Kent Communist Group Public Meeting on the ‘Anti-Parliamentary’ Tradition in Britain
This report has been written by our close sympathiser Mark Hayes whose book was the basis for the presentation given to the meeting. As the report makes clear, the Kent Communist Group is a very welcome sign of a growing interest in revolutionary politics in the UK as elsewhere.
On 25 November the Kent Communist Group held a meeting in Canterbury on the ‘Anti-Parliamentary’ Tradition in Britain presented by Mark Hayes, author of The British Communist Left.
The KCG is a new group formed in 2011 active in and around Canterbury University – for more see their blog https://kentcommunistgroup.blogspot.com/ [1]. We’re also reprinting their statement here for information. We think that, whatever its specificities, and whether or not it survives and develops further in 2012, this group, like others that have appeared (like the class struggle forums in Manchester and other British cities), is a very encouraging sign of a commitment to proletarian political activity and of a growing interest in discussing revolutionary politics faced with a revival of struggles worldwide and the deepening capitalist crisis.
Despite being held at 6.30pm on a Friday night in an out-of-the-way
university lecture hall some distance from the town centre, November’s meeting attracted around 20 people. In addition to members of the KCG these included representatives from the ICC, the Communist Workers’ Organisation, the Anarchist Federation, Socialist Party of Great Britain and The Commune, as well as former members of the ICC and half a dozen other students from the university.
The title of the meeting was chosen by the KCG themselves, but as the presentation explained, the left communist tradition is much more than ‘anti-parliamentarism. Focussing on the period at the end of the first world war it showed that opposition to parliamentary activity was a major trend within the early Third International, basing itself on the concrete experience of the seizure of power by the soviets in Russia and the counter-revolutionary role played by social democracy, the Labour Party and trade unions. Far from being an ‘infantile disorder’ as Lenin argued in his notorious pamphlet, anti-parliamentarism was a practical response to the need to develop new forms of mass organisation based on general assemblies, in order to wage an autonomous struggle to overthrow decadent capitalism. Despite eventual defeat, the left communists around Sylvia Pankhurst and the Workers’ Dreadnought fought for these positions against the growing trend towards opportunism and centrism in the International itself, while still attempting to form a principled communist party in Britain and fighting for their positions within it.
There was no vocal disagreement with these arguments in the meeting. Instead, the discussion that followed was around two main areas.
The first was dominated by the SPGB whose interventions focused on the need for us today to work in bourgeois parliaments in order to achieve a majority vote to peacefully overthrow capitalism. ‘Why not use parliaments?’ was the question asked by one SPGB speaker. This argument, which has been consistently advocated by this group since 1904, allowed other speakers to repeat the answer given by the left communists of the 1920s: because firstly the power of the bourgeoisie no longer resides in parliaments but rather in the executive apparatus of the state, and secondly because the exploiting class will never willingly give up its power peacefully through some simple vote. The peddling of such arguments today can only help to spread illusions in bourgeois democracy at a time when the power of this mystification is being unmasked by the realities of the economic crisis and increasing examples of mass revolt against it, in Greece, Spain, the Middle East...
The second area of discussion was of more interest in terms of understanding the issues and concerns of a new generation coming towards revolutionary politics and militant activity today, with a whole range of questions and assertions by ‘non-aligned’ students (and also by the Anarchist Federation). Isn’t the whole concept of class outmoded? ‘I’ve never even been in a factory, nor am I likely to’. Isn’t it better to talk instead of ‘the 99%’? Hasn’t the working class in Western Europe been decimated by or integrated into capitalism? Doesn’t the very term ‘communism’ put people off or make them think of Stalinist Russia? ‘We should forget old arguments, go out into the community, and listen to ordinary people’s concerns’....
On the face of it these sound like the same questions raised in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the revolutionary movement was just re-emerging from the counter-revolution. What are we to make of such questions today? In fact they are typical of discussions we’ve had with many others in the students’ struggles and the Occupy movement internationally, and despite their many weaknesses, and the continuing weight of the past, these movements, like the ‘Indignados’ movement in Spain, and the struggles in Greece and Israel, represent an important development of class consciousness – for much more on this crucial issue see the article on social movements in International Review no. 147. [2]
In short, without underestimating the difficulties for the recovery of the class struggle, the situation today increasingly provides concrete answers to such questioning and helps dispel the mystifications behind them – as they were to an extent at the meeting. And whatever confusions were expressed, we can certainly say the discussions among the comrades present were marked by an openness and very fraternal spirit which gives us confidence that they can be overcome.
MH 12/11
We are the Kent communist group.
The aggressive attacks on public service provision and the austerity agenda of the ruling class are symptoms of an ongoing crisis of capitalism. These austerity measures are a way in which the capitalist class attempts to cut costs in order to restore its rate of profit. Today the crisis is not simply a cyclical downturn but shows a system which has become obsolete, which cannot even reproduce that class whose work sustains it – the working class. With this in mind the overthrow of capitalism, and the misery it causes - Poverty, War, and Environmental degradation – is a necessity.
The alternative to capitalism is communism, and by this we do not mean the horrors of Stalinism, or the state dictatorships of the USSR and its ilk. What happened in Russia and other “socialist” countries, was not a challenge to capitalism, but its consolidation in the hands of the state. Whilst private property was abolished the state remained as the only capitalist, it is for this reason we refer to such regimes as “State-Capitalist”.
Instead we put forward a vision of communism as a stateless, classless society based on the principle of “from each according to ability to each according to need”. In such a society a multiplicity of councils and mass assemblies, directly controlled by workers themselves, direct the productive forces towards the fulfilment of society's needs. Communism therefore represents a real human community, where the free development of each is guaranteed by the free development of all.
The only way that this can come about is through the mass movement of the working class organized in its own interest and through its own organizations. However, the ways in which capitalism divides us through racism, nationalism, sexism and homophobia provide a barrier to working class solidarity and must be overcome. Workers must unite across national boundaries. Capitalism is a global system, and its overthrow must also be on a global scale.
The Kent Communist Group is an organization of revolutionary communists, from both Marxist and Anarchist traditions. We seek to provide a platform for cooperation and debate between revolutionary communists. We are not a specific political organization but provide points of common agreement as the basis of revolutionary cooperation.
These Points of agreement are:
- Global Revolution for the overthrow of capitalism.
- Proletarian Internationalism and Opposition to Nationalism of all kinds.
- Opposition to Stalinism and State Capitalism.
As an organization seeking to facilitate cooperation between communists of different traditions & tendencies, we seek to provide activities that are practical and activities that are more theoretical and further our understanding of communism – its history and ideas.
If you are interested in taking part in activities and discussions within the organization, please contact us via email: [email protected] [3]
One of the ideas raised at a recent meeting of the Occupy movement in London has been that the ruling class somehow engineered the current economic crisis in order to preserve its own power. This conception is nothing new; conspiracy theories have been around for as long class society and government and vary widely in scope and plausibility. Even the Ancient World had its share with Nero being accused by contemporary historians of starting the Great Fire of Rome.
In more modern times, ever since the rise to dominance of the Rothschild dynasty in international banking and their role in funding the English in the Napoleonic Wars, the idea of banking elites manipulating economic crisis and war for its own ends has been able to find an audience.
Today, as the masses try to make sense of the economic catastrophe that is shaking the foundation of society to its core, and with mainstream bourgeois politics utterly discredited, many are turning to conspiracy theories in order to try and understand the world situation.
Such conceptions are no longer the province of “crazy” extremists. For example, some opinion polls have demonstrated belief in 9/11 conspiracy theories as being widely held by the general public in the US. A poll in 2004 found that 49% of NYC residents believed parts of the US government had advance warning of the attacks and allowed them to happen.
We in the ICC have also been accused of being “conspiracy theorists” because of our thesis on the “Machiavellianism” of the ruling class. In fact, we think there are fundamental differences between a Marxist analysis of the political life of the ruling class and the ideological underpinnings behind many conspiracy theories. This is what we hope to explore in this article.
Another early conspiracy theory surrounds the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 with Lord Salisbury alleged to have either masterminded the plot or have allowed it to continue after discovery in order to justify a crackdown on Catholics in England. This theme of false-flag operations is common in conspiracy theory - that is, a covert operation designed to appear as if it was being carried out by an enemy group or power in order to justify action against it.
Most “false-flag” theories fall at you what might call the plausible or possible end of the conspiracy theory spectrum. Their plausibility is derived from the fact that many real false-flag operations have been planned and carried out throughout history. For example:
· Commonly known as the Gleiwitz Incident, Germany justified its invasion of Poland in 1939 due to an attack by a group of Polish soldiers on a German radio-station. In fact, the operation was carried out by SS commandos dressed in Polish uniforms;
· Operation Susannah was an attempt by the Israeli security forces to plant bombs in various hotels in Egypt which would then be blamed on Islamic extremists, communists, etc. Also known as the Lavon Affair, as the Israeli Minister of Defence, Pinhas Lavon, was forced to resign over the issue;
· Operation Northwoods was a proposed operation submitted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Kennedy administration, suggesting government operatives carry out acts of terrorism in the US and frame Cuba in order to justify military aggression. Although Northwoods was never carried out, it shows beyond question that these kinds of operations are seriously discussed in the upper echelons of the state.
Other examples of proven historical conspiracies include:
· The Ebert-Groener Pact, was a secret agreement Freidrich Ebert (leader of the SDP) and Wilhelm Groener (commander of the Reichwehr) in 1918 during the German Revolution. This was an alliance for counter-revolution between left and right, with the left providing the political cover (the ruling SDP saying it carried out its action in the name of the workers) while the right provided the muscle, the brutal Freikorps who later evolved into the Nazi SA and SS.
· The Propaganda Due (P2) Lodge – “a state within a state”[1] – had tentacles spread throughout the Italian ruling class. It has been linked to both the Mafia and the Vatican and included Italian politicians, business men and state functionaries (including the police and security services). P2 came to light in 1981 during investigations into the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano. It also alleged to have been closely linked with the mysterious “Operation Gladio”;
· Operation Gladio itself was initially established by NATO as a “stay-behind” operation in the event that the Soviet Union invaded Europe or a “communist”[2] government seized control of a European state. Strongly linked to the right-wing of the bourgeoisie and organised crime, these structures would attempt to disrupt political and social life under the new regime, through subversion and terror. Various trials and investigations have seen allegations of Gladio and P2 involvement in terrorist events in post-war Italy. Although Gladio was primarily focused on Italy, similar operations were in place throughout continental Europe and Gladio has become a short-hand term covering them.
It is, therefore, a matter of historical record that such conspiracies do exist. Naturally, this doesn’t mean that every event is the product of conspiracies, but nor does it mean that we can naively dismiss any discussion of bourgeois machinations as “just” conspiracy theories.
It goes without saying that while some conspiracies have been proven to exist and others, while not categorically proven are at least plausible, there are many conspiracy theories which are utterly without foundation.
These conspiracy theories usually have very similar characteristics:
· The world is secretly controlled by a covert group that ranges from Jews, Freemasons, bankers (who coincidentally often happen to be Jewish) and even aliens;
· All significant world events are actually the product of the machinations of this clique.
Ironically, the propagation of such conspiracy theories often has its origin (or is at least facilitated) by state organs. The infamous “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, supposedly the minutes of a meeting attended by world Jewish leaders as part of a plot to take over the world, was actually a forgery created by the Tsarist secret police, the Okhrana.
The Jewish people have, of course, long been the target for accusations of conspiracy. Even the word ‘cabal’, often used to describe a group of plotters, derives from ‘Caballa’, a form of Jewish mysticism. Many modern conspiracy theories, even when they are not the overtly anti-Semitic rantings of the far-right, are still ideological descendents of the kind of hatred embodied in the Protocols. More modern theorists may talk sincerely about “international bankers” and a “global elite” rather than “international Jewry”, but the essential ideological structure is the same. After all, much of the resentment towards Jews was derived from the perception of their dominance of the banking system and the fact that they represented a visible minority with supposed loyalties to something other than the crown or the national state. These sorts of conspiracy theories are thus tightly interweaved with nationalist sentiments. As a side note, the influence of this is even seen on leftist ideology which officially repudiates nationalism and racism - the ideology of anti-globalisation is explicitly bound up with the idea of global capitalists who undermine the national state and exploit its peoples. The underlying similarities with the paranoid ideology of the Nazi regime are obvious.
Communists have also been a popular target for conspiracy theories. In the US, the Protocols were republished in 1919 by the Public Ledger in Philadelphia with all references to Jews replaced with “Bolsheviks” and calling it the “Red Bible”. Drawing on Marx’s Jewish background, anti-Semites have always equated communists and Jews and it was inevitable that the Russian Revolution would be identified with the Jewish conspiracy. The vast literature written on this subject is worthy of an academic treatise in itself but it is safe to say that the well-known total identification between “Jews” and “Bolsheviks” by the Nazi regime is the logical consequence of this line of thought.
While most can see the paranoid fantasies of the far-right for what they are, it is worth pointing out that mainstream bourgeois history has largely interpreted the Russian Revolution along conspiratorial lines. Instead of being the conscious act of the masses themselves, historiography often reduces the Revolution to a coup d’état by the Bolsheviks. Once again, we see that conspiracy theory, for all its avowed rejection of mainstream thought, is not a million miles away from the fundamental axes of bourgeois ideology even if it exaggerates certain aspects to the point of absurdity.
Officially, the bourgeoisie disavows conspiracy theory. In fact, the very term is a pejorative intended to imply that the very idea of conspiracies in the democratic state is so ridiculous that no right-thinking person could possibly believe them. Despite this, as we have briefly examined, the bourgeoisie indulges in conspiratorial activity all the time. Moreover, its own view of history is conspiratorial, a chronicle of ceaseless rivalry between cliques seeking control of the state, of manipulation of the masses, etc.
Conspiracy theories orientated around libels towards particular groups are an expression of the racism and prejudice that’s endemic to capitalist society; in that sense they have a spontaneous character. But they are also employed consciously by the state in order to justify action against certain groups. The venomous lies propagated around the Jews have been used to justify brutal pogroms throughout history.
Similarly, conspiracy theories around communists were used in efforts to mobilise counter-revolution in the period after Red October, both in Russia and beyond. The “Red Scares” in the US, for example, were propagated in order to support the policy aims of the US state. In the first period, the aim was to decapitate the political organs of the working class. The ideological offensive wasn’t limited to communists: anarchists, union members (especially the IWW), strikers of any sort were all routinely denounced as dangers to respectable society. This was part of the international counter-revolution unleashed to crush the revolutionary wave.
In the second Red Scare, the infamous period of “McCarthyism”, the policy aims certainly had a social dimension but were primarily orientated around the imperialist rivalry between the US and its Russian rival. The US ruling class was concerned about the appeal that Stalinist ideology had for the working class and had already uncovered several active Russian spy-rings.
What of conspiracy theories that denounce the state (the 9/11 Truth Movement is an example)? In some respects, they represent the extreme distrust that the petit-bourgeoisie has for the state and big capital. It is no accident that the home of modern conspiracy theory is among the right-wing libertarians in the United States. On the face of things, these conspiracy theories appear to challenge the mythology of the democratic state. But, in fact, they play a role in preserving that very mythology because - in an expression of the historic impotence of the petit-bourgeoisie - they are unable to provide a real alternative to bourgeois democracy. Instead, they are reduced to the entirely utopian demand of calling on the state to be what it pretends to be, the democratic expression of “the people”. For example, John Buchanan stood for the US Presidency in the 2004 election on a “Truther” platform. The more radical elements that see this approach as the futile exercise it is are condemned to holing up in mountain retreats with stockpiles of automatic weapons, waiting for the final apocalypse to descend.
The more paranoid varieties also serve another role. In the first instance, they allow any serious discussion of the inner workings of the bourgeois class to be dismissed from mainstream consciousness through guilt by association: partly because of the ludicrous nature of some of their claims, but also their unsavoury associations with the extreme right and religious fundamentalism.
Although, as we have seen, their underlying themes are not new in themselves, their modern forms are certainly influenced by one of the classical expressions of decomposing capitalism: the tendency for bourgeois ideology to become more and more openly irrational. In part, they are also a response to the growing chaos of capitalist in its everyday, material reality, and it’s no accident that there are close links to the rise of New Age and religious fundamentalism. David Icke, the classic representation of the New Age version, talks of alien lizards that secretly rule the world while Millennialist Christians believe they are living in the time supposedly foretold in the book of Revelations and that the coming of the Antichrist will be accompanied by a totalitarian “New World Order”. Nearly 20% of US Christians (roughly 16% of the country’s population) believe that Jesus will return within their lifetimes[3]. Sales of Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth, one of the earliest popular paperbacks on the “End Times” had sold over 28 million copies by 1990, in spite of being more or less falsified by failed predictions. The Left Behind series, a fictionalised account of the Apocalypse, has sold millions of copies (in 1998 the first four books held the four top slots of the New York Times best-sellers list).
Many more examples could be given, underlining the fact that such theories have a growing influence on mainstream culture and politics. The impact of “End Time” ideology on the right-wing of the US ruling class is undeniable and we might also point out the successful television series “The X Files” which took up and widely popularised the UFO variety of conspiracism.
But aren’t Marxists (or the ICC at least) also conspiracy theorists? As mentioned above, we stand by the thesis that the ruling class is fully capable of organising elaborate conspiracies in order to further its aims. We identified some historical examples earlier in this article. We also identify an “elite” (the capitalist class) which has concentrated all political and economic power into its hands. Superficially, it would seem, we follow the basic pattern of conspiracy theories.
It is to be expected that, as Marxists, we subscribe to a materialist theory of reality and accordingly reject the notions of that we are living on the brink of Armageddon or that alien lizards are secretly in control of the planet. But why, for example, do we reject the idea of a secret global elite (who are capitalists after all) controlling the entire world, manipulating wars and crises in order to further their own ends?
The reason is based on our understanding of how capitalism functions. While conspiracy theorists may rail against the lizards, the bankers, the Bilderberg Group, etc. they cling to one of the deepest illusions that the bourgeoisie offers: the idea that someone, somewhere, is in control. It seems easier to lay the horror and waste of decadent, decomposing capitalism at the door of a grand conspiracy than understand it for the tragedy it truly is: that is, a society where humanity (even the ruling class) confronts its own economic and social activity as something alien and beyond its control.
The laws of capitalism function independently of the will of capitalists, regardless of how desperately they try to control them (usually through the medium of the state). For example, the current crisis is not the result of the machination of some global elite - on the contrary, the tendency towards crisis more and more escapes their control in spite of their machinations. While it is certainly true that this or that faction of the bourgeoisie will attempt to engineer war or crisis[4] to further their ends, it is important to remember that these aims were usually focused against another faction of the bourgeoisie.
The capitalist class is founded upon the principles of competition, a mechanism that capitalism cannot escape from. Competition is deeply entrenched within the economic processes of capitalism and cannot be overcome by an act of will. This element is expressed with the ruling class’s political and social life in the form of cliques, competition between individuals, corporations, nation states and alliances of nation states. Tendencies acting against competition certainly exist - statification, monopoly, etc - and are exacerbated in the era of decadence, but they can never fully overcome it, merely displace it to a higher level. Competition between companies becomes competition between states; free trade is sacrificed to mercantilism; wars are fought over markets and natural resources and tend towards more and more global conflagrations (world wars). Machiavellianism is a product of the alienated consciousness of the ruling class, the competition of each against all and does not offer the bourgeoisie any means of escaping from the fundamental contradictions in either its economic, ideological or political life.
The highest unity achieved by the bourgeoisie takes place in a revolutionary period, when they are forced to confront the threat of a conscious, organised working class. The Ebert-Groener Pact mentioned above is an example of the intrigues the bourgeoisie is capable of during this situation, but the difficulty of the ruling class maintaining its unity in such a dangerous situation was expressed in the ill-fated Kapp Putsch.
For Marxists then, the bourgeoisie can never achieve the kind of permanent unity required to fully control the evolution of society. Conspiracy theories of the type discussed here thus offer neither a method for understanding the historic crisis of capitalist society, nor do they provide any programme for overthrowing it. Nonetheless, we must expect the influence of conspiracism to grow in the present period as the systemic crisis deepens and class consciousness remains very weak. Communists cannot simply dismiss adherents to such conceptions but confront and expose the reactionary roots of these ideas, while insisting on the genuinely Machiavellian nature of the ruling class.
As the class struggle gathers pace and the proletariat once again feels its own power it will abandon conspiracy theories in favour of its own historic method: Marxism.
Ishamael 8/1/12
[2] Communist in this context was obviously the Stalinism represented by the Eastern Bloc, although it could also apply to any left-wing party that opposed US Imperialism. Naturally, none of these movements represented a genuinely communist or working class politics but similar methods would undoubtedly be used against any true movement of the working class.
[3] pewforum.org/uploadedfiles/Topics/Beliefs_and_Practices/religion-politics-06.pdf
[4] For example, the Asian crisis in the late-90s was strongly exacerbated by actions taken by the US bourgeoisie to push forward their economic domination in the region but the situation quickly spiralled out of control and threatened the wider global economy with serious consequences for the US economy.
In March 11th 2011 a gigantic tsunami flooded the Japanese east coast. Waves as high as 12-15 meters caused incredible damage. More than 20.000 were killed by the tsunami; thousands are still reported to be missing today; an uncountable number of people lost their home. On the whole planet a big part of the population has settled at the coasts or near coasts; most people live on a narrow space jammed together, more and more threatened by the irreversible rise of sea water levels. The flood waves of the tsunami showed all the dangers that flow from such dense settlement along the coasts.
But contrary to all expectations of the government, a disastrous accident occurred in the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The earthquake and the tsunami brought to the fore the potential dangers arising from both settlement along the coasts in times of climate change and the way the ruling classes deal with nuclear power. For reasons of space, we want to focus in this article on the consequences of the nuclear melt-down.
