from the mainstream media and the extreme left. But the only revolution that makes sense today is the proletarian revolution, because we are living in an era in which capitalism, democratic or dictatorial, quite plainly can offer nothing to humanity. Such a revolution can only succeed on an international scale, breaking through all national borders and overthrowing all nation states. Today’s class struggles and mass revolts are certainly stepping stones on the way to such a revolution, but they face all kinds of obstacles on the road; and to reach the goal of revolution, profound changes in the political organisation and consciousness of millions of people have yet to take place.

In a way, the situation in Egypt today is a summation of the historic situation facing humanity as a whole. Capitalism is in terminal decline. The ruling class can offer no perspective for the future of the planet; but the exploited class is not yet aware of its own power, its own perspectives, its own programme for the transformation of society. The ultimate danger is that this temporary stalemate will end in “the mutual ruin of the contending classes”, as the Communist Manifesto put it – in a plunge into chaos and destruction. But the working class, the proletariat, will only discover its real power through engaging in real struggles, and this is why what is now taking place in North Africa and the Middle East is, for all the weaknesses and illusions that hamper it, a real beacon for workers everywhere.

And above all it is a call to the proletarians of the more developed countries, who are also beginning to return to the road of resistance, to take the next step, to express their practical solidarity with the masses of the ‘third world’ by escalating their own combat against austerity and impoverishment, and in doing so exposing all the lies about capitalist freedom and democracy, of which they have a long and bitter experience. 

This is the leaflet we distributed on the demonstrations against education cuts on 29 January.

But the crisis isn’t confined to Britain. The sovereign debt crisis (i.e. investors beginning to lose faith in government bonds) continues to rumble on in Europe. Ireland has already been forced to adopt yet another austerity budget and growing political instability. Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain, and Belgium are also facing serious difficulties that continue to undermine the Euro-area. As for China, some investment banks (e.g. Goldman Sachs) and hedge funds are already starting to reduce their exposure, amid worries that the Chinese miracle may turn out to be the biggest bubble of them all.

The crisis is thus clearly embedded in the capitalist system on a global scale. It is not the product of this or that government’s policy but the result of the economic mechanisms of capitalism itself, over which even the most competent government has limited control. Contrary to capitalist ideology (and that includes the so-called ‘left’), the recession was not caused by ‘greedy bankers’ or ‘neo-liberal’ economic policies. These elements are no more than consequences of far deeper structural issues at the heart of the economy.

The financial crisis and accompanying recession is not a new problem that has suddenly appeared over the last few years. Their roots can be traced at least as far back as the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the 70s, mainly left-wing governments employed the Keynesian policies that successfully held off recession during the post-war boom. However, these were finally shipwrecked on the cliffs of enormous budget deficits, inflation and recession.

In the 80s, the era of ‘Reaganomics’ and ‘Thatcherism’ there were the brutal recessions of 1981 and 1990. The ‘third way’ popularised especially by Blair and Clinton in the 90s was punctuated by the Mexican ‘Tequila’ Crisis of 94, the Asian Crisis of 97, the Russian Crisis of 98, and the complete breakdown in Argentina in 2000.

All governments are our enemy, not just this one!

What does this potted history of the crisis tell us? For one, it demonstrates that the crisis is historic in scale, a product of an entire social system in decline. The media usually blame the government in power for the crisis but it has been a constant companion of right and left-wing governments in every country, and so have the resulting attacks on our living standards. Whether it’s the wage freeze imposed by Labour’s ‘social contract’ in the 70s or the mass unemployment under Conservative governments in the 80s, the common denominator under all governments is that the working class has to pay for the crisis.

For all their fine words, once in power, every would-be government is confronted with the same economic reality which demands workers sacrifice their interests for the sake of ‘their’ country. From this perspective, all governments are the same and participation in elections or signing petitions begging the capitalist state to have mercy are all a waste of time. The only restraint on capital’s assault on the working class is its estimation of how far it can push us before we start pushing back.

But how can we fight effectively? Firstly, we must challenge the idea of each sector fighting its own corner: instead, we must try to struggle together wherever possible. In colleges and workplaces we can hold general meetings open to everyone, regardless of faculty, job or union, where real decisions can be made about the demands to raise and how to win them. We can send mass delegations to other colleges and workplaces inviting them to join in.

Demonstrations should become a vehicle for workers and students to discuss together, for reaching out to other workplaces under attack (local councils, postal sorting offices, etc.) and asking those workers to join them.

But ultimately, the severity of capitalism’s decline is such that even the most vigorous struggle can only bring about a temporary relief.Capitalism has no choice but to come back for more. Eventually, the struggle against austerity must go beyond immediate self-defence and begin to pose the question of replacing a decrepit capitalism with a new social system that will provide for the needs of all members of society.

This is not a utopia; the weapons of self-organisation and class consciousness forged in the defensive struggle will be the same ones that will one day be used to overthrow our exploiters and build a new world of human solidarity.

International Communist Current 27/1/11

The shock contraction of 0.5% in the last quarter of 2010 has been somewhat unnerving for British capitalism. Labour immediately seized on the figures as evidence that the Coalition cuts agenda was ill-advised and risked tipping the economy back into recession. Chancellor Osborne responded by saying that backing down on cuts would create worse turmoil in the markets and weaken the economy further.

While from the capitalist point of view there is a real debate on how to manage the economic situation, another aim of carrying out these debates is to obfuscate the true depths of the crisis now confronting the capitalist system. The ruling class present the recent economic disasters as the result of ‘greedy bankers’ and mistakes by government. In reality, however, the crisis is the product of the underlying mechanisms of capitalism. While government policy can influence or moderate the action of these mechanisms, it can never overcome them. The contradictions they seek to resolve are simply displaced – they change their form of expression but eventually return to haunt the ruling class.

Today’s economic situation did not simply fall from the sky. It is the result of decades of deterioration in capitalism’s underlying economic health and the successive failure of all the economic policies mobilised by the ruling class to try and prevent it.

The last phase of sustained growth experienced by capitalism was the post-war boom. While there had been recessions during the boom period, these were usually tackled successfully with ‘Keynesian’ state intervention. Recessions were short-lived and followed by vigorous growth.

While it was especially powerful in the West, the Eastern Bloc was also affected. The Soviet Union was at the height of its power, its economic and military power symbolised by the launch of Sputnik and then Yuri Gagarin into space.

This ‘economic miracle’ – as it was called in a number of countries – began to fizzle out by the late 60s. The first signs of stress were located in the Bretton Woods monetary system, based on dollar-gold convertibility. The US balance of payments had gone negative as early as 1950. Initially, this favoured the boom as the flood of dollars maintained liquidity but over time it began to erode confidence, a situation known as “Triffin’s Dilemma” after the economist who identified it. By 1967, the global monetary system was suffering serious stress and a run on Sterling was the first in a series of destabilising affairs. By 1971, Bretton-Woods was finished.

Monetary difficulties were accompanied by broader economic problems. The devaluation of the dollar badly hurt the oil producing countries and this (combined with the Yom Kippur war) produced the oil crisis of 1973, when the price of oil rose considerably. The overproduction incurred as a result of the crisis was symbolised by the steel crisis – the saturation of global steel markets. Two years of recession followed accompanied by the new phenomenon of ‘stagflation’ - a situation where inflation remains high despite low growth, unemployment and even recession.

The Keynesian consensus of the day appeared powerless to overcome the crisis and this opened the door to monetarism or neo-liberalism. This new policy, christened ‘Reaganomics’ or ‘Thatcherism’ after its most belligerent advocates, promised to overcome the chronic crisis (especially inflation) and return capitalism to the path of growth. Economically, this meant curtailing monetary growth; reducing taxation and state spending; deregulation (particularly of finance capital); and (in many countries) the withdrawal of the state from direct ownership of areas of the capitalist economy (privatisation).

Contrary to the ideology of both left and right, which presented this as a retreat of the state, it was nothing of the kind. The state retained regulatory control over the privatised industries and continued to control the metabolic rate of the economy through interest rates and monetary policy.

The state could no longer afford to resist the inexorable pressures of the market. For capitalism to function, it must be able to establish a sufficient rate of exploitation to allow it to grow. The working class had vigorously resisted the policy of wage cuts via inflation that the Left governments of the 70s had attempted to impose. In response, capitalism simply unleashed the competition that was a consequence of the international overcapacity engendered by a decade of stagnating growth. The market was allowed to do ‘economically’ what the state was unable to do politically. Entire swathes of manufacturing industry in the West were wiped out, with millions of workers laid off. Those that remained were forced to submit to a brutal haemorrhaging of wages and working conditions, and the amputation of the ‘social state’ – that is, reducing the provision of services such as health and education provided through the state while forcing the workers that provide them to do so more ‘efficiently’.

The decimation of manufacturing in the ‘mature’ capitalist economies had its natural counterpoint in the outsourcing to certain sectors of the ‘Third World’. Based on massive rates of exploitation, countries such as China were able to pick up the baton and became the workshops of the world. In the meantime, Western economies, through their financial dominance, could leech massive amounts of value from the new manufacturing centres. This capital naturally required reinvestment but despite the partial recovery from the disaster of the 70s, investment outlets were still inadequate. The deregulation of capital flows allowed enormous amounts of capital to flow quickly around the world in the search of profit and creating a vast pool of speculative finance.

This experimentation with the economic crack cocaine of speculation quickly developed into a full blown addiction. While bubbles and manias have always been a natural product of the capitalist cycle, they more and more came to dominate completely. This certainly provided a level of stimulus for the economy – although actual growth still lagged behind that achieved in the post-war boom – but at the price of increasing financial and monetary instability. 1987 saw the Stock Market Crash, swiftly followed by the Savings & Loan Crisis in the US, while 1990 saw the beginning of a new recession in the West. 1990 also saw crisis in Japan, until then a seemingly unstoppable growth engine, as it suffered the collapse of one of the biggest asset price bubbles in history. Consequently, Japan suffered a decade of stagnation and built up a staggering national debt, a situation that still haunts it today.

From the 90s onwards, currency meltdowns and financial crises became common-place. 1990 saw the collapse of Swedish and Finnish banking systems. In 1992, the European Exchange Rate Mechanism lurched into a crisis. Sterling was rapidly ejected and other currencies also came under serious speculative attack. Hard on the heels of the ERM crisis was the ‘Tequila Crisis’ of 94, another speculative attack on the Mexican Peso. The most serious financial panic, however, was undoubtedly the ‘Asian Crisis’ of 1997, a series of speculative attacks on various South East Asian currencies. This culminated in a storm that swept through the region and brought the vaunted economic ‘Tigers’ and ‘Dragons’ to their knees. This was swiftly followed by almost total economic collapse in Russia in 1998 – millions of people lost their life savings as the banking system toppled over and production ground to a halt. Argentina suffered a similar fate in 2000 while the US in 2001 saw the explosion of the dot.com bubble.

With each episode, the fiscal authorities responded with ever more powerful monetary stimulus, albeit with diminishing results. This has the effect of temporarily relieving the immediate crisis at the price of immediately stimulating another massive bubble. The rampant and malignant growth of ‘sub-prime’ finance that ultimately led to the credit crunch was thus the product of the loose monetary policy that followed the dot.com crash. This perfectly illustrates the chronic dilemma that has more and more confronted capitalism in the past few decades – pour monetary fuel onto the fire and risk the fire consuming everything or watch the fire be extinguished entirely.

There is no longer the possibility of capitalism resolving its economic stagnation in any progressive manner. Instead, all it can offer humanity is an ever more barbarous parade of economic breakdown, intractable and brutal wars, environmental catastrophe and social collapse. Only the class struggle of the proletariat offers an alternative. 

Ishamael  1/2/11

That the police have infiltrated the environmental and anti-globalisation protest movements over the past decade should come as no surprise to those living in ‘perfidious Albion’. In the 1840s the ‘Peelers’ had informers inside the Chartist movement (Thomas Powell) and the Cold War machinations of MI6 are legendary. The state infiltration of the Irish Republican movement has given us the ‘Stakeknife’ affair, where one of the IRA’s chief spy-catchers was himself a British agent for 25 years, with the British government allowing at least 40 people to be tortured and killed to protect his identity. (See WR 274, ‘British state organises terrorism in Ireland’).

The revelations in The Guardian during January that exposed four undercover agents of the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), and the outraged response to them from the ‘democratic’ media and politicians, are nevertheless worthy of attention. Concerns about the first agent – PC Mark Stone (aka Mark Kennedy) – were first made public in October 2010 on Indymedia[1], but it was the collapse of the trial in early January of 6 activists accused of conspiring to break into Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station that grabbed the headlines. Apparently Stone, wracked with remorse, had threatened to ‘go native’ and give evidence for the defence.

He obviously has plenty of evidence at hand. According to The Guardian, from the day his undercover operation began, “Kennedy would live a remarkable double life lasting more than seven years... Kennedy was feeding back detailed reports to his police commanders as he participated in, and sometimes even organised, some of the most high-profile demonstrations of the past decade. He took part in almost every major environmental protest in the UK from 2003, and also managed to infiltrate groups of anti-racists, anarchists and animal rights protesters. Using a fake passport, Kennedy visited more than 22 countries, taking part in protests against the building of a dam in Iceland, touring Spain with eco-activists, and penetrating anarchist networks in Germany and Italy.” (‘Mark Kennedy: A journey from undercover cop to ‘bona fide’ activist’, 10/01/11.) His success was down to having transport and money. Socially, he seemed to get on well with his targets, even having relationships with women, who rightly feel disgusted and betrayed by his duplicity.

The same cannot be said for PC Mark ‘Marco’ Jacobs who infiltrated the Cardiff Anarchist Network between 2005 and 2009. According to CAN, Jacobs’ key objectives were “to gather intelligence and disrupt the activities of CAN; to use the reputation and trust CAN had built up to infiltrate other groups, including a European network of activists; and to stop CAN functioning as a coherent group.” (‘They come at us because we are strong’, fitwatch.org). While Jacobs shared the first two objectives with Kennedy, it is the third that stands out, and was probably used by the police because the CAN was more politicised. The tactics used to achieve this aim are reminiscent of the Stalinist GPU within the Trotskyist movement during the 1930s: “He changed the culture of the organisation, encouraging a lot of drinking, gossip and back-stabbing, and trivialised and ran down any attempt made by anyone in the group to achieve objectives. He clearly aimed to separate and isolate certain people from the group and from each other, and subtly exaggerated political and personal differences, telling lies to both ‘sides’ to create distrust and ill-feeling. In the four years he was in Cardiff a strong, cohesive and active group had all but disintegrated. Marco left after anarchist meetings in the city stopped being held.” (ibid).

Activists from CAN approached The Guardian with their concerns, who took them to the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) which confirmed that Jacobs was an officer with the NPOIU. Environmentalist activists in Leeds also had concerns about one Lynne Watson (and subsequently her partner) who had been involved in protest groups from 2004 to 2008. After Mark Kennedy was exposed in the autumn he apparently confirmed Watson was, like him, an NPOIU officer. The Leeds activists approached The Guardian, and the ACPO confirmed their suspicions, asking that she not be named until she was ‘extracted’ from her current operation. (See the ActivistSecurity.org statement on Lynn Watson[2]).

The subsequent inquiries into the Mark Stone case have shed light on the accountability of the various police agencies. The connection between the NPOIU and the ACPO is revealing. The ACPO is actually a private limited company. Before the Stone story broke, the NPOIU reported directly to the ACPO, not the government’s Home Office, meaning that it was not bound by the Freedom of Information Act. While we can have no illusions in a free and fair ‘democratic’ police force, the growing ‘privatisation’ of policing is interesting. The US government’s contracting out of security to private firms in Iraq and Afghanistan seems to have inspired the Labour Party’s approach to policing during the Blair administration. The NPOIU was formed in 1990, and is now part of the National Domestic Extremism Unit, responsibility for which has been handed to the Metropolitan Police.

Another element in the Kennedy affair has been the degree to which different European states – in this case Ireland, Iceland and Germany - cooperated in both using and covering up for Kennedy in his work of penetrating European activist and anarchist networks (wsws.org, 3/2/11, ‘Police agent Kennedy was active throughout Europe’).   

The technology of police surveillance has, of course, become much more sophisticated since Victor Serge wrote ‘What every revolutionary should know about state repression’ in 1926, basing himself on the activities of the Tsarist Okhrana. But the basic methods for infiltrating and sabotaging the work of ‘subversive’ elements remain substantially the same: get your agents inside as many of these dissident networks and organisations as possible; once inside, stir up personal animosities and rivalries; encourage all kinds of ‘extreme’ actions that give the state an excuse to smash the organisation. The work of Kennedy and his colleagues was directed mainly at a very amorphous activist milieu which presents numerous opportunities for infiltration and acts of provocation. But revolutionary communists should be under no illusion that the state, democratic or otherwise, will not use the same tricks against them.   

Colin, 27/01/11 

For its 26 March demonstration against government cuts the TUC are setting up a call in centre at their Congress House HQ in conjunction with the Metropolitan Police. Any information sent in by TUC stewards will go straight to the cops. Not only do the unions act with the police, they act as the police in workers’ struggles. They have also undermined any initiatives towards solidarity with the militant actions of students.

In Britain the student demonstrations and occupations at the end of 2010 were some of the most inspiring actions in twenty years. Not looking to a lead from the left or the unions, and not limiting their concerns to the education sector, the students’ initiatives often bypassed the ‘usual channels’ that lead to dead ends.

In 2011 we have seen a resumption in demonstrations and discussions on the way forward, partly re-energised by events in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. It would be misleading to overestimate the current strength of the movement, but it is significant that the forces of the left and the unions are struggling to play much of a role ... so far.

Unions stumble to catch up

Before Christmas RMT leader Bob Crow spoke about the need for “Industrial action, civil disobedience and millions on the streets” in response to government cuts. Since then he has conceded that the RMT and Aslef have not been able to co-ordinate any action on the railways. The energies of the unions have been put into building up a demonstration on 26 March where they hope a million will march three days after the next budget.

This demonstration, more than 3 months after the actions at the end of last year, is not aimed at the extension and self-organisation of the movement but at providing a safe, controlled outlet for all the anger at each new wave of austerity measures.

 Leftist groups like the Socialist Workers Party cry out that the “TUC must call a general strike.” That is to say that the unions must take over a movement that has so far shown little interest in or respect for the unions. At a local level, for example, if you’d been at a meeting on 20 January at Goldsmiths College in South London that involved students and others, the few mentions of the unions were just ignored. Members of a local leftist anti-cuts committee spoke about their campaign employing the usual clichés and set phrases, while the rest wrestled with real questions about where the movement was now and what were the next steps to take. A member of the SWP said it was necessary to call for an emergency general union meeting – not realising that he was actually in the presence of militant students who were already discussing and looking for a perspective for the development of the struggle without the straitjacket of the union.

There have been demonstrations since the start of the year but, for all the unions’ claims of supporting student initiatives, the unions have been unable to relate to the movement. At a demonstration in London on 29 January when at the beginning of the march a union speech started it acted as a cue for the march to move off. At the end of the march it seemed as though all the planned speeches were shelved.

Deliver us not unto Labour

 In describing events in Egypt for Socialist Worker (31/1/11) its editor remarks that “There is no plan. There is no one organisation responsible.”  This is true, and also applicable to Britain. But while revolutionary organisations encourage all tendencies toward self-organisation and towards the unification of the struggles of those already expressing their anger, the left and the unions have structures in place ready to sabotage the movement.

Not only are there calls for the TUC to call a General Strike but also to “Kick out Clegg and Cameron”. The implications of this are simple. Mark Serwotka, the general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union says that “While strike action is always a last resort, it would be the result of the government’s refusal to change course and its political choice to press ahead with unnecessary and hugely damaging cuts.” This claim that government cuts (following on from Labour’s) are an unnecessary political choice is false. The reason that the Lib-Con Coalition have undertaken cuts is for the same reasons Labour did: Britain is bankrupt. This has not of course stopped Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls from saying that the US economy, which hasn’t yet adopted the same policies as Clegg/Cameron, grew towards the end of last year. Yes, the resort to even greater debt is still being touted as a policy by the left – regardless of what it leads to in terms of the economy and in terms of the widespread poverty across the US. The ‘political choice’ that’s an ‘alternative’ to the Coalition is a Labour government. This is where the logic of the left leads.

A headline in Socialist World quotes an activist in Tunisia: “We need a clean trade union, which really represents the working class.” Clean or dirty, in Europe or North Africa, unions no longer represent the interests of the working class. In last year’s struggles in Britain, Greece, France and Italy we began to see what workers and students are capable of. Suspicion towards the unions and attempts to create new forms of organisation that are responsive to the needs of the struggle are entirely healthy. The routes marked out by unions and leftists can only serve to derail struggles.

Car 31/1/11

Political pundits are predicting meltdown for Fianna Fail at the Irish general election on 25 February, maybe losing more than half their seats. Considered the ‘natural party of government’ since coming to power in 1932, Fianna Fail has always had the most seats and the biggest share of the vote since 1933, and been in power for 61 of the last 79 years.

Whatever the result, all four of the main political parties in Ireland voted through the austerity measures required to get the €85 billion bail-out from the IMF and the EU. Whatever party or parties forms the next government, it will have little room for manoeuvre.

There will be €15 billion worth of cuts over the next 3 years, cutting, among many other things, the minimum wage, benefits and public sector jobs, following on from the billions already gouged from state expenditure. The economy has shrunk by over 20% in the past two years: even the most optimistic forecasts show only a marginal recovery for the foreseeable future. The 14% unemployment rate is the highest ever in absolute numbers and, of the 34 OECD states, only Spain and Slovakia have higher rates. Employment in the construction industry more than halved between 2008 and 2010. While thousands more are forecast to lose their jobs this year, a record 50,000 people are predicted to emigrate from Ireland in 2011, more than in any of the years of the 1980s’ recession.

Because the outgoing Fianna Fail/Green Party government is being widely blamed for the effects of the capitalist economic crisis in Ireland, other combinations of bourgeois parties are being backed to take over the running of the Irish state. The most popular prediction is for another Fine Gael/Labour Party coalition. This would be the seventh time this combination had been in charge. For all the supposed differences between the right wing Fine Gael and social democratic Labour, they have not found any difficulty in the past in enforcing austerity.

Some are predicting that, with a backlash against the ‘excesses’ of ‘free market’ capitalism, Labour and Sinn Fein will benefit, and be capable of forming a government in alliance with others. Should this unlikely first ever left wing Irish government transpire, the programmes of each party indicate that they will be perfectly capable of managing the state in the interests of Irish capitalism – for all that Gerry Adams continues to insist that he is a “subversive”.

The response of the working class in Ireland to the attacks on their conditions of life has been limited. In recent years there have been a number of massive, but union-dominated marches in response to different waves of austerity measures. The influence of the unions is still significant. Last year a number of major unions agreed a 4-year strike ban. While this is still holding there is still the potential for workers to see beyond the parliamentary games, beyond ‘responsible’ trade unionism, beyond the lies of Irish nationalism, and launch struggles in defence of their own class interests. 

Car 4/2/11 <?xml:namespace prefix = o />

Last month, when the proletariat and masses of large swathes of the Maghreb and the Middle East began rising up against their capitalist bosses, a Palestinian demonstration was mobilised in the West Bank to march behind the banners of Fatah to protest that their Palestinian Authority had been somehow wronged by the revelations that it was the “Third Israeli security arm” (US security coordinator for Israel and Palestine, General Keith Dayton). Or as World Revolution put it some time earlier, in December 2004 in fact, “Whereas the PLO was once an agent of the Russian bloc, (the) ‘Palestinian Authority’ was essentially created to act as an auxiliary force of repression for the Israeli army”.

The role of the PA, supported by the US, Britain and the EU as defenders of their imperialist needs and thus against the Palestinian masses, has been laid bare in 1600 documents leaked to al-Jazeera and published by The Guardian towards the end of January. The documents, some redacted in order to protect sources, have been authenticated by the newspaper and have been confirmed by recent Wikileaks’ cables coming from the US Consulate in Jerusalem and its embassy in Tel Aviv. They tell a story of the totally corrupt gangsters of the Authority, set up and funded by their American, British and Egyptian godfathers, begging their Israeli masters for a “fig-leaf” in order to give them some sort of credibility.

The documents detail the complete lies and sham of any ‘peace process’, a charade that been acted out for two decades now while the Palestinian masses have been going through humiliating misery, repression and war. Such is the nature of capitalist ‘peace’. The peace process in the Middle East has been nothing else except an expression of imperialism involving all the major powers and the local gangsters of the region. Amongst other things, the anti-working class nature of national liberation, in this case the chimera of a Palestinian state, is shown not only to be a pipe-dream for Palestinians but an ideological attack on the working class world-wide.

In any event, the documents show that only a very minimal number of refugees would be allowed to return to the homes from which they were ‘cleansed’, and are still being cleansed, in the interests of Greater Israel and the wider needs of American and British imperialism. They show a not so bizarre suggestion from US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, a couple of years ago, echoing views from the west after World War II where Jews were asked to re-settle in disease-infested swamplands of South America, that Palestinians could be re-settled in “Chile, Argentina, etc.”. The lawyer, ex-Mossad agent and then Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, “negotiating” with the PA, says: “... I am against law – international law in particular”. That there’s no peace process, that imperialism knows no law, international or otherwise, is also reflected in the lawyer Tony Blair being appointed as the “Quartet’s Middle East Peace Envoy”! There is a law at work though, the law of the jungle, and Chief PA negotiator, Saeb Erekat, sums it up well: “We have had to kill Palestinians... we have even killed our own people to maintain order and the rule of law”. Added to this, in an indication of the gangster nature of the “peace process”, is the stunning revelation that in a meeting in 2005 between the Palestinian Authorities’ Interior Minister, Nasser Youssef and Israeli Defence Minister, Shaul Mofaz, Mofaz put this question to Yousef regarding an al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade commander suspected of facilitating a bombing in Israel: “You know his address... Why don’t you kill him?” Documents show Britain’s role in setting up the security force of ‘trusted’ PA contacts in clandestine operations with direct lines to Israeli intelligence. The current head of MI6, appointed by the Labour government, was himself the British ambassador to Egypt in early 2000.

 Killing and torture is capitalist order, capitalist law. Further documents show that in response to the PA’s proposal to recognise all but one Israeli settlement on Palestinian land – an offer that was rejected out of hand by the Israelis – the Israelis’ proposed that Palestinians living in Israel could be “swapped”, ie cleansed, into the PA’s grip. Livni is clear that it’s been a long-time policy of Israel to take “... more and more land, day after day...” in order to create “facts on the ground”.

The Palestinian Authority, itself riven by corruption and rivalries which in turn are manipulated by the CIA, MI6 and the security services of Israel and Egypt, was also warned in advance of the Israeli invasion of Gaza, 2008/9.

Further, as The Guardian notes: “The papers highlight the far-reaching official British involvement in building up the Palestinian Authority’s security apparatus in the West Bank”. They also show that MI6 concocted its Security Plan for Palestine working with Egyptian intelligence in the British embassy in Cairo. It used EU funds and British development ‘aid’ to help bankroll these forces. There can be little doubt that Britain provided arms and training as well. These forces are praised by the Israelis and the Americans, but “they are causing some problems ... because they are torturing people” (General K. Dayton).

None of this leads us to give the least credibility to Hamas – itself a co-negotiator with Israeli intelligence when needs must and a repressive and torturing force in its own enclave. Its imperialist role is clear from its support by Iran and Syria.

The whole “Partners for Peace” process has not only been a cruel joke on the Palestinian masses and a defence of imperialism but an ongoing ideological attack against the working class world-wide. But events are stirring and the pro-Palestinian, pro-Fatah demonstration mentioned above wasn’t the only one to take place in January. Human Rights Watch, 1.2.11, reports: “On January 20, a group of young people in Ramallah who wanted to demonstrate their support for the Tunisians were thwarted by Palestinian Authority police”. A week or so later, it reports: “Hamas authorities prevented demonstrations in the Gaza Strip aimed at showing solidarity with anti-government protestors in Egypt”. Hamas police arrested three women and, in a show of overwhelming force, threatened other would be protesters[1]. We see the clear unity of interest of all these bourgeois gangs: the PA, Hamas, the Israeli and Egyptian states in stifling protest, repressing dissent and defending ‘their’ territories. It’s a lesson that the workers’ history knows well from the Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution, Italy and France after WWII and Poland in 1980 – all examples of where imperialist forces dropped their mutual antagonisms in order to confront the threat of class struggle. In late January, this was also evidenced in the US facilitating, with Israeli agreement, Egyptian special forces being sent across the demilitarised Sinai in order to repress the uprising around the Rafah crossing and strengthen the border with Gaza; in this case, the US, Hamas, Fatah, Israel and Egypt all in perfect harmony in coordinating the forces of repression for the maintenance of the border and capitalist order. This ‘truce’ will only last as long as they are all worried about protest generalising; when it dies down they will be back to their usual tricks and rivalries. 

Baboon. 3/2/2011

Our comrade Martyn has lost a very painful struggle with cancer. His death in his early fifties is a heavy blow. Martyn was a close sympathiser of the ICC for nearly 30 years. He first made contact with us in the early 80s after experiencing at first hand the reactionary and dishonest character of the Trotskyist organisations (in this case the ‘Militant’ variety). After a brief phase of defining himself as a council communist he moved towards the politics of the ICC and remained convinced of our positions for the rest of his life. Even when he was very close to death he wanted to make it clear that he maintained his confidence in the ICC and has left to us his collection of political books.

For one reason of another – perhaps because Martyn had a tendency to underestimate the degree to which he really grasped our political positions, especially on the organisation question – he never became a member but he took a full part in many of our interventions, defended the organisation when it was under fire, and kept up a regular activity in his own home town of Leicester, selling the press, participating in political meetings and making contacts around him. During the 90s this activity bore fruit in the formation of a discussion circle in Leicester, which subsequently expanded to Birmingham and survives today as the Midlands Discussion Forum. Some of the ICC’s present membership in the UK initially passed through this circle but it always retained its character as an open forum where different tendencies within the working class could meet and debate; and this openness, along with the longevity of the circle, owes a lot to the role that Martyn played within the circle, above all the seriousness with which he approached political debate and clarification. 

Martyn’s interest in discussion was not limited to politics in the narrower sense but took in many wider areas such as anthropology, ancient history, art and music. He spent much of his working life as a printer, although more recently he went to university to study the history of art.He also became a father and was immensely proud of his son, who along with Martyn’s wife will be feeling this loss more than we can convey here. But Martyn will also be mourned by all who knew him as a comrade and a fighter for the communist revolution.

WR 7/2/11

100 years ago this August the British ruling class was forced to dispatch troops and warships to Liverpool to crush a near-insurrectionary general strike. The Lord Mayor of the city warned the government that “a revolution was in progress.”[1]

These extraordinary events were one of the high points of a whole series of struggles in Britain and Ireland before the First World War popularly known as ‘the Great Labour Unrest’. As the following article shows, these struggles were in fact a spectacular expression of the mass strike, and formed an integral part of an international wave that eventually culminated in the 1917 Russian revolution. Even today they are not widely known but remain rich in lessons for the struggles of today and tomorrow.

International context

Between 1910 and 1914, the working class in Britain and Ireland launched successive waves of mass strikes of unprecedented breadth and ferocity against all the key sectors of capital, strikes that blew apart all the carefully cultivated myths about the passivity of the British working class that had blossomed in the previous epoch of capitalist prosperity. 

Words used to describe these struggles in official histories include ‘unique’, ‘unprecedented’, ‘explosion’, ‘earthquake’…. In contrast to the largely peaceful, union-organised strikes of the latter half of the nineteenth century, the pre-war mass strikes extended rapidly and unofficially across different sectors – mines, railways, docks and transport, engineering, building – and threatened to go beyond the whole trade union machinery and directly confront the capitalist state.

This was the mass strike so brilliantly analysed by Rosa Luxemburg, its development signalling the end of capitalism’s progressive phase and the emergence of a new, revolutionary period. Although the fullest expression of the mass strike was in Russia in 1905, Rosa Luxemburg showed that it was not a specifically Russian product but “the universal form of the proletarian class struggle resulting from the present stage of capitalist development and class relations” (The Mass Strike). Her description of the general characteristics of this new phenomenon serves as a vivid description of the ‘Great Labour Unrest’: 

“The mass strike...flows now like a broad billow over the whole kingdom, and now divides into a gigantic network of narrow streams; now it bubbles forth from under the ground like a freshspring and now is completely lost under the earth.   Political and economic strikes, mass strikes and partial strikes, demonstrative strikes and fighting strikes, general strikes of individual branches of industry and general strikes in individual towns, peaceful wage struggles and street massacres, barricade fighting - all these run through one another, run side by side, cross one another, flow in and over one another - it is a ceaselessly moving, changing sea of phenomena...” (The Mass Strike).

Far from being the product of peculiarly British conditions, the mass strikes in Britain and Ireland formed an integral part of an international wave of struggles that developed throughout Western Europe and America after 1900: the 1902 general strike in Barcelona; 1903 mass strikes by railway workers in Holland; 1905 mass strike by miners in the Ruhr.... 

Revolutionaries have yet to draw out all the lessons of the British mass strikes – partly due to the sheer scale and complexity of the events themselves but also because the bourgeoisie has tried to quietly bury them as a forgotten episode.[2] It is no coincidence that to this day it the General Strike of 1926 and not the pre-war strike wave which has pride of place in the official history of the British ‘labour movement’: 1926 marked a decisive defeat, whereas 1910-1914 saw the British working class take the offensive against capital. 

The revival of struggles

The mass strike in Britain and Ireland can be traced to the depression of 1908-09. In the previous year the working class in Belfast had united across the sectarian divide to launch a general strike that had to be put down by extra police and troops.[3] In the north-east of England there were strikes by cotton workers, and engineering and shipbuilding workers. A railway strike was narrowly averted. When the depression lifted the explosion came.

The first phase of the mass strike had its centre of activity in the previously non-militant South Wales coalfield. Unofficial strike action hit a number of pits between September 1910 and August 1911, at its highest point involving around 30,000 miners. Initial grievances focused on wages and conditions of employment. Miners spread the strikes through mass picketing. There were also unofficial strikes in the normally conservative Durham coalfield in early 1910, and spontaneous strikes in the north-east shipyards.

In the second phase the focus shifted to the transport sector. Between June and September 1911 there was a wave of militant, unofficial action in the main ports and on the railways, which experienced their first national strike. In the ports, local union officials were taken by surprise as mass picketing spread the struggle from Southampton to Hull, Goole, Manchester and Liverpool and brought out workers in other dockside industries who raised their own demands. No sooner had the unions negotiated an end to these strikes than another wave of struggle hit the sector – this time centred on London, which had previously been unaffected. Unofficial action spread throughout the docks system against a union-negotiated wage deal, compelling officials to call a general strike of the port. Unofficial strikes continued during August, despite further wage agreements. 

As the London dock strike subsided, mass action switched to the railways with unofficial action beginning on Merseyside where 8,000 dockers and carters came out in solidarity after five days. By 15 August 70,000 workers were on strike on Merseyside. The strike committee set up during the seamen’s strike reconvened. After employers imposed a lock-out the committee launched a general strike which was only finally settled after two weeks of violent clashes with the police and troops. 

Meanwhile, unofficial action on the railways extended rapidly from Liverpool to Manchester, Hull, Bristol and Swansea, forcing rail union leaders to call a general strike – the first ever national rail strike. There was active support from miners and other workers (including strikes by schoolchildren in the main railway towns). When the strike was suddenly called off by union leaders after government mediation thousands of workers erupted with anger and militancy persisted.

During the winter of 1911-12 the main centre of the mass strike shifted back to the mining industry, where unofficial direct action led to a four-week national strike involving a million workers – the largest strike Britain had ever seen. Unrest among the rank and file grew after union leaders called for a return to work and strikes broke out again in the transport sector, with a London transport workers’ strike in June-July. This collapsed, partly due to lack of support from outside London, but during the summer of 1912 there were other strikes by dockers, for example on Merseyside.

Unlike the previous, relatively peaceful wave of struggles in 1887-93, workers showed themselves more than ready to use force to extend their struggle, and the pre-war mass strikes saw widespread acts of sabotage, attacks on collieries, docks and railway installations, and violent clashes with employers, strike-breakers, police and the military, in which at least five workers were killed and many injured.

Acknowledging the significance of the struggles, the bourgeoisie took unprecedented steps to suppress them. In the most famous case, 5,000 troops and hundreds of police were rushed to Liverpool in August 1911, while two warships trained their guns on the town. This culminated in ‘Bloody Sunday’: the violent dispersal of a peaceful mass workers’ demonstration by police and troops. In response, the workers overcame traditional sectarian divisions to defend their communities during several days of ‘guerrilla warfare’ which made use of barricades and barbed wire entanglements.

By 1912, the state was forced to take even more elaborate precautions, deploying troops against the threat of generalised unrest and putting whole areas of the country under martial law. Alarmingly for the bourgeoisie there were small but significant efforts by militants to carry out anti-militarist propaganda among the troops, including the famous 1912 Don’t Shoot leaflet, which prompted swift repression.

The working class now faced a concerted counter-attack by the capitalist class, which was determined to inflict a defeat as a lesson to the whole proletariat. In 1913 over 11 million strike days were lost, and there were more individual strikes than in any other year of the ‘Unrest’, in hitherto unaffected sectors like semi- and unskilled engineering workers, building workers, agricultural labourers and municipal employees; but this year saw a definite downturn, marked among other things by the defeat of the Irish workers in the Dublin Lock-out.

The trade union bureaucracy also began to regain control over the workers’ struggles. The formation of the ‘Triple Alliance’ in 1914, supposedly intended to co-ordinate action by the miners, railwaymen and transport workers, was in reality a bureaucratic measure to recuperate the spontaneous and unofficial action of the mass strikes, and prevent future outbreaks of uncontrollable rank and file militancy. Similarly, the formation of the National Union of Railwaymen as a single sector-wide ‘industrial union’ was not so much a victory for syndicalist propaganda or a response to changes in capitalist production as a manoeuvre by the union bureaucracy against unofficial militancy.

Nevertheless, discontent continued without any decisive defeats, and on the eve of the First World War the Liberal government minister Lloyd George shrewdly observed that with trouble threatening in the railway, mining, engineering and building industries,“the autumn would witness a series of industrial disturbances without precedent”.[4] Certainly the outbreak of war in 1914 came just at the right moment for the British bourgeoisie, effectively braking the development of the mass strikes and throwing the working class into deep - albeit temporary - confusion. But this defeat proved temporary, and as early as February 1915 workers’ struggles in Britain revived under the impact of wartime austerity, developing as an integral part of an international wave that eventually culminated in the 1917 Russian revolution.

The importance of the mass strikes

Fundamentally the pre-war mass strikes were a response by the working class to the onset of capitalist decadence, revealing all of the most important features of the class struggle in the new period:

-       a spontaneous, explosive character

-       a tendency towards self-organisation

-       rapid extension across different sectors

-       a tendency to go beyond the whole trade union machinery and directly confront the capitalist state.

More specifically, the mass strikes were a response to the growth of state capitalism and to the integration of the Labour Party and the trade unions into the state machine in order to more effectively control the class struggle. Among militant workers there was widespread disillusionment in parliamentary socialism as a result of the Labour Party’s loyal support for the Liberals’ repressive social welfare programmes, and the active role of the trade unions in administering them.

Most significantly, for the first time in its history the British working class launched massive struggles which went beyond and in some cases directly against the existing union organisations. National and local union leaders lost control of the movement at many points, particularly during the transport and dockers’ strikes (according to police reports, in Hull the unions lost control of the dockers’ strike altogether).

Union membership had been declining, partly due to growing rank and file dissatisfaction with the trade union leadership. The mass strikes resulted in a 50 per cent increase in union membership between 1910 and 1914, but, in contrast to the struggles of 1887-93, union recognition was not a major theme of these struggles, which instead saw unofficial strikes and direct action against those union leaderships who backed government ‘conciliation’ and were openly hostile to strike action: for example, railway union leader Jimmy Thomas was shouted down for defending the conciliation system, and at a mass meeting in Trafalgar Square in July 1914, militant building workers took over the platform and refused to let officials speak.

Enormous rank and file pressure was exerted even on the more militant leaders of the new general unions: on Merseyside, for example, even the syndicalist leader Tom Mann was heckled and shouted down by unofficial leaders and strikers, and it took a week of mass meetings to overcome resistance to a return to work.

The mass strikes also saw the growth of unofficial strike committees, some remaining after the defeat of strikes as political groupings demanding reform of the existing unions: for example, the Unofficial Reform Committee in South Wales which called for reform of the local miners’ union on ‘fighting lines’. A similar group emerged in the engineering union in 1910 which engaged in a violent battle with the existing leadership. Unofficial groups of militants also emerged among dockers in Liverpool, close to Jim Larkin and defending syndicalist ideas, while in London a syndicalist ‘Provisional Committee for the formation of a National Transport Workers Union’ was formed on the basis of discontent with the union leadership.

We can see in these developments a real deepening of class consciousness and the spread of important lessons about the new period among the masses of workers thrown into struggle, for example:

-       the perception of a change in the economic and political conditions for the class struggle

-       the need for direct action in defence of working class conditions

-       the inability of the trade unions, as presently organised, to effectively defend those interests and the need to struggle for control of the unions

-       the need for new forms of organisation more suited to the new conditions.

Above all, the struggles in Britain and Ireland formed a part of the international mass strike, and therefore had an importance for the whole working class. Characteristically, the British workers were not the first to enter into struggle, but their arrival on the scene as the oldest and most experienced fraction of the world proletariat added a huge weight to the movement, providing an invaluable example of struggle against a highly sophisticated bourgeoisie and its democratic mystifications. Inevitably the strikes also showed all the difficulties facing the working class in developing its immediate struggles into a revolutionary movement, especially as the change in period and the impossibility of a struggle for reforms within capitalism had not yet been definitively announced. But they showed the way forward. 

MH 31/1/11 

see

Revolutionaries and the mass strikes, 1910-1914: the strengths and limits of syndicalism [23]

This year was ushered in by a series of devastating floods: in Queensland, Australia, covering an area greater than France and Germany combined, in Sri Lanka and in the Philippines. There has been further flooding in the Australian state of Victoria, with Cyclone Yasi battering Queensland, and a murderous mudslide in Brazil.

These follow on from the huge number of disasters in 2010:

• starting with the earthquake in Haiti on 12 January, killing 230,000, injuring 300,000, making over a million homeless and leading directly to the cholera outbreak ravaging the country;
• storm Xynthia battered the Atlantic coast of France, killing 52 in France, Spain and Portugal;
• earthquake in Chile killing 521, making half a million homeless;
• the heatwave in Moscow, killing 15,000, destroying crops and putting up wheat prices up 47%;
• enormous floods in Pakistan;
• the Mexican Gulf oil spill following the explosion of Deepwater Horizon, killing 11 workers on the oil platform and devastating the ecology of the area and the livelihoods of fishermen;
• the Hungarian aluminium spill causing 4 deaths and considerable ecological destruction.

So used to disaster are we becoming that if you look at the media since the New Year you could blink and miss the floods in the Philippines despite a death toll of 75 and £27bn of destruction to crops and infrastructure, and those in Sri Lanka with at least 40 dead and 300,000 displaced. You did not even need to blink to miss the Chinese drought, part of a general process of desertification: you have to look for it.

Capitalism’s responsibility for death and misery

There can be no doubt that the ruthless search for profit, heightened by fiercer competition as the economic crisis develops, is directly responsible for the deaths and ecological disasters caused by the BP oil spill and the Hungarian aluminium spill. But the same is true for the death and misery caused by seismic or climatic events. For example if we look at the earthquakes that took place in 2010 and compare the death toll and level of destruction, we can see the effects of a totally irresponsible policy of building cheaply without thought of what the buildings have to withstand. In New Zealand the earthquake of 7.1 on the Richter scale killed no-one, despite taking place close to the city of Christchurch, due to properly enforced seismic building regulations. In Haiti, a quake of similar magnitude, 7.3, caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in Port-au-Prince where buildings have just been put up as quickly, cheaply and profitably as possible regardless of even basic safety, let alone the well known risk of earthquakes. Once built, even prestigious buildings were not maintained.

When we come to the floods and mudslides a pattern of ruling class responsibility also emerges. In Brazil there were over 800 deaths in the state of Rio de Janeiro as a result of heavy rains and mudslides, with another 30 in neighbouring states. These can be directly linked to the policy of building in unsafe areas, despite the fact that January rains are getting heavier. The ministry to monitor urban planning was only set up in 2003 and £4.4bn set aside for disaster containment 2 years ago. “… ‘These are emergency works purely to reduce the repetition of tragedies,’ says Celso Carvalho, the national secretary of urban programmes. ‘Our cities are very insecure because of the failure to apply urban planning’. Short-term, eye-caching public works are the focus. Winning elections is the aim. Dominated by this logic, the main driver of cities’ growth is profit, above everything else. That’s the reason why so many people live in high-risk areas, such as the slopes of mountains. Land in the city centres is too valuable for social housing; often governments don’t force the private sector to use land in this way.” (www.guardian.co.uk [27]).

But surely in Australia, a developed democratic country, things will be different… Let’s see the response to both the fires and floods that have hit the continent in recent years: “It’s noteworthy that the Baillieu government in Victoria has accepted a recommendation from the Black Saturday royal commission to buy back properties not only in areas directly affected by the fire, but also those considered to be in high-risk fire zones across the state. But many residents plan to rebuild or remain in these areas, assessing the risk of another devastating fire as lower than the amenity of life in a rural idyll. In Queensland, those in low-lying areas will be forced to make similar assessments in the wake of this flood. But for many, living in such areas is not a matter of choice, it is because the houses are affordable. And with the population of southeast Queensland burgeoning during the past two decades as families flee the high costs of Sydney, many new houses have been built in areas inundated in the 1974 flood.

Research fellow in geotechnical and hydrological issues at Monash University Boyd Dent says that planners can forget the lessons of history. ‘It’s absolutely essential that we take matters such as environmental geology and flood history into account in urban planning…The historical nature of these things means they aren’t in the front of mind for planners, but then events like this come along to remind us all’..” (www.theaustralian.com [28], 12/1/11)

In Brazil and Australia, as in the USA at the time of Hurricane Katrina, the poor have to take the risks while capital makes the profits. Lives of workers go into the ‘cost-benefit’ analysis along with any other capital investment.

The aftermath – lies, hypocrisy, neglect

“A ‘humanitarian crisis of epic proportions’ is unfolding in flood-hit areas of southern Pakistan where malnutrition rates rival those of African countries affected by famine, according to the United Nations. In Sindh province, where some villages are still under water six months after the floods, almost one quarter of children under five are malnourished while 6% are severely underfed, a Floods Assessment Needs survey has found. ‘I haven’t seen malnutrition this bad since the worst of the famine in Ethiopia, Darfur and Chad. It’s shockingly bad,’ said Karen Allen, deputy head of Unicef in Pakistan. The survey reflects the continuing impact of the massive August floods, which affected 20 million people across an area the size of England, sweeping away 2.2m hectares of farmland.” (Guardian 27/01/11)

Throughout the period of the floods, the Pakistani ruling class appeared completely impotent, unable to competently organise relief and aid for the millions of people affected. Pakistan consistently ranks as one of the poorest countries in the world and the vast scale of corruption in daily life has been well-documented elsewhere. However, the cynicism and hypocrisy are clear when it was reported that “The Pakistan military has kept up pressure on militants in the northwest despite the devastating floods that have required major relief efforts, a top US officer said on Wednesday. Vice Admiral Michael LeFever, who oversees US military assistance in Pakistan, said Islamabad has not pulled troops out of the fight against insurgents but has had to divert some aircraft needed for rescue efforts due to the massive flooding.” (thenews.com, 06/12/10). So the priorities are clear. In fact, these comments hide the fact that in the north western provinces of Pakistan there has already been an ongoing crisis due to the effects of the earthquake which struck the region in 2005, from which the region never fully recovered, and the ongoing (and increasing) military actions there against the Pakistani Taliban. These latter have also caused significant displacements of people: estimates range from 100,000 - 200,000 people. 

A similar picture emerges in Haiti a year after the quake: only 5% of the rubble has been cleared, less than 30% of promised aid has been paid. The population living in frayed tents and under tarpaulins in appalling conditions have fallen prey to a cholera epidemic, adding hundreds to the death toll. However, when the bourgeoisie want to build, even in poverty stricken Haiti where more than half the population survive on less than $1 a day, they can. The iron market in Port-au-Prince was rebuilt with earthquake protection within a year, funded by Irish billionaire Dennis O’Brien at a cost of $12 million. Whatever subjective charitable feelings he may profess, the hard truth is that capital will only build when it is profitable and as the New York Times noted “He is also keenly aware of the financial upside to getting Haiti up and running again. ‘As a company, we’re more aligned to the masses than to the elites,” Mr. O’Brien said of his interest in the market’.” (www.nytimes.com [29], 11/1/11). In fact as a BBC programme ‘From Haiti’s Ashes’ showed, the planned housing project that was supposed to go ahead alongside the rebuilding has been shelved in favour of political self-interest, replaying on a smaller scale the scramble for influence between the USA and France in the immediate aftermath of the disaster – a time when food and water seemed only able to get through to their own military personnel and NGOs. In fact aid given to disasters of the last 20 years has resulted not so much in relief of the population as in a 25% increase in the debt that will be serviced at the expense of that population (see https://en.internationalism.org/wr/2010/%252F331/Haiti [30]).

And in Sri Lanka “Victims of flooding in Sri Lanka have besieged a government office in the east of the country, accusing officials of holding back relief supplies. Windows were smashed as more than 1,000 people surrounded the office in a village in eastern Batticaloa district. Flood victims have told the BBC that some local politicians have been giving food and other aid to their supporters rather than the most needy.” (17/1/11, BBC online).

And this is without taking account of the effect of these disasters on rising food price rises and economic disruption, spreading the resulting misery far more widely.

The contribution of climate change

Monsoons, floods, heatwaves and droughts – all the extreme climate events call to mind the effects of climate change, of global warming. Climate change scientists have to be cautious about linking specific events to the overall picture. Nevertheless the British Met Office says the floods in Australia and the Philippines are linked to La Nina, and it is possible those in Brazil are also but the evidence is not clear (The Guardian 14/1/11). Similarly, the extreme events last summer, both the Moscow droughts and the Pakistan floods, were caused by the jet stream becoming fixed, making areas to the south much warmer (www.wired.co.uk [31]). In other words, there is considerable evidence that capitalism has even more responsibility for the natural disasters of the past 13 months through its impact of the world’s climate.

 The bourgeoisie has made one positive contribution, not through its useless climate conferences which either cannot make a real deal (Copenhagen) or make a deal that remains a dead letter (Kyoto), not through the fraud of aid, but in creating its own gravedigger, the working class. 

Alex 5/2/11

As the government rains attack after attack on our living standards – whether through cuts in health, education, benefits and local services, through redundancies in both the private and public sector, through tuition fee increases or the abolition of EMA, or through the steadily rising price of basic necessities – the TUC has for months now been telling us to fix our gaze on the Big Demo on the 26th March. The bosses of the trade unions have argued that a very large turn-out on the day will send a clear message to the Lib-Con government, which will start carrying out its spending review at the beginning of April, involving even more savage cuts than the ones we have seen already. It will show that more and more working and unemployed people, students and pensioners, in short, a growing part of the working class, are opposed to the government’s programme of cuts and are looking for an “alternative”.

And there’s no doubt that people are increasingly fed up with the argument that we have no choice but to submit to the blind laws of a crisis-torn economic system. No choice but to accept the tough medicine that the politicians assure us will, at some point in the future, make everything all right again. There’s also no doubt that a growing number of people are not content to sit at home and moan about it, but want to go out on the street, encounter others who feel the same way, and form themselves into a force that can make the powerful of the world take notice. This is what was so inspiring about the unruly student demonstrations and occupations in the UK at the end of last year; this is why the enormous revolts that are spreading throughout North Africa and the Middle East are such a hopeful sign.

But if these movements tell us anything, it’s that effective action, action that can actually force the ruling powers to back down and make concessions, doesn’t come about when people tamely follow the orders of professional ‘opposition’ leaders, whether people like El Baradei and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or the TUC and the Labour Party in the UK. It comes about when people begin to act and think for themselves, on a massive scale – like the huge crowds who began to organise themselves in Tahrir Square, like the tens of thousands of Egyptian workers who spontaneously came out on strike to raise their own demands, like the students here who found new and inventive ways of countering police repression, like the school kids who joined the student movement without waiting for an endless round of union ballots…..

The TUC and the Labour Party, as well as the numerous ‘left wing’ groups who act as their scouts, are there to keep protest and rebellion inside limits that are acceptable to the status quo. The TUC didn’t say very much in the period from 1997 to 2010 while its Labour friends launched a vast array attacks on workers’ living standards, attacks that the present government is just continuing and accelerating. That’s because the social situation was different – there was less danger that people would resist. Now that this danger is growing, the ‘official’ opposition is stepping in with its expertise in controlling mass movements and keeping them respectable. The trade unions do this on a daily basis by handcuffing workers to the legal rigmarole of balloting and the avoidance of ‘secondary’ action. And now, with March 26, they are doing it on a national scale: one big march from A to B, and we can all go home. And during the march itself the TUC will be working directly with Scotland Yard to ensure that the day goes entirely to their jointly agreed plans.

True, some of the more radical trade unions and political groups call for more than a one-off march: they want the TUC to ‘coordinate strike action’, even call a ‘general strike’. But these approaches just reinforce the idea that the best we can hope for is to get the official opposition to act more effectively on our behalf, rather than organising and spreading the struggle ourselves.      

If there is to be a real opposition to the ruling class and its assault on our lives, it’s not going to be content with one big demo: it has to be part of a much wider movement of strikes, occupations, demonstrations and other actions, controlled directly through mass meetings and willing to defy laws aimed at rendering resistance passive and divided.

And when we are taking part in demonstrations, whether local rallies or big national marches, let’s use them to make links between different centres of resistance, different sectors of the working class. Let’s organise our own street meetings where instead of listening to celebrity speakers we can freely exchange experiences from our own struggles and prepare for the battles of the future. Let all those who stand for independent, self-organised workers’ struggles use them as an opportunity to meet up and decide on how to connect to wider numbers of their class.

And let’s also use such occasions to challenge not only the deadening methods advocated by the official opposition, but also the false perspective they offer us for the future. The TUC ‘alternative’ of ‘jobs, growth, justice’, for example, is completely misleading: this system is in an irreversible crisis and can’t guarantee anyone’s job; even if was possible without vast increases in state debt, capitalist growth can only be based on increasing workers’ exploitation and further despoiling the environment; and a society based on the exploitation of one class by another can never achieve justice. In sum: inside of capitalism, there is no ‘alternative’ except increasing austerity and barbarism. The only real alternative is to fight against this regime of capitalism and in doing so prepare the ground for a total transformation of society. 

WR 5/3/11

The unfolding events in Libya are extremely difficult to follow. One thing is clear though: the population has suffered weeks of repression, fear and uncertainty. Maybe thousands have died initially at the hands of the regime’s repressive apparatus, but now increasingly they are caught in the crossfire as the government and opposition struggle for control of the country. What are they dying for? On the one hand, in order to maintain Gaddafi’s control of the state, and on the other in order to put the Libyan National Council - the self proclaimed “voice of the revolution”- in control of the whole country. The working class in Libya and beyond is being asked to choose between two sets of gangsters. In Libya they are being told they should actively take part in this growing civil war between rival parts of the Libyan bourgeoisie over control of the state and economy. In the rest of the world we are encouraged to support the brave struggle of the Opposition. Workers have no interest in supporting either faction.

The events in Libya started as a mass protest against Gaddafi, inspired by the movements in Egypt and Tunisia. The impetus for the explosion of anger in many cities appears to have been the brutal repression of the first demonstrations. According to The Economist 26/2/11, the initial spark was the demonstration in Benghazi on 15February by about 60 youths. Similar demonstrations took place in other cities and were all met by bullets. Faced with the murder of scores of young people, thousands took to the streets in desperate battles with the forces of the state. These struggles witnessed actions of great courage. The population of Benghazi, hearing that mercenaries were being flown into the airport, descended upon the airport and its defenders en masse and took it over, despite heavy losses. In another action civilians commandeered bulldozers and other vehicles and stormed a heavily armed barracks. The population in other cities drove out the repressive forces of the state. The only response of the regime was ever more repression, but this resulted in the break-up of much of the armed forces as soldiers and officers refused to carry out orders to kill protesters. One private shot dead a commanding officer after he issued a shoot-to-kill command. Initially this seems to have been a genuine explosion of popular anger faced with brutal repression and increasing economic misery, especially on the part of the urban youth.

Why have things taken a different turn in Libya?

The deepening economic crisis and a growing refusal to accept repression has been the wider background for the movements in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa. The working class and general population has suffered years of brutal poverty and exploitation as the ruling class has accumulated vast wealth.

But why has the situation in Libya been so different to that in Tunisia and Egypt? In those countries, while there was repression, the main means for bringing the social discontent under control was the use of democracy. In Tunisia the growing demonstrations by the working class and wider population against unemployment was diverted almost overnight into the dead end of who would replace Ben Ali. Under the guidance of the US military the Tunisian military told the president to sling his hook. It took a bit longer in Egypt to get Mubarak to go but even his resistance ensured that the discontent was focused on getting rid of him. Importantly, one of the things that finally pushed him was the outbreak of strikes demanding better conditions and wages. This showed that while workers had participated in the massive demonstrations against the government they had not forgotten about their own interests and were not willing to put them to one side in the name of giving democracy a chance.

In both Egypt and Tunisia the military is the backbone of the state and was able to put the interests of the national capital above the interests of particular cliques. In Libya the military does not have the same role. The Gaddafi regime has deliberately kept the military weak over the decades, along with any other part of the state which may have been a power base for rivals. “Gaddafi tried to keep the military weak so they could not topple him, as he toppled King Idris” said Paul Sullivan, a North Africa expert at the Washington-based National Defense University. The result is “a poorly trained military run by poorly trained leadership that are on the ropes, not exactly personally stable, and with a lot of extra weapons floating around.” (Bloomberg 2/3/11) This meant that the only answer the regime has to any social discontent is naked repression.

The very brutality of the state’s response swept the working class up in an outbreak of desperate anger at the sight of their children being massacred. But those workers who joined the demonstrations did so largely as individuals: despite the great courage it took to stand up to Gaddafi’s guns, workers were not able to put forward their own class interests.

In Tunisia, as we have said the movement began within the working class and the poor against unemployment and repression. The proletariat in Egypt entered into the movement after having engaged in several waves of struggles over recent years, and this experience has given it confidence in its ability to defend its own interests. The importance of this was demonstrated at the end of the demonstrations when a wave of strikes broke out (see the article on page 3). 

The Libyan proletariat entered into the present conflict in a weak position. There were reports of a strike in one oilfield. But it is impossible to tell if there have been any other expressions of working class activity. There may have been, but we have to say that the working class as a class is more or less absent. This means that the class from the beginning has been vulnerable to all of the ideological poison generated by a situation of chaos and confusion. The appearance of the old monarchist flag and its acceptance as the symbol of the revolt in only a matter of days marks how deep this weakness is. This flag went along with the nationalist slogan of a “free Libya”. There have also been expressions of tribalism, with support or opposition to the Gaddafi regime being determined in some cases by regional or tribal interests and tribal leaders using their authority to put themselves at the head of the rebellion. There is also appears to be a strong presence of Islamism with the chant of “Allahu Akbar” being heard on many demonstrations.

This morass of ideologies has exacerbated a situation where tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of foreign workers have felt the need to flee the country. Why would foreign workers line up behind a national flag, no matter its colour? A real proletarian movement would have incorporated the foreign workers from the beginning because the demands would have been common ones: better wages, working conditions and the end of repression for all workers. They would have united because their strength was their unity, regardless of nation, tribe or religion.

Gaddafi has made full use of all of this poison to try and get workers and the population to support him against the alleged threat posed to his ‘revolution’: foreigners, tribalism, Islamism, the West.

A new regime in waiting

The majority of the working class hates the regime. But the real and gravest danger for the working class is falling in behind the ‘opposition’. This opposition, with the new ‘National Council’ more and more assuming a position of leadership, is a conglomeration of various fractions of the bourgeoisie: former members of the regime, monarchists, etc, along with tribal and religious leaders. All of them have taken full advantage of the fact that this movement has no independent proletarian direction to impose their desire to replace Gaddafi’s management of the Libyan state with their own.

Ehe National Council is clear about its role: “The main aim of the national council is to have a political face ... for the revolution,” “We will help liberate other Libyan cities, in particular Tripoli through our national army, our armed forces, of which part have announced their support for the people,” (Reuters Africa 27/2/11) “There is no such thing as a divided Libya” (Reuters 27/2/11). In other words their aim is to maintain the present capitalist dictatorship but with a different face.

The opposition is not united though. Gaddafi’s former Justice Minister Mustafa Mohamed Abud Ajleil announced the formation of a provisional government at the end of February with the support of some former diplomats. It was based in Al-Baida. This move was rejected by the National Council based in Benghazi.

This shows that within the opposition there are deep divisions which will explode eventually if they manage to get rid of Gaddafi or when these ‘leaders’ scramble to save their skins if Gaddafi manages to stay in power.

The National Council has a better public face. It is fronted by Ghoga, a well-known human rights lawyer and is thus not too tainted with links to the former regime, unlike Ajleil. All the better to sell this gang to the population.

The media has made a lot of fuss about the committees that have sprung up in cities, town and regions where Gaddafi has lost control. Many of these committees seem to have been self-appointed by local dignitaries, but even if some of them were direct expressions of the popular revolt, it looks as though they have been pulled into the bourgeois, statist framework of the National Council. The National Council’s effort to establish a national army means only death and destruction to the working class and the population as a whole as this army battles it out with Gaddafi’s forces. The social fraternization that originally helped to undermine the regime’s efforts at repression will be replaced by pitched battles on a purely military front, while the population will be called on to make sacrifices to ensure that the National Army can fight.

The transformation of the bourgeois opposition into a new regime is being accelerated by the increasingly open backing of the major powers: the US, Britain, France, Italy etc. The imperialist gangsters are now distancing themselves from their former buddy Gaddafi in order to ensure that if a new team comes to power they will hold some sway over it. The support will be for those who will fit in with the imperialist interests of the big powers.

What appears to have begun as a desperate response to repression by parts of the population has very rapidly been used by the ruling class in Libya and internationally to their own ends. A movement that began as a furious effort to stop the massacre of young people has ended up as another massacre of the young, but now in the name of a Free Libya.

The proletariat both in Libya and beyond can only respond by increasing its determination not to allow itself to be dragged into bloody struggles between factions of the ruling class in the name of democracy or a free nation. In the coming days and weeks, if Gaddafi hangs on to power the international chorus of support for the opposition in this civil war will grow ever louder. And if he goes, there will be an equally deafening campaign about the triumph of democracy, people’s power and freedom. Either way workers will be asked to identify with the democratic face of capitalism’s dictatorship. 

Phil 5/3/11

If timing is the essence of comedy then David Cameron’s long-planned arms sales trip around the Gulf and the Middle East couldn’t have worked out better. But supplying butchers with the means to attack their populations is far from comic.

The disgusting nature of this sinister farce was further reinforced by his attendance at a ceremony in Kuwait, along with ex-Prime Minister John Major, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the first Gulf War in which hundreds of thousands of innocents were killed by the most lethal weaponry of the advanced democracies.

At the same time as hundreds, perhaps thousands were being killed in Libya by weapons sold to Gaddafi under both Labour and Tory governments, Cameron, who briefly paused for a hastily arranged photo opportunity in Tahrir Square, along with eight executives from the defence and aerospace industries, hawked their deadly goods around to their gangster clientèle. In response to criticism Cameron, stretching words almost beyond comprehension, said that not to provide these Arab regimes with arms was “denying people their basic rights”, “racism” and undemocratic. The Gaddafi regime had been sold, amongst other things, up until very recently, sniper rifles, tear-gas grenades, crowd control weapons, small arms ammunition, stun grenades, anti-aircraft cannon, mortars, armoured personnel carriers, military aircraft, gun silencers, weapons sights, body armour and military aviation technology. These were all, in the words of the Foreign Office, “covered by assurances that they would not be used in human rights repression”.

The UK provided by far the largest pavilion at the last Libyan arms fair and last week, at the Abu Dhabi arms fair, 10% of all the global exhibitors were British. Minister Gerald Howarth, leading the delegation, declared: “We have ambitious plans”. At the same time, Labour’s defence spokesman, Jim Murphy, whose government undertook wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and several other ‘theatres’, trying to make a political point but showing the unity of the British bourgeoisie, said: “The UK has a responsibility beyond its borders and needs to support force”.

It was the Labour government that embraced and strengthened the Gaddafi regime and conducted arms sales to Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Syria, Kuwait, Iraq, Morocco, Israel, Qatar, Algeria, Tunisia, the UAE, Oman, Bahrain and Egypt. And it was the Labour government that sat on any enquiry into BAE’s al-Yamanah Saudi arms deal citing “national interest”. Now that the LibDems have a taste of power they’ve slunk away from the moral high ground. Business Secretary Vince Cable is complicit in the deals and Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister, apparently in charge of the country while Cameron was off flogging death and destruction, goes skiing while people protesting for basics, bystanders and children were being murdered by British-supplied arms.

The crimes and hypocrisy of these accomplices to massacres are limitless and Cameron has even proposed selling arms to the Libyan “rebels”, by whom he means the Libyan government in waiting, should Gaddafi fall. And while condemning the use by the regime of “excessive violence”, that is using the weapons it provided for that purpose, Britain has also fallen in behind the calls from the so-called ‘international community’ for sanctions and humanitarian assistance - which have been shown in the past to be weapons in the interests of the competing imperialisms implementing them.

Defence Secretary Liam Fox has called for “enhanced defence exports” with “the MoD ... at the forefront of the government export-led growth strategy” and the trade minister Lord Green (sitting next to Vince Cable) said that ministers would be “held accountable” if companies fail to secure deals. The only arms deal that has been blocked in the last couple of years has been the $65 million sale of helicopters, assault rifles, armoured cars and machine guns to the small African state of Swaziland. At the time the British government claimed that this was because these arms could be used for “possible internal repression”. But US embassy documents released by Wikileaks show that the Americans stopped it because of “end user concerns”, i.e., that the weapons were likely to end up in Iran. This didn’t stop the Campaign Against Arms Trade from welcoming the move as a refusal “to sell arms to a known human rights abuser” and this when British arms to war-torn Africa amounted to over a billion pounds in the last year.

Britain of course is not alone in this deadly trade, all major countries are involved and global arms sales have risen 60% since 2002 to total $400 billion (based on official figures) in 2009.

Britain’s BAE Systems was the second largest company involved in that period with its $33.25 billion just behind the USA’s Lockheed Martin. But it is Britain’s role in backing and arming the Gaddafi regime which is particularly nauseous in the present circumstances; feted by the Labour government, financiers, academics and the royal family, the Coalition government was about to continue the work of grooming Saif al-Islam Gaddafi as its place-man in the murderous regime.

