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

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

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

One historical example: the French Connection

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

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

All elements against the working class

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

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

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

 

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

 

Baboon 8/8/11 

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

This is why this protest has such tremendous potential. This is also the reason that we shouldn’t just watch for the immediate political fallout—I don’t think we will see the government fall any time soon—but for the long term consequences, the undercurrent, which is sure to arrive”. ‘The real importance of the tent protest [5]’

Playing down the significance of these events

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

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

But the biggest detractors of the movement are those on the extreme left. As one of the posters on libcom [6] put it: “I got in a big argument with one of the leading SWP people in my union branch, whose argument was that Israel did not have a working class. I asked her who drove the buses, built the roads, looked after the children, etc and she just dodged the question and ranted about Zionism and the occupation.”

The same thread also contained a link to a leftist blog [7] which put forward a more sophisticated version of this argument: “Certainly, every level of Israeli society, from trade unions to the education systems, the armed forces and the dominant political parties, are implicated in the apartheid system. That was true from the very inception, in the very germinal forms of the Israeli state built up in the British Mandate period. Israeli is a society of settlers, and this has enormous ramifications for the development of class consciousness. As long as it thrives on building colonial outposts, as long as people identify their interests with the expansion of settler-colonialism, then there is little prospect of the working class developing an independent revolutionary agency. Not only is it a settler-colonial society, it is also one supported with the material resources of US imperialism”.

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

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

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

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

At Levinsky Park in southern Tel Aviv on Monday 1 August, where the city’s second largest tent city has stood for nearly a week, over a hundred African migrants and refugees gathered for a discussion [8] on the ongoing quality-of-life protests taking place across Israel.

No reason to put up with austerity

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

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

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

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

Amos 7/8/11.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Internationalism, August 2011.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Turkey’s role

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

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

Baboon, 20.8.11.

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

Not just a matter of abnormal psychology

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

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

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

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

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

Living in an irrational world

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Barrow 2/8/11