After the disastrous accident in Fukushima the evacuation of the population began too late and it did not cover the necessary no-go zone. Even though it may be objected that the rescue measures and the evacuation were delayed and made more difficult due to the consequences of the tsunami, the government wanted to avoid a large scale evacuation, because it did not want the population to become aware of the scope of the danger and wanted to downplay the whole situation. All of a sudden it became obvious that the responsible people in Japan (both the company which runs the nuclear plant, Tepco, and the government) had never expected such a scenario and that the safety measures in case of an earthquake and a tsunami of such a magnitude were totally insufficient. The planned emergency measures and the means of emergency intervention were quite inadequate and made hi-tech Japan look like a poorly equipped, helpless giant.
A few days after the disaster, when the possible need for an evacuation of the metropolitan area of Tokyo with its 35 million inhabitants was discussed in the government, this idea was immediately turned down because they simply did not have the means to implement it, and moreover it would have shown the state to be in danger of collapse.
In and around the nuclear plant the recorded radiation reached fatal heights. Shorty after the disaster Prime Minister Kan “demanded the formation of a suicide team of workers who would have to attempt the task of easing the pressure in the plant”. The workers who intervened on the site were totally ill equipped. “For some time there was a lack of dosimeters, and a lack of appropriate and admitted safety boots. One worker reported that the workers had to bind plastic bags with cellotape around their shoes instead. Very often it was impossible for the workers to communicate with each other or with the control centres. Many of the workers had to sleep on the premises of the site, they could only cover themselves with lead blankets. The critical values for male power plant workers in emergency situations was increased on March 15th from 100 to 250 mSv per year”. In several cases workers could only undergo a health check weeks or months later.
25 years ago, at the time of Chernobyl, the collapsing Russian Stalinist regime, due to a lack of other resources, found nothing else to do but send a gigantic army of forced recruits to fight the disaster on the spot. According to the WHO some 600,000 to 800,000 liquidators were sent, of whom hundreds of thousands died or became ill because of the impact of radiation or cancer. The government never published any official reliable figures.
Now, 25 years later, hi-tech Japan tried desperately to extinguish the fire and cool the site amongst others with fire hoses and by spraying water from helicopters. In contradiction to all previous planning Tepco was forced to use large masses of sea water for cooling the plant and to dump the polluted water into the Pacific Ocean. And while the Russian Stalinist regime 25 years ago forcibly recruited hundreds of thousands of liquidators, economic misery forced thousands of workers in Japan to risk their lives. Tepco recruited in particular among homeless and unemployed workers in the poorest area of Osaka, Kamagasaki. In many cases they were not told where they had to work, and they were often not informed about the risks.
But not only were the lives of the liquidators put at risk; the civilian population was also put at risk. In particular children in the radiated area were exposed to high doses. Since the emissions superseded any previously recorded value, the government decided to consider the exposure of children in the Fukushima area to a radiation level of 20 millisievert as “not dangerous”.
During the first days the rulers in Stalinist Russia tried to stay altogether silent about the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl; the government of democratic Japan was equally determined to hide the full scope of the catastrophe. The people in charge in Japan showed no less cynicism and contempt for life than the Stalinist regime in power at the time of Chernobyl.
It is impossible today to assess the long-term consequences of the disaster in a realistic manner. The melt-down means that the melted fuel rods have formed a gigantic radioactive clot, which has penetrated through the pressure container. The cooling water has become extremely contaminated. It needs permanent cooling, and new gigantic masses of contaminated water accumulate all the time. Not only the water but also the “unprotected” reactors emit caesium, strontium, and plutonium isotopes. These are called ‘hot particles’, which can be found all over Japan, including Tokyo. So far there are no technical means available to dispose of the nuclear waste piled up in Fukushima. The cooling process itself takes years. In Chernobyl it was necessary to construct a sarcophagus which will have to be torn down at the latest in one hundred years time to be replaced by another one. There is not yet any solution in sight for Fukushima. However, in the meantime contaminated water accumulates and the authorities in charge do not know where to dispose of it. A large part of the cooling water is directly poured into the ocean, where the currents spread it across the Pacific, and its consequences for the food chain and for human beings cannot yet be measured. The Japanese northeast coast which counts as one of the richest fisheries will be affected, even the Bering Strait with its salmon resources may be hit[1].
Because the population density in this region of Japan is 15 times higher than in Ukraine the consequences for the population cannot yet be assessed.
The meltdown thus reveals that the consequences of such a nuclear disaster are totally out of control. The authorities in charge had the choice between plague and cholera. Either let the melt-down happen without any means of intervention or attempt to cool the site with sea water, thus accepting a further spread of radioactivity through the dissemination of the extinguishing devices. The helpless government opted for the contamination of sea water through highly radioactive fire fighting water.
The attempts to dispose of the contaminated soil in the surrounding area displayed a terrible lack of responsibility and lack of scruple. Up until August 2011 in the town of Fukushima some 334 school yards and nurseries were cleaned. But the authorities do not really know where to dispose of the contaminated soil. For example in Koriyama in the Fukushima prefecture, it was just buried in the soil on the school yards themselves. 17 out of 48 prefectures of Japan, amongst them Tokyo, reported that there were contaminated slicks, but the prefectures do not where and how to get rid of them. Even as close as 20 km to Tokyo radiated soil was recorded. Thousands of buildings still need to be scrubbed of radioactive particles. Even forested mountains will probably need to be decontaminated, which might necessitate clear-cutting and literally scraping them clean. Japanese media have reported that the government is planning an intermediary deposit for millions of tons of radioactively contaminated waste. Since there is no solution some of the radioactively contaminated garbage has been burnt[2]. This is a way of spreading radioactivity even further via the smoke. This helplessness vis a vis the piles of nuclear waste casts a light on the impossibility of decontaminating the radioactive waste.
The specificity of the production of electricity through nuclear energy is that the radiation does not stop once the nuclear power plants at the end of their operation time are switched off. The process of nuclear fission is not terminated once the nuclear power plant has been switched off.
What is to be done with the nuclear waste, because any material which has come into contact with radioactive material is contaminated?
According to the World Nuclear Association, every year some 12,000 tons of highly radioactive waste accumulates. Until the end of 2010 some 300,000 tons of highly radioactive waste had been piled up in the world as a whole, out of which some 70.000 tons can be found in the USA. In 2008 in Russia some 700,000 tons of radioactive waste were stored, out of which 140,000 tons came from European nuclear sites. At the Hanford Site in the USA some 200,000 cubic meters of radioactive material need to be disposed of. In France more than one million cubic meters of contaminated soil is stored (‘Nucléaire, c’est où la sortie’, Le Canard Enchainé, p74), The geological storage which has been practiced or planned in several countries, for example in old mines, is nothing but a temporary makeshift, the dangers of which the defenders of nuclear energy stay more or less silent about. For example in Germany 125,000 barrels of nuclear waste are deposited in an old mine in Asse; these barrels are eroding due to the influence of salt; contaminated lye is already escaping from the barrels. In the German case intermediate storage experts Gorleben found out about the danger of landslides. Similar risks have been diagnosed in most of the dumpsites. This means that while the “normal running” of a nuclear plant is full of dangers, the disposal of nuclear waste is a totally unsolved question. The people in charge have been placing all the nuclear waste into dumpsites, leaving behind a pile of nuclear waste which an endless number of generations will have to cope with.
And the “normal” running of a nuclear plant is not as “clean” as always claimed by the defenders of nuclear industry. In reality enormous masses of water are necessary for the cooling of the fuel rods. Nuclear plants have to be constructed at rivers or shores[3]. Every 14 months in each reactor one quarter of the fuel rods need to be renewed. However, since they are extremely hot, after their replacement they have to be placed into the spent fuel pit, where they need to be cooled for a period of 2-3 years. The cooling water, which is pumped into rivers, leads to a thermal pollution. Algae develop, fish perish. Moreover, chemicals are emitted into rivers (e.g. hydrochloric acid, sodium, boric acid, detergents) In addition water is also polluted with radioactivity, even though only in small doses.
Are the holders of power, the people in charge, interested in clarifying the root of the problem? Obviously not! As a matter of fact the entire construction plan of the power plant in Fukushima was not adapted to the danger of earthquakes and tsunamis. By now, it has become known that the operating company Tepco covered up many nuclear incidents; important safety deficiencies were camouflaged; widely criticised faults in the safety system were not eliminated, partly because the plant was to be closed after 40 years of operating time. The Japanese state, which usually intervenes heavily in the industry and is known for its intervention through the MITI in the economy, in order to strengthen the competitiveness of Japanese capital, almost issued a blank cheque to the nuclear industry. Even when the manipulation of inquiry reports or the trivialisation of nuclear incidents came to the fore, the state did not intervene more strictly. At any rate, under the weight of competition and the worsening crisis, there is a worldwide trend for less and less money to be invested in maintenance and fewer and fewer qualified staff to be employed in maintenance and repairs. The capitalist crisis makes the nuclear plants even less safe, as safety standards are lowered by employing less qualified staff.
But above all it has become clear that of the 442 operating power plants worldwide many of them were built in earthquake-prone areas. In Japan alone more than 50 power plants were constructed in such areas. In the USA more than a dozen nuclear plants with a similar risk were constructed. In Russia there are many nuclear power plants without an automatic mechanism for shutting down in case of nuclear incidents. In many Russian nuclear power plants cracks and surface subsidence were reported. Chernobyl was probably no exception: such a disaster can occur at any time again. (Le Monde p49). In Turkey the reactor Akkuyu Bay was built near the Ecemi fault. India and China are planning to build the most new nuclear power plants. Yet China with its 27 new nuclear power plants under construction is one of the most seismologically active countries[4].
Saudi Arabia is planning to construct 16 power plants, not least to be better armed against Iran.
In Pakistan a new reactor is to be opened near Lahore, where there is a moderate to high risk of earthquakes. Taiwan has 6 reactors although the country is in one of the most endangered seismological zones. Instead of considering the dangers of nature capitalism has constructed global time bombs. And while safety standards in the most highly developed countries have turned out to be insufficient, the safety philosophy is even weaker in those countries which are starting to draw on nuclear energy. They have even less experience in dealing with incidents and accidents. Hard to imagine what might happen in case of a nuclear disaster…
Moreover the operating time of old nuclear power plants which were to be shut down are now to be prolonged. In the USA their operating time has been prolonged to 60 years, in Russia to 45 years.
While the control mechanisms over nuclear industry by states on a national scale have proven to be incomplete and insufficient, on an international scale the states are opposed to restrictive safety standards or too much intervention by international monitoring organisations. National sovereignty takes precedence over safety.
In Germany the government decided in the summer 2011 to abandon nuclear energy by 2022. As an immediate measure, some nuclear power plants were switched off shortly after the Fukushima explosion. Does German capital act in a more responsible manner? Not at all! Because only a few months before the same government had prolonged the operating time of several nuclear power plants, i.e. before Fukushima it had planned to maintain nuclear energy. If, however, it has decided to abandon nuclear energy now, this corresponds on the one hand to a tactical political move, because the government hopes to improve its chances of being re-elected; and on the other hand there was an economic calculation, because German industry is very competitive with its alternative energy production know-how. German industry now hopes for very profitable markets. Moreover the whole problem of getting rid of the nuclear waste remains unsolved…
To sum up: with or without Fukushima humanity is still faced with these nuclear time bombs ticking away. In many places they can ignite a new disaster because of earthquakes or other weak points.
Time and again we hear the arguments put forward by nuclear energy’s defenders that nuclear power generated electricity is cheaper, cleaner, and without any alternative. It is a fact that the construction of a power plant costs gigantic sums, which – thanks to the help of state subsidies – are shouldered by the electricity supply companies. But the bulk of the costs of the disposal of nuclear waste is pushed onto society by the operating companies. Furthermore the whole economic calculation put forward by the nuclear lobby does not take into consideration the cost of disposing of the waste. And once the nuclear plants which are more than 50 years old have to be dismantled, there are tremendous costs in tearing them down. In the UK it was estimated that the cost of demolishing the existing nuclear power plants would amount to 100 billion euros, some 3 billion euros per nuclear plant. In the USA they want to make it even cheaper – only 104 million dollars are to be spent for the 104 operating nuclear power plants. In France the demolition of Superphénix will cost 2.1 billion euros (Le Monde, p. 68). And again, the remaining nuclear waste cannot be disposed of in any way.
And if there is a nuclear incident or accident, normally the state has to intervene and come to the rescue. In Fukushima the follow-up cost, the size of which is yet unknown, are estimated to amount to 200-300 billion euros. Tepco could not raise this money. The Japanese state has promised its “help”, provided that the Tepco employees make sacrifices – their pensions are to be cut, wages lowered, thousands of jobs to be axed. Special tax charges are scheduled in the Japanese budget. Having drawn the lessons from previous accidents the operating companies in France have limited their liability to 700 million euros in case of accidents: this is peanuts in comparison to the possible economic costs of a nuclear disaster.
From an economic and ecological view the real costs of the running of the plants and the unsolved question of nuclear waste are a bottomless pit. In every respect nuclear power is an irrational project. The nuclear power companies receive massive amounts of money for energy production, but they shove the follow-up costs onto society. The nuclear power plants embody the insurmountable contradiction between the search for profit and the long-term protection of man and nature.
Nuclear power is not the only danger for the environment. Capitalism practises a permanent depletion of nature. It constantly plunders all resources without any concern for sustainability, for harmony with nature. It treats nature like a garbage landfill.
By now entire stretches of the Earth have become uninhabitable, whole areas of the sea have become poisoned. The system has embarked upon an irrational course, where more and more new technological means are developed to deplete natural resources, while at the same time the investment into this exploitation becomes more and more costly and immense and the risks and potential of destruction increase. When in 2010 at the shores of the leading industrial power USA the oil platform Deepwater Horizon exploded, the investigation into the accident unmasked striking deficiencies in the safety regulations.
The pressure flowing from competition forces all the rivals, who have to invest large sums of money in the construction and the maintenance of production sites and their operation, to try to save money and to undermine safety standards. The most recent example is the oil pollution off the Atlantic shores of Brazil. All this negligence does not just crop up in technologically backward countries. In fact it takes on the most unbelievable proportions precisely in the most highly developed countries, because there competition is often even fiercer.
In comparison to Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, Fukushima meant that for the first time a metropolitan area such as Tokyo with its 35 million inhabitants was directly threatened.
Nuclear energy was developed during World War Two as an instrument of warfare. The nuclear bombing of two Japanese cities inaugurated a new level of destruction in this decadent system. The arms race during the ‘cold war’ after WW2, with its systematic deployment of nuclear weapons, pushed the military capacity for destruction to the point where humanity could be wiped out in one stroke. Today more than two decades after the end of the ‘cold war’ there are still some 20,000 nuclear war heads which can still annihilate us many times over.
With the nuclear disasters in Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima it has become obvious that humanity is not only threatened with annihilation through the military use of nuclear power. Its “civilian” use for the production of energy can also cause the destruction of humanity.
The Japanese government estimated that due to the nuclear disaster at Fukushima the radioactive level of Caesium-137 was 168 times higher than the one provoked by the nuclear bomb of Hiroshima in 1945 (Shimbun, 25/8/2011). The amount of Caesium-137 was estimated to have reached 15.000 Terabecquerel, while the effect of the American atomic bomb Little Boy on Hiroshima was ‘only’ 89 Terabecquerel.
The whole development since the beginning of the disaster shows that the authorities and Tepco lost control, that the scope of the disaster was trivialised, that the costs of the rescue operation were skyrocketing and that the people in charge had not drawn the necessary conclusions. On the contrary. Not only concerning the question of nuclear power, but concerning the protection of the environment as a whole, the ruling class is becoming more and more ruthless – as the results of the recent Durban summit show. The destruction of the environment has been reaching higher levels, and the ruling class is totally unable to change the course of events and to take appropriate measures. The planet is sacrificed for the sake of profit.
Moreover the worsening economic crisis, which sharpened even more in 2011, leaves the ruling class with less room for manoeuvre for protecting nature. Thus capitalism pushes humanity towards the abyss through the effects of the crisis such as hunger, pauperisation and trade wars, shooting wars etc., while its power of destruction threatens the whole of civilisation. The nuclear power plants are only the tip of the iceberg.
A race against time has begun. Either capitalism destroys the entire planet or the exploited and oppressed – with the working class at their head – succeed in overthrowing the system. Because capitalism poses a threat to humanity on different levels (crisis, war, environment) it is insufficient to struggle only against one aspect of capitalist reality, e.g. against nuclear energy. We have to highlight the link between these different threats and their roots in the capitalist system. During the 1980s and 1990s there were many “single issue” movements (such as the struggle against nuclear energy, against militarism, against the housing shortage etc.), which reduced their focus only to one aspect. Today more than ever it is necessary to show the bankruptcy of the entire system, to demonstrate that the system cannot take humanity out of this impasse. It is true that the connections between the different elements are not easy to understand, but if we do not take the link between crisis, war and ecological destruction into account our struggle will end up in the dead-end of thinking that things could be reformed within the system.
Di 1/12
[1] Northeast of Fukushima the two currents, the warm Kuoshio and the cold Oyashio, merge. This is one of the most abundant areas of the earth for fishing. And in this area Japanese fishing boats catch roughly half the amount of fish consumed in Japan. Thus fish supplies in Japan could be endangered. “Such a high emission of radioactivity into the sea has never been measured.” hpnw.de/commonFiles/pdfs/Atomenergie/Zu_den_Auswirkungen_der_Reaktorkatastrophe_von_Fukushima_auf_den_Pazifik_und_die_Nahrungsketten.pdfttp://www.ip [12]
[2] According to information from Japanese environmental organisations, the government is planning to spread contaminated debris from the Fukushima area across the whole country and to burn it. The Japanese ministry for the environment estimates the amount of building rubble at around 23.8 million tons. As the Mainichi Daily News reported a first shipment of 1000 tons of debris from Iwate to Tokyo took place in early November 2011. The Iwate authorities estimate that this debris contains 133 bq/kg of radioactive material. Before March 2011 this would have been illegal, but the Japanese government lowered the norms in July from 100 bq/kg to 8000 bq/kg, and in October to 10.000 bq/kg. The city of Tokyo announced that it would receive some 500.000 tons of radioactive rubble. https://news.ippnw.de/index.php?id=72 [13],
[3]In France, where more than 44 reactors are located at rivers, more than 57% of the water taken from the sea and rivers is used for the production of electricity. A French nuclear plant, Graveline, which needs 300 cubic meter of water per second, returns the water 12° warmer to the river. And if during dry seasons there is not sufficient water available, some nuclear plants have to be cooled by helicopter. (Les dossiers du Canard Enchainé, ‘Nucléaire, c’est par où la sortie?, le grand débat après Fukushima’, p80)
[4] How much safety is valued by Chinese capital can be seen through the training of qualified workers. China would need each year at least 6000 nuclear experts for the planned new nuclear power plants, but presently only 600 are trained every year. In China some 500,000 dollars are spent every year on safety; in the USA 7 million dollars are spent per year (Le Monde, p. 52).
The ICC attended this bookfair hoping to be able, like last year, to have a stall from which to sell our publications and to participate in the various meetings and forums. Unfortunately, we were informed that we had been refused a stall on the grounds that we were not an anarchist group. This is in a way understandable: we are indeed a marxist and not an anarchist organisation (although the ICC recognises the internationalist currents within anarchism as part of the proletarian political movement). But the fact that there were at least three stalls left untaken on the day, and that many of the participants holding stalls were not exactly of pure anarchist antecedents, points to the fact that we were refused because we are the ICC or because we are part of the tradition of the communist left. We also want to recall last year’s Manchester book fair, where under the influence of the late and lamented comrade Knightrose of the Anarchist Federation, the ICC was able to have a stall. The protests of elements in the Manchester anarchist milieu notwithstanding, Knightrose pointed out that comrades of the ICC were participating in the Manchester Class Struggle Forum alongside various anarchist organisations and that it was ridiculous to bar us from having a stall. This not only expressed a proletarian solidarity but also the need to have real political criteria beyond a blanket condemnation of ourselves being ‘marxists’. Knightrose also put forward the need to have wider criteria for a book fair that could include revolutionary marxists and anarchists. This was also raised in informal discussion at this event.
We should be clear that this is not sour-grapes on our part. We wanted to participate at this event to the full, to sell our literature, to put forward our positions in the many meetings that take place at these events.
That apart, comrades of the ICC sold in the foyer of the book fair and we were extremely impressed when a member of the IWW offered to take some of our literature and place it on their own stall. This expressed, like last year, a degree of proletarian solidarity which was much appreciated by all the ICC comrades.
Further, when a significant meeting on the agenda at this event – a discussion on the summer riots - was cancelled, the comrade from the IWW and another comrade who was participating as an organiser and ourselves pushed for a meeting to take place on the recession and the austerity attacks. This was an important meeting in which twenty or so people took part. The comrade from the IWW gave the introduction and there was an encouragement for all to speak. This discussion was focused particularly on the current phase of attacks upon our class. In many areas of the introduction and also the following discussion we found we had much in common with the comrades attending this forum. For example, the real need to go beyond TUC processions; to link up with the fight back against the cuts; to relate to the international dimension of the struggle. Here the experiences in North Africa and in Spain and France were crucial reference points. The question of creating assemblies was also a vital component of this discussion. We listened with interest to the IWW militant talking about his involvement with organising precarious workers. Even though we don’t agree with the IWW policy of unionising these workers (through the IWW), and with the concept of dual unionism, we recognise that the resistance of this mercilessly exploited layer of the working class is going to play an increasingly important role in future struggles.
Melmoth 27/1/12
We are publishing below a resolution adopted on the developments in Kurdistan, adopted by the recent territorial conference of the ICC section in Turkey. Our resolution, aims to explain clearly who the millions of people encircled by this imperialist war are being forced to give their lives for. It is founded on our position that the only solution for the working class which is being forced into butchering its class brothers and sisters for the sake of the imperialist interests of different nations is class war on the basis of internationalism.