Russia, among others, has also provided the regimes with weapons and France, in competition with the US and Britain in the Mediterranean, Maghreb and the Middle East has provided Gaddafi with anti-tank missiles, military telecommunications and maintenance for his Mirage fighter-bombers. The French ruling class has nothing to learn from Perfidious Albion. It has already sent two planeloads of so-called ‘humanitarian’ aid which the French Prime Minister says “will be the beginning of a massive operation of humanitarian support for the populations of the liberated territories”.

It’s not just in supplying the weaponry to these murderous regimes that Britain profits economically and strategically. Various special forces supply training to the killers as an adjunct to the arms trade and, unsurprisingly, there’s absolutely no scruples here. One of the most notable achievements of the SAS was in training the cadres of Pol Pot’s genocidal Khmer Rouge in the 1960s. More recently, we’ve seen the role of West Mercia and Humberside police officers in training associates of the death squads of the Bangladeshi government.

And, finally, it is worth recalling that the weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological, that Gaddafi was supposed to give up in return for his embrace by the ‘international community’ are still intact in the state’s bunkers and a possible threat to large numbers of people in the region.  

Baboon 1/3/11

The article below was written in mid-February, during a wave of workers’ strikes which spread to numerous sectors. Although the governing military responded with stern warnings to the strikers,many of their demands were quickly acceded, thus avoiding a head-on confrontation. The strike wave seems now to have abated, but the Egyptian working class has kept its fighting spirit intact.Furthermore, as the article emphasises, the tendency towards the mass strike, which can certainly be discerned in this recent movement, unfolds on a historic scale, so that particular expressions of it contribute to the development of much deeper and wider movements in the future.

Article published here [42]

At the very moment that Ireland was negotiating its rescue plan, the International Monetary Fund admitted that Greece would not be able to fulfil the plan that they and the European Union devised in April 2010. Greece’s debt would have to be restructured, even if they didn’t use this word. According to D. Strauss Khan, the boss of the IMF, Greece must be allowed to repay its debt not in 2015 but in 2024. That is, on the Twelfth of Never, given the course of the present crisis in Europe. Here is a perfect symbol of the fragility of some if not most European countries undermined by debt.

This concession to Greece has been accompanied by new austerity measures. After the austerity plan of April 2010 - which was financed by the non-payment of two months of retirement, the lowering of indemnities in the public sector, and price rises resulting from an increase in tax on electricity, petrol, alcohol, tobacco, etc - there are also plans to cut public employment.

A comparable scenario unfolded in Ireland where the workers were presented with a fourth austerity plan. In 2009 public sector wages were lowered between 5 and 15%, welfare payments were suppressed and recruitment frozen. The latest austerity plan includes reducing the minimum wage by 11.5%, reducing welfare payments, eliminating 24,750 state jobs and an increase in sales tax from 21 to 23%. For these two countries, these violent austerity plans presage future measures that will force the working class and the major part of the population into an unbearable poverty.

The incapacity of new countries (Portugal, Spain, etc) to pay their debts is shown by their attempt to avoid the consequences by adopting draconian austerity measures and preparing for more, like in Greece and Ireland.

What are the austerity plans trying to save?

Naturally, these policies are not intended to relieve the poverty of the millions who are the first to suffer the consequences. The bourgeoisie’s biggest fear is of a domino effect i.e. that if the weakest countries default, the effect will quickly spread throughout the system.

At the root of the bankruptcy of the Greek state is a considerable budget deficit due to an exorbitant mass of public spending (armaments in particular) that the fiscal resources of the country, weakened by the aggravation of the crisis in 2008, cannot finance. In Greece, it is clear that a country of 11 million people, whose GNP in 2009 was 164 billion euros, will not be able to pay back a loan of 85 billion euros. As for the Irish state, its banking system had accumulated a debt of 873% (ie nearly nine times!) GDP which the worsening of the crisis had made impossible to cover. As a consequence, the banking system had to be largely nationalised and the debt was transferred to the state. Accordingly, the Irish state found itself in 2010 with a public deficit corresponding to 32% of GDP!

In both cases, faced with an insane level of indebtedness of the state or of private institutions, it is the state which must assume the integrity of the national capital by showing its capacity to reimburse the debt and pay the interest on it.

The potential for a ‘domino effect’ lies in the fact that it is the banks of the major developed countries who held the colossal debts of the Greek and Irish states. There are different opinions concerning the level of the claims of the major world banks on the Irish state. Let’s take the ‘average’: “According to economic daily Les Echos de Lundi, French banks have a 21.1 billion euro exposure to Ireland, behind the German banks (46 billion), British (42.3 billion) and American (24.6 billion)”. And concerning the exposure of the banks by the situation in Greece: “The French institutions are the most exposed with 55 billion euros in assets. The Swiss banks have invested 46 billion, the Germans 31billion”. The non-bailout of Greece and Ireland would have put the creditor banks in a very difficult situation, and thus the states on which they depend. It would have been even more the case for countries in a critical financial situation (like Spain and Portugal) which are also exposed in Greece and Ireland and for whom such a situation would have proven fatal.

Worse, a failure to bailout Greece and Ireland would have unleashed a crisis of confidence and a stampede of the creditors away from these countries, guaranteeing bankruptcy of the weakest of them, the collapse of the euro and a financial storm that would make the failure of Lehman Brothers in 2008 look like a mild sea breeze. In other words, the financial authorities of the EU and the IMF came to the rescue of Greece and Ireland not to save these two states, still less the populations of these two countries, but to avoid the meltdown of the world financial system.

In reality, it is not only Greece, Ireland and a few other countries in the South of Europe whose financial situation has deteriorated. The following figures show the level of total debt as a percentage of GDP (January 2010): “470% for the UK and Japan, gold medals for total indebtedness; 360% for Spain; 320% for France, Italy and Switzerland; 300% for the US and 280% for Germany”.The levels of indebtedness of all these states show that their commitments exceed to an absurd degree their ability to pay. Calculations have been made which show that Greece needs a budget surplus of at least 16% - 17% to stabilise its public debt. In fact, all these countries are indebted to a point where their national production won’t allow the repayment of their debt.

In other words these states and private institutions hold debt that can never be honoured. Given that the rescue plans have no chance of success, what else is their significance?

Capitalism can only survive thanks to plans for permanent economic support

Nevertheless the Euro zone countries have another difficulty: its states are unable to create the monetary means to ‘finance’ their deficits. This is the exclusive preserve of the European Central Bank. Other countries like the UK and the US, equally indebted, do not have this problem since they have the authority to create their own money.

Such support to the financial sector, which finances the real economy, can reduce the impact of austerity which is why all those who are able to print money are doing so. The US is going furthest in this direction: Quantitative Easing Nº2, creating $900 billion.

The fact that the dollar is an international reserve currency allows the US to pump out dollars at a level that would cripple its rivals should they attempt such a strategy. A further round of ‘QE’ cannot be ruled out.

US fiscal and monetary measures are, therefore, far more aggressive than in European countries but even the US is now trying to drastically slash its budget deficit, as illustrated by Obama’s proposal to block the wages of federal employees. In fact one finds in every country in the world such contradictions revealed in the policies adopted.

The bourgeoisie has exceeded the limits of indebtedness that capitalism can sustain

As Marx showed, capitalism suffers genetically from a lack of outlets because the exploitation of labour power necessarily leads to the creation of a value greater than the outlay in wages, because the working class consumes much less than it produces. Up and till the end of the nineteenth century, the bourgeoisie had to offset this problem by the colonisation of non-capitalist areas where it forced the population, with various means, to buy the merchandise produced by its capital. The crises and wars of the twentieth century illustrate that this way of answering overproduction, inherent to capitalist exploitation, was reaching its limits. In other words, non-capitalist areas of the planet were no longer sufficient for the bourgeoisie to realise the surplus product that was needed for enlarged accumulation. The deregulation of the economy at the end of the 1960s, manifested in monetary crises and recessions, signified the quasi-absence of the extra capitalist markets as a means of absorbing the surplus capitalist production. The only solution henceforth has been the creation of an artificial market inflated by debt. It has allowed the bourgeoisie to sell to states, households and businesses without the latter having the real means to buy.

We have often shown that capitalism has used debt as a palliative to the crisis of overproduction that has ensnared it since the end of the 1960s. But we should not confuse debt with magic. Actually debt must be progressively reimbursed and the interest paid systematically, otherwise the creditor will not only stop lending but risk bankruptcy himself.

Now the situation of a growing number of European countries shows they can no long pay the part of the debt demanded by their creditors. In other words these countries must reduce their debt, in particular by cutting expenses, when 40 years of crisis have shown that the increase of the latter was an absolutely necessary condition to avoid a world recession. All states, to a greater or lesser degree are faced with the same insoluble contradiction.

The financial storms shaking Europe at the moment are thus the product of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism and illustrate the absolute impasse of this mode of production.

Developing inflation

At the very moment when most countries have austerity plans that reduce internal demand, including for basic necessities, the price of agricultural raw materials has sharply increased. More than 100% for cotton in a year; more than 20% for wheat and maize between July 2009 and July 2010 and 16% for rice between April-June 2010 and the end of October 2010. Metals and oil went in a similar direction. Of course, climatic factors have a role in the evolution of the price of food products, but the increase is so general that other causes must be at play. All countries are preoccupied by the level of inflation that is increasing in their economies. Some examples from the ‘emerging countries’:

- Officially inflation in China reached an annual rate of 5.1% in November 2010 (in fact every specialist agrees that the real figures for inflation in this country is between 8 and 10%)

- In India inflation reached 8.6% in October

- In Russia it was 8.5% in 2010

The development of inflation is not an exotic phenomenon reserved for the emerging countries. The developed countries are more and more concerned: a 3.3% rate in November in the UK was seen as worrying by the government; 1.9% in virtuous Germany caused disquiet because it occurs alongside rapid growth.

Inflation is not always the result of vendors raising their prices because demand exceeds supply and therefore carries no risk of losing sales. The printing of money, that is the issuing of new money when the wealth of the national economy does not increase in the same proportion, leads inevitably to a depreciation of the money in circulation and thus to an increase in prices. This is the natural result of Quantitative Easing.

There is also the question of speculation. As profitable outlets decline, capitalists no longer invest directly in production that can tie up capital for long periods with little return. Instead, they keep capital liquid; ready to be invested in any activity that looks likely to make a profit. When prices of a particular asset or commodity begin to rise for any reason, the capitalists pour money into the market anticipating further price rises so they can sell at profit. For example, a bad wheat harvest suggests prices will rise so capitalists buy up large amounts of wheat hoping to make a killing. This very action pushes the prices up further, which encourages other capitalists to invest, pushing the price up even more! Increasing the money supply gives more cash to invest and accelerates the process even further.

The problem is that a good part of these products, in particular agricultural products, are also commodities consumed by vast numbers of workers, peasants, unemployed, etc. Consequently, as well as a lowering of income, a great part of the world population is hit by the rise in the price of rice, bread, clothes, etc.

Thus the crisis which obliges the bourgeoisie to save its banks by means of the creation of money leads the workers to suffer two attacks:

- the lowering of their wages

- the increase in the price of basic commodities

A similar process occurred in 2007 –2008 (just before the financial crisis) triggering hunger riots in many countries. The consequences of the present price explosion have immediately led to the revolts in Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria.

The level of inflation won’t stop rising. According to Cercle Finance from 7December, the rate of 10 year T bonds has increased from 2.94% to 3.17% and the rate of 30 year T bonds has increased from 4.25% to 4.425%. That clearly shows that the capitalists anticipate a loss of the value of the money they invest and thus demand a higher rate of return on it.

The tensions between national capitals

Contrary to the pious intentions published by the recent G20 in Seoul, protectionist tendencies are clearly at work today behind the euphemism of ‘economic patriotism’. It would be too tedious to list all the protectionist measures adopted by different countries. Let us simply mention that the US in September 2010 was taking 245 anti-dumping measures; that Mexico from March 2009 had taken 89 measures of commercial retaliation against the US and that China recently decided to drastically limit the exportation of its ‘rare earths’ needed for a lot of high technology products.

But, in the present period, it’s currency war which will be the major manifestation of trade war. Increasing the money supply also allows national capitals to make their products cheaper on the world market, another benefit to countries using this policy. Other countries like China, deliberately undervalue their currency to maintain exports.

However, despite the trade war, the different countries have agreed to prevent Greece and Ireland from defaulting on their debt. The bourgeoisie is obliged to take very contradictory measures, dictated by the total impasse of its system.

What solutions can the bourgeoisie propose?

Why, in the catastrophic situation of the world economy do we find articles entitled ‘Why growth will come’ or ‘The US wants to believe in the economic recovery’ ? Such headlines seek to maintain the illusion that the bourgeoisie’s economic and political authorities still have a certain mastery of the situation. In fact, the policy options available, in so far as they are effective, bring with them their own dangerous side effects:

- creating money can stimulate the economy and help reduce deficits (when these funds are directed to buying state bonds) but creates currency instability and unleashes dangerous inflationary trends.

- austerity measures can reduce debt and make the working class pay for the crisis, but they can also curtail economic activity and exacerbate the tendency for depression and breakdown, which actually makes the debt problem worse and necessitating further austerity. This is the situation Ireland now finds itself in.

In fact, many governments are pursuing both policies simultaneously in the hope that the effects of one will offset the negative effects of the other. Unfortunately, this often results in the worst of all worlds: ‘stagflation’ i.e. low growth plus inflation.

The only true solution to the capitalist impasse will emerge from the more and more numerous, massive and conscious struggles of the working class against the economic attacks of the bourgeoisie. It will lead naturally to the overthrow of this system whose principle contradiction is that of the production for profit and accumulation and not the satisfaction of human needs.  

Vitaz 2/1/11

Youth unemployment has risen to 18.1% for those aged 18-24. This is worse than the official rate for the general population which is 7.9%. This only begins to tell the story: unemployment is 27% for 18-20 and 44.3% for 16-17 year-olds not in education, and for new graduates 20% (up from 10.6% at the start of the recession). Overall graduates do a little better than non-graduates at age 21-24 with 13.4% rather than 16% unemployment. No wonder students had such militant protests last November and December demanding “we want a future”.

The state orchestrates attacks on living standards

The underlying cause of unemployment is the crisis, in this example the fact that capitalism can no longer make a profit from exploiting the available workforce, and so is ‘socially excluding’ large numbers, particularly the young, from jobs. Not just here, not just in North Africa, the Middle East, but around the world.

It’s not just the recession that started with the credit crunch. Even in the developed countries employment has never returned to the levels of the 1960s and early 1970s. Already over a million in 1979, unemployment trebled in the 1980s before statistics were massaged and millions of the jobless reassigned to incapacity benefit – the origin of the 269,000 households where no-one has ever worked.

In these circumstances the role of the state is to manage the economy in the interests of capital, and right now that means lowering the cost of labour power. So although the crisis is an international and historic phenomenon, the state plays an essential role in coordinating and directing the attacks on jobs, on health, on education. Redundancies at the end of last year may have eased off a little since 2008-9, but we are now seeing another spate of announcements particularly in local government – 1200 in Liverpool, 800 in Oldham, 500 on the Isle of Wight, 500 in Plymouth… and a few hundreds in many others. These job losses are all essentially due to the cut to local government funding or formula grant of 27% announced in the spending review last year, meaning cuts of up to 8.8% this year. And of course when funding and jobs go, so do services that workers rely on. For example, among the £15 million cuts made by Solihull is a cut of £4.1m in children’s services, and all over the country Sure Start and children’s centres are either being closed or cut down to a skeleton service, worsening the prospects for those starting families. Connexions services that were supposed to give young unemployed the skills and support they need to find work are closing.

NHS is not immune

The NHS is losing 53,000 jobs, for example: 1,115 at Devon and Exeter Trust, 1,755 in Belfast, including 120 doctors and 620 nurses, 1,013 in East Lancashire including 50 doctors and 270 nurses. It will be no comfort whatsoever to the unemployed of any age, and particularly the young, that most of these will be through ‘natural wastage’. Remember that health service spending was ‘protected’ last year, although required to make around 20% efficiency savings. Front line services will inevitably feel the effects – it is precisely the intention to move as many activities as possible out of hospital, to shorten stays, and has been over the lifetime of several governments. In fact many of the initiatives that have received government funding – from Tony Blair’s Community Matron project to prescribing advice for GPs have been designed with cost cutting in mind. And the new reorganisation of the NHS under way at the moment is no different.

In education, money has been withdrawn from school rebuilding and repair, the National Audit Office is warning that cuts in funding will put more universities at risk of bankruptcy – remember the London Metropolitan redundancies. 400,000 teenagers are doing ‘vocational courses’ that are of no value in the job market. Young people and their families must foot more and more of the bill for their deteriorating education, with the abolition of the EMA in September and a rise in tuition fees at the universities that survive. Together with cuts in pre-school services this can only worsen educational outcomes at all levels.

And ahead of us we have all the attacks announced last year by the current coalition and previous Labour governments: the two year public sector pay freeze, cuts in housing benefit, restriction of Sure Start grants to first child, increase in fuel duty and many others come in this April, with more rolling out over the next two years, along with the continuing rise in the pension age. Not forgetting that there will be another budget later this month, no doubt with new cuts announced.

It is easy to see the role of the state in making redundancies in nationalised industries and local government, but it also applies in the private sector. Last November the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development warned that public sector cuts would cause even more job losses in the private sector, around 1.6 million. For example BT which gets 10% of its revenue from government contracts has had to cut costs with 35,000 job losses.

What is noticeable about these redundancies and cuts is that while they result from policies managed by central government, they are administered by innumerable employers – this or that NHS Trust, or Local Authority, or school or college. Legal resistance is now limited to actions divided up along the same lines.

We are all under attack, we need to fight back together

The attacks we face are class-wide, across the board, attacks on the young, but also on pensions, job losses in the public and private sector, attacks on benefits for the unemployed and the sick, but also benefits needed by families in work (child benefit, Sure Start grants, housing benefit). They are attacks orchestrated by the state on behalf of the entire capitalist class. And they aren’t going to stop – capitalism is in an impasse and can only come back for more attacks again and again.

There is obviously a lot of anger – shown, most recently, for example, by protesters storming Lambeth Town Hall. The attacks are coordinated, and so must are struggles be.  

Alex 5/3/11

It seems that everyone is talking about revolution. The recent social upheavals in North Africa have been described as ‘revolutions’. In Ireland, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny has proclaimed a “democratic revolution” because now it’s his turn to impose the austerity measures previously administered by his Fianna Fail and Green Party predecessors. In the US celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is fighting a “Food Revolution” against obesity.

In the mass media we don’t expect to see any serious attempt at examining the idea of revolution as understood by marxists in the workers’ movement. It would be like expecting fashion magazines to be referring to ‘images created as a focus for religious veneration’ or ‘small pictures on a computer screen’ when they write of ‘icons’.

The commune is a publication that makes claims to a marxist heritage. On its website in mid-February there appeared an article “on Egypt, and revolution”. It starts:

“Revolutions are actually quite common. It’s only February and there have been two already this year in Tunisia and Egypt. Other recent revolutions include Serbia (2000), Georgia (2003), Kyrgyzstan (2005) and Ukraine (2005). Recent failed endeavours include Thailand (2009), Burma (2007), and Iran (2009).

All of these revolutions were, to use the Marxist term, political rather than social revolutions. That is, they overthrew the faction which ruled the state and replaced it with another one”. The distinction made by the author between political and social revolutions is that “a social revolution is one which transforms not just the ruling clique, but the way in which all society is organised”.

Trotsky’s view, in a period of defeat

This is not a unique approach to the question by someone claiming to be a marxist. In Trotsky’s Revolution Betrayed, written in 1936, he looks at the Russian state and indicates a perspective for the working class. Because he saw nationalised property as a gain the changes he thought necessary specifically precluded any action against the state. Anticipating a more democratic regime he wrote “...so far as concerns property relations, the new power would not have to resort to revolutionary measures. It would retain and further develop the experiment of planned economy. After the political revolution - that is, the deposing of the bureaucracy - the proletariat would have to introduce in the economy a series of very important reforms, but not another social revolution.” In this passage the “political revolution” means not having “to resort to revolutionary measures” - it is not a “social revolution.”

Elsewhere in the same work Trotsky says “The overthrow of the Bonapartist caste will, of course have deep social consequences, but in itself it will be confined within the limits of political revolution.”

This concept of the ‘limits of political revolution’ is also found in Trotsky’s In Defence of Marxism, a work collecting material written in 1939 and 1940. Here he sees the Russian state “as a complex of social institutions which continues to persist in spite of the fact that the ideas of the bureaucracy are now almost the opposite of the ideas of the October Revolution. That is why we did not renounce the possibility of regenerating the Soviet state by political revolution”.Despite the fact that the state in Russia had become the overwhelmingly dominant means for the exploitation and suppression of the working class Trotsky thought that it could be regenerated by the process of ‘political revolution’.

The history of the degeneration of the Russian Revolution is, within certain parameters, open for discussion. Trotsky’s distinction between ‘political’ and ‘social’ revolution is unambiguous.

Marx, the founder of marxism

To find the basis for the marxist understanding of what a revolution is, it is necessary to start with Marx.

In his 1844 article “Critical Notes on the Article ‘The King of Prussia and Social Reform. By a Prussian’” Marx examines the phrase “A social revolution without a political soul” and concludes that “every revolution dissolves the old order of society; to that extent it is social. Every revolution brings down the old ruling power; to that extent it is political”.

He goes on: “But whether the idea of a social revolution with a political soul is paraphrase or nonsense there is no doubt about the rationality of a political revolution with a social soul. All revolution - the overthrow of the existing ruling power and the dissolution of the old order - is a political act. But without revolution, socialism cannot be made possible. It stands in need of this political act just as it stands in need of destruction and dissolution. But as soon as its organising functions begin and its goal, its soul emerges, socialism throws its political mask aside”.

It is clear that, while still continuing to base himself in the same framework, Marx was alive to historical developments throughout his life. The preface to the 1872 German edition of the Communist Manifesto says that events have made some details of the its political programme “antiquated”. In particular one thing proved by the Paris Commune (quoting The Civil War in France) was that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes”. The state has to be destroyed for the working class to take its transformation of society onto a higher level. The Paris Commune “was essentially a working class government, the product of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of labour. ... The political rule of the producer cannot co-exist with the perpetuation of his social slavery. The Commune was therefore to serve as a lever for uprooting the economical foundation upon which rests the existence of classes, and therefore of class rule” (The Civil War in France).

There have been further subsequent developments in the marxist view of the process of revolution, most notably Lenin’s State and Revolution. What the clearest have in common is an understanding that a working class revolution is ‘political’ in that it has to destroy the state of its exploiters, and ‘social’ in that its goal is the transformation of society. The ‘political’ and the ‘social’ are not two separate phenomena but two aspects of one struggle.

When one capitalist faction replaces another in government following parliamentary elections, when a capitalist faction seizes power in a military coup, or when material reality forces the bourgeoisie to re-organise the way it functions as a ruling class, none of these are ‘revolutions’ as the capitalist state remains intact.

The ‘revolutions’ on the commune’s list are not social revolutions, but neither are they political revolutions. The replacement of one faction by another is not, from the point of view of the working class, a revolution of any sort. For the working class the destruction of the capitalist state is an essential political moment in a social revolution, part of the process that can lead to the liberation of all humanity.  

Barrow 4/3/11

What’s been happening in Libya has been rapidly changing and marked by many uncertainties, but many on the Left are quite clear on what they want their demagogues to do.

In a Guardian (28/2/11) article headlined “How can Latin America’s ‘revolutionary’ leaders support Gaddafi?” Mike Gonzalez criticises Presidents Ortega of Nicaragua and Chavez of Venezuela, along with Fidel Castro, for expressing their sympathy for Gaddafi and the Libyan government. He says they “cannot support an oppressive regime that now faces a mass democratic movement from below” when, apparently, they do.

The exact nature of the movement is open for discussion, but there can be no quibbling with the fact that the Libyan capitalist state is repressive.

In contrast to the Gaddafi regime Gonzalez says that Ortega and Chavez came “to power as a result of a mass insurrection” and that when Castro overthrew Batista it “was hugely popular”. Regardless of their route to power Ortega, Chavez and Castro are integral parts of the capitalist ruling class in their countries. As it happens Ortega and Chavez are presidents following elections, but, whether in power through the ballot box, or through a military coup like Gaddafi, they have done their best to serve their national capitals.

What Gonzalez wants to hear is a passionate denunciation of Libyan repression and expressions of solidarity with the people. His explanation for the failure of his fallen heroes is that “Libya has invested in all three countries and presented itself as an anti-imperialist power.” This is a rather crude, partly materialist explanation. In reality all these left-wing leaders proclaim their anti-imperialist credentials, and recognise Gaddafi as one of their own, one of the bosses that can talk ‘radical’. Meanwhile the exploited working class and other oppressed strata endure the capitalist reality which they preside over.

There is an exception to this pattern. Iranian President Ahmadinejad has criticised the “bad behaviour of the Libyan government towards the people” and said that the state should listen to the people’s desires. This is what ‘radical’ leaders are supposed to do, and, if they criticise other governments their message will be transmitted by their leftist admirers.

Leftist hypocrisy over WRP’s Libyan connections

Gaddafi’s 1969 coup looks a little different through the eyes of the Workers Revolutionary Party that publishes Newsline. They refer (28/2/11) to “the Libyan revolution, through which the Libyan people took control over their country from UK and US imperialism in 1969.”

Other leftists scoff at the WRP because of the agreements and communiqués it signed with the Libyan government, its slavish loyalty to the Libyan ‘socialist’ state and Iraq of Saddam Hussein both of which gave money to the WRP, its defence of the execution of Stalinists in Iraq, and a whole range of sordid activities in collaboration with regimes in the Middle East during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Even now, after any Libyan contributions have possibly long dried up, they “urge the Libyan masses and youth to take their stand alongside Colonel Gaddafi to defend the gains of the Libyan revolution, and to develop it. This can only be done by the defeat of the current rebellion” (Newsline 23/2/11), and publish one of the longest available extracts from Gaddafi’s speech “to the Libyan people made ... to rally them against the internal counter-revolutionary forces and their UK and US backers” (ibid 24/2/11).

But the leftists who have pointed a finger at the WRP for accepting money from the blood-stained regime of Gaddafi don’t have a leg to stand on. What the WRP was paid for most leftist groups do for free.

Take the example of the Vietnam War. In the 1960s and 70s the International Socialists (who went on to become the SWP) described North Vietnam as ‘state capitalist’, while more orthodox Trotskyists called it a ‘deformed workers state’, and Stalinists called it ‘socialist.’ These differences amounted to little in the unity of the Left in insisting on the necessity for workers and peasants in Vietnam to lay down their lives for the capitalist North against the capitalist South.

In the eight year war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, during which maybe a million people died, the Left put all the emphasis in their propaganda on the support by the US and others for the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. There might have been reservations over the Iranian regime and its archaic religious ideology, but the consensus on the Left was that it was better to die for Iran then Iraq. Of course, when Iraq was under attack from the US and its ‘coalitions’ the leftists found Saddam defensible, even though the position of the working class had not altered in any way.

During the conflicts in disintegrating Yugoslavia in the early 1990s the leftists chose their camps once more. The logic of defence of Bosnia or Kosovo led to support for the bombing of Belgrade. Support for Serbia and a united Yugoslavia meant support for the massacres undertaken by both ‘official’ and paramilitary forces

The brutalism of the WRP is easy to see, but the ‘critical support’ offered by other leftists for various factions of the bourgeoisie is just as poisonous. With calls for military intervention in Libya growing louder it will be interesting to see who the leftists rally to. Past experience shows that it won’t be for the working class in defence of its class interests  

Car 4/3/11

Revolt is contagious, above all when more and more of the world’s population are facing a future of misery thanks to the deepening of capitalism’s economic crisis. The ruling class has no real control over the crisis and is becoming increasingly concerned about the growth of resistance to its austerity plans. This concern is manifested in two ways: the attempt to make concessions and ‘democratise’ its rule, coupled with the strengthening of its whole apparatus of repression.

Egypt: the ‘People’s Army’ against the people

The centre of the epidemic is obviously in the Middle East. Mubarak is so far the most significant of the scalps claimed by the movement sweeping the Middle East. This is because Egypt is an important regional power and also has a relatively well-developed working class with a history of struggle behind it. It is important to note, however, that meeting this demand has not meant the dispersal of the movement. On 25 February mass protests once again took place in Tahrir Square demanding that the rest of Mubarak’s government (largely still in place) also depart. After several hundred of the more determined protesters tried to camp out in the square overnight, they were met with the full force of the ‘democratic’ army. The Occupied London website (which seems to have direct links with the movement in Egypt) drew the appropriate conclusions:

“The sad events of tonight will hopefully bury that relatively misguided phrase ‘the people and the army are one hand’ and reveal that the true nature of the situation in Egypt is better described as ‘the army and the police are one hand.’ A group of several hundred peaceful protestors, attempting to stay the night in Tahrir square and in front of the People’s Assembly to protest continued military rule and the persistence of the old regime’s illegitimate presence in government, were violently attacked and driven away by Military Police, Army officers and commandos wearing balaclavas and wielding sub-machine guns. One protestor, taken inside of the People’s Assembly building by army officers and beaten, was told bluntly ‘don’t fuck with the army…..the army is no friend of the people.’ This institution is as much a part of the regime as any other, representing not just the same entrenched military-political elite that have ruled Egypt for 60 years, but also enormous and substantial business interests that benefit from preferential treatment and systemic corruption. There has been little doubt in anyone’s mind that the army’s preference would be to maintain most of the country’s infrastructure (police and political) just as it was before, while placating the people telling them that it was their ally and guardian” www.occupiedlondon.org/cairo/?p=355 [47]

Iraq, Iran, Algeria...

If the ‘struggle for democracy’ is how the capitalist media present the situation in North Africa, the situation in Iraq is rather embarrassing for them. After a brutal war campaign and occupation that left thousands dead, Iraq is now supposedly a democracy and yet Iraq, too, has seen its own wave of mass protests. The appalling ‘security situation’ (i.e. the threat to daily life from both rival militias and the state security forces themselves) has been a focus for the initial demonstrations, as has the issue of state corruption. However, many of the demonstrations have been demanding the provision of basic utilities: electricity, water, etc. The government has already been forced to subsidise electricity costs in an effort to deflect the anger, but this hasn’t stopped the protests. In the latest protests on 4 March, thousands gathered in central Baghdad to protest against corruption and unemployment.

While the bourgeoisie has been happy to show pictures of the brutal repression in Egypt and especially Libya, it seems to have little stomach for dealing with the 29 deaths of protesters in Iraq at the hands of the security forces on the “Day of Rage” on 25 February. Nor does it seem to recognise the attempt to disperse the March 4th protest with mass beatings and water cannon. At the time of writing, we have little information on whether there is an attempt by the working class to develop an autonomous struggle in Iraq - although Kirkuk oil-workers were threatening strikes in mid-February - as seemed to be the case in Egypt; but it is certain that the response to dissent from ‘Iraqi democracy’ is much the same as ‘Egyptian dictatorship’.

Iran, possibly the most significant power in the region, has also been affected by the wave of protests. The so-called ‘Green Movement’ has been at the head of discontent with Ahmadinejad government since 2009 and seems to be trying to use the protests to push forward its own agenda. Protests have been met with typical brutality by the regime with mass arrests. But the working-class has also been raising its own voice in Iran. In the words of Time (22/2/11): “Over the past year, strikes and walkouts have broken out in the automobile, tire, sugar, textile, metals and transportation industries. Many of these protests were concerned with bread-and-butter issues: wages not paid, unexpected layoffs, deteriorating benefits and rising unemployment”. Most recently, strikes in the refineries at Abadan, where workers haven’t been paid for 6 months, were timed to coincide with the protests on the streets. The Iranian regime cannot help but be nervous about the developing situation in Abadan - one of the largest refineries in the world, it was also one of the epicentres in the revolt against the Shah in 1979.

In Algeria, following demonstrations in January and February, the regime has announced the suspension of the ‘state of emergency’ in place since 1992. Under the banner of fighting terrorism, this decree made any public meeting or demonstration illegal. The government has also announced steps to combat unemployment and homelessness, two major themes of the recent demonstrations. There is no substance to these concessions. Demonstrations of 2-3000 in mid-February were contained by 30-40,000 police, and a demonstration planned for 26 February was preceded by a flood of arrests. Despite the continuing atmosphere of state repression, however, there was an energetic demonstration by students in Tizi Ouzou. There are also signs of resistance coming from the workplaces: 300 employees of a phosphate enterprise in Annaba demonstrated outside the company HQ demanding wage rises and social benefits; paramedics came out on strike nationally in early February and education workers struck for two days in Bejaïa.

Protests continue in Tunisia despite the departure of Ben Ali: on 25 February 100,000 people demonstrated against the ‘transition government’ which is seen by many as the old regime in make-up. More street protests in Morocco, Jordan, Yemen, and Bahrain, where the social situation remains tense. Again, the bourgeoisie responds with the same mixture. Police killed six demonstrators in Morocco. In Bahrain the government initially used strong arm tactics to break up the occupation of the Pearl Roundabout, and then backed off on the advice of the American bourgeoisie. In Syria, where the secret police are everywhere, demonstrations have been minuscule and the clamp down immediate: 200 people trying to express solidarity with the revolt in Libya were violently dispersed. In Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, the king initially tried to buy off discontent by announcing a series of wage increases and social measures. However, in anticipation of future demonstrations, all protests and marches are to be banned. An official announcement stated “Regulations in the kingdom forbid categorically all sorts of demonstrations, marches and sit-ins, as they contradict Islamic Sharia law and the values and traditions of Saudi society.” It added that police were “authorised by law to take all measures needed against those who try to break the law.”

Asia, Europe, America….

Despite the pseudo-explanations of the press, this mood of rebellion is not an ‘Arab’ phenomenon. 100,000 people demonstrated in New Delhi on 23 February to voice their growing disquiet over unemployment and rising prices. One demonstrator said in an interview: “I earn 100-125 rupees a day [2 or 3 dollars]. How can we survive on that if prices are going up so much?” December figures put inflation at 18%. One banner read “prices will end up killing people on the street”.

In China there was a major wave of strikes last year and the government is extremely sensitive to any form of dissent. It responded to Internet appeals for a ‘Jasmine revolution’ in China with further restrictions on access to the web and by a heavy police presence on the streets, with the use of barriers to prevent free movement on the day designated for the protests.

Conditions facing the population in south east Europe have deteriorated rapidly and there is a groundswell of discontent. In Albania on 25 February at least three people were shot dead during a protest in front of government buildings. In Croatia, there has been a series of demonstrations against the government and the rising cost of living. Some of the initial ones seem to have had a very nationalist flavour, but more recently they have had a more working/class student composition, with banners and slogans critical of capitalism gaining an echo. In Greece, on top of the youth revolt at the end of 2008, there has been a series of general strikes against the government’s well-publicised austerity packages. Tightly controlled by the unions, these one-day strikes were beginning to look like rituals, but the last one, on 23 February, seems to have had more life: more massive participation of public and private sector employees affecting banks, schools, hospitals, transport and other sectors, along with a series of strikes going on outside the ‘official’ days of action.

One of the most significant struggles in the recent period, however, has been the mobilisation of public sector workers in Wisconsin, USA, which has crystallised the mounting frustration of the American working class.

“Over 200,000 public sector workers and students have taken to the streets and have been 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 signs asking ‘If Egypt Can Have Democracy, Why Can’t Wisconsin?’ Protesters in Egypt have even shown their solidarity with workers in Wisconsin!” (From the ICC online article ‘Wisconsin public employees, defence of the unions leads to defeat’).

The conflict in Wisconsin is presented as a fight to defend the trade unions, and the majority of workers do perceive it in these terms, just as hundreds of thousands in the Middle East see theirs as a struggle for democracy. The ruling class makes maximum use of these ideological weak points, but the underlying motive for all the current revolts is the necessary reaction to the economic degradation and political repression imposed by the world-wide crisis of this system. The germs of an international movement against the system itself can be glimpsed in the rapid spread of revolts across national boundaries and the raising of slogans which express real international class solidarity. When workers in Egypt and America consciously support each others’ struggles, the road to revolution becomes a little bit wider, and the ruling class has every reason to fear this. 

Amos 5/3/11

This article from the printed edition of World Revolution has already been published online under the title 

A penny off petrol duty, paid for by a windfall tax on North Sea oil companies. A rise in the basic rate income tax allowance (i.e. a tax cut). A freeze in council tax. And a new tax on private jets. Has George Osborne suddenly taken the advice of the leftists and begun to change the balance of the tax burden?

The populist moves in the budget are no doubt an attempt to soften the pain of the previous emergency budget last year which unveiled a historic restructuring of the ‘social state’. It goes without saying that even were we to take the measures at face value, they really go nowhere to ameliorating the most brutal assault on workers’ living conditions since the Great Depression.

It’s already clear that the cut in petrol duty has had little effect on actual prices, which were raised even before the measure was announced. And the increase in the tax allowance allowed the government to disguise another measure around taxation: the annual increase in personal allowances will now be calculated from the CPI as opposed to the RPI. In the long-term, the CPI generally runs at 1 percentage point below the RPI, meaning that tax allowances will rise much more slowly relative to the cost of living. Some analysts have suggested that the package of measures, supposedly designed to benefit low-paid workers, will ultimately hit them the hardest.

But does the ‘tax the rich’ mantra recited by the left actually offer a real alternative? Don’t the bankers earn billions in bonuses? The left call upon the state to redistribute wealth through progressive taxation but this hides the real nature of the state, which is not a neutral organ but the ‘executive committee’ of the very ruling class the left call upon the state to tax. Armies of accountants stand ready to find loopholes for capitalists in the rules they set themselves.

Nor does the ‘tax the rich’ slogan take into account the nature of capitalism. The central motor of capitalist society is the drive to growth (or accumulation). Recessions, crises, etc. are the breakdown of that accumulation process. Fundamentally, accumulation depends on the ability of capital to exploit labour to a sufficient degree to ensure this growth. The official explanation for the credit crunch (reckless lending by the banks) is thus only partially true. At root, it meant lending to capitalists who then failed to milk a suitable amount of profit from their workers. In essence, workers were paid too much relative to the exploitative needs of capital.

The only response to the crisis is to drastically reduce workers’ real wages (both directly and the portion derived the social services provided by the state). And this is what we have seen through a combination of cuts in wages, social services and stealth cuts through inflation. Unfortunately for capital, these measures result in further shocks to demand because workers have to reduce their consumption, exacerbating the overproduction that is the classical expression of the capitalist crisis. The ‘debate’ about economic policy between right and left is how to reduce wages while stimulating demand.

The promises from the left are as empty as Osborne’s populist gestures. Even were they actually carried out, they would only exacerbate the crisis. Rather than succumbing to utopian dreams of reforming a dying system, workers need to launch struggles in defence of their living conditions and work towards ending this social system once and for all.  

Ishamael 1/4/11

Since the 1980s, the ruling class in Britain has been discussing how the various pensions schemes aimed at the working class have been too generous and unaffordable. Even at their peak, final salary schemes were generally only available to workers at the largest companies, leaving millions of workers dependent on the state pension or to be ‘mis-sold’ dodgy private pensions. In the years since, under governments of right and left, the state pension has been steadily eroded while ‘final salary’ schemes have been replaced with far less generous ‘defined contribution’ arrangements that reduced benefits to workers.

The efforts of the LibCon Coalition to tackle public sector pensions are thus in complete continuity with the previous Labour administration, which had presided over the more or less complete abolition of final salary pensions in the private sector. In the spirit of tying up loose ends, the Coalition are proposing to end National Insurance rebates that currently support final salary pensions schemes. This “will almost certainly see the end of final salary pensions” (Financial Times 24/3/11).

In this context, it must seem strange that the coalition is actually considering putting up the state pension, even if it is only to £155 per week. In practice, it means little more than abolishing the hated means-testing (which was so onerous many pensioners simply didn’t bother) which largely pays for itself by cutting the state’s administration costs. But what capitalism gives with one hand, it takes with the other. For those pushed over income tax allowance thresholds by the change, taxation will eat up the gains. Also to be taken into account is the acceleration of raising the pension age to 66. Previously planned for 2026 this is now happening in 2020.

The ruling class have been trying to promote the idea of working longer as a positive for some time. For example, the ending of mandatory retirement ages has been presented as an attack on age ‘discrimination’. Whatever the ruling class may plan for the future, the ‘working pensioner’ has already been a reality for some time. In 2006 more than half the jobs created were filled by people above the state pension age.

But while certain supermarket chains present us with the image of the plucky oldster happily continuing with his exploitation, the reality for many is that ill-health will eventually spoil this pretty picture. Another inconvenience is that while poverty may force pensioners to continue selling their labour, they face the same prospect as everyone else – the likelihood of unemployment - although the bourgeoisie will not count them as unemployed, of course.

The bourgeoisie talk as though employment is more than an aspiration – as though people only have to decide to work and they are home and dry. ‘Working until we drop’ is going to be the least of our worries because the same economic crisis which has created the pension problem also creates mass unemployment. Furthermore, admirable as it is that some older people can show that they are still capable of looking out for themselves in the labour market, if the elderly continue to take up jobs at the same kind of rate as they did in 2006, that actually makes it even more difficult for the young to get jobs. For about a million young workers there is not much chance of getting into the labour market at all – much less of getting paid a rate that would allow them to contribute to a ‘defined contribution’ scheme or any other type of savings scheme. To ‘work until they drop’ would actually be a step up for those in the front line of crisis-ridden capitalism’s brutal assault on the working class.  

Hardin 1/4/11

Maybe half a million people were on the TUC’s March for the Alternative on 26 March. From demo veterans to those on their first ever protest, all were shepherded from the Embankment to Hyde Park by a combination of police and union stewards.

In The Socialist (30/3/11) you could readthat “All of those capitalist commentators that have written off the trade union movement today as a spent force were decisively answered by this demonstration. The power of the trade unions was undisputedly established.” The ability of the unions to book special trains and charter coaches to get hundreds of thousands of people to walk a couple of miles across London is undeniable. Indeed, the numbers the unions were able to mobilise confirmed that they are still a significant social actor,

Robert Shrimsley, a cynical columnist writing in the Financial Times (1/4/11), observed that
“this kind of peaceful protest is pointless. The system has all the shock absorbers necessary to handle a law-abiding demonstration. The next day ministers were already clear they would ignore the entire event”. His analysis of the “political passivism” was that “Marching is as much about the marchers as it is about the cause. It’s about their need to feel they are doing something; something responsible; something lawful – something futile that makes them all feel better”. And if you add in the subsequent spectacle of a few small fires and graffiti in the West End, and the Fortnums occupations, then you have a neat contrast between the spectacle of a lively minority and the spectacle of enormous numbers marching. And both functioned as outlets for anger at cuts past and future.

Although the TUC had only organised the passive parade to boost their credibility and give a focus for people’s anxiety about their future, the marchers still had to turn up. Coaches and trains might have been free, but you still had to get up on a Saturday, for a stay of some hours in London, including waiting up to 2½ hours for the march to just get off, and listen to an excess of whistles and samba bands. As a protest it was impotent, but it did show how widespread is unease about jobs and declining living conditions.

Capitalism doesn’t work

There were two stated aims to the TUC demonstration: “to give a national voice to all those affected by the cuts” and “to show that people reject the argument that there is no alternative.” The ‘alternative’ offered is one “in which rich individuals and big companies have to pay all their tax, that the banks pay a Robin Hood tax and ... in which we strain every sinew to create jobs and boost ... sustainable economic growth.”

The idea that changes in the taxation system (plus the straining of every sinew) can create jobs and economic growth denies the reality and the depth of the capitalist crisis. There is no way of organising capitalism that will make its deepening crisis stabilise, let alone vanish, and there is no way that capitalism can be made to benefit the exploited rather than the exploiters.

Capitalism means the domination of the bourgeoisie, not only with the richest individuals and businesses having their interests protected, but as a society in which the accumulation of capital is the driving force for the ruling class. Capitalism means workers working for wages, as much as feudalism meant working for a feudal lord and slavery meant working for your owner. They are all forms of exploitation, not means for satisfying human needs (except those of the ruling class).

And, speaking of defenders of exploitation, it came as no surprise to hear Ed Miliband in Hyde Park saying that some cuts were actually needed and not to be opposed. After all, the last Labour government set in motion the cuts that the LibCon coalition is continuing with, and its thirteen years in power left the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Against Miliband’s claims to speak for a “mainstream majority” there were union activists saying it was necessary to go from marches to “a plan of resistance including coordinated strike action”,as Unite union leader Len McCluskey put it. Of course, any ‘plan’ and any ‘coordination’ would, in their vision, be in the hands of the unions. The experience of the working class is that such union actions undermine and ultimately sabotage the effectiveness of workers’ struggles. Unions are still significant social actors, but they serve the interests of the bourgeoisie, not the working class.  

Car 2/4/11

In the wake of the militant student struggles in the autumn, and before and after the massive TUC demo of 26 March, there are growing signs of an effort by radical minorities to get together and discuss the lessons of the struggle and how to take it forward. Two recent examples: a discussion group in London which came together following the perceived failure of the ‘Network X’ initiative in Manchester, and a recent meeting on fighting the cuts organised by the Anarchist Federation in Whitechapel and attended by comrades from different political tendencies: both raise the possibility of more regular ‘physical’ forums for discussion in London. The article that follows is an account of a further expression of this phenomenon: the general discussion meetings that took place in a weekend of activities aimed at preparing for the TUC’s 26 March demo and held at the University of London Union.     

“From capitalist crisis to cuts…to revolution? … could the fight against the cuts be the start of a new movement that goes beyond both the capitalist economy and the state?” The first presentation at this meeting at the ‘Arts Against the Cuts March Weekend’ from Endnotes certainly posed the essential questions. First of all the nature of the crisis, the role of bail outs and sovereign debt – which can only be paid back by the state squeezing us dry, whoever is in government, since the Labour Party also favours cuts. It is not easy to defeat the state, and the TUC slogan “Jobs, Growth, Justice” is posed entirely within the system. The revolutionary alternative is not easy, and the presentation went on to put the speaker’s view that this requires going beyond 19th Century ideologies and in particular the notion of the working class as one pole of society leading a form of transition to communism, because that carries within itself the seeds of betrayal and counter-revolution. In his view what is needed is the immediate abolition of all capitalist categories[1]. Posing the nature of the capitalist crisis we face today and the nature of revolution, the key questions at stake today, was certainly very ambitious for a 90 minute meeting.

Two more presentations followed. David Broder of The Commune did not want to start with the crisis but with the lack of working class reaction and the TUC inaction. He wanted to see the struggle against the cuts say what we want, such as how we want public services run. David Graeber introduced more points, such as the way our day to day interactions often follow principles of solidarity rather than capitalist exchange, that capitalism is not a creative force. Discussion from the floor raised many more points such as the contribution of anthropology and understanding of hunter-gatherer societies; the need for an international revolution; the importance of strikes going on in Egypt… the importance of struggles for jobs… And one speaker rejected the whole framework of trying to understand the crisis and revolution, which he characterised as being soft on the bourgeoisie, in favour of simply condemning the cuts proposed by the current government. Overall the lack of time and lack of focus provided by the different emphases in the three presentations inhibited the development of a real discussion.

Beginning to discuss the issues

Later on a second meeting, “Challenging the anti-cuts discourse” introduced by Mute, took up the key questions. A very brief presentation pointed out that the dominant perception on the left is the idea that there is no crisis, that it is simply a pretext for austerity. This misconception of the crisis and of what the struggle involves leads to the idea that it is our job to propose an alternative for capitalism.

G, from the Hackney Alliance to Defend Public Services, disagreed with this. Capitalism is always in crisis, this is how it develops as shown by looking at any decade in the last 150 years. He disagreed with the notion of a terminal crisis of capitalism necessary for communism. Besides European companies hold lot of cash, and capitalism is growing in India and China – and could here if the working class could be forced to accept the same low level of wages.

Several contributions recognised the importance of the crisis: this is the biggest crisis since 1929, it is secular, not cyclical, and 2-3 years into the crisis we are still seeing fallout from it. Capitalism cannot find productive investment opportunities as greater productivity displaces labour. In the 19th Century crises came every 10 years or so, but since 1914 the problem has been on a different level. Keynesianism would make no sense without the Second World War.

What is the implication of this for struggling against the cuts? For G it is simply important to say ‘no’ to the cuts. David Graeber, who is also sceptical about the crisis which he described as artificial, thought we should use it to put forward radical positions.

But there is a crisis, which is causing the imposition of austerity all over the world. We can be honest about this and still demand no cuts. One contribution called the idea that cuts are unnecessary, as put forward by UKuncut, a social democratic analysis, and their idea of ‘tax the bosses’ a dead end, while the fight to keep services has the potential to go beyond that. For another, the TUC cannot admit the crisis because if there is no answer within capitalism they are redundant. Others pointed to the nationalism of the left with its British solutions for British problems, despite the international nature of the crisis, and to the importance of the international struggle of the working class.

This effort at discussing and understanding the situation faced by the working class today, one which we have seen from Exeter to Edinburgh, is an essential contribution to the development of the class consciousness we need.  

May 28/3/11

We are publishing here an article written by our French section in Revolution Internationale 420 in response to the very widespread debate about the tactic of the oil refinery blockades during last autumn’s struggles against pension ‘reforms’. The blockades have certainly impressed some revolutionaries outside France. Brighton Solidarity Federation, for example, recently published a text ‘The paradox of reformism: a call for economic blockades’[1] which contains the following argument:

“It’s all about the balance of class forces. It’s primarily a power struggle, not a moral argument. We might have right on our side, but might will determine the outcome. For the fight against the cuts, there are several implications. Symbolic protest won’t cut it. If actions like UK Uncut move from largely awareness-raising into the realms of economic blockades, then we’ll be getting somewhere. And the state will react accordingly, we must be prepared for more police violence if we’re serious about winning. No doubt such tactics will also be condemned by those notionally on ‘our side’ just like Aaron Porter condemned the Millbank Riot which kick-started this movement. The irony is without such a movement, they’re powerless too. But given the TUC is in thrall to the Labour Party, and the lack of independent workers’ organisation, sustained, co-ordinated strike action against austerity looks unlikely. On the other hand economic blockades have been used to great effect in France both as a standalone tactic and in support of strike action”.

There’s no doubt that the working class can’t push back capital’s attacks by complaining that they are unfair: it is indeed all about the balance of class forces. But the question is whether the tactic of the economic blockade really does create a balance of forces in favour of the working class. The Solfed article seems to offer a very misleading answer, since it seems to think that blockades could work as a ‘standalone’ tactic as well as part of a wider strike movement, and even seem to imply that it would be good to use such tactics in the UK because “sustained-co-ordinated action against austerity looks unlikely” here. In sum, blockades can work when more massive movements are not on the cards. This line of reasoning confirms the criticism made in the article that follows: that as an ideology. ‘the blockade’ obeys the same logic as trade unionism: a specialised minority acts on behalf of the working class; and furthermore, that the unions in France put so much emphasis on the blockade tactic precisely because they could us it to block the real extension of the class struggle.

The blockade of petrol refineries and oil depots was a major element in the struggles against the retirement reform of 2010 in France. In the general assemblies and demonstrations it was a focus of many discussions and debates. For many, blocking the refineries appeared as a means of concretely bringing pressure to bear on the bourgeoisie by paralysing transport and the whole of the economy through this “strategic sector”.

“Despite eight days of particularly well-followed action, it seemed that even with three-and-a-half million of people on the streets, the processions weren’t enough to spread the struggle (...) Throughout France blockages of refineries, of refuse and waste treatment plants and in many other sites, were on the increase. Undoubtedly, the obstinacy of the state and the bosses in imposing their retirement reforms pushed the struggle to rediscover union practices which had disappeared a long time ago (...) How could it be seriously thought that strikes could boil down to processions in the street, hemmed in by the forces of order? History (...) often shows us that our rights, our social acquisitions have been drawn like teeth (and not through polite requests) coming out of very hard struggles and generally by using the only means available to workers: the strike and the blockade of production at the place of work”[2]. These few lines from the CNT-Vignoles sum up what the “blockers” of autumn 2010 were effectively thinking. From February to November, demonstration followed demonstration, each time bringing together millions of people. Within the marches there was an immense anger faced with the degradation of living conditions . However, the French bourgeoisie did not cede ground and even stepped up its attacks on social security, access to health care and on the numbers of workers directly employed by the state. While the “processions in the street” seemed to everyone impotent and sterile, some minorities looked for more radical and effective methods of struggle. The blockade of the economy thus appeared as “obvious”[3].

The refinery blockade: a Pyrrhic victory

A few days of occupation of the refineries was sufficient to create a fuel and petrol shortage and problems in transport generally.

At the end of September, strikes broke out in some refineries. The movement spread quite naturally and factories closed one after the other. In mid-October, 12 French refineries were all blocked. Faced with the provocations of the CRS police, some pickets composed of oil workers, workers of other sectors, unemployed, students, retired, etc., manned the gates day and night.

Rapidly petrol and diesel were drying up at the pumps and the shortage was the number one story in the media. The declarations of the political authorities affirmed that there was no problem of supply to the pumps came across as absurd. Finally, according to INSEE, petrol production was reduced by 56.5% during October.

Apparently the blockaders seemed to have succeeded in their aim. But clearly, in reality, they didn’t. This so-called “victory” is nothing but an illusion created by the propaganda of the bourgeoisie. Letting us think that it is possible to block the production of one sector, whatever it is, is a big lie. And in the precise case of petrol, the bourgeoisie had the full capacity to face up to the blockades. France, as many other countries, in fact holds several million tonnes of petrol in reserve assuring itself of a number of months provisions (17 million tonnes of strategic stocks, or more than three months of normal consumption, reserve stocks of the petrol companies, reserves of oil managed by the army...). Further, with the internationalisation of pipeline networks and, quite simply, importing from abroad by road tankers, states do not solely rely on their own reserves in order to assure the distribution of fuel. As Peter Vener writes, “It is characteristic that even the most insurrectionist of the tiqquniens[4] talk of blocking the ‘economy of the country’, from the simple generalisation of blockades made more or less sporadic or widespread, more or less spontaneous or controlled from above, etc., as if that made the least sense in this time of ‘globalisation’ and the organisation of modern capitalist ‘network’”, particularly in the key sector of the production and distribution of fuel”[5].

The risk of a shortage of fuel in October 2010, and the paralysis of the national economy was thus only a fairy tale to send the workers to sleep. The difficulties in filling up their tanks only affected some drivers, above all because of a panic. The petrol companies even profited from the occasion by putting up their prices. The blockade of the refineries was only a gnat’s bite on the back of an elephant. And capitalism has a thick skin!

In fact, behind this pretend victory of the blockade is hidden the contrary: a real defeat for the working class. The bourgeoisie used the refinery blockade to isolate the most combative workers and divide the proletariat.

* On the one hand, the unions, notably the CGT, resting on the absolute control that it exercised over operations, used it to isolate the refinery workers who were being threatened with restructuring and are thus particularly militant, from the rest of their class. Their justified anger was not the point of departure for an extension of the struggle: rather than organise flying pickets to enterprises of other sectors for them to join the movement, the CGT clearly locked the blockaders into their place of work. Everything revolved around the blockade of the refineries whatever the cost, creating the atmosphere of a besieged citadel where only the “fuel shortages” mattered.

* On the other hand, through an intense campaign on the risks of a fuel shortage, the government and its media readily created a climate of panic among the population. Squeezed between costly days of massively supported strikes and daily harassment from the bosses, many workers were afraid of not being able to get to work. This concern was expressed elsewhere in long queues at the petrol stations that journalists covered up to the point of nausea. If, in general, proletarians did not blame refinery workers and even expressed their solidarity, the hysterical propaganda from the media undeniably contributed to breaking the dynamic of extension in which the struggle was engaged.

Thus, it’s not by chance if, after months of the movement growing in power, the decline started at the very moment when the blockade of the refineries was fully implemented.

But given a mass movement always starts off somewhere, couldn’t the blockade of the refineries have been the point of departure of a much wider struggle? Why did the ICC, from the first blockades, warn of the risk of the confinement, isolation and division contained in this form of action?[6].

The cult of a blockade against the mass nature of the struggle

From its first manifestations, the theory of the economic blockade was built on weak foundations. The pro-blockers very quickly became aware of the ineffectiveness of endless demonstrations organised by the unions. However, they concluded from this that a handful of determined individuals preventing the running of strategic targets such as refineries was the best basis on which to create the conditions for a widespread and authentic solidarity. A group in Lyon called “Premier Round” thus wrote: “The present movement goes from here: ‘We must block the economy; how do we do it?’ The answer is posed around the question of petrol. Even if no-one knows if it will work, if it is the best way to attack the problem, it’s an attempt: organise a petrol shortage. And then see what happens. With the rolling strike voted on, it’s sufficient that some strikers adopt the blockade as a means of action so that others come to join them from elsewhere. Where the strike and sabotage isn’t enough, strikers should oppose transportation. In this way we’ll see train drivers, students, postal workers, nurses, teachers, dockers, unemployed, together blocking the oil depots – without waiting for the endless appeals of an abstract ‘convergence of struggles’. The same thing should happen at the railway stations, postal centres, transport depots, airports, and motorways: wherever it’s enough for a few dozen people to do the blocking (...) the sinews of the struggle unfolding are the blockades of oil refineries and petrol depots, a relat9ively small number of nerve centres. To block the production and distribution of petrol is to finish with symbolic demands and to attack where it does the most damage”[7]. This single phrase alone reveals the false route: “wherever it’s enough for a few dozen people to do the blocking”.

It is moreover very significant that the targets aimed at were refineries, stations, airports, motorways or public transport. The transport sector is effectively a strategic sector for the working class, but for exactly the opposite reasons than those raised by Premier Round: the blockage of trains, metros or buses is often an obstacle to extending the struggle and can facilitate the games of the bourgeoisie. It’s even one of their classic ploys: set workers against each other by unleashing campaigns around the theme of “taking passengers hostage”. Above all the blockage of transport prevents the mobility of the workers who can no longer give their solidarity to the strikers by attending their assemblies or participating in their demonstrations. The movement of delegations of strikers towards other firms is equally made more difficult. In fact the total blockage almost always favours the struggle being locked up into corporatism and isolation. That’s why the most advanced workers’ struggles have never led to a blockade of transport.

When the working class appropriates the means of production

The theory of the blockade of the economy is based on a profoundly correct idea: the working class draws its force from the central place that it occupies in production. The proletariat produces almost all of the riches that the bourgeoisie, in its own parasitic role, takes for itself. Thus, through the strike, the workers are potentially capable of blocking all production and paralysing the economy.

At the time of events around May 68 in France and those of August 1980 in Poland, gigantic strikes paralysed the economy leading even... to fuel shortages. But the blockade wasn’t in itself the objective of the workers, since the country was already paralysed. If these two struggles are historic and remain engraved in our memories, it is because the proletariat knew how to construct a rapport de force in its favour through self-organisation and the massive scale of its struggles. When the workers took over the struggle themselves, they spontaneously regrouped in general assemblies in order to debate and collectively decide which actions to undertake. They looked for the solidarity of their class brothers by going to meet them and draw them into the movement. To spread the struggle is a preoccupation and an instinctive practice of the exploited faced with capital.

At the times of these two great movements, the strikers looked to turn the economy around for themselves, in the service of the struggle and its needs. In 1968, for example, the railworkers ran their trains so that the population could travel to the demonstrations. In 1980, this grip on the means of production went much further still. The inter-enterprise strike committee (the MKS) had “all prerogatives to conduct the strike. It formed working commissions – maintenance, information, links with journalists, security – and decided if certain industries should continue working in order to assure the needs of the strikers. Thus refineries worked and produced, at a slower rate, the fuel necessary for transport, the buses and trains to run, the food industry went beyond the highest norms (previously fixed by the bureaucrats) in order to assure provisions for the population. The three towns (of the Baltic ports), Gdansk, Gdynia, Sopot, lived the rhythm of the strike, the rhythm that the strikers decided[8]. In the strongest moments of this movement, the strike committee organised supplies to the strikers and the whole population by controlling electricity and food production.

The blockade of the economy is a union manoeuvre

The pro-blockers close to the group Premier Round correctly and scathingly criticised the grip of the unions on the struggle. From this, they identified the blockade of the refineries as an action of radical struggle outflanking the iron grip of the unions: “New, informal solidarities are being put in place on the ground and outside of the control of the union leaderships. One feels that the latter have been overwhelmed by events and don’t quite know what to do with all this ‘support’. This solidarity has its own strength and can’t really be controlled and isolated”. But reality was exactly the opposite. It’s sufficient moreover to carry on reading the article for this illusion to jump out of the page:

“Where do you go to support the strikers? Where to send the cash?

* Grandpuits Refinery: donations in cash or cheques made payable to: CFDT-CGT at the following address: Intersyndicale CFDT-CGT, Raffinerie Total de Grandpuits, postal box 13, 77 720, MORMANT, or donate online through the internet site.

* Raffinerie Total de Flandres: address your donations to the strike fund managed by SUD-Chime: P.W. SUD-Chimie Raffinerie des Flandres 59140 DUNKERQUE. Cheques payable to: SUD-Chimie RF.”

The actions of blockading are unfolding “outside of the control of the union leaderships” because they “can’t really be controlled and isolated” so thinks Premier Round, which then informs us, without batting an eyelid, “Where to send donations” to support the strikers: to the CDFT, the CGT and the SUD! The truth is that the unions organised the paralysis of the fuel industry from top to bottom.

Again, Peter Vener provides a rare example of daring to look reality in the face: “Some people joined up with the strike pickets around the refineries in general response to the appeal launched by the local inter-union committees, now often re-named inter-professional assemblies because they were looking to enlarge their base. Certainly, such people didn’t have political designs but they simply had the impression of going beyond atomisation, separation and corporatism, in brief, participating in the ‘convergence of struggles’ and the ‘blockade of the economy’(...) The people who swelled the ranks of the pickets didn’t ask themselves why the trade unionists of the energy and chemical industries, so usually corporatist and closed in on themselves, felt the need to appeal to forces not belonging to their sector, even strangers to the ‘world of work’, sometimes even anarchists on whom they were still openly spitting the day before. Was it a question of new breaches through the walls of bastions so usually well protected and controlled by the trade unionists who, from their watchtowers, usually organise a cordon sanitaire around themselves? Do we see a real rupture by the workers of these sectors with their specific corporatism, based on the horrible neo-Stalinist tradition of ‘produce French and buy French’, etc? In reality, except perhaps for some amongst them, there’s nothing of the sort here. Hence the acceptance of these forces coming from elsewhere, who, for the most part, have to play the role of additional troops to the union apparatus of the CGT and also the SUD (...) Today, via the re-centring of the main union organisation towards fashionable forms of intervention, such as the programmed blockage of the axes of communication, sometimes announced in advance to the police by the union leaders, we go from the ‘strike by proxy’ of the 1980s and 90s, to the ‘blockade by proxy’. The ‘blockaders’ of the sites, have very often worked for the union head offices. Full stop.”

Thus, at the refinery of Grandpuits in the Paris region, numerous workers, unemployed, students, retired, etc., came every day to give their support to the strikers. Some even sometimes joined in with the General Assembly. But these rare “open” GA’s were just pathetic masquerades: speeches from the CFDT representative, then the CGT, then... vote. No discussion, no debate.

Why have these pro-blockaders, usually so critical of the union leaderships, put themselves forward as supporters of the actions typical of the strong-arm tactics of the CGT? For Peter Vener, “one shouldn’t confuse simple reactions of anger against union stewards with a profound criticism of trade unionism”. The experience of reality is moreover much more edifying. There is in fact a perfect concordance between the partisans of the economic blockade and those of the unions: a minority decides and acts instead of the majority of the exploited. The difference lies in what the pro-blockers think acts in the interests of the struggle, whereas the union apparatus are fully conscious of their work of sabotage.

No immediate recipe, no minority activist practice, can be a substitute for the extension and massive struggle of the proletariat. Concretely, the blockade of the economy can’t be a short-cut involving a victory falling from the sky by decree; it is the result of a process of generalisation of the self-organised struggle and solidarity of the workers. If it was obvious that the autumn demonstrations were ineffective, we must not deduce that it’s useless for millions to be on the streets - the real question is this: who leads the movement - the workers or the unions?

“The emancipation of the working class will be the work of the workers themselves” ... of all the workers. 

Pawel and V 21/2/11

“People were no longer prepared to beg for bread or tolerate being beaten in the streets by the police” - as an activist from Daraa in southwestern Syria near the border with Jordan explained to the Financial Times (1/4/11). These are the grievances that lie behind the revolts and protests across the Arab world this year, from Tunisia to Bahrain. In Syria there have been demands to know what became of the thousands who disappeared in the 1980s after the 1982 rebellion was drowned in the blood of tens of thousands, indignation at the arrest of schoolchildren for anti-government graffiti, and then at the murder of the mainly young men who protested against this.

The Syrian bourgeoisie have reacted just as murderously as Gaddafi – and Bahrain backed by Saudi Arabian troops – using teargas, live ammunition, baton charges, arrests and detention. In little over two weeks at least 60 people have been killed, including 55 in Daraa and another four after the demonstrations in Damascus. As Al Jazeera’s senior analyst points out “The complication of the situation in Libya, leading to internal violence and international intervention and great destruction, will clearly dissuade many Syrians and Arabs from attempting more of the same in Syria”. Despite this, unrest has now spread to the Kurdish northern cities. The sacking of the governor of Daraa, the sacking of the entire Syrian government, and Bashir al-Assad’s announcement of a panel to look at replacing (or renaming) the emergency powers instituted in 1963 with anti-terror legislation were never going to satisfy the protesters.

Inevitably after half a century of the brutal dictatorship of the al-Assad dynasty there are huge illusions in the prospects democracy, illusions which have not helped the movements in either Egypt, where the military continue to rule having pushed Mubarak aside, or in Libya where different factions of the ruling class are sacrificing the population in a civil war.

Nor can the population rely on the democratic credentials of the ‘international community’ – currently embroiled in Libya as well as Afghanistan and Iraq. Not that this ‘community’ of thieves will fail to take any advantage they can out of the current unrest in Syria. Despite all the evidence of state repression over more than a decade, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has spoken of a potentially reforming Syrian presidency and Obama’s spokesman Jay Carney of “an important opportunity to be responsive to the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people” (FT). Not because they are “at best fooling themselves” as Democrat Congressman Gary Ackerman said, but because the US administration sees opportunities as well as risks in the situation and particularly wants to drive a wedge between Syria and Iran. As ever, the ‘humanitarian’ statements of the bourgeoisie only serve its imperialist interests.

Faced with poverty, murderous repression and the manoeuvring of great powers, the protesters in Syria, as elsewhere, have shown great courage. The best way to show our solidarity is to develop our own struggles, for it is only the international struggle of the working class that can put an end to the system responsible for their misery.  

