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 [21] 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

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