1. The Turkish state is a state which is pursuing imperialist interests both in Kurdistan and in the Middle East in general. The PKK[1], although it hasn't succeeded in becoming an actual state, is acting as the main apparatus of the nationalist Kurdish bourgeoisie in Turkey; it attempts to realize its interests in its area of activity as if it is an actual state and it is bound to rely on the direct or indirect support of this or that imperialist state the interests of which rival those of Turkish imperialism at this or that point. As such, although its forces are weaker compared to those of the imperialist Turkish state and its interests narrower, the PKK is as much a part of world imperialism as the Turkish state. This war which escalated in the recent months in Kurdistan is, like all the wars going on in all parts of the world, an imperialist war.[2] Dying or killing their class brothers or sisters for the interests of their masters is in the interests of neither the Turkish nor the Kurdish workers.
2. The situation in Iraqi Kurdistan and in other Kurdish regions has changed with the entry of the United States into the region. Turkey is a power in the region, and a partner of the United States and so is also a partner of the relationships stemming from this situation. Also, the region is extremely profitable for the Turkish bourgeoisie. It has been demonstrated that the relationship between Southern Kurdistan[3] and the PKK can become tense as a result of certain pressures of the Turkish state. On the other hand, the pressure created by the Kurdish population forces the Southern Kurdish government to look after the PKK. A similar relationship doesn't exist between Iranian Kurdistan and Southern Kurdistan.
3. The Kurdish question is completely tied up with imperialist politics in the Middle East. There are two aspects of this: The first is the influence of the United States, while the second stems from the fact that Kurds occupy a key position in the region. When we look at recent developments, it is possible to analyze the situation as regards the Turkish state as follows: while at times there is a partnership with the Southern Kurdish government, these relationships have shown a tendency to worsen at certain moments as well. In the background is the Nabucco project designed by the United States to pump oil to Europe, avoiding Russia. Following the November the 5th talks in 2007, Turkey's perspective has changed. While the perspective before the summit was advancing with completely military methods, afterwards a different course was taken under the guise of democratic reforms. Behind this lies the security of the Nabucco plan. There is a need for the normalization of this problem in order to stabilise the region. For this reason, it is desired for the problem between the Turkish and Kurdish bourgeoisies should be solved, as they have mutual long term strategic partners.
4. Despite all this, what the AKP[4] government did beneath all the promises of reforms and talks of democracy was nothing but a continuation of the old policy of war. During the process, thousands have been arrested in the KCK trials[5], hundreds of Kurdish guerrillas were murdered while retreating during ceasefire, extremely heavy handed attacks by the police were made on Kurdish demonstrations resulting in the injury of many demonstrators and the deaths of several, social oppression was encouraged in Turkish cities against the Kurds living there, resulting in lynching attempts. Yet, while the AKP government's strategy remained the same as those of the previous governments, its tactics were significantly different. The AKP government pursued an ambitious plan of stalling the representatives of the Kurdish movement in Turkish politics[6] openly with intrigues and false gestures and the PKK in the background with negotiations, while continuing a policy of repression which essentially remained the same. The last part of the gambit was to be winning the support of the Kurdish masses by giving out different sorts of charity such as food, refrigerators, ovens and so forth and by using religious ideology. This, last point perhaps had been the most critical of the AKP government's plan, since like the rest of the Turkish state they had realised that it wasn't possible for them to defeat the PKK by military force alone. For this reason, they had aimed to become a force first rivaling and eventually surpassing and marginalizing the PKK in Turkish Kurdistan; yet this intrigue, worthy of the old Ottoman empire, ended up exploding in the government's face.
5. The reason this plan did not work out was not because the Kurdish bourgeoisie didn't bite the bait, because quite the contrary they did for a long time. The strategy of the Kurdish bourgeoisie to integrate into the Turkish state and to rule in Turkish Kurdistan as the local apparatus of the Turkish state forced them to put up with lots of moves of its rival just for the sake of remaining on the negotiation table. Nevertheless, eventually the Kurdish bourgeoisie ended up having to make a strong counter-move, saying: “We've been fighting for the last 30 years, and you know as well as we do that we can't solve this with such methods; but let us remind you once again so that we can go back to the negotiation table”. Contrary to other forces bested by the AKP government by such intrigues[7], what was at the background of the fact that the Kurdish bourgeois movement could make such a daring move was the fact that the Kurdish bourgeoisie is not a part of the Turkish bourgeoisie; that it is a separate bourgeoisie which is based on different economic and social dynamics and which draws its strength from different conditions.
6. And yet again, despite all this, the Kurdish bourgeoisie wants capital to come to the region. And in this, the Kurdish bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie of Turkey have mutual interests. The words spoken by Leyla Zana[8] in a conference where she participated with Ishak Alaton, the owner of the Alarko Holding, one of the one of the largest business conglomerates in Turkey, are eloquent: “Until today, they've seen the Kurds only as street vendors and shoe polishers”. This expresses the ambitions of the Kurdish bourgeoisie and for this, the Kurdish bourgeoisie needs foriegn investment in Kurdistan.
7. The Turkish bourgeoisie also wants to create a new image for itself. This includes turning Turkey into a heaven for cheap labor. Needless to say, an important part of this is made up of the Kurdish working class. The current period is one in which attacks on the living and working conditions of the working class are being prepared, especially with the new measures in the public sector. By trying to give the image of a social state, surplus value is being increased. An example of this is the fact that the Ministry of Work is planning a new law which will make it a necessity for every worker to be unionized. A potential for surplus value not used well (!) enough exists in Kurdistan. Kurdish workers are working for very low salaries in numerous sectors. The implementation of this cheap labor policy in Kurdistan is being prepared with the new regional minimal wage policy.
8. This point reached as a result of all these reforms and negotiations has demonstrated once again that only war can come of the bourgeoisie's peace, that the solution of the Kurdish question can't be the result of any compromise with the Turkish imperialist state, and that the PKK is in no way a structure even remotely capable of offering any sort of solution whatsoever. The Kurdish question can't be solved only in Turkey. The Kurdish question can't be solved with a war between nations. The Kurdish question can't be solved with democracy. The only solution of this question lies in the united struggle of the Kurdish and Turkish workers with the workers of the Middle East and the whole world. The only solution of the Kurdish question is the internationalist solution. Only the working class can raise the banner of internationalism against the barbarism of the nationalist war by refusing to die for the bourgeoisie.
[1] Kurdistan Workers Party, a former-Stalinist Kurdish nationalist organization based in Turkey but also operating in Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan.
[2] The escalating war in Turkish Kurdistan since the May of 2011 claimed the lifes of hundreds, perhaps thousands of guerrillas, soldiers and civillians and included the armed conflict between the PKK and the army as well as bomb attacks in the cities by the PKK and numerous aerial strikes by the army. Among the civillians dead especially due to aerial bombings are dozens of children.
[3] The Kurdish Regional Government in Southern (ie Iraqi) Kurdistan, lead by Masoud Barzani is basically a semi-independent state today with its own officially and legally recognized army, police force, intelligence agency, flag, parliament, national anthem, airlines and so on.
[4] Justice and Development Party, a center-right populist party which can be appropriately described as a Muslim Democrat party in the fashion of the European Christian Democrats. Close to other moderate islamist parties in the Middle East such as the Justice and Development Party of Morocco, the Freedom and Justice Party controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Renaissance Party in Tunisia among others.
[5] KCK or the Democratic Confederation of Kurdistan is the alleged urban organization of the PKK. In reality, the KCK can be explained as the proto-state of the Kurdish nationalist movement based in Northern Kurdistan. Technically, the KCK includes the PKK which is said to be its guiding ideological power; PJAK or the Free Life Party of Kurdistan, its organization in Iranian Kurdistan; PÇDK or the Democratic Solution Party of Kurdistan, its organization in Iraqi Kurdistan; HPG or the Popular Defence Forces, the armed forces of the KCK; Kongra Gel or the Popular Congress, its parliament formation among numerous other organs and organizations assuming numerous different functions of a state. The KCK trials can effectively be described as a Kurdish Scare.
[6] In other words BDP, or the Peace and Democracy Party, the latest name of the ill-fated legal Kurdish nationalist political party in Turkey which had been forced to change its name over and over again since its first formation as the Popular Labor Party in 1990. A significant amount of the KCK detainies are members of this party. The BDP managed to get 36 candidates elected as independents in the last parliamentary elections, although a number of their elected candidadtes weren't allowed to become MPs for being in prison, adding fuel to the tensions.
[7] Such as the army and the secularist bureaucracy.
[8] A symbol of the Kurdish nationalist movement, Leyla Zana is currently an independent MP in the Turkish parliament, not allowed to join the BDP with whose support she was elected because she still has a political prohibition. Previously elected as a deputy in 1991, Zana obained international fame following her arrest directly from the Turkish parliament in 1994, for the crime of speaking a sentence in Kurdish in parliament and was sentenced to spend fifteen years in prison although she was released in 2004. She is known for having closer ties to the Kurdish nationalist leaders such as Barzani in the Iraqi Kurdistan than most people in the Kurdish nationalist movement in Turkey.
The pundits of the bourgeoisie include China in their collection of economic ‘powerhouses’ known as the “BRICs”. This also includes Brazil, Russia and India, which are all supposedly going to be the salvation of crisis-ridden capitalism. These countries are painted as being at the other end of the scale to the “PIIGs” (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain). In reality, they’re just two sides of the same coin. The PIIGs have fallen far and fast into open economic crisis, the BRICs are about to, thereby extinguishing the faint hopes of the ruling class of an economic miracle capable of overcoming the mortal crisis of the capitalism. As the ICC's International Review 148 says: “The 'emerging' countries, like India and Brazil, are seeing a rapid reduction of activity. Even China, which since 2008 has been presented as the new locomotive of the world economy, is officially going from bad to worse. An article on the website of the China Daily on December 26 said that two provinces (one being Guangdong which is one of the richest in the country since it hosts a large part of the manufacturing sector for mass consumer products) have told Beijing that they are going to delay the payments on the interest on their debt. In other words, China is faced with bankruptcy”.
In an ominous development for the Chinese economy – and for capitalism more generally – there is a massive building boom/bubble swelling up which, like those in the USA, Ireland, Spain and elsewhere, can only burst, with dire consequences. There is a vast overcapacity shown in the hundred odd million square feet of unusable and unsellable building space in Shanghai. Housing here and in Beijing is priced around 20 times more than an average worker's annual pay. 85% of workers who need one, can't afford a new home. The regime has tightened credit because of rising inflation so, just like Britain, the USA, Ireland, Spain, etc., the soon-to-deflate bubble will threaten the banking system, particularly China's version of ‘sub-prime’, the unofficial grey market banking system financed by the large state-owned businesses of the regime. These losses in turn will adversely impact on the important local authorities of the state who will be unable to meet their obligations. Far from being a beacon of hope, the developing global crisis of capitalism means even more that the Chinese economy is just another factor of capitalist despair.
Developments in working class struggle in China show that it is fully a part of the global wave of class struggle and social protest that has been building up since around 2003. Also, because the extent and depth of the struggles, which now involving second-generation, largely literate migrant workers, events in China have a great potential. Not as an expression of bourgeois self-delusion in any ‘economic upturn’, but to as an important beacon for the world proletariat in the development of the class struggle.
The thousands and thousands of reported “incidents” of strikes and protests in the cities, along with unrest in the countryside are growing in number and intensity. Strikes are getting bigger: the three-day strike early in January in the industrial zone of Chengdu, was, according to The Economist (2/2/12) “... unusually large for an enterprise owned by the central government”. Here the workers gained a small increase of around $40 a month, but buying off strikes in such a way, along with overt repression, is no longer sufficient. The media black-out of unrest is no longer enough given the use of microblogs. The frequency of strikes at privately owned factories has also increased in the last year.
In the Pearl River Delta, which produces about one-third of Chinese exports, thousands of workers in Dongguan last November, protesting against wage-cuts, took to the streets and clashed with police. Photos of injured workers appeared on the internet. In the last few weeks there have been more protests here.
The Economist continues, observing recent and developing protests in Guangdong, as taking on a different form, in contrast to the settled and peaceful strikes that took place here in 2010: “...these days, rather than bidding to improve their lot, workers are mostly complaining about wages and jobs being cut. The strikers seem more militant... A report published this month by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, says that compared to 2010, the strikes of 2011 were better organised, more confrontational and more likely to trigger copycat action. 'Workers are not willing this time to accept that they have to make sacrifices, and secondly, fewer are willing to pack up and go home’”.
Repression is still the main weapon of the Chinese state – non-uniformed police are everywhere. But there are dangers in this policy. When a pregnant worker was manhandled by the police in Guangdong recently, thousands of workers attacked the police and government buildings. These workers are unlikely to go back to being settled peasants particularly when the countryside is raising its own form of protests against the effects of the crisis – as in the village of Wukan recently. There are a hundred and sixty million migrant workers (20 million lost their jobs when the economic shock-waves of 2008 hit China) and they are living in the cities. There is nothing for them to go back to and, given that, as migrants, they are supposed to pay for their children's education and family healthcare (which companies are supposed to pay for, but like the minimum wage is largely ignored), another area of class conflict has opened up.
The world economic crisis is deepening and this will have a significant effect on China and its economy. Given the present and developing levels of class struggle in this country, we should expect to see further developments in the struggles of workers in China, building on a number of strikes and protests reported in January.
Baboon, 2/2/12
On 2 February, the football match between the Port-Saïd team Al-Masry and the Cairo side Al-Ahly ended in a bloodbath: 73 dead and a thousand injured. The final whistle had just been blown – Al-Masry had won it - when local supporters, or people claiming to be, invaded the pitch and terraces, viciously attacking players and supporters of the Cairo team. During all this mayhem, with bottles, stones and fireworks flying all over the place, and in which the majority of dead were smothered or trampled in the resulting stampede, the police did not intervene. Even though football matches in Egypt have often seen very violent clashes between supporters, which is why they are often very tightly marshalled by the forces of order, on this occasion a lot of questions have been asked about the attitude of the police. According to a number of observers and testimonies, the police seemed to be allowing this explosion of hatred to take place. There are photos of police officers turning their back on the general chaos, as though nothing was happening; and the question is clearly posed whether this was a carefully orchestrated provocation, with cops infiltrated into the Port-Saïd supporters to stir things up and push things towards a massacre. “This was a programmed war” was the accusation of Ehab Ali, Al-Masry’s team doctor who witnessed the passivity of the security forces for a whole hour.
It looks like the new government was attempting to send out a message to opponents of the new regime made up of the army and the Muslim Brotherhood, via this assault on the Al-Ahly supporters[1]. These supporters, many of them sons of workers, took a frontline role in the fight against Mubarak and were very active in the confrontations with the police in Tahrir Square. They see themselves as ‘ultras’, i.e. a radical part of the rebellious youth which is out to change things in Egypt. One of their favourite slogans is “down with the military regime”, and one of their favourite songs is “All Cops are Bastards” – they often wear the acronym “ACAB”. Some of them have even given out a pamphlet called “The crimes against the revolutionary forces will not stop or scare the revolutionaries”.
During the match on 2 February, the Port Said supporters were chanting slogans in favour of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, and thus in opposition to the Cairo supporters. But what might have been just another episode in the nationalist and localist craziness which is increasingly infecting sport, and which is assiduously promoted by the media, now became a real “lesson” aimed at the opponents of the existing regime.
This was not just aimed at the young people who make up the ultras – many of whom have overcome the divisions between different groups of supporters to fight together against the post-Mubarak regime – but also and above all at the entire Egyptian population[2]. And it seems that the population knew it: the day after the tragedy, Cairo and other towns saw two days of very violent confrontations in which the police responded to the crowd with live ammunition. In the capital, the Interior Ministry was besieged and attacked. Officially there were ten deaths and hundreds of injuries, which made the population even more angry: “they know how to protect a ministry, but not a stadium”, as the demonstrators put it. They also called for the execution of Field Marshall Tantawi.
This reaction by the population was entirely legitimate, but it fell into the trap of responding to repression by rioting. Immediately after the macabre match in Port-Saïd, the town, along with a number of others in the country, was immediately and heavily patrolled by the army, proof that the regime knew what it was doing, that it was expecting riots and was ready to deal with them.
We need to look at things in a sober way. Popular revolt in the street, however ‘ultra’, is not enough to change society and it does not equal revolution. Let’s not forget that what forced Mubarak to stand down last year was not just the social revolt but above all the workers’ strikes which spread throughout the country and really scared the Egyptian and international bourgeoisie. The Egyptian and American bourgeoisie accelerated the departure of the old dictator in order to prevent this class movement from coming to the fore, from developing to the point where it could undermine illusions in ‘democracy’ and serve as an example to the working class across the world.
Wilma 17/2/12
[1] Henri Michel, who coached the Egyptian team Zamalek between 2007 and 2009, declared on RTL: “I have never felt that sort of danger in any part of Egypt. Passions were inflamed. Accidents can happen but there’s a long way between that and the drama that took place. I never thought such a thing could happen”.
[2] It was probably no accident that these events took place at a time when massive demonstrations were being planned to commemorate the “battle of the camels” of 2 February 2011, when Mubarak’s thugs attacked the demonstrators in Tahrir Square.
The winter months have now placed some distance between us in the here and now and the days when the Occupy Movement created a wave of occupations that seemed unstoppable across the U.S. Was this movement an ephemeral whim of the masses’ imagination, an accident of history, or rather part and parcel of the general and wider struggles put forth by the working class and other non-exploiting strata of society against capitalist oppression? The heat of the movement has clearly dissipated. This seems to be the case when we note that while during the early days of the movement the state’s repressive apparatus had to ‘soften’ its most ferocious tactics of social control in the face of the population’s indignation against police brutality and sympathy with the protesters, by January it was carrying out violent evictions of the most resilient encampments in the nation virtually unhindered. We can also point out that while in Oakland in December the brutal attack against an Iraq war veteran—which resulted in his hospitalization in a coma—sparked the Occupy Oakland blockade of the Longview port and the protest march by thousands of Oakland workers in its support, the social situation today has returned to a relative, if perhaps temporary, calm. Disregarding these signs that the initial vitality and authenticity of the movement have for the moment exhausted themselves, the Occupy Movement’s organizers are planning a ‘general strike’ for May 1st, and are putting forth calls to all affiliated groups to support this action. How successful can this action be in the face of a virtually demobilized movement? Can it develop a perspective for overcoming capitalism -- the root cause of humanity’s suffering-- against which at least initially the movement seemed to be to crystallizing, in isolation, without linking up to the wider struggles of the working class? And, most importantly, who can be the subject of a radical transformation of society today? The activists and organizers who today are largely at the helm of a demobilized movement? The labor parties and attendant unions? Or the non-exploiting masses themselves, consciously and autonomously organized?
As Marxists, we understand that in the period of capitalist decadence the burning questions about the future that decaying capitalism offers –the lack of perspective, the dislocation of a sense of collective, the sense of uncertainty, anxiety, alienation, the never ending wars, the degradation of the environment etc— find expression in spontaneous eruptions, without warning and without being planned in advance, as it used to be the case during the period of the ascendance of capitalism. Then, youthful capitalism had the ability to grant significant and long-lasting reforms. This made it possible to organize struggles with the help of the then existing permanent organizations of the working class –the unions and the socialist parties. But capitalism’s entry in its epoch of decadence irreversibly changed these conditions. The spontaneous nature of the masses’ movement is what has characterized the struggles seen across the globe in the last year and a half. It is what gives them authenticity.
The Occupy Movement in the U.S. did not escape from this fundamental tendency. But once the heat of the struggle is gone, the desire to come together to discuss the big social questions of the day and the determination not to accept the brutalization of existence imposed by capitalism cannot find expression in any permanent form of organization without it becoming co-opted by the superior forces of the state and its apparatus, of which the unions and leftist/bourgeois political organizations have become a part. Without the life given by the spontaneous mobilization of the masses, the call for a general strike is totally voluntarist, when not an outright manipulation by leftist organizations or their activist attendants. An affinity group affiliated with the Anti-Bureaucratic Bloc in Oakland notes how the Occupy Movement has not been able to resist the distortion and usurpation of its originally non-hierarchical General Assemblies by professional activists who established a practice of linking up with the leftist apparatus of the bourgeoisie and the unions. According to this group, this contributed to the de-vitalization of the movement. On libcom.org [28] on January 29, 2012, the day after the Oakland Police Department cleared the encampment there for the second, and last, time, the group writes: “…it was beginning to look like a class-based critique was becoming acceptable discourse. With the usual professional Leftist intelligentsia more firmly in control of the content and direction of Occupy Oakland tactics and strategies, however, the likelihood of a return to that initial wide appeal -- based on the workable and attractive principles (although not without their unique problems) of non-hierarchical decision making and the refusal to issue demands -- seems practically non-existent…bureaucratic tendencies began creeping into the open with [the leadership’s] cozying up to Organized Labor, an early self-destructive move (for Occupy as a whole, not for the leadership, for whom it was an astute career move).” We can discuss with the comrades who posted this on the significance of “non-hierarchical decision making” and the (attractive principle) of “the refusal to issue demands”. But we agree with their general assessment. The Occupy Movement, or whatever is left of it, is today in the hands of experienced activists and organizers. As such, we think it is in great jeopardy of missing the opportunity for a genuine development in the direction of class, proletarian positions.
But what do we mean by this? There's certainly a difference between a small group like Student Loan Justice (a group whose signs were a fixture at the original Occupy Wall Street encampment), for whom the campaign to make student loan debt dischargeable in bankruptcy is probably a sincere expression of a desire to improve the deteriorating conditions of life experienced by the younger generations today, and those professionals who hop from social movement to social movement, turning them toward partial struggles, reformism, or premature fights with the cops. Instead of capitalizing on the common grievances of the protesters and the wider working class, such as the necessity to defend one’s self and each other against the concerted attacks of crisis-ridden capitalism, whether they come in the form of precariousness, evictions, student debt peonage, lay-offs, chronic unemployment, cuts to benefits or social spending, the job of professional activism is to take advantage of the movement’s momentary questioning as to whether or which goals to pose for itself, who to turn to for help, and the real causes of society’s impasse to harness the movement’s genuine openness and derail it into reformist and single-issue campaigns. This only contributes to exhausting the potential and initial elan of the struggle into a myriad of meetings and marches, the aim of which is not to build unity and buoy the sense of self-confidence, but rather to weaken their potential.