Alex 2/4/11

In WR 341 [66] we described the wave of struggles popularly known as ‘The Great Labour Unrest’ that hit Britain and Ireland 100 years ago. We showed that these struggles – which at their high points reached near-insurrectionary levels – were in fact a spectacular expression of the mass strike analysed so clearly by Rosa Luxemburg, and formed an integral part of an international wave of class struggle that culminated in the 1917 Russian revolution.

In this article we look at the impact of the mass strikes on the British and Irish working class, and the attempts of militant workers and revolutionaries to draw the lessons of these historic struggles.

The mass strikes were a product of the growing class consciousness of the British and Irish workers, and gave an enormous stimulus to their understanding of capitalism and of the changing conditions for the class struggle on the eve of its decadent phase.

We can see the stimulus of the mass strikes in the broadening of class consciousness – the spreading of revolutionary ideas among the masses of workers thrown into struggle – and in its deepening; the growing understanding of the clearest minorities of militant workers and revolutionaries about the goals and methods of the proletariat’s struggle against capitalism. We can also see the historical limitations of this understanding.

The growth of syndicalism

“Policy: I The old policy of identity of interest between employers and ourselves be abolished, and a policy of open hostility installed...” (The Miners’ Next Step, 1912)

The most significant expression of the broadening of class consciousness in Britain and Ireland in the period from 1910 to 1914 was the growth of syndicalist ideas among the most militant workers.

We have written before about the rise of syndicalism (see WR 232). As a distinctive strand of ideas it emerged in the years after 1900. But it was in the mass strikes that syndicalism played a significant role in the workers’ struggles. In fact we can say that syndicalism was the political expression of the most militant minority of the British and Irish working class in this period.

This doesn’t mean that it was ever a coherent ideology or set of positions. As a movement syndicalism always contained different and conflicting strands such as De Leonist industrial unionism, anarcho-syndicalism and the ‘amalgamation’ movement in the trade unions, but some of the key ideas that directly influenced the mass strikes were:

       an emphasis on the economic power of the working class in the factories

       the central importance of class solidarity

       the need for direct action by the workers to defend their interests

       the goal of worker’s control of industry and, ultimately, society.

Syndicalist ideas, popularised by Tom Mann, James Connolly, James Larkin and other well-known workers’ leaders, found a ready echo among younger, militant workers, already suspicious of the trade union leaderships and their conciliatory policies and looking for new, more effective ways of organising against the attacks of capital.

With hindsight we can see that syndicalism was part of an attempt by the working class to respond to changes taking place in capitalism on the eve of its decadent phase, including larger units of production, de-skilling, ‘scientific’ management methods, etc., and in particular to the growth of state capitalism and the tendency for the trade unions to be integrated into the state.

So if the trade unions were not defending the working class, the burning question for militant workers was whether they should try to transform them from within, or build new, revolutionary industrial organisations to fight capital.

One wing of the syndicalist movement argued that the trade unions could still be radicalised from the inside, and that the task was to propagandise within them for revolutionary policies. Tom Mann, for example, believed that “The trade unions are truly representative of the men, and can be moulded by the men into exactly what the men desire.”[1]

Probably the most important written statement of syndicalist ideas in Britain during the mass strikes was The Miners’ Next Step produced by the Unofficial Reform Committee in the South Wales Miners’ Federation. Faced with changes in production in the mining industry and the attacks of the employers, the younger militant workers of the URC analysed the failure of the union leadership’s conciliatory policies to secure real improvements for the workers and proposed instead “A united industrial organisation, which, recognising the war of interest between workers and employers, is constructed on fighting lines...” This would be controlled by the rank and file and fight for real reforms in the mining industry like the minimum wage and the seven-hour day “on the basis of complete independence of, and hostility to all capitalist parties.”

One of the strengths of the Next Step was its emphasis on involving all the workers in the practical organisation of the struggle. Political action was not rejected but defined as parliamentary action because relevant legislative measures would demand “the presence in parliament of men who directly represent, and are amenable to, the wishes and instructions of the workmen”. The URC’s ultimate objective was “...to amalgamate all workers into one national and international union, to work for the taking over of all industries, by the workmen themselves.”[2]

The central problem of this vision was that, in emphasising the economic power of the working class, it underestimated the political power of the capitalist class; there is no mention of the fact that the bourgeoisie might oppose this process of the gradual take-over of industry by the workers or of the consequent need for a confrontation with the capitalist state in order to achieve revolutionary change.

The militant workers behind The Miners’ Next Step described in detail how their leaders became corrupted by the role they were forced to play, and sought to avoid this by making the existing unions act under the direct control of the workers. But another wing of the syndicalist movement – the dual or industrial unionists – believed that the existing trade unions could not be made to do this and that the task was to build new revolutionary unions.

Both strategies faced insurmountable obstacles: building mass organisations to replace the trade unions was never going to be realistic in Britain given the historical attachment of the working class to this institution (in fact the period of the mass strikes saw a huge rise in union membership), while the policy of ‘boring from within’ inevitably came up against the entrenched power of the union bureaucracy, which would never willingly give up its control.

The test for revolutionaries

The popularity of syndicalism and the spread of its ideas among militant workers were due at least in part to the weakness of the marxist movement and its lack of influence among militant workers. But the real problem was not so much its size as the strength of opportunism which dominated the whole workers’ movement by this time. The hardened opportunist tendency which dominated the leadership of some socialist groups was firmly wedded to parliamentary and reformist tactics, and viewed spontaneous, violent mass action as a serious threat to its position rather than as any kind of opportunity for advancing the cause of the revolutionary proletariat.

If opportunism was the greater danger, sectarianism was undoubtedly the lesser: there were plenty of socialists in Britain who regarded strikes at best as a ‘last resort’ (like the Socialist Party of Great Britain), or at worst as a criminal waste of energy and diversion from the ‘real’ struggle for socialism.

Those revolutionaries who managed to avoid both opportunism and sectarianism, and attempted to relate to the workers’ struggles, still risked being swept away or falling prey to syndicalist illusions in the potential of the working class to destroy capitalism through use of its economic power alone. One negative effect of the mass strikes was to reinforce the identification of political action with parliamentarism and reformism, and to strengthen those tendencies in the revolutionary movement which rejected the need for political action at all.

Of the existing socialist groups, the reformist leadership of the Independent Labour Party was by this time far too closely linked to the Labour Party’s fortunes in parliament to be able to relate to the workers’ struggles outside it, and many left-wing dissidents in the party were attracted to syndicalism.

The right-wing leadership of the Social Democratic Federation opposed the mass strikes, complaining that: “if the workers had used their political power as they ought to have used it, all these recent strikes would have been wholly unnecessary”.[3]Under the influence of the class struggle the SDF regrouped with elements of the ILP and others influenced by syndicalist ideas to form the British Socialist Party in 1911. The leadership was forced to allow a debate on the role of the political party and its relationship to the industrial struggle, and to reinsert support for immediate demands in the new party’s constitution. During the railway and miners’ strikes BSP militants distributed manifestos calling for simultaneous action by different sectors of workers. But before long the syndicalists and many other activists were forced out of the party and the right-wing reinforced its grip.

The Socialist Labour Party, though much smaller, and despite sectarian tendencies, was better able to play the role of a revolutionary organisation in the mass strikes: it supported the raising of immediate demands and through its advocacy of industrial unions it had a practical means of relating to the workers’ struggles. The party formed a separate propaganda group, the Industrial Workers of Great Britain, which played an active role in the 1911 Singer’s strike in Glasgow where at one point the it recruited 4,000 of the 11,000 workforce and gained an important presence among Clydeside engineering workers. The SLP expelled a minority opposed to strikes and affirmed the role of the revolutionary party, successfully defending a marxist intervention in the class struggle.

The mass strikes also influenced the development of a wider and much more diverse milieu outside of the established arxist groups. There was a surge of new groupings coming more or less directly out of the struggles themselves, For example, the Daily Herald national daily paper, later to be known as the Labour Party’s mouthpiece, originated as the news-sheet of striking London print workers in 1911. The Herald Leagues which grew up around the paper were critical of state capitalism, the Labour Party and existing socialist groups, not explicitly anti-parliamentary but sympathetic to syndicalism. Probably the most influential grouping was the Industrial Syndicalist Education League around Tom Mann and Guy Bowman, which published the Industrial Syndicalist from 1910 until its collapse in 1913.

Drawing the lessons of the mass strikes

The mass strikes certainly tested revolutionaries. There were real gains: growth (albeit temporary); the (partial) regroupment of revolutionaries and a small but significant presence within the struggles themselves.

With hindsight the biggest failure of revolutionary minorities was to draw the lessons from the appearance in the mass strikes of unofficial strike committees, mass meetings, discussion groups, etc. The syndicalist movement in particular remained wedded to the two false alternatives of transforming the existing trade unions or creating new unions. At this stage it was not clear to many workers that the tendency for the trade unions to be integrated into the capitalist state was already an irreversible process, but even the clearest revolutionaries were unable to take up the work of the German and Dutch lefts around Luxemburg and Pannekoek on the lessons of the 1905 mass strike in Russia, or to grasp the historic significance of the appearance of the soviets or workers’ councils.

The biggest strength of revolutionary minorities in Britain was their recognition of the reactionary nature of state capitalism and its danger to the working class struggle. For example, the 1913 platform of the syndicalist Industrial Democracy League identified the trend towards the centralisation of capitalist state power and denounced the Liberal Party’s social welfare legislation as “the extension of the tentacles of the state into the vitals of organised labour”.[4]

The clearest revolutionaries extended this analysis to the trade unions. In 1911 the Durham miners’ leader George Harvey, a leading SLP member, warned that: “the trade union movement is tending to create a sort of organ of oppression within the masters’ organ of oppression - the state - and an army of despotic union chiefs who are interested in reconciling, as far as possible, the interests of masters and men”.[5] By 1917 this solid insight enabled the majority of the SLP to conclude that capitalism had definitely entered its epoch of decadence, and to support the formation of unofficial workshop committees as embryo soviets.

Conclusion

The sheer breadth and intensity of the pre-war mass strikes encouraged illusions in the ability of the working class to emancipate itself through the use of its economic power alone, and despite the depth of opportunism in the workers’ movement the integration of the existing trade unions into the capitalist state was not yet proven by the tests of war and revolution. It was the outbreak of imperialist war in 1914 that sealed the trade unions’ betrayal through their abandonment of internationalism and confirmed the necessity for a revolutionary assault on the power of the capitalist state.

The pre-war mass strikes in Britain and Ireland were inevitably overshadowed by the even greater revolutionary wave that ended the first world war which culminated in the seizure of political power by the working class in Russia. But today, when we are seeing the spectre of class struggle return to haunt the decrepit capitalist system, again led by younger generations of workers anxious to fight back against the attacks of capital, we can find in these struggles – in their immense militancy, their capacity to organise and extend the movement, and willingness to take on the capitalist class – a rich source of lessons and inspiration. One key lesson is the central importance of the revolutionary minorities of the working class in clarifying its historic tasks and the methods and tactics needed to achieve them.  

MH 26/3/11

see

After NATO bombings on a building in Tripoli killed a son and three grandchildren of Muammar Gaddafi, there were revenge attacks on the cities of Benghazi and Misrata, and attacks on the British and Italian embassies, among other targets. The killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan by American special forces was supposedly undertaken in revenge for the 3000 9/11 murders. When the anti-Gaddafi forces in Libya heard of bin Laden’s death they called for Gaddafi to face the same fate.

This spiral of murder and destruction is further evidence of capitalism’s appetites in an era where every state, every capitalist faction that aspires to power, is compelled to follow the military option and the path of terror.

In this capitalist world the antagonists go under many flags, but they are all pursuing the same goals. Gaddafi is favoured by many who call themselves socialists, despite being at the heart of a regime for whom repression is second nature and vicious retaliation comes automatically. Barrack Obama is supposed to be a ‘friend of freedom’, yet his military campaigns, from the bombing of Pakistan within the first few days of taking office, just continue from where George Bush left off. Bin Laden is seen by some as an ‘anti-imperialist’ hero, but his ultimate dream of a multi-national caliphate is one of the oldest imperialist projects going. And as for the Libyan ‘rebels’ of the National Transitional Council, they can be marked down as enemies of the exploited and oppressed on a number of counts, from the backing of the US, the calls for the return to a monarchy, and the basic fact that so many of them were not so long ago integral to Gaddafi’s state apparatus.

Following the killing of bin Laden there were commentators in the US who spoke about the possibility of ‘closure’ for the victims of 9/11. With the continuing wars in Afghanistan, Iran and Libya there is clearly no closure for those who have been caught up in and become victims of the American ‘war on terror.’

As Obama said in his first speech celebrating the killing of bin Laden “his death does not mark the end of our effort. There's no doubt that al-Qaida will continue to pursue attacks against us.” Indeed it will, and if one terrorist force is diminished then others can easily take its place. Obama asserted that “we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to”. American imperialism, however it is minded, cannot impose its will in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, despite being the world’s biggest military power. On the contrary, all its actions tend, in Obama’s words not to “make the world a safer place” but exacerbate conflicts and chaos across the face of the planet.

Some things have changed since 9/11. In the Middle East, for example, despite the fantasies of Gaddafi, al-Qaida has never really got a foothold, whatever its strengths in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the recent social movements in various Arab countries, whatever their confusions, there has been no sign that protesters have been going in the direction of al-Qaidaist ideas, adoption of sharia law or other Islamic tenets. On the contrary, many of the demonstrators have explicitly rejected the vicious sectarian and gender divisions which al-Qaida stands for. A bigger obstacle to the movements in North Africa and the Middle East has been the myth of democracy, which serves to prevent the working class from acting as an independent force in society.

All the figureheads of capitalism, whether in the White House, in a tent in the desert, in a cave in the mountains, or in the affluent suburbs, stand for a world of war and destruction and against the liberation of humanity.  

Car 2/5/11

In 2007, when the debt bubble burst, it was the big banks that were on the verge of collapse. They only kept going thanks to massive infusions of credit from the treasuries of the world’s states. This was done not because governments do what the greedy bankers tell them to do, but because the capitalist system could not tolerate the implosion of its global financial machinery.

But the bail-out of the banks did not solve capitalism’s problems. On the contrary: in the space of a few years we have gone from the bail out of banks to the bail out of entire states. First Greece, then Ireland, then, in April 2011, Portugal. Unable to meet its sovereign debt obligations, Portugal has had to appeal to the European Union to rescue it to the tune of 80 billion euro. Speculation is rife about who will be next: the most likely candidate is Spain, but Britain, whose government is taking desperate preventive action with its programme of savage cuts, looks equally shaky in the eyes of the world’s economic think-tanks. The need to keep the weaker members of the EU afloat is putting an enormous strain on the stronger economies, like Germany, and is threatening to undermine the stability of the euro and of the EU itself. And it’s not just in Europe: Japan, whose national debt is twice the size of its GDP, and even the mighty USA, are heading in the same direction. A spokesman for the International Monetary Fund, Jose Vinals, recently expressed the view that US government bonds are no longer without risk. And who will bail out the USA if it too defaults on its gigantic debts?

There could hardly be a more graphic illustration of the bankruptcy, not of this or that company, this or that country, but the entire capitalist system. In an article in this issue, ‘The demise of credit’ we look at the causes of the present world economic crisis, which has opened up a new chapter in the long historical decline of the capitalist system. It is vital to understand that the capitalist system has no route out of this crisis, not least because it means that the capitalist class, whatever the country and whatever the shade of government, has no alternative but to attack the living standards of the vast majority of us, to force us to accept austerity, poverty and sacrifice – not because they are ‘ideologically driven’, but because they are driven by the very material needs of a dying system of production.  

WR 1/5/11

More than 50,000 health service jobs are due to be lost, including doctors, nurses, midwives and ambulance personnel. In fact Trusts plan to shed 12% of qualified nursing posts over the next 4 years, while the NHS already relies on their unpaid overtime, carried out by 95% of nurses with more than 1 in 5 doing this every shift. Small wonder that the RCN Chief Executive notes this “could have a catastrophic impact on patient safety and care” (Nursing Times, 12/4/11). At the same time NHS staff are not just facing the public sector pay freeze but also a threat to “allow employers to agree locally with their trade unions to freeze incremental pay progression for all staff groups, in return for a commitment to provide a guarantee of 'no compulsory redundancies' for all staff in bands 1 to 6” (www.nhsemployers.org [72]), along with plans to allow more health care providers to ignore national scales and set their own pay. In other words, there is an attempt to drive down pay, as well as changes to the pension scheme.

The key to understanding the changes going on in the NHS today is cost-cutting. According to the Public Accounts Committee “under the previous government, only £15bn of £35bn savings promised in Labour's 2007 comprehensive spending review had been achieved... and of those reported savings, just 38 per cent were definitely legitimate value for money savings” (www.publicservice.co.uk/news_story.asp?id=14649 [73]). It’s not about this or that Labour or coalition government, or ideology, but – like the pensions, like benefits – simple cost-cutting.

Reform at the service of ‘efficiency savings’

The heart of the current reforms is to transfer control of 60% of the NHS budget to consortia of GPs, abolishing the Primary Care Trusts, many of whose staff have already left or been made redundant. “One underlying political goal is to hand hard decisions about the rationing of care to GPs, the most trusted part of the health service” (The Economist, 9/4/11). This effort to make GPs feel responsible for the NHS budgets wasn’t invented by Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, but was already implicit in fundholding in the 1980s and in ‘commissioning’ of services by the PCTs with GPs elected to their boards, as it is in the software that invites doctors to prescribe the cheapest medication, in the encouragement to refer to the least expensive hospitals, in the effort to standardise and reduce the number of referrals to hospital. And with the new reorganisation NHS organisations will no longer allowed to overspend – unlike the banks they will be allowed to fail, to go bankrupt – rationing will be tighter and tighter. Putting GPs in charge won’t make the choices any better; they will be determined by the resources the state allocates, not who is nominally responsible.

There is already a deterioration in services as a survey of 500 GPs showed (Guardian 19.4.11). 54% said waiting times had gone up for musculo-skeletal conditions with 30% seeing a restriction in orthopaedic services, 42% that waiting times had gone up for neurology. Three quarters noted cuts in fertility treatment, 70% in weight loss treatment – during an epidemic of obesity, and 40% noted restrictions in ophthalmology. Not surprisingly they are more likely to refer privately for those patients with insurance. And that is before the next £20bn savings are made!

At the moment there is a ‘pause’ in the Health and Social Care legislation, and a government ‘listening exercise’. This is an exercise in which the public has to listen to government PR, as when Cameron addressed various healthcare charities “Your organisations, which are hugely trusted and understood by the public and by users of your organisations, can help us make the argument that change, that choice, that diversity is not about privatisation, it's actually about improving healthcare” (www.politics.co.uk [74]). It is likely that the consortia in charge of 60% of NHS spending with have slightly wider representation, but there is no chance whatsoever that the reorganisation will be put in question.

Privatisation = more state capitalism

Another aspect of the NHS reforms is the increase in the number of private companies involved in delivery of services, with the use of “any willing provider” instead of seeing the NHS organisations as preferred, even more private companies will come in. For many this is seen as an ideologically driven effort with the aim of “Handing the entire NHS budget across to the private sector …” (Dr Kambiz Boomla, East London GP, Socialist Worker 22/1/11). First of all we need to understand what the private sector offers the NHS, as an example of how state capitalism works. First of all we must never forget that the whole point is to drive down costs, and in the long term, because there is an economic crisis. The aim of bringing in more competitors is to get cheaper services, as it was with competitive tendering for ancillary services back in the 1980s, as it was with the internal market. Cheaper services, as always, on the back of increased exploitation of the workers in them.

Introducing more private companies also has added benefits when pay and working conditions are being attacked and services cut. On the one hand the private business can take the blame rather than the NHS or the government. On the other, when workers struggle to defend themselves the law and the unions will tell them to confine their action to those who have the same employer – for instance a particular private provider – and this will be even worse if pay and conditions starts to vary between various providers.

Dr Boomla goes on to say “it will fundamentally undermine the founding principles of the NHS”. This is not so. The fact of a two tier health service was never even put in question by the NHS as those who could afford it have always been able to buy themselves prompter treatment in better surroundings with better staffing ratios. And these days that includes those who cannot afford private treatment here, but can find the money for cataract surgery in India. If you visit a dentist in Eastern Europe it is cheaper than on the NHS – many do.

The NHS has never excluded private businesses at any time since it was founded in 1948. GPs have always remained ‘independent contractors’ with a local franchise, as did pharmacies. Larger private enterprises have made money through interest on bank loans, selling drugs, building hospitals etc. What has changed with the need to reduce costs is not just the increase in exploitation of staff, but the fact that less of them are directly employed by NHS bodies and there is more internal competition. This isn’t weakening state control but strengthening it – through better control of budgets; through better integration of the NHS and private healthcare providers into the bureaucracy as the directors of the various companies sit on the boards of the trusts and consortia; ever tighter control of what healthcare can be offered.

We need healthcare, but that doesn’t mean we have to defend the NHS or its mythical ‘founding principles’. On the contrary, to defend our hospitals, our health, our jobs or our conditions, means to come up against one of the many heads of the NHS hydra, and through it, the capitalist state. 

Alex 29/4/11

On 21 April a huge police operation aimed at a squat in the Stokes Croft area of Bristol provoked an angry response from local people. Barricades were set up and the heavily tooled-up police found themselves facing not just a handful of squatters but a long night of skirmishes with the hundreds who turned up spontaneously to join the protest. The police claimed that the squatters were part of a campaign against the new Tesco which had opened on their street, and that they were stockpiling molotov cocktails. The police worked closely with bailiffs to evict the squatters. Later on the squatters denied that they were part of the anti-Tesco campaign, or that they were planning any attacks on the store; but although the shop in question got trashed anyway during the course of the night, it was really not the issue. What happened only makes sense as an expression of growing popular resentment against the police, their heavy-handed methods of ‘crowd control’ and their increasingly evident role as the armed wing of the government’s austerity programme, as shown especially during the militant student movement in the autumn.

This is not the first time that a police raid has sparked off a street battle in Bristol. In 1980 a militaristic ‘anti-drugs’ bust on a West Indian owned café in the St Pauls area produced similar results, which we wrote about in an article in World Revolution 30, now republished on ICConline. The article made it clear that although young black residents played a central role in the resistance to the police, this was no ‘race riot’ “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”.

The fact that the St Paul’s rebellion was an expression of much deeper tensions in society was demonstrated in practise about a year later by the riots in Brixton, which in turn spread to many other urban centres, most notably Toxteth in Liverpool, Chapeltown in Leeds, Handsworth in Birmingham and Moss Side in Manchester. This phenomenon of social revolt was international in scope, with comparable movements in Zurich, Amsterdam and Berlin. In WR 38 we published an article analysing the strengths and weaknesses of these movements away from the point of production, movements that involved young proletarians as well as other social strata, but which were above all a reaction to spiralling unemployment, poor housing and omnipresent police harassment. We saw them as harbingers of more powerful reactions from workers in the centres of the capitalist economy, which we did indeed see later on in the 1980s.

Today the crisis of capitalism is far deeper than it was at the beginning of the 80s. The working class has been through many struggles and a lot of defeats since then, but as the recent student movement showed, there is now a new generation ready to take up the fight against the austerity and repression which the capitalist state is seeking to inflict on us.

The raid on the Bristol squat was followed on the day before the Royal Wedding by raids on other squats and on ‘anarchists and republicans’ suspected of conspiring to create some kind of disruption during the Nation’s Day of Joy, including the arrest of a group of people for conspiring to commit street theatre... These actions had a slightly ridiculous air about them, but they are part of a general preparation by the ruling class to deal with wider and more dangerous social movements in the future. They are quite explicitly political in their targeting of social dissidents and are a means of creating a climate in which repression against political ‘outsiders’, people who openly question capitalism and the state, becomes commonplace. All the more necessary therefore to defend those who are in the front line of such attacks, and to ensure that organised, collective solidarity against state repression becomes no less commonplace.  

Amos 2/5/11

see also The Bristol revolt: not colour or community but class [76]

World Revolution held its 19th Congress in November 2010. One of the responsibilities of any territorial section of the ICC is to discuss the national situation. It has to analyse the economic crisis, the class struggle, and role played by British imperialism on the world stage. The following article is part of the Resolution on the British Situation adopted by the congress, specifically the section concerning the life of the bourgeoisie and the class struggle. The first part, on economic crisis and inter-imperialist rivalries, was published in World Revolution 340 [79].

Globally the material condition of the working class has further deteriorated since the autumn, as many national capitals continue to struggle with the multiple problems of weak growth, rising public deficits, stubbornly high unemployment, particularly amongst the youth, and relatively high inflation. As a result the working class is seeing the erosion of pay as wages lag behind inflation, attacks on pensions and the wider effects of cuts in the social wage as benefits and government services fall under the axe of various austerity programmes. Despite the rising stock markets and soothing words of the bourgeoisie the world economy remains extremely fragile, with the spectre of sovereign defaults continuing to stalk Europe, especially with the bailout of Portugal in April.

Given the terrible situation facing the working class, one might well ask why is the level of class struggle in Britain so low? Why aren’t workers taking to the streets en masse to protest as they have in Greece, France, Spain, Wisconsin etc.? As the Resolution points out, there have been several important industrial disputes in Britain over the past 2 years, but the working class in Britain has to confront a number of historical weights, especially the strength of the trade unions and the legacy of the defeats of key sectors of the class in the 1980s, such as the miners. This has been further reinforced by the bourgeoisie’s ensuing ideological assault on working-class identity and the pressures of decomposition that further undermine social cohesion and a common sense of class solidarity. So, the key point to remember that there is no mechanical link between the depth of the economic crisis and the levels of class struggle and class consciousness.

These difficulties have been illustrated in particular by two key events over the past 6 months. First, the student protests in late 2010, which broke out soon after the resolution was written. This movement was sparked by proposed steep increases in tuition fees for students entering higher education in 2012, and the scrapping of the Educational Maintenance Allowance for students in further education - an important weekly benefit of £30 for those students from low income families. While the ‘student body’ itself is not a social class, many young people from working class families have no option but to stay in education for as long as possible to avoid unemployment and to gain skills and qualifications in order to stand a better chance of getting those jobs that are available. Increasingly, even those young people from better off middle-class backgrounds face being proletarianised during and after education, having to work part-time while studying to survive and then joining the labour market where very few full-time jobs with decent conditions and pensions are being created. A report in February from the NIESR found that only 3% of new jobs created were full time since the UK economy came out of recession.

The student movement was thus strongly animated by a proletarian spirit. There was a strong element of spontaneity to many of the protests and demonstrations, which the NUS, Labour Party and leftists had to chase to catch up with. There was a clear sense of solidarity with future generations of students too: many of those protesting wouldn’t be affected by the increases in fees and cuts to benefits but were protesting on behalf – and often with the involvement of – those children still at school. The demands raised were of an economic nature, and the methods used in many of the occupations – mass meetings and debates – expressed a tendency to unity and self-organisation that could have lent itself to wider involvement from the working class, as happened in 2005 in France when students and workers there protested against the reforms to the CPE.[1] In the end the student movement was unable to gather a sufficient momentum to change the coalition government’s decisions and by the spring the relevant legislation had been passed in Parliament. Nevertheless, the lessons and experience gained in the struggle were important for the future as and when the most militant minorities of those involved enter the workforce and participate in the coming struggles.

The second significant event was the national demonstration against cuts organised by the TUC on 26 March in London. The Lib-Con coalition government has been walking a tightrope. On the one hand it hasn’t shied away from planning the scale of cuts it feels is necessary to avoid ‘the market’ losing confidence in their determination to deal with the deficit. On the other it is keenly aware of the response that a brutal, frontal assault on the working class might provoke. In the face of this dilemma the British bourgeoisie has demonstrated its historic intelligence and strength by phasing in the cuts over a much longer term than was originally expected, while relying on the trade unions and leftists to organise ‘anti-cuts’ groups and demonstrations to keep what indignation and resistance there is in safe hands. Thus the 26 March demonstration, while very well attended, was essentially a pointless exercise in ‘marching from A to B’.

Should the lack of an explosive, massive response from the working class in Britain to the deepening economic crisis be a cause for concern? While the development of the class struggle here has lacked the spectacular expressions seen in other countries, such as France and Greece, there is no doubt that the crisis will continue to deepen and the material condition of the working class will continue to deteriorate. The ‘70s and ‘80s saw much higher levels of class struggle in Britain, but one of their weaknesses was the insufficient politicisation of the struggles, especially in the form of the emergence of a politicised minority whose class consciousness had been raised through struggle and reflection on the wider historic dimension of the class movement. While the ICC and other organisations of the communist left were products of this era, these forces were incomparably weak and isolated compared to the demands of the historic situation. The emergence over recent years of a new generation of people concerned with the need to discuss and clarify is thus historically significant. In Britain we are seeing the emergence of widespread political discussion outside of the confines of the capitalist left, through internet forums and small discussion groups, as well as efforts of these minorities to coordinate their participation in the class struggle. These efforts face many weaknesses but they are a sign that future workers' struggles in the UK will be able to develop much more rapidly in an openly political direction.  

Colin 1/5/11.

Resolution on the British Situation from the 19th Congress of World Revolution (part 2)

Life of the bourgeoisie

1.      The bourgeoisie remains the dominant class and there is no likelihood of this being challenged in the short term. However, it increasingly finds difficulty in keeping control over the functioning of society at all levels and has to work harder to maintain both its material and ideological domination.

2.      The economic crisis poses the most immediate threat to the bourgeoisie because it can neither control not understand it. The worsening of the crisis increases the risk of divisions emerging both between and within the national bourgeoisie about the most effective approach. While the first response to the open crisis of 2007-9 showed that the bourgeoisie still remembers the lessons of the 1930s, once the immediate threat had been contained differences began to emerge. One area of difference is between Europe, where most countries adopted austerity measures to reduce their deficits, and the US where the emphasis remained on using debt. In part this reflects the different positions of these countries where the US is most able to sustain a policy based on debt because the continuing position of the dollar as the global reference currency allows it to increase debt by printing more money. A second area of difference is between the debtor and creditor countries, essentially that is between the US and China where friction over China’s policy of keeping its currency low in order to promote exports has been long-standing but is likely to increase, particularly if the US seeks to use manufacturing to help climb out of recession. More widely, there is an increased risk of countries engaging in competitive devaluations to favour their exports, which is one step on the road towards protectionism. Within the British bourgeoisie there is little evidence of real division at present. Those differences that are reported over what to cut, when to cut and how far to cut are part of the strategy to keep questioning within the framework of capitalism.

3.      Divisions over imperialist strategy have played a significant role in the life of the British bourgeoisie over the last two decades. They undermined the dying days of the Conservative government in the mid-1990s and were one of the reasons for putting New Labour into power. They reappeared over Blair’s turn towards the US after 2001, were expressed in public through some of the inquiries into the Iraq war and ultimately resulted in Blair being forced from office early. In recent years the dominant part of the bourgeoisie has sought to reassert the independent line it favours and to develop this in the light of the current situation. If the pressure put on Blair was the most dramatic, developments within the Tory party were no less significant. While both Cameron and Foreign Secretary Hague have previously made strong Euro-sceptic comments, their more recent policy statements have stressed the need to take a more independent line from America and to develop links within Europe. This last has been most strikingly shown in the treaties signed with France in late 2010. The reception given to this by parts of the Tory party show that the Eurosceptic faction remains but also that it has been subdued for at least the time being. At the moment a certain level of unity has been restored in the British ruling class; however, the difficulties facing British imperialism as it attempts to develop a new strategy mean that there is a real possibility of divisions reappearing with renewed force in the future.

A key issue for the bourgeoisie in the recent election was its ability to get the workers to accept the massive attacks that every faction of the ruling class knew were unavoidable. The immediate task was to draw the electorate in to give democratic credibility to the attacks to come. Key moments in this were the debates between the party leaders and the rise of the Liberal Democrats that were used to inject some drama into the campaign. This was successful in slightly increasing the turnout compared with recent elections, although it did not reverse the long-term decline. Following the election the drama continued with the talks to form the first coalition since the Second World War. The coalition has given a strong boost to the ideological strategy of working together in the national interest, which is the main method currently being used to get the working class to accept the cuts. It has also helped to reduce the distrust of the Tories that still remains after the experience of Thatcher. The Liberal Democrats have continued to provide cover while the attacks are introduced. The Labour Party has played its part in this strategy with the new leader Ed Milliband limiting the argument to points of detail about the extent and timing of cuts while promising to support the government when it is in the national interest. While it is not clear that the result of the election was what was wanted by the bourgeoisie, it has certainly been effective in using the situation to its advantage, as the high rates of support for the government show.

The main challenge for the ruling class in managing the working class is to get it to accept the attacks rather than resist them. There are a number of strands to this strategy, the principal one being that referred to above of working together in the national interest, while another is that of ‘fairness’. At the same time it has also sought to introduce the attacks gradually, targeting one or two sections of the working class at a time and taking care to prepare the ground by presenting these sections as privileged or lazy and so not working in the national interest. It has also decided to offer some protection to services such as health and education that large parts of the population use and value. Further ahead, the bourgeoisie is ready to target particular groups, who are identified as being outside or against the ‘national interest’. It is also preparing for a more direct challenge from the working class by positioning the unions as the protectors of the working class and focusing on the violence and ‘inconvenience’ of the recent actions in Greece and France.

Class struggle

4.      At the international level the working class is responding to the deepening of the crisis by gradually engaging in struggle with the ruling class. At present this remains at a low level overall, although there are important differences between the situation in the developed economies and the emerging and underdeveloped ones. In the latter the exploitation is more brutal while in the former it is more hidden and limited to some extent by the historical power of the working class. In a minority of struggles workers have sought to control the strike themselves, to spread it to other workers and show class solidarity. This challenge to the unions tends to be implicit and spontaneous rather than considered in advance but, nonetheless, it creates the basis for a development of consciousness with the potential to take the struggle to a qualitatively new level.

5.      In Britain, the objective situation of the working class has become more difficult over time with a permanent level of hidden unemployment and growing numbers of workers in temporary or part time work with the resulting low levels of pay. Outside work the proletariat is confronted with all the pressures arising from a social system in decline, including crime, drug abuse and violence. At the subjective level the working class has to deal with the consequences of the objective situation, such as unemployment and poverty. It is recognised, for example, that losing a job can lead to mental health problems. Secondly, it has to deal with the ideological offensive launched by the ruling class described above. Thirdly it is also marked by the weight of its own history and, in the present period by the continuing legacy of the miners' strike in particular. Before the strike the British working class was frequently at the forefront of the waves of class struggle that marked the late 1960s, the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s; afterwards it fell back sharply and has remained at historically low levels ever since. The bourgeoisie prepared thoroughly for the strike, stockpiling large quantities of coal and acted ruthlessly to crush it, not only to break the militancy of the miners, who were at the vanguard of the class struggle in Britain throughout that period, but also to teach the working class a lesson it would not forget. The strike had a high level of support within the working class so the defeat was felt all the more widely and deeply. The failure of the struggle also had international repercussions   as the British miners were seen throughout the world as the most militant sector of the working class in Britain; and it was followed a few years later by the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the reflux in the class struggle that this ‘victory of capitalism’ produced. This reinforced the defeat. The material legacy of the strike still exists in many former mining towns and the ideological legacy weighs on the working class in Britain to this day

6.      This situation does not mean that the working class has not responded to the crisis. Three distinct responses can be identified: capitulation, survival and struggle. In the first, part of the working class is overwhelmed by its situation and falls into a lumpen mass where it may resort to crime, preying on other members of the class, or it may become lost in drugs and alcohol or become fodder for racist and other extremist groups. There are many variations in the individual route taken but they are all marked by the absence of a sense of being part of a class defined by the qualities of solidarity and collective struggle.

The second response, of survival, is that currently taken by the majority of the working class. This is expressed in the willingness to accept wage freezes, increases in the rate of exploitation and reduced hours in order to keep a job. It is driven, as always in the history of the working class, by fear of unemployment and poverty. The policies of the coalition reinforce this by holding out the prospect of reducing benefits below the level at which it is possible to survive, while its ideological offensive vilifies those cast aside by capitalism. With the worsening of the objective situation this response becomes harder to sustain and pushes more and more of the working class towards either capitulation or struggle. The atomisation and war of each against all that underpins capitalism favours the former; the position of the working class, whereby the individual can only struggle against their exploitation by participating in the collective struggle against all exploitation, favours the latter.

7.      At present only a minority of the working class has taken the path of struggle. At the quantitative level the number of workers involved in strike action and the days lost as a result have both fallen since the start of the recession and are close to the lowest levels recorded. However, behind these figures there have been some important struggles marked by solidarity, workers taking the initiative and challenging the dead hand of union control. The most significant of these were the two strikes of construction workers in January and June 2009. These strikes were controlled through mass meetings and efforts were made to extend them to other workers. They also saw a struggle within the working class against the weight of bourgeois ideology expressed in the nationalist slogans that especially marked the start of the first strike. Towards the end of the first and during the second strike the nationalist dynamic was openly challenged and solidarity with workers from other countries working in the UK was seen. Moreover, these strikes both succeeded in winning their immediate aims. Other significant actions were the occupations of the Visteon and Vestas plants in the face of redundancies where objectively, despite their subjective acceptance of the role of the unions they were led to challenge that role, at least briefly. This illustrates an important point about this period: in order to struggle effectively the situation requires workers to take matters into their own hands. The objective necessity to go beyond the union framework based on the acceptance of capitalism if struggles are to have any chance of success means at times that the objective action of the working class goes ahead of its subjective understanding, which creates the possibility of a sudden development of consciousness appearing as if from nowhere.

8.      The state does not sit idly by while this happens however and in the latter part of 2009 and throughout 2010 the unions have reasserted their control. The strikes that have taken place during this period have tended to end in acceptance of the bosses' terms and conditions despite the militancy of the workers involved. The BA strike and postal strikes were of particular significance. In both actions workers showed great determination and militancy; in the former this was in the face of threats and victimisation by management. However in neither strike did the workers challenge the control of the unions. In the BA strike the union led workers through legal hoops and ballots while the postal workers' union dissipated the workers' energy in dispersed rolling strikes and on/off negotiations

9.      In Britain as elsewhere the objective conditions for the development of the class struggle have developed over the last two years and it is probable they will continue to do so during the two years ahead. However the pace in Britain has been slower than elsewhere thanks in part to the efforts of the bourgeoisie to control the economic crisis. This situation may begin to change as the cuts take affect, but it should be noted that the bourgeoisie is still trying to target one or two groups of workers rather than the class as a whole in order to pursue the strategy of divide and rule that has long been its watchword. The subjective conditions will also continue to hold back the development of the struggle until greater parts of the working class begins to gain confidence in itself and in the possibility of getting rid of capitalism and replacing it with something better. Here the example of action in other countries can have a significant impact, which is why the bourgeoisie always has and always will continue to seek to impose a blackout on such news or to distort its message.

WR 10/11/10

Demonstrations and confrontations have continued in North Africa and the Middle East. Uprisings by oppressed populations, as well as workers’ strikes and demonstrations, are still taking place in a number of countries in the region, and there have been growing echoes elsewhere in Africa. At the same time, conflicts and wars between rival bourgeois factions, and the imperialist policies of the powers involved in the region, weigh very heavily on the development of these movements. A mortal danger faces the oppressed classes and the proletariat in all these countries. Alongside the traps of nationalism and democracy, they are also being met with brutal state repression and the ‘humanitarian’ bombs of imperialism. But the need to feed themselves, to live with dignity, to carve out a future means that our class brothers and sisters cannot just give in. In front of such a situation, what can and should be done by the working class of Britain, France, Germany and all the countries at the heart of world capitalism? The struggle of the oppressed and the exploited in these countries is our struggle; the armies and bourgeois cliques who are massacring them are our common enemies.

Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia: workers’ and social struggles persist

In Egypt, the street, the determination of the demonstrators, the militancy of the working class got the better of Mubarak. But after he went, the bourgeoisie could breathe a sigh of relief: Tahrir Square, the central focus of the movement, could again be open to traffic. The population could go home, in many cases ‘free’ to slowly starve. The provisional government run by the army and its Supreme Council could take up the reins of state, promising free and democratic elections. But their real aims were made clear when, on 23 March the Sharaf cabinet passed a new law promising jail and a fine of E£500,000 for “anyone inciting, urging, promoting or participating in a protest or strike that hampers or delays work at any private or public establishments”. Of course, strikes and protests are already banned under the hated ‘Emergency Law’ that has been in force since 1981. One of the key demands of the protestors was that this law be repealed - while this has been promised by the Sharaf government, it still hasn’t been dismantled.

However, neither this new law, nor the intervention of the police and the army against demonstrators and strikers have put a stop to the discontent, which has continued despite the ‘victory of the revolution’. Indeed the new law has actually provoked a new wave of protests and strikes. On 12 April, the daily al-Masry al-Youm wrote about “the permanence of protest movements and strikes in numerous region of Egypt. They are about wages, working conditions, work contracts, etc. These movements involve very diverse sectors”. In Alexandra, for example, teachers demanded the suppression of their temporary status and the granting of indefinite contracts. In Cairo, the employees of the fiscal adminsitration offices demanded a wage increase. There have been other strikes in public transport, health, textile, and even the tourism sector.

Mass protests are still taking place across Egypt with thousands of protestors gathering in Tahrir Square on 1st and 8th April demanding faster reform. These protests have been met with typical brutality, with soldiers storming the square and killing at least two protestors. Previously, these protestors had openly been joined by up to 15 -20 soldiers who joined in the protest against the regime - the crowds made a conscious effort to protect these defectors from arrest by the security forces and this seems to have been what provoked the savage response.

Other political forces are already developing in order to succeed where Sharaf has failed. New ‘independent’ unions are springing up, while on the political front the Popular Alliance is overtaking Tagammu as the leading standard bearer of ‘Socialism’. These new developments perfectly express both the strengths and weaknesses of the movement in Egypt: the elemental rage of the masses at their intolerable living conditions is fuelling a new militancy and determination, but weaknesses at the level of class consciousness makes it difficult for the workers to channel this militancy into a direct defence of their own interests. Instead, they turn to the forces of the bourgeois left and infuse them with a new dynamism. This leaves the movement deeply vulnerable to sabotage from within.

The situation in Algeria has also been marked by permanent unrest. On 3 April, the paper al Watan declared: “The students have not calmed down. The hospital doctors have expressed their defiance against Ould Abbès. Communal guards threaten to ‘encircle’ the Presidential palace. Paramedics are on strike again”. In education, a three day national strike around the issue of pensions is due to take place even though education employees faced repression during a demonstration over working conditions.

In Tunisia, the oil workers employed by SNDP have again come out on strike, rejoining the teachers who have been out for weeks against the most miserable pay and conditions.

In countries like Swaziland, Gabon, Cameroon, Djibouti, Burkina Faso and most recently Uganda there have been demonstrations by students, workers and others, influenced by what happened in North Africa. They have frequently been met with savage state violence. The working class in these countries is not very numerous and despite the determination of hungry populations, this makes it much easier for the bourgeoisie to resort to massive repression.

Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya: war between bourgeois gangs undermines social revolt

In Yemen, although the ‘official’ opposition announced on 25 April its agreement with the plan for resolving the crisis proposed by the Gulf Cooperation Council, envisaging the departure of president Saleh within weeks, the response from the street was unambiguous: “We categorically reject any initiative which does not involve the departure of president Saleh and his family” – the words of a communiqué from a coordinating committee of young people organising the sit-in in the university of Sanaa. The next bit of the communiqué says a lot about the determination of the demonstrators: “the opposition only represents itself”, it says, and calls for an end to all dialogue with the regime and for Saleh’s immediate departure. Here again the response of the state was the same: during demonstrations in Taêz, Ibb and Al-Baîda, the army used live ammunition against the demonstrators.

When it comes to shedding blood in the street, the el-Assad family in Syria is in the front line. Since 12 March large numbers have been demonstrating on the streets. The reasons are the same: growing poverty and daily oppression. The response of the sinister Bashir el-Assad is brutal in the extreme: according to different estimates, up to 500 people have been gunned down by the army and security services. Tanks, armoured cars and snipers have routinely been positioned outside mosques to crack down on any show of defiance. This has been especially true in the town of Deraa where the movement started. The government’s justification? The army entered Deraa “in response to appeals for help from the inhabitants, calling for an end to the acts of sabotage and murder by extremist terrorist groups” (cf the Orange site, 26.4.11).

These are indeed hypocritical lies, but no less hypocritical than the attitude of the great powers who claim to be concerned about the situation in Syria and have called for an end to the violent repression. Cameron tells us that this is unacceptable and the Syrian ambassador’s invitation to the Royal Wedding was cancelled. The French and the Italians held a summit. The Obama administration is thinking about sanctions. However, president Sarkozy, who led the charge to intervene militarily in Libya, has excluded an intervention in Syria without a resolution from the UN Security Council. A resolution which everyone knows will be impossible to obtain and which no one wants. The Syrian population can just put up with it; Syria is not Libya. Syria is a country of 21 million inhabitants, with a much more formidable army than Libya today or Iraq yesterday; above all, it’s an imperialist power which counts in the region. It has some important allies in its anti-American policies, especially Iran, and diplomatic support from Russia and China. A military intervention in Syria would destabilise the whole Arab-Muslim world and no one knows where it would end. The imperialist powers will have to defend their squalid interests in a different way here.

But there is a real danger facing the insurgent population in Syria. The el-Assad government draws its support from the Alawi religious minority, while 70% of the population is Sunni. In the absence of a sufficiently strong and conscious working class, it could be easy to pull an oppressed and hungry population behind one or another bourgeois faction. This could result in a real civil war as in Libya; and a similar danger is emerging in Bahrain.

For weeks now the population in Bahrain has been demonstrating to demand the departure of the prime minister, Khalifa ben Salman Al Khalifa, the uncle of the king Hamad ben Issa al-Khalifa, part of a Sunni dynasty which has reigned for a hundred years in a kingdom with a majority Shia population. Calling for bread and the right to free speech in this emirate is susceptible to being derailed into a ‘Shia’ struggle against the corrupt Sunni dynasty.

Meanwhile the imperialist vultures are circling. Already the Saudi army has entered the country to defend the Sunni power; tensions are growing between Iran and its neighbours in the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman). Since the middle of March, Iran has been criticising the repression of a movement which is de facto led by Shiites, if only because they are the majority of the country. The hypocrisy of France, Britain and the USA, who are currently bombarding Libya in the name of humanitarianism, is striking: not a word of protest against the repression in Bahrain, because Bahrain and its Saudi accomplices are their allies, and they all have a common enemy: Iran. The manoeuvres of the imperialists around the situation in Bahrain do not bode well for the development of the protest movement in this country.

In all the countries of the Arab world, populations are rebelling, the economic crisis is raging. But the movements are not all the same and their prospects are not identical. In countries like Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria it is more difficult for the local bourgeoisies to carry out large-scale massacres, just as it is more difficult for the big imperialist powers to defend their interests by applying direct military force. The difference between them is that in these countries there is a sizeable working class which, while it hasn’t been able to take the lead in the movement of revolt, still has a considerable weight in the social situation.

International class struggle: the only remedy for nationalist and democratic poison

The crisis today is not limited to the Middle East. Its effects are hitting home in America, Europe and Asia as well. Struggles involving the young generation of the working class have developed in Greece, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Britain. The working class in these countries has mobilised against the austerity plans which each national bourgeoisie is trying to impose. These reactions are important and necessary. In many of the demonstrations, there has been a real sympathy for the revolts and struggles which have broken out in Egypt, in Tunisia and elsewhere. In the countries at the heart of capitalism, the working class is beginning to sense that the revolts in North Africa and the Middle East spring from the same source as their own struggles. But this is not enough.

To defend themselves against the massive attacks being organised by capital, the workers’ struggles also have to be much more massive and unified than they have been up till now. And in taking this step the proletariat in the central countries will be able to offer a concrete solidarity to the workers’ struggles and social revolts in the Middle East – not only because the struggles in the belly of the beast will weaken the ability of the beast to aid the repression in the weaker countries or to carry out its military plans, but also because the struggles in the ‘democratic west’ will help proletarians all over the world understand that the blessing of democracy is a curse in disguise.  

T 1/5/11

Based on an article from Révolution Internationale 422,

The magnitude 9 earthquake that struck off the eastern coast of Japan on 11 March was the biggest disaster to hit Japan since the US unleashed nuclear destruction in 1945. After the devastation of the earthquake there followed an enormous tsunami, in some areas it is recorded as reaching the third floor of buildings as it hit the Japanese coast. In the resulting destruction a number of nuclear reactors were damaged. The Fukushima I nuclear reactor reached level 7 on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s INES scale, the highest level accident.

One month on, the Japanese Red Cross published its assessment of the catastrophe. “...the number of confirmed dead was 13,127 and missing/unaccounted for totalled 14,348, with 4,793 people being treated for injuries.” Many of the dead were buried under mud and debris or washed out to sea. The latest figures from the National Police Agency have put the dead at 14,517 with 11,432 missing.

The assessment then focuses on the survivors. 127,817 persons, displaced by the disaster, are being housed in evacuation centres; these are mainly school buildings. This figure doesn’t include those living with friends and relatives. Some have returned to their homes despite the lack of water and electricity.

What about the long term psychological effects? “In an informal survey, which tried to gauge the psychological impact of what victims felt were their three greatest concerns, in Miyagi Prefecture, 53% cited money (for living expenses), 50% cited work and housing was cited by 40%. A significant 55% said they continue to feel traumatized from the experience.” The assessment doesn’t mention the psychological effects of living near one of the biggest nuclear accidents in history.

There will be long term effects from radiation. Radiation has been recorded in the fish stock, in the soil and in the water supply. The government’s reassurances on safety are questionable in light of previous cover ups. 80,000 residents have been moved from the area around the Fukushima plant.  

After the trauma, what next?

Standard & Poor, one of the world’s biggest credit ratings agencies, has estimated the cost of rebuilding could be 50 trillion yen ($612bn, £372bn). This is double the figure the Japanese government have estimated. Before the tsunami Japan had the world’s highest public debt. The credit ratings agencies have sent a warning shot to Japan that it will downgrade its credit rating if it attempts to create large amounts of debt to deal with the disaster. This can mean only one thing for workers in Japan. Lower wages and higher taxes will pay for the repairs.

As well as repairing the damage the government may be faced with the prospect of bailing out some of the country’s largest corporations. Of most immediate danger is TEPCO the company that operated the Fukushima nuclear reactors. As well as dealing with the cost of the management of the damaged nuclear reactors they may be faced with huge compensation claims from those who contract illnesses from the radiation.

A few days before Standard & Poor gave a negative assessment of the biggest of Japans corporations, downgrading the credit rating of the 6 largest. The major car manufacturers have drastically reduced production at plants globally. Most of the blame has been placed at the door of the disaster due to breaks in the supply chain. Though it must be said that Toyota announced a 39% fall in profits during the final quarter of 2010.

The outlook for workers in Japan is grim. After the trauma of the natural disaster comes the trauma of trying to rebuild their lives under the weight of the economic crisis. Under capitalism it makes perfect sense to build nuclear power plants in major earthquake zones and impoverish disaster victims. That is why capitalism is the biggest disaster that humanity has to face.

To overcome the disaster of capitalism it will require the combined struggle of the world’s working class. Only in a communist society will we see a response to natural disasters based on human needs.   

Hugin 29/4/11

If lying was a mortal sin, the ruling class would have died a long time ago.

Everywhere it’s been shouting from the rooftops, on the TV, the radio, in its newspapers and journals: Look: there it is – a light at the end of the tunnel! The proof: unemployment is falling. Or so it seems. In the US and in France, in the last few months the unemployment rate has had its biggest drop since the outbreak of the crisis of 2007. In Germany, it’s fallen to its lowest since 1992! And the big international institutions have been parading their optimism. According to the IMF, in 2011, world growth will reach 4.4%. The Asian Development Bank is predicting growth rates of 9.6% for China and 8.2% for India. Germany, France and the US will reach 2.5%. 1.6% and 2.8% respectively. The IMF even predicts a growth rate of 1.7% for Japan this year, despite the earthquake and the nuclear disaster!

A decisive argument for the return of better times: the stock exchanges are soaring...

So, do these gleams of light announce an imminent resurrection of the economy? Or is this the classic hallucination of a dying creature?

Poverty, poverty

In the US, then, things have been getting better. Gone is the spectre of the 1929 crash. No chance of seeing interminable queues outside the employment offices like in the nightmarish 1930s. It’s just that...at the end of March, McDonald’s announced an exceptional recruitment of 50,000 jobs in one day. On 19 April, there were three million people waiting to apply at the doors of the restaurants! And the firm hired 62,000.

The reality of the present crisis is revealed in the suffering inflicted on the working class. Unemployment in America is officially falling, but the state’s statistics are a huge trick. For example, they exclude everyone classed as “NLF” (Not in the Labor Force). These includes older people who have been laid off, long term unemployed discouraged from looking for work, students and the young, unemployed people on job-seeking schemes....in short, in January 2011, 85.2 million people. The state itself has been obliged to recognise that the number of poor people makes up 15% of the American population and is continuing to grow.

The explosion of poverty on the soil of the world’s leading power shows the real state of the international economy. All over the planet, living conditions are becoming more and more inhuman. According to the estimates of the World Bank, around 1.2 billion people live below the poverty line (1.25 dollars a day). But the future is even more sombre. For an increasing proportion of humanity, the return of inflation will mean that it is getting harder and harder to keep a roof over your head or even to eat. World prices of food products have risen 36% above their level a year ago. According to the last issue of Food Price Watch, produced by the World Bank, every 10% rise in world prices pushes a minimum of another 10 million people below the poverty line. 44 million people have thus officially fallen into poverty since 2010. Concretely, the prices of basic necessities are becoming more and more prohibitive: maize up by 74%, grain by 69%, soya 36%, sugar 21%.

The decadence of the system: A new chapter in the historic crisis of capitalism is opening up in front of us

Since the summer of 2007 and the bursting of the ‘sub-prime’ bubble in the USA, the world crisis has worsened inexorably, at an increasing pace, without the bourgeoisie being able to come up with the merest shadow of a solution. Worse, its efforts to deal with the problem are preparing the ground for further convulsions. The economic history of the last few years resembles a sort of infernal spiral, a downward pulling whirlpool. And this is a drama that has been in gestation for the past 40 years.

From the end of the 1960s to the infamous summer of 2007, the world economy has only kept going through a systematic and increasing resort to debt. Why is this? A short theoretical detour is required here.

Capitalism produces more commodities than its markets can absorb. That is almost a tautology:

Capital exploits its workers - in other words their wages are lower than the real value they create through their labour.

Capital can therefore sell its commodities at a profit. But the question is: to whom?

Obviously, workers buy these commodities...as far their wages allow. There remains therefore a good part which is not sold, corresponding to what is not paid to the workers when they were producing them, the part containing an added value, a surplus value, which alone has this magic power to create profit for Capital.

The capitalists themselves also consume things, and in general we know they are not too badly off...But they alone can’t buy all the commodities containing surplus value. It would make no sense for Capital as a whole to buy its own commodities to make a profit: this would be like taking money from its left pocket and putting it in its right pocket. Any poor person can tell you that you can’t get rich that way.

To accumulate, to develop, Capital therefore needs to find buyers others than workers and capitalists. In other words, it is imperative that it finds outlets outside its system, otherwise it will find itself weighed down with unsold goods and a market that has become engorged. This is the celebrated ‘crisis of overproduction’.

This ‘internal contradiction’, this natural tendency towards overproduction and this ceaseless obligation to find external outlets is also one of the roots of the incredible dynamism of this system. Capitalism has had to trade with all economic spheres without exception: the former ruling classes, the peasants and artisans of the whole world. The history of the late 18th century and the entire 19th century is the history of colonisation, of the conquest of the globe by capitalism. The bourgeoisie was ravenous for new territories on which it forced, through multiple means, the populations to buy its commodities. But in acting this way, it was also transforming these archaic economies; little by little, it was integrating them into its system. The colonies slowly became capitalist countries themselves, producing according to the laws of the system. Not only were their economies less and less susceptible to being outlets for the commodities produced in Europe and the USA: they too were generating their own overproduction. To develop, Capital was therefore again and again forced to seek out new territories.

This could have been a never-ending story but our planet is only a round ball: to its great misfortune, Capital had hardly taken 150 years to complete its conquest. At the beginning of the 20thcentury, all the main territories had been taken, the great historic capitalist nations had divided up the world. From then on it was no longer a question of new discoveries but of taking the possessions of rival nations. Germany, the poorest in colonies, was thus put in the position of the aggressor and unleashed the hostilities of the First World War, driven by the necessity which Hitler formulated openly in the lead up to the Second World War: “Export or Die”.

From then on, capitalism, after 150 years of expansion, became a decadent system. The horror of the two world wars and Great Depression of the 1930s is the dramatic and irrefutable proof. However, even though, during the 1950s, it destroyed the extra-capitalist markets which still existed (like the French peasantry), capitalism did not fall into a mortal crisis of overproduction. Why? We return to the initial idea we were trying to demonstrate: if “Capitalism produces more commodities than its markets can absorb”, it has been able to create an artificial market: “From the end of the 1960s to the infamous summer of 2007, the world economy has only kept going through a systematic and increasing resort to debt”

The last forty years can be summarised as a series of recessions and recoveries financed by credit. With each open crisis, Capital has increasingly resorted to debt. And it’s no longer a question of just supporting ‘household consumption’ through state aid...no, whole states have themselves plunged themselves into debt to artificially maintain the competitive edge of their economy faced with other countries (by directly financing investment in infrastructure, by loaning to banks at the lowest possible rate of interest so that they in turn can lend to households and enterprises...). In short, by opening up the sluice-gates of credit, the world is awash with money and all sectors of the economy are in the classic position of the debtor: every day new debts are taken out to pay for yesterday’s debts. This dynamic inevitably leads into a dead-end.

And here the summer of 2007 opened a new chapter in the history of capitalist decline. The capacity of the world bourgeoisie to slow down the development of the crisis by an increasingly massive recourse to debt has reached its limits. Today, convulsions follow each other in quick succession without any respite or real recovery. The powerlessness of the bourgeoisie in front of this new situation is patently obvious. In 2007, with the bursting of the sub-prime bubble, and in 2008 with the collapse of the banking giant Lehman Brothers, all the states of the world were only able to do one thing: pump up the finance sector and let public debt explode. And this was not just a one-off. Since 2007, the world economy, the banks and the stock exchanges have only kept going through a permanent transfusion of public money derived from new debts or simply from printing money. One example: the USA. In 2008, to save the financial sector from generalised bankruptcy, the US Federal bank launched an initial phase of money-printing – QE1, or Quantitative Easing 1 – amounting to more than 1400 billion dollars. Just two years later, in January 2010, it had to renew the whole operation by launching a QE2: 600 billion injected thanks to printing off more dollars. But this is still not enough. Hardly 6 months later, in the summer of 2010, the Fed had to renew the buy out of debts that had reached their deadline, at a rate of 35 billion a month. In all, since the latest stage of the crisis began, that’s over 2300 billion dollars coming out the pocket of America’s central bank. It’s the equivalent of the GNP of a country like Italy or Brazil! But obviously history doesn’t stop there. In the summer of 2011, the Fed will be obliged to launch a QE3, then a QE4[1]...

The world economy has become a bottomless pit, or more precisely, a black hole: it is absorbing increasingly astronomical quantities of money/debt.

The future? Inflation and recession!

It would however be wrong to claim that the immense sums of money injected by all the states of the planet today are having no effect. Indeed, without them, the system would literally implode. But there is a second consequence: the unprecedented increase in the mass of money on a global scale, particularly in dollars, is about to corrode the system, to act on it like a poison. Capitalism has become a dying patient dependent on its morphine fix. Without it, it would die, but each new injection gnaws away at it a little more. So while the injections of the years 1967-2007 allowed the economy to hold, today the doses needed are on the contrary speeding the patient towards its demise.

Concretely, by printing money, the different central banks are consciously producing what the economists call ‘funny money’. When the monetary mass grows faster than real activity, it loses its value. As a result prices rise and we have inflation.[2]

Obviously, in this sphere, the world champion is the US. They know that their currency has been the pillar of economic stability since the end of the Second World War. Still today no one can bypass the dollar. This is why since 2007 it has been the US that has produced the greatest quantity of money to back up their economy. If the dollar has not been put out of commission, it’s because China, Japan etc have been, despite themselves, obliged to buy dollars. But this precarious equilibrium is also reaching its end. There are less and less buyers for US Treasury Bonds because everyone knows they are not really worth anything. Since 2010, it has been the Fed itself buying up its own T-Bonds to maintain their value! Above all, inflation is beginning to develop in a significant way in the US (between 2 and 105 according to what source you use, with workers increasingly feeling the pinch in their food shopping). The President of the Fed in Dallas, Richard Fisher, who this year sits on the monetary policy committee, has raised the risk of a hyperinflation comparable to what happened in the Weimar Republic in 1923.

This is a fundamental tendency. Inflation is growing in all countries. And the capitalists are increasingly distrustful of all currencies. The shocks to come, the probable collapse of banks and entire states, are placing a very big question mark over the whole international financial system. The consequence of this is tangible: the price of gold is hitting the roof. After a 29% rise in 2010, the hunt for gold is now beating record after record, for the first time jumping the fence of 1500 dollars – five times what it was ten years ago. The same phenomenon with silver, now at its highest level for 31 years. The University of Texas, which trains economists, has recently put its whole treasury of a billion dollars into gold. We can see from this the confidence that the American big bourgeoisie has in its own currency! And this is not just an epiphenomenon. The central banks themselves have bought more of the yellow metal in 2010 than they have sold, a first since 1988. All this means nothing less than the end of the Breton Woods agreement (not officially but de facto) which after the Second World War set up an international monetary system based on the stability of the dollar.

The bourgeoisie is obviously aware of the danger. Incapable of stopping the flow of credit, to stop the money printing presses from turning, it is trying to limit the damage and to reduce debt by introducing draconian austerity plans which are aimed first and foremost at the working class. Almost everywhere, wages are being frozen or cut in the private and the public sector, health and social benefits are being slashed. In short, poverty is on the rise. In the USA, Obama has announced that he wants to reduce the US debt by 4000 billion dollars in 12 years. The sacrifices which are going to be imposed on the population are unimaginable. But this solution really is no solution. In Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain...one austerity plan comes after the next and yet the deficits continue to grow. The only effect of this policy is to plunge the economy a little deeper into recession. There is only one outcome of this dynamic: after the failure of American households in 2007, of the banks in 2008, it’s now the turn of states themselves to sink into bankruptcy. There can be illusion on this score: the defaults on payment by countries like Greece are inevitable. Even American states like California are not immune and questions have been asked about the credit-worthiness of the US economy as a whole. The consequences for the acceleration of the world crisis are incalculable: explosion of the euro zone, deregulation of currencies, hyper-inflation....

It’s not possible to make exact predictions, to see when and where the next crack in the world economy will appear. Will the catastrophe that hit Japan (which brought down production in the world’s third-ranking economic power by 15% in March) be the detonator? What will be the impact of the destabilisation of the Middle East? Will we see the collapse of the dollar or the bankruptcy of Greece or Spain? No one can tell in advance. One thing is certain though: we are going to see a succession of extremely brutal recessions. After the slow development of the world economic crisis between 1967 and 2007, we are now entering a new chapter in the decadence of capitalism, marked by incessant convulsions in the system and an explosion of poverty.  

Pawel 30/4/11

This text is not meant to be a thorough survey of the history of the anarchist movement in Britain as written from a marxist starting point, nor of its relationship with marxist traditions. Such a task is necessary but it will take time, reflection and discussion. The aim of these notes is much more modest: to serve as a basis for recognising and understanding that anarchism in Britain, as elsewhere, has its revolutionary, internationalist wing, thus enabling us to correct certain significant errors we have made towards some of its organised expressions. Its focus on these organised expressions can never give a complete picture of anarchism, which almost by definition contains a large number of ‘unorganised’ individuals[1], but it is a necessary route to understanding the principal historic currents in the UK anarchist movement.     

1) Anarchism in Britain does claim its specific forebears: Winstanley in the English civil war, William Godwin and William Blake at the end of the 18th century, the poet Shelley. But there are no equivalents to the major figures of anarchism in the ascendant period, such as Proudhon, whose artisan vision was already being left behind by the development of industrial capital and of an organised workers’ movement in Britain. Similarly, Bakuninism had little impact in the British sections of the International in the 1869s and 70s. However, a variety of Bakuninism – with its emphasis on conspiratorial organisation and violent insurrectionism shading off into terrorism – did implant itself in the movement in the UK in the 1880s, via ‘immigrants’ like Johann Most. This type of anarchism was quite strong in the anarchist exile clubs which sprang up in the East End of London in particular, and was to have a largely negative impact on the development of anarchism in Britain. This milieu was a fertile soil for cops and informers of all kinds, as for example in the role played by Auguste Coulon in the 1892 trial and imprisonment of the Walsall anarchists[2], whom he had lured into a ridiculous bomb-making plot.

2) But there were plenty of anarchists who attempted to relate to the workers’ movement, in both its economic and political dimensions, and in the 1880s, both in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, there was not yet a rigid line between anarchists and socialists. Elements like Joseph Lane and Frank Kitz were more or less libertarian communists, who were from the beginning opposed to all forms of parliamentarism. Nevertheless they joined the Social Democratic Federation and then split from it in the company of William Morris, Eleanor Marx and others to form the Socialist League in 1885. The SL was itself soon torn by disagreements between the tendency around Marx and Aveling – supported by Engels - and the anti-parliamentary current which was at first led by Morris but increasingly assumed an anarchist direction. Lane’s Anti-Statist Communist Manifesto was the most distinctive statement of this tendency. The growing rift between the two tendencies was a classic manifestation of the difficulties in elaborating a clear revolutionary orientation in this period of triumphant capitalist growth. On the one hand, Engels, Eleanor Marx and Aveling rightly insisted on the need for the socialist groups to break with sectarian isolation and involve themselves in the real evolution of the workers’ movement, which in the 1880s was above all taking the form of strikes and the formation of more inclusive ‘New Unions’. The negative side of this insistence was a difficulty in resisting the growth of reformism and opportunism, which were a particularly strong danger in the parliamentary and municipal spheres, as indicated by the development of purely reformist currents like the Fabians. This in turn reinforced the temptation of Morris and others to fall back into a kind of abstract purism which – like today’s SPGB – saw its main field of action ‘the making of socialists’; parallel to this, a number of the anarchist elements in the League were drawn towards the worst kind of adventurism and violent posturing, which led Morris himself to quit the League in 1890.

3) Alongside these developments, anarchism in the UK in the late 19th century found other expressions. There was the more sober, theoretical anarchist communism of Kropotkin, whose thoughts on evolution in Mutual Aid and on the future society in works such as Fields, Factories and Workshops are still worthy of consideration. In contrast to Proudhon’s ‘mutualism’, which envisaged a future society founded explicitly on exchange relations, and Bakunin’s ‘collectivism’, which was a kind of half-way house between Proudhon and communism, Kropotkin explicitly advocated a communist mode of production based on the abolition of wage labour and commodity production. Kroptkin and Morris certainly saw eye to eye on the nature of the society they were aiming for and the ‘anarchist Prince’ was an occasional speaker at the meetings of the Hammersmith Socialist Society in which Morris maintained his militant activity after splitting from the League. Also important was the contribution of the German anarchist Rudolf Rocker whose main field of activity was among the Jewish anarchists of the East End and the publication Arbeter Fraint. As recounted in William Fishman’s book East End Jewish Radicals 1875-1914, the Arbeter Fraint group was directly connected to real workers’ struggles, especially in the great garment industry strikes of the 1900s. Rocker took up an internationalist position on the First World War, openly opposing Kroptkin’s views.  A further strand of anarchism in the UK is represented by the more artistic and utopian forms represented by figures like Edward Carpenter.