This was clearly noticeable in the actions of west coast activists who worked in close ranks with the union apparatus there to fragment the potential for unity and solidarity with the working class which was expressed by Occupy Oakland when it shut down the Longview port in solidarity with its struggling longshoremen (see our article online on this issue). While the ‘rank and file’, genuine base of the Occupy movement on the west coast called on workers’ solidarity and organized meetings with longshoremen and other workers, activists worked around the clock and behind their backs to make sure that the unions’ presence would disrupt, intimidate, and discourage attempts by Occupy protesters and workers to build real ties of unity. This is because the more experienced activists and organizers vie for a position of power and status and identify rather with the bureaucratic tendencies of a union’s apparatus than with any spontaneous and autonomous expression of real class solidarity by the ‘rank and file’ protesters. We think these elements have done and are doing their best to occupy the terrain of the struggle ahead on the May 1st general strike in order to be better positioned to dampen all incipient potential for the movement to start at a deeper, wider, more politicized level than when it first started in September. However, even the kind of activism represented by the campaign to reform the student loan system can be absorbed by the ruling class. This campaign, if successful, would integrate more and more with bourgeois legality to "work out a solution" or it would turn to something disruptive and then disappear, but if it was successful the state would seek to bring it into the fold, so to speak, in order to enhance the mystification about its ‘benevolent’ nature.
Activism fully works for the benefit of the ruling class and in its class terrain. It is no coincidence that the Democratic Party uses the issue of the widening income gap between rich and poor as a campaign issue, posing as the party that champions the plight of the least lucky and the purveyor of benevolent relief. In this way, rather than encouraging a deepening of the understanding of how capitalism works, why it can no longer offer long-lasting reforms, what needs to be done to address the social problems of the world, and who is to do so, activism ties the movement to the belief that the capitalist state can intervene on behalf of the dispossessed, and that capitalism can still offer ‘opportunities’ and prosperity. Whether the terrain of the struggle will be diverted from the real issues posed by decadent capitalism into the dead-end of reformism and the democratic campaign or otherwise will depend largely on the general situation of the class struggle both nationally and internationally. This does not prove that the movement was from the beginning an orchestration of the bourgeois left and had no proletarian expressions of its own. Neither does it necessarily mean that any genuine expressions of possible politicization are defunct. It does mean, we believe, that the direction the movement ultimately finds its roots in its original difficulties and weakness. Whether these will ultimately prove to be the death knell of the movement, it is impossible to say today.
As it is often the case in similar circumstances, there are certainly individuals within activism who are genuinely interested in advancing the cause of the struggle of the exploited and who cannot be identified as ‘the enemy’. However, their political development, their clarity as to the goals and methods of the struggle will not advance so long as they don’t break free of the traps of activism, which will make every attempt to steer them away from real class positions. As we conclude from the https://libcom.org [28] post, and as we discuss in the article on the west coast longshore workers’ struggle, this is the situation on the West Coast, but what of the East Coast? New York City is, after all, the birthplace of the movement. However it cannot be said that it provides any clearer leadership and way forward. On the New York City Occupy website there is a very interesting post on the present state of the General Assembly and spokes council there, with interesting replies as well, clearly showing that the Occupy Movement as it was at its birth is now good and defunct. Here is a little excerpt: “Proposal to end spokes and the GA
I propose that we end both spokes council and the GA for several reasons.
…Spokes and the General Assembly are a recreation of the US Congress, without the judicial and executive branches to check the legislative branches power.
Both spokes and the GA have completely screwed over the most vulnerable occupiers. Spokes showed how at a whim it could just end a housing program for occupiers. Essentially people were thrown to the wolves by this decision. Both bodies have shown a complete disregard for marginalized voices such as the mentally ill or homeless. Violence has broken out not just because disruptors are bad, but the total disregard of body itself for certain voices has triggered some conflicts…
A secret organization like spokes does NOTHING for OWS in terms of public relations. As neither body is functional, both OWS and Spokes are an embarrassment to the movement…Ending spokes and the GA would not hamper the movement at all. Individuals and working groups could still work on their projects. In fact as both the spokes and GA absorb time from events or projects that occupiers could be working on, freeing up this time would help rejuvenate the movement. Spokes council meetings in particular take people away from downtown Manhattan, and this divides the movement.
Activists who are fighting against the system and against laws they consider injustice shouldn’t submit to a new system with equally oppressive structures (out of control legislative process)"1
While the post contains a number of confusions regarding the structure and purpose of a general assembly, it nonetheless gives a good idea of the situation today. To illustrate how very difficult it will be for the movement to express its voice freely and openly as it had been able to do initially, we can take a look at the calendar of events leading up to the ‘general strike’ of May 1st which Occupy’s organizers have set up. It is filled with guest speakers and personalities from the union apparatus, leftist activism, and radical academia who will hold teach-ins about most notably May Day and the general strike. This being said, we still affirm that this movement belonged to the working class. A social movement of this importance cannot be understood in isolation. When we place Occupy in the context of the international situation, as the movement itself did at the beginning, when it clearly stated it found its inspiration in the movements of the Indignant in Spain and in the students’ and workers’ protests in Greece, the broader context of its grievances is immediately grasped. But the movements in Spain and Greece themselves are the product of a historic period that opened up in 2006 with the anti-CPE movement in France and the Vigo, Spain massive workers’ struggle, breaking the reflux in consciousness which resulted from the campaigns around the collapse of the Stalinist bloc in 1989. The Occupy Movement of the U.S. is inscribed in this dynamic, both regarding the incipient, even if admittedly confused, questioning of capitalism, and the difficulties it is facing in finding a clear class terrain, class identity and class consciousness. In this sense, it is important to assess Occupy Movement on the basis of both its origin and its development in order to trace clearer perspectives for the struggles to come and in order to more fully understand the problems the working class faces in the present period. This can inform us as to how to help it overcome its difficulties.
However, it is not the scope of this article to present the weaknesses of the movement since its inception. We invite our readers to see this article on the democratic illusions in the movement [29], and elsewhere in our press and online articles. But we think it is important to at least point out that the Occupy Movement’s confusions regarding its own identity, its goals, its tactics, and its form of organization created the conditions of isolation from the wider struggles of the working class and opened the door to the intrusion and substitution by strata, political groups and individuals that do not belong to the working class terrain and who have expertly manipulated the openness and amorphous state of the consensus process to distort the functioning of the General Assemblies and install themselves at the movement’s helm. Further, the movement’s own illusions in democracy –expressed in its insistence that the ‘injustices’ of capitalism can be addressed by amending the Constitution, or the tax code, or the juridical definition of corporation- block and obscure a clear understanding of capitalism, which is not regarded as a social relationship between exploited and exploiters defended by the state, but as the usurpation of a state otherwise neutral and beneficial by ‘corporate greed’. This can further provide leftists with ammunition to steer the movement in the direction of electoral and reformist campaigns aimed at defending the integrity of the capitalist state. Given these conditions, what can the most genuine elements within the Occupy Movement do to find a way forward to their questioning, to their preoccupations, without drowning in the swamp of reformism and activism?
Undeniably, the working class is still confronting innumerable difficulties in developing its struggles and its consciousness. It is also true that it has not taken the lead in many of the important mobilizations we have seen in the last year and a half, and that when it has mobilized, even massively, even in general strikes, it has not been able, for the most part, to force the state to relent its brutal attacks. But just as it is impossible to understand the Occupy Movement in the isolation of the U.S., so it is impossible to understand why the working class is the revolutionary class of our epoch if we look at each of its struggles in isolation from their wider historical context. One thing for certain we can say: the string of austerity measures –layoffs, precariousness, cuts to services and wages, cuts to pension and health benefits, cuts to social security in the form of lengthening the stay at work—gives the lie to the ‘theories’ that sprouted up in the 1970’s about the working class having ‘integrated’ as part of some ‘labor aristocracy’! Indeed, one important characteristic of capitalism is that it has created, for the first time in history, a class that is both exploited and revolutionary. This is because capitalism’s mode of exploitation rests on the most developed form of private ownership. The working class does not own the means of production and its existence cannot therefore be based on the exploitation of other classes. On the contrary, it is obliged to sell its labor power to the owners of the means of production. Its conditions of existence are thus completely at the mercy of the market, the general conditions of the production, sale, and realization of commodities. It is this generalization of commodity relations that rests at the basis of the contradictions of capitalism, not ‘corporate greed’, as some occupiers believe, and that generates the crisis of overproduction, with its sequel of layoffs, brutal attacks against the very class that produces all the wealth of society, degradation of the environment as capital desperately tried to reduce its costs of production, wars, etc. A class that produces all the wealth of society without owning a little bit of it has only one interest to defend: the abolition of the conditions of its own exploitation, i.e., the abolition of capitalism itself. This is why the essential place the working class occupies in these generalized relations of commodity exchange puts it at the center of a social conflict which can only be resolved through massive, generalized, and unified class confrontations against the oppression of capital. These confrontations are not inevitable, but it is the working class that will be at their center stage when, and if, they develop. Without a doubt, the working class is still far from developing the capacity to take the system head on and change it through a revolution. But if this task seems enormous from the point of view of the working class, it is because it still needs to find the confidence in itself that when it unites the various threads of its indignation and discontent of which we are seeing the sparks, it will be the unstoppable force in society that can lead the whole of humanity toward the perspective of a new world. For all these reasons, it is when the working class and the Occupy Movement find and forge links of solidarity on a class, autonomous terrain away from unions, activism, and reformism that a real perspective for a real, radical change can open up.
Ana, March 2012
The article below was originally published in February of last year in the aftermath of the shooting death in Sanford, Florida of unarmed African-American teenager Trayvon Martin by "neighborhood watch captain" George Zimmerman. The case provoked weeks of protests as local authorities initially refused to prosecute Zimmerman citing Florida's "Stand Your Ground Law," which they claimed gave Zimmerman the right to defend himself.
Since the article was published, a special prosecutor appointed by Florida's Governor filed second-degree murder charge against Mr. Zimmerman. This lead to a two-week long trial that has just concluded with Mr. Zimmerman's acquittal. For weeks, the trial dominated the cable news networks, even knocking the scandal around NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden out of the spotlight. The media's lurid media spectacle around the trial featured legal experts handicapping the state and defense cases as if it were a sporting event, right-wing commentators fearing race riots if Mr. Zimmerman was acquitted, and Civil Rights leaders pinning the future of racial justice on a successful conviction.
Given the media circus around the trial, we think it is appropriate to "republish" our original article on the shooting now. In the article, we argued that whatever the outcome of the investigation and possible trial, there could be no "justice" for Trayvon Martin, his family or any other young person subject to similar treatment obtained through the bourgeois justice system.
Clearly, the trial has been a powerful confirmation of our analysis. Prosecuting one man, regardless of how distasteful we may find his character and actions, cannot solve the deep rooted historical scars that produce racial stereotyping and prejudice as persistent social problems in the United States (and many other countries); nor can it compensate for the galloping social decomposition that produced the ideological and social conditions that are ultimately responsible for the tragic and fatal events of that day in February of last year.
Even when the bourgeois criminal justice system functions as it is supposed to (and it rarely does), it can only ever consider the facts and circumstances of individual cases according to its own very limited legal principles; it cannot get to the root of the social, historical and economic problems that produce the context for these individual cases. Bourgeois justice may have exonerated Mr. Zimmerman for now, but it cannot excuse the violence, tragedy and suffering that the continued existence of capitalism will continue to produce everyday. This would be the case even if Mr. Zimmerman had been convicted and sent to prison. Whatever the verdict was, it was only ever going to be the case that there will be more Trayvon Martins to come, as long as this inhuman system continues to exist.
On February 26th, Trayvon Martin, an unarmed seventeen-year-old African American man, was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a "neighborhood watch captain," as he walked home from a local convenience store in Sanford, Florida. The official investigation into the killing by the local authorities has been fraught with difficulties and controversy. About the only thing we know for sure is that Trayvon was not carrying any weapons at the time he was killed, carrying only a bag of Skittles and an iced tea he purchased moments before his life was tragically snuffed out.
For his part, Mr. Zimmerman claims to have acted in self-defense, shooting Trayvon only after their confrontation turned violent. Citing Florida's controversial "stand your ground law," Zimmerman's camp claim that he had no legal duty to retreat before using deadly force to defend himself. But what was Zimmerman doing in the first place pursuing a young man through the neighborhood for no other crime other than being black and wearing a hoodie?1 Zimmerman's camp claims he was acting to protect his neighborhood, which had been subject to a string of recent burglaries reportedly carried out by young black males. But why should he feel as if it was his job to protect his neighborhood? And protect it from what exactly? In bourgeois society, it seems only individuals can be responsible for crime. Rarely, and only in passing, are social and economic conditions such as the erosion of the social fabric, a pervasive each for their own mentality, mass unemployment and poverty that produce crime in the first place ever considered. No, under capitalism, the poor are considered the "dangerous classes" which it is the duty of all good citizens to keep a watchful eye over. Unfortunately, for Trayvon Martin, in the United States, being young and black is generally enough to raise suspicion that one is up to no good.
Unsurprisingly, this episode has provoked a tremendous outrage in the African-American community in Florida and indeed across the entire country. But the outrage is not just limited to the official African-American spokespersons; a deep sense of remorse and regret are gripping the country over the fact that a young man could lose his life in such a brutal way apparently having done nothing wrong.
The last several weeks have seen Trayvon's case become a cause célèbre for the national civil rights organizations, as well as the national media. Last week, over 30,000 people participated in a rally in Sanford, with similar rallies being held in cities a far afield as Chicago and Washington, DC. The outspoken civil rights activist, Reverend Al Sharpton has taken up Trayvon's case and even President Obama has entered the discussion, saying that, "If he had a son, he would look like Trayvon."2 Of course, the President fails to mention that if he had a son, he wouldn't be walking down the street without Secret Service protection. Even the contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, who have not shied away from playing the race card over the course of their bitter campaign, have been forced to denounce the shooting. 3
From our perspective as revolutionary Marxists, Taryvon's death is indeed a terrible tragedy. How revealing is it that in our day and age, a chain of events can occur where a short trip to a local convienence store ends in a brutal death? This incident stands as a stark reminder that whatever advances might have been made over the past several decades, the quest for true human solidarity across racial lines will always be frustrated as long as capitalist society still stands. Trayvon's family, the African American community and all those concerned with human dignity have every right to be outraged by this terrible event. This incident is but one more example that the social system under which we live—capitalism—is more and more characterized by senseless violence and a total disregard for human life. Even if Zimmerman's fears about a pending burglary were correct, there is no rational reason why this should have lead to Trayvon's brutal death in the neighborhood streets. Under capitalism it seems the protection of property rights trumps the dignity of human life. Clearly, this incident should cause us all to think about the root cause behind this type of senseless interpersonal brutality.
However, the involvement of the various bourgeois civil rights organizations and the narrative being developed by the national media appear to be designed to make sure we never get to the underlying issues that have produced this brutal outcome. Over the last several weeks, the civil rights organizations have turned the outrage over this shooting into a campaign to pressure the state into making an arrest and prosecuting Zimmerman. 4 Calls for "Justice for Trayvon," and "No Justice, No Peace," have been the dominant slogans of the rallies and the press conferences.
Indeed, the local police and prosecutors seem to have bungled the investigation into this case from the beginning. This fact seems to finally have been acknowledged by the bourgeois authorities. The Sanford Police Chief has temporarily stepped down, and the local prosecutor has recused himself from the case. Florida Governor Rick Scott—himself a radical Tea Party Republican—has appointed a special prosecutor and a grand jury is scheduled to examine evidence in the case in early April with the goal of finding out if there is any charges that can legally be brought against Zimmerman at all. Moreover, word is that the federal Justice Department is reviewing the evidence to see if there is anyway that Zimmerman can be charged with a federal hate crime—a charge that could bring a life sentence if he were convicted, since the underlying act led to Trayvon's death. 5
Clearly, the failure of the state to bring any charges against Zimmerman has fueled the outrage that continues to brew. How can a man shoot an unarmed teenager to death in the street and no charges are brought? This must be the result of a racist justice system that does not value the life of black people. If the circumstances had been reversed, had it been an armed black man, shooting a white teenager, certainly the authorities wouldn't be discouraged by the state's odd gun laws from making an arrest?6 Surely, there is a way of making some charges against this man stick? After all, we have all seen Law and Order—we now that when the state wants someone to go to jail, there are always creative ways to find a basis for prosecution. The state's seemingly willful failure to bring any charges of Zimmerman seems to harken back to the brutal days in the struggle for civil rights, when the Ku Klux Klan, and even local law enforcement officers themselves, could murder black people with impunity.
We can certainly sympathize with the frustration and outrage expressed here, but for us these are the wrong questions for getting to the bottom of the senseless and often racist violence that so often characterizes capitalist society. Framing the problem as the lack of prosecution of Mr. Zimmerman, does not escape the horizon of bourgeois justice, which for us is no justice at all in the end. After all, what is the bourgeois justice system? A set of laws and institutions set up above all to protect the sanctity of private property. Its version of justice for the masses is no more than cruel retribution. No serious academic who studies these issues really believes the bourgeois justice system is capable of humanely rehabilitating anyone. Its only purpose is to discipline and punish the bodies of offenders and to convince the rest of us to be content that once the state has extracted its pound of flesh, no further questioning of the root basis of crime is necessary.
We have no way of knowing what motivated Mr. Zimmerman to take the actions that he did. However, given his history of making dozens of phone calls to the police sometimes on the same day, it seems reasonable to consider whether he suffers from some kind of detachment from reality, a perverse identification with the repressive power of the capitalist state, which he strove to emulate. This phenomenon is well known to law enforcement officials, something that has been called "Wanna-Be Cop Syndrome" by some commentators. This may be reason enough to call Mr. Zimmerman's mental health into question, something that even under bourgeois justice could mitigate his personal responsibility for his actions.
However, whatever Mr. Zimmerman's mental state, it seems clear that his actions are only the logical fulfillment of a culture and a society that more and more encourages a "shoot first and ask questions later" attitude towards problem solving. An environment that more and more erodes social solidarity and promotes the most lurid interpersonal competition. Whether it is at the workplace or in the streets, decomposing capitalism seeks to turn everyone into an isolated monad, looking after their own best interests. If you aren't prepared to be brutal and ruthless, you are reduced to the status of a social loser, or worse, in Trayvon's case, cannon fodder in the fulfillment of a sick will to power.
For us, the real story in the Trayvon Martin case is the intersection of such a personality disorder with the social decomposition of capitalist society. Racism may predate the development of decomposition, and maybe even capitalism itself, but today's expression of racial animus take place in a context of the utter degradation of human relations characteristic of a moribund society. Rather than focusing on the question of Mr. Zimmerman's possible individual criminal responsibility (which would allow us to think "justice" could be served by his prosecution), we ask what kind of society produces the conditions that allow a personality such as his easy access to a gun, legitimates his power lust by giving him a position as a "neighborhood watch captain" and then emboldens him to fulfill his power fantasy through the "stand your ground" law? Our answer: a capitalist society in full decomposition.7
The absolutely bizarre law that may or may not allow Zimmerman to escape prosecution in this case seems to us to itself be a function of the social decomposition of capitalist society. These laws—on the books in some two dozen states— revise the common law standard for self-defense by allowing individuals to use deadly force to defend themselves and others without first obliging them to exhaust all opportunities to retreat from the situation. Moreover, many of these laws allow individual citizens to use deadly force to prevent the commission of any felony: even crimes against property such as burglary. Couple these laws with the vast expansion of the right to carry a concealed weapon that has occurred over the last decade and American society begins to resemble more and more the days of the Wild West. In the time of the Tea Party, even law enforcement it seems is being privatized with deadly consequences. American society moves further and further towards embodying the "everyman for himself" mentality that characterizes capitalist decomposition on so many levels.
Not surprisingly, law enforcement officials have generally opposed such laws. As professionals in repression, they know they don't need vigilante loose canons armed to the teeth making their job of policing capitalist society any more difficult.8 Not least because it flies in the face of the ideology of equality and justice and creates a social layer that thinks the only way the law will be enforced is to take it into one's own hands. 9 But in today's political climate, it seems as if doesn't matter what the experts say; the legislative process advances according to its own perverted political calculus that often defies logic. The inordinate weight carried by the National Rifle Association (N.R.A.) in U.S. politics has only been magnified by the Tea Party ascendancy, a political fact that makes the main factions of the bourgeoisie more and more uneasy, even as the Republicans repeatedly seek political gain by exploiting fears that the Democrats will take your guns away, and Democrats strain themselves to convince the electorate of their pro-gun credentials in awkward campaign photo-ops involving shotguns and dead animals.
In the end, we don't think that there can be any "justice" for Trayvon in the bourgeois justice system. Zimmerman may or may not be prosecuted by the state in the end. But even if he is, this will not address the social decomposition that produces the conditions that allow an act like this to transpire in the first place. The only way we can transcend these episodes of senseless interpersonal violence is to abolish capitalism itself altogether. Only then can we advance towards building a truly human community, in which each individual is valued according to his unique capabilities in service of the species as a whole. In such a society, there will be no need for police, "neighborhood watch captains" or "stand your ground laws." While the outrage over Trayvon's killing is indeed justified—we don't think we gain very much by focusing on the prosecution of one man.10 We need to call the entire society itself into question. To do less only lets the real criminal off the hook: capitalism itself.
Henk, 03/25/2012
1 Fox News Commentator Geraldo Rivera sparked controversy when he said that Trayvon's hoodie was as much responsible for his death as George Zimmerman was.
2 Matt Williams. "Obama: Trayvon Martin death a tragedy that must be fully investigated." The Guardian. March 23, 2012.
3 Although this didn't prevent Newt Gingrich from scolding Obama about politicizing the tragedy and using it to "divide Americans."
4 Indeed, on the face of it the idea that justice for African-Americans—disproportionate victims of the U.S. bourgeois justice system—involves an arrest and a prosecution seems odd. According to Michelle Alexander, writing in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color-Blindness (The New Press: New York) 2010, there are now more African Americans under correctional control as a result of bourgeois "justice" than there were slaves in 1850.
5 Curt Anderson. "Trayvon Martin case: US could bring hate crime charge against George Zimmerman." The Christian Science Monitor. March 25, 2012.
6 Of course, the narrative in this case may be slightly complicated by the fact that Zimmerman's mother is Hispanic. The media seems to have downplayed this fact though as it might disrupt the more simplistic and racially incendiary narrative of a "white man" shooting an unarmed black teenager.
7 In fact, rather than taking steps to prevent such a person from obtaining a deadly weapon, the culture and the laws seem to actually encourage it.
8 The "stand your ground" gun laws are just one example of a growing phenomenon of laws being crafted that totally contradict the consensus of the experts in the fields they concern. This seems to be a growing feature of the U.S. political crisis. Other prominent examples include: the anti-immigrant "Papers Please Laws," which many law enforcement officials have argued only make their jobs more difficult and the non-dischargeability of student loans in bankruptcy, which just about every expert to study the matter has denounced. So irrational is this law that it is now even opposed by some student loan companies!
9 Of course, this doesn't mean that the state wouldn't hesitate to use such social layers in the service of the repression of working-class movements if the situation called for it. Perhaps, there is more than a surface connection between these developments in contemporary U.S. society and the Freikorps that crushed the German Revolution?
10 So successfully has the issue been framed in terms of Zimmerman's personal guilt that the so-called New Black Panther Party has issued a $10,000 reward for his capture. What they intend to do with him if he is captured is unclear, but it is hard not to see in this a mirror image of the sick vigilantism that led to Trayvon's death in the first place.
Throughout the 1990s, the territory of the former state of Yugoslavia was the scene of a series of horrifying massacres justified by the ideology of ethnic chauvinism. The war in the Balkans brought imperialist slaughter closer to the heartlands of capitalism than at any time since 1945. The local bourgeoisies did all they could to whip their populations into a frenzy of ethnic and nationalist hatred, the precondition for supporting or participating in the bloody slaughter of the Yugoslav wars.
These hatreds have not been eliminated by the uneasy peace which now reigns in the region, so it is all the more heartening to see signs that there are those in the region who look for a way forward in the social movement against capitalism and not in any dreams of national aggrandisement. We have seen, for example, a number of struggles by students in Serbia and Croatia, which should be seen as another expression of the same international tendency which we have seen in Western Europe and in the USA with the indignados and Occupy movements. And we are now witnessing the development of a genuinely internationalist politicised minority in both countries, a which openly rejects national divisions and seeks cooperation among all internationalist revolutionaries.
One expression of this new movement is the Declaration of the Birov collective in Serbia, which has recently emerged from a growing nucleus there (see their website, www.birov.net [38]). We are publishing it here. The most important thing about this Declaration, it seems to us, is the clarity and directness with which it puts forward a series of fundamental class positions:
affirmation of the revolutionary nature of the working class against all “post-marxist mystifications”;
necessity for the self-organisation of the working class in opposition to the trade unions, defined as organs of the capitalist state;
insistence that the workers’ assemblies and eventually the workers’ councils are the instrument for the mass struggle against capitalism;
rejection of all national liberation struggles and capitalist wars, seen as a fundamental “border line between revolutionaries and the patriotic, social democratic left”;
characterisation of the so-called ‘socialist states’ as capitalist regimes.
The last two points are obviously especially important given the recent conflicts in the region, and the increasing use of nationalist rhetoric by the ruling class.
Underlying these revolutionary positions is a definite recognition that capitalism is no longer in its progressive phase and can no longer provide permanent reforms: in other words, that it is a system in decline.1
The Declaration also makes an interesting observation on the transition period, recognising the problem of the conservative ‘drag’ exerted by certain semi-state organisms.
Clearly there remain areas for discussion and clarification among internationalists, for example on the question of organisation, the perspectives for the class struggle, and the meaning of anarcho-syndicalism today. At the very least, we can welcome a healthy realism in the Declaration’s statement that “no revolutionary organization can be larger or stronger than the current workers` general position dictates”. These and no doubt other questions can only be elucidated through open and fraternal debate.
ICC, February 2012
“If there was hope, it must lie in the proles” - George Orwell
Aware of the class divisions inside the capitalist system, the brutal exploitation of which all of us are victims, the state oppression which makes that exploitation possible, and also the unsustainabile nature of the current militaristic order which is inevitably heading towards a catastrophe, we organize ourselves into “Birov”, an organization with the goal of radically opposing these social phenomena and of achieving their final eradication through class struggle.
By realizing that the working class, as the class hit the most by today’s social structure, holds the largest revolutionary potential, “Birov” organizes class conscious, militant workers with the intention of spreading class consciousness within the working class, and directing it towards organized workers` struggle realized by means of workers` councils. We reject all “post-Marxist” mystifications which talk about the dying out or non-existence of the working class and therefore negate the class struggle and the crucial role of the workers as an agent of revolutionary change. A member of the working class is anyone who has to sell their labour power to capital : a butcher, a worker in the sexual industry or a girl working in a printing shop alike.
Emancipatory actions must be based on the self-activity of the oppressed, and on autonomous workers` councils, striving towards the creation of a self-managed society, without a state, without classes and without the involuntary institutions of civil society. Every new attempt at overcoming the old society must be directed towards organizing the council system on an international scale, because only a radical change in the balance of class forces can initiate progressive social changes. The council form set up after the dissolution of the traditional, hierarchical capitalist state machinery is not something that revolution should strive for – here it only exists as a conservative organ which exists during the revolution, and the final self-organization and emancipation of the working class will imminently threaten its power, as well as the existence of that order itself. In this imminent conflict revolutionaries must recognize autonomously organized workers as the revolutionary vanguard in the final and decisive battle against the old order and for the society of free producers.
Only the open and unrestricted opposition to divisions created by this society will unleash the subversive potential which the existing workers` struggle holds today. Workers` struggle must be founded on the workplaces, where workers recognize themselves as producers and where class differences are being projected and resolved in their essence. We reject the party as completely inadequate for revolutionary organizing of the working class. Old reform parties which are remembered for winning political freedoms and reduced work hours, weren’t that in the first place : their primary purpose was a struggle for economic and political reforms, where an anti-political consciousness was yet to be and where it was still striving towards traditional –hierarchical forms of representation.
We can conclude that “Birov” can be characterized as an anarcho-syndicalist propaganda organization. It addresses workers in struggle and gathers anarcho-syndicalists which act by forming militant class groups at their workplaces. These groups shouldn`t be mistaken for trade unions because their intention is not to grow in numbers but to participate in assembly movements. They don`t have a formal structure and political programme. These groups are formed at workplaces where there is already a tradition of autonomous workers` organization and where a network of workers tends to continue their activities and develop new ways of struggling.
We consider that today the trade unions cannot have a political program which is not reactionary, and thus the only possible way for the mass of workers to organize can be assemblies; mass organizing in a “permanent” organization isn`t possible until the revolution becomes an immediate goal. Trade unions have, as instruments of reform struggle and a separate economic organization, lost their reason of existence in conditions in which they cannot any longer consistently reflect the aspirations of the working class. They are today nothing less than a state incorporated instrument which keeps the workers` struggle depoliticized and within a strictly limited framework They represent a kind of prison for the working class, without which the workers would be free in their tendency towards self-organization. Paid and often corrupt union bureaucrats are nothing but guards and wardens of those prisons. Therefore, unions are just an arm of a state which implements another kind of oppression of the working class. Capitalism cannot provide permanent reforms anymore: every struggle for the immediate and daily interests of proletariat, where they are not suppressed by trade unions and parties, necessarily evolves towards the revolutionizing of the masses and action against the repressive and exploitative foundations of the capitalist order. Because of that, today, any kind of phenomenon that tends to depoliticize the workers` struggle and keep it in the imposed framework, is necessarily reactionary. Claims about how anarcho-syndicalist organizations should be “non-ideological” are no alternative to the fake divisions imposed by capitalism, but only a re-emergence of the old (unenforceable) idea about separate economic organization, and in practice most often end up as leftist activist networks which reproduce the ideology of the mainstream, nationalist “left”. Opposed to those claims, anarcho-syndicalist organizations are class-militant and political organizations : the only principles of anarcho-syndicalism which are accepted by all members are necessarily political in their content.
We see ourselves not as an organization which necessarily tends towards growth in numbers and thus puts itself as a goal, an idea which often results in radical activism; nor do we consider ourselves as a kind of vanguard of the working class which dictates its interests. Our goal is to develop an organization which will be able to intervene in workers` struggle. We share our accumulated experience with the workers and by that we can increase the capacity of the workers` struggle, thus helping its extension and its further organization. Such a relation creates a mutual dependence and therefore no revolutionary organization can be larger or stronger than the current workers` general position dictates; and because of that we aren`t afraid of workers self-organizing and of “loss of control”; it is, on the contrary, our goal. Consequently, the basis for the unification of oppressed groups in capitalism will not be set by any party or “front”, nor by a mass trade union, or an anarchist group which acts in the preparation phase, the phase of re-grouping of revolutionary forces, but by a mass anti-capitalist struggle organized in workers’ councils under whose wing alone can the true emancipatory vision be articulated. Therefore, the best way of expressing solidarity with oppressed groups is the development of our own struggle at the workplace and constant education about the questions of oppression.
We condemn as completely reactionary any stance on the revolutionary character of ’national liberation’ struggles. Drawing a parallel with bourgeois-revolutionary national movements is wrong and in this period anti-nationalism is a border line between revolutionaries and the patriotic, social-democratic left. In today`s capitalist society every state is imperialist and the growth of national consciousness can only be seen as a means of preserving the capitalist order in conditions of permanent crisis and impending doom. Any acceptance of national, populist discourse can only draw workers towards a bloody imperialist war; it is the prelude to such a historic moment, as we all witnessed during the beginning and the middle of the 20th century.
In total contrast to the ideas of the anti-war movement of the First World War, counter-revolutionary ideology subordinates the workers to the needs of the national bourgeoisie and all in the name of “anti-imperialism” and “peoples’ liberation”. The results are historically recognizable and can be seen in the “socialist revolutions” after the end of the October revolutionary period, which were victims of party instrumentation and suppression of any form of workers’ self-organization and have resulted in totalitarian imperialist regimes of state capitalism, or so-called “real socialism”.
The liberation of the working class will be carried out by the workers themselves, or it won`t be at all.
Belgrade, Serbia, October 2011
1See their FAQ, which also gives more explanation of this and other aspects of the group’s politics
From the start, the unions, the left of the bourgeoisie, and even some from among the libertarian milieu on the west Coast have cast the conflict between the Longview (Washington) longshoremen (ILWU Local 21) and Export Grain Terminal (EGT) corporation as a struggle against ‘union busting’. EGT signed an agreement with the Longview Port promising that all cargo work would be done with the International Longshoremen Workers’ Union (ILWU) workers, but has not kept the promise and tried to hire non-union labor unsuccessfully, and then contracted with another union, Operating Engineers Local 701, who incited its workers to cross Local 21’s picket lines. ILWU workers have received the support of the Occupy movement, who, on Monday, December 12 shut down the major west coast ports of Oakland, Portland, Longview, and Seattle. San Diego, Vancouver, and Long Beach partly shut down as well, and echoes of the unrest were felt as far ashore as Hawaii and Japan. EGT has spent $200 million to build an automated grain elevator at the Port of Longview, and had planned to bring in its first ship in mid-January. Operations at Longview, as at other ports, today are highly automated and longshoremen are the highest paid, yet one of the numerically smallest group of workers at the port. This is the result of more than forty years of union’s negotiations with the bosses which, while guaranteeing high wages, benefits, and job security also allowed for attrition of jobs as workers retired and automation in the context of the ongoing economic crisis made the hiring of new workers superfluous. This created the conditions of isolation the longshoremen find themselves in today and the opportunity to create divisions among groups of workers at the port, where the truckers are by far the lowest paid but also the most numerous workers at the port. They are forced to work as independent contractors and are therefore non-unionized. In this context, even some who are critical of the unions have called for the ‘organization of the un-organized’ truckers at the time when the Occupy movement decided to shut down the ports in a sign of solidarity with the struggling workers. This decision by the Occupy movement could have been taken as an opportunity to start establishing real ties of solidarity among the different groups of port and other workers. The open discussions at the General Assemblies organized by the Occupy movement could have been used as spaces where workers could flesh out a set of common demands that can help them unify their forces and strengthen their ability to self-organize. The call for organizing the un-organized, while sounding radical, does nothing more than letting in the usual divisive union tactics through the back door. Under these conditions, EGT has never had an intention to hire workers with ILWU’s salary and benefits. Instead, it understood the opportunity to make use of the existing conditions of isolation and division among the port workers to pit workers against each other and win the day. Further, EGT has known from the beginning of the existing feud between and within the various local unions, who raid each other as union membership dwindles to barely one in ten workers. In the words of Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO president, in response to calls to support ILWU 21, the AFL-CIO won’t take sides because the feud between ILWU and Operating Engineers is a ‘jurisdictional dispute’. What ‘jurisdictional’ means is the opportunity for this or that local union to curry the favor of any given boss by offering ‘deals’ which would secure their position as brokers between that company and the workers. In order to achieve this goal, the unions must also show the bosses how skillful they are in keeping the working class divided and disoriented, while brokering contracts that are advantageous to the bosses. This is precisely what happened during the dispute between EGT and the ILWU. In this sense, Occupy Longview, Occupy Seattle, Occupy Oakland, and Occupy Portland, all of whom organized and participated in several solidarity actions with port workers from December through February, would do well to draw all the necessary lessons about the treacherous actions of both union officials and some of the Occupy’s organizers from the events that happened on January 5th in Portland and January 6th in Seattle, when various officials of ILWU Locals repeatedly disrupted and sabotaged the meetings planned in solidarity with the port workers. In the words of an organizer of the January 6th Longview, WA action planning meeting and solidarity panel in Seattle, we find the excellent intentions and interest in helping the class build unity and solidarity: “The Friday event emphasized the importance of working class unity and solidarity. It was a historic event bringing together rank and file union members, along with those from the 89% of the working class that is not unionized and unemployed. Through this event, we showed that Occupy is a new type of working class movement that goes beyond the limits of traditional trade unionism by bringing together working class people across industrial lines and across lines of race, gender, and national origin. Building off the example of December 12th west coast port shutdown, speakers dare to envision forms of class struggle that exceed the limits set by 20th century labor laws purposed to constraint past struggles into tame truces that are being broken now by companies like EGT.” In the accounts of what followed, union goons provoked fist fights and constant disruptions, attempted to prohibit the attendance to the meeting by their members, and usurped the public microphone to repeatedly warn Occupy protesters that the unions would not accept their show of solidarity to “their’ workers, and insisted that Occupy stop entreating them to come and speak to their meetings. The same writer continues: “We had initially thought we had a functional relationship with the officers of Local 19 (Seattle). Prior to December 12, we had established communications with the union officers where they had expressed respect for our port shutdown efforts even though they said they could not be involved because of labor law constraints and threats from the courts. On November 30th, the President of Local 19, Cam Williams has publicly received a solidarity letter we had written to the local, and in response he held his fist up in the air saying ‘Solidarity Forever’.” This is the same Cam Williams who came to the January 6th meeting with a goon squad who got drunk before showing up at the meeting and who provoked a fist fight. He shoved people around, snatched the microphone and announced that any of his Local’s members present at the event would be penalized their wages for being there. We can only hope the Occupy movement on the west coast will learn from this experience that ‘organizing the unorganized’, contrary to what some present as the way forward for the class struggle, can only lead to the same kind of situation when workers really try to express solidarity and try to unite their struggles. We also hope it is now clear to them that their past insistence on treating the local union official as ‘equal’ partners in organizing the various rallies and marches in support of the port workers was completely wrong. The unions’ divisive tactic, when they can afford to hide their most virulent goon-squad methods, fully aid the bosses achieve the workers’ acquiescence.
It is clear that while the longshoremen have been locked in a battle to protect their jobs and benefits, their struggle is identical with the struggle which the truckers and the workers of Operating Engineers Local 701 would wage in defense of their conditions of life against the attacks of capital. This message of unity is what could forge the solidarity workers need to confront capital. The struggle is a class struggle, not one against ‘union busting’, nor one about ‘organizing the un-organized’. As of January 27th, 2012 a settlement has been reached between EGT and ILWU Local 21, just in time for the first EGT ship to arrive. It arrived escorted by armed U.S. Coast Guard vessels and helicopters, the first known use of the military to intervene in a labor dispute on the side of management in 40 years. The ILWU trumpets the settlement as a victory for the workers because ‘union busting’ has not succeeded, and union jobs are back in Longview. It praises the Occupy movement (!!!) for helping achieve this ‘victory’. Those who called for organizing the unorganized may be baffled by the union’s ‘success’ in achieving this ‘victory’ without the involvement of the more numerous, and un-organized, truckers at the ports. Who won? In effect ‘confidential’, i.e., secret, behind closed doors, out of the control of the workers themselves, negotiations between the ILWU and EGT still continue, and it is likely the decisions will not be brought to light until the social situation is deemed calm, because we can rest assured, it will not be a ‘victorious’ contract. The victory, it seems to us, belongs squarely in the hands of the bosses and the bourgeois state, of which the unions are but an arm. The ILWU has won the confidence of the bosses because it has succeeded in freezing and derailing the incipient attempts at solidarity and unity across various sectors of the working class which Occupy correctly had aspired to. The truckers will continue to work under miserable conditions. The longshoremen are very likely to get a bad contract, while the ‘scabs’ who EGT had hired will continue their existence trying to make ends meet somehow, somewhere. Meanwhile, the ILWU across the west coast boast of having done the job that Governor Gregoire could not do when she intervened a year ago to try to settle the dispute. They say the workers have reasons to have confidence in the union! And the workers that produce the grain used by EGT and the soil they produce it from will continue to be exploited. Occupy, along with the rest of the working class, must learn that the only way to end this misery is through building real unity and solidarity across categories, race, gender, and nationality lines as they have started recognizing: by extending the struggle and keeping it firmly in their own hands and outside of unions’ and activists’ control.
Ana, March 2012
After six months of struggle against the BESNA agreement[1], which would have meant pay cuts of up to 33%, serious deskilling throughout the building industry, and unemployment for all those refusing to sign the new contracts, the electricians have forced the bosses to back off. Following a failed injunction against an imminent official national strike called by the Unite union, the main BESNA signatory, Balfour Beatty, announced that it was dropping plans to bring in the BESNA agreement, and most of the other firms involved have now followed suit.
As we have shown in a series of articles about this dispute[2], the electricians have fought this battle with an extraordinary degree of militancy and inventiveness. They have occupied public places, blocked roads, held open-mic debates in the street, disregarded the laws on picketing, accepted the support of other workers at their protests, and tried to link up with others in struggle, such as the students and the public sector workers at the big November demonstrations. The most significant expression of this combative spirit was probably the almost country-wide unofficial strike action that took place on 7 December when Unite called off an official national strike under the threat of an injunction. This is a far cry from the tame rituals which we have associated with the recent series of official days of action against public sector cuts or attacks on pensions. All this was almost completely blacked out by the media, including ‘left’ papers like the Guardian, indicating that the sparks’ tactics and independent spirit were seen as a dangerous example to other workers.
In recent weeks, however, there have been signs that the movement has been ebbing, certainly in the London region which had been the epicentre of the movement for a long time. The weekly demonstrations outside selected building sites were becoming less well attended and there were often more leftist paper sellers there than electricians. These weekly actions were themselves in danger of becoming ritualised and did not often succeed in getting other building workers to join the movement. And as the leadership of the strike, organised in the Rank and File group made up mainly of shop stewards, began putting increasing emphasis on the need to pressure the union into calling a national strike, Unite’s incessant delaying tactics were serving to sap workers’ energies.
And then in the space of a few days, the picture changed dramatically. On Wednesday February 22nd there was lively demonstration outside the Mayfair hotel where Balfour Beatty bosses and others were gathered for a black tie dinner. Park Lane was blocked for nearly an hour and the mood of the sparks was defiant. The next day it was announced that the courts had thrown out Balfour Beatty’s latest injunction against Unite, who would now have no choice but to organise a national strike. Almost immediately Balfour announced that it was pulling out of BESNA.
The leftist press was exultant, trumpeting ‘victory for the sparks’. A typical example was provided by Socialist Worker (25/2/12)
“Victory shows workers can win in struggle
The electricians’ victory is a simple answer to those that say the working class isn’t a force or that unions are too weak to win. Their determined campaign has humbled a huge corporation—and at the centre has been rank and file workers’ organisation. Despite being ignored by the mainstream media, workers called protests to build up support and show the bosses the depth of opposition to the attack. The threat of an official strike, and the prospect of spreading unofficial action, was enough to force the bosses to back off.
[…]
Strikes are a direct challenge to the authority of the bosses. They can expose the class divide and show the power of the working class. An astonishing level of hesitancy and conservatism from the union leadership marked the electricians’ dispute.