4) The approach of a new epoch in the life of capitalism and the class struggle brought significant developments to the anarchist movement. The 1900s saw a major upsurge in the class struggle and the search for new forms of organisation which could go beyond both the bureaucracy and reformism of the established trade unions, and the arid parliamentarism of groups like the SDF. The answer of many militant workers was to turn towards syndicalism or industrial unionism, although there was no British equivalent to either the CNT in Spain, the CGT in France or the IWW in the USA, which were able to function as real organs of struggle. Groups like the Industrial Syndicalist Education League, formed in 1910, were never really more than groups of propaganda for revolutionary unions. Despite this syndicalism did develop a real presence in some key industries like the railways and the mines, as well as playing a key part in the emergence of the shop stewards’ movement during the war.  The majority of the elements involved in this movement were definitely internationalist, actively participating in strikes in the arms industry and elsewhere, and came out in support of the October revolution and the Third International in its initial phase.

5) The First World War split the anarchist movement as it did the marxists. Most famously, Kropotkin openly abandoned internationalism, supporting ‘democratic’ France against German militarism, and inevitably others followed in his wake. The majority of anarchists opposed him, though some from an essentially pacifist standpoint. The pages of Freedom, the paper that Kropotkin had helped to found, were given over to violent polemics on the question of the war. It is noticeable, however, that there seems to have been little in the way of an organised, specifically anarchist opposition to the war. The period of the war is glossed over in Woodcock’s chapter dealing with anarchism in Britain[3], seen as a period of declining fortunes due to state repression, and the Anarchist Federation’s quite detailed history of anarcho-communism in the UK[4] talks mainly about the work anarchists did in groups like the North London Herald League alongside socialists, or the group animated by Guy Aldred. The Solidarity Federation’s history of syndicalism in the UK[5] is even sparser in dealing with this crucial period. This heightens the importance of Aldred’s Glasgow-based group which published the Spur (and later the Red Commune). Within the anarchist movement in Britain, the Aldred group took the clearest position on the war and tried to bridge the gap between anarchism and marxism, working with elements of the Socialist Labour Party and ardently supporting the Bolsheviks in the first phase of the Russian revolution. Aldred can be considered as the UK equivalent of the ‘Soviet anarchist’ tendency during the revolutionary wave and as a key element in the ‘anti-parliamentary communist’ tradition which united elements of internationalist anarchism and council communism. The Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation was formed in 1921 and maintained activity for over 20 years, although Aldred split with the APCF in 1934 and went off searching for wider unity via the United Socialist Movement, sometimes veering off in rather dubious directions. The APCF, which changed its name to the Workers Revolutionary League in 1941, took up a rigorously internationalist position against the second world war, defining it as imperialist on both sides: this is documented by Mark Shipway’s book Anti-Parliamentary Communism, The Movement for Workers Councils in Britain 1917-1945, published in 1988, as well as in our own book on the British communist left. This British council communist tradition essentially disappeared after 1945 but it was briefly revived by the publication Black Star in the 1980s.  

6) The anarchist movement, like the left communists around the Workers’ Dreadnought, seems to have gone through a period of decline from the mid-20s to the mid-30s, corresponding to the victory of the counter-revolution. The war in Spain led to a revival of anarchist ideas but it is noteworthy that the movement in Britain contained a left wing around Marie-Louise Berneri and Vernon Richards, which was very critical of the errors and outright betrayals of the CNT’s higher echelons in relation to the Republican state, and it was this same tendency, through the magazine War Commentary, which maintained an internationalist stance during the second world war (this is also recounted in our book on the British communist left)[6]. In 1944, the editors of War Commentary were put on trial for sedition. After 1945 War Commentary was replaced by a new series of Freedom which has continued ever since, although not necessarily with the same class struggle politics. In parallel to this, a clandestine Anarchist Federation of Britain was set up at the beginning of the war; by 1944, the AFB was strongly influenced by a group of anarcho-syndicalists who in 1954 formed the Syndicalist Workers’ Federation, publishing Direct Action and aligned to the International Workers’ Association. This group took a clear position on the Labour Party’s post-war nationalisation programme and published one of the few contemporary accounts of the Hungarian workers’ uprising from a proletarian perspective. The difficulties of political engagement in the 1950s also led to the shrinking of the SWF to one group in Manchester, but the latter joined with other elements to form the Direct Action Movement in 1979, which in turn became the Solidarity Federation in 1994.  Thus, contrary to the article published in WR 109, November 1987, which argued that the DAM was at root a form of rank and fileist leftism, Solfed is actually the heir of a workers’ tradition which – for all its ambiguities on the trade union and other questions –has its roots in internationalism.

Amos, April 2011.

To be continued

“To work together for the development of the class struggle”

Our comrades in the Alicante Encounter and Solidarity Network (Red de Encuentro y Solidaridad) and in the L'Escletxa collective organised a meeting to discuss and support the workers' struggle on 11th and 12th February. They examined the experience of the struggles in France and Barcelona. The declared aim of this meeting was: “To work together for the development of the class struggle”.

The Encounter and Solidarity Network Appeal

JOIN US AND LET'S SHARE our experiences of unity, self-organisation and solidarity.

LET'S SHARE OUR EXPERIENCES AND CONTINUE THE FIGHT

Not long ago, we began one of our leaflets with: “We want to meet workers (people) who support the same concerns as us.” We are continuing the search because because we know we are not alone in this. We know that a movement exists (still currently a weak and dispersed one) and that it is growing all around the world and has appeared at other moments in history with great force. We can describe it in various ways: proletarian internationalism, workers' autonomy or the self-organised movement of workers. These movements have expressed and still do express the best that humankind can offer:

·        Unity: coming together in a fraternal manner to agree what we have in common and being able to act on this, understanding that we have a common interest, one that transcends artificial barriers of race, nation, profession...

·      Taking our self-organisation in hand, by ourselves, without depending on intermediaries, creating real ASSEMBLIES which are the best expression of our struggle for a better life.

·       Solidarity and cooperation, based on a clear understanding that without these, we would just be solitary beings incapable of defending ourselves.

In the present state of things, it is not easy to see ourselves in the collective sense, when the bosses constantly set out to isolate us from each other so they can rain down attacks on us with the crisis, unemployment, evictions, unpaid wages, in circumstances where we are left with little more to do than complain that “we can't make ends meet at the end of the month”, or that “the future holds nothing for our children”...

It's very easy to understand when you are actually in such situations, when they affect us in flesh and bone. Have you never stood pondering over your bank account, wondering how long you can survive on the last few Euros in your pocket until you can get a new loan or a deferral of the repayments? Did you ever feel your heart sink when you heard that a mother or a grandfather have realised that they are heading into financial difficulties because they had to divide their pension money between the family's unemployment problems and being in debt up to the hilt...?

Once again we are calling you, we call on ourselves, everyone, workers, unemployed, evicted, students, who are fully aware of the bleak future ahead, the retired with their pensions further eroded, housewives who are forced to manage without wages,... on the PROLETARIANS, on all those for whom this system offers nothing but anxiety, hidden or obvious poverty, the fear of not knowing what will happen from one day to the next, of being powerless spectators, with our own survival resting in the hands of others.

Because, despite everything, LIFE does go on, and the struggle goes on too,   for everyone; starting from immediate needs which all of us share, uniting our efforts, striving to build a movement that can change everything. The experiences scattered around the world are small scale, some virtually unknown but they are OUR experiences and we know that sharing them together will make us stronger.

Red de Encuentro y Solidaridad de Trabajadores (Alicante)[email protected] [91]

Ateneo Libertario “La Escletxa”

escletxa.org

Sharing their experiences in this meeting will be comrades from:

-        The neighbourhood committees from the Barcelona Assembly. It's an “assemblyist” experiment that hit the headlines in the media because of the occupation of the former credit bank and the incidents provoked by the police during the evictions (this was on the day of the recent general strike). However, this assembly has carried out a profound work of self-organisation and struggle that didn’t succeed in gaining media attention because they didn't consider this newsworthy enough.

-        The workers' assemblies in Toulouse that reflect the determination of workers in France today to wage a struggle that they organise themselves. These assemblies are trying to stand up to attacks on workers' living conditions, and to the unions' demobilisation and manipulation.

-        the Rupture group, in Madrid. They are comrades who have been active for some time in supporting self-organised workers' struggles and contribute towards this by stimulating debate in their publication.

-        The Valencia Workers' Assembly which presents itself as a space for meetings, debates and intervention by the working class and for the working class.

-         The Alicante Workers' Encounter and Solidarity Network. This initiative arises from the Platform of the Health Workers in Social Services, evolving from the struggle of its general assemblies, and is based on the certainty that only the unity and extension of the struggles can open up a perspective for us.

What brings us all together is the effort of self-organisation and unity, the principle of solidarity between us and the practice of the general, inter-professional, and open assemblies.

We hope and wish that other people, groups or assemblies, who are able to receive this appeal by whatever means, will join us and participate in our meeting.

From this invitation, you should consider your presence to be essential.

We are waiting for you.

Alicante Encounter and Solidarity Network (Red de Encuentro y Solidaridad) 12/2/11

This article is available as a leaflet to download and distribute [95].

Why are nearly a million workers – from education, the civil service, local councils – preparing to go on strike on June 30th?

For the same reason that half a million workers marched through the streets of London on 26 March. And for the same reason that tens of thousands of university and school students took part in a whole movement of demonstrations, occupations and walk-outs last autumn. They are more and more fed up with the never-ending attacks on their living standards being organised by the government, whether in the form of cuts in healthcare, rising tuition fees, growing unemployment, wage freezes or – a major issue in the June 30 strike – an assault on pensions, so that teachers for example will pay more towards their pension, retire later, and get a smaller pension at the end of it.

Workers and students, the unemployed, pensioners, etc. are also less and less convinced by the justifications offered by the government (and, with few tiny differences, the Labour ‘opposition’): ‘we need to make these cuts to get the economy going again, so really they are in everyone’s interest’. People have been making all kinds of sacrifices in response to similar arguments for a long time now, and still the economy keeps going downhill and our living standards with it.

And the idea of striking together, of making the response to the attacks as widespread and as inclusive as possible, has also appeared more and more logical to a growing number of us, given that we are all facing the same attacks, and given that so many isolated, dispersed struggles have been doomed to defeat.   

But there’s another question raised by the planned ‘day of action’. What are the real motivations behind the decision of the official trade union machinery to call this strike? Do they really want to organise an effective response to the government’s attacks? If this were the case, why did they put all that energy into bringing so many thousands of workers to London on 26 March, only to march them up and down, subject them to hypocritical speeches from the likes of Ed Milliband, and send them home again?  Why do the trade unions sell us the illusion that the problem of the cuts is something specific to this present government, implying that Labour would be able to offer an alternative?
 
And why are only a part of the public sector being called out? What about the rest of the public sector and all the workers in the private sector? Are they also not under attack? And why just a one day event? Could it be that, like on 26 March, the trade unions want to provide us with a semblance of action, a mock-up of fighting back, which will have the net effect of reinforcing divisions and wasting our energies?

The ruling class has reason to fear us

The ruling class has good reason to fear that its attacks will provoke a bigger response than it can comfortably handle. It has in front of it the evidence not only of what happened in Britain in autumn, and the numbers who turned out on 26 March, but also the growing tide of revolt that has swept across North Africa and the Middle East, and has now hit Europe with the massive movements in Spain and Greece, where tens of thousands, the majority of them young people facing a very uncertain future, have occupied city squares and held daily assemblies where participants are free to express their concerns not only about this or that government measure but about the whole political and social system that rules our lives. This movement is not yet a “revolution” but it is certainly creating an atmosphere where the question of revolution is being discussed more widely and more seriously. 

Little wonder that the state in Britain wants to keep resistance trapped inside the safe walls of official protest. The trade union apparatus has a key role in this, keeping us to the strict guidelines laid down in the trade union rulebook which stipulates: no strike action to be decided by mass meetings; no solidarity strikes; if necessary, cross picket lines of workers in other sectors because otherwise you might be engaging in illegal “secondary action”; only strike if you are a properly paid up member of the union, etc etc.

Take the struggle into our own hands!     
  
Does this mean that the action on 30 June is a waste of time?

No, not if we use it as a means to come together, discuss and decide on more widespread and effective forms of resistance. Not if we use it to overcome our fear of taking charge of our own struggles.

The examples of Tunisia, Egypt, Spain or Greece are there in front of us: when people gather together in large numbers, when they occupy public spaces and begin to demand the right to speak and to take collective decisions, they can overcome their fear of repression by the police or of punishment by the bosses.  
They offer us the ‘model’ to follow -  a model which in any case is not a new invention but which has appeared in all the major workers’ struggles of the last century: the open general assembly, which maintains control of all its delegates or commissions by making them elected by a show of hands and recallable at any time.

Before June 30th, we can call for general meetings at work, open to all employees regardless of job or union, where we can decide how to spread the action as widely as possible. In the schools and colleges, there is a real need to overcome the divisions between teachers and non-teaching employees, between staff and students, and to work out how to bring everyone into the struggle. In the councils and government departments, the same applies: discussion groups and general meetings of all kinds can help to overcome these divisions and make sure that the struggle involves many more than are ‘officially’ on strike 

On the day of the strike, we need to make sure that pickets are not just token affairs but are used to widen and deepen the movement: by persuading everyone in your workplace to join the strike; by sending delegates to other workplaces to support their struggle; by acting as a focus for discussion about how to take the struggle forward in the future.

Demonstrations must not be passive parades ending in a ritual rally. Demonstrations provide an opportunity to hold street assemblies where the aim is not to listen to pre-arranged speeches by politicians and union hacks but to allow as many people as possible to exchange their experiences and express their views.

There’s much talk, especially from the ‘left’, about how the cuts and other attacks are not really ‘necessary’ and are ‘ideologically’ driven. But the truth is that for capitalism in crisis it is totally necessary and unavoidable to try to reduce our living standards. What’s necessary for us, the exploited, is not to try to convince the exploiters that they should organise their system in a better way. It’s to resist their attacks today and tomorrow, and in doing so to gain the confidence, the self-organisation and the political awareness needed to pose the question of revolution and the need for the complete transformation of society.

WR 4.6.11

The strikes and demonstrations planned for 30 June by teachers' unions and the PCS public sector union are being hyped in a way that follows inevitably the precedent set by the big demonstration of 26 March. After that demo Socialist Worker (2/4/11) headlined with “Magnificent march - now let's strike to beat the Tories” - reporting that all speeches in favour of a strike next time round were greeted enthusiastically.

So the 30 June is the next in a series and leftists are already discussing what the big event after that will be in the autumn. The Socialist Worker headlines read “30 June strikes can turn the tide against the Tory government” (4/6/11) and “30 June: we must seize opportunity for a mass strike” (23/4/11).These items should be put in the context of what they said before the 26 March demo: “A huge protest could give millions of people confidence to fight against every cut and for every job—and to bring down this rotten Tory government of the rich.” And how did the huge protest of 26 March make people feel? Many were impressed by the size of the demo, but deflated when they reflected afterwards on what could have been. Some felt, right from the start, that it might be a pointless procession leading nowhere. Others saw something more positive in the occupation of buildings in the London's West End.

Whichever way you look at 26 March, it was dominated by the unions and their supporters, in the banners, in the speeches, in the way that so much anger and frustration was transformed into a passive stroll. The SWP think it's possible to “Kick out Cameron’s crumbling coalition” (14/5/11) but 30 June is still dominated by unions and, as things stand, based on the proposals of Left and unions, will have no more effect that 26 March.

Also, it is necessary to look a little closer at the idea of a 'mass strike' that might be part of the process of 'kicking out' the government. The Office for National Statistics has released the figures for the number of days' work lost due to industrial action in the 12 months to March. At 145,000 it's the lowest since records in their current form began in 1931. Obviously government statistics exist as much for propaganda as anything else, and they don’t include the significant struggles in schools and universities last autumn. Nevertheless the numbers do reflect a reality – a hesitation faced with the gravity of the economic crisis. Many people were inspired by the student protests last year in Britain, by the social movements in Tunisia and Egypt, and more recently by the demonstrations and assemblies in Spain and Greece, but this inspiration has not yet been transferred into widespread action.

To make anything of the 30 June actions workers need to prepare to go beyond union boundaries, to discuss in advance what could be achieved if workers took control of their own struggles. When it comes to the unions' 'big day', the strike can be extended ‘from the bottom up’ by calling on workers in other unions and sectors to take unofficial action; instead of the usual pre-arranged rallies, we can be thinking in terms of genuine assemblies where everything can be discussed and we don't have to bow down to the slogans of the Left and unions.

The Left talks about 'mass struggles' only to undermine the possibility of their appearance. Any movement today, however small, that starts to discuss the needs of the struggle, the issues and obstacles that face the working class, and the longer term perspectives for the class struggle, has far more to offer than all the big talk of the unions and the Left.

Car 3/6/11

As we approached the 2010 general election in Britain the ICC reminded workers of what the experience of the Labour government had been. Not only was the gap between the wealth of the rich and the poverty of the poor much the same as it was 60 years ago: the impoverishment of a great many was worsening.

The statistics, official and unofficial, that are produced on an endless carousel, continue to show that the state of the capitalist economy means further deterioration in the conditions of life of the working class.

In March, for example, it was confirmed that, with official price inflation rising faster than official wage levels, real household income had fallen for the first time in 30 years, and by the greatest amount since 1977. It doesn't take a genius to work out that, with a pay freeze and pay cuts in the public sector, and the private sector imposing the 'discipline of the market', incomes are down and the real level of price rises is higher than official inflation.

The official acknowledgement of the decline in incomes is not only bad news for those whose incomes are directly under attack but also for the overall state of the economy. If, as some claim, consumer spending accounts for 65% of the economy, then lack of spending power, with real earnings falling and with cuts to benefits and tax credits, is going to lead to more businesses going under, more unemployment, and even less money in the economy.

The most recent forecasts of the OECD for the British economy have unsurprisingly been further revised down. More dramatically, another forecast, by the Resolution Foundation, suggests that average pay in 2015 will be no higher than in 2001. This puts into clearer focus the 'real household income' question. Continuous inflation over 14 years means a continuing erosion of living standards for those in work. For those out of work the many cuts in benefits will further worsen the quality of life for the unemployed.

Meanwhile, the difference between the top earners and the rest of the working population is back at 1918 levels, or approaching the situation in Victorian times – according to who is interpreting the figures. The top 0.1% has the same proportion of national income as it did in the 1940s. The income of those in the top 1.0% went up 13% in 2009-10. The annual income of the chief executives of the FTSE 100 companies went up 32 per cent last year to an average £3.5million. The income of the top 0.1% is now 145 times that of those on median full-time incomes. Between 1996-97 and 2007-8 the income of the bottom 50% went from £16,000 to £17,100; by 2019-20 this is predicted to reach £18,700, while the top 0.1% will average £901,600. Most of these increases in social inequality took place under a Labour government that was supposedly committed to 'social inclusion'.

The fact that lots of the big money is made in financial speculation, hedge funds, insurance, banking, property, land, advertising and all sorts of other dubious 'services' is particularly galling when you consider the meagre rewards given to those who work at the sharp end in health, education, construction, manufacturing, transport and other areas of activity from which people can directly benefit.

Every tranche of figures tends to confirm an ever-widening impoverishment. Those who claim that capitalism can be reformed so that all can benefit have no evidence for such a proposition. The development of the class struggle is the only basis for tackling the problem.

The class struggle isn't simply between the rich and the poor. The fundamental conflict in capitalist society is between the ruling bourgeoisie and the working class that produces all value in society. Workers' struggles don't consist in attacks on the rich as individuals but need to attack, dismantle and replace the basic social relations of capital (wage labour and production for profit) and the state which tries to keep them alive, despite the fact that they are the fundamental reason for the impoverishment of the vast majority of human beings.

Car 3/6/11

The police are playing an increasingly prominent role in the NHS and social services. As health services are more and more stretched there is a greater emphasis on maintaining public order.

One example of this is the increasing tendency to treat the mentally ill as if they were criminals. You can get a ridiculously sanitised idea of this from the police training video in which the handcuffs go on as part of a caring and calming process leading to the patient, who’s been causing a disturbance, being delivered to a place of safety. The reality is not so pretty – half a dozen police raid the home of someone who is already frightened and unable to cope, cuff him and take him away in an ambulance. Sometimes dawn raids are carried out as though the mentally ill individual is some sort of terrorist.

If the way the police deal with the mentally ill has become more systematically brutal in recent years, there never was any golden age within capitalism. Not only does the stress of daily life within capitalism directly trigger mental illness, capitalist society is also incapable of providing adequate support that might enable the mentally ill to continue to lead normal lives. Instead, it relies on repression and compulsory treatment (organised in Britain under the various ‘Sections’ of the Mental Health Act) - necessary because the most severely mentally ill cannot cope in what passes for ‘normal’ society within capitalism. As conditions worsen, what care there was tends to be progressively replaced with an inflexible and terrorising mode of enforcement prioritising naked repression.

In terms of treatment of the mentally ill, the closure of the old asylums in the 1960s and 70s was presented as – and believed to be – a great liberation from the old repressive impersonal institutions. But hopes were dashed by the paucity of provision and ‘care in the community’ was really about ‘neglect in the community’. It turned out to be just another cost cutting measure, enabled by the development of new drug treatments. But the overall issue of the treatment of mental illness throughout capitalism is beyond the scope of a short article.

Another example of the increased weight of repressive forces relates to the laxer rules for divulging patient information to the police. For decades it was believed that information was confidential unless the law (in the case of road accidents and terrorism) or a Court demanded it be divulged. Now the Department of Health’s Code of Practice on Confidentiality, 2003, states “Under the common law staff are permitted to disclose personal information in order to prevent and support detection, investigation and punishment of serious crime…” Furthermore, unlike the disclosure of patient information for medical research, or the disclosure of Oyster travel information to the police, there is no clear framework for making such decisions which are simply left to the particular organisation or individual members of front line staff who are likely to be most vulnerable to police pressure. There are not even any records kept of police requests for information or whether these were acceded to or refused. (See ‘Police access to NHS confidential medical records’ webjcli.ncl.ac.uk/2010/issue4/pdf/dickson4.pdf). [98]

The NHS is often seen as a protector, in contrast to private institutions which are presented as being solely driven by the profit motive. And we have seen two glaring examples of the dangers of the profit motive recently with the torture of people with learning disabilities at Winterbourne View care home; and with the example of Southern Cross which has put its residents’ homes at risk though a sell and lease back financial manoeuvre. However, while the private enterprises are motivated by their immediate profits, the state and its institutions – including the NHS – exist to ensure the smooth running of the capitalist system, to provide the best conditions for the private institutions to carry on making their profit. So it is hardly a surprise to find the same kind of cost cutting in the NHS that creates the conditions for the sort of scandal that occurred in the Castlebeck home. Nor is the NHS immune to leaseback financial manoeuvres – isn’t that exactly what the PFI (Private Finance Initiative) is?

The way a society treats the sick and vulnerable is one way in which it can be judged. On this standard, state and private capitalism are to be condemned.

Alex 3.6.11

Since March 19th,  there has been no let-up in the military intervention in Libya under the dual banner of the UN and NATO. But we needn’t worry: the last G8 summit has reaffirmed that the members of the coalition, putting their differences to one side, are 'determined to finish the job', having called on the Libyan leader to relinquish power because he has 'lost all legitimacy'. Russia has allied itself with the new anti-Gaddafi front, offering its assistance to mediate with the man it 'no longer regards as the leader of Libya'. As a sign of their support for the 'Arab revolutions' and thus also for the Libyan people, world leaders are split over pressing Saudi Arabia to put its hand in its pocket for a gift to the 'Arab revolutions' of 45 billion dollars.

Meanwhile, this beautiful outpouring of 'solidarity' towards the anti-Gaddafi insurgents united in the National Transitional Council of Libya, whose representatives spend more time in Western embassies than in the combat zones, seems incompatible with a war that has got more and more bogged down. Gaddafi’s forces, despite  being on the end of some 2700 aerial attacks, continue to pound the rebels, both in Benghazi and Misrata. We are far from seeing the eviction of the Libyan forces, denounced by the 'international community' for their cruelty, and from the advent of democracy that was the pretext for this new imperialist military adventure. The 'leader of the Green Revolution' is desperately clinging on to power. The country presents a spectacle of desolation, far away from the hopes and enthusiasm that were raised by the movements in Tunisia and Egypt. There are dozens of deaths every day in Misrata (according to the World Health Organisation) and carcasses of tanks and military vehicles litter the roads, while the towns are looking more and more like Beirut in the 1970s and 1980s. Evidently our hallowed representatives have continued castigating the Libyan government, demanding that 'those responsible for attacks against civilians be made accountable' and threatening them with being brought before the International Criminal Court for these crimes. It’s a familiar refrain based on dishonesty and hypocrisy: they are themselves responsible for deaths on both sides, including those of civilians. For those who advocate 'aerial attacks', it’s only those on the side of the 'baddies' that get killed, just like it is in the B movies. Let’s recall specific examples, such as the so-called 'targeted' attacks in the two wars in Iraq: they resulted in hundreds of thousands of 'collateral' deaths; there’s the situation in Afghanistan where logistical 'errors' have regularly led to whole villages being devastated. The list of civilian deaths that the great powers are responsible for is very long – though that’s not to minimise the part played by the small states.

Thus, the commitment of the last G8 summit to increase military pressure on Gaddafi by deciding to deploy French and British attack helicopters to be 'closer to the ground' is leading towards a longer term presence 'on the ground'. If the military intervention was launched on a rather unsure and unsettled basis, with the United States dragging its feet, along with Italy, and with Russia opposed, it now seems the goal is clear: to fight over the spoils. The Libyan people, that all the champions of Western democracy have come to 'help' and to 'rescue', are now suffering the same plight as those suffering under the yoke of any dictator or from international terrorism. The future, in the post-Gaddafi period, will be one of a more or less simmering  confrontations between the various  Libyan tribal groups, supported by the various regional powers, with the motto: every man for himself and all against all.

And the question that is posed today is whether the same fate is soon to face the Syrian population, which has seen at least a thousand killed since the anti-Assad protests began there two months ago, with tens of thousands imprisoned by the repressive forces of the Damascus government. Torture, beatings and murders are the daily lot of the Syrian population: in fact the same brew which in Libya has so 'offended' the representatives of the European Union. Registering their half-hearted objections to the 'bloody repression in Syria at the UN Security Council, France, Germany, Great Britain and Portugal called for 'international sanctions' to be imposed on the Syrian regime, which is about as frightening for it right now as the story of the big bad wolf.

Unlike what happened with Libya, the UN is far from reaching any agreement and adopting a resolution that would commit it to military action against Syria. First, because the Syrian state has a military machine much larger than Gaddafi’s, and because the region is far more significant strategically than the terrain around Libya. And this is the true measure of the Western powers’ support for the 'democratic Arab revolutions'. Their words gush from the mouths of patent liars who have supported the Assad family regime for many years.

The imperialist stakes concerning Syria are of the highest order. Neighbour and ally of Iraq where the United States is still struggling to find a credible military exit, Syria is also increasingly supported by Iran, which in the recent events has supplied it with seasoned militias that have a long experience of carrying out massive repression against the population.

The world’s leading power cannot afford to find itself in a new quagmire in Syria, a quagmire that would discredit it still further in the Arab countries at a time when it is having more and more difficulty calming Israeli-Palestinian tensions, which are being fuelled by Israel and Syria in particular. In addition, the momentary bonus achieved in the world arena by the United States - and particularly Obama, virtually assuring him the prestige for his future re-election – thanks to the elimination of bin Laden, which the media hyped as “washing away the discredit of September 11”, does not mean the eradication of terrorism, which has been proclaimed as the great goal of the American crusade for the last ten years. On the contrary, this situation exposes the world to a growing upsurge in deadly attacks, as the recent bloody attacks in Pakistan and Marrakech were quick to demonstrate. Everywhere there is a multiplication of military conflicts, a headlong rush into imperialist tensions heightened by the rivalry between the big powers.

Mulan 28/5/11

(Extract from the resolution on the international situation, 19th ICC Congress)

These failures of the USA have not discouraged Washington from pursuing the offensive policy which it has been carrying out since the beginning of the 1990s and which has made it the main factor of instability on the world scene. As the resolution from the last congress put it: “Faced with this situation, Obama and his administration will not be able to avoid continuing the warlike policies of their predecessors.... if Obama has envisaged a US withdrawal from Iraq, it is in order to reinforce its involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan”. This was illustrated recently with the execution of Bin Laden by an American commando raid on Pakistani territory. This 'heroic' operation obviously had an electoral element as we are now a year and a half away from the US elections. In particular it was aimed at countering the criticism of the Republicans, who have reproached Obama with being soft in affirming US hegemony on the military level; these criticisms had been stepped up during the intervention in Libya where the leadership of the operation was left to the Franco-British tandem.  It also meant that after using Bin Laden in the role of Bad Guy for nearly ten years it was time to get rid of him in order not to appear completely impotent.  In doing so the USA proved that it is the only power with the military, technological and logistical means to carry out this kind of operation, precisely at the time when France and Britain are having difficulty in carrying out their anti-Gaddafi operation. It notified the world that the US would not hesitate to violate the national 'sovereignty' of an 'ally', that it intends to fix the rules of the game wherever it judges it necessary.  Finally it succeeded in obliging the governments of the world to salute the value of this exploit, often with considerable reluctance.
 

Banners at protests in Madrid made fun of Greek ‘apathy’ in the face of the austerity attacks they have already suffered and those which are to come. In reality strikes and demonstrations have been continuing in Greece, but a new wave of ‘indignant’ protests was soon ignited, in Athens and in towns across the country, explicitly following the Spanish example. At the time of writing this has been going on for more than a week.

The bourgeois press was quick to notice that there was something different in the demonstrations. The Greek daily Kathimerini (27/5/11) observed “the absence of political parties, unions, violence and traditional slogans from the protests”. In a country with very active unions and political parties this is very significant as there has been no absence of ‘official’ protest from the Left against the ‘socialist’ PASOK government of George Papandreou.

What’s also been different has been the character of the protests, which have often taken the form of assemblies where all points of view have been present. On 25 May in Athens’ main Syntagma Square, for example, there was a solid three hours of discussion in which 83 people spoke. Some spoke in terms of democracy and patriotism, but others put forward the importance of the self-organisation of the working class and the need for a revolutionary struggle. There were also few Greek flags on display at the start of this wave of protests, although the number has clearly increased over time.

A difference with the protests in Spain is that in Greece there has been a wide range of ages involved, far more workers and their families, with not such a focus on the young unemployed. This is understandable as the range of attacks on living standards in Greece is so extensive. The mainstream Kathimerini (27/5/11) states the obvious: “Decisions, it seems, are being taken to satisfy the pressing demands of banks, markets and creditors rather than to safeguard the interests of the people. It’s enough to make even the most patient person indignant”.

The Greek Deputy Prime Minister denounced the movement as “a movement without an ideology or organization, which bases itself on only one feeling, that of rage”. Against this view Kathimerini (31/5/11) does distinguish something more than anger as “at these rallies we see a large part of society come together, most of whom will say that they don’t see any of our politicians as being fit to govern in opinion polls and who will opt to abstain from general elections. Their physical presence, even if it is without a statement, is authentically political”.

Opposition to the movement has taken many forms. When, for example, protesters prevented MPs leaving parliament (until extra police detachments arrived) the Speaker of the Greek Parliament warned that “history has shown that a climate of across-the-board rejection of parliamentary democracy has had tragic consequences wherever it has been expressed”. In Greek terms, from a PASOK spokesman, such warnings should be taken as references to the Right-wing dictatorships of Pangalos, Kondyles and Metaxas in the 1920s and 30s, and the Colonels’ regime from 1967-74. The intention is to obscure the role of democracy and PASOK in particular at the heart of the repressive Greek capitalist state.

Other critics of the protests include the main Greek Stalinist party (the KKE) which says (25/5/11) that “a planned people’s struggle is necessary”. In an interview its General Secretary spoke of “certain outbursts which have no organisation, are not rooted in the workplaces, the industries, either in the private or public sector, they have no basic political direction” and that “without wishing to underestimate the intentions of many ordinary people to protest against the continual downgrading of their standard of living, it is more than certain that mobilisations which seek to release a sense of frustration are more easy to manipulate”. She said that the KKE is always sympathetic to “attempts by people to find a way to express themselves” but, in reality, workers’ experience shows that the Stalinists prefer situations which they can manipulate, the one day strike, or the formal demonstration under their slogans.

In Greece the cult of militarist actions which affects a significant part of the anarchist milieu also means that there are those who will criticise anything that doesn’t involve violent attacks on cops or fascists. For them the latest Greek protests are ‘pacifist’ and ‘reactionary’. It’s true that any movement can potentially go in a number of directions. The claims of nationalism and democracy echo throughout all the media of the bourgeoisie. The possibilities of reforming decaying capitalism are still put forward at every opportunity by the Left. The unions pretend that they are the true forms for the advance of workers’ struggles, rather than for their sabotage. And the impotent posturing of the advocates of bombings and shootings still attracts those who can’t see the potential for mass working class struggles.

In Greece many of the assemblies have committed themselves to joining with workers in struggle, and to keeping the movement under their direct control. They are not the only ideas put forward. They might amount to very little. But, following on from the protests in Spain, and all the discussions on the significance of these movements, we have seen another spark of a response to capitalism’s unavoidable austerity.

Car 2/6/11

The discussion on the ICC’s French internet forum has been particularly animated and passionate these last few weeks around a tragic event: the bloody crushing of the insurgents at Kronstadt.

Ninety years ago, in 1921, the workers stood up to the Bolshevik Party demanding, amongst other things, the restoration of real power to the soviets. The Bolshevik Party then took the terrible decision to repress them.

A participant in this forum debate called Youhou sent us a letter which we warmly welcome and which we publish here below. She makes both the effort to synthesize the different points of view coming out of the posts and to clearly take a position.

Here, it’s not at all our aim to close the discussion. On the contrary, it seems to us that in the spirit of the comrade, her text is just one stage in the debate. Finally, we agree with her in the last lines when she says: “Join in this passionate debate! Fraternal debate is our best weapon faced with the ideology of the bourgeoisie”.

That’s why we are not responding here to comrade Youhou. Not only do we share the essential points of her analysis but this debate needs to carry on. To read the position of the ICC on this tragic event, we refer our readers to two of our articles:

a) ‘The repression of Kronstadt in March 1921: A tragic error of the workers’ movement’ (https://en.internationalism.org/book/export/html/117 [107])

b) ‘1921: Understanding Kronstadt’ International Review 104 (https://en.internationalism.org/ir/104_kronstadt.html [108])

On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the repression of Kronstadt, a very lively discussion has just taken place on the ICC’s French forum which merits some comments. The discussion is very interesting because it turns out to be very representative of the positions within the working class on this subject. The crushing of the working class revolt of the Kronstadt soviet by the revolutionary army on the orders of the Bolshevik Party in 1921 is approached without taboo and without any stilted language on the forum. The will to draw lessons from this massacre, so important for the future revolution, brings together all the comrades on this forum and confirms what Rosa Luxemburg wrote on the Russian revolution: “it is clear that only a deep critique, and not a superficial apology, can draw from these events the treasures of lessons that they carry”. For decades this debate has been marked by two diametrically opposed tendencies: the Trotskyists who think that the repression was a 'tragic necessity' and the anarchists who think that the Bolshevik Party, as a formally constituted party, contained within itself the germs of this degeneration, and that this calls into question the very necessity for the existence of a party of the working class.

Was it an 'error' or a tragic 'necessity'?

Here’s one of the ideas put forward by Jeannotrouge: “The proletariat cannot constitute itself into a class and then, after the revolution, into a dominant class without a tenacious political struggle within itself, against bourgeois influences borne by different so-called ‘workers’ institutions, organisations and parties, a struggle which can only involve episodes of confrontation and violence”.

Mouhamed, a little more nuanced, explains that the Bolsheviks could not have done otherwise.
But on this point, I fully agree with Tibo and Underthegun: the crushing of Kronstadt did not go in the direction of the revolution. This massacre was absolutely not necessary and precipitated the defeat of the Russian revolution. Why? These were workers that were killed and massacred and not some white-collar counter-revolutionaries as Trotsky himself conceded: “We waited as long as possible for our blind comrades, the sailors, to open their eyes and see where the mutiny was  leading them”. Communist society cannot be born from fratricidal struggles: such a massacre cannot be a weapon of revolutionaries. Tibo correctly says: “Yes, we have a ‘finally human’ world to build. And that cannot be based on the bodies of workers killed by other workers”. I would add: and above all in the manner of taking their families hostage and condemning the Red Army soldiers to death if they refused to fire on them. Class violence is certainly necessary, but for the working class it is determined by the final aim, which is the liberation of humanity from the yoke of exploitation. Comrades disagreeing with this point rightly recalled the support the Bolsheviks gave to the working class. The party, under the leadership of Lenin, had never betrayed the interests of the proletariat and by refusing all political alliances to form a mass party, it made the choice to remain a minority among the workers and tireless repeated the necessity not to have any confidence in the Social Democrats. The party defended internationalism to the hilt. The Bolsheviks supported the workers in their struggle and stayed at their side even when they knew that they were making mistakes.

How did the Bolsheviks commit such a crime?

Comrade Mouhamed writes: “For me, if there had been a world revolution, there would have been no Kronstadt, nor anything like it”. It is true that the isolation of Russia is a fundamental cause of the downfall of the revolution. Many workers were killed in the civil war; the soviets were partially depopulated and were to a large extent limited to military committees, with a few members deciding which strategies to adopt. When the President of the Bund (Jewish Communist Party) asked at the 7th Soviet Congress what the Central Committee was doing, Trotsky responded “The CC is at the front!”. Added to this was the draconian food rationing, a result of the starvation in the Ukraine, Russia’s bread basket. The involvement of the German proletariat, by infecting other European sections of the proletariat, then the world, would have given the Russian revolution a second breath. In its pamphlet on the period of transition, the ICC says: “But the worse danger of the counter-revolution didn’t come from the ‘Kulaks’ or from the workers lamentably massacred at Kronstadt, nor from the ‘White plots’ that the Bolsheviks saw behind this revolt. It was over the bodies of the German workers massacred in 1919 that the counter-revolution prevailed and it was through the bureaucratic apparatus of what was supposed to be the ‘semi-state’ of the proletariat that it was most powerfully expressed”. With the wearing out of the soviets, the foundation stone of the dictatorship of the proletariat; with the revolution hemmed in by the national frontiers of Russia, the Bolshevik Party found itself faced with choices that were very heavy with consequences and chose the worst: physically eliminating their class brothers.

The isolation of Russia in the process of the world revolution partly explains the attitude of the Bolsheviks but doesn’t explain why the soviets turned against the party: if they hadn’t rebelled, then the question wouldn’t even be posed. As I maintain, along with Underthegun, we very clearly see in the demands of the Kronstadt soviet (“all power to the soviets”), but also in the waves of strikes that hit Moscow and Petrograd (all three regions that had been at the avant-garde of the October insurrection), that a gulf was opening up between the party and the working class. This is a radio broadcast aimed at the “workers of the entire world” recorded on March 6, 1921: “We are partisans of soviet power, not of parties. We are for the free elections of representatives of the worker masses. The soviet puppets manipulated by the Communist Party have always been deaf to our needs and demands; we have only received one response: bullets (...) Comrades! Not only do they mislead you, but they deliberately misrepresent the truth and defame us in the most despicable fashion (...) In Kronstadt, all power is exclusively in the hands of revolutionary sailors, soldiers and workers (...) Long live the revolutionary proletariat and peasantry! Long live the power of the freely elected soviets!”. Whether one agrees with the demands or not, it is incontestable that the soviets directly put themselves against a party that they henceforth saw as an enemy. For my part, I think that the assimilation of the party into the state, a reactionary and conservative organ by nature, led the Bolsheviks to distance themselves from the class. In the end, it was isolation within isolation. The Party was both judge and jury and thus couldn’t understand the revolt of their comrades in the soviets. Underthegun rightly says: “the ‘Bolshevik government’ is really the problem of this isolated revolution which was besieged from all sides. The urgency of the situation, the multiple dangers, led the Bolsheviks, from 1918 and Brest-Litovsk, to secure the exercise of power. But (...) the dictatorship of the proletariat is not the dictatorship of the party”. The party does not just represent the interests of a particular soviet or of a part of the working class: it must defend the interests of the world proletariat, and it is precisely because the party became confounded with the state that it lacked the clearsightedness to give orientations based on the interests of the world proletariat. Caught in the trap of the immediate perspective linked to the organisation of the revolution, it lost sight of the final aim: the liberation of humanity. That’s why it wasn’t a passing error but one of failing to understand that the dictatorship of the proletariat must be exercised by the soviets and this within a world revolution.  Here are the material and objective causes  of the crime of fratricide, but it is clear that contrary to what Prodigy, Jeannotrouge and Mouhamed think, the material conditions they talk about are incomplete if they don’t integrate the ethical dimension.

The question 'has one the right to draw up a moral balance-sheet of this drama?' has been debated for a long time.

Underthegun insists a lot on the fact that there is no determinism and that among revolutionaries within the party, some, in identically urgent conditions, made the choice of defending their brothers at Kronstadt. Lenin and Trotsky had the choice and made theirs the massacre of the workers at Kronstadt. In my opinion, the question merits being posed but comrades Mouhamed and Prodigy object in their posts that: “a marxist analysis does not consist of making a moral balance-sheet, but of making one that’s objective and materialist. It’s not a question of condemning, of saying that it’s immoral or not. It’s a matter of drawing lessons without humanist sentiments”. A moral balance-sheet and contextual analysis are not opposed but complement each other. Morality is not the Manichean morality of the bourgeoisie, it is the fruit of a long evolution coming from the fact that man has chosen civilisation and expressed itself in the preservation of the species through solidarity: it is thus inherent in the material conditions. The Bolshevik Party had degenerated and found itself in unprecedented situations for which there was no recipe. Then, yes, it chose the path which led to its ruin and, no, the crushing of Kronstadt did not go in the direction of the revolution. Could it have done otherwise? Perhaps. Should it have done so? Certainly! Why did some order this massacre and others oppose it? Simply because faced with the same situation consciousness is not homogenous, the link between consciousness and material conditions is not mechanical. That’s why we cannot look on the repression of Kronstadt with the eye of an unfailing morality forged during nine decades of proletarian struggles. Revolutionaries will be faced with equally essential choices in future struggles and Kronstadt is a sombre 'treasury of lessons' because its unfortunate outcome underlines one essential lesson: no violence within the working class! The end doesn’t justify the means, but it does determine them.

We have not been able to debate this question without clarifying our positions on marxism and also Trotskyism and anarchism. Join in this passionate debate! Fraternal debate is our best weapon faced with bourgeois ideology.

Fraternally, Youhou

It is very painful for us to tell our readers and contacts about the death of our comrade Enzo on Sunday 15 May. Although we knew he was ill, nothing prepared us for such a sudden and tragic end. The news of his death hit everyone like a bolt out of the blue, leaving us stunned and also with the regret that we were not able to be with him in the last moments of his life.

A number of contacts in Italy knew Enzo and have expressed the same sorrow about his death. They knew him not just as a communist militant but as someone who, in his political activity, in his interventions at public meetings, in discussions, was so well able to express his own pain at the sufferings capitalism inflicts on the human species, often with tears in his eyes. Enzo was a young proletarian who had lived through exploitation, redundancy and unemployment but who was at the same time convinced that it is possible to react, to fight against all this barbarism and build a truly human society. His militant activity in the ICC was always characterised by this conviction, and his determination, even in very difficult circumstances, to contribute to this fight. His death is a loss for the ICC and for the whole working class.

We want to convey our deepest solidarity with Enzo’s family, his parents, and his friends in a very bitter moment for us all, and to reaffirm our determination to carry on with the struggle for a human society which Enzo stood for.

ICC 19/5/11

This is the concluding part of a contribution aimed at clarifying the ICC’s analysis of the main anarchist groups in Britain. (The first part was published in the previous issue of World Revolution [114]).

7) The 1950s have been described as a “period of somnolence” for anarchism in Britain[1]. But the upheavals of the 1960s brought a revival of libertarian ideas on various fronts, for example as a radical wing of the CND protests or as an element in the emergence of ‘movements’ around sexual politics, the environment, and daily life in general. British anarchism in the late 60s and early 70s also had a brief flirtation with Propaganda by the Deed in the form of the Angry Brigade. Also important was the work of the Solidarity group descended from Socialisme ou Barbarie, and like the latter initiated by people who had broken away from Trotskyism. Though closer to councilism than anarchism, Solidarity’s publications had a big impact on a much wider anarchist/libertarian audience[2]. In 1963 a new Anarchist Federation of Britain was set up to bring together all the various strands of anarchist activity, but as Nick Heath (a founding member of the present-day AF) recalls in his essay on the anarchist movement since the ‘60s[3] this was not even a Federation but a mosaic of contradictory tendencies from anarcho-syndicalists and anarchist-communists to individualists, pacifists and ‘lifestylers’. Heath even uses the term “swamp” to describe the weight of anarcho-liberalism and faddism of all kinds in the AFB.

8) Under the impact of the international revival of workers’ struggles after May 1968, there was a reaction against this swamp and various attempts to develop a class struggle anarchist tendency with a more effective form of organisation. The Organisation of Revolutionary Anarchists, formed around 1970,was an attempt to put this effort into practice, mainly by relating to the The Organizational Platform of the Libertarian Communists [115] produced in 1926 by Arshinov, Ida Mett, Makhno and other fugitives from the defeat in Russia. The Platform had, quite correctly, argued that one of the reasons for the crushing of resistance to the counter-revolution in Russia had been that those doing the resisting, and in particular the anarchists, had lacked any organisational and programmatic coherence. This was fundamentally a healthy class response to the problem of opposing the degeneration of the revolution. Unfortunately, the history of platformism seems to have been one in which the search for such a coherence has led to the bourgeois consistency of leftism, generally in its Trotskyist form. The fate of ORA underlined the strength of this difficulty, with a large part of its elements sliding towards different forms of leftism – some towards Trotskyism pure and simple, some towards a more libertarian brand of the same thing, as exemplified by the Libertarian Communist Group of the 1970s, part of which fused with the neo-Maoists of Big Flame. More recent forms of this kind of ‘anarcho-Trotskyism’ include the Anarchist Workers Group [116], which supported the Saddam regime against ‘imperialism’ in the first Gulf war, and the current Workers’ Solidarity Movement [117] in Ireland which doesn’t hesitate to call for the nationalisation of Irish resources and pledges support for the ‘anti-imperialist’ (i.e. nationalist) struggle in Ireland.

9) In the middle to late 80s, there were two main developments in the organised anarchist movement: the spectacular rise of Class War, and the more modest but ultimately more substantial development of the Anarchist Communist Federation, today the AF. On Class War, Nick Heath’s summary of these developments, from his essay mentioned above, can be quoted in full: “Class War, which had emerged as a group around the paper of the same name in the mid 80s, transformed itself into the Class War Federation in 1986. The latter group was made up of activists who rejected the pacifism, lifestylism and hippyism that were dominant tendencies within British anarchism. In this it represented a healthy kick up the arse of that movement. Again, like the Stop the War actions, it rejected apathy and routinism. It groped towards organisational solutions in its development of a Federation. But it was trapped in a populism that was sometimes crass, and in a search for stunts that would bring it to the attention of the media. In its search for such publicity, it went so far as to immerse itself in populist electoralism with its involvement in the Kensington by-election. These contradictions were eventually to lead to the break-up of the old CWF, with some offering a sometimes trenchant critique of their own politics up to that time. However, no organisational alternative was offered beyond a conference in Bradford that attempted to reach out to other anarchists and to offer a non-sectarian approach at unity of those seriously interested in advancing the movement. Alas, these moves were stillborn and many of those who had offered critiques of the old ways of operating dropped out of activity altogether. A rump remained that has carried on maintaining Class War as both a grouping and a paper in the same old way”.

The next quote is from ‘ACF- The first ten years’: “The shipwreck of anarchist communism in the late 70s meant that there was no anarchist communist organisation, not even a skeletal one, that could relate to the riots of 1981 and to the miners strike of 1984-5 as well as to mobilisations like the Stop the City actions of 1984. But in autumn 1984 two comrades, one a veteran of the ORA/AWA/LCG, had returned from France where they had been living and working and where they had been involved in the libertarian communist movement. A decision was made to set up the Libertarian Communist Discussion Group (LCDG) with the aim of creating a specific organisation. Copies of the Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists, left over from the AWA/LCG days, were distributed to bookshops, with a contact address for the Anarchist-Communist Discussion Group (ACDG). Progress was slow, until contact with the comrade who produced Virus, a duplicated magazine that defined itself as ‘Anarcho-socialist’. This comrade had broken with the politics of the SWP and rapidly moved in an anarchist direction. Apart from its sense of humour, Virus was defined to a certain extent by its critiques of Leninism and of Marxism-not surprising considering the comrade’s past experiences. From issue 5 Virus became the mouthpiece of the LCDG, and there were a series of articles on libertarian organisation. Other people were attracted to the group, and it transformed itself into the ACDG, which proclaimed a long-term aim of setting up a national anarchist-communist organisation. This came much sooner than expected, with the growth of the group, and a splinter from the Direct Action Movement, Syndicalist Fight, merging with the group. In March 1986 the Anarchist Communist Federation was officially founded, with an agreed set of aims and principles and constitutional structure that had been developed in the previous six months”[4].

10) Given that some of the elements involved in the formation of the AF had been through the route which led from the ORA to the neo- leftist Libertarian Communist Group, it is not altogether surprising that the ICC originally saw the Anarchist Communist Federation as another expression of this leftist type of anarchism[5], especially because from the start many of its activities appeared to offer little more than an anarchist gloss on a whole plethora of leftist campaigns, not least its involvement in anti-fascism. However, what this assessment missed was the fact that the ACF contained components that indicated an attempt to avoid a complete descent into leftism. The desertion to Trotskyism by some of ORA’s founding members did not go unopposed at the time and resulted in splits that gave rise to various short-lived groups such as the Anarchist Workers’ Association; but perhaps more importantly, those who formed ACF tried to draw some key lessons from this whole experience, not least on the questions of unions and national liberation: “What should be remarked upon is the quantum leap that the ACF made in its critique of the unions. A critique of anarcho-syndicalism was deepened and strengthened. At the same time the ACF broke with the ideas of rank-and-filism which had characterised the ORA/AWA/LCG period, as well as any false notions about national liberation and self-determination” (‘ACF – the first ten years’). At the same time, rather than dogmatically adhering to the ‘platformist’ tradition, the ACF saw a number of different currents as part of its inheritance, as can be seen in the series of articles ‘In the tradition’ that began in Organise 52. These included the 26 platform, the Friends of Durruti, Socialisme ou Barbarie, situationism and the left communists of Germany, Holland and Britain. But lacking a real understanding of the internationalist tendencies in anarchism, and convinced that the ACF had emerged out of leftism without ever really questioning its origins, we responded to these developments by dismissing the ACF’s interest in the communist left as a form of parasitism, even though the ACF hardly fulfilled our definition of a parasitic organisation[6]. These false assumptions were reinforced by the ACF’s decision to drop the ‘communist’ from its name at the end of the ‘90s.

11) In London in 1896, at a stormy Congress of the Socialist International, the application of the anarchist delegations to join the organisation was rejected, marking the definitive exclusion of the anarchists from the International. The vote to exclude them was conducted on a basis that has been disputed in some quarters, and a number of the socialists present in body or spirit (including Keir Hardie and William Morris) opposed the decision. This is not the place to evaluate these events; but they do illustrate the difficult and often traumatic relationship between the anarchist and Marxist wings of the workers’ movement, which had only recently been through the split between Marx and Bakunin at the end of the First International. Moments of attraction and repulsion continued to occur throughout the history of the movement. The tremendous vistas opened up by the revolutionary wave that began in 1917 also gave rise to hopes that the traditional split between Marxist and anarchist revolutionaries would be healed, with anarcho-syndicalists attending the first congresses of the Third International and anarchists fighting alongside Bolsheviks in the overthrow of bourgeois power in Russia. These hopes were to be dashed very quickly, to a considerable extent because the Bolsheviks, imprisoned in the new soviet state, began suppressing other expressions of the revolutionary movement within Russia, most notably the anarchists. It’s certainly true that some of the anarchists – such as those who attempted to blow up the Bolshevik Moscow HQ in 1918 – lacked all sense of revolutionary responsibility, but the repression meted out by the Bolsheviks encompassed clearly proletarian trends like the anarcho-syndicalists around Maximoff. The world-wide triumph of the counter-revolution then reinforced the isolation and separation of the remaining revolutionary minorities, although there were moments of convergence, for example between the council communists and some expressions of anarchism, between the Italian left and the group around Camillo Berneri in Spain (Camillo was the father of Marie Louise Berneri, who had been active in the War Commentary group in the UK, as mentioned in the first part of this article). But the role of the CNT in Spain, and the overt participation of some anarchist tendencies in the Resistance and even in the official armies of the ‘Liberation’, increased the divide between anarchism and the marxists, particularly those who had descended from the Italian communist left, who were inclined to conclude that anarchism as a whole had gone the way of Trotskyism in definitively abandoning internationalism, and thus the workers’ movement, during the war[7].

12) The battles of May 1968 were often fought under the black and red banner – symbolically expressing an attempt to recover what was genuinely revolutionary in both the anarchist and Marxist traditions. A number of the groups that formed the ICC had begun their lives in anarchism of one kind or another, so from the beginning of our organisation there was an understanding that anarchism was anything but a monolithic bloc and that many of the new generation, in its fervent rejection of social democracy and Stalinism, would initially be attracted to the ideals of anarchism. At the same time, this more open attitude was accompanied by a need to mark ourselves off as a distinct tendency with coherent positions; and under the influence of political immaturity and a lack of historical knowledge this necessary response was often marred by a somewhat sectarian attitude. The ICC’s debate about proletarian groups in the late 70s was the first conscious attempt to go beyond these sectarian reactions. But the proletarian political milieu went through a phase of crisis at the beginning of the 1980s and this included the ‘Chenier’ affair in the ICC. To a considerable extent the crisis that affected the ICC had its epicentre in Britain, and its aftermath created a wall of suspicion around the ICC, most notably among the libertarian currents who tended to see our efforts to defend the organisation as expressions of an innate Stalinism. This wall has never really been breached. Despite moments of dialogue[8], the relationship between the ICC and the anarchist/libertarian milieu in Britain has been particularly difficult: by the end of the 1990s, the ICC had been expelled from the No War But The Class War group formed in response to the Balkans war and banned from AF meetings in London. It must also be admitted that the ICC’s own errors contributed to this poor state of affairs: in particular, a hasty dismissal of Direct Action and the AF as leftist groups, based on an ignorance of their historical background, and a schematic and heavy-handed application of the notion of political parasitism in the context of the NWBTCW group. At the same time, the anarchists’ suspicious and sometimes uncomradely attitude towards the ICC  has deeper roots in history and theory, above all in relation to the question of the organisation of revolutionaries, and these roots also need to be thoroughly examined. Despite all these obstacles, the appearance since the early 2000s of a new generation of elements attracted to revolutionary ideas, largely mediated through libertarian communism, has provided the possibility of a fresh beginning. Through our participation in online discussion forums like libcom.org, it became evident to us that there are numerous comrades calling themselves anarchists or libertarians who defend proletarian positions on unions, nationalism, and imperialist war, and that this includes members of groups or traditions we would have in the past dismissed as leftist, such as the AF and Solfed. This led to a re-evaluation on our part, reinforced by our international discussions, and even common work, with groups like the CNT-AIT in France and KRAS in Russia, or newer anarchist groups in Latin America. This re-evaluation has been welcomed by some anarchists, although many continue to see it as an opportunist ‘recruiting’ tactic’ on our part, and our relations with this milieu still goes through some alarming ups and downs. But for us, the maintenance of an active dialogue with the proletarian elements in anarchism is the only basis for overcoming the suspicions which exist between the Marxist and anarchist wings of the revolutionary movement, and arriving at a sound basis for common activity in spite of our differences.

Amos, April 2011.

There is no evidence for an economic recovery in the UK.

In a few days at the end of June a range of High Street names showed what effect the continuing crisis is having. Thorntons is closing 120 and maybe up to 180 shops. Carpetright is closing 94 stores. Jane Norman is shutting 33 shops. TJHughes is looking at going into administration. Habitat is going into administration and closing most of its shops. Clinton Cards is to be restructured. Lloyds TSB is cutting another 15,000 jobs, making more than 40,000 since 2009. Inflation is running at 4.5% (5.2% on the higher RPI measure), there’s a public sector pay freeze, the state pension age is rising. Council workers in Southampton, Shropshire and Neath Port Talbot have faced the ‘choice’ of pay cuts or job losses.

And it’s not just here in Britain. While no-one can be unaware of the draconian austerity plans in Greece and mass unemployment in Spain, the working class faces the same worsening conditions in economic giants such as Germany where real household incomes have fallen over the last 10 years. No section of the working class is spared.

So how do we respond to this situation? Specifically, how does the working class respond faced with not just inflation but also declining real wages, the threat of job losses, working harder and longer when in work?

After the public sector protest strikes on 30 June can we draw any lessons about how to struggle, or how not to struggle? 750,000 teachers and civil servants from 4 unions, NUT, UCU, ATL and PCS, on strike, 30,000 marching through London, many of them on strike for the first time in their lives. Following on from the student struggles against increased fees last winter and the demonstration of half a million on 26 March we can see there is real discontent in the working class. When you hear Dave Prentis saying that the disputes on pensions are the “biggest since the general strike” it sounds impressive – until you realise that Unison, the union he runs, was not striking and so was instructing its members to cross picket lines. The unions are dividing us.

We reject the idea that we fight among ourselves over the declining resources the ruling class is willing to spend to maintain the working class (pay, pensions, benefits, education, health). For instance, the division between public and private sector workers, the question about whether private sector employees should pay more tax to maintain public sector pensions. Unions do not reject this notion, they negotiate about it. They have already accepted a move away from final salary pensions for new civil service entrants. We cannot allow our struggles to be reduced to a walk-on part to support union negotiation or they will be able to impose anything they like.

We reject the notion that we should campaign to get rid of this particular LibCon government – whoever is in office will impose the cuts because that is the logic of capitalism in crisis, as the Labour government was doing until May last year.

Developing a sense of being part of the working class

While the unions were in overall control of the strikes and demonstrations on 30 June, workers were trying to understand and draw lessons from the experience. On the picket lines and demonstrations they were discussing. Those on strike for the first time were gaining experience, those who remembered the strikes of the 1970s and 1980s were remembering what a picket line means. On the one hand it is a real effort to persuade other workers to join the strike, on the other it is a source of strength and solidarity for the workers taking part. All made extremely difficult when the law and the unions enforce token picket lines of no more than 6 people.

At the same time strikers and their supporters were drawing inspiration from the struggles going on elsewhere in the world. However distorted the media reporting, workers remember the struggles about pension reform in France last year, which became a focus for discontent about all the attacks, and have been particularly inspired by the struggles in Tunisia, Egypt, Spain and Greece. At rallies any mention of these struggles got a cheer. The fact is that when workers go into struggle they recognise other struggles on the other side of the world as their own.

In this we see, in embryo, in small scale discussions by a minority on picket lines and demonstrations, two of the most important strengths of the working class – its history and its internationalism.

The lessons of both the struggles of the 1970s and 1980s and the international struggles going on today tell us about the need for the unity of the working class. For instance when we look back at the most important struggles in the 1980s we see that some of the strongest sectors of the working class of the time, with widespread sympathy here and abroad, such as the miners and then the printers at Wapping, were defeated. This was not for lack of militancy and determination, but because they allowed their struggle to be confined within the bounds of their industry, their union, and its demands.

Where workers have been able to extend their struggles across different sectors they have been immensely powerful. In Poland in 1980 price rises were withdrawn and the government fell. In France in 2006 the threat that workers would support the students struggling against the CPE not only made the French government withdraw the measure but the German government withdrew similar legislation. The struggles going on internationally with the holding of assemblies show the importance of discussion among workers, including the unemployed and future workers, all meeting together.

Discussion of the lessons of past struggles here and abroad is the best preparation we can make for future struggles as the present round of austerity measures begins to bite.  

Alex 2/7/11

Since Cameron’s Coalition picked up the baton from Labour in making brutal attacks on public sector workers and state-funded services a plethora of ‘anti-cuts alliances’ have appeared around the country. In general, these alliances are conglomerations of leftist groups, trade unions or their representatives, and Labour Party members (in some cases including Labour councillors). In other words, most anti-cuts alliances seem to be a typical attempt to build a ‘united front’.

However, in addition to the forces of the capitalist left, people and groups with sincere revolutionary aims are often to drawn to these groups in the hope of mobilising a struggle against capitalism. For example, the Anarchist Federation of Bristol is affiliated with the Bristol & District Anti-Cuts Alliance. We think this strategy is deeply flawed and in this article we will attempt to explain the theoretical basis for our position. We hope to present a more concrete analysis of specific anti-cuts groups at a later date.

Political organs and organs of struggle

Throughout its history, the working class has attempted to build two principle types of organisation: organs of mass struggle and political organs. The first type, broadly speaking, attempts to regroup workers on a class basis in order to take common action in their common interest. In the nineteenth century, the typical expression of this tendency was the trade union. Union struggles enabled workers to engage in broad struggles aimed at winning better pay, safer working conditions and reduced working hours.

Alongside unions, class conscious workers also formed political parties and organisations. Ranging from small revolutionary groups such as the Communist League and the First International to the mass parties of the Social Democratic era, these political organs had two specific tasks. Firstly, they were centres of political and theoretical discussion and clarification – the vigorous debates, for example, around Rosa Luxemburg’s book The Accumulation of Capital in 1913. Secondly, they also took the class struggle directly into the capitalist political arena, fighting for working class representation in bourgeois parliaments in order to win reforms.

In the era of capitalist expansion it was possible, to a certain degree, for the ruling class to accommodate working class demands without this threatening to destabilise the entire economic and political system. This didn’t mean that the class struggle was without upheaval. The wave of attempted revolutions across Europe in 1848 demonstrated the potential threat of the working class even it had not yet acquired the maturity to struggle independently. Moreover, the more lucid factions of the bourgeoisie, especially those around the capitalist state, realised that the system had to restrain its more rapacious appetites in order to avoid literally exploiting the working class to death and thus destroying the basis for its own expansion.

The First World War announced the definitive end of this relatively progressive era for capitalism. From this point onward, capitalism has become more and more unable to accommodate even the most elementary demands of the working class. World wars of unprecedented brutality; protracted local conflicts that destabilise entire regions; the disintegration of nation states; crises that threaten the collapse of entire national economies; these are the visible manifestations of capitalism’s historic impasse.

In order to survive these shockwaves, capitalism has concentrated more and more power in its state. The reformist wing of the workers’ movement was completely integrated into the capitalist political machine, swiftly followed by degenerating communist parties, Trotskyists et al. The trade unions today, while pretending to represent workers, are really the enforcers of capitalist discipline in the workplace or – in cases where workers’ struggle cannot be avoided – act to keep the struggles contained as far as possible.

In these circumstances, the working class has adopted new forms of mass and political organisation. The mass parties of the past have given way to smaller – but far clearer – political organisations that concentrate on the development of consciousness in the working class. Similarly, in a situation where permanent mass organisations are quickly integrated into the state, the working class wages its independent struggle through organs formed directly in the heat of struggle: the soviets of Russia in 1917, the workers’ councils in Germany 1918, the strike committees formed across the decades, etc.

Despite these changes, however, the fundamental differences between organs of struggle and political organs remains.

The role of revolutionaries in mass organs of struggle

If revolutionary political organisations and mass organs of struggle serve fundamentally different functions for the working class, this in no way means that members of the former should avoid working in the latter! Nor should revolutionaries avoid working in such organs simply because they are, at particular moments, dominated by ruling class ideology. When the workers first formed the soviets in Russia, the majority of workers adhered to Menshevik ideology; conversely, the Bolsheviks were in a minority in most soviets. This didn’t prevent Lenin from identifying – to the horror of many of his own party – the soviets as the basis of proletarian class power and issued the rallying cry of “All Power to the Soviets” in his April Theses.

Similarly, revolutionaries should be prepared to work in any genuine organ of proletarian struggle. In the past, for example, members of the ICC were elected to strike committees in important struggles in the 70s and 80s, often alongside leftists and union functionaries. Refusal to work in such conditions out of ‘purism’ would have been catastrophic and only have retarded our capacity to prevent the sabotage of the struggle by the leftists.

Anti-cuts alliances: political organisations or organs of struggle?

So what exactly are anti-cuts alliances? In their present form, they are obviously not organs of mass struggle. For one thing, they do not arise directly from the struggle itself but largely pre-empt it. At best, they are able to regroup a minority of politicised workers. Their activity – organising demonstrations, distributing propaganda, etc. – are clearly political activities aimed at establishing a political presence within the working class. While revolutionaries can and should work in mass organisations, the anti-cuts alliances are actually political organisations or alliances between political organisations.

Where these groups are coalitions of leftists or dominated by leftist ideology, they will spread that ideology. Genuine revolutionary positions will, at best, be submerged in a morass of capitalist ideology. Usually, they are eliminated altogether and genuine revolutionaries are either forced out or reduced to serve as a ‘critical opposition’ to the dominant leftist trend. This can only serve to legitimate leftist ideology and contribute to the ideological domination of the enemy class.

For example, both the Exeter Anti-Cuts Alliance and the Bristol & District Anti-Cuts Alliance encourage people to petition their local councils and local MPs, perpetuating the idea that democracy actually presents a real choice to the working class. The Exeter Anti-Cuts Alliance distributes a pamphlet called “Cuts are Not the Cure” littered with quotations from pro-Keynesian economists such as Paul Krugman, David Blanchflower and Joseph Stiglitz. In other words, they are propagating the idea that curing the crisis simply requires a different economic policy from the ruling class. This flies in the face of the real historical experience of the working class. The Keynesian era of the 1960s and 70s that this ideology harks back to was based on the increasing exploitation of the working class through productivity-linked pay rises and the erosion of real wages through increasing inflation. This ideology denies the reality of the crisis and the nature of capitalism – in order to grow, capitalism must exploit the working class and the only way to overcome crises is by increasing exploitation. Differing government policies simply change the precise way that this increased exploitation is leveraged from the working class but leftist ideology presents one form of increasing exploitation as being acceptable and even beneficial for the working class.

This doesn’t mean revolutionaries should be passive in their approach to such groups. On the contrary. While some within these groups act consciously and openly proclaim their support for state capitalist measures, others (including union activists and leftists) genuinely want to struggle against the attacks of capital. The problem is that, trapped as they are in a capitalist framework, they end up acting against their own intentions. Revolutionaries need to be able to reach such people, show them where leftist ideologies lead, and what the struggle for the interests of the working class consists of.

Revolutionaries should certainly attend the public meetings and demonstrations organised by leftist anti-cuts group in order to engage in discussion with militants who are searching for an alternative to the capitalist system. They should not, however, affiliate to such groupings or take part in their organising committees, etc.

There is, of course, the potential for groups appearing under the ‘anti-cuts’ banner that are not specifically leftist (even if leftism may still have its influence). The ICC has long recognised the importance of discussion groups for clarifying class positions and has taken an active role in several in the UK. We have also participated in several ‘class struggle’ groups that have emerged around the country in the last few years. In London, the ‘J30 assemblies’ that have formed around the slogan of “generalise the strike” have potential for being a forum where militant workers can discuss how to push forward the struggle.

Just as revolutionaries should beware opportunist involvement with leftist fronts, they should be wary of falling into the opposite error of sectarianism.  

Ishamael 30/6/11

In preparation for the recent public sector strikes three ‘Generalise the strike assemblies’[1] were held in London. They weren’t the only assemblies held throughout the UK at the time; similar events were held in Birmingham, Leeds, Norwich, Bristol and Sheffield. The ICC were only able to attend the second two in London. And what interesting experiences they were.

First of all, the call to generalise the strike expressed in the name shows dissatisfaction with the union proposal for a one-day protest strike, dividing workers up between those called out and those who are not, with union led marches through London and other cities. This feeling that the union action did not answer the needs of the struggle was the one thing that united the people at the meetings, however different and even opposed their views. The fact that such assemblies were held is a step forward in itself. Prior to the 26 March demonstration in London, the ICC called for meetings where those interested in not taking part in another A-B march could come together to pose some questions about alternatives. At the time, this call had very little response from within the politicised milieu.

This time, it seemed that a group of people had determined that we weren’t going to be just led around by the unions, and that what was needed was an alternative place to meet to discuss and collectively decide upon action.

It was clear from the people attending the assemblies that this is a very heterogeneous milieu:

       There were unionised and non-unionised workers, as well as students, workers who were called out on strike, and others who would have had to wildcat or take a sickie if they wanted to participate.

       There were members of organised political groups such as the ICC, the AF, Solfed, and members of other organisations, such as People’s Assemblies Network – as well as plenty of people not affiliated to any political group.

       In the London assembly some people were warning about the strike as a pre-emptive action by the unions, whereas others were urging people to join unions as a way of fighting for jobs etc.

The political range was also reflected in the range of ideas put forward for 30 June. Should we go for some kind of a ‘spectacular’ event that would get media attention, something like blocking roads in Docklands, pulling up the railings outside Parliament, camping in Trafalgar Square, or some other kind of direct action – primarily aimed at ‘the bankers’? Or we should be focussing on the fact that this was a strike day, and so the focus should be on trying to engage with the strikers?

Other attendees focussed on more local events, putting forward the idea of making connections with pickets and also trying to bring workers on different picket lines outside different workplaces together.

Some, inspired by the assemblies held in Spain and Greece, put forward the idea of assemblies and a camp in Trafalgar Square, while others warned that the struggle cannot simply be transplanted and will need to develop here before we can do that.

The debates at both meetings were lively and organised very well. Speakers were listened to, very rarely interrupted, and a good level of patience (and humour!) was maintained.

Initiatives and proposals arose out of the discussion of the need to pose an alternative to the workers on strike and others supporting them on the day itself, including the idea of holding some kind of an ‘assembly’ at Parliament Square, as a conscious counter point to the run of the mill speeches given by the union bureaucrats.

Overall we feel this has been a positive experience. The main difficulty in these meetings was that while politicised groups and individuals ‘came together’ to discuss common work in spite of political differences, the discussion was entirely focused on action, what we could do on the day. For instance we could state opinions on the role of the unions, or on what is positive or negative in the assemblies in Spain, but these were not questions to be taken up and clarified in the discussion. This limited our ability to agree a common approach to the struggle we are all trying to support, and will often prevent it altogether.

One of the last questions posed was how do we keep this momentum going? Outside of periods of mass, open struggle it is highly difficult to maintain a consistent activity. What we can do is discuss the questions raised by this union day of action, and particularly the one that came up again and again on pickets and demonstrations – what can we learn from the experience of the 70s and 80s? – in preparation for future union demos and future workers’ struggles.  

Graham 27/06/11

The issue of climate change never really goes away. Every so often there are big reports and big conferences. Big speeches with big promises are made. Little seems to change. Here are some of the most recent reports.

A report published by the IEA (International Energy Agency) in May said that greenhouse gas emissions from power generation in 2010 were higher than any year in history.

The CCAFS (Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security) have produced their first report into the effects of climate change on food supplies. They set out to predict those areas of the world that would suffer most over the next 40 years. They predicted that western Africa is particularly vulnerable as countries like Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali already rely on drought resistant crops for food production.

HadCRUT3, a joint initiative in the UK has said that global warming between 1995 and 2010 was 0.19C. More importantly the statistical measurements amount to a statistically ‘real’ trend, i.e. statistically likely between 95%-100%.

We have come to expect rises in global temperatures and warnings of disasters of one shape or another. Every year seems to be the ‘worst year’ ever recorded for one indicator or another. What is more significant is that all these records are occurring while the world is supposed to be doing something about it.

Take for instance the first report mentioned, the IEA report on greenhouse emissions from power generation setting a new record for 2010. An international carbon emissions trading scheme is in operation.

There is carbon offsetting where companies and financial institutions can create carbon credits by creating schemes where CO2 is saved, particularly in the areas of the world which are not covered by the ‘cap and trade’ system.

This ‘cap and trade’ system is where big industrial companies are handed out licenses to release CO2 which can then be traded with other holders to increase or reduce emissions within the limit of the carbon allowance.

The carbon trading system is supposed to reduce the CO2 requirements of major industries and yet the IEA report says that CO2 from power generation is at an all time high. This is the paradox of green capitalism.

While the bourgeoisie accepts climate change is a problem, the competition between nation states means that each country is at the same time trying to prevent any serious disadvantage by acting significantly.

The large scale use of fossil fuels in transport has meant that for the first time the bourgeoisie has had some flexibility to move goods economically on a large scale, including even the most perishable of goods. One TV programme in the UK a few years ago showed prawns fished in the UK, transported by plane to Thailand, sorted and packaged there before being flown back to be sold in British shops. The sourcing of cheap labour in the ‘peripheral countries’ of capitalism has been motivated by the crisis in the capitalist system rather than its good health. Cheaper labour in the third world has enabled capitalism to reduce further the labour costs of production but this can only continue with the use of relatively inexpensive fossil fuels.

The threat to the food supply is a more serious problem. Cheap labour requires cheap food to reproduce itself. The threat from global warming in the long term is for increases in food prices. This can be seen in recent years with harvest failures contributing to the increase in supermarket prices. The bourgeoisie hasn’t worried too much about starvation in the third world as these countries by definition are undeveloped economically and are therefore insignificant within the world economy. What the bourgeoisie worries about is the ability to feed workers at a cheap price.

The analysis of Had CRUT3 is one more addition to the scientific evidence for global warming. It seems that capitalism will pretend to trade its way to sustainability. In reality capitalism will only sustain exploitation and destruction.  

Hugin 2/7/11.

The government has made a ‘U-turn’, as the media calls it, on reform of the NHS. For Socialist Worker (18.6.11) changes proposed to the NHS are a “retreat”, a “humiliating climbdown” for a government intent on privatising. For the Guardian (14.6.11) it is “a compromise that might just heal the coalition”. But in all the words written about the changes the government has accepted from the Future Forum and the so-called ‘listening exercise’ there is often no mention of the driving force behind the reform – the £20bn efficiency savings demanded of the NHS.

The heart and soul of Andrew Lansley’s original NHS reform proposals was to inject even more business sense into the NHS through the formation of new bodies better able to control costs than the existing ones. GP practices were to be grouped into ‘consortia’ to oversee about 80% of NHS spending, holding budgets both tight and inelastic, and would simply be put out of business if they exceeded them. In other words there would be no room whatsoever for the consortia to test the limits of their budgets – they and any existing or new private health providers would be the fall guys for whatever goes wrong, with the health secretary no longer responsible for providing comprehensive health services. It apparently made financial sense, for as small businesses GP practices have already shown themselves particularly good at keeping costs down at the government’s bidding.

One of the important concerns raised was that the increased competition for the cheapest services would undermine joined up care. Now the ‘GP consortia’ are to be rebranded as ‘clinical commissioning groups’ and will have 2 members of the public, a nurse and a hospital specialist on the board as well as GPs. So now everyone is going to work together to plan services in their area? Well, no! That’s not allowed, the nurse and specialist “must have no conflict of interest in relation to the clinical commissioning group’s responsibilities, eg they must not be employed by a local provider” (government document summarising changes quoted in The Nursing Times 21.6.11) although the nurse can be employed by a local GP. The commissioning groups will be advised by clinical senates on how to make patient care fit together. But what of the basic problem of resources?

“The NHS Commissioning Board must be up and running as soon as possible to help with the challenge of saving £20bn through greater efficiency by 2015” (Guardian 14.6.11, summarising Future Forum recommendations). 

Privatisation is a state capitalist policy

Privatisation has had an increasing role in cost cutting in the NHS since the 1980s, when tendering for hospital cleaning contracts was used to cut staff and pay. But while private enterprises play a part, the state is the driving force. “The myth that competition has been key to cost containment in the Netherlands has obscured a crucial reality. Health care systems in Europe, Canada, Japan, and beyond, all of which spend much less than the United States on medical services, rely on regulation of prices, coordinated payment, budgets, and in some cases limits on selected expensive medical technologies, to contain health care spending.” (New England Journal of Medicine, NEJM.org 15.6.11). Cost-cutting comes from government policy, and from state bodies such as NICE (National Institute of Clinical Excellence) which has been established to look at the cost efficiency of medical interventions and propose guidelines for their use – or recommend they are not used.

Competition or the threat of it may play a role alongside regulation to keep costs down, but privatisation has a far more important role in hiding the responsibility of the state for any deterioration of health services. For instance the Unite website carries news items about privatisation dated 10th, 13th and 14th June that do not mention efficiency savings, and a Briefing, ‘David Cameron: a personal guarantee of chaos’ which only mentions it in relation to whether or not the 18 week target is being enforced. But the NHS would not be alright if only it got rid of private companies, workers are not being laid off because of privatisation but because of the state policy of keeping costs down. Within the NHS each part, each trust, each purchaser or provider, is set against the others in the competition for inadequate resources.

Following the Future Forum recommendations the government has eased off its privatisation rhetoric. Monitor, one of the NHS regulatory bodies, will no longer be there to promote competition, but will also be concerned with ‘choice’ and collaboration, while still policing the same rules on competition. Meanwhile the private sector will not be able to ‘cherry pick’ the most profitable services – how much this comforting incantation actually means when there are already private companies offering limited services at competitive prices, for instance routine but not urgent medical investigations, is a moot point. They cannot offer a comprehensive service, but one which is cheaper in the short term – which is what the state wants – since they are not contributing to long term needs such as nursing and medical education.

The rebranding of NHS reforms may have rubbed off some of the rough edges, and dropped some of the more incredible notions – no-one was ever going to believe the health minister no longer responsible for the NHS – but it is no retreat. To make the ruling class do that will require a much deeper level of class struggle that threatens to overflow the bounds of legality and union control. 

Alex 29/6/11

After negotiations with the EU, IMF and the European Central Bank, the Greek government got parliamentary backing for a further array of austerity measures. Following last year’s bailout and a previous a wave of cuts in jobs, wages and pensions, the new 28 billion Euro package of cuts includes a further 15% cut in wages and 150,000 jobs for public sector workers, cuts in benefits, and in government services. Despite the addition of taxes for lower paid workers who’d previously been excluded, and some other new taxes including a ‘solidarity levy’, there is still anxiety throughout the bourgeoisies of Europe that Greek state capitalism could default on its loans and that the country might have to leave the Euro.

The responses to the blows from the economic crisis and the attacks by the state have varied. For example, Greece used to be noted for its low suicide rate, but over the last couple of years suicides have gone up 40% as people have failed to cope with debt and unemployment. On the other hand, the initial impulses of those who occupied squares across Greece and held assemblies to discuss what could be done were a healthy response to the situation. However, after the early days of the occupations the assemblies have become more formalised, with more invited speakers and much less discussion. Yes, all politicians are routinely denounced as ‘thieves’, but the suspicion of politics has not prevented meetings being increasingly influenced by leftist and liberal demagogues.

Even more significantly, the unions (despite their links and support for the governing PASOK party) have been re-establishing their influence. Last year, there were seven one-day general strikes; this year there have already been five, including one 48-hour strike. With the addition of the minority who bring along flares and other weaponry there have been some spectacular confrontations, but these have been played out as so many theatrical rituals in which the police are prepared to play their part. At the time of key parliamentary votes the police used greater force than usual along with tear gas, while some anarchists attacked the finance ministry and a branch of a major bank. Events outside parliament choreographed to go with the melodrama inside.

The role of the unions is crucial for Greek capitalism. It relies on them to recuperate, divide and divert struggles. There is a great deal of anger in the ranks of Greek workers, but the unions have so far ensured that this anger is not being transformed into anything effective. For example, included in the package of measures are plans for the privatisation of 50 billion Euros worth of assets. This programme is fiercely contested by unions and their leftist supporters. The campaign against privatisation is a classic diversion. Workers are already suffering from the attacks undertaken by public sector institutions, but the left/unions try to persuade workers to defend the state and government employers.

The economic crisis that has driven the ruling class in Greece to attack so brutally the working and living standards of the working class is the same crisis that led to the need to bailout Ireland and Portugal and with it the imposition of their austerity regimes. It’s not all a plot by the EU/IMF/ECB; it’s a desperate response to a crisis that has an international reality. The working class is also international. The assemblies that occupied squares in Greece were partly inspired by events in Spain. The bourgeoisie is worried about a domino effect if the economy of one country in the Euro should collapse, but they’re even more worried that they will not be able to contain any future struggles within the frontiers of a single country.  

Car 30/6/11

The Xintang area of Zengcheng, in China’s southern Guangzhou province, annually produces 260 million pairs of jeans, 60% of China’s and a third of the world’s output for more than 60 international brands. Known as the ‘jeans capital of the world’ it is in some ways symbolic of Chinese economic development over the last thirty years. In June, demonstrations and clashes with the police in angry protests by thousands of workers against the treatment of a pregnant 20-year-old, hint at the reality experienced by workers in the heart of an ‘economical miracle’.

Workers attacked government buildings, overturned police cars and battled with police. Against the protests the Chinese state sent in 6000 paramilitary police with armoured vehicles, deploying tear gas as they attacked up to 10,000 workers.

After strikes at Honda last year spread, the company conceded substantial wage increases. In the face of these recent protests by workers, many of whom were rural migrants, the state offered residency rights to anyone who would identify rioters. In Chinese cities those without household registry are not entitled to healthcare, education and other social benefits.

The days of protests in Zengcheng are not isolated incidents. A week previously “migrants from Sichuan clashed with police and overturned cars in Chaozhou, about 210 miles east of Guangzhou, after a worker demanding two months of back wages was allegedly attacked by the boss of the ceramics factory where he had worked” (Los Angeles Times 13/6/11).

As the Financial Times (17/6/11) put it “Although similar demonstrations are relatively common in China, in both cases a standoff between police and angry citizens quickly descended into violence.”

The bourgeois press has highlighted the fact that migrant workers have been involved in these conflicts. In China there are 153 million migrant workers living outside their hometowns. Leaving rural areas they go to work on construction sites, factories, restaurants and new projects as they occur. Sixty per cent of them are under 30, and, when questioned in surveys, the younger workers are much more likely to say that they would take part in collective actions than older workers. Workers now working in urban areas mostly have no intention of returning to the countryside, with very few, for example, having any farming experience.

Also, as evidence of the degree of attachment to their place of origin, younger workers “tend to remit less money to home villagers. The National Bureau of Statistics found that in 2009 young migrants sent back about 37.2 percent of their income, while older migrants sent back 51.1 percent” (Reuters 28/6/11).

The response of Chinese capitalism

Whether dealing with strikes or other protests “the first instinct of China’s government, at both local and national level, is to use force. Suppression can work for a while. But if the underlying causes are not addressed, China risks an explosion” (FT 19/6/11). This doesn’t of course mean that China is going to let up on repression.

Bloomberg (6/3/11) reported that “China spent more on its internal police force than on its armed forces in 2010, and plans to do the same this year, as the government deployed security forces around the country to control growing social unrest”. As the article continues “The surge in public security spending comes as so-called mass incidents, everything from strikes to riots and demonstrations, are on the rise. There were at least 180,000 such incidents in 2010, twice as many as in 2006” according to Sun Liping, a professor of sociology at Beijing’s Tsinghua University. The concern of the Chinese ruling class is partly at the proliferation of ‘mass incidents’ but also “The perception that local protests might be gaining a broader national coherence is deeply threatening to China’s Communist Party” (FT 19/6/11).
This doesn’t mean that the Chinese bourgeoisie can deal with the ‘underlying causes’ of unrest. What lies behind protests and strikes, fundamentally, are the conditions in which workers live and work. And without the imposition of these conditions China’s economic growth would not have been possible.

Chinese capitalism can’t offer meaningful material improvements to millions of workers, and that’s why it risks an ‘explosion’. But it does know it needs something other than repression. As the Bloomberg article notes “Zhou Yongkang, a member of the Communist Party’s ruling Politburo Standing Committee who oversees the country’s security forces, said in a Feb. 21 article in the People’s Daily, the party’s official mouthpiece, that the government must ‘defuse social conflicts and disputes just as they ‘germinate’”.

In general the Chinese bourgeoisie lacks the means to defuse conflict in its early stages. The official unions are inflexible, widely distrusted and rightly perceived as being part of the state. Those ‘independent’ unions that have existed have been in on a very limited scale. It is interesting, therefore, to note that Han Dongfan, an activist who set up a union during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, is revising his view of the official unions.

In a Guardian (26/6/11) article he says that recent protests and demands for improved wages and conditions show that “with no real trade union that can articulate those demands, workers are left with little option but to take to the streets”. He thinks that “This new era of activism has forced China’s official trade union, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, to re-examine its role and look for ways to become an organisation that really does represent workers’ interests”. The Chinese ruling class certainly wishes that the official unions had more influence with the working class, but for workers there is no form of union organisation that can answer their needs. For the working class it’s not a matter of swapping one sort of union for another but finding the means for the most effective collective action. The fact that strikes and demonstrations so quickly end up in confrontations with the police is one piece of evidence that demonstrates to workers the need for their struggles, ultimately, to create a force that will be able to destroy the Chinese capitalist state.  

Car 1/7/11

It was 140 years ago that the French bourgeoisie put an end to the proletariat’s first great revolutionary experience, with a massacre of some 20,000 workers. The Paris Commune was the first time that the working class had appeared in such strength on the stage of history. For the first time, the workers showed that they were capable of destroying the bourgeois state apparatus, and so stood out as the only revolutionary class in society. Today, the ruling class is trying at all costs to convince the workers that humanity has no perspective for any society other than capitalism, and to infect them with a feeling of impotence in the face of the terrible barbarity and misery of the modern world. Today then, it is necessary that the working class examine its own past, to regain confidence in itself, in its own strength, and in the future that its struggles contain. The formidable experience of the Paris Commune is there to bear witness that even then, despite the immaturity of the conditions for communist revolution at the time, the proletariat showed that it is the only force able to call the capitalist order into question.

For generations of workers, the Paris Commune was a reference point in the history of the workers’ movement. The Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 especially were imbued with its example and its lessons, until the 1917 revolution took its place as the principal beacon for the struggle of the world proletariat.

Today, the bourgeoisie’s propaganda campaigns are trying to bury the revolutionary experience of October for ever, to turn the workers away from their own vision of the future by identifying communism with Stalinism. Since the Paris Commune cannot be used to spread the same lie, the ruling class has always tried to mask its real meaning by treating it as an event of their own, a movement for patriotism, or for the defence of republican values.

A combat against Capital, not a patriotic struggle

The Paris Commune was founded seven months after Napoleon III's defeat at Sedan, during the 1870 Franco-Prussian war. On the 4th September 1870, the Parisian workers rose against the dreadful conditions inflicted on them by Bonaparte’s military adventure. The Republic was proclaimed while Bismarck’s troops camped at the very gates of Paris. From then on it was the National Guard, originally made up of troops from the lower middle class, which took on the defence of the capital against the Prussian enemy. The workers, who had begun to suffer from hunger, joined up in droves and soon made up the majority of its troops. The ruling class tries to paint this episode in the patriotic colours of “popular” resistance against the Prussian invader; very quickly, however, the struggle to defend Paris gave way to the explosion of irreconcilable antagonisms between the two fundamental classes in society: proletariat and bourgeoisie. After 131 days of siege, the French government capitulated and signed an armistice with the Prussian army. Thiers, the new leader of the republican government understood that with hostilities at an end it was necessary immediately to disarm the Parisian proletariat, since it posed a threat to the ruling class. On the 18th March 1871, Thiers first tried trickery: arguing that the weapons were state property, he sent troops to remove the National Guard’s artillery of more than 200 canons, which the workers had hidden in Montmartre and Belleville. The attempt failed, thanks to bitter resistance from the workers, and a movement of fraternisation between the troops and the Parisian population. The defeat of this attempt to disarm Paris touched off a powder-keg, and unleashed the civil war between the Parisian workers and the bourgeois government which had taken refuge in Versailles. On the 18th March, the central committee of the National Guard, which had temporarily taken over power, declared: “The proletarians of the capital, in the midst of the governing classes’ defections and betrayals, have understood that the hour has come for them to save the situation by taking charge of public affairs. (...) The proletariat has understood that it is its imperious duty and absolute right to take its own destiny in hand, and to ensure its triumph by seizing power”. On the same day, the committee announced immediate elections for delegates from the different arrondissements, under universal suffrage. These were held on 26th March; two days later, the Commune was declared. Several tendencies were represented within it: a majority, dominated by the Blanquists, and a minority whose members were mostly Proudhonist socialists from the International Workers’ Association (the 1st International).

Immediately, the Versailles government counter-attacked, to recover Paris from the hands of the working class - this “vile scum”, as Thiers called it. The bombardment of the capital, which the French bourgeoisie had denounced at the hands of the Prussian army, went on continuously for the two months that the Commune survived.

It was not to defend the fatherland from the foreign enemy, but to defend itself against the enemy at home, against its “own” bourgeoisie represented by the Versailles government, that the Parisian proletariat refused to give up its weapons to its exploiters and set up the Commune.

A combat to destroy the bourgeois state, not to defend republican freedoms

The bourgeoisie distils its worst lies from the appearance of reality. It has always relied on the fact that the Commune did indeed base itself on the principles of 1789, to reduce the first revolutionary experience of the proletariat to the level of a mere defence of republican freedoms, for bourgeois democracy against the monarchist troops behind which the French bourgeoisie had rallied. But the true spirit of the Commune is not to be found in the garments the young proletariat of 1871 draped itself in. This movement has always been a vital first step in the world proletariat’s struggle for its emancipation, because of the promise it held for the future. This was the first time in. history that the official power of the bourgeoisie had been overthrown in one of its capitals. And this immense combat was the work of the proletariat, and no other class. Certainly, this proletariat was little developed, had scarcely emerged from its old craft status, and dragged behind it all the weight of the petty bourgeoisie and the illusions born of 1789: nonetheless, it was the motive force behind the Commune. Although the revolution was not yet a historic possibility (because the proletariat was still too immature, and because capitalism had not exhausted its capacity to develop the productive forces), the Commune heralded the direction that future proletarian combats would have to take.

Moreover, while the Commune took to itself the principles of the bourgeois revolution, it certainly did not give them the same content. For the bourgeoisie, “liberty” means free trade, and the liberty to exploit wage labour; “equality” means nothing more than equality between bourgeois in their struggle against aristocratic privileges; “fraternity” means harmony between capital and labour, in other words the submission of the exploited to their exploiters. For the workers of the Commune, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” meant the abolition of wage slavery, of the exploitation of man by man, and of a society divided into classes. This vision of another world, heralded by the Commune itself, was reflected in the way the working class organised social life during its two months existence. The Commune’s real class nature lies in its economic and political measures, not in the slogans it dredged up from the past.

Two days after its proclamation, the Commune confirmed its power by directly attacking the state apparatus through a whole series of political measures: abolition of the police forces dedicated to social repression, of the standing army, and of conscription (the only recognised armed force was the National Guard); the destruction of all state administration, the confiscation of church property, the destruction of the guillotine, compulsory free education, etc, not to mention such symbolic actions as the destruction of the Vendôme column, the symbol of ruling class chauvinism erected by Napoleon 1st. The same day, the Commune confirmed its proletarian nature by declaring that “the flag of the Commune is that of the Universal Republic”. This principle of proletarian internationalism was clearly affirmed by the election of foreigners to the Commune (such as the Pole Dornbrovski, in charge of Defence, and the Hungarian Frankel, responsible for Labour).

Amongst all these political measures was one which particularly demonstrates how false is the idea that the Parisian proletariat rebelled to defend the democratic Republic: that is, the permanent revocability of the Commune’s delegates, who were constantly responsible to whichever body had elected them. This was well before the appearance, in the 1905 Russian revolution, of the workers’ councils - the “finally discovered form of the proletarian dictatorship” as Lenin put it. This principle of revocability which the proletariat adopted in its seizure of power once again confirms the proletarian nature of the Commune. The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, of which the “democratic” state is only the most pernicious variant, concentrates the exploiters’ state power in the hands of a minority to oppress and exploit the vast majority of producers. The principle of the proletarian revolution on the other hand is that no power should arise to place itself over society. Only a class which aims at the abolition of any domination over society by a minority of oppressors can exercise power in this way.

Because the Commune’s political measures clearly expressed its proletarian nature, its economic measures, however limited, could not but defend working class interests: abolition of rent, abolition of night work for certain trades like the bakers, abolition of employers’ fines taken out of wages, the reopening and workers’ management of closed workshops, the payment of Commune delegates limited to a worker’s wage, etc.

Clearly, this way of organising social life had nothing to do with the “democratisation” of the bourgeois state, and everything to do with its destruction. And indeed, this is the fundamental lesson that the Commune bequeathed to the whole future workers’ movement. This is the lesson that the proletariat in Russia, urged on by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, put into practice much more clearly in October 1917. As Marx had already pointed out in The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, “All political revolutions to date have only perfected the state machine rather than smashing it”. Although conditions were not yet ripe for the overthrow of capitalism, the Paris Commune, the last revolution of the 19th century, already heralded the revolutionary movements of the 20th century: it demonstrated in practice that, “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and use it for its own purposes. For the political instrument of its enslavement cannot serve as the political instrument of its emancipation” (Marx, The Civil War in France).

Faced with the proletarian threat, the bloodthirsty rage of the bourgeoisie

The ruling class could not accept that the working class should dare to stand against its own order. This is why, when it regained Paris by force of arms, the bourgeoisie aimed not only to re-establish its power in the capital, but above all to inflict a such a bloodbath on the working class that it would serve as a lesson it would never forget. Its rage in repressing the Commune was equal to the fear the proletariat had inspired in it. From the beginning of April, Thiers and Bismarck, whose troops occupied the forts to the North and East of Paris, began to organise their ‘Holy Alliance’ to crush the Commune. Even then, the bourgeoisie showed its ability to push its own national antagonisms into the background in order to confront its class enemy. This close collaboration between the French and Prussian armies allowed the capital to be completely encircled. On 7th April, the Versailles troops seized the forts to the West of Paris. Faced with bitter resistance from the National Guard, Thiers persuaded Bismarck to free 60,000 French troops taken prisoner at Sedan, which from May onwards gave the Versailles government a decisive numerical advantage. During the first fortnight in May, the southern front folded. On the 21st, Versailles troops under General Gallifet entered Paris by the North and East, thanks to a breach opened up by the Prussian army. For eight days, fighting raged through the working class districts; the Commune’s last fighters fell like flies on the heights of Bellevile and Menilmontant. But the bloody repression of the Communards did not end there. The ruling class still wanted to savour its triumph by unleashing its revenge on a beaten and disarmed proletariat, this “vile scum” which had dared to call its class domination into question. While Bismarck’s troops were ordered to arrest any fugitives, Gallifet’s hordes carried out an immense massacre of defenceless men, women, and children: they coldly assassinated them by firing squad and machine-gun.

The “week of blood” came to an end in an abominable slaughter: more than 20,000 dead. It was followed by mass arrests, the execution of prisoners “to make an example”, transportation to forced labour colonies. Hundreds of children were placed in so-called “houses of correction”.

This is how the ruling class re-established its order. This is how it reacts when its class dictatorship is threatened. Nor was the Commune drowned in blood only by the bourgeoisie’s most reactionary fractions. Although they left the dirty work to the monarchist troops, it was the “democratic” republican fraction, with its National Assembly and its liberal parliamentarians, which bears full responsibility for the massacre and the terror. Never must the proletariat forget these glorious deeds of bourgeois democracy: never!

By crushing the Commune, which in turn led to the disappearance of the 1st International, the ruling class inflicted a defeat on the workers of the entire world. And this defeat was particularly crushing for the working class in France, which had been at the vanguard of the proletarian struggle ever since 1830. The French proletariat was not to return to the front line of the class combat until May 1968, when its massive strikes opened a new perspective of struggle after 40 years of counter-revolution. And this is no accident: in recovering, even momentarily, its place as a beacon for the class struggle, which it had abandoned a century before, the French proletariat heralded the full vitality, strength, and depth of this new stage in the historic struggle of the working class to overthrow capitalism.

But unlike the Commune, this new historic period opened in May 1968 came at a moment when the proletarian revolution is not only possible, but absolutely necessary if humanity is to have any hope of survival. This is what the bourgeoisie is trying to hide with all its lies, its propaganda campaigns, to falsify the revolutionary experience of the past: the strength and vitality of the proletariat, and what is at stake in its combat today.

Avril (originally published in Révolution Internationale no.202, July 1991, and in World Revolution146, July-August 1991).

In mid-March, in line with the ‘Arab spring’, the Syrian population began to protest and demand the removal of its leader and a ‘democratic’ regime. In the face of this popular movement expressing its discontent with the living conditions imposed by the regime of a clique descended from Hafez al-Assad, the “Desert Fox”, there has been a violent crackdown that has continued to intensify. There are already 1,600 dead, no one knows how many wounded, and 12,000 refugees principally in Turkey, but also in Lebanon, where hundreds of people have fled recently from the brutality of the Syrian army.

This repression and all-out terror shows the world Bashar al-Assad’s will to stay in office, against all odds. Villages and towns are deprived of water and electricity supply to ‘set an example’, while people are slaughtered as they flee the atrocities of the Syrian army. ‘Rebel’ cities are bombed. Torture, already common before, and one of the triggers for the revolt because of what was inflicted on five children, is reaching the heights of horror. The police regularly open fire on demonstrations and the suburbs of Damascus are attacked with increasing intensity with military or sniper fire. The situation has become so bad that soldiers are deserting in disgust. These desertions have been met with bloody repression such as at Al-Jisr Chouhour on 5 June where it appears that 120 deserters were shot by the army itself. The government is of course keen to attribute these killings to the “armed terrorists who spread chaos.” In its headlong rush into repression this is the Syrian regime’s terrorist leitmotiv, which is reminiscent of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, or of Russia in Chechnya, to justify their military abuses.
For now the Syrian state plays the card of confusion. So, while spreading repression across the country, Bashar al-Assad promised a programme of reforms for July 10, a programme with no official status. With a catastrophic economic situation, it’s not clear whether he will be able to promise much without being shot in the back. In addition, in an attempt to quieten the opposition he tried to organise demonstrations in his favour. It’s not clear whether participants were truly voluntary, or there with a gun to the head as with past mass demonstrations in the days of Stalinism. Syria had a long honeymoon with Stalinism during the cold war between the USA and USSR. A sham ‘opposition’ meeting was held in Damascus on 26 June, under the complacent gaze of the police who nevertheless continue to beat and kill a whole population of ‘opponents’. This fooled no-one, but allowed them to buy some time.

Syria is also threatening to extend the chaos to the surrounding region. The deployment of its massive army to the border with Turkey, and its brutal military incursions into villages increasingly close to the border, while the area is far from the epicentre of the revolt, is a clear message from Assad to the whole ‘international community’: leave me alone or I will spread disorder. While Turkey is already very concerned with its regions bordering on Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan, the Turkish head of state, Erdogan, is worried about a conflagration on its borders with Syria and the occurrence of a real humanitarian catastrophe that would be the consequence. Damascus has threatened to set fire to the powder keg and open up a new front in military tensions. In this mutually destructive game Syria is in a strong position because Ankara cannot afford any slip. It is obliged, whether it likes it or not, to maintain imperialist order in the north of the Middle East. Pressure is put on Lebanon in the same way, through attacks on Kseir, on Syria’s border with the Golan heights, that Damascus claimed historically and was the reason for dozens of years of war and massacres. However, behind Lebanon, there is the huge problem of Israel, which has recently hardened its position on the questions of Palestine and Lebanon. From the stirring of tensions in the south of its territory, Syria has again provoked the threat of war and increased tensions with more risky results, not least because Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has a firmly anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian policy.
Developed countries, including those that produced a draft resolution in the UN a month ago (Germany, Britain, France and Portugal) have understood the need to approach the situation with care because, beyond the potential for the chaos of regime change in Syria, the entire region may be thrown into a more barbarous future. The leaders of these countries do not care or think about the population or their well-being, but are trying to contain a situation fraught with danger. There are celebrities who beg for peace but go no further because they know that military intervention in Syria would mean opening a Pandora’s box whose outcome would be uncertain when facing a strong, well-trained Syrian army.
No one can predict the prospect that awaits the people of Syria, and whether countries like the US, which has supported the ‘opposition’ for years, will intervene. However, it is clear that the current evolution of the situation in Syria, whether or not it’s the product of direct action by the United States, as some commentators have suggested, will be the centre of a free-for-all between imperialist appetites where the population is left to bear the cost. The formal opposition to any intervention from Russia and China in the UN prefigures this future. And, as the imperialist powers move their pawns to defend their interests, it will not improve the lives of all who live in poverty and suffer the violence of state repression. 

Wilma 28/6/11

The dramatic worsening of the world economic crisis over the summer gives us a clear indication that the capitalist system really is on its last legs. The ‘debt crisis’ has demonstrated the literal bankruptcy not only of the banks, but of entire states; and not only the states of weak economies like Greece or Portugal but key countries of the Eurozone and on top of it all, the most powerful economy in the world: the USA.

And if the crisis is global, it is also historic. The mountain of debt that has become so visible over the last few years is only the consequence of capitalism trying to postpone or hide the economic crisis which surfaced as far back as the late 1960s and early 70s. And as today’s ‘recession’ reveals its real face as a genuine depression, we should recognise that this is really the same underlying crisis as the one which paralysed production in the 1930s and tipped the world towards imperialist war. A crisis expressing the historical obsolescence of the capitalist system.

The difference between today’s depression and that of the 1930s is that capitalism today has run out of choices. In the 1930s, the ruling class was able to offer its own barbaric solution to the crisis: mobilising society for imperialist war and re-dividing the world market. This re-organisation created the conditions for launching the ‘boom’ of the 50s and 60s. This was an option at that time, partly because world war did not yet automatically imply the destruction of capitalism itself, and there was still room for new imperialist masters to emerge in the aftermath of the war. But it was an option above all because the working class in those days had tried and failed to make its revolution (after the First World War) and had been plunged into the worst defeat in its history, at the hands of Stalinism, fascism, and democracy.

Today world war is only an option in the most abstract theoretical sense. In reality, the road to a global imperialist war is obstructed by the fact that, in the wake of the collapse of the old two-bloc arrangement, capitalism today is unable to forge any stable imperialist alliances. It’s also obstructed by the absence of any unifying ideology capable of persuading the majority of the exploited in the central capitalist countries that this system is worth fighting and dying for. Both these elements are linked to something deeper: the fact that the working class today has not been defeated and is still capable of fighting for its own interests against the interests of capital.

Dangers facing the working class

Does this mean that we heading by some automatic process towards revolution? Not at all. The revolution of the working class can never be ‘automatic’ because it requires a higher level of consciousness than any past revolution in history. It is nothing less than the moment where human beings first assume control of their own production and distribution, in a society with relations of solidarity at its heart. It can therefore only be prepared by increasingly massive struggles which generate a wider and deeper class consciousness.

Since the latest phase of the crisis first raised its head in the late 60s, there have been many important struggles of the working class, from the international wave sparked off by the events of May 1968 in France to the mass strikes in Poland in 1980 and the miners’ strike in Britain in the mid-80s. And even though there was a long retreat in the class struggle during the 1990s, the last few years have shown that there is now a new generation which is becoming actively ‘indignant’ (to use the Spanish term) about the failure of the present social order to offer it any future. In the struggles in Tunisia, Egypt, Greece, Spain, Israel and elsewhere, the idea of ‘revolution’ has become a serious topic for discussion, just as it did in the streets of Paris in 1968 or Milan in 1969.

But for the moment this idea remains very confused: ‘revolution’ can easily be mistaken for the mere transfer of power from one part of the ruling class to another, as we saw most clearly in Tunisia and Egypt, and as we are now seeing in Libya. And within the recent movements, it is only a minority which sees that the struggle against the current system has to declare itself openly as a class struggle, a struggle of the proletariat against the entire ruling class.
After four decades of crisis, the working class, especially in the central countries of capitalism, no longer even has the same shape that it had in the late 60s. Many of the most important concentrations of industry and of class militancy have been dispersed to the four winds. Whole generations have been affected by permanent insecurity and the atomisation of unemployment. The most desperate layers of the working class are in danger of falling into criminality, nihilism, or religious fundamentalism.

In short, the long, cumulative decay of capitalist society can have the most profoundly negative effects on the ability of the proletariat to regain its class identity and to develop the confidence that it is capable of taking society in a new direction. And without the example of a working class struggle against capitalist exploitation, there can be many angry reactions against the unjust, oppressive, corrupt nature of the system, but they will not be able to offer a way forward. Some may take the form of rioting and looting with no direction, as we have seen in Britain over the summer. In some parts of the world legitimate rage against the rulers can even be dragged into serving the needs of one bourgeois faction or one imperialist power against another, as we are seeing in Libya.

In the most pessimistic scenario, the struggle of the exploited will be dissipated in futile and self-defeating actions and the working class as a whole will be too atomised, too divided to constitute itself into a real social force. If this happens, there will be nothing to stop capitalism from dragging us all towards the abyss, which it is perfectly capable of doing without organising a world war. But we have not yet reached that point. On the contrary, there is plenty of evidence that a new generation of proletarians is not going to let itself be pulled passively into a capitalist future of economic collapse, imperialist conflict and ecological breakdown, and that it is capable of rallying to its banners the previous generations of the working class and all those whose lives are being blighted by capital.  

WR 1/9/11

In the aftermath of the riots which broke out across the country this week, the spokesmen of the ruling class – government, politicians, media, etc – are subjecting us to a deafening campaign aimed at getting us to support their ‘programme’ for the future: deepening austerity and increased repression against anyone who complains about it.

Growing austerity, because they have no answer to the terminal economic crisis of their system. They can only continue to keep cutting jobs, wages, social benefits, pensions, health and education. All this can only mean a worsening of the very social conditions that gave rise to the riots, conditions which are convincing a large part of an entire generation that they have no future ahead of them. Which is why any serious discussion about the social and economic causes of the riots is being denounced as ‘excusing’ the rioters. They are criminals, we are told, and they will be dealt with as criminals. End of story.  Which is all very convenient, because the state has no intention of pouring money into the inner cities as it did after the riots of the 80s.   

Increased repression, because that is what our rulers can offer us. They are going to take maximum advantage of public concern about the destruction caused by the riots to increase spending on the police, to equip them with rubber bullets and water cannon, even to bring in curfews and put the army on the street. These weapons, along with increased surveillance of web-based social networks and the summary ‘justice’ being handed out to those arrested after the riots, will not only be used against looting and random mayhem. Our rulers know full well that the crisis is giving rise to a tide of social revolt and workers’ struggles which has spread from North Africa to Spain and from Greece back to Israel. They are perfectly aware that they will face such massive movements in the future, and for all their democratic pretensions they will be just as prepared to use violence against them as openly dictatorial regimes like Egypt, Bahrain or Syria. They already showed that during last year’s student struggles in Britain.   

The ‘moral high ground’ of the ruling class

The campaign about the riots is based on our rulers’ claim that they are occupying the moral high ground. It is worth considering the substance of these claims.

The mouthpieces of the state condemn the violence of the riots. But this is the state that is now inflicting violence on a far bigger scale against the populations of Afghanistan and Libya. Violence that is presented every day as heroic and altruistic when it serves only the interests of our rulers.

The government and the media condemn lawlessness and criminality. But it was the brutality of their very own forces of law and order, the police, which sparked the riots in the first place, from the shooting of Mark Duggan to the arrogant treatment of his family and supporters who demonstrated outside Tottenham police station demanding to know what had happened. And this comes on top of a long history of people from areas like Tottenham dying in police custody or facing daily harassment on the streets. 

The government and the media condemn the greed and selfishness of the looters. But they are the guardians and propagandists of a society which functions on the basis of organised greed, on the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a tiny minority. Meanwhile the rest of us are ceaselessly encouraged to consume the products that realise their profits, to identify our worth with the amount of stuff we can afford to buy. And since inequality is not only built into this system, but is getting worse and worse, it is no surprise when those at the bottom of the pile, who can’t afford the shiny things they are told they need, think that the answer to their problem is to nick what they can, when they can.  

The rulers condemn this petty looting while participating in a vast operation of looting on the scale of the planet – the oil and logging corporations who ravage nature for gain, the speculators who are richly rewarded for pushing up the price of food, the arms dealers profiting from death and destruction, the respectable financial institutions who launder billions from the proceeds of the drug trade. An intrinsic part of this robbery is that a growing part of the exploited class is pushed into poverty, hopelessness, and crime. The difference is that the lowly law-breakers usually get punished, while the masters of crime do not. 

In short: the morality of the ruling class does not exist.

The real question: how to resist

The real question facing those of us – the vast majority – who do not profit from this gigantic criminal enterprise called capitalism is this: how can we defend ourselves effectively when this system, now visibly drowning in debt, is obliged to take everything from us?

Do the riots we have seen in the UK this past week provide a method for fighting back, for taking control, for uniting our forces, for carving out a different future for ourselves?

Many of those taking part in the riots were clearly expressing their anger against the police and against the possessors of wealth, who they see as the main cause of their own poverty. But almost immediately the riots threw up more negative elements, darker attitudes fed by decades of social disintegration in the poorest urban areas, of gang culture, of buying into the dominant philosophies of every man for himself and ‘get rich or die trying’. This is how an initial protest against police repression got derailed by a chaos of frankly anti-social and anti-working class actions: intimidation and mugging of individuals, trashing of small neighbourhood shops, attacks on fire and ambulance crews, and the indiscriminate burning of buildings, often with their residents still inside.           

Such actions offer absolutely no perspective for standing up to the thieving system we live under. On the contrary, they only serve to widen divisions among those who suffer from the system. Faced with attacks on local shops and buildings, some residents armed themselves with baseball bats and formed ‘protection units’. Others volunteered for clean-up operations the day after the riots. Many ordinary people complained about the lack of police presence and demanded stronger measures.

Who will profit most from these divisions?  The ruling class and its state. As we have said: those in power will now claim a popular mandate for beefing up the machinery of police and military repression, for branding all forms of protest and political dissent as forms of criminality. Already the riots have been blamed on ‘anarchists’ and only a week or two ago the Met made the mistake of publishing recommendations about grassing on people who are in favour of a stateless society.

The riots are a reflection of the dead-end reached by the capitalist system. They are not a form of working class struggle; rather they an expression of rage and despair in a situation where the working class is absent as a class. The looting was not a step towards a higher form of struggle, but an obstacle in its way. Hence the justified frustration of the Hackney woman who has been watched by thousands on Youtube [136], denouncing the looting because it was preventing people from actually getting together and working out what the struggle was about. “You lot piss me off...we are not all gathering together and fighting for a cause. We’re running down Footlocker...”  

Gathering together and fighting for a cause: these are the methods of the working class; this is the morality of the proletarian class struggle, but they are in danger of being eaten away by atomisation and nihilism to the point where whole sectors of the working class have forgotten who they are.

But there is an alternative. The re-emergence of class identity, the reappearance of the class struggle, can be discerned in the massive and inclusive movements in Tunisia, Egypt, Spain, Greece or Israel. These movements, with all their weaknesses, give us a glimpse of a different way of fighting: through street assemblies where everyone can have a voice; through intense political discussion where every issue can be discussed; through organised defence against attacks by police and thugs, through workers’ demonstrations and strikes; through raising the question of revolution, of a completely different form of society, one based not on dog eat dog but on solidarity between human beings, not on production for sale and profit but on the production of what we really need.   

In the short term, because of the divisions created by the riots, because the state is having some success in plugging its message that any struggle against the present system can only end in wanton destruction, it is likely that the development of a real class movement in the UK is going to face even greater difficulties than before. But world-wide, the perspective remains: deepening crisis of this truly sick society, and increasingly conscious and organised resistance by the exploited. The ruling class in Britain will not be spared from either.    

ICC, 14.8.11.

The ruling class in Britain has offered a number of explanations for the recent riots. Whatever their individual analyses, those in parliament recalled to discuss the four nights of riots stood united behind the wave of state repression in some of the country's most deprived areas. Speakers queued up with suggestions about how the capitalist state can exercise social control, intimidate groups and individuals, monitor all our communications, and beef up its ability to physically confront any threat it chooses to identify. In practice, courts have carried on sentencing overnight, people have been remanded for sentencing in higher courts; there have been dawn raids with doors broken down, and the press have published galleries of people in the hope that others will, in the words of the Sun, “shop a moron.”

After riots in the 1980s the Conservative government acknowledged that poverty and unemployment were factors in the situation. Today Prime Minister Cameron says “This is criminality, pure and simple.” Beyond that he's said "There are pockets of our society that are not just broken but, frankly, sick.” Leaving aside the reality of a capitalist society that is actually incurably sick in its fundamentals, Dr Cameron's 'treatment' following this 'diagnosis' seems to be mostly violent state repression.

Opposition leader Ed Miliband has attacked Cameron for being “shallow and superficial” and thinks there's something more “complex” that has to be understood. He thinks the riots echo something beyond 'criminality'. “We have got to avoid simplistic answers. There's a debate some people are starting: is it culture, is it poverty and lack of opportunity? It's probably both.” On the 'culture' side of the equation Miliband says “It's not the first time we've seen this kind of 'me-first, take what you can' culture” and goes on to list “The bankers who took millions while destroying people's savings” and “the MPs who fiddled their expenses” and “the people who hacked phones at the expense of victims” all of them described as “greedy, selfish and immoral.”

The differences with Cameron are only at the level of rhetoric. When it comes to supporting repressive measures Miliband had no hesitations; indeed he complained that Cameron had “undermined” the police. On the left wing of the Labour Party, Ken Livingstone and Dianne Abbott were among those who backed an increase in police numbers, with the latter also in favour of curfews, that would have to be enforced by police swamping of the poorest areas.

SWP conflate riots and struggles

The riots mostly occurred in areas of high unemployment and deprivation. Many people have a natural sympathy for those living in the poorest circumstances and left-wing groups have for a long time tapped into that feeling. Posing as an 'alternative' to the consensus in parliament the Socialist Workers Party in various headlines (13/8/11) announced an “urban revolt spreading across Britain”, declared the riots (using an expression from Martin Luther King) as “the voice of the unheard” and as “One of the most powerful expressions of anger for decades.” In the articles themselves they write about an “explosion of bitterness and rage.”

Anger can be channelled into activity that is productive. It can also lead to behaviour that is destructive and counter-productive. In the recent events, the initial protests against Mark Duggan's killing, and the attacks on a number of police stations expressed a basic response to state repression. But this initial focus was very quickly overwhelmed by the indiscriminate burning of vehicles and buildings, muggings, looting of status symbols, attacks on strangers, and all the rest of the phenomena that the media has had such a feeding frenzy over. These actions were expressions of nihilism, despair and the emptiness in people's lives. There was anger to start with, but, as time went on, there was little left but cynical outbursts of imitation.

In an article in WR 344 on the class struggle we identify three distinct responses from the working class: survival, struggle and capitulation. The majority of workers are still tending to accept the current situation and just trying to survive through fear of poverty and unemployment. A small minority has taken the path of struggle. However, “part of the working class is overwhelmed by its situation and falls into a lumpen mass where it may resort to crime, preying on other members of the class, or it may become lost in drugs and alcohol or become fodder for racist and other extremist groups. There are many variations in the individual route taken but they are all marked by the absence of a sense of being part of a class defined by the qualities of solidarity and collective struggle.”Whatever the social origins of those who participated in the riots, the dead-end and destructive actions were in continuity with those who have capitulated in the face of the force of the economic crisis. It's true that not only workers (in work and out of work for various lengths of time) but also those still at school or college, petit-bourgeois, career criminals, and others took part in the random burnings and similar acts. The social position becomes secondary in such events; but we can say quite unambiguously that the working class as a class was absent from the riots. No matter how many were involved across the country they only ever amounted to a mass of desperate individuals.

The SWP protest that “It’s not about people smashing up their local area for no reason. It’s about them expressing their anger, wherever they happen to be.” If you're at home and you smash it up, you might well be expressing your anger, but you're certainly not fighting for anything[1]. Against the accusations of “mindless violence” one SWP article insisted that “the destruction of property has been targeted”. This is blatantly untrue. The burning of the furniture store in Croydon, the derelict buildings that were torched just to make a spectacular blaze, the homes that people lost when they were gutted by fire – none of these were planned, and, whether they were or not, it rather seems that the SWP writes them off as so much 'collateral damage'.

The SWP (15/8/11) claims that “The state lost control”. This is clearly a lie. Those on the street were not organised to do anything much more than loot, nor were they around in the sort of numbers that could cause the police any problems. Right wing Tories might bang on about the difficulties faced by the police, but the police tactics seemed to be a typical response to the situation, in line with what they've done in the past.

Ultimately the SWP's propaganda conflates rioting and class struggle. This is what all factions of the bourgeoisie habitually do. Any protest can be described as a 'riot' in order to justify an attack from the forces of law and order. On the other hand, confusion over the significance of anti-social rioting can undermine workers’ capacity for struggle. To those who live on the poorest estates, and in the most deprived neighbourhoods, revolutionaries need to offer their solidarity, but also the only perspective for the transformation of society, that is, the conscious, self-organised struggle of the international working class.

Car, 22/8/11.

You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
(thank God!) the British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do,
unbribed, there's no occasion to.

(Humbert Wolfe)

Many workers know from bitter experience the nasty, lying nature of the British media[1].  The ‘free press’, ‘unbiased’ TV, are merely means for the ruling class to frame the way we see and understand the world: an important part of totalitarian state capitalism’s repressive apparatus aimed at ensuring that we don’t even want to think about changing it[2].

If nothing else, the top-rated scandal around Rupert Murdoch’s News International (NI, the UK arm of Murdoch’s global, US-based News Corporation) over the summer of 2011 briefly cast this truth in the spotlight. The phone-hacking scandal showed how police, politicians and the media have for years worked with and for each other ‘in the national interest’ against the majority of the population. It revealed a world of bribery, corruption, hypocrisy and cynicism – including the flouting of its own ‘laws’ when it suits – which truly reflects the life of the ruling class.

To highlight just some examples:

• For decades, top politicians from all parties maintained close personal relations with members of the Murdoch clan and their senior employees. They brought ex-Murdoch hacks into the heart of government. Current Prime Minister David Cameron hired ex News of the World (NoW) editor Andy Coulson (who had previously resigned from NI because of illegal phone hacking ‘on his watch’) as his top communication strategist. Coulson again resigned – this time from his Tory post – but that didn’t prevent his subsequent arrest on suspicion of illegally obtaining information and bribery of police, along with (so far) 12 other current or former NI employees. Labour Leader Ed Milliband appointed another former NI toady to his team who in January sent a text to Labour Parliamentarians telling them not to pursue questions of phone hacking and NI!

• For years, police have been involved in “inappropriate” links with NI, from low ranking officers taking bribes for passing on information to close ties between the leadership of the Metropolitan Police and NI. This includes top brass being wined and dined regularly by NI during the period when the Met was “investigating” allegations about NI’s use of illegal information-gathering and the Met employing large numbers of ex-NI employees in its PR Department. Britain’s top three police chiefs resigned during the scandal.

But now the ‘great and the good’ say that’s going to change. The mighty Murdoch Empire – the ‘unacceptable face of media capitalism’ – has been, via newspaper exposes and televised proceedings of a Parliamentary Committee, humiliated and humbled so normal service can resume. As if Murdoch’s media outlets were the only ones pushing the ruling class’s propaganda; the only ones involved in lies, hacking, bribery or employing private investigators to spy. As if all this wasn’t intrinsic to capitalism! [3]

Like last year’s furore over the corrupt misuse of MP’s expenses, the ruling class has tried to use the exposure of the sordid realities of its own life to pretend that it’s merely a problem of a few rogues who don’t represent the norm and who’ve now been vanquished. At the same time, it’s trying to manipulate the scandal to clean out its own stable, heal its own divisions and to ensure that its all-important media mouthpieces function as they should.

So what lay behind the eruption of this scandal, and why did it explode when it did?

From saviour to sinner

Murdoch and NI have played a particular role in the life of the British bourgeoisie over the past 40 years. At election time, Murdoch’s papers always support the team the ruling class wants to get into power, and were integral to the state's ability to gain the result it wants. NI also drove through the ‘modernisation’ of the print industry in the 1980's through its role in crushing the print workers, who along with the miners, steel and car workers were important battalions of the working class in Britain. Murdoch print media (The Sun, The News of the World and The Times) have been at the forefront of the state’s dissemination of Islamophobia, nationalism, xenophobia and scapegoating of the weakest elements of society. Like Margaret Thatcher, Rupert Murdoch has played the role of the great right wing hate figure for the left-wing of British capitalism.

As long as NI and the Murdochs were useful to the British bourgeoisie's domination of society, these ties and activities were tolerated and encouraged.

But three elements contributed to the relative diminution of Murdoch’s standing in the UK – a fall from grace which also has ramifications for his influence in the US.

(1)    Murdoch and his son James got greedier. Not content with some 40 per cent share of the UK press market, not content with 39 per cent ownership of the most profitable arm of the British media – satellite broadcaster BSkyB - the Murdoch machine wanted more: total control of BSkyB, enabling NI to ‘bundle’ TV, satellite, telephone, internet and newspaper packages at the expense of other UK outlets, threatening the “plurality” of the British media and undermining the whole illusion of a ‘free press.’ Indeed, Murdoch Jnr, James, head of NI’s UK operations, had declared in 2009 his intention to “cut down to size” his main domestic and international broadcasting rival, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). However, the BBC is the bedrock of the British bourgeoisie’s media control: a formidable and well-respected plank of “soft power”[4] at home and abroad. The response to Murdoch’s grab was the formation of a powerful alliance of NI’s media rivals and their supporters in the political arena. This cabal saw the right wing Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail join the left wing Mirror and Guardian and the BBC to sign an appeal for NI’s bid to be blocked. Other sections of the British bourgeoisie recognised the validity of their case, notably Coalition Business Secretary Vince Cable, who said he would “wage war” against the proposed deal but who was then taken off the case by Cameron (the inexperienced Prime Minister being one of the slowest to recognise Murdoch’s increasingly destabilising and divisive role, which is why, to bring him to heel, his links to Murdoch were highlighted more than any other politician’s).

(2)    The recent role of Murdoch’s empire in the US in fostering the rabidly right-wing Fox News Network (while also being a major contributor to the President Obama’s campaign coffers) has contributed to real difficulties for, and exaggerated divisions within, the US bourgeoisie[5]. This convinced more and more members of the UK ruling class that they needed to avoid such a polarisation within their ranks and to unify against Murdoch for the good of the state.

(3)    Murdoch’s support of US imperialism and strong Euro-sceptic views had helped reinforce powerful, pre-existing conflicts within the British ruling class and was increasingly at odds with post-Blair UK imperialist policy, pursued by both Brown and Cameron, which was to try to play a more independent role following the fiascos of the Afghan/Iraq wars which left the UK weakened.

Dog Eats Dog: Murdoch snared by his own methods

All the above factors combined to launch the ‘phone-hacking scandal’ only days before Murdoch’s BSkyB bid was to have been rubber-stamped.

The timing was obviously no accident. Police (and thus the state) have known about The News of the World's use of phone tapping for years - a NoW correspondent and a private investigator hired by NI were jailed in 2007 for related offences! And more: the story 'broke' at precisely the moment a controversial and well-publicised court case ended. Millie Dowler was a 13 year old schoolgirl brutally murdered in 2002. Following the trial of her killer, there emerged a carefully manipulated media campaign about the way her innocent family had been traumatised by their questioning during the case. This fomented a tremendous sense of outrage and into this fevered atmosphere The Guardian released ‘news’ that the police had known that The News of the World had hacked the dead girl’s mobile and had even removed messages from her phone.

There could not have been a better moment to cynically turn the public against Murdoch. In addition, The Guardian then revealed that The NoW had hacked the phones of the families of two other girls murdered in 2002 and those of soldiers killed in Afghanistan. After denying all culpability, amidst a Parliamentary hue and cry which drowned genuine public outrage, Murdoch and NI were forced onto the back foot, closed the News of the World, were publically pilloried in Parliament, then made their excuses and left.

In short, Murdoch was snared by his own methods: a well orchestrated witch-hunt combined with cynical manipulation of the news.

For the moment this campaign has gained the objectives of those backing it: the BSkyB bid is dead; NI’s exclusive rights to Hollywood movies in GB have been called into question; Murdoch’s spell over UK political life is broken and rifts in the British bourgeoisie temporarily papered-over with PM Cameron finally disciplined. On the back of all this, a sickening, united ‘clean-up’ campaign to restore the ‘integrity’ of media and politicians is underway.

Workers could well reflect on the nauseous nature of all this and raise the question: if this is how the ruling class treats its own, how much more vicious and venomous are they when confronting the working class? Media coverage of the recent riots may answer that.

JJ Gaunt: 23.08.2011          

The modern Southern Cross Care Home building in Walthamstow, East London, today stands empty. What’s happened to its vulnerable residents – have they been transferred to hospitals, unsuited to their special needs, taking up beds designed for the temporarily sick? Or the minimum-waged carers who tended for them: are they now swelling the ranks of the unemployed?

When Britain’s largest care home operator Southern Cross went out of business this summer – the end result of frenzied speculation - 31,000 residents (and their relatives) in 750 homes across the country and more than 43,000 employees were left in a state of acute anxiety. 3,000 staff lost their jobs immediately.

While implementing major cuts in services and budgets, government and local authorities issued placebo assurances of an “orderly transfer” of residents and staff. But private care operator BUPA estimates that some 100,000 care home places could be “lost” in the coming 10 years while the number of people over 75 is expected to rise from 2008’s figure of 4.8 million to 7.9 million by 2028.

The situation of the elderly being ‘cared’ for in their own homes is also bleak: state quango, the Quality Care Commission, this summer issued a damning report on services provided, citing cases of the infirm being left alone for up to 17 hours a day, of ill-trained and under-paid carers forced by time restraints to choose between changing their “customers” soiled clothes or feeding them.

The crisis-ridden state can’t and won’t take responsibility for this mess – in fact it’s the source of it - while private companies say there’s not enough profit in it for them and shut up shop.

While youth unemployment soars, there’s nothing but misery at the end of their lives for millions of the elderly. Capitalism can’t cope with them and doesn’t care.

JJ Gaunt, 23/08/11.

July and August were marked by some stunning economic developments. We saw a general panic involving governments, politicians, central banks and other international financial bodies. The masters of this world seem to have totally lost it. Every day, there were new meetings between heads of state: G8, G20, the European Central Bank the US Federal Bank....there were all kinds of ad hoc, improvised declarations and decisions, but none of them stopped the world economic crisis continuing its catastrophic progress. Generalised bankruptcy is advancing. The depression has become irreversible. In a few weeks, the plan to bail out the Greek economy has become out of date and the debt crisis has had a spectacular impact on countries as significant as Italy and Spain. The world’s number one economic power, the USA, is itself going through a major political crisis faced with the necessity to deal with a debt of between 14,500 and 16,600 billion dollars. All of this in the context of a battle against a public deficit which has directly resulted in the fall in the credit rating of this giant with feet of clay. This is a first in its history. The train is going off the rails and the drivers are losing control of the engine. But where is the world economy as a whole going? Why does it seem to be tumbling into a bottomless pit? Above all: where is this leading humanity?

From lies to reality

We need to go back a bit. At the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008, the collapse of the US bank Lehman Brothers pulled the economy to the edge of the abyss. The whole financial system was threatened to fall like a house of cards. The state had to take on a large part of the debts of the banks, which had already reached incalculable proportions. As a result the central banks themselves were put into a very dangerous situation. And throughout this whole time, the bourgeoisie showed its profound cynicism. We were treated to a series of arguments, each more dishonest than the one before. Of course, to some extent the bourgeoisie is duped by its own discourse. The exploiters can never have a truly lucid view of the collapse of their own system. However, lying, cheating, hiding the facts is a necessity for the exploiters if they are to keep the exploited under their yoke.

They began by saying that all this wasn’t as serious as all that, that they were in complete control of the situation. Already this looked a bit ridiculous. However, the best was yet to come. At the beginning of 2008, after a near 20% fall in world growth, they promised us, with straight faces, a rapid exit from the crisis. It was all a passing storm; but the facts proved to be stubborn. The situation continued to deteriorate. Our famous leaders then moved on to the crudest nationalist arguments. We were told that it was all the fault of the American population who had taken out credit without any thought and bought houses without having the means to pay back the loans. It was all about the ‘sub-primes’. Of course this explanation wasn’t much use when the crisis hit the Euro zone, when it became obvious that the Greek state would not be able to avoid defaulting. The arguments then became even more shameful: the exploited in this country were described as cheats and profiteers. The crisis in Greece was specific to this country, just as it had been in Iceland and as it would be a few months later in Ireland. On the TV and the radio all the world leaders added their murderous little phrases. According to them, the Greeks were spending too much. The lower orders were living above their means, living like lords! But faced with the legitimate anger growing within these countries, the lies once again went up a notch. In Italy, good old Berlusconi was identified as bearing the sole responsibility for a totally irresponsible policy. But it was a bit harder to do the same with the very serious president of Spain, Zapatero.

Now, the bourgeoisie was pointing fingers at a part of itself. The crisis was in part at least the fault of the world of finance, those sharks greedy for growing profits. In the USA, in December 2008, Bernie Madoff, a former leader of Nasdaq and one of the best known and most respected investment advisers in New York, overnight became one of the worst crooks on the planet. And the credit ratings agencies were also used as scapegoats. At the end of 2007, they were accused of incompetence for neglecting the weight of sovereign debt in their calculations. Now they are accused of making too much of sovereign debt in their assessment of the Euro zone (for Moody’s) and of the USA (for Standard and Poor’s).

The crisis was by now openly, visibly worldwide, so a more credible lie was needed, something closer to reality. Thus for a few months there have been growing rumours that the crisis is due to an insupportable and generalised debt organised in the interest of the big speculators. In the summer of 2011, with the new explosion of the financial crisis, this line of argument has begun invading our screens.

Even if all these examples show that the bourgeoisie is finding it harder and harder to find credible lies, we can trust it to come up with new ones all the time. This is proved by the din coming from the parties of the left, the extreme left, and a number of economists, for whom the current aggravation of the crisis is down to the finance sector, and not to capitalism as such. Of course, the economy is buckling under the weight of debts which it can neither pay back nor even service. This is undermining the value of currencies, raising the prices of goods and opening the door to a series of failures in the banks, the insurance companies, and states. It is threatening to lead to the paralysis of the central banks. But the fundamental cause of all this debt is not the insatiable greed of the financiers and speculators, and even less the consumption of the exploited. On the contrary, this generalised debt has been a vital necessity for the survival of the system for half a century, enabling the system to avoid massive overproduction. The progressive development of financial speculation is not the cause of the crisis, but a consequence of the means used by states to try to deal with the crisis for the last 50 years. Without the policy of easy credit, of debt growing to the point of becoming uncontrollable, capitalism would not have been able to sell its commodities in increasing amounts. It has been the accentuation of debt which has enabled the system to maintain growth throughout this period. The monstrous development of financial speculation, which has indeed become a real cancer for capitalism, is in reality only the product of capitalism’s mounting difficulty in investing and selling at a profit. The historic exhaustion of this capacity, at the end of 2007 and beginning of 2008, has opened the door wide to today’s depression[1]

A time of depression and bankruptcy

The events that unfolded in August are a clear expression of this. The president of the European Central Bank, JC Trichet, has recently declared that “the present crisis is as serious as the one in 1930”. As proof, since the opening of the present phase of the crisis at the end of 2007, the survival of the world economy can be summed up in a few words: accelerated, titanic printing of bank notes by the central banks, and above all by the USA. What they called “Quantitative Easing” One and Two[2] were just the tip of the iceberg. In reality the Fed has literally inundated the economy, the banks and the American state with new dollars; and by extension it has done the same for the world economy as a whole. The banking system and world growth has been sustained thanks to this blood transfusion. The depression that began four years ago has been attenuated. But it’s now coming back to haunt them in the summer of 2011.

One of the things that most scares the bourgeoisie is the current brutal slowdown in economic activity. The growth at the end of 2009 and 2010 has collapsed. In the USA, GNP in the third quarter of2010 reached a value of 14,730 billion dollars. It had gone up to 3.5% since the low point of mid-2009, which was still 0.8% lower than where it had been prior to late 2007. Now, whereas an annual growth rate of 1.5% was predicted at the beginning of 2011, the real figure for the first quarter fell to about 0.4%. For the second quarter growth had been estimated at 1.3% but it’s really closer to zero. We are seeing the same thing in the UK and the Euro zone. The world economy is seeing falling growth rates, and in certain major countries, like the USA, it’s even heading to what the bourgeoisie calls negative growth. And yet in this recessionary context, inflation is on the rise. It is officially at 2.985% in the US but at 10% according to the calculations of the former director of the Fed, Paul Volcker. For China, which gives us the keynote for all the ‘emerging’ countries, it stands at over 9% annually.