Nonetheless the rank and file rightly fought to get official backing and an official strike. But they were also prepared to act independently of the union bureaucracy. That process needs to be deepened and extended, building up the confidence and organisation of the workers. This can also help to inspire others, in construction and beyond. There should be no return to the corrupt “company unionism” that has infected construction. And the lesson for the rest of the labour movement is simple—militant tactics win”
On the face of it, this was a vindication of the strategy put forward by the leftists and echoed by the majority of the ‘rank and file’ leadership: carry on with the inventive tactics, act unofficially as much as necessary, but put pressure on the union hierarchy to back the dispute. The very threat of a national strike seems to have forced the bosses to cave in.
It’s certainly true that the bosses were worried by the prospect of a national strike. But the unions were also worried. The events of 7 December had shown that the sparks could organise strike action on a national scale without the support of the union machinery. Given the outward looking tactics of the sparks in their local protests and pickets, there was a real danger that a national strike would get increasingly out of their control, even spreading to other sectors. This is why the union was so quick to get together with the industry bosses after Balfour withdrew from BESNA and to issue a joint statement.
On the libertarian communist discussion forum libcom.org, the announcement that BB was withdrawing from BESNA also led to many calls of ‘victory’, but at least one poster (Jim Clarke) sounded a note of caution:
“Have BB really given up on trying to kill of JIB[3]? From having a read of the document sent round today Unite have called off strike action and agreed to come up with a new agreement for modernising the industry, which means electricians and everybody else will still get fucked over but with union approval this time”.
Our comrade Alf supported this approach:
“I agree with Jim Clarke's caution here. A sudden (apparent) climbdown by the bosses on the eve of a union led strike, followed by the cancellation or indefinite postponement of strike action, points to some kind of back room deal. Plus as Jim says, both bosses and union are talking ominously about modernisation. Not to forget that a large part of the workforce in the building trade is not even covered by the JIB in the first place”.
(https://libcom.org/article/attack-electricians-contracts-wobbles-balfour-beatty-folds [42])
There is no doubt that the sparks have achieved a ‘victory’ in the sense of forcing the bosses to retreat. But this was the result of their own initiative and willingness to break out of the established union rules. It would be a serious error to think that the fight is now over and that the union has finally shown itself to be on the workers’ side. Of course, the majority of sparks still see the unions as in some sense their organisations and certainly feel that it’s possible to organise at the rank and file level through the shop steward system. But the shop steward network that ran the strike from below, despite being made up of many sincere militants, also served as the main vehicle for illusions in the trade unions and the strategy of pressurising the union machinery. This is an argument for workers taking further steps along the road towards independence from the unions, by ensuring that general assemblies rather than shop stewards’ committees are really in control of the coming struggle against the ‘modernisation’ plans that are even now being cooked up by the bosses and the unions together.
Amos 28/2/12
[1] Building Engineering Services National Agreement
[2] "Electricians’ actions hold the promise of class unity [43]"; "Electricians: solidarity across industries is key [44]"; "Sparks: don’t let the unions block the struggle [45]"; "Illusions in the unions will lead to defeat [46]".
[3] JIB: the Joint Industry Board regulations which the sparks see as providing basic protection of their interests at work
We are publishing a statement by the occupation of the Athens Law School. This seems significant because it directly attacks all nationalist and state capitalist ‘solutions’ to the debacle of debt in Greek, which it correctly identifies as an expression of capitalism’s global crisis. Such positions no doubt reflect the views of a minority in the present social movement, but it seems to be a growing minority.
The political and financial spectacle has now lost its confidence. Its acts are entirely convulsive. The ‘emergency’ government that has taken over the maintenance of social cohesion is failing to preserve jobs, and the spending power of the population. The new measures, with which the state aims to secure the survival of the Greek nation in the international financial world, lead to a complete suspension of payments in the world of work. The lowering of the minimum wage is entirely with the full suspension of every form of direct or social wage.
Every cost of our reproduction vanishes. The health infrastructure, the educational spaces, the ‘welfare’ benefits and anything that makes us productive in the dominant system are now a thing of the past. After squeezing everything out of us, they now throw us straight into hunger and poverty.
The securing of the abolition of any form of wage, on a legal level, takes place via the creation of a “special account”. In this way, the Greek state ensures that the money supply will be used exclusively for the survival of capital, even at the cost of our lives. The severity of the debt (not of the state, but of that which is inextricably contained in the relationship of capital) threatens to fall on our heads and eliminate us.
The myth of the debt. The dominant patriotic narrative promotes the idea of the Greek debt, promoting it as a transnational problem. It creates the impression that some stateless loan sharks have targeted the Greek state and our “good government” is doing its best to save us, or, on the other hand, that it aims to betray us, being part of international finance capital.
Against this false nationalist conception, the debt is a result of, and an integral part of political economy, a fact that the bosses know only too well. The economy is based upon the creation of shortages, upon the creation of new areas of scarcity (that is, the destructive creation, with negative, always, long-term consequences). The debt and debt obligations will expand to dominate society for as long as there exists property, the routine of consumption, exchange and money.
When we say that the crisis is structural and systemic we mean that the structures of the political economy have reached an end, that their very core has come under attack — that is, the process of value production. It is clear that for capital, we are surplus (see the sky-rocketing unemployment figures) and that at this point, the reproduction of the labour force is merely an obstacle in the process of capital accumulation. The monetary-debt crisis, that is, the replacement of wages with loans, and the inability of issuing of loans, lead the system into a vicious circle of unsustainability. This happens, because it puts into question the value of work itself, that is, the same relationship through which those from below were part of the system.
Should we then head for socialism and a ‘people’s economy’? All kinds of union professionals and wannabe-popular leaders present their own illusions about a political solution within the system and the current political economy. They might talk of the nationalisation of banks, they might take the form of the rebirth of rational liberalism. Sometimes, they even take the form of integration and an alternative ‘revolutionary spirit’. Sometimes we hear about green development, ecological decentralisation, direct democracy and the fetishism of political forms.
While the market itself and state intervention fail to offer any prospects whatsoever, the political spectacle continues to promote all sorts of products such as a people’s economy and state socialism. The mythologies of the various dictatorships of the proletariat, survive at the same time when the masses of those excluded from production, from institutions, the unemployed, all fail to be a reliable customers for political parties and their unions. The reactionary political position of state capitalism has succeeded the previous empty ideology.
Social war knows no borders. Some, amidst the crisis, see a re-drawing of national boundaries. The national body and the various racists seem to see an opportunity to target immigrants, make attacks and pogroms, and to promote the institutional racism of the Greek state. For them, their resistance is painted in national colours; they struggle as Greeks, not as enemies of exploitation and the social repression they face.
We consciously chose sides, believing that any presence of any national symbol or flag belongs to the camp of the enemy, and we are willing to fight it by all means possible. Because the nazis of the Golden Dawn, the autonomous nationalists and the other fascists promote a pure national community as a solution, the pre-emptive attacks against them and solidarity towards the immigrants is a necessary condition for any radical project.
The only solution is social revolution. Against all the above, we propose social revolution, which we consider the only solution in order to have a life, not just survival. This means, to rise up against any financial and political institution. It requires, through the route of revolt, to take measures such as the abolition of the state, of property and any sort of measurability, the family, the nation, exchange and social genders. In order for us to extend freedom across every part of society.
This is what revolution means! Bringing to this direction any struggle centred on wage demands; any self-organised structure and assembly, especially at a time like the present when the political-governmental form of the systemic crisis can lead to a social explosion.
Statement by the Occupied Athens Law School 9/2/12
see also:
The workers at the general hospital in Kilkis in Greek Central Macedonia recently occupied their hospital and declared it to be running under their control. Here is the public statement they issued on 4 February:
1. We recognize that the current and enduring problems of Ε.Σ.Υ (the national health system) and related organizations cannot be solved with specific and isolated demands or demands serving our special interests, since these problems are a product of a more general anti-popular governmental policy and of the bold global neoliberalism.
2. We recognize, as well, that by insisting in the promotion of that kind of demands we essentially participate in the game of the ruthless authority. That authority which, in order to face its enemy - i.e. the people- weakened and fragmented, wishes to prevent the creation of a universal labour and popular front on a national and global level with common interests and demands against the social impoverishment that the authority's policies bring.
3. For this reason, we place our special interests inside a general framework of political and economic demands that are posed by a huge portion of the Greek people that today is under the most brutal capitalist attack; demands that in order to be fruitful must be promoted until the end in cooperation with the middle and lower classes of our society.
4. The only way to achieve this is to question, in action, not only its political legitimacy, but also the legality of the arbitrary authoritarian and anti-popular power and hierarchy which is moving towards totalitarianism with accelerating pace.
5. The workers at the General Hospital of Kilkis answer to this totalitarianism with democracy. We occupy the public hospital and put it under our direct and absolute control. The Γ.N. of Kilkis will henceforth be self-governed and the only legitimate means of administrative decision making will be the General Assembly of its workers.
6. The government is not released of its economic obligations of staffing and supplying the hospital, but if they continue to ignore these obligations, we will be forced to inform the public of this and ask the local government but most importantly the society to support us in any way possible for: (a) the survival of our hospital (b) the overall support of the right for public and free healthcare (c) the overthrow, through a common popular struggle, of the current government and any other neoliberal policy, no matter where it comes from (d) a deep and substantial democratization, that is, one that will have society, rather than a third party, responsible for making decisions for its own future.
7. The labour union of the Γ.N. of Kilkis will begin, from 6 February, the retention of work, serving only emergency incidents in our hospital until the complete payment for the hours worked, and the rise of our income to the levels it was before the arrival of the troika (EU-ECB-IMF). Meanwhile, knowing fully well what our social mission and moral obligations are, we will protect the health of the citizens that come to the hospital by providing free healthcare to those in need, accommodating and calling the government to finally accept its responsibilities, overcoming even in the last minute its immoderate social ruthlessness.
8. We decide that a new general assembly will take place, on Monday 13 February in the assembly hall of the new building of the hospital at 11 am, in order to decide the procedures that are needed to efficiently implement the occupation of the administrative services and to successfully realise the self-governance of the hospital, which will start from that day. The general assemblies will take place daily and will be the paramount instrument for decision making regarding the employees and the operation of the hospital.
We ask for the solidarity of the people and workers from all fields, the collaboration of all workers' unions and progressive organizations, as well as the support from any media organization that chooses to tell the truth. We are determined to continue until the traitors that sell out our country and our people leave. It's either them or us!
The above decisions will be made public through a news conference to which all the Mass Media (local and national) will be invited on Wednesday 15/2/2012 at 12.30. Our daily assemblies begin on 13 February. We will inform the citizens about every important event taking place in our hospital by means of news releases and conferences. Furthermore, we will use any means available to publicise these events in order to make this mobilization successful.
We call
a) Our fellow citizens to show solidarity to our effort,
b) Every unfairly treated citizen of our country in contestation and opposition, with actions, against his'/her oppressors,
c) Our fellow workers from other hospitals to make similar decisions,
d) the employees in other fields of the public and private sector and the participants in labour and progressive organizations to act likewise, in order to help our mobilization take the form of a universal labour and popular resistance and uprising, until our final victory against the economic and political elite that today oppresses our country and the whole world.
2/12
see also:
Mass poverty in Greece, it's what awaits us all [50]
"In order to liberate ourselves from debt we must destroy the economy" [55]
As February came to an end the Greek parliament rushed through a further package of wage and pension cuts as part of yet another round of measures required to secure a second international tranche of bailout loans. The working class in Greece is being subjected to another vicious round of assaults on its living standards. But it is not alone. On the day this article was written (18/2/12) there were demonstrations in dozens of locations across Europe, and as far away as New York. With slogans such as “We are all Greeks now”, “In solidarity with the Greek people, One world, One revolution” and others, the demos expressed a basic solidarity, and an elemental acknowledgement that there are no national struggles in the epoch of a global capitalist crisis.
Facing the umpteenth austerity plan imposed on the Greek population, anger again erupted on the streets. Between 80,000 and 200,000 people gathered outside parliament in Syntagma Square, during the voting for the latest measures on the night of February 12 to 13, and clashed with riot police. The basic balance sheet of what the media called "night of the urban guerrilla" included 48 buildings that were set on fire and 150 shops that were looted. There were also a hundred injured and 130 arrests. The images of these scenes of violence and of Athens in flames, and later the smoking ruins filmed in the early morning, were used by the media, with constant references to the ravages of war, to impress and frighten the rest of the world. But, according to numerous witnesses on the web, nearly 300,000 people could not reach the Greek parliament, being caught by the police in the adjacent streets or at the exits to the underground. And it was the police who threw tear gas to disperse the crowd into small groups throughout the city centre. The media talked about young thugs but you could see many older women and men participating in or encouraging violence. Whether the fires and looting were the work of provocateurs or the product of desperate acts, the rage of the people was undeniable as demonstrated by the images of those throwing stones or Molotov cocktails at the forces of repression.
The final set of measures imposed by the "troika" (International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank) is particularly intolerable. All the protesters were calling out the same thing: we can no longer feed our families or care for our children; we no longer want to continue being suffocated like this. Judge for yourself:
- Reduction in the minimum wage by 22% (reduced from 750 to 480 euros) and a 32% cut for those under 25, with knock on effects for those whose income is determined in relation to the minimum wage – for most workers this means wages have been cut in half;
- The cutting of 150,000 civil servants, over the next two years with an immediate cut to 60% of their current salary;
- Reduction in pensions;
- Unemployment benefit limited to just one year;
- The abolition of automatic wage increases, including those based on seniority;
- Reducing the social security budget, depriving a large segment of the population of any reimbursement of care costs;
- The limitation to three years for collective agreements on wage agreements.
And this list is not exhaustive. The official unemployment rate in November 2011 was 20.9% (up 48.7% year on year). The unemployment rate for youth between 18 and 25 is around 50%.
In two years, the number of homeless has increased by 25%. Hunger has become a daily concern for many, as in the days of the occupation during World War II.
The testimony of a doctor from an NGO was reported in the French daily Libération (30/1/12): "I started to worry when I had one consultation, then two, then ten children who came for treatment on an empty stomach, without having had any meal the day before.”
The number of suicides has doubled in two years, particularly among young people. Every second person suffers from depression as the level of household debt explodes.
The almost unanimous rejection of the latest austerity plan was such that at the time of the vote a hundred deputies abstained or opposed it, including some forty belonging to the two major parties of the right and left, dissociating themselves from the discipline of the party vote. The situation is increasingly chaotic as the two traditional major parties are completely discredited, with opinion polls indicating massive desertion by those who previously supported them. In this climate, the bourgeoisie will have the greatest difficulty in organising the forthcoming parliamentary elections announced for April.
And Greece is one link in this chain of brutal austerity that already surrounds many European countries. After Greece, the "troika" has moved to Portugal to send the same notice. Ireland will be in the spotlight after that. Then comes the turn of Spain and Italy. Even the new Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, put in power to administer the same bitter medicine, is concerned about what the future holds for his country, questioning the ”harshness with which Greece is treated.” France, whose economy falters more and more, will be soon on the list. In Germany itself, despite all the praise for its health and economic strength, we see an increasing proportion of its population, especially students, sinking into poverty. Europe is not and will not be the only affected area and no country in the world will be spared. There is no solution to a global crisis that openly reveals the total bankruptcy of the capitalist system.
A desperate teacher said: "Before the crisis, I had about 1,200 euros a month, now it’s more like 760. For each day on strike, that’s another 80 euros and there are retroactive measures: this month I took home 280 euros. It is not worth working, better to go and smash everything so they understand we're not going to let it go on. "
This frustration and anger is further strengthened by the proven sterility and impotence of the sequence of days of general strikes against austerity of 24 or 48 hours over the last 2 years that have been called by the two main unions, ADEDY (public sector) and GSEE (private sector - related to PASOK) which share the work with the PAME (arm of the Greek Stalinists) to divide and undermine workers’ struggles
In this situation, social unrest in Greece leads towards solidarity and attempts to organise. Meetings have been held in neighbourhoods, in cities and villages. Food kitchens and distribution has been undertaken. The occupation of the University of Novicki has served as a forum for discussion. There were occupations of ministries (Labour, Economy, Health), regional councils (in the Ionian Islands and in Thessaly), the Megalopolis power plant, the town hall in Holargos. Producers have distributed milk and potatoes. Workers have occupied the newspaper Eleftherotypia that employs 800 people. While on strike they have published their own newspaper.
But the most significant reaction which shows the determination of the movement in Greece also illustrates all its weaknesses and illusions. It took place at the hospital in Kilkis in Central Macedonia in northern Greece. Hospital staff in a general meeting decided to go on strike and occupy the hospital to demand their unpaid wages while taking the initiative to continue to operate emergency services and provide free care for the poor. These workers have launched an appeal to other workers, declaring that “the only legitimate authority to make administrative decisions will be the General Assembly of the workers.” We are republishing this call which shows a clear desire not to remain isolated, not only by appealing to other hospitals but to all workers in all sectors to join in the fight. However, this call also reflects many democratic illusions, in seeking to rely on a "citizens’ reaction" and an amorphous notion of "workers’ unions", or of the “collaboration of all unions and progressive political organisations and the media with goodwill.” It is also heavily imbued with patriotism and nationalism: "We are determined to continue until the traitors who have sold our country have gone”. This is real poison for the future of the struggle[1].
This is the main factor in the decay of the “popular” movement in Greece. It is stuck in the trap of nationalism and national divisions that politicians and unions use every means to promote. All parties and unions increasingly inveigh against "violated national pride" Prime exponents of this populist demagogy are the Greek Stalinists (KKE), which plays the same role as nationalists of left and right everywhere, and continues to spread its chauvinistic propaganda, accusing the government of selling off the country, of being a traitor to the defence of the nation etc. They put forward the idea that the root of the situation is not the capitalist system itself, but is the fault of Europe, of Germany or the United States.
This poison puts the class struggle on the terrain of rotten national divisions which are the product of specifically capitalist competition. It’s not only a dead end but it a major obstacle to the necessary development of proletarian internationalism. We have no national interest to defend. Our struggle must grow and unite beyond national frontiers. It is vital that the proletarians of other countries enter into struggle and show that the response of the exploited around the world faced with the attacks of capitalism is not and cannot be on a national terrain.
W 18/2/12
see also:
Workers take control of the Kilkis hospital in Greece [51]
"In order to liberate ourselves from debt we must destroy the economy" [55]
[1] However the statement by the occupation of the Athens Law School, which we are also publishing on our site, directly attacks all nationalist and state capitalist ‘solutions’ to the debacle of debt in Greek, which it correctly identifies as an expression of capitalism’s global crisis. Such positions no doubt reflect the views of a minority in the present social movement, but it seems to be a growing minority.
With the recent eviction of the Occupy LSX camp, it seems that the Occupy movement in the UK, for the time being, is winding down. The fact that there was little resistance to the eviction was a clear sign of this.
Occupy London Stock Exchange came in the wake of ‘Occupy Wall Street’ in the USA, which itself followed on from the protests and occupations across north Africa, in Greece, Spain and also in the wake of the student protest movement against increased university fees. The main positive factor in the occupation movement, both in the UK and internationally, has been having a physical presence in a public space. Most demonstrations, marches, pickets etc tend to be ‘closed’ affairs with pre-determined routes, barriers separating people on the march from others and so on. By contrast the occupations have been open to all and sundry. A whole range of topics have been presented at the St Paul’s occupation’s Tent University, amongst other places, open to members of the public to take part in. We ourselves have presented three meetings there – one on the contribution of Rosa Luxemburg, one on the ecological crisis, and another about communism.
The occupation has been presented in the mainstream media as ‘anti-capitalist’. However even a short survey would show that the vast majority of the meetings and discussions have tended to be of a ‘reformist’ nature, mainly presenting the idea that particular reforms or policy changes, or the application of pressure on the government, can lead to a more ‘democratic’ form of capitalism - that the 1% can be convinced of sharing its wealth and power with the other 99%. Political discussion on actual revolutionary alternatives was much rarer, although it certainly did happen.
In truth, a movement which was generally ‘against capitalism’ without reference to a specific struggle, would have difficulty maintaining itself. This was the contrast with the movements in north Africa, especially in Egypt, where we could see a number of sections of the working class becoming increasingly mobilised. In Spain and Greece, public meetings have been linked with the movement of the ‘Indignants’ (Spain) and with the savagery of the austerity demanded by the EU paymasters (Greece). In the absence of a real focus for the struggle, it would also tend to become the preserve of ‘professional activists’ separated from the population at large.
This is not to say that these occupations are useless, far from it. But we have to recognise their limitations.
Undoubtedly a few people influenced by them have been led to question the entirety of capitalism as a social and economic system. Many others, by contrast, would have come away thinking that significant change could come about ‘If only the government would nationalise the land/banks/railways/industry…’
It’s clear that ‘occupations’ as a tactic are not going away. It’s also clear that, however uneven it is in different countries, the response of the employed working class is beginning to show itself. So there is a significant potential for the two movements to become complementary in future struggles both in the UK and internationally.
Graham 01/03/12
Exactly a year after the beginning of the uprising in Egypt (25/1/12), the film Tahrir, Liberation Square, by the Italian documentary maker, Stefano Savona, sponsored by the International League for Human Rights (ILHR) and supported by ‘independent’ producers, came out in a number of cinemas in France.
In the preamble to the film, besides an animation of a singer and a musician, celebrating the revolt of Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia, we're reminded that today the mobilisation on Tahrir Square still continues, and that there are still around 15,000 political detainees in the gaols, although the army has symbolically released 200 other prisoners on the anniversary of what all Egyptians proudly call “the Revolution”.
We should remember, however, that the army still holds the reins of power in this country after the recent elections, where two-thirds of the Parliament is composed of Islamic parties (the Muslim Brotherhood who formally have a majority) plus the Salafists. So nothing has changed since the departure of a dictator to be replaced by... the open dictatorship of the army. And above all, besides the repression, there is no improvement in the poverty and the living conditions of the exploited, now stuck between a rock and a hard place, between the army, democratic illusions and the political influence of the Islamic parties.
For its ‘premiere’ in Paris, the film was also followed by a live debate with the producer in which we participated.