This August, the general panic on the financial markets led, among other things, to an understanding that the money injected since the end of 2007 was not going to get the economy moving and coming out of the depression. At the same time it had in four years exacerbated the development of the world debt to the point where the collapse of the financial system is once again on the cards, but in an altogether worse economic situation than in 2007. Today the economic situation is so bad that the injection of new liquidities, even on a more reduced scale, is as vital as ever. The European Central Bank is daily forced to buy up the Italian and Spanish debt for a sum of around 2 billion Euros or see these countries go under. So while this new money is indispensable for the day to day survival of the system, this cannot have even the limited impact that increasing the money supply has had since the end of 2007. It would require a whole lot more to soak up the debts which for Spain and Italy (and they are not the only ones) stand at hundreds of billions of Euros. The possibility of France losing its AAA credit rating would be a step too far for the Euro zone. Only countries rated in this category can finance the European reserve fund. If France can no longer do this, the whole zone will fall apart. The panic we have seen in the first half of August is not yet over. We are seeing the bourgeoisie being brutally forced to recognise that maintaining continuous support for economic growth has become impossible, even on a limited scale. This is what is provoking the current lamentable spectacle. These are the underlying reasons for the splits in the American bourgeoisie on the question of raising the debt ceiling. The same goes for the much fan fared accords drawn up the leaders of the Euro zone to bail out Greece, which had to be put into question a few days later by certain European governments. The conflict between the Democrats and the Republicans in the USA are not simple disagreements between responsible people and irresponsible people on the right as the bourgeois press presents it – even if the dogmatic, absurd demands of the right, and the Tea Party in particular, are certainly aggravating the problems facing the American ruling class. The inability of the leaders of the Euro zone to come to an ordered, consensual agreement towards European countries unable to repay their debts, are not only the product of the sordid interests of each national capital. They express a deeper reality, one which is dramatic for capitalism. The bourgeoisie is quite simply becoming aware that a new massive boost for the economy like the one carried out between 2008 and 2010 is particularly dangerous. It risks resulting in the collapse in value of the treasury bonds and the currency of these countries, including the euro; a collapse which announces, as we have seen over the last few months, a surge in inflation.

What perspectives for the world economy?

The depression is there and the bourgeoisie can’t stop it. This is what the summer of 2011 has brought us. The storm has broken. The world’s leading power, around which the economy of the entire planet has been organised since 1945, is going towards defaulting on its debts. It would have been impossible to imagine this a while ago, but this historic reality is a sign of the bankruptcy of the whole world economy. The role the USA has played as an economic locomotive for more than 60 years is now finished. The USA has demonstrated this in public: it can no longer go on as before, however much part of their debt is taken over by countries like China or Saudi Arabia. The latter’s own finances have become a major problem and they are not in a position to finance global demand. Who will take up the reins? The answer is simple: no one! The Euro zone is going from one crisis to another, at the level of both public and private debt, and is heading towards a break-up. The famous ‘emerging countries’, like China, are, in turn, completely dependent on American, European and Japanese markets. Despite their very low production costs, the last few years have shown that these economies have developed as what the media call ‘bubble economies’. i.e. on the basis of colossal investments than can never be returned. It’s the same phenomenon we saw with what the specialists call the ‘housing crisis ‘ in the US and the ‘new economy’ a few years before. In both cases, the result is well known: a crash. China can raise the cost of its credit but crashes lie in store for the Middle Kingdom as they have done in the west. China, India, Brazil, far from being future poles of economic growth, can only take their place in the slide towards global depression. All these cracks in the economy will further destabilise and disorganise the system. What’s happening now in the USA and the Euro zone is propelling the world into depression, with each bankruptcy feeding the next at an increasing pace. The relative respite we have been through since mid-2009 is now over. The mounting bankruptcy of the capitalist world economy poses to the exploited of the world not only the need to refuse to pay for the effects of this crisis. It’s no longer just a question of massive redundancies or the reduction in real wages. It’s a question of a drive towards the generalisation of poverty, a growing inability for proletarians to meet their most basic needs. This dramatic perspective obliges us to understand that it’s not a particular form of capitalism which is collapsing, such as finance capital, but capitalism as such. The whole of capitalist society is rushing towards the abyss, and us with it of we allow it. There is no alternative but its complete overthrow, prepared by the development of massive struggle against this futureless, moribund system. Faced with the failure of capitalism we have to fight for a new society in which human beings will no longer produce for the profits of a few but to satisfy their own needs: a truly human, collective society, based on solidarity – communism (which has nothing to do with the political regimes and models of economic exploitation supplied by the former USSR or China). This society is both necessary and possible.

TX, 14/8/11.

After six months of fighting, the Libyan ‘rebels’ are celebrating their victory over the once all-powerful Gaddafi, who for 42 years had been flouting the western democracies, and playing cat and mouse with their leaders. He was also a member of the Socialist International. The democracies, in fat years and lean, had made every effort to get into the good books of Libya’s Guide, but from the moment when a real popular revolt against the Libyan dictator’s Jamahiriya regime was turned into a sinister struggle between factions of the bourgeoisie (see https://en.internationalism.org/wr/342/libya [145]), they have been giving their active support to the Transitional National Council (TNC).

The western powers, led by France and Britain, orchestrated all the operations of the ‘rebels’. How many dead and wounded and maimed for life in this capitalist war which the obedient media have tried to pass off as the continuation of the ‘Arab spring’? For months we have seen no clear figures showing the number of victims, and yet to justify the NATO intervention the press has given us plenty of details about the massacres committed by Gaddafi’s forces. Since the first Gulf War, we have been fed the cruel lie about ‘targeted strikes’ which only kill bad guys and not civilians, even though there are thousands of examples to the contrary.

According to its own estimates, NATO has carried out 20,000 air raids and 8,000 ‘humanitarian’ strikes since 31 March. And even though NATO was bombing towns to ‘prepare the way for the rebels’, only nine deaths were officially recognised. But despite this black-out, whole villages and neighbourhoods were pulverised in the various battles, as in Tripoli and other ‘liberated’ towns, ‘guilty’ of the fact that the loyalist army or even Gaddafi himself were holed up in them. It’s not unlike what Assad’s army is doing with its ruthless bombardments of the Syrian population, which is currently being subjected to a real massacre. On top of this, a humanitarian disaster is taking shape: in Tripoli, there is no water, no electricity, no food supplies, while bodies are rotting in the streets. This is the face of ‘liberation’ in Libya.

The NATO forces have not limited themselves to bombing with the aim of ‘giving cover’ to the rebels. They have also sent out ground forces: 500 British special service personnel and hundreds of French commandos. And they have also armed the anti-Gaddafi military forces. France has acknowledged supplying ‘self-defence’ weapons such as rocket-launchers, assault rifles, machine-guns and anti-tank missiles. Not counting the presence of CIA forces, even though the USA has supposedly withdrawn from direct military intervention.

In this war where lies, generalised disinformation, inhumanity and contempt towards the population have been ever-present, the murderous hypocrisy both of the tribal chiefs in Libya and of the big and medium powers is going to be a trademark of the post-Gaddafi order. Obviously, few will regret the downfall of this odious and bloody dictator, who for months has been exhorting the population to sacrifice itself while using it as a human shield. But behind the speeches of the opposition and their international backers, there has been a real clash of interests and this is now going to become more and more dominant. After Iraq, ex-Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Ivory Coast etc, ‘international aid to the oppressed’ is the royal road to a situation of endless chaos. Never in history have so many countries and regions been the permanent prey of wars, terrorist attacks, and human and material destruction. Libya has just joined this world-wide concert.

We are being told that the ‘freedom fighters’ of the TNC are now going to work towards a regime of ‘stability, democracy and respect for human rights’, with the support of an ‘international community’ ready to unfreeze Libyan assets in order to finance the new regime. The coalition government (which envisages elections in...20 months) is a mish-mash of tribal chiefs, militant Islamists and former eminent members of the Gaddafi regime. The head of the TNC’s military council is himself a former jihadist, close to al-Qaida, with a murky past in Afghanistan. The president of the TNC was up till recently the justice minister of the hated Gaddafi regime – the same man who condemned the Bulgarian nurses to death. The prime minister was a childhood friend of the deposed dictator....

The short history of the TNC has already shown its shadowy side. Younes, a military head and leader of a powerful tribe, was killed at the end of July in very obscure circumstances. These ingredients, to which you would have to add the ancestral tribal rivalries which the ‘Leader’ managed to keep under wraps, are combining to make sure that there will be a general free for all. And if that wasn’t enough, the rush by the European, American and Arab raptors (like Qatar, Jordan, Algeria, etc) to grab their piece of this oil-producing cake will only further aggravate instability.

France, whose head of state is strutting around more than ever, is posing as the saviour of the Libyan people. Together with Britain it organised an “international conference in support of the new Libya” in Paris on 1 September. A pretty but deceptive spectacle: behind the facade of unity among the 60 delegations representing the ‘friends of Libya’ a stormy future is taking shape. At stake above all is the prize of Libyan oil. Paris and London, advertising their active support for the rebellion, are seeking preferential contracts from the new government, as is the USA, which is already set up there with two oil companies. Sarkozy seems to have negotiated for the French state a 35% share of Libyan crude in exchange for its good and loyal services to the TNC.

But countries like Italy, Germany, and Russia are also queuing up. Whether before or during the conflict, we saw these countries mounting a more or less open opposition to the intervention. Italy, 21% of whose exports went to the former Libyan government (as opposed to 4% for France), and which is worried about seeing its present oil agreements revised downwards, consistently tried to counter the intervention (‘for humanitarian reasons’), both before and after UN resolution 1973 on 31 March, although it was in the end obliged to participate rather than risk losing everything. As the TNC spokesman said to the conference: “the Libyan people know who supported its fight for freedom and those who did not”. The message towards Russia and China is clear, but the game is far from over.

The Libyan territory is important not only for its oil but also as regards strategic control of the region. The NATO mission is supposed to finish at the end of September, and it’s clear that that Gaddafi’s departure has to be speeded up (or his capture dead or alive – there is already a high price on his head) so that the military forces of the powers that took part in the operations can have a pretext for installing themselves in the country: the story about ‘stabilising’ the country. A UN document officially envisages sending a military and police force “for disarming the population” and “establishing a climate of confidence”. It’s clear that the countries of the UN are not going to let go of this morsel: “The mandate of protecting civilians coming from the Security Council and applied by NATO forces will not end with the fall of the Gaddafi government”. If a free-for-all between the bandits of the TNC is a certainty, this is no less the case for the big powers who will step in and stir up the tensions even more. The last 40 years, and especially the last 10, have shown us what all this means: grab what you can, play on the dissensions between the various factions, of which there are many in a country which has remained largely tribal. But the old imperialist powers like France and Britain, just like the USA, have a long experience in sowing discord and in the strategy of divide and rule. Except that here, there won’t be anyone really ruling, just an explosive struggle of each against all.

The permanent instability taking shape in Libya is the latest example of the madness of the capitalist system.  

Wilma 3/9/11

In The Independent of 3/9/11 there appeared an article based on secret files that the paper had unearthed. We are reprinting here substantial extracts from that article. The Independent says that they “reveal the astonishingly close links that existed between British and American governments and Muammar Gaddafi.”

The documents chart how prisoners were offered to the Libyans for brutal interrogation by the Tripoli regime under the highly controversial “rendition” programme, and also how details of exiled opponents of the Libyan dictator in the UK were passed on to the regime by MI6.

The papers show that British officials actually helped write a draft speech for Colonel Gaddafi while he was trying to rehabilitate his regime from the pariah status to which it had sunk following its support for terrorist movements. Further documents disclose how, at the same time, the US and UK acted on behalf of Libya in conducting negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

With the efforts they had expended in cultivating their contacts with the regime, the British were unwilling, at times, to share their “Libya connection” with their closest ally, the US. In a letter to his Libyan intelligence counterpart, an MI6 officer described how he refused to pass on the identity of an agent to Washington.

The documents, many of them incendiary in their implications, were found at the private offices of Moussa Koussa, Col Gaddafi’s right hand man, and regime security chief, who defected to Britain in the days following the February revolution…

The material raises questions about the relationship between Moussa Koussa and the British government and the turn of events following his defection. Mr Koussa’s surprising arrival in Britain led to calls for him to be questioned by the police about his alleged involvement in murders abroad by the Libyan regime, including that of policewoman Yvonne Fletcher and opponents of Gaddafi. He was also said to be involved in the sending of arms to the IRA. At the time David Cameron’s government assured the public that Mr Koussa may, indeed, face possible charges. Instead, he was allowed to leave the country and is now believed to be staying in a Gulf state.

The revelations by The Independent will lead to questions about whether Mr Koussa, who has long been accused of human rights abuses, was allowed to escape because he held a ‘smoking gun’. The official is known to have copied and taken away dozens of files with him when he left Libya.

The papers illustrate the intimate relations Mr Koussa and some of his colleagues seemingly enjoyed with British intelligence. Letters and faxes flowed to him headed ‘Greetings from MI6’ ‘Greetings from SIS’, handwritten Christmas greetings, on one occasion, from ‘ Your friend’, followed by the name of a senior British intelligence official, and regrets over missed lunches. There were also regular exchanges of gifts: on one occasion a Libyan agent arrived in London laden with figs and oranges.

The documents repeatedly touched on the blossoming relationship between Western intelligence agencies and Libya. But there was a human cost. The Tripoli regime was a highly useful partner in the ‘rendition’ process under which prisoners were sent by the US for ‘enhanced interrogation’, a euphemism, say human rights groups, for torture.

One US administration document, marked secret, says “Our service is in a position to deliver Shaykh Musa to your physical custody similar to what we have done with other senior LIFG (Libyan Islamic Fighting Group) members in the past. We respectfully request an expression of interest from your service regarding taking custody of Musa”.

The British too were dealing with the Libyans about opposition activists, passing on information to the regime. This was taking place despite the fact that Colonel Gaddafi’s agents had assassinated opponents in the campaign to eliminate so-called “stray dogs” abroad, including the streets of London. The murders had, at the time, led to protests and condemnation by the UK government.

One letter dated 16th April 2004 from UK intelligence to an official at the International Affairs Department of Libyan security, says: “We wish to inform you that Ismail KAMOKA @ SUHAIB [possibly referring to an alias being used] was released from detention on 18th March 2004. A panel of British judges ruled that KAMOKA was not a threat to national security in the UK and subsequently released him. We are content for you to inform [a Libyan intelligence official] of KAMOKA’s release.”

Ironically, the Libyan rebels who have come in to power after overthrowing Colonel Gaddafi with the help of the UK and NATO have just appointed Abdullah Hakim Belhaj, a former member of the LIFG, as their commander in Tripoli.

Other material highlights the two-way nature of the information exchange. One document headed “For the attention of the Libyan Intelligence Service. Greetings from MI6 asks for information about a suspect travelling on [a] Libyan passport...”

One of the most remarkable finds in the cache of documents is a statement by Colonel Gaddafi during his rapprochement with the West during which he gave up his nuclear programme and promised to destroy his stock of chemical and biological weapons.

The Libyan leader said “we will take these steps in a manner that is transparent and verifiable. Libya affirms and will abide by commitments... when the world is celebrating the birth of Jesus, and as a token of contribution to a world full of peace, security, stability and compassion the greater Jamahiriya renews its honest call for a WMD free zone in the Middle East and Africa.”

The statement was, in fact, put together with the help of British officials. A covering letter, addressed to Khalid Najjar, of the Department of International Relations and Safety in Tripoli, said “for the sake of clarity, please find attached a tidied up version of the language we agreed on Tuesday. I wanted to ensure that you had the same script.”

The Independent 3/9/11

The scale of the catastrophe that has taken place at the nuclear power plant at Fukushima in Japan has once again revealed the predatory exploitation of nature by capitalism. The human species has always lived by transforming nature. But capital today poses a new problem: this system doesn’t produce for the needs of humanity but for profit alone, and it is ready to do anything necessary to ensure its profits. Left to its own logic, this system will end up destroying the planet. The article that follows looks at nuclear energy within a broad historical context, with the aim of developing a communist point of view on the problem. 

New debates about nuclear energy

The disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power reactor in Japan this March has reopened the debate about the role of nuclear power in meeting world energy needs. A number of countries, including China, have announced reviews or temporary halts to their building programmes while Switzerland and Germany have gone further and pledged to replace their nuclear capacity. In the case of the latter, 8 of the country’s 17 plants will be closed this year with all shut down by 2022 and replaced by renewable energy sources. This move has brought forth warnings from the nuclear industry and some big energy users of problems with supply, and large price increases. Over recent years there have been reports of a renaissance of the nuclear industry with 60 plants under construction and another 493 planned according to the industry group the World Nuclear Association.[1] In Britain there has been a debate about the risks and benefits of nuclear power with one of the most high profile greens in the country, George Monbiot, not only announcing his conversion to nuclear power as the only realistic way to prevent global warming[2] but also going on to attack former colleagues in the anti-nuclear movement for ignoring scientific data about the real risk of nuclear power.[3]

In reality the issue of nuclear power cannot be understood as a purely technical question or as an equation determined by the various costs and benefits of nuclear power, fossil fuels and renewable energies. It is necessary to step back and look at the whole question of energy use in the historical perspective of the evolution of human society and differing modes of production that have existed. What follows is a necessarily brief outline of such an approach.

Energy Use and Human Development

The history of humanity and of the different modes of production is also a history of the use of energy. Early hunter-gatherer societies relied principally on human energy and lived from the animals and plants produced by nature with fairly minimal intervention, although some use was made of fire to clear the ground to allow regrowth or to bring down trees. The development of farming in the Neolithic period marked a fundamental change in humanity’s use of energy and its relationship with nature. Human labour was organised on a systematic basis to transform the land, with forests cleared and walls erected to manage domesticated animals. Animals began to be used to assist in farming and subsequently in some productive processes such as powering mills. Fire was used for heating and cooking and for industrial processes such as the making of pottery and the smelting of metals. Trade also developed, again relying on human and animal muscle power but also harnessing wind power to traverse oceans.

The Neolithic revolution transformed human society. The increased food supply that resulted led to significant population growth and to a greater complexity of human society, with part of the population gradually moving from direct production of food to more specialised roles linked to the new productive techniques. Some groups also became freed from production and took on religious and military roles. Thus the primitive communism of the hunter-gatherer societies became transformed into class societies, with the religious and military elites supported by the labour of others.

These societies’ achievements in agriculture, architecture and religion all required the concentrated and organised use of human labour. In the first civilisations this resulted in the coercion of a mass of human labour, which found its typical form in slavery. The enforced expenditure of energy by a subject class allowed a minority to be freed from labour and live a life that required the mobilisation of a level of resources far beyond that which any individual could achieve for himself or herself. To give one example: one of the glories of Roman civilisation was the heating systems in villas that circulated hot air below floors and inside walls; nothing comparable was seen for centuries afterwards where even kings lived in buildings that were so cold that the wine and water was reported to freeze on the table in winter.[4] These systems were often built and run by slave labour and used large quantities of wood or charcoal. The warmth enjoyed by the ruling class came from the appropriation of both natural and human energy.

The relationship between humanity and Nature

The development of the productive forces and the class societies that were both the consequence and spur of the latter changed the relationship between humanity and nature as it changed the relationship between people. The hunter-gatherer societies were immersed in and dominated by nature. The agricultural revolution sought to control nature with the domestication of crops and animals, the clearing of forests, the alteration of soils through the use of natural fertilisers and control of water supplies.

Thus the natural world and human labour became resources to be exploited but also threats to be dominated. The result was that humans – both the exploited and the exploiters – became distant from nature and from each other. Writing in the mid 19th century Marx pointed to the intimate inter-relationship between humanity and nature that he saw as the “life of the species”: “Physically man lives only on these products of nature, whether they appear in the form of food, heating, clothes, a dwelling etc. The universality of man appears in practice precisely in the universality which makes all nature his inorganic body – both inasmuch as nature is (1) his direct means of life, and (2) the material, the object and the instrument of his life activity. Nature is man’s inorganic body – nature, that is, insofar as it is not his human body. Man lives on nature – means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is part of nature.”[5] Capitalism, wage labour and private property tore this apart, turning the product of the worker’s labour into “an alien object exercising power over him” and transforming nature into “an alien world, inimically opposed to him.”[6] The alienation that Marx saw as characteristic of capitalism, and experienced most sharply by the working class, actually emerged with the appearance of class society but accelerated with the transition to capitalism. While all of humanity is affected by alienation the impact of it and their role in it is not the same for the exploiting and the exploited classes. The former, as the class that dominates society, drives forward the process of alienation as it animates the process of exploitation and rarely senses what its does, even though it cannot escape the consequences. The latter feels the impact of alienation in its daily life as a lack of control over what it does and is but it also absorbs the ideological form that alienation takes and repeats part of it in its human relationships and its relationship with the natural world.

The process has continued since Marx described it. In the last century alienated humanity has devoured itself in two global wars and has seen the systematic effort to annihilate parts of itself in the holocaust of the Second World War and the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of recent years. It has also ruthlessly exploited and destroyed nature to the point where the natural world and all life faces extinction. However, it is not humanity in the abstract that has done this but the particular form of class society that has come to dominate and threaten the earth: capitalism. Nor is it all who live within this class society who bear responsibility: between the exploiters and the exploited, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, there is no equality of responsibility just as there is no equality of power. It is capitalism and the bourgeois class that has created this world and that bears responsibility. This may upset those who want us all to pull together for the ‘common good’ but history shows this conclusion is correct.

Energy and the Dawn of Capitalism

The industrial revolution was also a revolution in energy, in the utilisation of energy sources that allowed society to go beyond the boundaries imposed by the ‘organic economy’ that relied on the seasonal growth of natural sources of energy to meet most of its needs. However, the industrial revolution predates the large scale use of coal that is synonymous with it and it is in the changed relations of production, in the emergence of the bourgeoisie as a class, that the impetus for the development of the technology to extract and utilise the latter lies.[7] Just as the first days of capitalism saw a more systematic and extensive use of the existing means of production, so it made use of the existing sources of energy and pushed them to their limits.

In the organic economy that existed from the Neolithic revolution until the widespread adoption of coal during the industrial revolution, human power, animal power and wood were the main sources of energy. In 1561- 70 they made up 22.8%, 32.4% and 33.0% respectively of the energy consumed in England and Wales. Wind and water power made up scarcely more than 1% combined while coal accounted for 10.6%.[8] The abundance of wood in Europe gave it an advantage over societies where it was scarce, but the development of production drained these supplies and impeded growth. Thus in 1717 a blast furnace in Wales was not fired until four years after construction when enough wood and charcoal had been accumulated and subsequently could only operate for an average of fifteen weeks a year for the same reason.[9] Before the 18th century it has been calculated that an average blast furnace working two years on and two years off required 2,000 hectares of forest.[10] In South Wales, subsequently famous of its coal mining, the first stages of the industrial revolution witnessed the development of ironworks and led to the deforestation of the valleys that had once been densely wooded. The growth of demand for wood led to price increases and shortages that affected the poor most of all. In parts of France there was insufficient wood to fire the bread ovens and in others it was reported that “the poor do without fires.”[11]

The limits to production imposed by the organic economy can also be seen by calculating the amount of timber that would have been required to match subsequent consumption of energy from coal. Wood is not as efficient a source of energy as coal: two tons of wood are required to produce the same energy as a ton of coal and 30 tons to produce a ton of iron. An acre of managed woodland can produce about the equivalent energy to one ton of coal in a year. In 1750 4,515,000 tons of coal were produced in England and Wales. To produce the equivalent amount of energy using timber would have taken 4.3 million acres, or 13% of the land surface of the two countries. In 1800 coal production was 13,045,000 tons requiring 35% of the land surface (11.2 million acres). Half a century later production had risen to 65,050,000 tons, requiring no less than 150% of the land (48.1 million acres).[12] One of the keys to Britain’s rise to world dominance was that it had coal reserves that were accessible using the existing technology. This created the momentum to develop the means of production to allow the extraction of coal from deeper levels.

Coal and Oil: The foundations of Industrial Capitalism

Prior to the widespread use of coal the energy available was essentially determined by the amount of the sun’s energy that was converted to plant growth through photosynthesis. This included the production of foodstuffs for animals and humans and of timber. This natural cycle seemed to impose an insurmountable limit to the amount of muscular and thermal energy that could be utilised and thus to the level of production and the wealth of society. Poverty and widespread misery seemed eternal, unalterable, facts of life. The large scale extraction of coal and subsequently oil broke this barrier by allowing access to the earth’s energy stores, to the product of the photosynthesis of past millennia.[13]

The 19th century and the first part of the 20th were dominated by the use of coal. The advance of the industrial revolution is often measured in the tons of coal mined, the tons of iron produced and the miles of railway line laid. We have given some indication of the first of these above, but It can also be measured in the changing patterns of energy use and in the amount of energy used per head. We noted above that in 1560 coal accounted for just over 10.6% of the energy consumed in England and Wales. By 1850 this figure had increased to 92%.[14] Coal was initially used to replace wood in industries such as smelting, pottery and brewing that required large amounts of heat, and it only gradually affected the actual organisation of production and directly increased productivity. Static steam engines were initially developed to pump water from mines, which, although inefficient, allowed coal and other resources, such as tin in Cornwall, to be mined from previously inaccessible depths. Subsequently engines were adapted to drive machines, notably in the cotton industry, and as means of transport.

Total energy consumption increased progressively throughout the industrial revolution. Total consumption in England and Wales in 1850 was 28 times as great as in 1560. In part this was accounted for by the substantial growth in population that took place during this period but the real scale of the increase is shown by the fact that consumption per head went up fivefold.[15]

The oil industry gradually developed during the 20th century, with significant developments in production techniques and the scale of production taking place in the inter-war years. By 1929 the trade in oil had grown to $1,170m, with the main exporters being the US Venezuela and the Netherlands Antilles, although refineries were also established during this period in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia by the US and in Iraq and Lebanon by British and European enterprises.[16] However, it was only after the Second World War that oil came to dominate energy production, accounting for 46.1% of total world energy production in 1973, although by 2008 this had fallen to 33.2%.[17]

The increasing use of energy has been a feature of industrialisation around the world. It expresses not only the increase in scale of production and the impact of rising population, but also the development of productivity with the increase in the quantity of the means of production, including energy, that each worker is able to set in motion. This trend has continued today: between 1973 and 2008 total energy consumption increased by 80%.[18]

The revolution in the form and quantity of energy available to humanity underpinned the industrial revolution and opened the door from the realm of want to that of plenty. But this revolution was driven by the development of capitalism whose purpose is not the satisfaction of human needs but the increase of capital based on the appropriation of surplus value produced by an exploited working class. Energy is used to drive the development of productivity but it is also a cost of production. It is part of the constant capital alongside raw materials, machines and factories and, as such, tends to increase in relation to the variable capital that is the source of capitalism’s profits. It is this that dictates capitalism’s attitude to energy.

Capitalism has no regard for the use of energy, for the destruction of finite resources, other than as a cost of production. Increased productivity tends to require increased energy, so the capitalists (other than those in the oil industry) are driven to try and reduce the cost of this energy. On the one hand this results in the profligate use of energy for irrational ends, such as transporting similar commodities back and forth across the world and the ceaseless multiplication of commodities that meet no real human need but serve only as a means to extract and realise surplus value. On the other, it leads to the denial of access to energy and to the products of energy for millions of humans who lack the money to be of interest to the capitalists. This is illustrated in Nigeria where Shell pumps out billions of dollars worth of oil while the local people go without or risk their lives by trying to illegally tap the oil from the pipeline. The price is also paid by those working in the energy industries in lives lost and bodies maimed or poisoned and by the environment and all that lives in it, from the polluted, toxic waters of the Thames that characterised 19th century London to the warming of the globe that threatens the future of humanity today.

Nuclear Energy

The potential to use nuclear fission or fusion to produce power has been known about for around a century but it was only after the Second World War that it was actually realised. Thus, while its general context is that outlined above, the specific context is the post-war situation dominated by the rivalry between the USA and USSR and the nuclear arms race that resulted. The development of nuclear power is thus not only inextricably linked to that of nuclear weapons but was arguably a smokescreen for the latter.

In the early 1950s the American government was concerned about the public’s response to the danger of the nuclear arsenal it was assembling and the strategy of first strike that was being propounded. It’s response was to organise a campaign known as Operation Candor to win the public over through adverts across the media (including comic books) and a series of speeches by President Eisenhower that culminated in the announcement at the UN General Assembly of the ‘Atoms for Peace’ programme to “encourage world-wide investigation into the most effective peacetime uses of fissionable materials.”[19] The plan included sharing information and resources, and the US and USSR jointly creating an international stockpile of fissionable material. In the years that followed the arms race went on unabated and nuclear weapons spread to other powers, often under the guise of a civilian nuclear power programme, as in Israel and India. The initial reactors produced large quantities of material for nuclear weapons and small amounts of very expensive electricity. The sharing of nuclear knowledge became part of global imperialist struggles; thus in the late 1950s Britain secretly supplied Israel with heavy water for the reactor it was building with French assistance.[20]

Despite talk about energy too cheap to meter, nuclear power has never fulfilled this promise and has relied on state support to cover its real cost. Even where private companies build and run plants there are usually large open or hidden subsidies. For example privatisation of the nuclear industry in Britain failed when Thatcher attempted it in the 1980s because private capital identified there were unquantifiable costs and risks. It was only in 1996, when the ageing Magnox reactors that would soon need decommissioning were excluded from the deal that private investors were prepared to buy British Energy at a knockdown price of £2bn. Six years later the company had to be bailed out with a £10bn government loan.[21]

While advocates of nuclear energy today argue that it is cheaper than other sources this remains a questionable assertion. In 2005 the World Nuclear Association, stated that “In most industrialized countries today, new nuclear power plants offer the most economical way to generate base-load electricity even without consideration of the geopolitical and environmental advantages that nuclear energy confers” and published a range of data to support the claim that construction, financing, operating and waste and decommissioning costs have all reduced.[22] Between 1973 and 2008 the proportion of energy from nuclear reactors grew from 0.9% of the global total to 5.8%.[23]

A report published in 2009, commissioned by the German Federal Government,[24] makes a far more critical evaluation of the economics of nuclear power and questions the idea that there is a nuclear renaissance underway. The report points out that the number of reactors has fallen over the last few years in contrast to the widespread forecasts of increases in both reactors and the power produced. The increase in the amount of power generated that has taken place during this period is the result of upgrading the existing reactors and extending their operational life. It goes on to argue that there is a lot of uncertainty about the reactors currently described as being ‘under construction’, with a number having been in this position for over 20 years. The number under construction has fallen from the peak of over 200 in 1980 to below 50 in 2006.

As regards the economics of nuclear power, the report points to the high level of uncertainty in all areas including financing, construction, operation and decommissioning. It shows that the state remains central to all nuclear projects, regardless of who they are formally owned and operated by. One aspect of this is the various forms of subsidy provided by the state to support capital costs, waste management and plant closure and price support. Another has been the necessity for the state to limit the liability of the industry in order for the private sector to accept the risks. Thus in 1957 the US government stepped in when insurance companies refused to agree insurance because they were unable to quantify the risk.[25] Today it is estimated that “In general national limits are in the order of a few hundred million Euro, less than 10% of the cost of building a plant and far less than the cost of the Chernobyl accident.”[26]

The dangers of nuclear energy are as fiercely debated as the costs and the scientific evidence seems to be very variable. This is particularly the case with the Chernobyl disaster where the estimates of the deaths that resulted vary widely. A World Health Organisation Report found that 47 the 134 emergency workers initially involved had died as a result of contamination by 2004[27] and estimated that there would be just under 9,000 excess deaths from cancer as a result of the disaster.[28] A report by Russian scientists published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences estimated that from the date of the accident until 2006 some 985,000 additional deaths had resulted from the accident from cancer and a range of other diseases.[29]

For those without specialist medical and scientific knowledge this is difficult to unravel, but what is less questionable is the massive level of secrecy and falsification that runs from the decision by the British government to withhold publication of the report into one of the first accidents in the industry at Windscale in 1957 to Fukishima today where the true scale of the disaster only emerged slowly. Returning to Chernobyl, the Russian government did not report the accident for several days, leaving the local population to continue living and working amidst the radiation. But it was not only Russia. The French government minimised the radiation levels reaching the country[30] and told its population that the radiation cloud that spread across the whole of Europe had not passed over France![31] Meanwhile the British government reassured the country that there was no risk to health, reporting levels of radiation that were forty times lower than they actually were[32], and then quarantined hundreds of farms. As late as 2007 374 farms in Britain still remained under the special control scheme.[33]

Nuclear energy is being pushed by various governments as a ‘green’ solution to the problems associated with fossil fuels. This is largely a smokescreen to hide the real motives, which are concerns about the possible exhaustion of oil, the increasing price of oil and the risks associated with a dependence on energy resources outside the state’s control. This green facade is slipping as the economic crisis leads states to return to coal[34] and to push down the costs of exploiting new sources of oil, much of which is physically hard to access, or requires processes that pollute and despoil the environment, such as coal-tar sands. Energy supplies have also been a factor in the imperialist struggles over recent years and it seems likely that this may increase in the period ahead. Nuclear energy then comes back to where it started as a source of fissile material and a cover for weapons programmes.

Communism and Energy

The Stalinist regimes that appropriated and besmirched the name of communism shared all of capitalism's attitudes to energy use and acted with complete disregard  for the health of the people or the damage to the environment. This was true of the former USSR yesterday and is true of China today. This feeds the widespread confusion that communism is about enforced industrialisation and disregard for nature.

In contrast Marx had a strong concern for nature, both at the theoretical level of the relationship between humanity and nature as we have already seen, and at the practical level where he wrote about the danger of the exhaustion of soils by capitalist farming and about the impact of industrialisation on the health of the working class: “Moreover, all progress in capitalistic agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time, is a progress towards ruining the lasting sources of that fertility…Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth – the soil and the labourer.”[35]

We cannot set out the ‘energy policy’ of communism in advance but starting from the fundamental fact that production will be for human need rather than profit we can predict that the pattern of energy use will change significantly and can set out some aspects of this:

–         we can anticipate a vast reduction in the production of unnecessary commodities and in the transportation of other commodities whose only purpose is to increase the profits of the capitalists;[36]

–         similarly there may be a reduction in unnecessary travel to and from places of work as communities take on more human proportions, as the boundary between work and non-work activities blur, as the divorce between town and country is overcome;

–         creativity and intellect will be devoted to meeting human needs so we can anticipate significant developments in energy sources,[37] especially renewables, as well as in the design of means of production, transport and other equipment and machinery to make them more energy efficient and long-lasting;

Since a communist society will have a concern for the long term this implies vastly reducing the use of non-renewable sources of energy so that they remain available for future generations. It should be noted that even the uranium required by nuclear power is a non-renewable resource so it does not break the reliance on finite resources. This implies that renewable energy will be fundamental to communist society, but because the creativity and intelligence of humanity will be freed from its current shackles this does not imply a return to the privations of previous organic economies.

Communism and Nuclear Energy

It is not for us to dictate to the future the decisions it will take on this question. But the above implies a significant reduction in the use of energy and changes in the forms of energy informed by increased scientific understanding. The potential dangers of nuclear power and the fact that spent fuel and contaminated waste remains a risk for hundreds of thousands of years suggest that nuclear power may not have a place in a society that is concerned with the common good of this generation, of future generations and of the planet that we all depend on.

In contrast, capitalism today is stepping back from the pretence to be ‘green’. Green energy today is largely peripheral, although may expand if it is economic to do so. However, the way that capitalism uses all sources of energy exposes humanity to dangers because the threat it poses does not spring from this or that policy and element of production but from the laws that govern capitalism and from the historic legacy of societies based on exploitation.

North 19/06/11

International Communist Current Public forum

Capitalism in meltdown: is there a working class response?

7.30 pm, Tuesday 20 September, Lucas Arms, 245A Grays Inn Road, London, WC1X 8QY

This forum will focus on some of the most important developments in the world situation in the last few months:

-       the deepening of the ‘debt crisis’, now hitting not only weaker countries like Greece but the world’s most powerful economy, the USA

-       the explosion of social protests across North Africa, Spain, Greece, and most recently Israel

-       the war in Libya

-       the riots in Britain.

We will try to show that all these events have a common root: the historic dead-end reached by capitalism. We will try to discuss both the dangers and the potential in the situation, focusing on questions such as:

-       does capitalism have any way out of the current crisis, or is it actually reaching the terminal stages of its decline?

-       What is the class nature of the revolts, demonstrations and assemblies we have seen in the recent period?

-       How did the protests in Libya get diverted into an imperialist war?

-       Do the riots in Britain contain the potential for a movement against capitalism?

Short presentation followed by open discussion. All welcome

In the article on the ‘social justice’ movement in Israel we published on 7 August [1], we wrote that “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”.

These fears proved to be well-grounded. On 18 August, there was a spate of armed attacks on Israeli civilians and military patrols. Two public transport buses in southern Israel were raked with gunfire, leaving several dead and wounded. There was some confusion as to whether the Popular Resistance Committees or Hamas carried out these attacks: neither claimed responsibility. Either way, the Israeli government responded in its characteristically brutal manner, with air strikes in Gaza that killed members of the PRC but also children and a group of Egyptian border guards. This in turn provoked further rocket attacks launched from Gaza on southern Israeli towns.

Whoever initiated this latest spiral of violence, an increase in war tensions can only benefit the nationalists on both sides of the Israel-Arab conflict. It will create major difficulties for the development of the protest movement and will make many hesitate about continuing with the tent cities and demonstrations at a time when there is enormous pressure to maintain ‘national unity’. Calls to cancel the protests came from the like of National Union of Students leader Itzik Shmuli, but a significant core of the protestors rejected this call. On the night of Saturday 20 August demonstrations went ahead although they were to be ‘muted’, and were on a far smaller scale than in previous weeks. The same was true for the demonstrations on Saturday 27 August.

And yet what is significant is that these demonstrations did take place, attracting up to 10,000 in Tel Aviv and several thousand in other cities. And there was no shying away from the question of war: on the contrary, the slogans raised on the demos reflected a growing understanding of the need to resist the march to war and for the oppressed of both sides to fight for their common interests: “Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies”, “social justice is demanded in Israel and the territories”, “Life in dignity in Gaza and Ashdod”; “No to another war which will bury the protest”. The “Tent 1948” Palestinian-Jewish group on Rothschild Boulevard issued a statement of its own: “This is the time to show real strength”, the statement read. “Stay on the streets, condemn the violence and refuse go either home or to the Army to take part in the revenge attack on Gaza.”

A speech by Raja Za’atari in Haifa also expressed the emergence of internationalist sentiments, even if still couched in the language of democracy and pacifism: “At the end of the day, a homeless family is a homeless family, and a hungry child is a hungry child, regardless whether he speaks Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic or Russian. At the end of the day, hunger and humiliation, just like wealth, have no homeland and no language… We are saying: it is time to speak of peace and justice in one breath! Today more than ever, it is obvious to everyone that in order to curb talk of justice, this government might begin another war”. onedemocracy.co.uk/news/we-will-be-a-jewish-arab-people [156]

The fact that these slogans and sentiments should become so much more popular than they were only a year or two ago indicates that something profound is happening in Israel, and especially among the younger generation. We have seen comparable glimmerings of youthful protest against the Islamic status quo in Gaza[2].

As in Israel, the ‘Gaza youth’ are a small minority and they are weighed down with all kinds of illusions – in particular, Palestinian nationalism. But in a global context of mounting revolt against the existing order, the foundations are being laid for the development of a genuine internationalism based on the class struggle and the perspective of an authentic revolution of the exploited.

Amos 28/8/11

• In a further sign that the protests in Israel have not disappeared, The Guardian of 28 August reported that a number of unoccupied buildings in Jerusalem have been taken over by demonstrators who are demanding that they be used to house people at affordable rents. www.theguardian.com/world/2011/aug/28/israel-squatting-campaign-housing [157]

“Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, said the economic situation was entering a ‘dangerous place’. Earlier, the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, said the world’s economy was ‘in a danger zone’. The comments came after the Federal Reserve warned that the US economy faced ‘significant downside risks’.”[1]

Last week, this grim chorus from three of the most powerful economic organs in the world sent the markets into yet another tailspin, compounding a summer already punctuated by volatile market swings. The FTSE-100 quickly posted its biggest one-day-drop (in percentage terms) in more than 2 years. Ever since we have been treated to a rollercoaster ride as the markets react to the latest drama in the long-running Euro-crisis. Markets have posted big quarterly falls, with the FTSE ending September with its biggest quarterly loss in 9 years.

The world economy crumbles

Accompanying these warnings was a series of credit downgrades for banks across the US. This included Bank of America (the biggest bank in the US) but also Citigroup, another powerful player in the international banking sector[2]. The anaemic growth the US has managed to squeeze out of its ailing economy has done nothing to reduce stubbornly high unemployment, which remains stuck at over 9%. The economic situation was exacerbated even further over the summer by the drama over the Congressional dead-lock over the debt-ceiling - the legal limit on what the Federal Government can borrow. In the end, the US state decided to pay its bills, but still had its credit worthiness downgraded - essentially the worst of both worlds.

In Britain, debate continues over whether the Coalition government should halt its deficit reduction programme and consider a new stimulus to the economy. The IMF is also beginning to question whether the spending cuts should be delayed. Here, too, growth remains anaemic (0.7% over the last year) and unemployment stubbornly high (7.9%). But the UK is also experiencing inflation (5.2% RPI) in an environment of zero pay rises and sluggish demand, raising fears of stagflation.

Even in China - recently cast in the role of riding to the rescue by purchasing European debt - things are taking a turn for the worse. China’s massive stimulus programme managed to prevent the economy entering recession, but has resulted in inflationary pressures and a huge construction boom. As the government moves to bring down inflation, the massive debt exposure of many local government bodies is coming into focus. Communist party economists are already talking about the Chinese version of “sub-prime”[3].

But it is Europe that is the current source of fear for the capitalists. The spectre of the Greek state defaulting on its debts would have serious implications for banks across the Eurozone, risking a re-run of the credit market seizure that nearly brought down the world economy in 2008. To make matters worse, the failure of the European powers to halt a Greek debacle would throw into doubt their ability to rescue other economies facing serious difficulties, especially Ireland and Portugal, resulting in enormous pressure on those two countries. Nor are Spain and Italy immune to serious concerns about their capacity to weather the coming storm. The fear is of a domino effect that could quickly spread across the Eurozone, threatening not only individual countries but the entire single-currency project. Were such a scenario to unfold, it would mean unprecedented catastrophe for a world economy already on its knees.

It was to try to prevent this that central banks acted in unison earlier this month to offer “unlimited dollars” to European banks. This was followed quickly by “Operation Twist”, a new bond-buying scheme by the Federal Reserve, and talk of a new round of quantitative easing from the Bank of England.

When these measures failed to calm the markets, talk immediately switched to reinforcing the European Financial Stability Facility. There was much hysteria in the media about whether the Germans would vote to bail out the Greeks again. In fact, there is no new money for the EFSF - it is simply the confirmation of a previous bail-out already agreed by governments back in July.

The ripples of the crisis are being felt far outside the Western economies: emerging markets (including China) are facing a new credit crunch, with corporate bond issuance (companies selling bonds in return for funds to invest) in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe falling by around 75% in the last three months[4].

As September draws to a close, it is impossible to say whether the ruling class has managed to bring even a temporary stabilisation to the current situation. Even if they achieve this, the roots of the crisis remain unresolved and will continue to shake the foundations of a thoroughly decadent social system.

What we can be certain of is that the new measures, like all the policies that have been resorted to since the onset of the “credit crunch”, will not stop the crisis; they are designed to make the working class pay the price a piece at a time. Wages are brought down by inflation and increased taxes, or by open pay cuts as faced by electricians in Britain today; state services are cut, threatening hundreds of thousands of jobs.

For the working class, there is no escape from the crisis, only the necessity to defend ourselves, to struggle. In Egypt, where workers in several sectors have taken strike action (see page 5); in Spain, with the movement of the Indignados [162]; in Britain with the electricians’ struggle [163], we see workers starting to develop their struggles. These struggles are vital experiences that hold the promise for the future – that the working class will find the only way out of this intractable crisis through an intractable struggle to end this crisis-ridden, dead-end system once and for all.  

Ishamael 30/9/11

The trade unions and the Left are preparing to make the 30 November strike over pensions something big. TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said that it would be “the biggest trade union mobilisation for a generation” as more than a dozen major unions prepared to ballot their members. More generally, the media consensus was that it could be the biggest strike since the 1926 General Strike. Similar things were said around the time of the 30 June strike which involved 750,000 workers. Now there are predictions for 3 million to be on strike on 30 November. The PCS union thinks it could be “the largest day of strike action in UK history.”

And the unions say they are determined that this will not just be an isolated day. The big demonstration of 26 March was not accompanied by significant strike action. The 30 June strike was a one-off with only hazy plans for something to follow in the autumn. Union leaders are now painting a picture of a substantial campaign. Brian Strutton of the GMB has said “We are not talking about a day out and a bit of a protest. We are talking about something that is long, hard and dirty as well. This is going to require days of action, running through the winter into next year and right into the summer.” Elsewhere he emphasised that “We are talking about throwing everything at it that we can, rolling into next summer. We are not just looking to nudge this along. We are assuming that this will be a huge set piece conflict running for a long time.”

Not only demonstrations and strikes but occupations are also envisaged. At a meeting at the Labour Party conference the GMB leader Paul Kenny said “If they close a library I think we should occupy it. If they close a hospital I think we should occupy it. I believe in direct action. If I have to go to jail, I’m prepared to go to jail.” He said much the same at the TUC conference announcing that “We’ll give them the biggest campaign of civil disobedience their tiny little minds can ever imagine.”

All this rhetoric and proposed activity shows how the unions in Britain are responding in the face of substantial and increasing unemployment, of wage freezes and wage cuts while inflation grows along with cuts in services, higher retirement age, reduced pensions and all the other attacks on living and working conditions from the Coalition and its Labour predecessors. Workers are angry and the unions are doing something. The trouble is the effect of the unions’ actions is to divide workers and undermine their attempts to fight.

For a start, while 30 November is being promoted as The Big One, there are other major union-organised demonstrations on different dates which already show an attempt by the unions to divide workers by sectors. On 9 November there’s a big student demo. On 26 October seven education unions are staging a lobby of parliament.

Overall, whether acting together or separately, what the unions provide are just so many outlets for the anger of the working class, blind alleys leading nowhere.

A demonstration can be a rallying point for discussion and organisation. In the hands of the unions it’s just an impotent procession from one place to another.

A strike can be an important moment in the organisation and spread of working class struggles. Mass meetings can be part of the process of beginning to realise what potential power organised workers can have. In the strait jacket of the unions a strike becomes a formality without any potential for further development. Those planned by the unions for this year and next are intended to sap workers’ energies, provide a dead-end for militancy, and maybe be part of a movement for the election of a future Labour government.

Occupations can provide a focus for meetings in which all questions facing the working class can be discussed, and act as a base for organising the extension of the struggle to other workers. The intention of the unions is for the most militant workers to take part in occupations as just one part of the campaign to put pressure on the Coalition to reverse the irreversible reality of capitalist austerity.

The demonstrations and strikes proposed by the unions (and their leftist supporters) get more and more dramatic as anger and frustration grows in the working class. Workers still participate in the unions’ great spectacles, but there is a growing dissatisfaction with union actions. At the end of every one of the recent big demos you could have met people who are frustrated with their ‘day out and a bit of protest’. There’s a growing sense that a big demo every three or four months is just an empty ritual. It will only be when workers begin to take struggles into their own hands that they will be able to defend their own interests. When assemblies discuss the needs of the struggle, when workers start to question the union framework and look to forming their own organisations, then there is the possibility for anger to be turned into something effective.  

Car 29/9/11

The operation that Ed Miliband had to tackle a deviated septum in his nose has not altered the nasal quality of his speech. The content of his speeches has not changed much either since he was elected Labour leader last year. Then we said (WR 338 [169]) that his lack of political baggage allowed him to “be all things to all people, and gives him a great deal of room for manoeuvre if the political and economic situation gets more difficult.”

In attracting criticism from both Right and Left at the recent Labour Party Conference, he’s probably achieved what he wanted. The Daily Mail (26/9/11) said “he failed to condemn coordinated strike action planned for November 30 – repeatedly suggesting it was up to the Government to give ground”. As the Sun (26/9/11) put it, “Union leaders’ joy as Mili goes soft on strikes.” From the Left Socialist Worker (1/10/11) attacked him for calling for “cooperation not conflict in the workplace” and saying that “All parties must be pro-business today.”  And when he spoke to the TUC Conference he was booed and heckled because of his opposition to the 30 June strike.

Miliband is in a potentially difficult position. He can’t criticise Coalition cuts with any conviction because they’re in continuity with Labour policies. Some are saying that New Labour was finished with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. But, apart from saying he’s not Brown or Blair, what can a Labour leader now do? It would be quite a feat to find something new to offer.

What is in fact on offer is a revival of old fashioned social democracy. Seumas Milne of the Guardian (28/9/11) was particularly impressed. “There’s no question who was in Miliband’s frame: the bankers and vested interests of the corporate world, rigged markets, rip-off energy conglomerates, ‘cosy cartels’ that control executive pay, and the companies so powerful ‘they can get away with anything’. But more importantly, he blamed the ‘economic system’ that governments of both main parties have overseen for decades – and called for a ‘new economy’ that rewarded ‘producers’ not ‘predators’, and ‘wealth creators’ instead of ‘asset strippers.’”

This is a traditional position for Labour to take. There’s opposition to the ‘excesses’ of capitalism’s ‘unacceptable face’, and support for healthy ‘wealth creation.’ At times during its party conference there was talk of ‘Labour values.’ No one spelt out whether this meant the rich getting richer and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as happened under Blair and Brown. But now they’ve put this behind them and can oppose the Coalition and ‘casino capitalism’ while still showing they could be a responsible bourgeois government when called upon.

At a time when the working class is increasingly angry with the austerity measures dished out by the bourgeoisie the unions have to put forward their ‘fighting’ side, and so it’s to be expected that there will be divisions in the ‘Labour family’. There are few left-wing voices in the Labour Party, so the unions have a responsibility for putting forward a ‘real alternative’ to the current government. For the future, there’s a possibility that the LibDem vote might collapse at a future election through association with the current regime. Labour would stand to gain from this. And if the modest Miliband project is unsuccessful then Yvette Cooper is already being touted as the next Labour leader. However Labour is led it will continue to try and play an effective role for British capitalism. 

Car 30/9/11

The world economic crisis has hit the construction industry very hard. The Office of National Statistics Bulletin for the 2nd quarter 2011 says that the total volume of new orders for building contracts is at their lowest level since 1980. Faced with this slow-down, one of the major UK Construction companies, Balfour Beatty Engineering, issued 90 day notices of termination to some 890 employees on the 14th September. 7 other major electrical contractors also announced their intention to withdraw from the national industry agreement (the Joint Industry Board, JIB), proposing to split electricians from one grade – where they’re paid £16.25 per hour – into 3 grades ranging from £10.50 to £14 per hour. For those downgraded to £10.50 this will amount to a 35% pay cut.

There was an immediate reaction from the workforce, with co-ordinated unofficial action taking place at several major construction sites across the UK, including the Olympic park, Lindsey oil refinery, the Tyne Tunnel, Farringdon Station and the Commonwealth Games stadium. So far, this has included actions such as blocking entrances to building sites, an invasion of the Farringdon Station site and a noisy demonstration inside Kings Cross station.

At all these actions there have been passionate speeches not only about present and past building workers’ struggles, but the situation facing all workers. After all there is little doubt more and more of us are also going to be faced not only with massive redundancies, but with out-and-out pay cuts. The electricians have welcomed the participation of other workers in these actions, and there have been calls to join the public sector strikes planned for 30 November.

These examples of direct, collective action have already had an impact on the bosses. Since the fight began, one of the 7 contractors pulled back from its stated intention and has said it will ‘honour’ the existing JIB contracts.

These actions have gone ahead despite the lack of official response from the national apparatus of UNITE, which now ‘represents’ the majority of the workers involved. In the demonstrations electricians have called for an immediate national ballot and have openly criticised the apparent sluggishness of the union leaders.

The question is though: if workers can organise so much without the national leadership, why waste time calling on them to act on their behalf? What’s needed is not more ‘co-ordination’ from above, which is invariably designed to paralyse real militancy, but more direct participation from below, with real decision-making not in the hands of the local union structure, but of general assemblies of strikers, with strike committees responsible only to the assemblies.

In fact, the electricians have already taken some vital steps forward from ‘traditional’ ways of organising, where the division into different unions keeps workers divided and therefore weak. Inspired by the example of taking over public spaces that has spread from Egypt to Spain, Greece, Israel and elsewhere, the electricians’ actions create the possibility of street assemblies where all divisions break down and workers, unemployed, the retired, students and others can take part in the debate about spreading the struggle. 

Graham 1/10/11

Following the riots in August the British judicial system swung into action. Prime Minister Cameron pledged that all would face the courts and those found guilty would face stiff prison sentences. Whether rioters or so-called ‘organisers’ or people sentenced for receiving stolen goods or those found guilty of inciting rioting on Facebook, they could all expect to feel the full force of the law.

In the days after the riots, the police, often in dawn raids, arrested over 2700 people, the majority of whom were refused bail. Impromptu courts were set up, with some sitting all through the night.

A ‘no holds barred’ directive gave courts licence to imprison regardless of any previous government guidelines.

A month after the riots the Guardian (5/9/11) revealed that “More than 90% of the cases being sentenced at crown court are resulting in jail terms, compared with an average rate for custodial sentences of 46%. Data previously released by the Ministry of Justice revealed that 44.6% of rioters sentenced at magistrate courts were sent to prison, almost four times the typical custody rate of 12.3% …Magistrates courts have been delivering sentences about 25% longer than average.”

The reason that these harsh sentences have been meted out is not primarily because the bourgeoisie believes that it will discourage future rioting, arson and looting, nor because the ruling class is having a fit of vindictiveness. The biggest threat to the rule of the capitalist class comes from the working class. In the future the bourgeoisie wants to know that it has at its disposal every possible repressive measure as part of its armoury against workers’ struggles. The material situation of the working class has been so degraded that the bourgeoisie knows that future social disorder will not be limited to rioting but will involve conflict with the only class that can threaten its position. 

Melmoth 1/9/11

“There’s going to be a crash and it will be a hard one” “Absolutely no one believes in the rescue plans. They know that the market is screwed and the stock exchange is finished”. “Traders don’t give a damn about how the economy can be saved; our job is to make money in this situation”. “Every night I dream of a new recession”. “In 1929 a few people made money from the crash; today everyone can do it, not just the elites”. “This economic crisis is like a cancer”. “Prepare yourselves! It’s not the moment to hope that the government will solve the problem. Governments don’t rule the world. Goldman Sachs rules the world. This bank doesn’t care about rescue plans”. “I predict that in less than 12 months the savings of millions of people are going to vanish and that’s just the beginning”. These are all from a talk on the BBC on 26 September by the London trader Alessio Rastani. This video has since created a real buzz on the internet[1].

Obviously we agree with the dark perspective drawn up by this economist. Without trying to make equally precise predictions, we can still affirm without hesitation that capitalism is going to continue its nosedive, that the crisis will get worse and more devastating, and that a growing part of humanity is going to suffer the consequences.

The declaration by Alessio Rastani is feeding one of the biggest lies of recent years: that the planet is in trouble because of finance, and only because of finance: “It’s Goldman Sachs that rules the world”. And all the voices of the left, of the extreme left, of the ‘anti-globalisation’ brigade join the chorus: ‘This is awful! Here is the cause of all our troubles. We have to take back control of the economy. We have to put limits on the banks and on speculation. We have to fight for a stronger and more humane state!’ This kind of talk has been going on non-stop since the collapse of the US banking giant Lehman Brothers in 2008. Today, even part of the classical right wing has bought into this ‘radical’ critique of ‘wild’ finance, calling for a more moral approach and for a greater role for the state. All this propaganda is nothing but a desperate ideological smokescreen to hide the real causes of the contemporary cataclysm: the historic bankruptcy of capitalism. This is not a matter of nuances or terminology. Accusing neo-liberalism and accusing capitalism are fundamentally different. On the one hand, you have the illusion that this system of exploitation can be reformed. On the other hand you have the understanding that capitalism has no future, that it has to be destroyed from top to bottom and replaced by a new society. We can therefore understand why the ruling class, its media and its experts use up so much energy pointing the finger at the irresponsibility of finance and blaming it for all the current economic ills: they are trying to divert attention from the system, to derail all the reflection going on about the need for a radical change, i.e. for a revolution.

‘It’s the financial traders’ fault’ or, the search for scapegoats

For the last four years, each stock market crash has been accompanied by a tale of dodgy trading. In January 2008, the Jerome Kirviel scandal hit the headlines. He was found responsible for the fiasco at the French bank Societé Générale after losing 4.82 billion euros through bad investments. The real reason for this crisis, the housing bubble in the US, was pushed into the background. In December 2008, the investor Bernard Madoff was investigated for a 65 billion dollar fraud. He became the biggest crook of all time, which conveniently distracted attention from the downfall of the US giant Lehman Brothers. In September 2011, the trader Kweku Adoboli at the Swiss bank UBS was accused of a 2.3 billion dollar fraud. This affair, ‘by chance’, came to light when the world economy was again in full disarray.

Obviously, everyone knows that these individuals are just scapegoats. The strings being pulled by the banks to justify their own crimes are just a bit too thick not be noticed. But the intense media propaganda does make it possible to focus everyone’s attention on the rotten world of high finance. The image of these speculating sharks is being used to fill our heads and fog our thoughts.

Let’s step back and think for a moment: how can these various events in themselves explain why the world economy is on the brink of collapse? However revolting these billion dollar frauds may be at a time when millions are dying of hunger all over the world, however cynical and shameful the words of Alessio Rastani when he says he hopes that he can get rich by speculating on stock market crashes, none of this explains the scale of the world economic crisis which today is hitting every sector and every country. The capitalists, whether they are bankers or captains of industry, have always sought for the maximum of profit without the slightest concern for the welfare of humanity. None of this is new. From its inception, capitalism has always been a system of inhuman exploitation. The barbaric and bloody plunder of Africa and Asia in the 18th and 19th centuries is tragic proof of that. The kleptocracy of the traders and the bankers therefore tells us nothing about the current crisis. If crooked financial dealings are now resulting in colossal losses and sometimes threaten to tip banks over the edge, it’s really a result of the fragility brought about by the crisis and not the other way round. If, for example, Lehman Brothers went bust in 2008 it wasn’t because of its irresponsible investment policies but because the American housing market collapsed in the summer of 2007 and because this bank found itself holding masses of valueless debts. With the subprime crisis, the households of America were shown to be insolvent and the loans given to them would never be repaid.

‘It’s the fault of the credit rating agencies’ or, blaming the thermometer for the fever

The credit ratings agencies are also under fire. At the end of 2007, they were accused of incompetence because they neglected the weight of the sovereign debts of states. Today they are being accused of the opposite, of giving too much emphasis to sovereign debt in the Eurozone (for Moody’s) and the USA (for Standard and Poor’s).

It is true that these agencies have particular interests, that their judgement is not neutral. The Chinese ratings agencies were the first to downgrade the creditworthiness of the American state, and the American agencies are more severe towards Europe than towards their own country. And it’s true that with each downgrade, the financiers seized the opportunity to speculate, further accelerating the deterioration of the economic situation. The specialists can then talk about ‘self-fulfilling prophecies’.

But the reality is that all these agencies completely underestimate the gravity of the situation: the ratings they hand out are far too high in relation to the real capacity of the banks, the enterprises, and certain states to repay their debts. It’s in the interest of these agencies not to be too critical of the economic essentials because that would create panic, and the world economy is the branch they are all sitting on. When they downgrade the ratings, it’s in order to maintain a minimum of credibility. To totally deny the seriousness of the situation facing the world economy would be grotesque and no one would believe them: from the standpoint of the ruling class, it is more intelligent to recognise certain weaknesses in order to cover up the basic problems of the system. All those who are currently blaming the ratings agencies are well aware of this. If they complain about the quality of the thermometer, it is to prevent us thinking about the strange illness affecting world capitalism, out of fear of admitting that the illness is incurable and is getting worse.

‘It’s the fault of finance’ or, confusing the symptom with the disease

The criticisms of the traders and the ratings agencies is part of much bigger propaganda campaign about the madness and hypertrophy of the financial sector. As always, this lying ideology is based on a grain of truth; it cannot be denied that in the last few decades the world of finance has indeed become an obese and increasingly irrational monstrosity.

Proof is legion. In 2008, the sum total of global financial transactions rose to 2,200,000 billion dollars, as against a world GNP of 55,000 billion[2]. The speculative economy is therefore around 40 times bigger than the so-called ‘real’ economy! And these billions have over the years been invested in increasingly crazy and self-destructive ways. One edifying example: the short sale mechanism. What is this about? “In the short sale mechanism, we begin by selling an asset which we don’t possess in order to buy it back later on. The aim of this trick is obviously to sell an asset at a certain price and buy it back at a lower price in order to pocket the difference. As we see, the mechanism is the complete opposite of buying something and then selling it”[3].

Concretely, short selling involves a huge flow of speculative finance around certain assets, betting on a fall in their price, and this can sometimes lead to the collapse of the targeted asset. This has now become a scandal and a lot of economists and politicians even tell us that this is the main problem, THE cause of the bankruptcy of Greece or the fall of the euro. Their solution is therefore simple: forbid short selling and all will go well in the best of all possible worlds. It’s true that short selling is utter madness and that it is accelerating the destruction of whole swathes of the economy. But that’s the point: it is merely ‘accelerating’ and is not the cause. You need a raging economic crisis in the first place for such deals to be so profitable. The fact that the capitalists are gambling not on a rise in the market but on its fall shows how little trust they have in the future of the world economy. This is also why there are less and less long-term, stable investments: investors are out for a killing in the very short term, without any concern for the longevity of enterprises and especially of factories, since there are almost no industrial sectors than can ensure long term profits. And here, finally, we are getting to the heart of the problem: the so-called ‘real’ or ‘traditional’ economy’ has been in a mess for decades. Capital is in flight from this sphere because it is less and less profitable. The world economy is saturated and commodities can’t be sold, the factories are not producing and accumulating. Result, the capitalists invest their money in speculation, the ‘virtual’ economy. Hence the hypertrophy of finance, which is just a symptom of the incurable disease of capitalism: overproduction.

‘It’s the fault of neo-liberalism’ or, how to tie the exploited to the state

Those who see the problem as neo-liberalism also agree that the real economy is in deep trouble. But they don’t for one moment attribute this to the impossibility of capitalism to go on developing. They deny that the system has become decadent and is in its death agony. The anti-globalisation ideologists blame the destruction of industry since the 1960s on bad political choices and thus on neo-liberal ideology. For them as for our trader Alessio Rastani, “it’s Goldman Sachs which rules the world”. So they fight for more state, more regulation, more social policies. Beginning from the critique of neo-liberalism, they come up with a new mirage to lead us on: statism. “With more state control over finances, we can build a new economy, more social and more prosperous”.

But a bit more state won’t make it possible to resolve capitalism’s economic problems. Let’s say it again: what undermines this system is its tendency to produce more commodities than the markets can absorb. For decades, they have managed to avoid the paralysis of the economy by creating an artificial market based on debt. In other words, since the 1960s capitalism has been living on credit. This is why, today, households, companies, banks and states are all groaning under a vast mountain of debts and why the current recession is called the ‘credit crisis’. Now, since 2008, and the failure of Lehman Brothers, what have the states been doing via their central banks, in particular the Fed and the European Central Bank? They have been injecting billions of dollars to prevent further bankruptcies. And where do these billions come from? From new debts! All they are doing is displacing private debt onto the public sphere, so preparing the ground for bankruptcies of entire states, as we are already seeing with Greece. The economic storms that lie ahead threaten to be of unprecedented violence[4].

‘But if it can’t control the crisis, the state could at least protect us and be more social’ says the whole chorus of the left. This is to forget that the state has always been the worst of bosses. Nationalisations have never been good news for the workers. After the Second World War, the big wave of nationalisations had the aim of reviving the apparatus of production that had been destroyed in the war, and were accompanied by a much intensified pace of work. At the time, Thorez, the general secretary of the French Communist Party and vice-president of the De Gaulle government, launched his famous appeal to the working class of France, especially the workers of the nationalised enterprises: “If miners die at their posts, their wives will replace them”; or again: “pull in your belts for national reconstruction” and “strikes are a weapon of the trusts”. Welcome to the wonderful world of the nationalised enterprise! There is nothing unexpected or surprising in all this. Since the experience of the Paris Commune in 1871, communist revolutionaries have always insisted on the viscerally anti-working class function of the state: “The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more it actually becomes the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers - proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head”. Friedrich Engels wrote these lines in 1878, which showed that even at that time the state was beginning to spread its tentacles to the whole of society, to take over the whole of the national economy, public enterprises as well as the big private firms. Since then, state capitalism has only got stronger: each national bourgeoisie is ranged behind its state to wage the merciless commercial war that goes on between all countries.

‘The BRICS will save us’, or praying for an economic miracle

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (the BRICS) have in the last few years shown a remarkable degree of economic success. China in particular is now seen as the world’s second biggest economic power, and many think it will soon dethrone the USA. This flamboyant achievement has led economists to hope that this group of countries could become the new locomotive of the world economy, just like the USA after the Second World War. Recently, given the risk of the Eurozone exploding as a result of the sovereign debt crisis, China has even proposed partly filling Italy’s coffers. The anti-globalisation crew see a reason for rejoicing here: since they argue that the American supremacy of neo-liberalism is the worst of all scourges, the rise of the BRICS will result in a more balanced, fairer world. This hope in the development of the BRICS, shared by the big bourgeoisie and the ‘anti-capitalists’, is not only comical: it also shows how deeply they are attached to the capitalist world.

This hope is going to be dashed. There’s a touch of déjà-vu about this ‘economic miracle’ business. Argentina and the Asian tigers in the 80s and 90s, or, more recently, Ireland, Spain and Iceland, were all at various times put forward as ‘economic miracles’. And like all miracles it turned out to be a con. All these countries owed their rapid growth to unbridled debt. They therefore all came to the same sticky end: recession and bankruptcy. It will be the same for the BRICS. Already there is growing concern about the level of debt in the Chinese provinces and about the rise of inflation. The president of the sovereign fund China Investment Corp, Gao Xiping, has recently said that “we are not saviours. We have to save ourselves”. It couldn’t be put more clearly!

The truth is that capitalism has no solution and no future

Capitalism can no longer be reformed. To be a realist, you have to admit that only the revolution can prevent catastrophe. Capitalism, like slavery and serfdom before it, is a system of exploitation which is condemned to disappear. Having developed and expanded for over two hundred years, above all in the 18th and 19thcenturies, having conquered the planet, capitalism entered loudly into its period of decline when it unleashed the First World War. The Great Depression of the 1930s, then the terrible slaughter of the Second World War, confirmed the obsolescence of this system and the necessity to put an end to it if humanity is to survive. But from the 1950s on there have not been crises as violent as the one in 1929. The bourgeoisie has learned how to limit the damage and revive the economy, which has left many believing that today’s crisis is yet another in a series of downturns and that growth will once again come back, as it has done over the last 60 or so years. In reality, the successive recessions of 1967, 1970-71, 1974-75, 1991-93, 1997-98 (in Asia) and 2001-2002 merely paved the way for today’s drama. Each time the bourgeoisie only managed to get the world economy going again by opening up the sluice-gates of credit. It has never succeeded in getting to the root of the problem: chronic overproduction. All it has done is put off the day of reckoning by the resort to credit and today the system is suffocating under the weight of all this debt. No sector, no state is spared. This headlong plunge into debt is reaching its limits. Does this mean that the economy is going to grind to a total halt? Obviously not. The bourgeoisie will debate the options it has before it, which boil down to a choice between cholera and the plague: draconian austerity or a monetary re-launch. The first leads to brutal recession, the second to uncontrollable inflation.

From now on, the alternation between short phases of recession and long periods of revival financed by credit is behind us: unemployment is going to explode and poverty and barbarism are going to spread dramatically. If there are phases of recovery (as in 2010), they will be no more than very fleeting gasps of air followed by new economic disasters. All those who claim the contrary are a bit like the suicide who jumped from the top of the Empire State Building and at each stage of his descent declared that ‘it’s all going well so far’. Let’s not forget that at the beginning of the Great Depression, US president Hoover also told us that “prosperity is just around the corner”. The only uncertainty is what will be the fate of humanity. Will it go down with capitalism? Or will it be able to construct a new world of solidarity and mutual aid, without classes or state, exploitation or profit? As Frederick Engels wrote more than a century ago: “bourgeois society is faced with a dilemma: transition to socialism or a relapse into barbarism”. The key to this future is in the hands of the working class, of its struggles uniting workers, the unemployed, the retired and young people in precarious jobs.  

Pawel 29/9/11

The assemblies in Cairo’s Tahrir Square at the beginning of the year, in the period before the departure of President Mubarak, inspired subsequent assemblies and protests in Spain, then Greece, Israel, and most recently, in occupations and assemblies in cities across the US. However, the most important force in the movement in Egypt was the working class, the decisive factor in the removal of Mubarak. Strikes across the country on the 8th, 9th and 10th February showed the strength of the working class.

This was not a revolution, as the army has remained firmly in charge of the country ever since, doing everything that would be expected from a repressive state, including the introduction of a law banning strikes. But the workers were not crushed, as has most recently been shown in a new wave of strikes from the beginning of September.

There have been strikes of tens of thousands of textile workers in a number of locations. There have been strikes by a large proportion of 100,000 doctors. In about half of Egypt’s hospitals some 200,000 health technicians have been on strike. Some 4,000 dockworkers struck in a port on the Suez Canal. More than 50% of the country’s 1.7 million teachers have been on strike. This, their first national strike since 1951, has also involved a number of occupations of government buildings. In Cairo 45,000 bus drivers, mechanics and ticket collectors have been on strike. Some joined teachers’ protests at the cabinet headquarters.

Typically the strikes have been over the concessions that were made in February and March not being subsequently upheld by the bourgeoisie. Al-Masry Al-Youm (15/9/11) headlined with “Unfulfilled economic and political demands keep Egypt’s labourers furious” and wrote “the recent resurgence of widespread strikes, analysts say, reflect a deep disillusionment with the democratic transition process, with workers feeling more and more that improving their economic and political conditions were but hollow promises from the revolution.” Material conditions are at the heart of the moment with incomes falling behind inflation. Food prices, for example, are up 80% since January.

Since Mubarak left there have been at least 130 new unions formed in Egypt. This is not unexpected bearing in mind the role that the official unions played before, as an integral part of the state machine. The new ‘independent’ unions are already proving themselves worthy successors, suspending strikes prematurely and undermining the developing movement with propaganda for a more democratic capitalism in Egypt.

One of the main dangers awaiting the working class in Egypt is that it will embrace the new unions because of a false idea that they are somehow different from the old state-run unions. Also, wider illusions in the merits of a democratic state as a replacement for the current military regime could undermine future struggles. There have recently been widespread demonstrations to “Reclaim the Revolution”, Sean Penn notably in attendance in Tahrir Square. These demonstrations, while opposing the current government, focussed on the recent announcements of a timetable for elections. A state decree says that voting will be staggered over a six-week period, with a new parliament assembling on 17 March 2012. Opposition parties, whether liberal or Islamist, complained about many of the details and that they hadn’t been consulted. A danger for the working class is that it could be drawn into a conflict between the military and democratic factions of the bourgeoisie. The latest wave of strikes shows a strength that could be further developed; so long as it is not diverted down the democratic dead-end.  

Car 1/10/11

The ICC held its 19th Congress last May. In general a congress is the most important moment in the life of revolutionary organisations, and since the latter are an integral part of the working class, they have a responsibility to draw out the main lessons of their congresses and make them accessible to a wider audience within the class. This is the aim of the present article. A longer version of this article can be found in International Review 146, and online at https://en.internationalism.org/ir/146/icc-19th-congress-report [179] .

In line with the statutes of our organisation: “the Congress is the sovereign organ of the ICC. As such it has the tasks

- of elaborating the general analyses and orientations of the organisation, particularly with regard to the international situation;

- of examining and drawing a balance sheet of the activities of the organisation since the preceding congress

- of defining the perspectives for future work”.

On the basis of these elements we can draw out the lessons of the 19th Congress.

The international situation

The first point that needs to be dealt with is our analyses and discussions of the international situation. If an organisation is unable to elaborate a clear understanding of the international situation, it will not be able to intervene appropriately within it.

Today it is of the greatest importance for revolutionaries to develop an accurate analysis of what’s at stake in the international situation, above all because in the recent period the stakes have been getting higher than ever.

In International Review 146, we published the resolution on the international situation adopted by the Congress and it is therefore not necessary to go over all its points here. We only want to underline the most important aspects.

The first aspect, the most fundamental one, is the decisive step taken by the crisis of capitalism with the sovereign debt crisis of certain European states such as Greece:

 “In fact, the potential bankruptcy of a growing number of states constitutes a new stage in capitalism’s plunge into insurmountable crisis. It highlights the limits of the policies through which the bourgeoisie has managed to hold back the evolution of the capitalist crisis for several decades...” (point 2 of the resolution).

These policies are based on a headlong flight into debt to make up for the lack of solvent markets for the commodities capitalism produces. With the debt crisis now hitting the states themselves, the last ramparts of the bourgeois economy, the system is now being brutally confronted with its fundamental contradictions and its total inability to overcome them.

 “Thus the bankruptcy of the PIIGs is just the tip of the iceberg of the bankruptcy of world economy, which for decades has owed its survival to a desperate headlong flight into debt... By tipping over from the banking sphere to the level of states, the debt crisis marks the entry of the capitalist mode of production into a new phase of its acute crisis which will considerably aggravate the violence and extent of its convulsions. There is no light at the end of the tunnel of capitalism. This system can only lead society into an ever increasing barbarism”.

The period which followed the Congress has confirmed this analysis: new alarms about Greece’s debts and the downgrading of the USA’s credit rating in July, stock market crash in August. The drama is non-stop.

This confirmation of the analyses that came out of the Congress doesn’t derive from any particular merit of our organisation. The only ‘merit’ it can claim is being faithful to the classic analyses of the workers’ movement which, since the development of marxist theory, has always argued that the capitalist mode of production, like the ones that came before it, cannot in the long run overcome its economic contradictions. And it was in this framework of marxist analysis that the discussions at the Congress took place. Different points of view were put forward, notably on the ultimate causes of the contradictions of capitalism (which to a large extent correspond to our debate on the ‘Thirty Glorious Years’[1]), or on whether or not the world economy is likely to sink into hyperinflation because of the frenzied resort to printing banknotes, especially in the USA. But there was a real homogeneity in underlining the gravity of the current situation, as expressed in the resolution which was unanimously adopted.

The Congress also looked at the evolution of imperialist conflicts, as can be seen from the resolution. At this level, the two years since our last Congress have not brought any fundamentally new elements, but rather a confirmation of the fact that, despite all its military efforts, the world’s leading power has shown itself incapable of re-establishing the ‘leadership’ it had during the Cold War, and that its involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan have not succeeded in establishing a ‘Pax Americana’ across the world, on the contrary:

“The ‘New World Order’ predicted 20 years ago by George Bush Senior, which he dreamed about being under the guidance of the US, can only more and more present itself as a world chaos, which the convulsions of the capitalist economy can only aggravate more and more” (point 8 of the resolution).

It was important for the Congress to pay particular attention to the current evolution of the class struggle since, aside from the particular importance this question always has for revolutionaries, the proletariat today is facing unprecedented attacks on its living conditions. These attacks have been especially brutal in the countries under the whip of the European Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as is the case with Greece. But they are raining down in all countries, with the explosion of unemployment and above all the necessity for all governments to reduce their budget deficits, which obviously makes a massive and determined response by the working class more vital than ever. However, the congress noted that

“This response is still very timid, notably where these austerity plans have taken the most violent forms, in countries like Greece or Spain for example, even though the working class there had recently shown evidence of a rather important level of militancy. In a way it seems that the very brutality of the attacks provoke a feeling of powerlessness in the workers’ ranks, all the more because they are being carried out by ‘left’ governments”. Since then, the working class in these countries has given proof that it is not just lying down. This is especially the case in Spain where the movements of the ‘indignant’ has for several months acted a sort of beacon for other countries in Europe and other continents.

This movement began at the very moment the Congress was being held and so it was obviously not possible to discuss it at that point. However, the Congress was led to examine the social movements which had been hitting the Arab countries from the beginning of the year. There was not a total homogeneity in the discussions on this subject, not least because they are something we have not seen before, but the whole Congress did rally to the analysis contained in the resolution:

“...These movements were not classic workers’ struggles... They often took the form of social revolts in which all different sectors of society were involved: workers from public and private sectors, the unemployed, but also small shopkeepers, artisans, the liberal professions, educated young people etc. This is why the proletariat only rarely appeared directly in a distinct way (for example in the strikes in Egypt towards the end of the revolt there); still less did it assume the role of a leading force. However, at the origin of these movements...we find fundamentally the same causes as those at the origin of the workers’ struggles in other countries: the considerable aggravation of the crisis, the growing misery it provokes within the entire non-exploiting population. And while the proletariat did not in general appear directly as a class in these movements, its imprint was still there in countries where the working class has a significant weight, especially through the deep solidarity expressed in the revolts, their ability to avoid being drawn into acts of blind and desperate violence despite the terrible repression they had to face. In the end, if the bourgeoisie in Tunisia and Egypt finally resolved, on the good advice of the American bourgeoisie, to get rid of the old dictators, it was to a large extent because of the presence of the working class in these movements”.

The intervention of the ICC in the development of the class struggle

The 19th Congress of the ICC, on the basis of an examination of the economic crisis, of the terrible attacks which have been imposed on the working class, and of the first responses of the class to these attacks, concluded that we are entering into a period of class conflicts much more intense and massive than in the period between 2003 and now. At this level, even more than with the evolution of the crisis which will play a big part in determining these movements, it is difficult to make any short term predictions. It would be illusory to try and fix where and when the next major class combats will break out. What is important to do, however, is to draw out the general tendency and to be extremely vigilant towards the evolution of the situation in order to be able to react rapidly and appropriately when this is required, both in taking up positions and intervening directly in the struggles. 

The 19th Congress felt that the balance sheet of the ICC’s intervention since the previous congress was definitely a positive one. Whenever it was necessary, and sometimes very rapidly, statements of position were published in numerous languages on our website and in our territorial paper press. Within the limits of our very weak forces, the press was widely distributed in the demonstrations which accompanied the social movements of the recent period, in particular during the movement against the reform of pensions in France in autumn 2010 or the mobilisations of educated youth against attacks that were aimed especially at students coming from the working class (such as the major increase in tuition fees in the UK at the end of 2010). Parallel to this, the ICC held public meetings in a lot of countries and on several continents, dealing with the emerging social movements. At the same time, whenever possible, militants of the ICC spoke up in assemblies, struggle committees, discussion circles and internet forums to support the positions and analyses of the organisation and participate in the international debate generated by these movements.

Similarly, the Congress drew a positive balance sheet of our work towards individuals and groups who defend communist positions or who are heading in that direction.

The report on contacts adopted by the Congress “stresses the novelty of the situation regarding contacts, in particular our collaboration with anarchists. On certain occasions we succeeded in making common cause in the struggle with elements and groups who are in the same camp as us, the camp of internationalism” (presentation of the contacts report). This cooperation with individuals and groups who identify with anarchism has stimulated a number of rich discussions within our organisation, enabling us to get a better grasp of the various facets of this current and in particular to get a clearer understanding of its heterogeneous nature.

Organisational questions

Any discussion on the activities of a revolutionary organisation has to consider the assessment of its functioning. And in this area the Congress, on the basis of different reports, noted the biggest weaknesses of the organisation. The Congress examined these difficulties at some length, in particular the often degraded state of the organisational tissue and of collective work, which can weigh heavily on some sections. All the militants of the sections where these problems have arisen are fully convinced of the validity of the ICC’s fight, and continue to show their loyalty and dedication towards the organisation. When the ICC had to face up to the most sombre period suffered by the working class since the end of the counter-revolution whose end was marked by the movement of May 1968 – a period of general retreat in militancy and consciousness which began at the start of the 1990s – these militants ‘stayed at their post’. Very often, these are comrades who have known each other and militated together for more than 30 years. There are thus many solid links of friendship and confidence between them. But the minor faults, the small weaknesses, the character differences which everyone has to accept in others have often led to the development of tensions or a growing difficulty to work together over a period of many years in small sections which have not been refreshed by the ‘new blood’ of new militants, precisely because of the retreat experienced by the working class. Today this ‘new blood’ is beginning to arrive in certain sections of the ICC, but it is clear that the new members can only be properly integrated if the organisational tissue of the ICC improves. The Congress discussed these issues with a lot of frankness, and this led some of the invited groups to speak up about their own organisational difficulties. However, there could be no miracle solution to the problems, which had already been noted at the previous congress. The activities resolution which it adopted reminds us of the approach already adopted by the organisation and calls on all the militants and sections to take this up in a more systematic way: “This means the growth of mutual respect and support, cooperative reflexes, a warm spirit of understanding and sympathy for others, sociability, and generosity” (point 15).

The discussion on ‘marxism and science’

One of the points stressed in the discussions and in the resolution adopted by the Congress is the need to go deeper into the theoretical aspects of the questions we face. This is why, as for the preceding congress, this one devoted an item on its agenda to a theoretical question, ‘marxism and science’. For lack of space, we are not going to report here the elements raised in the discussion. What we want to say here is that the delegations to the Congress were very pleased with this debate, and that this owed a great deal to the contributions of a scientist, Chris Knight[2], who we had invited to take part in our Congress. We want to thank Chris Knight for accepting our invitation and we salute the quality of his interventions, which were both very lively and accessible for non-specialists, which includes the majority of ICC militants.

At the end of the Congress, the delegations felt that the discussion on marxism and science, and the participation of Chris Knight within it, had been one of the most interesting and satisfactory parts of the Congress, a moment which will encourage all the sections to pursue and develop an interest in theoretical questions.

We are not drawing a triumphalist balance sheet of the 19th Congress of the ICC, not least because it had to recognise the organisational difficulties we are facing, difficulties the ICC will have to overcome if it is to continue being present at the rendezvous which history is giving to revolutionary organisations. A long and difficult struggle awaits our organisation. But this perspective should not discourage us. After all, the struggle of the working class as a whole is also long and difficult, full of pitfalls and defeats. This is a perspective which should inspire militants to carry on the struggle; a fundamental characteristic of every communist militant is to be a fighter.  

ICC 31/7/11 

The massive street protests in Israel seem, for the moment at any rate, to have gone into retreat; the social question, which they raised so noisily around issues of housing, inflation, and unemployment, is once again being sidelined by the national question.

On the occupied West Bank, there have been clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians demonstrating in support of the Palestine Liberation Authority’s bid to be accepted as a member state at the UN.

At Qalandiya, a major Israeli checkpoint between the West Bank and Jerusalem, Israeli troops fired tear gas to disperse Palestinian stone-throwers. The confrontations lasted several hours and around 70 Palestinians were injured by rubber-coated steel pellets or suffered tear gas inhalation. This scenario was played out in several places, sometimes linked to sharpening tensions between Palestinian villagers and Jewish settlers. Near the West Bank village of Qusra, Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian man during an incident between the villagers and Israeli settlers, according to witnesses and military accounts

Earlier on in September, in Egypt, a violent assault on the Israeli embassy followed Israeli air raids on Gaza which had left a number of Egyptian border guards dead.

At the height of the Tahrir Square demonstrations, government attempts to divert attention away from the economic and political demands of the protesters by brandishing the ‘Palestinian question’ and anti-Israel feeling had met with little success. According to an article by Nadim Shehadi in The New York Times (25/9/11), “even the recent attack on the Israeli embassy in Cairo was seen by many as a diversion from the continuing protests in Tahrir Square”. There were hints of government and police collusion in the attack, which also coincided with a visit to Cairo from the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan who is keen to promote a new anti-Israel Middle East power axis between Turkey and Egypt. In any case, the sacking of the embassy certainly helped to draw attention away from a new wave of popular discontent with the regime, which has again involved a rash of workers’ strikes.

One state or two?

Among those who claim to be opposed to the present capitalist system, many argue that until the national question is sorted out in Israel/ Palestine, there can never be a ‘normal’ class struggle in the region, with workers and the oppressed fighting alongside each other, regardless of nationality and religion, against the capitalists of all countries.

There are different approaches to how the Israel/Palestine issue might be resolved: parts of the left have shown themselves to be more than willing to support military action against Israel (by Palestinian nationalist groups, secular and Islamic, and, logically, by the states which have provided them with weapons and resources, such as Iran, Syria, Gaddafi’s Libya or Saddam’s Iraq). The fact that such policies are combined with rhetoric about the ‘Arab revolution’ and a future ‘Socialist Federation in the Middle East’ does not alter their fundamentally militarist character. Views of this kind of have been put forward by the SWP, George Galloway, and others. Such approaches have often been linked to the idea of a ‘one-state solution’ - a democratic secular Palestine with rights for all. How such an idyllic regime could emerge out of a wholesale imperialist massacre is a question that could only be answered by those trained in Trotskyist sophistry.

Others on the left, and a whole host of liberals, favour the ‘two-state solution’, with the Israeli and Palestinian nations both ‘determining’ themselves and mutually respecting their respective national rights. Within this view there are many different nuances: officially the USA is in favour of a two-state solution, based on the negotiations it oversees as part of the Middle East Quartet along with the UN, the EU, and Russia. But Washington is currently vetoing the PLA’s bid at the UN because it says it is not based on mutually agreed terms. The fact that it is increasingly unable to bend Israel’s intransigent right-wing government to its proposals, particularly in its call for a freeze on settlements in the occupied territories, also plays a major role in America’s current stance.

Meanwhile PLA president Mohamed Abbas, pointing out that negotiations just aren’t happening, is going ahead with the proposal that the PLA becomes a state because this will provide it with a number of tactical advantages, such as being able to take Israel to the International Criminal Court. But opposition to this ploy comes from a number of supporters of Palestinian nationalism, both secular and Islamic, who point out, quite correctly, that a state based on a few scraps of land divided and dominated by the Israeli military and the ‘anti-terrorist’ Wall is no more than a token state. The Islamists, most of whom don’t even recognise the existence of Israel, want to continue with armed struggle for an Islamic state in the whole of historic Palestine (although in practise they are prepared to look at various interim stages). On this level, militarist Islam and militarist Trotskyism advocate the same methods for achieving their different one-state schemes[1].

Communists are against the nation state

In our view, these are all false solutions. The Israel/Palestine conflict, which has dragged on for all of 80 years, is a concrete example of why capitalism cannot solve the various ‘national questions’ which it partly inherited from previous social systems, but largely created itself.

Opposing the slogan of ‘the right of all peoples to national self-determination’ during the First World War, Rosa Luxemburg argued that in a world now carved up by imperialist powers, no nation could advance its interests without aligning itself with larger imperialist states, while at the same time seeking to satisfy its own imperialist appetites. Nationalism was not, as Lenin and others argued, potentially a force that could weaken imperialism, but was an integral part of it. This analysis has certainly been confirmed by the history of the Middle East conflict. It is well known that from its inception Zionism could not make any gains without the backing of British imperialism, and later only turned against Britain to put itself at the service of the more powerful USA. But the Palestinian national movement has been no less compelled to seek the backing of imperialist powers: fascist Germany and Italy before and during the Second World War, Stalinist Russia and its Arab subalterns during the cold war, Syria, Iraq, Iran and others since the collapse of the old bloc system. Alliances have shifted over the years, but the constant has been that both Jewish and Arab nationalism have acted as local agents of wider regional and global imperialist rivalries. Those who advocate the military defeat of Israel or more peaceful solutions presided over by the UN are still locked in this logic.

At the same time, support for national solutions, in a period of history where the working class and its exploiters have no common interests, not even the need to oppose previous reactionary ruling classes, runs directly counter to the struggle of the exploited class. In Israel, the workers’ struggle to defend living standards is constantly greeted with the argument that the country is at war, we must accept sacrifices, and that strikes can only undermine the needs of national defence. In Egypt and other Arab countries, workers resisting their exploitation have been told time and time again that their real enemy is Zionism and US imperialism. A very clear example of this was provided during the massive workers’ struggles of 1972: following the repression of strikes in Helwan by the Sadat government, “the leftists (Maoists, Palestinian activists, etc) succeeded in diverting the whole issue into nationalist ends. Thus demands to release imprisoned workers were combined with declarations of support for the Palestinian guerrilla movement, with demands for the setting up of a war economy (including a wage freeze) and for the formation of a ‘popular militia’ to defend the ‘homeland’ against Zionist aggression. Thus the main complaint was that the government was not being decisive enough in its war preparations; as for the workers, they were exhorted not to carry on the struggle against their exploiters but to form the rank and file of a ‘popular’ Egyptian imperialism against its Israeli rival” (‘Class struggle in the Middle East’, World Revolution no. 3, April 1975).

On the other hand, the recent protest movements show that when the social question is raised in open struggle, the arguments of the nationalists can be put into question. The refusal of Tahrir Square demonstrators to subordinate the fight against the Mubarak regime to the struggle against Zionism; the prescient warnings by Israeli demonstrators that the Netanyahu government would use military conflict to derail their movement; and above all their determination to continue protesting even when military clashes were taking place on the borders, show that the class struggle is not something that can be postponed until after some ideal solution to the national problem has been implemented. On the contrary, it is in the course of the class struggle itself that national divisions can be confronted and exposed. In Israel, the inspiration drawn from the movements in the Arab world, loudly recognised in slogans like “Mubarak, Assad, Netanyahu”, the calls for Arab-Jewish unity in the struggle, were positive and concrete examples of this possibility, even if the movement there remained hesitant about dealing directly with the question of the occupation.

It would be naive to expect the recent movements to have sprung to the surface free of nationalist ideas; for the majority of those who took part in them, internationalism means a kind of truce or love-fest between nations, rather than what it really implies: class war across national divisions, the struggle for a world without nation states. And that is not even to mention the terrible spiral of revenge, distrust and hatred that the Arab/Israeli conflict has created and daily reinforces. But at the same time, capitalism is providing ample proof not only of its economic bankruptcy, but also of its inability to reconcile conflicting national interests. Within the cage of the nation state, whether the one-state or the two-state ideal is preferred, there is simply no possibility of delivering millions of Palestinians from the misery of the refugee camps or enabling the mass of Israelis to live without constant fear of war and terrorist attack. The vision of a human community without borders, which is the only answer to capitalism’s global crisis, will also appear as the only realistic solution to the Arab/Israeli conflict. And this vision can only be made flesh in the course of massive social movements which evolve towards an authentic revolution of the exploited and the oppressed. All bourgeois states, whether extant or potential, will be the enemy of such a revolution: they are the first wall to be dismantled on the road to freedom.  

Amos 26/9/11

Resistance against the present social order is spreading, from the huge social revolts in Tunisia and Egypt to the movement of the ‘indignant’ in Spain, to the general strikes and street assemblies in Greece, the demonstrations around housing and poverty in Israel, and the ‘Occupy’ movements across the USA, now echoed on a smaller scale in the UK. Awareness that this is a global movement is becoming sharper and more widespread.

In Britain, on 9 November, students will again be demonstrating against the government’s education policies, and on 30th November up to three million public sector workers will be on strike against attacks on their pensions. For weeks now electricians have been holding noisy demos at building sites in defence of their jobs and conditions and will also be out in force on 9 November.    

Not yet a revolution, not yet the 99%

The word ‘revolution’ is once again in their air, and ‘capitalism’ is once again being widely identified as the source of poverty, wars and ecological disasters.

This is all to the good. But as the exploited and oppressed majority in Egypt are being made painfully aware, getting rid of a figurehead or a government is not yet a revolution. The military regime that took over from Mubarak continues to imprison, torture and kill those who dare to express their dissatisfaction with the new status quo.

   Even the popular slogan of the Occupy movement, ‘we are the 99%’, is not yet a reality. Despite widespread public sympathy, the Occupy protests have not yet gained the active support of a significant proportion of the ‘99%’. Millions feel anxious about the uncertain future offered by capitalism, but this very uncertainty also creates an understandable hesitation to take the risks involved in strikes, occupations and demonstrations.

We are only just glimpsing the potential for a real mass movement against capitalism, and it is dangerous to mistake the infant for the fully-grown adult.

But those who have already entered the struggle can also be held back by their own illusions, which the propagandists of the system are only too eager to reinforce.

Illusions such as: 

‘It’s all the fault of the bankers and/or neoliberalism’.

 Capitalism is not just the banks, or a ‘deregulated’ market. Capitalism is a social relation based on the wage system, on the production of commodities for profit, and it functions only on a world wide scale. The economic crisis of capitalism is a result of the fact that this social relation has become obsolete, a blockage on all future advance.

Regulating the banks, bringing in a ‘Robin Hood Tax’ or extending state control does not uproot the essential capitalist social relation between the exploited and their exploiters, and gives us a false goal to fight for. The unions’ call for ‘growth’ is no better: under capitalism this can only mean the growth of exploitation and environmental destruction, and in any case, today it can only be based on the racking up of huge debts, which has now become a major factor in the deepening of the economic crisis.  

‘Right wing politicians are our main enemies’.

Just as the bankers are the mere agents of capital, so politicians from right to left are instruments of the capitalist state, whose only role is to preserve the capitalist system. Cameron’s Tories begin where Labour left off, and Obama, despite all the hype about the ‘hope’ he represented, continues the Bush administration’s imperialist wars and assaults on living standards.  

‘We need to make parliamentary democracy work better’

If the state is our enemy, demands for its reform are also a diversion. In Spain ‘Real Democracy Now’ tried to get people to fight for an improved parliamentary list, more control over the selection of MPs etc. But a more radical tendency opposed this, recognising that the general assemblies which were everywhere the organising form of the protests could themselves be the nucleus of a new way of organising social life. 

 So how can the struggle advance? By recognising and putting into practice certain basics: 

That the struggle against capitalism is a struggle between classes: on the one hand the bourgeoisie and its state, which controls the majority of social wealth, and on the other hand the working class, the proletariat – those of us who have nothing to sell but our labour power. 

The struggle must therefore spread to those parts of the working class where it is strongest, where it masses in the largest numbers: factories, hospitals, schools, universities, offices, ports, building sites, post offices. The examples are already there: in the strike wave that broke out in Egypt, when ‘Tahrir Square came to the factories’, and they were forced to dump Mubarak. In Oakland in California where the ‘Occupiers’ called for a general strike, went to the ports and got the active support of dockers and truckers. 

To spread the struggle, we need new organisations: the practice of forming assemblies with elected and mandated delegates is reappearing everywhere because the old organisations are bankrupt: not only parliament and local government, but also the trade unions, which serve only to keep workers divided and to ensure that the class struggle never exceeds the legal limit. To overcome union divisions and keep struggles under the control of the workers, we need assemblies and elected committees in the workplaces as well as on the streets. 

To get rid of capitalism, we need revolution: The ruling class maintains its power not only through lies, but also through repression. Class struggle is never ‘non-violent’. We have to be prepared right now to defend ourselves from the inevitable violence of the cops, and in the future, to overthrow the state machine by a combination of mass self-organisation and physical force. 

The only alternative to capitalism is communism: Not state-controlled exploitation like under the Stalinist regimes, not a return to isolated communes exchanging their goods, but a worldwide association of the producers: no wages, no money, no borders, no state! 

ICC 5/11/11

Despite the government claiming that it had made major concessions on pensions, aimed at averting the ‘irresponsible’ public sector strike on 30 November, the day of action will go ahead and around three million workers from education, the health service, local government and elsewhere will be on strike that day.

The government was criticised by some business leaders and right wing panic papers like The Daily Mail for backing down to union pressure. For example, public sector workers over 50 would get more protection for final salary schemes being scrapped elsewhere, and those earning £15,000 a year or less would not have to pay the increased contributions being demanded of others. For the right, all this is grossly unfair on private sector workers and that queer beast, ‘the tax payer’, who, as always, will have to ‘foot the bill’.

These arguments are just attempts to split public sector workers – who will only get adequate pensions if they work for around 40 years and who will be paying a huge slice of their wages towards their retirement fund – from those in the private sector, who have been even more screwed but whose interests lie not in attacking public sector workers but in fighting alongside them for better conditions all round. 

Given the huge dissatisfaction among workers over the pension issue – because whichever way you paint it, all of us are being asked to work longer, pay more, and get less – the unions have been obliged to take up this issue and were in no position to abandon plans to strike on 30 November. The ‘sell-out’ would have been too obvious. 

But does this mean that the government was genuinely scared by the prospect of three million workers having a day off? Hardly: giving tens of thousands a lot more ‘days off’ through unemployment doesn’t scare them a bit. And, being less stupid than The Daily Mail assumes its readers to be, serious politicians know that the unions are responsible servants of the national interest and can be trusted with the job of ensuring that the ‘biggest strike since 1926’ remains a purely symbolic affair like the ones on 26 March and 30 June.

What we have here is a classic division of labour between government and unions. The real differences that exist between them are secondary to their shared interest: finding an austerity package that both can agree to and sell to the workers, and ensuring that workers’ anger is channelled into the legally acceptable forms of ‘struggle’.   

But despite the considerable difficulties facing all workers considering going into struggle today – the threat of lost income or the sack, the weight of past defeats, the inexperience of many sectors and generations of workers who have not been on strike before – there is always the danger that things will not turn out quite how the ‘official representatives’ of labour have planned. It’s worth noting, for example, that the unions are not envisaging ‘one big march’ in London this time round, perhaps because the two previous examples were so evidently felt by many workers to be no more than a passive stroll culminating in dull celebrity speeches. Unions will hope that any local demonstrations or actions will be just as passive, but they could also provide workers from different local workplaces with a better opportunity to come together across sectional divisions and discuss seriously how to take the struggle forward after the ‘great day’. But that will depend on our willingness to challenge old habits and begin taking things into our own hands.    

Amos 5/11/11

In April, in exchanges in the House of Commons Prime Minister David Cameron advised Labour’s Angela Eagle to “Calm down, dear.” He told Tory MP Nadine Dorries she was “frustrated”. There was the usual debate between the ‘outraged’ and those who thought it was ‘just a bit of fun’, but it wasn’t until October that Cameron felt compelled to apologise. This appeared to stem from the Coalition’s concern about women’s lack of appreciation of its activities.

In September, a leaked government memo outlined a ‘secret plan’ to ‘win back women’ in the face of a collapse in female support, especially in the working class. The polling evidence behind this concern was unsurprising as there are plenty of ways in which women are hit disproportionately by government cuts. According to the Women’s Budget Group report in November 2010 “the cuts represent an immense reduction in the standard of living and financial independence of millions of women, and a reversal in progress made towards gender equality”[1].

Furthermore, “the WBG’s analysis shows that:

·        the groups that will suffer the greatest reduction in their standard of living due to cuts in public services are lone parents and single pensioners, the majority of whom are women;

·        lone parents will lose services worth 18.5% and female singles pensioners services worth 12% of their respective incomes;

·        overall single women will lose services worth 60% more than single men will lose as proportions of their respective incomes, and nearly three times those lost by couples;

·        the cuts will lead to hundreds of thousands of women losing their job. 53% of the jobs in the public sector services that have not been protected from the cuts are held by women and the pay and conditions of employment of all public sector workers, 65% of whom are women, are likely to deteriorate;

·        cuts in welfare spending fall disproportionately on the finances of women. Child Benefit is paid almost 100% to women; while 53% of Housing Benefit claimants are single women. Both benefits have been cut significantly in real terms and eligibility has been tightened.”[2]

Moreover, women often have the responsibility for family budgets and day-to-day household spending and are arguably directly confronted with the continuing rise in the cost of living. They are also more likely to be direct carers for children, the elderly and the infirm and see the impact in terms of cuts to health and social services.

In October the leader of the Women’s Institute said the Coalition wasn’t listening to women: “she criticised Mr Cameron’s male-dominated Cabinet, the Coalition’s ‘chilling’ decision to cut legal aid in divorce cases and to scrap an organisation that represents women in Whitehall”[3].

So, it’s clear why the government has experienced a desertion of female support. Its overall polling position is holding up surprisingly well, but the bourgeoisie wants to be confident that it can manipulate election results according to its requirements.

Credit where credit’s due

During this year’s Conservative Party conference, the Coalition’s economic policy came under scrutiny. Osborne’s speeches were raked over for any sign of a ‘Plan B’ to deal with the slowdown in the economy. In particular, the proposal for the Treasury to buy bonds issued by private companies, referred to as ‘credit easing’ by Osborne, was seen as a tacit admission that the current economic policy mix is not working as it should.

If ‘credit easing’ was given a ‘let’s wait and see’ response by the press, the same could not be said of David Cameron’s pre-released speech where he said that responding to the debt crisis needed “households - all of us - paying off the credit card and store card bills”. Critics ranging from the British Retail Consortium to the Institute for Public Policy Research lined up to ridicule the idea, saying that it would lead to a reduction in consumer spending and exacerbate the drag on growth.

The phone hacking scandal

In the WR 348 we presented a detailed analysis of the scandal around the issue of phone hacking in News International. It is worth recalling the pressure that was put on Cameron over his links with the Murdoch empire and the factional struggles behind the scandal. We described Cameron as “being one of the slowest to recognise Murdoch’s increasingly destabilising and divisive role, which is why, to bring him to heel, his links to Murdoch were highlighted more than any other politician’s”[4]. We concluded by saying that the campaign had succeeded in its primary objective: “Murdoch’s spell over UK political life is broken and rifts in the British bourgeoisie temporarily papered-over with PM Cameron finally disciplined”[5].

Downfall of Fox

In October Liam Fox finally resigned his position as Secretary of State for Defence after a brutal media campaign focussing on his relationship with Adam Werrity. It has emerged that Werrity and Fox were the primary forces behind the Atlantic Bridge, a charity promoting close co-operation between the UK and America. This ‘charity’ had already been criticised by the Charity Commission and had been wound up in September 2011. Senior members of the current cabinet (including Hague, Osborne and Gove) had also been involved with this organisation although none seem to have had the tangle between their political and personal lives that Fox had with Werrity.

Fox’s downfall is officially attributed to the blurred nature of Werrity’s role and the inappropriate access he was given. The web of business and political connections was complex, but the most significant aspect of his activity seems to be his connections with the Eurosceptic right-wing in Britain, and also conservative forces in the US.

Revolting backbenchers

On 24 October there was the largest ever Conservative Party rebellion on Europe. The Commons was voting on the question of whether there should be a referendum on Britain’s role in Europe. The official position of all the major political parties was ‘No’ but this didn’t prevent 81 Tory rebels from voting ‘Yes’. Junior members of the government either resigned or were sacked. 19 Labour MPs joined the revolt and even one LibDem MP joined in.

Most of the MPs obeyed the diktat issued by their parties and the No vote was carried comfortably but it was clear that, particularly among the Tories, obedience was reluctant at best.

No escape from the crisis

We can see from this survey that some elements of the ruling class have differences with the current administration. On one question, the economic crisis, the whole ruling class is united. The need to reduce the state’s debt, slash the welfare budget and push through a sustained attack on working class living conditions is agreed by all.

The Murdoch, Fox and Eurorebellion episodes are the public face of the battle within the British ruling class over foreign policy that has been going on for decades. The elimination of Fox and the implicit threat to expose even more of Cameron’s dealings with the Murdoch empire can be seen as a warning to the Cameron clique. However, one of the benefits of the Coalition with the Liberal Democrats is that it means that Cameron can’t be held hostage by the right wing in the way John Major’s government was.

Most of the bourgeoisie still has confidence in current political arrangements. It recognises that an attempt to unseat the Coalition is unnecessary and would unleash instability at a dangerous juncture for the economy. The most important pressure on the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie comes from the deepening economic crisis, and there is nothing it can do to avoid that.  

Ishamael 29/10/11

There is no doubting the level of the attack on electricians’ jobs, pay and conditions involved in ending the Joint Industry Board agreement, which will lead to cuts of up to 35% and many jobs reclassified as semi-skilled or unskilled. Go to any of their weekly protests outside various construction sites, or read their discussion forums, and you’ll hear just how disastrous it would be for workers already doing long hours of overtime in order to be able to afford house, car and necessities. “Think we can kiss good bye to our houses cars family life etc.”, “there will be no holidays or fooball or trips to the pub anymore. It will be a struggle to put new shoes on the childrens feet every few months” (https://www.electriciansforums.co.uk [198]).

When 8 big electrical contractors on construction projects announced they planned to pull out of the JIB and impose worse conditions, with Balfour Beatty sending out 90 day notices to their employees to accept a change of contract, there was a deafening silence form the union, Unite. Workers’ indignation was obvious: “I reckon that the Unions are up to their eyeballs in this as well”, “the unions have been very quiet on this … it stinks a bit” (posts on 30.7.11).

Difficulty of developing a struggle

Ask about the fightback, and workers have often been exasperated that nothing seems to be happening, Unite has been delaying everything, and some fear that other sparks will not have the stomach for a struggle. Early morning protest meetings of 3-400 workers outside construction sites, the effort to persuade the workers on the need to join the struggle, and the opportunity for discussion and temporary blockades of the site entrances, every week for 3 months are not insignificant, but electricians have no illusion that this will push back the attack.

Electricians clearly face important difficulties in developing their struggle. To go into struggle today, in the face of an economic crisis with high unemployment, wages in general frozen or falling with inflation eating away at living standards takes courage for workers in any industry. In construction, with its traditions of subcontracting, creating divisions between directly employed and subcontractors, as well as blacklisting of militant workers, there are particular difficulties. It’s been important to think about the experience of struggles in the 1970s and 80s: “I spent a year of my life at your age fighting a strike that was doomed, and you are going the same way. Hardship you don’t know the meaning of it son, I have seen men cry that they could not feed their kids and worrying how they would survive … We fought our fight and we lost …”, “What the 70s & 80s had was membership who were prepared to accept the majority vote or show of hands, and walk, but even then not everyone showed at the picket line, and never an official of the union was seen on picket lines I stood on anywhere in the land !! ... Also if the fitters or the welders walked so did we, and vice versa!” To develop today’s struggle past defeats need to be confronted and the lessons drawn, as well as returning to positive experiences of what working class struggle means. The long strike, confined to one industry, was indeed a trap leading to bitter defeats like that of the miners in 1984 or the printers at Wapping. These were occasions when everyone did not walk out together, and even when different sectors were struggling at the same time – in ’84 both dockers and car workers struck while the miners were out – they did not succeed in linking up.

Developing solidarity

Unofficial action started in the summer when the attack was announced and has continued with the early morning protests outside construction sites run by BESNA employers (those wanting to leave the JIB agreement) particularly in London, Manchester and Newcastle. These have provided a focus for workers to get together and discuss the struggle, with an open mike and workers listening to what is said. Workers in other industries, retired or students, and some anti-capitalist protesters have been able to come and show their solidarity – when a group from Occupy London turned up with a banner they had made they got a cheer. They are an opportunity for those convinced of the need to struggle to discuss with and persuade others to join them, often with success. In London the protests have often marched from one site to another – such as from Blackfriars to Cannon Street. And several of those who have refused to cross into work have been victimised. They are also the occasion for a temporary blockade of the entrance.

But whose solidarity? For Unite, we need to lobby parliament, to seek the solidarity of the great and the good against “rogue employers” (Unite leaflet for 9th November demonstration). And indeed Jeremy Corbyn turned up to Blackfriars on 12th October to tell us about an early day motion. Are we seriously expected to believe that in the middle of an economic crisis, with workers in the public sector – including the NHS and education – facing attacks, that this is just a question of rogue employers who need to be reined in by the government?

Unite are not unaware of the push for solidarity, but their method is to wheel out the PCS deputy general secretary, Chris Baugh, to assure workers of his union’s solidarity and propose public and private sector both take action on 30th November. Yet neither Unite nor the PCS, nor any other union, has done anything to overcome the media blackout of the attack or the struggle. What do public sector workers know of the attack on electricians or their efforts to fightback? Workers need to get together now and build links without the mediation of union leaders and their hollow speeches that can, and are likely designed to, make it seem that someone else can do it for them.

For Siteworker, which describes itself as a paper for site workers and trade unionists, it is clear it is not just 7 or 8 rogue employers: “We would be naïve if we were not aware that the giant general construction companies, who run and absolutely control the industry, must have given their approval to this breakaway group…” and therefore “we can only succeed with other trades and occupations reinforcing our ranks and standing alongside us in working class industrial solidarity, in a union or not, in common cause and purpose.” Understanding the need for workers to unite across such divisions is vital for the development of struggle, although this is seen in terms of uniting workers in the construction industry while the whole working class is under attack and needs to strike back together. And the way they see to unite those in a union with those who are not is to support union recruitment – despite their observation that Unite has largely been conspicuous by its absence from the efforts to struggle so far.

A Siteworker update special, noting that early morning meetings are not enough, proposed “Stopping production is what will bring the big firms to the negotiation table” but until then the blockades must continue – their jibelectrician.blogspot.com site notes how much various firms have lost through the disruption of these blockades. Meanwhile, after 3 months of regular protests, Unite is just starting to ballot for industrial action – but only electricians at Balfour Beatty, widely seen as the bosses’ ringleader. Yet another division is being set up between those workers called into struggle and the rest. Striking to ‘force’ employers to negotiate with the union leaders is like demanding that the bosses sit down with another set of bosses, or the government, and expecting that you can get anything but another sell out “as has happened in the past” (Siteworker).

However strong the illusions remaining in Unite, or at least in its methods of struggle, the sparks have shown a real militancy and determination. This has been demonstrated in the effort to discuss in the protest meetings, the effort to convince other workers, and the attempts to seek solidarity within and beyond the construction industry – calls to join protests by students and public sector workers, welcoming other workers showing solidarity, and on 19th October making contact with Occupy at St Pauls. It is only the solidarity of the rest of the working class, and not MPs or union bureaucrats, that will scare the bosses into withdrawing any of their attacks. 

Alex 5/11/11

“It can surely never be a good thing for living standards to be falling in the way they are. Of course not, but if the relatively high level that living standards reached in the run up to the crisis was unsustainable, then the present adjustment, painful though it undoubtedly is for many households, was both inevitable and necessary, the latter because it helps to make the UK a competitive economy once more.”[1]

One of the enduring themes of the ruling class is the idea that the current crisis is the result of a credit-fuelled consumerism. Supposedly the working has run up a credit card bill with high living during the boom and now we have to tighten our belts in order to pay for it.

The ‘boom’ than never was

As with all the best lies this contains elements of truth. Credit certainly did expand at an unsustainable rate at all levels of the economy and the ultimate crash came about because this enormous accumulation of fictitious capital could no longer be valorised. The insane propagation of credit was actually a conscious policy of the bourgeoisie and the latest in a long line of attempts to overcome the chronic stagnation that has dominated the economic picture since the 70s.

But the really insidious lie is that the working class enjoyed some sort of renaissance during the ‘boom’. In fact, average yearly growth in the UK during the period from 1992-2008 was 2.68% with peak growth far lower than in previous decades. This is marginally smaller than the average 2.9% achieved in the post-war boom, where Britain significantly lagged behind its rivals. The idea of an “unsustainable” boom is therefore at odds with the evidence which suggests a more moderate expansion. The so-called ‘credit boom’ was thus nothing more than a boom in credit expansion – and in spite of this enormous credit injection, the actual economy itself grew only modestly.

A ’consumer boom’ without prosperity

If actual economic growth didn’t exactly match up to the idea of a boom, what about the situation of the working class? In the year 2000, 4.5 million workers aged 22+ subsisted on less than £7 per hour (in 2010 £s)[2], around 40% of workers in that age group. By 2010, the number was 3.5 million or 32%. On the face of things, the number of workers on low pay as defined by hourly rate has declined quite strongly, although 32% of the workforce living on very low wages is still a surprising statistic for a supposed boom.

The rise of part-time working partially obscures a reality behind the headline figures of slightly declining wages. The number of involuntary part-time and involuntary temporary workers (i.e. people who worked in those conditions because they couldn’t find a full-time and/or permanent job) peaked in 1994 at around 846,000 and 650,000 respectively. Involuntary part-timers reached their lowest number (around 550,000) in 2004 before beginning to rise again. Involuntary temps fared somewhat better, remaining just below 400,000 before beginning to rise again in 2009. By the beginning of 2010, involuntary part-timers had reached a new peak of over a million. Involuntary temps have yet to reach the previous peak but there are still roughly 500,000 of them and the trend is upwards[3].

The figures above suggest perhaps mild improvements, at least for those in work, at least until the recession hit. But the indicators covering the broader impact of poverty paint a more depressing picture. In 1992, the number of people living on low income (at 60% or less than the median wage - the point in the income scale where half the population get more, the other half get less) peaked at roughly 14.5 million. This dipped slightly the following year and followed a slow downward trend finally reaching its lowest point in 2004/05 at just below 12 million. Since then the figure has been rising. However, those receiving less than 40% of the median wage never dropped below 4 million and their numbers have slowly and consistently grown[4].

Even worse, “Median wages in the UK were stagnant from 2003 to 2008 despite GDP growth of 11 per cent in the period. Similar trends are evident in other advanced economies from the US to Germany. For some time, the pay of those in the bottom half of the earnings distribution has failed to track the path of headline economic growth.”[5]

The share of value generated in the economy that goes to workers has fallen considerably over the past few decades: “In 1977, of every £100 of value generated by the UK economy, £16 went to the bottom half of workers in wages; by 2010 that figure had fallen to £12, a 26 per cent decline”[6]. Contrastingly, “£39 went to the top half of workers … and £39 went to businesses and owners in the form of profits”.

The situation today

Unemployment has (according to the official figures) reached a 17 year high, standing at 2.57 million or 8.1%. The number actually receiving benefits is 1.6 million. In 2008/9 (the most recent data) 13.5 million were living below the poverty line with the figure forecast to increase with what the IFS is calling the “largest three-year fall in median income since 1974-77”[7].

Inflation has reached 5.2% on the CPI measure, 5.6% on RPI. But the headline figures don’t appreciate the impact that inflation has on the poorest, for whom the rise in the actual cost of living is considerably higher. One report demonstrated that in 2008/9, the inflation for the bottom fifth was 4.3% compared to an overall RPI figure of 2.4%[8].

The working class has experienced a permanent recession

In conclusion, the so-called ‘boom’ had a minimal impact on the actual living conditions of the working class. The numbers in overall poverty occasionally fell by a small margin and the numbers right at the bottom actually rose. While the numbers of those on low wages moderated slightly, median income was stagnant again showing the overall wage pressure on the majority of the working class. What little improvement has been seen is due to be wiped away by the new plunge into crisis.

If the last decade seemed like a boom for the ruling class and their press that’s because their share of social wealth increased enormously. The “unsustainable” rise in living standards, so lamented by the ruling class, consisted of a slight reduction in absolute penury. The lowest number of people in poverty since 1990 was 12 million in 2004/5. To put this number in perspective it is worth recalling that in 1982, at the end of a brutal recession, the number of people in poverty by the same measure was a mere 8 million. For the working class and particularly its most impoverished members, the period of the so-called boom has been worse in terms of living conditions than the recessions of previous periods!

The ‘boom that never was’, along with its supposedly “unsustainable” living standards it provided, is an utter illusion. It should be seen rather as the feeble sputtering of the dying fire of capitalism, paid for by the wholesale exploitation and degradation of millions of working class people. Any future ‘recovery’ - itself looking more unlikely by the day - will see no relief for the working class.  

Ishamael 5/11/11

Readers have undoubtedly been following the events surrounding the OCCUPY WALL STREET (OWS) movement. Since mid-September, thousands of protestors have occupied Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan, just blocks from Wall Street. Protests have now spread to hundreds of cities around North America. Tens of thousands have taken part in occupations, demonstrations and general assemblies that have shown levels of self-organization and direct participation in political activity unseen in the US for many decades. The exploited and angry population has raised its voice, shown its indignation against the ills of capitalism. The international impact of OWS across the world should not be underestimated: protests have taken place in the most important centre of world capitalism, raising slogans and frustrations that echo those raised throughout Europe and North Africa.

However, the future of the movement seems uncertain. While many protestors vow to continue their occupations indefinitely, it is becoming increasingly clear that the movement’s initial spontaneous energy is in reflux, as its hallmark general assemblies (GAs) are transformed more and more into a passive echo chamber of the “working-groups” and “committees,” many of which appear to be dominated by professional activists, leftists, etc. The situation remains fluid, but we think it has reached a certain level of development that we can now attempt to make a preliminary assessment of its meaning and identify some of its strengths and weaknesses.

The ICC has been able to participate in these events in New York, where several militants and close sympathizers have made a number of trips to Zuccotti Park to speak with occupiers and participate in the GAs. ICC sympathizers elsewhere have sent us reports on their experiences in these movements in their cities. A vibrant discussion has also started on our website’s discussion forum[1]. This article is a contribution to this debate and we welcome our readers to join in the discussion.

How to respond to capitalism’s attacks? The struggle to find the class terrain

First we must recognize that the current occupation movement grows from the same source as all the massive social revolts we have witnessed over the course of 2011: from the movements in Tunisia and Egypt to the emergence of the indignados in Spain, the occupations in Israel and the mobilizations against austerity and union-busting in Wisconsin and other states, the frustration and desperation of the working class - in particular the younger generations hit hard by unemployment[2].

Thus we see a direct continuity between OWS and the growing willingness of the working class to fight back against capitalism’s attacks on an international level. OWS is clearly not a bourgeois campaign to derail and co-opt the class struggle. On the contrary, it is the latest in a series of movements, largely organized through the internet and social media - outside the unions and official political parties - through which the working class is seeking to respond to the massive attacks being unleashed against it in the wake of capitalism’s historic crisis. The movement is thus to be welcomed as a sign that the proletariat in North America has not been completed defeated and is unwilling to suffer capitalism’s attacks indefinitely. Nevertheless, we must also recognize that there are different tendencies at work in the movement, that a combat is taking place between different wings. The dominant tendencies have a strongly reformist outlook, the more proletarian tendencies are having a very difficult time locating the class terrain of its struggle.

In defence of the sovereignty of the General Assemblies

Perhaps the most positive aspect of the OWS protests has been the emergence of the General Assemblies (GA) as the movement’s sovereign organs. That represents an advance over the mobilization in Wisconsin, which despite its initial spontaneity, was quickly taken over by the organizational apparatus of the unions and the left of the Democratic Party[3]. The emergence of the GAs in OWS represents continuity with the movements in Spain, France and elsewhere, and stands as marked evidence of the capacity of the working class to take control of its struggles and learn from events in other parts of the globe. Indeed, the internationalization of the GAs as a form of struggle is one of the most impressive features of the current phase of the class struggle. The GAs are, above all else, an attempt by the working class to defend its autonomy by involving the entire movement in the decision making process and ensuring the widest and broadest possible discussion with the class.

However, despite their importance in this movement, it is clear that the GAs in OWS have not been able to function without considerable distortion and manipulation from the professional activists and leftists who have largely controlled the various working-groups and committees that are supposed to be nominally responsible to the GAs. This weight has contributed to a severe difficulty for the movement in maintaining an open discussion and has worked to prevent it from opening a discussion of extending itself beyond the occupations to reach out to the working class as a whole. The 15M movement in Spain has also encountered similar problems[4].

Early in the occupation, in response to persistent calls from the media for the movement to identify its goals and demands, a press committee was formed for the purpose of publishing an OCCUPY WALL STREET journal. One of our comrades was present at the GA when the first issue of this journal - which had already been produced and disseminated to the media by the press committee - was taken up. The predominant sentiment of the GA was one of outrage that a journal had been produced and disseminated to the media with content that did not reflect the consensus view of the movement, but seemed to reflect one particular political point of view. A decision was made to remove the person responsible for the production and dissemination of the journal from the press committee. This action represented the power of the GA to assert its sovereignty over the committees and the working groups. An embryonic expression of the “right of immediate recall,” the offending member of the press committee was promptly removed for exceeding his mandate.

However, at a GA several weeks later—on the eve of Mayor Bloomberg’s threatened eviction of the occupiers from Zuccotti Park—our comrade found a remarkably different atmosphere. With the eviction looming, the GA was virtually devoid of meaningful discussion. The majority of the GA was taken up by reports from the working-groups and committees without discussion. The only discussion that was permitted by the GA facilitators was regarding a proposal by the Manhattan borough President to limit the performance of movement drummers to two hours a day. This GA never broached the issue of the future of the movement. It did not even consider the question of how to develop a strategy and formulate tactics for extending the movement beyond its current limitations and almost certain demise in Zuccotti Park.

At this GA, one of our comrades attempted to propose that the occupiers look to the future by reaching out beyond the park’s boundaries to the working class of the city, where they were likely to receive a warm reception. Our comrade was told that the intervention was not on the topic of the proposal to limit drumming and that the time limit for interventions (arbitrarily set by the facilitators at one minute) had been exceeded. Another proposal was made by a participant to form a delegation to speak about the movement to students at several area colleges and universities. Her proposal was also rejected, with many protestors indicating that they had no desire to spread the movement and that if the students wanted to support the occupation, they should come to Zuccotti Park.

How, then, can we explain the tendency for the working groups, committees and facilitators to progressively assert control over the movement as time passed?

The danger of Anti-Politics

The OWS movement has been characterized from the start by a certain ‘anti-political’ spirit that has served to deaden discussion, prevent the polarization of conflicting ideas and the development of class demands. This has made it possible for leftists, political celebrities and politicians of all stripes to step in and speak for the movement, and allowed the media to present the OWS movement as the early stages of a “Left-Wing Tea Party”[5].

OWS’s almost militant refusal to take up the question of goals and demands, which we think represents a general reluctance to consider the question of power, presents something of a conundrum for revolutionaries. How do we understand this phenomenon, which has also been present in other movements? As far as OWS is concerned, we think it flows in large measure from the following factors.

The continued weight of the bourgeoisie’s ideological campaigns around the death of communism

While it is true that the main social force behind these movements appears to be the younger generation of workers, many of whom were born after the collapse of Stalinism in 1989, there remains a genuine fear in the working class to take up the question of communism. While Marx may be in the process of rehabilitation in terms of his critique of capitalism, there is still a great fear of being associated with a system that many continue to believe, “has already been tried and failed” and which runs counter to the goal of establishing “true democracy”. While it is possible to see many signs and slogans at these occupations quoting Marx to the effect that capitalism has become unworkable, there remains total confusion regarding what can replace it. On the other hand, the longer term perspective is for the weight of the ‘nightmares of the past’ to weaken and pose less of a barrier to those searching for the genuine content of communism, for a new rethinking of the future of society to flourish.

The predominance of the young generation

By and large these movements are animated by the younger generation of workers. Although older workers affected by the massive destruction of jobs that has occurred in the U.S. since 2008 are also present in the movements, sociologically the driving force of these protests are workers in their 20s and 30s. Most are well-educated, but many have never held a steady, secure job in their lives. They are among the most deeply affected by the massive long-term unemployment that now haunts the U.S. economy. Few have the experience of the shop floor in anything other than a tenuous way. Their identities are not rooted to the work-place or their job category. While these sociological qualities likely make them more open to an abstract broad solidarity, they also mean that most lack the experience of struggles defending living and working conditions through the formation of specific demands and goals. Having been largely exiled from the production process, they have little concrete left to defend other than their dignity as human beings! The necessity of developing specific demands and goals is thus not so apparent. In a world where no real future can be seen, it is not surprising that the younger generation have difficulty thinking concretely about how to develop the struggle for the future. Thus, the movement becomes trapped in a celebration of the process, of the occupations themselves, as the occupation site becomes a community, and in some cases, even a home[6]. Another aspect that can’t be ignored is the weight of post-modernist political discourse, particularly on those who have been through the US university system, which instils a mistrust and rejection of ‘traditional’ class politics.

That being said, we shouldn’t ‘expect the infant to be a man’. The mere existence of general assemblies is a victory in itself, and they provide excellent schools where the young can develop their experience and learn how to combat the forces of the bourgeois left. All this is vital for the struggles to come.

The specifically American context

OWS remains stubbornly trapped in the context of U.S. politics and history. There is often little mention of the international roots of the crisis and social movements in other countries. The predominant belief of the movement continues to be that the immense problems facing the world can all in one form or another be traced back to unethical behaviour by bankers on Wall Street, aided and abetted by the U.S. political parties. The stripping of regulations governing the interaction of commercial and investment banks, the unscrupulous running up of a real estate bubble, the growing influence of corporate campaign money on the U.S. state, the immense gap between the richest one percent of the population and the rest, the fact that Wall Street sits on billions of dollars of surplus cash that it refuses to reinvest in the American economy, remain the movement’s chief grievances. Moreover, the identification of the main problem as “unregulated financial capital” has served to maintain illusions in the ultimately altruistic nature of U.S. bourgeois state.

Clearly, the OWS movement’s anti-political ethic has served to hamper it from going beyond the level of the process itself and in the end has only served to reproduce the kind of political domination that it rightly feared. This should serve as a powerful lesson for future movements. While the movement is right to be sceptical of all those that would seek to speak for it, the working class cannot shy away from open discussion and confrontation of ideas. The process of polarization, of working out concrete goals and demands—as difficult as it is—cannot be avoided, if the movement is to advance. In the end, a movement dominated by an extreme eclecticism of ideas “all demands are equally valid” will ensure that only those demands that are acceptable to the bourgeoisie will advance. The goals of re-regulating capitalism, of taxing the rich and breaking the stranglehold of corporate money on the electoral process are actually goals shared by many factions of the U.S. bourgeoisie! Is it not a little coincidental that Obama wants to pay for his jobs plan with a surtax on millionaires? There is a strong risk that the main factions of the bourgeoisie could steer this movement in a direction that serves their own interests in its factional fights with a resurgent right-wing. However, in the final analysis the bourgeoisie’s complete inability to solve its mortal crisis will see the illusions in ‘American Dream’ smashed, replaced by the nightmare of existence under capitalism.

Only the working class offers humanity a future

For all its weaknesses, we must recognize the profound lessons that the OWS protests hold for the further development of the class struggle. The emergence of GAs—probably for the first time in decades on North American soil—represent a major step forward for the working class as it seeks to develop its struggle beyond the bounds of the unions and bourgeois left. However, we must argue that a movement that falls in on itself rather than seek extension to the class as a whole is doomed to failure, whether that failure comes as a result of repression, demoralization or eventual co-optation behind the campaigns of the bourgeois left. At the current juncture of the class struggle we face a situation where the sectors of the working class with the least experience of collective labour are the most combative. On the other hand, those with the most experience of concrete struggles in defence of their living and working conditions still remain quite disoriented by capitalism’s attacks and uncertain of how to fight back. Many are just glad to still have a job and have recoiled under the weight of capitalism’s offensive against its living and working standards.

Moreover, in the U.S., the persistent campaigns of the right wing to smash the unions have actually had the effect of revitalizing the union straitjacket in the workers’ eyes to some degree, and have further disoriented this sector of the working class[7]. In fact, to the extent that this sector of the working class participated in the OWS movement, it was largely under the union banner, but with the unions working systematically to segregate their members from the occupiers. It was clear that under the unions, the workers were there to support the occupiers, but not to join them! It is in the working class’ struggle to defend its living and working conditions, at the location where society reproduces itself, that the organs that can actually implement the transition to a society of associated producers —the workers’ councils—can emerge. It is here where the fact that capitalism can no longer offer lasting reforms can be discovered, as the working class’ struggle to protect its living standards are constantly frustrated by the persistent economic crisis. It is at the point of production where the fact that today human society can only reproduce itself on a global level will become apparent to the working class.

That said, we don’t minimize the immense difficulties facing the working class in all sectors today in finding the class terrain and developing the willingness to fight back against capitalism’s attacks. On the first score, we think the OWS movement has remained trapped on the bourgeois rhetorical terrain; however, on the latter it is of immense value in showing a glimpse of how the working class can take control of its own struggle.

Internationalism, 10/19/2011.

1. See the thread on our forum [204].

2. See our article "The movement of the Indignados [162]".

3. Although in contrast to Wisconsin, where for a moment the spectre of a general strike across the state was raised, OWS represents a much less “massive” mobilization, characterized as it is by a core group of protestors and those who stop by to participate on an irregular basis.

4. See our article "‘Real Democracy Now!’: A [205]dictatorship against the mass assemblies [205]".

5. See Peter Beinhart, “Occupy Protests’ Seismic Effects” for a statement of how the bourgeois left thinks OWS could be of use as a grassroots adjunct to the Obama Presidency.

6. Over the last several weeks, the media has reported on several cases of young people who quit low-paying jobs or dropped out of school to participate in the occupations.

7. See our article on the recent Verizon strike [206].

“Occupy London stands together with occupations all over the world; we are the 99%. We are a peaceful non-hierarchical forum. We’re in agreement that the current system is undemocratic and unjust. We need alternatives; you are invited to join us in debate and developing them; to create a better future for everyone.”

This is the statement which greets you upon finding the Occupy London website (occupylsx.org). It’s certainly true that there have been occupation movements all over the world, with actions springing up in over a hundred cities in the USA, starting with the Occupy Wall Street movement, and in places throughout Europe (Frankfurt and Glasgow, to name but two). The general format has been the occupation of a public space followed by discussions, protests and joint actions.

That the people taking part in the occupations have genuine concerns about the state of the world, the economy and political action is beyond dispute. A comrade of WR recently visited both occupied sites: “I visited Finsbury Square where I spoke to two young women, one unemployed and one working. One of them described their reasons for being there as being at some level unhappy with the current state of things.” The occupations provide something that is not in very great supply in Britain – a public space where people are free to come and discuss in general assemblies in an effort to try and understand the current situation of the world. The people at the occupations have come from different parts of the country, as well as from other countries. Some are actually working whilst taking part in the protest. There have been attempts to send delegates to, amongst other things, the current ongoing electricians’ protest. This at a time when, throughout the country as a whole, despite the widespread fear and anger engendered by the austerity being rained down, there has been little in the way of a genuine workers’ response.

As the recent events in Spain and Greece have demonstrated, the assemblies are the lifeblood of workers’ self-organisation. They are the place where political confrontation, clarification and reflection can take place. The clearest example of this was the intense discussions in Spain between those arguing for ‘real democracy’, that is, a better, improved governmental democracy and those putting forward a proletarian perspective: “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 of ‘going to the roots of the problem’ as one of them said).”[1]

The discussions around the Occupy London protests still revolve around two key themes: how to ‘improve’ Parliamentary democracy, to win it back ‘for the people’ against the rich, the bankers, the elite; and secondly how to bring about social justice – i.e. a more equitable distribution under capitalism. As our comrade put it: “I eventually found the meeting, rather late, in the University Tent where there was a discussion on democracy where I learned that they don’t really have democracy in Spain as it is all party lists in proportional representation with no voting for an individual MP, and the parties are part of the state, which some of them felt was all a hangover from the dictatorship under Franco…In this meeting the politicians were pretty much to blame for everything. There were some dissenting voices which tried to raise the question of the economy, to point out that democracy in the UK isn’t any better. And there were some bizarre contributions to discussion including the idea that we should get the public involved in public office in the same sort of way they are called for jury service – perhaps this could replace political patronage in the House of Lords… or we should get better managers into government as in China… One thought that tinkering with the system of voting for parliaments was the way to try and take the assembly experience to a wider level. I was able to make 3 short contributions to the discussion. (1) That the way politicians behave is not caused by the Spanish, UK or any other voting system but the fact they are defending capitalism. (2) To support points on the role of the crisis – which is not just down to the bankers. (3) To say I had hoped to hear more about the assemblies, and to mention a list of historical experiences including workers’ councils. Although there was some hand waving of approval to some of what I said, the overall discussion went back to looking for ways to perfect bourgeois democracy.”

Occupy London is not only smaller than the movements in Spain and the USA that inspired it, but the voices raised in support of a working class perspective have been relatively weaker, and those defending parliamentary democracy relatively stronger. For instance the efforts to send ‘delegations’ to the electricians’ protests only a short walk away were seen as an entirely individual decision and initiative of those who participated, whereas in Oakland the Occupy Movement called for a general strike as well as evening meetings so that those who had to work could also participate (see https://www.occupyoakland.org/ [208]). This has left Occupy London very vulnerable to the manoeuvres around the threatened eviction – or the alternative offer of a reduced number of tents for two months – and the media circus around what is going on in the hierarchy of St Paul’s Cathedral with the resignations of first the Canon and then the Dean.

The reaction of the mainstream media has been mostly predictable, from the ‘shock! horror!’ headlines to articles in the more liberal / left wing press arguing that these occupations represent a ‘boost’ or a ‘shaking up’ of a staid democratic system. All in all, most of the press, and the established church, have tried to find a way to argue that politicians should be ‘responding’ to the ‘concerns’ of legitimate protest. But in the absence of a perspective for going out to make contact with the wider working class this predictable media feeding frenzy, and how they present the occupation, has become a point of fixation.

The threat of eviction, and how to defend against the violence and repression involved, is obviously an important concern. In many places across America, this ‘response’ by elected politicians has taken the form of heavy repression (witness the 700 protestors tricked and then arrested trying to safely cross Brooklyn Bridge, arrests and beatings at other occupations[2]). However, when one of our comrades went to a general assembly at Finsbury Square that discussed how to react to the threatened eviction at St Pauls (before the offer to stay for 2 months and leave at an agreed date) the way the media would portray their response was the major concern. A proposal to go directly to workers, made by our comrade, like a reminder by another participant that their aims went beyond keeping the occupation going indefinitely, were not taken up. In fact both felt like distractions.

The greatest danger now is that Occupy London will become trapped in a hopeless inward looking dynamic leaving the Church and the media to make all the running. Graham 04/11/11

The war in Libya is over and the old dictator Gaddafi has met a violent and inglorious end. The leaders of the free and democratic powers are congratulating themselves on their support for the rebels (now the legal government). The people of Libya celebrate their new freedom and the victory of the revolution. Not too triumphalist, a word of criticism for the brutal manner of Gaddafi’s end, not fitting for one in the rulers club, but a job well done by NATO for a change. This is the narrative in the media.