Filmed with a simple hand-held Canon 5D camera, this documentary involves us more closely in the faces and movements of the crowd, the life of tens of thousands of participants and their chance meetings. Over 12 days and, through the eye of the producer, we follow some of the protagonists throughout some of the ‘days of anger’ from the sixth day of the occupation of the square to the announcement of the resignation of Mubarak on 11 February, and in the final images some questions about the future.
The problem with this film is that it pretends, through its aspect of a documentary, to be a witness of living history which is taking place inside Tahrir Square thus giving itself a certain stamp of ‘objectivity’ that's supposedly proper to journalistic reporting showing the reality of life as it happens in front of our eyes. But this film is anything but objective. Not only does it show reality from a certain point of view, but its bias of filming this reality from the inside ends up in partiality, focusing the attention on a very narrow and limited surface as with a magnifying glass, keeping in the shade, or outside the field of vision, the framework which would allow us to see the entirety and understand it.
Whereas the movement in Egypt is not limited to what was happening on Tahrir Square, the latter is presented as the sole point of reference. There's not a single echo, nor any concern for the wave of workers' strikes which swept across the country and which really pushed Mubarak, under pressure from the United States, to quit. If the army did not intervene at this point, if one of the first measures was to forbid strikes, it is because these strikes almost paralysed the country and played a major role in the course of events. The film gives the illusion, the distorted vision, that the sole force of the movement came from the occupation of Tahrir Square. An article on the film in le Monde, (25/1/12) gives the comment: “What does the film show us? First of all an extraordinary effervescence, a palpable intoxication, an exciting reconquest of freedom of speech and movement” It's true. And this intoxication overcomes the spectator as well as the participants themselves paralysing any effort of reflection. In this way, the film takes and leads us to immediately share the emotions and feelings of the crowd in placing us in the middle of the participants without allowing any space for reflection, it espouses its point of view with a maximum of empathy, engagement: its angers, its fears, hopes, doubts, its explosions of joy at the announcement of the fall of a tyrant. The le Monde article continues : “Then (it shows) a diversity of faces, ages, sexes, backgrounds, relationships, mixed attitudes, self-respecting, unifying in the same crowd, in the same challenge, the same fight. Some bearded, some clean-shaven, some people praying, others in keffiyehs, young women carrying stones, youths who throw them, older people that support them. In a word, people on the move, a utopia realised”. And this “utopia” was not realised but bore dangerous illusions and a maximum of confusion with a double label: Democracy and the Revolution of the people.
However, even through the deformed prism of this truncated reality, some aspects of the situation at the time are striking to the spectator. First of all the courage given by the collective: “we are no longer afraid”, the determination: “we will go right to the end to get rid of Mubarak” and the solidarity of the participants: men and women unknown to each other beforehand talking together, protecting each other, sleeping side by side in temporary shelters – tent material or shower curtains – without the least problem, each bringing their own food for the collective. It shows the courageous fight, with bare hands, against the police, against the snipers or against the hordes of criminals released and recruited by Mubarak, including killers handsomely paid and sent to attack the occupiers of the square. It shows the impotence of a high grade military machine incapable of making itself understood and the utilisation of Twitter by some youth to appeal to meet up at various points and go to other strategic points where there was a need for reinforcement in order to ‘hold’ onto territory. Information was widely circulated by word of mouth and there were continual movements across the square. Another striking element is the absence of any general assembly, despite “free-speech”. There’s no collective discussions and decisions on the orientation of the movement outside of small informal groups of discussion on the situation or on the future. At the beginning of the film, some of the people raise the question of demonstrations in other towns, their origins, their jobs. At one moment, this diversity is reflected when three youths talk together: one is a country lad, the other a city dweller, the third a Bedouin, sometimes they give their opinion or state their respective sympathies for such or such fraction, three or four at the most. They talk fraternally to each other despite their different convictions, especially religious and secular. We see some speeches followed by small groups of the Muslim Brotherhood, a few fiery individual speeches, often moving in front of the camera and above all the slogans repeated ad nauseam: “The people want regime change”, “Mubarak must go!”, “The Egyptian people are us, we are here”, “Long live Egypt!” in the middle of a sea of national flags held aloft by individuals or some very large ones flown over the crowd. Because nationalism, the preoccupation of the fate and interests of the country is omnipresent in the square and, it seems, is shared by everyone. Each participant recognises themselves with all the others as “the people” without the least class connotation. Here, the mirage of democracy is functioning. And directly, the trap springs shut. The trap is precisely all the ideological values put forward by the bourgeoisie and the speeches full of illusions that run through this film: someone says it: “the people are united here as the fingers on the hand” around the single idea of “getting rid of Mubarak”. But this will to dump Mubarak and his detested regime alone creates an artificial inter-classist unity: “What we want, what everyone wants, is to overthrow this regime”. Young and old, veiled women or not, religious or secular, Muslim or Christian all say the same, and after that we will see what happens. At the end of the film, after the scenes of celebration provoked by the announcement of Mubarak’s departure with many breaking camp to return home, a woman warns however: “now it’s the army which has full power and suspends our liberties, we shouldn’t leave here, it’s against them that we must continue to mobilise and fight”.
In short, the film is entirely to the glory of the conquest of this democratic dream of which “the Egyptian people” are the heroes. Moreover, new arrivals to the square were welcomed with shouts of “Here they are, the heroes of the nation!” Everyone wants to find a hero or an iconic leader, the crowd wanted a young, imprisoned demonstrator, released after 12 days, to come to the tribune, but scared by the ovations he refuses to speak.
The film insidiously invites us to join with and delight in what is shown to the contrary to be great weaknesses, the immaturity of the revolt and above all the nationalist poison massaged by the pride of having got rid of Mubarak. Alongside the weight of religion, these democratic illusions weigh very heavily on the exploited in the uprising in Egypt. It is moreover, the notions of the people, democracy and revolution which are exploited throughout the “debate” after the film. Whereas most questions of the producer asked about the filming process or about the meetings with people followed throughout the film, three questions showed their unease or called into question the term “revolution” use to describe events in Egypt. One of them said that real revolutions hadn't happened very often in history and the film maker replied saying that living through those days had been an exceptional experience and what had happened had a lasting effect on consciousness including his own. And this is what justifies using the term “revolution”. This “contestationist” element briefly spoke to say that, minus the national flags, the phenomenon was not dissimilar to May 68 in France without anyone calling that a revolution. The response by the producer and his entourage was that this was the beginning of a revolutionary process which was still ongoing because the mobilisation of those at Tahrir wasn't finished, and he finally responded by saying that the question had unnecessarily pessimistic implications. A comrade from the ICC spoke on several levels: on the absence of any reference to the workers' mobilisation in events, on the fact that the film and the debate takes Egypt as an absolute reference point whereas this movement took place in the framework of an international social protest recently. This was expressed almost everywhere and we find it with the Indignant movement of Spain or Greece, Occupy in Britain or the United States in the face of a global crisis of the system. Finally, he recalled that the revolt and the birth of the movement in Tunisia took off from economic demands over unemployment, poverty and the hiking of food prices, not in order to demand more liberty and democracy. He again insisted on the fact that this had been underestimated in the debate on Egypt whereas the precariousness of life and unemployment were strong in Egypt, but the sole expression of this element of protest in the film was one of the protesters shouting out “120 pounds for a kilo of lentils!” The producer tried quite clumsily to counter the importance of element of economic demands, even denying that they played a major role in Tunisia. A member of the team associated with the film more subtly admitted that workers' strikes had also played an important role in the uprising notably since the wave of strikes in 2007/8 in the textile factories of Mahalla and elsewhere in the Nile Delta. And following this the “April 6 Movement” while at Tahrir there were bits of bread stuck to posters expressing the economic aspects. After this the debate, doubtlessly to avoid the discussion taking a more “political” turn, was quickly closed by the organisers.
W (26/1/12)
We are publishing below an article originally written as part of the ICC's own discussions on the relationship between marxism and science. It aims to bring together some of Marx and Engels thoughts on the subject, with modern scientific and historical analysis of science, and concludes with a brief critical examination of the ideas of Karl Popper.
The text was originally written in the summer of 2009.
Carlo Rovelli: Anaximandre de Milet ou la naissance de la pensée scientifique.
Marx/Engels : Lettres sur les sciences de la nature.
John Gribbin: Science, a history – 1543-2001.
Engels: Dialectics of nature and Anti-Dühring
Karl Popper: The poverty of historicism
Carlo Rovelli is an Italian physicist currently working at Marseille university, mainly in the field of quantum gravity (he was one of those responsible for the development of loop quantum gravity theory in 1988).
John Gribbin is a visiting fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex, and a science writer.
Karl Popper is one of the best-known philosophers of science of the 20th century, and as such is a reference for many scientists. One of his major works, The open society and its enemies targeted notably Plato, Hegel and Marx – and he has famously attacked the scientific status of both marxism and psychoanalysis. The open society... being an enormous tome, this text is limited to a slim volume which resumes much of his thinking.
Of Marx and Engels, it was certainly Engels who wrote the most about science (notably in the two works cited above). It is fascinating to read Engels in the light of the history of science described by Gribbin, since this throws light on the remarkable degree to which Engels actually kept in touch with, and was knowledgeable in, the science of his day. Obviously the science itself has moved on, yet Engels still has much to teach us about the way we think about science, and of course about how the scientific method should inform our thinking as marxists.
One of Engels’ main concerns in Dialectics of nature is to show how the laws of nature are themselves dialectical, in other words dominated by the laws of dialectics (transformation of quality into quantity, interpenetration of opposites, the negation of the negation), and that nature has a history. At the time (Engels began preparing the work in 1873), we should remember, many things that we take absolutely for granted today were very recent discoveries or still disputed: Darwin's work on The Origins of Species had been published barely 15 years before (the Descent of Man was only published in 1871, and it seems that Marx and Engels remained unaware of its main message), it was only beginning to be realised that there was no such thing as a “pure gas” (ie a gas that could only exist as a gas), and so on. It is thus very striking to find Engels writing, more than 20 years before the publication of Einstein's theory of relativity in 1905, that matter is only another form of motion. Engels' and Marx's preoccupation with the natural sciences was something that they always considered an important aspect of the development of a materialist view of the world.
Like most other questions, we can only address this one historically. Gribbin takes 1543 as his starting point, a year which by a happy coincidence saw the publication of both Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) and Vesalius' De humani corporis fabrica (On the Structure of the Human Body – Vesalius is often referred to as the founder of modern anatomy). Copernicus, Vesalius, and Galileo (born in 1564) all shared a readiness to call into question the accepted authorities of the day – Ptolemaic astronomy in the case of Copernicus and Galileo, Galen’s medical theories in the case of Vesalius.
Gribbin highlights a number of aspects of Galileo’s life and work which represented a critical break with previous thinking about nature, and which lie at the foundations of all the development of science since then. Although doubtless these first scientists did not realise the full implications of the road they were opening up, these aspects are already contained in germ within their thinking:
an understanding that nature must be studied in its own terms, and that nature is not teleological,
an insistence that theory must be validated by experiment,
a realisation that mathematics is the language of nature, that natural laws can be described in the language of mathematics.
Gribbin also points out that the emergence of this new way of thinking was made possible by the advance of technology: in Galileo’s case, the development of glass manufacture which allowed the creation of the first telescopes. This has continued to be the case ever since – old theories have been called into question in part because new technology has made it possible to measure nature’s parameters with ever greater precision (it is no accident that Newton’s achievements coincide with improvements in metallurgy which in turn led to the construction of more accurate clocks, for example) – and this is still the case today.
Until the second half of the 18th century, science remained essentially a way of thinking about the world without any direct effect on the development of technology. Gribbin highlights the work of James Watt (one of the fathers of the steam engine) as the moment when science began to feed its theoretical insights back into the development of technology: Watt was employed at Glasgow University and used the newly emerging understanding of heat and the transformation of water into steam not only to improve on the existing Newcomen engines, but to set up a company which developed steam engines on the basis of the best existing scientific knowledge. From this moment on, we can say that science truly became a productive force in its own right. Indeed, this intimate, dialectical relationship between science and technology (ie production) is a unique feature of capitalist society: capitalism cannot live without a constant revolutionising of its productive apparatus – one reason that decadent capitalism has not (yet) seen the collapse of production and technology that characterised decadent Roman society.
This view of scientific thought’s place in society essentially echoes that of Engels who – to be schematic – makes a clear distinction between three phases of scientific thought: the “brilliant intuition” of the Greeks, the still essentially empirical experimental science that was born out of the Renaissance, and the full flowering of science as a productive force directly related to the development of production that got under way in the 19th century.[1]
For Engels, a true theoretical science (ie one which views the whole natural world in its interconnections, and in its historical movement) could only be born out of the accumulation of empirical knowledge: one-sided empirical natural science is transformed by its own development into a theoretical science.[2] Theoretical propositions must be validated by experiment. [3]
Since Engels wrote, the scientific outlook on the world has been profoundly changed by the work of Einstein and his successors, the emergence of the theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics. Indeed we can say that Engels’ attempt to develop a “dialectics of nature” has been triumphantly vindicated by the historical process which has produced quantum theory, a theory which indeed claims, or attempts, to englobe the whole of nature in a unified theoretical vision, justified and validated by experiment.[4]
It is worth pausing here for a moment to consider Engels’ view of cosmology. In Anti-Dühring, Engels takes Dühring to task for his notion of a “self-equal state of matter”, since “We still do not know where mechanical force was in that state, and how we are to get from absolute immobility to motion without an impulse from outside, that is, without God”. At the time, and given the existing state of knowledge about the universe, Engels was undoubtedly right to attack Dühring’s tendency to smuggle teleology back into the natural sciences. In fact, this provides us with an interesting example of how it is possible for a correct general theoretical approach to lead to incorrect hypotheses.[5] At the time, nothing was known about the red-shift which has demonstrated that the surrounding galaxies are moving away from us (indeed nobody was yet aware that various “stars” and nebulae where in fact galaxies like our own) and that indeed space itself is expanding. The scientific view of the universe (ie the non-teleological view which has no place for God in any form) saw it as in an eternal more or less steady state: this view was still defended by the British astronomer Fred Hoyle in the 1960s.[6] And yet today, the majority consensus among scientists seems to be that the universe emerged from an infinitely small and dense singularity: this consensus is born not from mysticism, but from the mathematics of quantum mechanics. The singularity is explained as the natural, indeed inevitable, consequence of the random variations in the quantum void predicted by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. The advance of science and experimental data has demonstrated that the Big Bang model is currently the best adapted to explaining observed phenomena, while at the same time the development of theoretical and mathematical tools has maintained the basic scientific principle of studying nature on the basis of nature itself.
This brings me, by a rather roundabout route, to re-pose the question: what is science? And it seems to me that we can, and should, view science from two angles: on the one hand, science is a productive force, a social form which has emerged from the development of a critique of religious temporal and spiritual authority by the rising bourgeoisie, the development of technology which made new tools available to natural philosophy, and the constant demands of capitalist production for a more advanced productive apparatus. In the period of decadence, science has also become one of the most vital instruments of war. On the other hand, science is a materialist – non-teleological – way of looking at the world which must aim not only to explain but to predict, in other words to justify its theory through experiment.[7]
But – as Engels said – if experimental science began with the Renaissance, the materialist view of the world was born long before that, in ancient Greece. As Carlo Rovelli points out in his study of Thales and Anaximander, and of the society of the Ionian city of Miletos during the first millennium BCE, the materialist outlook is highly atypical: by far the greater part of human history has been dominated by religious explanations of the origins of the world and of man’s place in it. Although Rovelli’s explanation of religious thought is superficial (he visibly understands nothing of Marx, who he cites), his explanation of how materialist thought emerged in Milesian society is far more interesting.
According to Rovelli[8] Anaximander’s importance lies in his “intuitions” (Rovelli explicitly uses the same word as Engels) based on direct observation, but also going beyond observation to seek an underlying principle to the world. Not only does Anaximander propose a model where the heavenly bodies are no longer confined to a dome over a flat earth, but placed at varying distances from a cylindrical earth floating in space, he also proposes the notion of apeiron as the universal constituent of all matter. As Rovelli says, “Anaximander thus proposes that all substances of our common experience can be understood in terms of something else; something which is both natural and foreign to our daily experience. The central intuition here is that in order to explain the world’s complexity, it is useful to postulate, to imagine, the existence of something else, which is not one of the substances we experience directly but which can play the role of an element that unifies all of them”. Anaximander, in fact, sets human thought on the road to quantum mechanics. Rovelli also shows here that intuition is an important element in scientific thought. Experiment and observation are critical, but they cannot take place without the presence of a hypothesis whose validity they are supposed to test, and the hypothesis necessarily precedes the experiment (though of course the hypothesis may itself be the result of previous experiment or observation).
Rovelli goes on to pose the question of how Anaximander’s thought arose in Miletos: what was specific about Milesian society, and later Greek society, that made possible those “brilliant intuitions” that lay the basis for materialist thinking?[9] When we see the answers that Rovelli gives to this question, one can hardly help wondering whether he is not a reader of the International Review, so close are his ideas to those expressed in the article on the Culture of debate. Let us just highlight briefly some of his main points.
Firstly, there is the importance of Miletos as a trading city, in other words a place where many different cultures and strands of thought came together. Amongst these different cultures Egypt played a particular role since it forced the Greeks to recognise that those outside Greek culture were not “barbarians”, indeed that there existed a civilisation whose antiquity was greater than their own legends. All this helped to liberate thinkers like Thales and his successors from their own religious and social prejudices.
The development of trade in turn led to the emergence of a new social structure which destroyed the dominance of the previous aristocratic or oligarchic rule to replace them with a democracy, where decisions are taken by majority vote after discussion. This capacity for debate is in itself a social discovery: “The cultural basis for the birth of science is thus also the basis for the birth of democracy: the discovery of the effectiveness of criticism and dialogue, between equals. Anaximander, who openly criticises his master Thales, does nothing other than transfer onto the terrain of knowledge the common practice of Miletos’ agora: not to approve uncritically and reverentially the god, demi-god, or lord of the moment, but to criticise the magistrate. Not out of lack of respect, but out of an awareness that a better proposal may always exist (...) This is the discovery in the domain of knowledge: that allowing criticism to take its course, and ideas to be called into question, giving the right to speak to all and taking every proposal seriously, does not lead merely to sterile cacophony. On the contrary, it makes it possible to put aside hypotheses that do not work, and to allow better ideas to emerge” (p97).
Rovelli insists on the difference between Anaximander – who challenged the teachings of his master Thales – and the Chinese savants whose main concern was to build and comment on the works of the masters. Anaximander both built on the ideas of Thales and subjected them to criticism, contrary to the Chinese practice (this goes along with a frequent insistence by Gribbin, that whatever the role played by men of genius such as Newton, science is fundamentally incremental, a collective activity of humanity as a whole).
The ability to criticise the ideas of others also implies a willingness to subject one’s own ideas to criticism and debate. But as Rovelli points out, it is the sign of an idea’s strength, not weakness, that it can be called into question. When we are confident in our ideas, in our theories, then we cannot be afraid of debating them – if debate reveals weaknesses or gaps in this or that aspect of a theory then the theory itself can only be strengthened. And even if the theory itself turns out to be wrong (for example, Copernicus’ theory that the sun was at the centre of the universe), by posing the right questions it will have allowed debate to go forwards and the sum of knowledge to increase.
Rovelli writes “in praise of uncertainty”. Science can never take the theories of today as the final “truth”, they are only the best available at any given moment – and we must live with the awareness that we do not know everything, that maybe it will never be possible for mankind to know everything.
It would need a text in itself to examine Popper’s ideas, and subject them to criticism. Such a text will be necessary if we want to treat the question of science seriously since Popper is the reference for scientific epistemology: no scientist talking about method will feel unable to refer to Popper. Perhaps his most important idea (at least the most commonly known), is the principle that to be scientific, a theory or hypothesis must be open to invalidation. In other words it must be possible to prove the theory false experimentally. While a hypothesis may attain the status of a theory (or even a “strong theory”) if it proves able to make enough positive predictions, it can never attain the status of “truth” since one contradictory observation or experiment is always enough to overturn the theory. This does not amount to pure empiricism: “I believe that theories are prior to observations as well as to experiment in the sense that the latter are significant only in relation to theoretical problems” (p90).
Up to a point, this vision of scientific thought can be of value, especially in the field of science itself and in the reflection on experimental procedure. It is not, however, complete. Two brief examples, both drawn from La Recherche n°433 in which several articles are devoted to problems of cosmology and the theory of the “multiverse”, can illustrate this point. The various theories of the existence of multiple universes are certainly materialist, and they are certainly scientific in the sense that they are built on some of the current models of the nature of matter which have proven experimentally successful. And yet in themselves, they cannot be tested since if multiple universes exist they are inherently inaccessible to us. Even if we stick to the known universe, it is impossible to test experimentally theories as to the internal structure of black holes, since the very nature of black holes is that no information can escape from them.[10]
In fact, a critique of Popper’s scientific philosophy would have to start with Engels’ critique of metaphysics, in its inability to accommodate historical change. For Popper, it is impossible to have a science of history, or historical development; indeed, it is also impossible to have a law of evolution because “The evolution of life on earth, or of human society, is a unique historical process (...) Its description is not a law, but only a single historical statement (...) we cannot hope to test a universal hypothesis nor to find a natural law acceptable to science if we are forever confined to the observation of one unique process” (p99). Popper is obliged – almost despite himself – to recognise Darwinism as a “scientific hypothesis” because of its demonstrated explanatory power. He also rejects the idea that it is possible to talk of social “laws” in a scientific sense, because historical “laws” are said to be valid only for particular historical periods (Marx and Engels certainly considered that the economic laws of capitalism that they had laid bare only held good for capitalist society), whereas “it is an important postulate of scientific method that we should search for laws with an unlimited realm of validity”.