Gaddafi wasn’t the only one to meet a violent end; 50 Gaddafi supporters were executed with their hands tied behind their back on the eastern edge of Sirte. The town of Tawargha was ransacked and the 30,000 residents banned from returning because of their support for Gaddafi. We shouldn’t be too surprised by the level of brutality meted out to the defeated, because the new regime received its training under the old regime, in fact some of them used to be the old regime. 

The new Transitional National Council of Libya wants to avoid the mistakes of Iraq where many of the repressive structures were dismantled. This time those who benefited under Gaddafi will remain. When criticism of the old regime is made the emphasis is on the idea of the all powerful dictator with his handful of loyal cronies rather than the embarrassing collusion of the whole Libyan elite. The announcement of Abdurrahim al-Keib as the new interim Prime Minister can be seen as an attempt by the TNC to distance itself from the past. The previous holder of that position, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, was a justice minister under Gaddafi. Also we shouldn’t forget that the nations who raced to defend democracy this year were rubbing shoulders with Gaddafi last year.

This attempt to bury the past is also an attempt to avoid a new civil war between the factions that have emerged in the new Libyan state. The bourgeoisie in Libya is not united in action. There are differences between east and west Libyans, Islamists, tribes, local warlords and non-TNC rebels. The TNC is an attempt to hold things together and prevent the country descending into total chaos.

The inter-bourgeois war in Libya also had a clear imperialist dimension. The intervention of France, Britain and the US via airstrikes, 10,000 according to the BBC, helped to swing the civil war in the favour of the rebels.

The triumph of the TNC over Gaddafi’s forces is no victory for the working class or the legions of the exploited in Libya. The development of the uprising into a civil war between bourgeois factions, backed by the imperialist powers, was a symptom of the weakness of the working class in comparison to Egypt, where the working class played a significant role in the movement even if it failed to take decisive leadership.

This does not mean that the class struggle is totally absent from Libya. At the end of October, strike action by Waha Oil workers, unhappy at the continued presence of the same directors who collaborated with the Gaddafi forces during the civil war, had been going on for two months. The TNC backed the directors, not the workers of course. Workers from other refineries and other sectors of the oil industry joined them in protest outside the National Oil Corporation headquarters, also unhappy about the Gaddafi supporters who manage them.[1] The future for the Libyan workers lies in the continuing defence of their own class interests against whichever faction takes the reins of power, but their main hope lies in the development of the class struggle throughout the region and across the globe.

Hugin 5/11/11

Part two of this article has been published in the printed edition of World revolution.The complete article is already available online here [213]

After Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou proposed and then ditched the idea of a referendum, globally share prices rallied. After winning a confidence vote but then indicating he would step aside, the financial markets looked forward to the possibility of Evangelos Venizelos leading the team to meet up with the EU/IMF/ECB troika to negotiate the conditions of the next bailout. Economic reality means that this is much more than a routine visit to the bank manager. There is so much at stake for Greece, the eurozone and the world economy.

If Greece was to default on its loans it would have a widespread impact way beyond its national frontiers. Effectively Greece has already been excused billions. It has been agreed that Greece’s creditors will annul 50% of what’s owed to them, effectively wiping out 106 billion euros at a stroke. This was presented as a ‘haircut’. Capitalism doesn’t have any solutions to its historic crisis, only deepening austerity. None of the alternative measures proposed by different factions of the bourgeoisie offer the prospect of a revival in the economy. This applies just as much to printing money and resorting to debt and quantitative easing, as it does to viciously cutting and cutting again without any concern for the impact it will have on any potential for growth.

The only prospect is austerity

In May 2010 after the first massive 110 billion euro bailout of the Greek economy there was a 10% cut in public sector wages alongside a whole range of measures. These were on top of an already existing austerity regime. This ‘rescue plan’ proved utterly ineffective and a second package was negotiated this July, which led to further extensive cuts.

As was widely predicted this didn’t have a positive effect on the economy either. So, in October, there was a further round of negotiations. The banks might have taken a ‘haircut’, but 30,000 more public sector workers were to lose their jobs and deeper wage and pensions cuts were proposed. European leaders have said there will be no more money if Greece is not committed to the euro. There is no real choice, for either Greece or Europe, as all routes taken tend to exacerbate rather than soothe the economic crisis. The conservative New Democracy opposition in Greece has been very severe in its rhetoric against Papandreou’s PASOK government, but they’re really only quibbling about details. Eventually, they endorsed the latest austerity package. After all, before PASOK came to power in May 2009, the previous ND government had already started the attacks on living standards that were to intensify under Papandreou.

Workers’ resistance to attacks

It was during the last New Democracy government in December 2008 and early 2009 that there was a wave of militant protests against the shooting of a 15-year-old student by the police. In the occupations and assemblies that took place during that movement there was a clear demonstration of the potential for struggle.

The size and militancy of the many general strikes in Greece in 2010 showed that the working class in Greece was not just going to roll over in the face of the frontal assault on its living standards. However, the degree of control by the unions ultimately limited the impact of these workers’ actions.

In Greece in 2011, apart from the strikes called by unions in response to the very real anger felt throughout the working class, there has also been an echo of the ‘indignados’ movement in Spain with assemblies meeting in many cities. Among other concerns they considered the perspectives for the development of the struggle.

And, as new government measures have been announced, proposed, or rumoured, there have been further strikes and protests. These have involved particular groups of workers or been, like the 5 October general strike, throughout the public sector. The 48 hour general strike of 19-20 October involved the most widespread protests in decades. There were more occupations, initiatives beyond the actions proposed by union leaderships, and the whole scale of the protests and the range of those demonstrating in massive protests across the country was noted, for example, by the cynical foreign press corps. Offices, government buildings, banks, schools and courts were closed. Hospitals were running on an emergency basis. Public transport came to a standstill.

In a major demonstration outside the Greek parliament the Stalinist KKE and Stalinist PAME union made a point of defending parliament. This was not just a ceremonial guard but involved beating up and intimidating protesters. Not content with attacking those who had come to demonstrate, they handed some over to the police. This activity inevitably lead to clashes with those who wanted to reach parliament. This was not an isolated outbreak of violence as Stalinists attacked demonstrators protesting at a number of other locations.

Nationalism is always the enemy

Every year on 28 October in Greece there are parades in commemoration of the day in 1940 when Greek dictator Metaxas refused an ultimatum from Mussolini. This led to an Italian invasion and marked the beginning of Greek participation in the Second World War. Usually this feast of Greek nationalism is marked by an epidemic of Greek flags and the usual speeches, but this year there were protests against the austerity regime. All over Greece missiles were thrown, parades were blocked, MPs of the main parties were harassed and in some instances parades were called off.

In Thessaloniki, Greece’s second city, the Greek President was greeted by 30,000 demonstrators. Police were unable to disperse the protesters, the parade was cancelled and demonstrators took over the podium. These protests were not organised by the unions and seem to have been in many respects spontaneous. The President said that the choice was between participating in protests or in elections. Papandreou denounced the “insult” to Greece’s “national struggles and institutions” and the ND leader complained that protests had “ruined our national holiday”.

However, while it is true that disrupting 28 October commemorations is more or less unheard of, the protests were not entirely devoid of nationalism. In particular, there was a certain amount of anti-German sentiment expressed, partly based on Germany’s role in the EU. A banner in Crete said “No to the Fourth Reich”. Also Papandreou was denounced as a “traitor” in a way that could only have a nationalist interpretation. But, looked at overall, these most recent protests are further confirmation that, rather than reverentially bowing in front of its masters, the working class is not crumpling under the attacks.

The bourgeoisie can’t expect a passive working class

The bourgeoisie has no solutions to its economic problems. Not only that, it is faced with a difficult social situation in which workers in some places are resisting the attempts to make them pay for the capitalist crisis. Vicious austerity measures don’t inevitably immediately lead to workers’ struggles. Look at the example of Ireland where, so far, the response to the cuts in living standards has been very muted.

Yet the bourgeoisie does expect a response to its measures sooner or later as it has nothing else to offer. In Spain, for example, the ruling Socialist Party has already raised taxes, cut wages and radically reduced investment. If it loses power after the forthcoming 20 November election the incoming government has promised to further deepen budget cuts. This is not going to aid economic recovery and will make one more contribution towards a global recession. In turn, as a recent International Labour Organisation report pointed out, this is going to contribute to widespread social unrest.

Papandreou’s manoeuvres around the referendum were also a demonstration that the Greek ruling class knows that it can’t simply ram austerity down the workers’ throats, however much the leaders of the EU and IMF might demand it. But those same leaders are also going to find workers in ‘their own’ countries behaving in the same rude and unacceptable manner in the near future.

 Car 5/11/11

There was a time, not so long ago, when revolutionaries were greeted with scepticism or mockery when they argued that the capitalism system was heading towards catastrophe. Today, it’s the fiercest partisans of capitalism who are saying the same thing. “Chaos is there, right in front of us” (Jacques Attali, previously a very close associate of President Mitterand and former director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development; now an adviser to President Sarkozy, quoted in the Journal du Dimanche, 27/11/11). “I think that you are not aware that in a couple of days, or a week, our world could disappear...we are very close to a great social revolution”(Jean-Pierre Mustier, bank director, formerly at the Société Générale. www.challenges.fr/finance-et-marche [217]). It’s not with any joy in their hearts that these defenders of capitalism are admitting that their idol is on the way out. They are obviously shattered by this, all the more so because they can see that the solutions being put forward to save the system are unrealistic. As the journalist reporting Jean-Pierre Mustier’s words put it: “as for solutions, the cupboard is bare”. And with good reason!

Whatever their lucidity about what’s in store for capitalism, those who think that no other society is possible are not going to be able to put forward any solutions to the disaster now threatening humanity. Because there are no solutions to the contradictions of capitalism inside this system. The contradictions it is confronting are insurmountable because they are not the result of ‘bad management’ by this or that government or by ‘international finance’ but quite simply of the very laws on which the system is founded. It is only by breaking out of these laws, by replacing capitalism with another society, that humanity can overcome the catastrophe that is staring us in the face. It is only by putting forward this perspective that we can really understand the nature of the crisis that capitalism is going through.

The only solution: free humanity from the yoke of capitalism

Just like the societies which came before it, such as slavery and feudalism, capitalism is not an eternal system. Slavery predominated in ancient society because it corresponded to the level of agricultural techniques which had been achieved. When the latter evolved, demanding far greater attention on the part of the producers, society entered into a deep crisis – the decadence of Rome. It was replaced by feudalism where the serf was attached to his piece of land while working for part of his time on the lord’s land or giving up part of his harvest to the lord. At the end of the Middle Ages this system also became obsolete, again plunging society into a historic crisis. It was then replaced by capitalism which was no longer based on small agricultural production but on commerce, associated labour and large industry, which were themselves made possible by progress in technology (the steam engine for example). Today, as a result of its own laws, capitalism has in turn become obsolete and must give way to a higher system. 

But give way to what? Here is the key question being posed by more and more people who are becoming aware that the present system has no future, that it is dragging humanity into an abyss of poverty and barbarism. We are not prophets who claim to describe the future society in all its details, but one thing is clear: in the first place, we have to abolish production for the market and replace it with production whose only aim is the satisfaction of human need. Today, we are confronted by a real absurdity: in all countries, extreme poverty is growing, the majority of the population is forced to go without more and more, not because the system doesn’t produce enough but because it is producing too much. They pay farmers to reduce their production, enterprises are closed down, wage earners are sacked en masse, vast numbers of young people are condemned to unemployment, including those who have spent years studying, while at the same time the exploited are more and more forced to pull in their belts. Misery and poverty are not the result of the lack of a work force capable of producing, or of the lack of means of production. They are the consequences of a mode of production which has become a calamity for humanity. It is only by radically rejecting production for the market that the system that succeeds capitalism can put on its banner “From each according to their means, to each according to their needs”.

The question then posed is this: “how do we get to such a society?? What force in the world is capable of taking in charge such a huge transformation in the life of humanity?” It is clear that such a transformation cannot come from the capitalists themselves or the existing governments who all, whatever their colouring, defend the present system and the privileges it gives them. Only the exploited class under capitalism, the class of wage labourers, the proletariat, can carry out such a total change. This class is not the only one that suffers from poverty, exploitation and oppression.

For example, throughout the world there are multitudes of poor peasants who are also exploited and often live in worse conditions than the workers in their countries. But their position in society does not enable them to take charge of constructing a new society, even if they also have a real interest in such a change. More and more ruined by the capitalist system, these small producers aspire to turning back the wheel of history, to go back to the blessed days when they could live from their own labour, when the big agro-industrial companies didn’t take the bread from their mouths. It is different for the waged producers of modern capitalism. What’s at the basis of their exploitation and their poverty is wage labour - the fact that the means of production are in the hands of the capitalist class (whether in the form of private owners or state capital), and the only way they can earn their daily bread and a roof over their heads is to sell their labour power. In other words, the profound aspiration of the class of producers, even if the majority of its members are not yet conscious of this, is to abolish the separation between producers and means of production which characterises capitalism, to abolish the commodity relations through which they are exploited, and which are the permanent justification for the attacks on their income since, as all bosses and governments say: “you’ve got to be competitive”.   

Therefore the proletariat has to expropriate the capitalists, collectively take over the whole of world production in order to make it a means of truly satisfying the needs of the human species. This revolution, because that’s what we are talking about, will inevitably come up against all the organs capitalism uses to preserve its rule over society, in the first place its states, its forces of repression, but also the whole ideological apparatus which serves to convince the exploited, day after day, that capitalism is the only possible system. The ruling class will be determined to stop by all possible means the ‘great social revolution’ which haunts the banker mentioned above and many of his class companions.

The task will therefore be immense. The struggles which have already begun today against the aggravation of poverty in countries like Greece and Spain are just the first necessary step in the proletariat’s preparations for the overthrow of capitalism. It’s in these struggles, in the solidarity and unity that they give rise to, in the consciousness they engender about the possibility and necessity to get rid of a system whose bankruptcy is daily becoming more obvious, that the exploited will forge the weapons they need to abolish capitalism and install a society finally free of exploitation, of poverty, of famine and war.

The road is long and difficult but there isn’t another. The economic catastrophe on the horizon, which is creating such disquiet in the ranks of the bourgeoisie, will bring with it a dire worsening of living conditions for all the exploited. But it will also enable them to set out on the path of revolution and the liberation of humanity  

Fabienne 7/12/11

In recent weeks, comrades of the ICC have attended, and on two occasions given, talks at the Occupy site in St Paul’s. As has been the case in the last few years with movements in North Africa, Greece and, most notably, Spain there is a multiplicity of ideas being discussed. The Occupy movement is no different. As we wrote in the last edition of WR, there is a need to wage a struggle within such movements for a workers’ perspective “Occupy London is not only smaller than the movements in Spain and the USA that inspired it, but the voices raised in support of a working class perspective have been relatively weaker, and those defending parliamentary democracy relatively stronger. For instance the efforts to send ‘delegations’ to the electricians’ protests only a short walk away were seen as an entirely individual decision and initiative of those who participated, whereas in Oakland the Occupy Movement called for a general strike as well as evening meetings so that those who had to work could also participate.”

The movement as a whole is heavily impregnated with reformism – the idea that if some aspect(s) of capitalism were changed this would change the overall functioning of capitalism, and its current dynamic. There is a widespread idea that capitalism can be made a ‘fairer’ more ‘humane’ system and that it’s possible to tackle the biggest economic crisis in its history.

Among some of our experiences:

       One comrade attended one of the Tent City University meetings, entitled ‘Here’s the risk: Occupy ends up doing the bidding of the global elite’. Presented by Patrick Hennigsen, an American investigative journalist, who made some very pertinent points about attempts by bourgeois foundations like the one funded by George Soros to recuperate Occupy movements from Tunisia to New York. Hennigsen insisted that ‘right versus left’ was a dead-end. His alternatives however weren’t that illuminating – taking money out of banks and putting it in credit unions, etc. He also argued that if there’s no free market, it’s not capitalism. We spoke to say we agreed with the danger of recuperation but we had to have some basic clarity about what capitalism is otherwise the movement will indeed be trapped in false alternatives.

       Another comrade attended a meeting presented by Lord Robert Sidelsky entitled “The crises of capitalism” which asked questions such as: Why does the system collapse? How do we recover from the present recession? How do we build a better system? Again, there were some interesting observations made. For example that capitalism is not just about economics, but that it’s also a system of power and hierarchy, that the crisis in the eurozone is not the cause of the UK crisis, that figures for GDP in themselves don’t say everything about ‘growth’ – all valid questions for discussion. However, again, the answers that were put forward were entirely within the framework of changes already proposed by one or other faction of the ruling class, such as for a Tobin Tax on all financial transactions, more work sharing, a government investment bank etc.

Despite all the illusions in the possibilities of reform, the occupation has provided a space for a discussion of ideas, even ideas that are rarely heard. As another comrade said “… a couple of people in the tents near our stall put out a piece of cardboard saying ‘Discussion point’ and an impromptu discussion about whether a new society was possible began with around a dozen people taking part. The best contribution was from a woman who felt that it was the process of discussion itself, people breaking from isolation to come together and talk, which was the most positive thing about the Occupy movement.”

Some comrades of the ICC gave a talk about the ideas of Rosa Luxemburg on the rise and decline of capitalism. There were barely more than a dozen there but nonetheless the discussion was lively and interesting and posed things in a deeper way. It is the capacity to have a political confrontation of ideas that is the basis for a development in consciousness and political maturity in the face of the questions capitalism is posing to the whole world today.  

Graham 10/12/11

It’s not much fun being young at the moment. If you manage to stay in education you end up accruing large debts only to be told standards are slipping and the only reason you’ve passed is because the exams are so easy now. On the street you’re either patronised as a ‘chav’ or feared as a ‘hoodie’. Everything from the summer riots to cultural decline is down to you and your self obsessed, greedy individualism: you just can’t win.

The cherries on the top of this rancid cake are the recent announcements on youth ‘employment’. Figures published by the Department for Education (DfE) in November showed that the number of Neets has risen to a record high of 1.16 million with almost one in five 16 - 24 year olds in England ‘not in education, employment or training’ between July and September this year. “The figure was up 137,000 [a rise of 13%] on the same period last year. Just over 21% of 18 - 24 year olds are not in education, work or training” (Guardian 25/11/11). Records, demonstrated by a confusing array of statistics, may have been broken across the board - “official figures published last week show there were 1.02 million unemployed 16 to 24 year olds in the UK between July and September this year, also a record” (ibid) - but the results for young people are the same.

In response the Government has wheezed into action. Even though they “know many young people move between school, college, university and work during the summer, which explains why Neet figures are higher during this quarter” (ibid) they promise not to be complacent. This doesn’t mean that they’ll review scrapping the Education Maintenance Allowance, rethink increasing university tuition fees or reopen closed career services. No, it’s a retro response, we’re going back to the 1980s. Nick Clegg has announced a billion pounds of new funding, with the money possibly coming from a freeze in tax credits paid to working families, “to be spent over three years, [that] will provide opportunities including job subsidies, apprenticeships and work experience placements to 500,000 unemployed” (ibid). All of which sounds like the Youth Training Scheme (YTS) that were so ‘popular’ and so ‘successful’ in the 80s. If they’re lucky enough to be signed up to this ‘youth contract’ - and that may not be easy, recently there has been a 900% increase in the number of apprenticeships begun by those aged 60 and over (Guardian 14/11/11) - participants will lose their benefit and be expected to “stick with it”, whatever that may mean. And sometimes they’ll have to work to get their ‘benefits’.            

While there was never a golden age for young people in capitalist society it’s impossible not to respond to these recent developments without utter contempt for those who rule us. Despite what the bourgeois press claims young workers a generation ago didn’t have it easy but there was at least the illusion that if you followed the ‘rules’, ‘played the game’ and worked or studied hard capitalism would ‘reward’ you - i.e. you would, usually, be ‘better off’ than your parent’s generation; with a little sacrifice you could own your own home and save for your retirement. With the acceleration of the crisis the same can not be said today. Young people are now faced with huge obstacles, both economically and socially, having to run merely to stand still, so it’s hardly surprising that some give up trying to ‘build’ Michael Gove’s laughable ‘aspirational nation’. Faced with, at best, an uncertain future and criticised at every turn, who’d blame them.

‘He who has youth has the future’: this phrase attributed to both Lenin and Trotsky is on one level banal, a truism, but on another it suggests something much more - the idea that young people have the ability to shape, to change their future. This idea is currently being put into practice by young people around the world in the student and Occupy movements, which despite their illusions in democracy, are a direct response to all those who want to dismiss and marginalise the young. If these movements are able to reach out to the working class they will be able to begin pose a real alternative to capitalism: communism. If that happens these just could be the best years of your life… .  

Kino 9/12/11

After the trade union marches and strikes against the Coalition’s pension cuts the unions went straight back into the serious business of working with government officials in order to implement the latest austerity measures. November 30 was deliberately chosen by the unions for a strike in order to cause the minimum disruption – the airlines for example privately welcomed the date. “Now, after the strike” says Dave Prentis, General Secretary of Unison, “we want to reach a negotiated settlement”. So individually, behind the scenes, relying on their usual tactics of division and secret talks, the unions are again working with the government against the interests of the working class.

Mark Serwotka’s Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) gives us a good idea of what to expect. Serwotka presents his union as a militant defender of working class interests but the opposite is the truth. In 2006, the PCS “negotiated” with the then Labour Government, the raising of the retirement age of its members from 60 to 65 and greatly reduced payments by agreeing to go from a final salary scheme to a career average. This was put in place in 2007.

Further, the PCS has proposed to increase its own workers’ pension payments by 10% in 3 consecutive yearly hikes of three-and-a-third per cent. The PCS workers belong to a branch of the GMB union and seeing that the proposals have been in the hands of the president of “GMB@PCS” branch since last July, a stitch up of the workers by both unions is on the cards. More than this, while the PCS has gone to the High Court (where the union’s lawyers get even richer) to challenge the government’s move to change pension entitlements based on the higher Retail Price Index (RPI) to the lower Consumer Price Index (CPI), the union has imposed exactly this change on its own workers’ pension scheme, thus further cutting the value of their pension payments (employees benefits.co.uk)

This hypocrisy is one more indication of the double language of the unions who not only do not defend our interests but are part of the attack upon them.  

Baboon 8/12/11

On November 9, 10,000 students marched in central London, spurred on by the mounting cost of education and a will to fight the government’s programme of austerity. Recalling last year’s student demonstrations, which often posed severe problems for the police, and aware that the students are a somewhat volatile force, who are not really ‘disciplined’ by legal minded union officials, the state took no chances. The demonstration was therefore treated not to the kettle, but to the ‘sock’, a kind of mobile kettle, where marchers were herded down a prescribed route with seriously equipped police contingents on either side, blocking the possibility of demonstrators breaking off to right or left, or others joining the march along the way. 

Meanwhile, several hundred electricians had been holding the second of two demonstrations against pay cuts at nearby building sites. Although the unions had organised a lobby of parliament, a large group of electricians and supporters took the position of ‘sod that, we want to join the students’, and started to move towards the student march. They were very quickly met by a police line, and those who didn’t manage to evade it were kettled. Attempts by those who had escaped to get help from the students were blocked as another police line delayed the student march for some time.

In short: a massive police presence, very well organised, overseen by helicopters, and capable of acting swiftly to prevent anyone from stepping out of line.

On November 30, in central London, 50,000 public sector workers marched in protest against attacks on their pensions, part of one of the biggest national strikes for many decades. This time, the police operation was of the softly softly kind, very low key, no sign of socks or kettles: you could leave the march or join it when and where you wanted. It gathered in good order, marched along in cheerful humour, and dispersed when the speeches at the rallying point were over, if not well before.

Why was this? Could it have anything to do with the fact that, unlike the students and the electricians, the public sector strike had been controlled from start to finish by the unions, who are much more effective than a confrontational police force in containing workers with their march stewards, their well-rehearsed rallies and their widely accepted role as the official representatives of the working class?

Not that the police didn’t show their other side that day. In Dalston, when a group of young people who had been roaming around showing solidarity with pickets staged a short road block outside the CLR James library, they were immediately set upon by dog-wielding heavies and caught up in a kettle, followed by numerous arrests, terrifying a number of small children in the process. At the end of the march, a group of activists who had carried out a banner drop in Piccadilly were given similar treatment.

So let that be a lesson to you: if you start acting unofficially, if you question the trade unions’ History-given right to lead, you will face the full force of the Law. Put another way: unions and police are two arms of the same state. 

Amos 10/12/11  

Electricians have been protesting against the proposed 35% pay cut for 4 months. Vociferous early morning protests in London, Manchester, the North East, Glasgow and elsewhere, blockading or occupying building sites run by the 7 firms trying to impose a change in pay and conditions, a demonstration in London on 9th November coinciding with the students and wildcats and blockades of sites on 7th December.

In spite of this militancy, in spite of the fact that sparks were being asked to sign their new contracts by early December or lose their jobs (now put back to January), the Unite union did not ballot for strike action until November, and then only for its members working for Balfour Beatty, seen as the employers’ ringleader, and only for a limited strike. Even with an 81% majority that vote was challenged and Unite are repeating the ballot, preventing an official strike on 7th December – but not the unofficial strikes and blockades at Grangemouth, Immingham, Cardiff, Manchester, London and many other places. In places workers refused to cross the pickets lines and despite heavy police presence many building sites were shut down.

The struggle so far

The strikes and protests which have gone on since 8 employers announced they wanted to leave the Joint Industry Board and impose lower pay and worse conditions through BESNA have been characterised by:

- repeated wildcat strikes;

- meetings outside building sites to ensure all sparks are aware of the threatened pay cut and to try and involve them in the struggle, and sometimes brief occupations or blockades. These meetings have become a focus for sparks to show their determination to struggle, and for others to show their solidarity. An open mic has allowed a real discussion;

- a determined search for solidarity within the construction industry and beyond it. There has been a recognition that they need to get the solidarity of workers in other trades, and that they would be next if the pay cut is imposed on the electricians. Workers inside and outside the union would need to be involved, although this is seen in terms of getting them to join the union. And there has been a significant effort to seek solidarity of workers in other industries expressed in the strikes and demonstrations on 9th November to coincide with the student protest and the proposal to do the same on 30th alongside the public sector workers. At Farringdon on 16th November, although the numbers outside were smaller, some workers – including a group of Polish workers – refused to go in;

- supporters from Occupy London have been welcomed, and several hundred electricians marched to St Paul’s to show solidarity with their protest.

The action on the 9th November showed all these tendencies, starting with a rank and file protest outside the Pinnacle near Liverpool Street after blocking the road it moved off to visit several other construction sites run by BESNA companies and held open mic sessions before joining the main Unite demonstration at the Shard. Several hundred sparks decided not to go to the union lobby of parliament but to join the students. They were immediately kettled and despite their best efforts most were contained and searched – apart from a few who escaped through a coffee shop. The ruling class really do want to keep us apart!

On December 7, as well as calling on sparks to come out the picket at Balfour Beatty at St Cath’s Birkenhead sought out NHS Estates workers to explain why they were picketing – and got a sympathetic hearing.

There is a media blackout of all this. Nothing on the pay cut. Nothing on the protests, blockades and occupations. Virtually nothing on the demonstration on 9th November, despite the notion that lobbying parliament would attract the media. It is typical of the media to keep quiet about a struggle that the ruling class think is a bad example to other workers. And what the sparks have done so far is certainly an inspiration.

No information passed through union channels either, despite platonic assurances of support from other unions – I tried asking pickets outside Great Ormond Street Hospital on 30 November and they knew nothing of the attack on the sparks, nothing of their struggle. We shouldn’t be surprised.

Difficulties developing the struggle

Jobs are scarce, living standards are falling as inflation eats away at real wages, and all these attacks are presented as painful but necessary by politicians and media. This is true for the whole working class, but the difficulties faced in construction are much more acute. Thousands of militant workers have been blacklisted, and many of them remain unemployed, and this is a real intimidation against the whole workforce. Then there is the difficulty getting regular work, many are forced to subcontract (subbies) or work through an agency with appalling effects on their pay and conditions, and the potential for divisions among workers along these lines. Hardly surprising that many workers hesitate: “Most of the lads are still not up for the unofficial action, a few boys are going down to London though … The lads are coming round to the idea of the official strike. They are looking out for their jobs which is understandable” (post on ElectriciansForum.co.uk).

This situation shows that the electricians’ need to fight far more than the 7 or 8 BESNA firms that want to impose a 35% pay cut next year. The agencies already pay less, as do a large number of firms which are not part of the JIB, and those that are only fulfil its rules when it suits them: “The JIB/SJIB set up is NOT working as it should, pure and simple!!!” (post on the same forum).

Unite – are we really the union?

With the original deadline for workers to sign the new agreement looming and no official strike called sparks are getting extremely frustrated with the union. “1 day out wont in my opinion cause much harm, these firms will have plenty of notice of when & how many… IT MAY ALREADY BE TOO LATE”, “people are reluctant to join a union that is run by ‘nodders’ that will sell its members down the river for personal gain”, “I do not trust Unite one single bit to negotiate a deal that satisfies us. I have seen too many of their sweetheart deals in various industries. It is imperative that Rank and File members are party to any negotiations that take place”. The union has been described as “contemptible” for its inaction and absence from the protests. On the other hand “the union is far from perfect but it is all we have”, there can be no Rank and File without the union and no union without the Rank and File.

So why do the unions keep behaving like this? One of Unite’s greatest defenders on the forum tells us “ffs stop the union bashing, they will be the ones around the table negotiating the deals..we all play our own part in one way or another but its Unite who will do the main stuff” and “Unite are there to make deals with union lads whose companies have a relationship with Unite, they are there for their members, Unite is not there to represent a whole industry or an agency”. This is precisely the problem. Unions are there to negotiate with the bosses – workers have a walk on part, in the ballot or on militant demonstrations, but the main union business takes place behind their backs. And they are limited to making deals with unionised companies. The unions limit our struggle, divide it by job, by membership of this or that union, by this or that employer. But sparks are facing a 35% pay cut across the whole industry, on workers in or out of a union. And it is only one part of the attacks on the whole working class which needs to unite across all the divisions of trade or profession, of employer, regardless of membership of any particular union or none.

Rank and File Group

The struggle so far has been organised by the Unite Construction Rank And File Group, headed by a committee elected at a meeting in Conway Hall, London, in August and which has held meetings up and down the country. They took the view that “It is now widely accepted that we can’t and won’t wait for the ballot, though we will all be glad when it comes. But until then we must step up the campaign to one of even more unofficial action, walkouts on sites with solidarity action from others” (https://siteworker.wordpress.com [224]). In September 1500 electricians walked out of Lindsey oil refinery to join a demonstration of electricians. Like the national shop stewards committee the Rank and File Group takes a very militant stance – at times at arm’s length from the union and at times arm in arm. “We are working for the same goals both the Rank & File Committee and the official unions. We are working for the same objective. Don’t allow people to divide us” said Len McCluskey outside the Shard on 9 November, despite the fact that Unite leaders have been conspicuous by their absence from most of the protests, apart from a few token showings, such as at Blackfriars in October.

The efforts of the Rank and File Group show the sparks’ militancy, the determination of a minority to resist this attack. It also shows their attachment to the union and its methods of struggle, including the view that the aim of the struggle is negotiation between BESNA and Unite, and that convincing workers to struggle means recruiting them into the union. The dynamic of the struggle, as we have seen, goes far beyond trade union methods and even in a completely different direction with the attempts to link up with workers in other trades whether in a union or not and with other struggles, rather than confining the struggle to Unite members and their employers. The sparks’ total rejection of the cut in pay and apprenticeships contrasts with Unite’s assurance that they will discuss modernisation.

General assemblies to run the struggle, mass meetings open to all workers regardless of union membership, are the way for workers to take the struggle into their own hands, and to spread it to other workers.  

Alex 9/12/11

The global economy seems to be on the brink of the abyss. The threat of a major depression, worse than that of 1929, looms ever larger. Banks, businesses, municipalities, regions and even states are staring bankruptcy in the face. And one thing the media don’t talk about any more is what they call the “debt crisis”.

When capitalism comes up against the wall of debt

The chart below shows the change in global debt from 1960 to present day. (This refers to total world debt, namely the debts of households, businesses and the States of all countries). This debt is expressed as a percentage of world GDP.

Graph 1

According to this chart, in 1960 the debt was equal to the world GDP (i.e. 100%). In 2008, it was 2.5 times greater (250%). In other words, a full repayment of the debts built up today would swallow up all the wealth produced in two and a half years by the global economy.

This change is dramatic in the so-called “developed countries” as shown in the following graph which represents the public debt of the United States.

Graph 2

In recent years, the accumulation of public debt is such that the curve on the previous graph, showing its change, is now vertical! This is what economists call the “wall of debt.” And it is this wall that capitalism has just crashed into.

Debt, a product of capitalism’s decline

It was easy to see that the world economy was going to hit this wall eventually; it was inevitable. So why have all the governments of the world, whether left or right, extreme left or extreme right, supposedly “liberal” or “statist”, only extended credit facilities, run bigger deficits, actively favoured increasing the debts of states, firms and households for over half a century? The answer is simple: they had no choice. If they had not done so, the terrible recession we are entering now would have begun in the 1960s. In truth, capitalism has been living, or rather surviving, on credit for decades. To understand the origin of this phenomenon we must penetrate what Marx called “the great secret of modern society: the production of surplus value”. For this we must make a small theoretical detour.

Capitalism has always carried within it a kind of congenital disease: it produces a toxin in abundance that its organism cannot eliminate: overproduction. It produces more commodities than the market can absorb. Why? Let’s take a simple example: a worker working on an assembly line or behind a computer and is paid £800 at the end of the month. In fact, he did not produce the equivalent of the £800, which he receives, but the value of £1600. He carried out unpaid work or, in other words, produced surplus value. What does the capitalist do with the £800 he has stolen from the worker (assuming he has managed to sell all the commodities)? He has allocated a part to personal consumption, say £150. The remaining £650, he reinvests in the capital of the company, most often in buying more modern machines, etc.. But why does the capitalist behave in this way? Because he is economically forced to do so. Capitalism is a competitive system and he must sell his products more cheaply than his neighbour who makes the same type of products. As a result, the employer must not only reduce his production costs, that is to say wages, but also increase the worker’s unpaid labour to re-invest primarily in more efficient machinery to increase productivity. If he does not, he cannot modernise, and, sooner or later his competitor, who in turn will do it, and will sell more cheaply, will conquer the market. The capitalist system is affected by a contradictory phenomenon: it does not pay workers the equivalent of what they have actually produced as work, and by forcing employers to give up consuming a large share of the profit thus extorted, the system produces more value than it can deliver. Neither the workers, nor the capitalists and workers combined can therefore absorb all the commodities produced. Therefore capitalism must sell the surplus commodities outside the sphere of its production to markets not yet conquered by capitalist relations of production, the so-called extra-capitalist markets. If this doesn’t succeed, there is a crisis of overproduction.

This is a summary in a few lines of some of the conclusions arrived at in the work of Karl Marx in Capital and Rosa Luxemburg in The Accumulation of Capital. To be even more succinct, here is a short summary of the theory of overproduction:

• Capital exploits its workers (i.e. their wages are less significant than the real value they create through their work).
• Capital can thus sell its commodities at a profit, at a price which, greater than the wage of the worker and the surplus value, will also include the depreciation of means of production. But the question is: to whom?
• Obviously, the workers buy commodities ... using their entire wages. That still leaves a lot for sale. Its value is equivalent to that of the unpaid labour. It alone has the magic power to generate a profit for capital.
• The capitalists also consume ... and they are also generally not too unhappy about doing so. But they cannot alone buy all the commodities bearing surplus value. Neither would it make any sense. Capital cannot buy its own commodities for profit from itself; it would be like taking money from its left pocket and putting it in its right pocket. No one is any better off that way, as the poor will testify.

* To accumulate and develop, capital must find buyers other than workers and capitalists. In other words, it is imperative to find markets outside its system, otherwise it is left with unsalable commodities on its hands that clog up the capitalist market; this is then the “crisis of overproduction”!

This “internal contradiction” (the natural tendency to overproduce and the necessity to constantly seek out external markets) is one of the roots of the incredible driving force of the system in the early stages of its existence. Since its birth in the 16th century, capitalism had to establish commercial links with all economic spheres that surrounded it: the old ruling classes, the farmers and artisans throughout the world. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the major capitalist powers were engaged in a race to conquer the world. They gradually divided the planet into colonies and created real empires. Occasionally, they found themselves coveting the same territory. The less powerful had to retreat and go and find another territory where they could force people to buy their commodities. Thus the outmoded economies were gradually transformed and integrated into capitalism. Not only the economies of the colonies become less and less capable of providing markets for commodities from Europe and the United States but they, in turn, generate the same overproduction.

This dynamic of capital in the 18th and 19th centuries, this alternation of crises of overproduction and long periods of prosperity and expansion and the inexorable progression of capitalism towards its decline, was described masterfully by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto:
 “In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity, the epidemic of overproduction. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce.”

At this time, because capitalism was still expanding and could still conquer new territories, each crisis led subsequently to a new period of prosperity. “The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establishes connections everywhere ... The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensively obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what is calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image ...”(ibid)

But already at that time, Marx and Engels saw in these periodic crises something more than an endless cycle that always gave way to prosperity. They saw the expression of profound contradictions that were undermining capitalism. By “the conquest of new markets”, the bourgeoisie is “paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means by which crises are prevented.”(ibid) Or: “as the mass of products and consequently the need for extended markets, grows, the world market becomes more and more contracted; fewer and fewer new markets remain available for exploitation, since every preceding crisis has subjected to world trade a market hitherto unconquered or only superficially exploited” (Wage Labour and Capital)

But our planet is a small round ball. By the early 20th century, all lands were conquered and the great historic nations of capitalism had divided up the globe. From now on, there is no question of making new discoveries but only seizing the areas dominated by competing nations by armed force. There is no longer a race in Africa, Asia or America, but only a ruthless war to defend their areas of influence and capturing, by military force, those of their imperialist rivals. It is a genuine issue of survival for capitalist nations. So it’s not by chance that Germany, having only very few colonies and being dependent on the goodwill of the British Empire to trade in its lands (a dependency unacceptable for a national bourgeoisie with global ambitions), started the First World War in 1914. Germany appeared to be the most aggressive because of the necessity, made explicit later on by Hitler in the march towards World War II, to “Export or die”. From this point, capitalism, after four centuries of expansion, became a decadent system. The horror of two world wars and the Great Depression of the 1930s would be dramatic and irrefutable proof of this. Yet even after exhausting the extra-capitalist markets that still existed in the 1950s, capitalism had still not fallen into a mortal crisis of overproduction. After more than one hundred years of a slow death, this system is still standing: staggering, ailing, but still standing. How does it survive? Why is this organism not yet totally paralysed by the toxin of overproduction? This is where the resort to debt comes into play. The world economy has managed to avoid a shattering collapse by using more and more massive amounts of debt. It has thus created an artificial market. The last forty years can be summed up as a series of recessions and recoveries financed by doses of credit. And it’s not only there to support the consumption of households through state spending ... No, nation states are also indebted to artificially maintain the competitiveness of their economies with other nations (by directly funding infra-structural investment, by lending to banks at rates as low as possible so they in turn can lend to businesses and households...). The gates of credit having been opened wide, money flowed freely and, little by little, all sectors of the economy ended up in a classic situation of over-indebtedness: every day more and more new debt had to be issued... to repay yesterday’s debts. This dynamic led inevitably to an impasse. Global capitalism is rooted in this impasse, face to face with the “wall of debt.”

The ‘debt crisis’ is to capitalism what an overdose of morphine is to the dying

By analogy, debt is to capitalism what morphine is to a fatal illness. By resorting to it, the crisis is temporarily overcome, the sufferer is calmed and soothed. But bit by bit, dependency on daily doses increases. The product, initially a saviour, starts to becomes harmful ... up until the overdose!
World debt is a symptom of the historical decline of capitalism. The world economy has survived on life supporting credit since the 1960s, but now the debts are all over the body, they saturate the least organ, the least cell of the system. More and more banks, businesses, municipalities, and states are and will become insolvent, unable to make repayments on their loans.
Summer of 2007 opened a new chapter in the history of the capitalist decadence that began in 1914 with the First World War. The ability of the bourgeoisie to slow the development of the crisis by resorting to more and more massive credit has ended. Now, the tremors are going to follow one after the other without any respite in between and no real recovery. The bourgeoisie will not find a real and lasting solution to this crisis, not because it will suddenly become incompetent but because it is a problem that has no solution. The crisis of capitalism cannot be solved by capitalism. For, as we have just tried to show, the problem is capitalism, the capitalist system as a whole. And today this system is bankrupt.

Pawel 26/11/11

In the last few months, the world economy has been going through a disaster which the ruling class has found it harder and harder to conceal. The various international summits aimed at ‘saving the world’, from G20s to endless Franco-German meetings, have only revealed that the bourgeoisie is powerless to revive its system. Capitalism has reached a dead-end. And this total lack of any solution or prospects is beginning to stir up tensions between nations, as we can see in the current threats to the unity of the Eurozone and even to the European Union itself, and within each country, between the various bourgeois cliques who make up the national political panel. Serious political crises have already broken out:

- in Portugal: on 23 March, the Portuguese prime minister, José Socrates, resigned following the refusal of the opposition to vote for a fourth austerity plan aimed at avoiding a new plea for financial aid from the EU and the IMF;

- in Spain: in April, prime minister José Luis Zapatero had to announce in advance that he would not be standing in 2012, in order to get his austerity plan adopted; but his plan with its very sharp attacks on pensions was paid for by a heavy defeat for his party, the PSOE, at the legislative elections of 20 November, resulting in a new right wing government led by Mariano Rajoy;

- in Slovakia, the prime minister Iveta Radicova was forced at the beginning October to scuttle her government in order to get the green light from parliament to a salvage plan for Greece;

- in Greece: after the surprise announcement on 1 November, just after the European summit of 26 October, of a planned referendum, which caused a huge storm among the other European powers, Georges Papandreou had to quickly give up the idea under intense international pressure and, pushed into a minority in his own PASOK party, he resigned on 9 November and handed over to the Papadopoulos team;

- in Italy: because he was seen as incapable of pushing through the drastic measures that were needed, the highly controversial president Silvio Berlusconi had to give up office on November 13, when neither mass protest in the street nor endless scandals had managed to make him go before that;

- In the USA: the American bourgeoisie has been torn over the question of raising the debt ceiling. This summer, a very short-term deal was made at the last minute. And the same question is threatening to cause trouble in a few weeks or months. Similarly, Obama’s inability to take real decisions, divisions within the Democratic Party, the vehemence of the Republican Party, the rise of the obscurantist Tea Party… show to what extent the economic crisis is undermining the cohesion of the world’s most powerful bourgeoisie.

What are the causes of these divisions?

These difficulties have three interlinked roots:

1.       The economic crisis is sharpening the appetites of each national bourgeoisie and each clique. To use an image, the cake to be shared is getting smaller and smaller and the battle to grab a slice is getting more and more savage. For example, in France, the settling of scores between different parties and sometimes within the same party, through moral and financial scandals, revelations about corruption and sensational trials, are clear expressions of this ruthless competition for power and the advantages that go with it. In the same way, ‘differences of opinion’ (in other words, once the diplomatic language is decoded, ‘full-on clashes between irreconcilable positions’) which come out at the big summits are the fruit of the deadly struggle over a world market in crisis.

2.       The bourgeoisie has no real solution to the catastrophe facing the world economy. Each faction, whether of the right or the left, can only put forward vain and unrealistic proposals. Each faction clearly sees the uselessness of what their rivals are proposing, but can’t see the ineffectiveness of their own. Each faction knows that the policy of the other leads to a dead-end. This is what explains the blockage over the decision to raise the debt ceiling in the USA: the Democrats know that the Republicans’ policies will lead the country to ruin… and vice versa.

This is why the appeals launched all over the world, from Greece to Italy, from Hungary to the USA, for ‘national unity’ and a sense of responsibility from all parties are all desperate and delusional. In reality, in a ship that’s threatening to go under, ‘save what you can’ predominates in the ruling class. Each one is trying to save his own skin at the expense of the rest.

3.       The anger of the exploited with all these austerity plans is growing all the time and the parties in power are more and more discredited. The oppositions, whether of right or left, have no other policy to put forward and often alternate with each other after each election. And when the scheduled elections are too far away, they are being artificially precipitated by the resignation of presidents or prime ministers. This is exactly what happened several times in Europe recently. In Greece, if a referendum was proposed, it was because Papandreou and his acolytes were ejected from the national parade of 28 October by an angry crowd!

In Greece, or in Italy with the Mario Monti government, the discrediting of politicians has reached the point where the new teams in power have had to be presented as ‘technocrats’, even if these new representatives of power are just as much politicians as their predecessors (they had already occupied important posts in the previous government). This gives an indication of the level of discredit towards the ‘political class’ as a whole. For the mass of the population, for the exploited, nowhere has there been any real support for the new governments but simply a rejection of the old ones. This is confirmed by the record rate of abstention in Spain, which went from 26% to 53% of the voting population. In France, 47% of electors don’t intend to choose between the two favourites at the second round of the presidential election in May 2012, arguing that they are neither for Sarkozy nor Hollande.    

Against right and left – the class struggle!

It is flagrantly clear that changing governments doesn’t change anything about the attacks on our living conditions, that all the divisions within the camp of the bourgeoisie don’t alter its unanimity when it comes to pushing through drastic austerity plans against the exploited. The proof if this that, not long ago, the period before, during and after elections used to be marked by a relative social calm. Today, there is no such truce. In Greece, there was already a new general strike and massive demonstrations on 1st December. In Portugal on 24th November we saw the biggest country-wide mobilisation since 1975, with numerous sectors (schools, post offices, banks and hospital services) closed, while in Lisbon the metro was paralysed and the main airports widely disrupted, as was the highways department. In Britain on 30 November there was the most widely followed strike in the public sector since January 1979 (around two million people). In Belgium, on 2 December, the unions called a 24 hour strike, which was again broadly followed, against the austerity measures announced by the future Di Rupo government, formed with great difficulty after 540 days in which the country was officially ‘without a government’. And the political crisis is not about to end because none of the sources of tension between the various bourgeois parties have gone away. In Italy, on 5 December, as soon as the draconian austerity plan was announced, the moderate UIL and CISL unions were obliged to call a symbolic two-hour strike on 12 December.

Only this path – the path of struggle in the street, of class against class – can lead to an effective resistance against the attacks on our living standards. What’s more, even though in France we see an arrogant right wing, symbolised by the fatuous Sarkozy, holding the reins of government, the national bourgeoisie is to some extent paralysed by the danger of class struggle. Faced with a downgrading of its AAA economic status, which could make it lose its leadership position in Europe alongside Germany, this government has only been able to introduce an austerity plan which is on a far lower level than those of other states. A significant example of this is the attack on sick pay, which is its nastiest component: the government had to manoeuvre to ensure it didn’t appear to be making too frontal an attack. Having announced that in case of absence through sickness all workers would no longer receive wages for the first day off sick, Sarkozy then had to look as though he was being less hard on the private sector (where the rule was already no pay for the first three days off work) and only maintained the measure for the public sector (who previously would not be penalised for the first day off). This shows that the French bourgeoisie, more than any other, does not dare to hit out too brutally, because of its fear of major proletarian mobilisations in a country which has historically been the detonator of social explosions in Europe, in 1789, 1848, 1871 and 1968. And the movement of ‘precarious’ youth in 2006 against the CPE, when the French government had to back down, was also a very sharp reminder of this.

The whole of this situation is inaugurating an era of growing instability in which governments can only become more and more discredited because of the attacks they will be forced to carry out. And in these political crises, behind the flimsy and short-lived agreements they may come to, the principle of ‘every man for himself’, tensions and rivalries between different factions and between competing countries can only accentuate.

We on the other hand, proletarians at work or unemployed, in retirement or in education, have to defend the same interests against the same attacks. Unlike our class enemy which is torn apart by the crisis, this situation is pushing us to respond in a more and more massive and united manner! 

WP 8/12/11               

Cameron’s veto of changes to the European Union treaty to enforce fiscal stringency and shore up the Euro has left Britain isolated, alone among the 27 member states without a seat at the table discussing the financial future of the Eurozone. For media commentators, all representing the ruling class, it has posed the question whether this has “helped protect Britain’s economic interests” against “Eurozone integration spilling over” into other areas; whether it is to the benefit of the UK financial sector, especially the City of London, and manufacturing industry, as chancellor George Osborne thinks . Or has it undermined those interests: “As for protecting the interests of the City of London … that will scarcely be achieved with Britain locked out of negotiations on the future shape of European financial regulation” (Philip Stephens commenting on https://www.ft.com [225])? Others think it a cynical ploy to sacrifice the national interest to preserve the coalition with the LibDems, which would be undermined by signing up to a treaty change requiring a referendum, and to suck up to the Eurosceptics.

Whatever the truth of the situation, the national interest is not our interest. Whether the City of London has been protected or not the bourgeoisie will demand that the working class pay for the crisis by imposing austerity measures, cutting and delaying pensions, though hundreds of thousands of job losses in both the public and private sectors, through pay cuts as faced by the electricians… Nevertheless we do need to follow what is going on, not so that we can take sides but so that we can understand the decline in the capitalist economy, so that we can be prepared for the next round of attacks, so that we do not fall for all their lies.

In relation to the Eurozone it is clear that Britain finds itself in an impossible situation. On the one hand, it relies on the health of the Eurozone for much of its trade, and on the other hand it wants to safeguard its huge financial sector from interference, and benefit from the freedom of having its own currency, to be in the EU at the same times as maintaining its fiscal sovereignty. And as a declining power it is limited in its ability to defend its interests, even when ‘punching above its weight’. As these events have only just happened we will return to this question in a future online article. 

Alex 10/12/11

Growing poverty, the brutal blows of the economic crisis, the yearning for freedom from a regime of terror, indignation about corruption, are continuing to fuel revolt among the populations of the Middle East, especially in Egypt[1].

After the huge mobilisations last January and February, since 18 November we have again seen the occupation of Tahrir Square and big new demonstrations. This time, the target of the anger has mainly been the army and its leaders. These events prove, contrary to what we are told by the bourgeoisie and its media, that there was no ‘revolution’ at the beginning of 2011 but a massive movement of protest. In the face of this movement, the bourgeoisie was able to change the country’s masters: the army has been acting exactly like Mubarak and nothing has changed in the conditions of exploitation and repression for the vast majority of the population. 

The bourgeoisie uses lies and repression against thedemonstrations

All the main Egyptian cities have again seen this general discontent with living conditions and with the omnipresence of the army in the maintenance of order. The climate of protest has been as hot in Alexandria and Port-Said in the north as in Cairo; there have been important confrontations in the centre of the county, in Suez and Qena, and in the south, in Assiut and Aswan, and in the west in Marsa Matrouh. The repression has been ruthless: 42 deaths and around 200 wounded, even according to the official figures. The army does not hesitate to hurl its anti-riot squads against the crowds, using highly toxic forms of tear gas. Some people have died from breathing it in. Some of the dirty work of repression has been sub-contracted. Specialist snipers have been using live rounds with impunity. A large number of young demonstrators have been cut down by these mercenaries. The police, to make up for the fact that they only have rubber bullets at their disposal, have been systematically firing at people’s faces. There is a shocking video going the rounds and which has provoked a great deal of anger among demonstrators; in it you can hear a cop shouting “take out their eyes!”, congratulating a colleague “You got him in the eye, well done my friend!” (L’espress.fr). And many demonstrators have indeed lost an eye. On top of this we have to add arrests and torture. Often the troops are accompanied by “militia”, the “baltaguis”, who are used in an underhand way by the regime to sow disorder. Armed with iron bars and wooden clubs their tactic is usually to isolate demonstrators and beat them up savagely. Last winter they were the ones who burned tents in Tahrir Square and played a hand in numerous arrests (LeMonde.fr).

Again, contrary to what the media would have us believe, women, who are today playing a big part in the demonstrations, are often sexually assaulted by the security forces and are for example frequently subjected to horrible humiliations like ‘virginity tests’. In general they are treated with respect by the demonstrators, although assaults on some western journalists (like the one against Caroline Sinz, a journalist from France 3 in which young ‘civilians’ were implicated) have been widely publicised. However, “the clashes in Tahrir should not make us forget that, on the Square, a new relationship between men and women is being established. The simple fact that the two sexes can sleep in close proximity in the open air is a real novelty. And the women have seized hold of this new freedom. They have become an integral part of the struggle” (Lepoint.fr). 

We are being led insidiously to think that the occupants of Tahrir are hooligans because they “don’t care about the elections” and so are endangering the “transition to democracy”. This from the same media which, having supported Mubarak and his clique for so long, then welcomed the “liberating” military regime, taking full advantage of the population’s illusions in the army.

The key role of the army for the Egyptian bourgeoisie

Even if the army is being strongly discredited today, the main target of popular anger is the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and its leader Hussein Tantawi. The latter, minister of defence for ten years under Mubarak, and seen as a clone of the dictator, has been told by huge crowds: “leave”. But the army, Mubarak’s historic base, is a solid bulwark and continues to hold onto the reins of the state. It never stops manoeuvering to ensure its position with the backing of all the big powers, especially the USA, since Egypt is a vital piece in the latter’s strategy for controlling the Middle East, a factor of essential stability in its imperialist policies in the region, above all with regard to the Israel-Palestine conflict. By claiming that the “the army has gone back to the barracks”, the bourgeoisie has for the moment managed to hide the most essential thing. Not without reason, the daily Al Akhbar warned that “the most dangerous thing that could happen is the deterioration of the relationship between the army and the people”. In effect, the army has not only had a major political role since the arrival in power of Nasser in 1954, forming an indispensable pillar to the regime; it also has a key economic role, directly running a number of big enterprises. Since the defeat in the Six Day War against Israel in 1967, and above all since the Camp David Accords in 1979, when tens of thousands of soldiers were demobilised, the bourgeoisie has been encouraging large parts of the army to turn themselves into entrepreneurs, out of fear that the demobilisation would mean a heavy extra burden on the labour market, which already suffered from massive endemic unemployment: “It began with the production of material for its own needs: arms, accessories and clothing, then, in time, it launched itself into different civil industries and invested in agricultural enterprises, which were exempt from taxes” (Libération, 28.11.2011), investing 30% of production and oiling all the wheels of Egyptian capital. Thus, “the SCAF can be seen as the administrative council of an industrial group composed of firms held by the (military) institution and managed by retired generals. The latter are also ultra-present in the upper echelons of the administration: 21 of the 29 governorships of the country are led by former army and security forces officers”, according to Ibrahim al-Sahari, a representative of the Cairo Centre for Socialist Studies, who adds: “we can understand the anxiety of the army faced with the social troubles and insecurity which have developed in recent months. There is a fear of the contagion of strikes in its enterprises, where its employees are deprived of all social and trade union rights, and where any protest is seen as form of treason” (cited by Libération, 28.11). There is good reason for the iron fist with which it rules the country.

Courage and determination, but the limits cannot be breached in Egypt

The continuation of the repression and the protests of the “committees of families of the wounded” were the focus of the anger against the army, but the motivation was not simply to call for the military to give up power, for more democracy and elections. The worsening economic situation and the black hole of poverty are also pushing the demonstrators onto the streets. In conditions of mass unemployment it is becoming increasingly difficult for people just to feed their families. And it is precisely this social dimension which the media are trying to hide. We can only salute the courage and determination of the demonstrators, who have been standing barehanded against state violence. Their only ammunition is paving stones and rubble, against cops armed to the teeth. The demonstrators have shown a great will to organise themselves for the needs of the struggle. They are obliged to organise and they have shown considerable ingenuity in the face of the repression. Makeshift hospitals have been set up all over the squares, with human chains serving as ambulances. Scooters are used to take the wounded to safety. But the situation is not the same at the time of the fall of Mubarak, when the proletariat played a decisive role, when the rapid extension of massive strikes and the rejection of the official trade unions were largely responsible for the military chiefs, under the pressure of the US, deciding to dump Mubarak. The situation for the working class is very different now. Since April, one of the first measures taken by the army was to toughen laws “against strike movements liable to disturb production in any group or sector, so undermining the national economy” , and to call for the unions to get a stronger grip. This law included punishments of a year in prison and fines of up to 80,000 dollars (in a country where the minimum wage is 50 euros!) for strikers or anyone inciting strikes.

While the movement today has been rejecting the power of the army, it is still weakened by many illusions. First and foremost, because it has been calling for a “civil democratic” government. It’s true that the Muslim Brotherhood and the salafists, who see themselves on the verge of forming such a “civil government” (which will just be a facade because real power will remain in the hands of the army) have distanced themselves from the protest movement and have refrained from calling for demonstrations, preferring to negotiate their political future with the military. Nevertheless, the mirage of “free elections”, the first for 60 years, seems to be momentarily sapping the anger. However, even if they are real, these democratic illusions are not as strong as the bourgeoisie would like us to think: in Tunisia, where we were told that 86% voted in the elections, this was only out of the 50% who are entered on the electoral lists. It’s the same in Morocco where the rate of participation in the elections was 45% and in Egypt, where the figures are still very vague (62% are entered but there were only 17 million voters out of 40 million).

Today, leftists everywhere are shouting “Tahrir shows us the way!” as if it was just a question of copying this model of struggle everywhere, in Europe as well as America. In fact this is a trap for the workers. Not everything can be taken from these struggles. Their courage and determination, the now famous slogan “we are not afraid”, the will to gather en masse in the squares to live and struggle together... all this really is an invaluable source of inspiration and hope. But also, and perhaps above all, we have to be aware of the limits of this movement: the democratic, nationalist and religious illusions, the relative weakness of the workers... These obstacles are linked to the limited historical and revolutionary experience of the working class in this region of the world. The social movements in Egypt and Tunisia have given to the international struggle of the exploited the maximum of what they are capable of achieving for now. They are reaching their objective limits. It is now up to the most experienced sections of the proletariat, living in the countries at the heart of capitalism, and especially Europe, to take up the torch of struggle against this inhuman system. The mobilisation of the indignados in Spain is part of this indispensable international dynamic. It began to open up new perspectives with its open and autonomous general assemblies, with its debates where there were often interventions that were clearly internationalist and which denounced the charade of bourgeois democracy. Only such a development of the struggle against poverty and the draconian austerity plans at the countries at the centre of capitalism can open up new perspectives for the exploited not only in Egypt but in the rest of the world. This is the precondition for offering humanity a future. 

WH 1/12/11 

The following article, by a supporter of the ICC, was written before the recent attack on the British Embassy in Iran. On 29 November student protesters broke into the embassy building causing damage to offices and vehicles. Dominick Chilcott, the British ambassador, in an interview with the BBC, accused the Iranian regime of being behind the ‘spontaneous’ attacks. In retaliation the UK expelled the Iranian embassy in London.

These events are another moment in the growing tensions in the Middle East between the west and Iran. Firstly around the issue of nuclear weapons and secondly over Syria.

The recent IAEA report into Iran’s nuclear programme said Iran is developing a nuclear military capability. In response the UK, Canada & the USA have introduced new sanctions. In recent days Iran claims that it has shot down a US drone attempting to gather military intelligence.

In Syria the article mentions the collaboration between the Assad regime and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in the massacre of the Syrian populace. They also had a hand in the sacking of the British embassy in the guise of their youth division, the Basij.

As well as inter-imperialist rivalries we should not forget internal rivalries within the national bourgeoisies themselves. This summer it became clear that there was a growing rift between Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Despite Ahmadinejad’s anti-Semitic rants and sabre rattling rhetoric he represents a faction of the Iranian bourgeoisie that wants to maintain some sort of relationship with the west. Khamenei has had some of Ahmadinejad’s close allies arrested and supporters within the government sacked. In response Ahmadinejad went on strike for 11 days refusing to carry out his duties. The recent events around the sacking of the British embassy are being seen by some media analysts as part of this feud. Khamenei and his conservative supporters are considered to be behind the attacks as a way of undermining Ahmadinejad’s more conciliatory policy. This in turn will undermine him in the eyes of the Iranian voters with the next elections coming in 2012. (see: uk.reuters.com/article/2011/12/02/uk-iran-britain-policy-idUKLNE7B101120111202)

With tensions between Iran and the west growing there is speculation about war. Are the workers in the Middle East and in the west ready to be mobilised to support another major war? Workers the world over are being forced to take the burden of the financial crisis on their shoulders and are beginning to fight back. War means more austerity, more violence against workers, more despair. Workers have no stake in these bloody imperialist massacres. The only way forward is the destruction of capitalism itself.

After eight months of protest, originally part of a regional and international movement against oppression, unemployment and misery, here involving Druze, Sunnis, Christians, Kurds, men, women and children, events in Syria have continued to take a darker turn with new, dangerous developments.

If, in defending their own interests and strategies, the USA, Britain and France are wary of a direct attack against Iran, then contributing to an assault on its closest ally, the Assad regime in Syria, is, in the rationale of inter-imperialist rivalries, the next best thing in pursuing their squeeze on the region and the Khamenei regime. The brutal security forces of Assad, backed with logistical support of “3-400 Revolutionary Guard Corps” from Iran (Guardian, 17.11.11), has massacred thousands of the populace and given rise to the lying, hypocritical ‘concern for civilians’ from the three main powers of the anti-Iranian front above. As in Libya, the US is ‘leading from behind’, this time having pushed the Arab League (splitting off Assad’s Algerian, Iraqi and Lebanese allies), of which Syria was a leading force, to suspend its membership and issue it with subsequent humiliating deadlines.

At the forefront of this phoney concern for life and limb is the murderous regime of Saudi Arabia, which a while ago sent a couple of thousand of its crack troops, in British-made APCs, to crush protest in Bahrain as well as to protect American and British interests and bases there. Underlying the hypocrisy, the confirmation of Syria’s suspension for its ‘bloodshed’ was made by the Arab League meeting in the Moroccan capital Rabat on November 16th, as that country’s security forces were attacking and repressing thousands of its own protesters. There are wider imperialist ramifications to the Arab League action in that its decisions have been condemned by Russia but supported by China.

It’s not only the Arab League that the USA and Britain are pushing forward from the corridors but the regional power of Turkey which was also involved in meetings in Rabat. After seemingly dissuading Turkey from setting up some sort of buffer zone or ‘no-fly zone’ on the Turkish/Syrian border, the US administration has now moved on with Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, saying last week “We very much welcome the strong stance that Turkey has taken...” The exiled leader of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood also told reporters last week that Turkish military action (to protect civilians of course) would be acceptable (Guardian, 18/11/11). The possibility of a buffer zone along the now heavily militarised Turkish/Syrian border would see the shadowy ‘Free Syrian Army’, largely based in Turkey (as well as Lebanon) and, at the moment, greatly outnumbered by the Syrian army, able to muster and move around with much heavier weaponry. Within this convergence of imperialist interests, this nest of snakes – containing inherent and further problems down the road – is the USA, Britain, France, the majority of the Arab League, Leftists, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi jihadists of Syria who have also taken a greater role in the anti-Assad opposition. Further regional destabilisation and potentially greater problems are evidenced in Turkish President Gul warning Syria that it would pay for stirring up trouble in Turkey’s Kurdish south-east and “Washington’s renewed willingness to turn a blind eye to Turkish military incursions against Kurdish guerrilla bases in northern Iraq” (Guardian, 18/11/11). All this instability, fed by all these powers and interests, make a military intervention by Turkey into Syrian territory all the more likely.

The ‘Free Syrian Army’ itself has been involved in sectarian murders and killings of civilians inside Syria and, operating from its safe havens outside the country, has been fighting and killing government forces and police, thus inviting retribution against the civilian population. The Syrian National Council, which appeared last month, has also called for military intervention against the Assad forces while another opposition force, the National Coordination Committee has denounced this position. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe has already met the opposition forces in Paris and, in an upgrading of relations British Foreign Secretary Hague met opposition forces in London on 21 November. It’s wasn’t made clear who these ‘opposition forces’ were and whether they included the Free Syrian Army, the Syrian National Council, the NCC, the Kurdish opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi jihadists. Further opposition ‘coalitions’ include Stalinists, eleven Kurdish organisations, tribal and clan structures plus a bewildering array of initials of conflicting interests. At any rate, Hague has called for a “united front” and has appointed an “ambassador-designate” to them.

Tehran, the ultimate target

For a while now, the US, Britain, Israel and Saudi Arabia have been ratcheting up the anti-Iran hysteria and this is what lies behind their support for the Syrian oppositions and their ‘concern for civilians’. On Iran’s eastern border are over a hundred thousand US troops in Afghanistan; to the north-east is Turkmenistan with its US military bases. In the south Bahrain with its American and British naval bases; also Qatar with its US Forward Command HQ and leading anti-Iran cheerleader, Saudi Arabia. Iran’s only breathing space now is around its western border with Iraq and even here US and British Special Forces will probably maintain their terrorist attacks inside Iran. Off the coast of Iran is a massive build up of US warships in the Persian Gulf and in the wider Gulf region the US will beef up its ‘assets’ in Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE that it has had to run down in Iraq. And recent revelations (Guardian, 3/11/11) showed that the UK was advancing contingency plans for linking up with US forces in a possible naval and airborne attack against targets in Iran. Less than a thousand miles away is nuclear-armed Israel, who was implicated in the Stuxnet virus attack which succeeded in shutting down around a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and the death of Iranian scientists including one leading nuclear expert, Major General Moghaddam, killed along with 16 others in a huge explosion at a Revolutionary Guards base near Tehran ten days ago. Back in 2007, Bush got the approval of Congress for a $400 million programme for supporting ‘ethnic’ groups in Iran, as well as intelligence and sabotage plans and the US strategy of squeezing Iran goes back much further than that.

Again, the hypocrisy of democracy is almost beyond belief: despite the rhetoric about disarmament, the British American Security Information Council says that the US will spend $700 billion on upgrading its nuclear weapons facilities over the next decade and “other countries, including China, India, Israel, France and Pakistan are expected to devote formidable sums on tactical and strategic missile systems” (Guardian, 31.10.11). The report goes on to say that “nuclear weapons are being assigned roles that go well beyond deterrence... war fighting roles in military planning”. In respect of Israel, the report says: “... the size of its nuclear-tipped cruise missile submarine fleet is being increased and the country seems to be on course, on the back of its satellite launch rocket programme, for future development of an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM)”. Britain, which was instrumental in providing Israel with nuclear weaponry, is not mentioned in this British-commissioned report.

Everyone knows that an attack on Iran would be crazy: even Mossad and Shin Bet, Israel’s external and internal security agencies. Using their usual channel of leaking against their politicians, the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Jarida, the two agencies have expressed their serious doubts and the recently retired boss of Mossad, Meir Dagan, called the prospect of an attack on Iran “the stupidest idea” he had ever heard. But stupid or irrational doesn’t make it unlikely – look at the wars in Iraq and the Afghan/Pakistan long-running monumental completely irrational nightmare. Syria is becoming another step in transforming the covert war against Iran into its overt expression. It has nothing to do with ‘protecting civilians’ but everything to do with advancing the increasingly irrational aims imposed by imperialism on a decayed economic system.  

Baboon 21/11/11