Popper’s “critique” of marxism is vitiated by the fact that what he understands by "marxism" is in fact nothing but Stalinist ideology.[11] Most notably, Popper seems incapable of seeing the importance that Marx and Engels give to human consciousness as an active factor in the evolution of society – and the factor of consciousness, and humanity’s ability to act consciously on its own history, is one of the most important elements that distinguishes the natural sciences from the materialist, marxist view of history which must take account both of the unconscious factors at work in society, and of the development of conscious human activity on the world: humanity is capable of teleology whereas nature is not.
That said, I do not propose to enter here into a critique of Popper’s social thinking so I will conclude here with a word on his theories of science. The fact that he denies any scientific validity to marxism, to psychoanalytical theory, and even up to a point to Darwinism, reveals the limits of his theoretical approach: a narrow materialism which, when it comes down to it, has little room for a materialist, scientific approach which it may be impossible (at least in the immediate) to test, but which allows science and even society to look at the world in a new way. The example of Copernicus can serve to illustrate this. According to Rovelli, the Copernican theory (the earth revolving around the sun) is in fact inferior to the fully evolved Ptolemaic system, in terms of its predictive power: yet the important thing about the Copernican theory is that for all its faults, it poses the right questions. Others, beginning with Galileo, were to take up the challenge.
Jens 2/9/09
[1] “Thus we have once again returned to the point of view of the great founders of Greek philosophy, the view that the whole of nature, from the smallest element to the greatest, from grains of sand to suns, from protista to men, has its existence in eternal coming into being and passing away, in ceaseless flux, in un-resting motion and change, only with the essential difference that what for the Greeks was a brilliant intuition, is in our case the result of strictly scientific research in accordance with experience, and hence also it emerges in a much more definite and clear form” (Dialectics of Nature).
[2] “At about the same time, however, empirical natural science made such an advance and arrived at such brilliant results that not only did it become possible to overcome completely the mechanical one-sidedness of the eighteenth century, but also natural science itself, owing to the proof of the inter-connections existing in nature itself between the various fields of investigation (mechanics, physics, chemistry, biology, etc.), was transformed from an empirical into a theoretical science and, by generalising the results achieved, into a system of the materialist knowledge of nature” (Dialectics of Nature, notes for the history of science).
[3] “We all agree that in every field of science, in natural as in historical science, one must proceed from the given facts, in natural science therefore from the various material forms and the various forms of motion of matter; that therefore in theoretical natural science too the inter-connections are not to be built into the facts but to be discovered in them, and when discovered to be verified as far as possible by experiment” (Dialectics of Nature, the “Old preface to Anti-Dühring”).
[4] A theory which certainly defies all our ‘common-sense’ views of the world, but as Engels says: “sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research. And the metaphysical mode of thought, justifiable and even necessary as it is in a number of domains whose extent varies according to the nature of the particular object of investigation, sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions. In the contemplation of individual things it forgets the connection between them; in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion” (Anti-Dühring).
[5] Or at least, apparently incorrect, since some scientists continue to prefer some variant of the steady-state model of the universe to the theory of the “Big Bang”.
[6] One reason for the suspicion aroused by Big Bang theory may be that one of its earliest and greatest proponents was the Belgian catholic priest Georges Lemaître.
[7] I cannot resist citing here the great French scientist Pierre Simon de Laplace (1749-1827), who answered Napoleon, when the latter asked why his Exposition du système du monde contained no reference to the world’s Creator, with the words “Sire, I found this hypothesis unnecessary”. When the mathematician Lagrange objected that God is a “beautiful hypothesis that explains so many things”, Laplace is said to have answered that “it explains everything, but predicts nothing”.
[8] Rovelli makes great use of the ideas put forward by Dirk Couprie notably in his book Anaximander in context.
[9] Rovelli also cites GER Lloyd’s brief comparative study of ancient Greek and Chinese science, The ambitions of curiosity which argues that a major difference between the two cultures lies in the competitive nature of intellectual activity in Greece where different teachers and schools are all vying for influence and students, as opposed to the preoccupation with harmony and process in China, where scholars are above all concerned with developing and influencing the institutions of the state, including the emperor.
[10] We are talking here about the internal structure of black holes, not about the information which can be gathered, as Stephen Hawking showed, from a black hole’s event horizon.
[11] As a good bourgeois ideologue, he only recognises the possible “consciousness” of the social scientists themselves – the consciousness of a whole revolutionary class remains a closed book to him.
The general strike called by trade unions representing 100 millions workers spread all across India took place on 28 Feb 2012. All national unions, belonging to all political parties, including the Hindu fundamentalist BJP, joined the strike, as did thousands of local and regional unions. Bank employees, postal and state transport workers, teachers, dock workers and many other sectors of workers participated in the strike. The fact that all unions agreed to call this strike together goes to show the dynamic of workers’ struggles behind it.
The unions put forward a mishmash of demands: defend the public sector, control prices, compulsorily register unions within 45 days, strict enforcement of labour laws, increase of minimum wages to Rs. 10000.00 per month and social security etc. They made no effort to show that the bourgeoisie is mercilessly attacking workers today as its system is in crisis and sick and rotten. Instead, the unions’ efforts were aimed at building trust in the system – the bourgeoisie can concede anything, if it wishes to do so.
But the way the unions went about this whole strike showed their real intent. For one, they did not ask several millions of their members to even formally join the strike. More than one and a half million railway workers, equal or even bigger number of state power sector workers, many others workers, most of whom are members of these unions, were not even called upon to join. While proclaiming a ‘general strike’, unions agreed to millions of their members going to work as usual and not disrupting the smooth flow of the main arteries of capitalism.
Even in sectors whose unions pledged to join the strike, their attitude was more one of proclaiming a ritual strike. Most workers who participated did so by staying at home. Unions made no big efforts to bring them onto the streets and together or organise demos. Not much effort was made to involve millions of private sector workers, who belong to striking national unions, in the strike. We can see the seriousness of this exclusion when we recall that recently and for quite some time private sector workers have been far more militant and less respectful of the laws of the bourgeoisie. Even industrial areas like Gurgaon and auto hubs near Chennai and factories like Maruti at Gurgaon and Hyundai near Chennai that have recently witnessed major strikes did not join this strike. In most industrial areas, in hundreds of big and smaller cities all across India, while public sector workers joined the strike, millions of private sector workers continued to work and their unions did not join the strike.
It is clear that unions did not use the strike to mobilise workers, to bring them onto the streets and unify them. They used it as a ritual, as a means to let off steam, to keep workers apart, to keep them passive and demobilised. Striking workers sitting at home and watching TV do not strengthen workers’ unity or consciousness. It only encourages a sense of isolation, a sense of passivity and of a wasted opportunity. Given this attitude, why did unions then call the strike? And what made all of them, including BMS and INTUC, join it? To understand this we have to look at what is happening at the economic and social level and within the working class in India.
Despite all the big talk about economic boom by the Indian bourgeoisie, the economic situation has been worsening over the last few years. Like capitalism everywhere, the capitalist economy in India too has been in crisis. According to statistics issued by the government, the growth has stalled and come down from nine percent to nearly six percent. Many industries have been badly hit by the crisis. These include the IT sector but also other sectors like textiles, diamond processing, capital goods industries, infrastructure, private power companies and airlines. This has led to intensified attacks on the working class. General inflation has been hovering around ten percent for more than two years. Inflation in food and other items of daily use has been much higher, sometime going up to 16%. This has made the life of the working class miserable.
In the midst of these deteriorating living and working conditions, the working class has also been discovering the path to class struggle. Since 2005 we have seen a slow acceleration of class struggle all across India. Of course this is not unique to India but part of a global resurgence of the class struggle. The years 2010 and 2011 have seen numerous strikes in many sectors, including in auto hubs at Gurgaon and Chennai. Some of these struggles, as the strikes by Honda Motor Cycle workers in 2010 and Maruti Suzuki workers in 2011, had shown great militancy and determination to confront the security apparatus of the bosses. This has also been the characteristic of strikes in Hyundai Motors in Chennai, where workers struck work several time against casualisation and other attacks of the bosses. These strikes showed strong tendencies toward solidarity and spread across factories. They also expressed tendencies toward self-organization and setting up general assemblies, as seen in strikes by the Maruti workers who occupied the factory against the advice of ‘their’ union.
In addition to this slowly rising tide of class struggle, the struggles taking place in Middle East, in Greece, in Britain and the global ‘occupy movements’ have been having an echo in the Indian working class.
In the face of this situation the bourgeoisie has really been worried about the spread of class struggle. At times the bourgeoisie has been very scared. This fear has been clearly expressed in the face of many of the recent strikes.
At the time of violent confrontations at Honda Motor Cycles and in the face of repeated strikes in Maruti-Suzuki, this fear could be seen clearly. Each time the media was full of stories that strikes could spread and engulf other auto companies in Gurgaon and paralyse the whole area. These stories were not speculation. While the main strikes were in a few factories, other workers went to the gates of the striking companies. There were workers’ joint demos, even one strike across the whole industrial city of Gurgaon. The provincial government was itself seriously concerned about the spread of the strike. The Chief Minister and Labour Minister of Haryana, at the prompting of the Primer Minister and Union Labour Minister, brought management and union bosses together to dampen down the strike.
Like the rest of the bourgeoisie, unions have been even more concerned over loosing control over the workers if the militancy increases. Again, this was evident in strikes at Maruti in 2011 where workers took many actions against the directions and the wishes of the union.
This fear has been pushing the unions to appear to be doing something. They have called a number of ritual strikes including a bank workers’ strike in November 2011. The present strike, while without doubt an expression of the rising tide of anger and militancy within the working class, is also the latest effort of the unions to contain and channel it.
Workers need to understand that going on a ritual strike and sitting back at home does not take us anywhere. Nor does it help to gather in a park and listen to speeches of union bosses and party MPs. The bosses and their government are attacking us because capitalism is in crisis and they have no way out. We need to understand that all workers are under attack, all are in the same boat. Remaining passive and isolated from each other does not discourage bosses from intensifying their attacks against workers. Workers need to use these occasions to come out on the streets, to mobilise themselves, to come together and discuss with other workers. They need to take their struggles into their own hands. This will not immediately solve workers’ problems but it will make it possible for us to mount a genuine struggle against the bosses to defend ourselves, to push the bosses back. It will help us develop our struggle against the whole of capitalism and work toward its destruction. As those occupying the Athens Law School in Greece in February 2012 said, in order to liberate ourselves from present crises of capitalism, “we must destroy the (capitalist) economy.”
Communist Iinternationalist, 9/3/12
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Thousands of teachers are striking in London on 28 March against the governments pension ‘reforms’
No. It’s the whole public sector. All pensions are under attack, and the latest budget, with its ‘granny tax’, has made it worse. Last November the civil servants, local government employees and others were out alongside those who work in education. Why have the unions decided not to bring them out today?
It’s the whole private sector, where growing numbers of workers can’t look forward to any kind of pension at all.
No. More and more workers face long term pay freezes, worsening conditions at work – if they have a job at all. Over 20 percent of young people between 16 and 25 are out of work.
No. These conditions are faced by workers up and down the country
No. the brutal austerity measures being imposed on the working class and the entire population in Greece, Portugal and Spain, where wages and pensions are already being directly cut and hundreds of thousands of jobs wiped out, are what lie in store for all us, because the crisis of this system is world wide and terminal
There are many reasons. The widespread feeling that there is no alternative, the hope that it will all go away, the lack of confidence about taking things into our own hands.
But this lack of perspective and lack of confidence means that those who falsely claim to represent our interests – above all our ‘official’ trade union representatives – can keep us divided into countless little sectors, trades, and categories, call us out on separate days, cancel strikes when the courts give the order, and imprison us in trade union legislation which makes us fight with one hand tied behind our backs.
Yes, if we cut across professional and trade union divisions and come together in assemblies open to all workers.
If we ignore laws about ballots and use these assemblies to make actual decisions about how to struggle.
If we ignore trade union laws about ‘secondary picketing’ and use massive delegations to call on other workers to join our struggle.
If we open out to casual workers, students, the unemployed, pensioners.
If we use demonstrations, occupations and street meetings not to listen passively to speeches by the experts but to exchange experiences of struggle and discuss how to go forward.
If we rediscover our identity as a class – a class which everywhere, in all countries, has the same interests and the same goal: the replacement of this rotten system with a real human community.
International Communist Current, 23/3/12
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This is an international statement that tries to draw a provisional balance sheet of the social movements of 2011 in order to contribute to a wider debate about their significance
The two most important events in 2011 were the globe crisis of capitalism[1], and the social movements in Tunisia, Egypt, Spain, Greece, Israel, Chile, the USA, Britain...
The consequences of the capitalist crisis have been very hard for the immense majority of the world's population: deteriorating living conditions, long-term unemployment lasting years, precarious work making it impossible to have even a minimum of stability, extreme poverty and hunger...
Millions of people are concerned about the disappearance of the possibility of having a stable and normal life and the lack of a future for their children. This has led to a profound indignation, attempts to break out of passivity by taking to the streets and squares, to discussions about the causes of a crisis which in its present phase has lasted 5 years.
This anger has been exacerbated by the arrogance, greed and indifference shown towards the suffering of the majority by the bankers, politicians and other representatives of the capitalist class. The same goes for the powerlessness of governments faced with such grave problems: their measures have only increased poverty and unemployment without bringing any solution.
This movement of indignation has spread internationally: to Spain, where the then Socialist government imposed one of the first and most draconian austerity plans; to Greece, the symbol of the crisis of sovereign debt; to the United States, the temple of world capitalism; to Egypt and Israel, focus of one of the worst and most entrenched imperialist conflicts, the Middle East.
The awareness that this is an international movement began to develop despite the destructive weight of nationalism, as seen in the presence of national flags in the demonstrations in Greece, Egypt or the USA. In Spain solidarity with the workers of Greece was expressed by slogans such as “Athens resists, Madrid rises up”. The Oakland strikers (USA, November,2011) said “Solidarity with the occupation movement world wide”. In Egypt it was agreed in the Cairo Declaration to support the movement in the United States. In Israel they shouted “Netanyahu, Mubarak, El Assad are the same” and contacts were made with Palestinian workers.
These movements have passed their high points and although there are new struggles (Spain, Greece, Mexico) many are asking: what did this wave of indignation achieve? Have we gained anything?
It is more than 30 years since we have seen such multitudes occupy the streets and squares in order to struggle for their own interests despite the illusions and confusions that have affected them.
These people, the workers, the exploited who have been presented as failures, idlers, incapable of taking the initiative or doing anything in common, have been able to unite, to share initiatives and to break out of the crippling passivity to which the daily normality of this system condemns them.
The principle of developing confidence in each others’ capacity, of discovering the strength of the collective action of the masses, has been a morale booster. The social scene has changed. The monopoly of public life by politicians, experts and ‘great men’ has been put into question by the anonymous masses who have wanted to be heard[2].
Having said all this, we are only at a fragile beginning. The illusions, confusions, inevitable mood swings of the protesters; the repression handed out by the capitalist state and the dangerous diversions imposed its forces of containment (the left parties and trade unions) have led to retreats and bitter defeats. It is a question of a long and difficult road, strewn with obstacles and where there is no guarantee of victory: that said the very act of starting to walk this road is the first victory.
The masses involved in these movements have not limited themselves to passively shouting their displeasure. They have actively participated in organising assemblies. The mass assembles have concretised the slogan of the First International (1864) “The emancipation of the working class is the work of the workers themselves or it is nothing”. This is the continuation of the tradition of the workers' movement stretching back to the Paris Commune, and to Russia in 1905 and 1917, where it took an ever higher form, continued in Germany 1918, Hungary 1919 and 1956, Poland 1980.
General assemblies and workers' councils are the genuine form of the struggle of the proletarian struggle and the nucleus of a new form of society.
Assemblies which aim to massively unite ourselves point the way towards breaking the chains of wage slavery, of atomisation, “everyone for themselves”, imprisonment in the ghetto of a sector or a social category.
Assemblies in order to think, to discuss and decide together, to make ourselves collectively responsible for what is decided, by participating together both in the making of decisions and their implementation.
Assemblies in order to build mutual confidence, general empathy, solidarity, which are not only indispensable for taking the struggle forward but can also serve as the pillars of a future society free of class and exploitation.
2011 has seen an explosion of real solidarity that has nothing to do with the hypocritical and self-serving “solidarity” that the ruling class preaches about. The demonstrations in Madrid called for the freeing of those who have been arrested or have stopped the police detaining immigrants; there have been massive actions against evictions in Spain, Greece and the United States; in Oakland “The strike Assembly has agreed to send pickets or to occupy any company or school that punishes employees or students in any way for taking part in the General Strike of the 2nd November”. Vivid but still episodic moments have happened, when everyone can feel protected and defended by those around them. All of which starkly contrasted with what is “normal” in this society with its anguished sense of hopelessness and vulnerability.
The consciousness needed for millions of workers to transform the world is not gained through being handed down by the ruling class or through the clever slogans of enlightened leaders. It is the fruit of an experience of struggle accompanied and guided by debate on a massive scale, by discussions which take into account the past but which are always focused on the future, since as a banner said in Spain “There is not future without revolution”.
The culture of debate, that is, open discussion based on mutual respect and active listening, has begun to spring up not only in the assemblies but around them: mobile libraries have been organised, as well as countless meetings for discussion and exchange of ideas... A vast intellectual activity has been carried out with very limited means, improvised in the streets and squares. And, as with the assemblies this has reanimated a past experience of the workers' movement “The thirst for education, so long held back, was concerted by the revolution into a true delirium. During the first six months, tons of literature, whether on handcarts or wagons poured forth from the Smolny Institute each day, Russia insatiably absorbed it, like hot sand absorbs water. This was not pulp novels, falsified history, diluted religion or cheap fiction that corrupts, but economic and social theories, philosophy, the works of Tolstoy, Gogol, Gorky”[3]. Confronted with this society’s culture that is based on the struggle for “models of success” which can only be a fount of millions of failures, the alienating and false stereotypes hammered home by the dominant ideology and its media, thousands of people began to look for an authentic popular culture, making it for themselves, trying to animate their own critical and independent criteria. The crisis and its causes, the role of the banks etc, have been exhaustively discussed. There has been discussion of revolution, although with much confusion; there has been talk of democracy and dictatorship, synthesised in these two complementary slogans “they call it democracy and it is not” and “it is a dictatorship but unseen”.
If all of this makes 2011 the year of the beginning of hope, we have viewed these movements with a discerning and critical eye, seeing their limitations and weaknesses which are still immense.
If there is a growing number of people in the world who are convinced that capitalism is an obsolete system, that “in order for humanity to survive, capitalism must be killed” there is also a tendency to reduce capitalism to a handful of “bad guys” (unscrupulous financiers, ruthless dictators) when it is really a complex network of social relations that have to be attacked in their totality and not dissipated into a preoccupation with its many surface expressions (finance, speculation, the corruption of political-economic powers).
While it is more than justified to reject the violence that capitalism has exuded from every pore (repression, terror and terrorism, moral barbarity), this system will however not be abolished by mere passive and citizen pressure. The minority class will not voluntarily abandon power and it will take cover in its state with its democratic legitimacy through elections every 4 or 5 years; through parties who promise what they can never do and do what they didn't promise; and through unions that mobilise in order to demobilise and end up signing up to all that the ruling class puts on the table. Only a massive, tenacious and stubborn struggle will give the exploited the necessary strength to destroy the state and its means of repression and to make real the oft repeated shout in Spain “All power to the assemblies”.
Although the slogan of “we are the 99% against the 1%”, which was so popular in the occupation movement in the United States, reveals the beginnings of an understanding of the bloody class divisions that affect us, the majority of participants in these protests saw themselves as “active citizens” who want to be recognized within a society of “free and equal citizens”.
However, society is divided into classes: a capitalist class that has everything and produces nothing, and an exploited class -the proletariat- that produces everything but has less and less. The driving force of social evolution is not the democratic game of the “decision of a majority of citizens” (this game is nothing more than a masquerade which covers up and legitimises the dictatorship of the ruling class) but the class struggle.
The social movement needs to join up with the struggle of the principle exploited class -the proletariat- who collectively produce the main riches and ensure the functioning of social life: factories, hospitals, schools, universities, offices, ports, construction, post offices. In some of the movements in 2011 we began to see its strength, above all in the wave of strikes that exploded in Egypt and which finally forced Mubarak to resign. In Oakland (California) the “occupiers” called a general strike, going to the port and gaining the active support of the dockers and lorry drivers. In London striking electricians and the Saint Paul's occupiers carried out common actions. In Spain certain striking sectors have tended to unite with the assemblies in the squares.
There is no opposition between the class struggle of the modern proletariat and the profound needs of the social layers exploited by capitalist oppression. The struggle of the proletariat is not an egotistical or specific movement but the basis for the “independent movement of the immense majority to the benefit of the immense majority” (The Communist Manifesto).
The present movements would benefit from critically reviewing the experience of two centuries of proletarian struggle and attempts at social liberation. The road is long and fraught with enormous obstacles, which calls to mind the oft repeated slogan in Spain “It is not that we are going slowly, it is that we are going far”. Start the most widespread possible discussion, without any restriction or discouragement, in order to consciously prepare new movements which could make it clear that capitalism can indeed be replaced by another society.
International Communist Current 11/03/12
[1] See: The economic crisis is not a never-ending story, en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201203/4744/economic-crisis-not-never-ending-story [73]. Along with the global crisis of the system, the serious incident at the Fukushima nuclear power station -Japan- shows us the enormous dangers that humanity is facing.
[2] It is not without significance that Time Magazine made The Protester as its “Man of the Year”. See www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2101745_2102132_2102... [74].
[3] John Reed: 10 days that shock the world. www.marxists.org/archive/reed/1919/10days/10days/ch1.htm [75]
We are very pleased to announce the formation of two new sections of the ICC, in Peru and Ecuador.
The constitution of a new section of our organisation is always a very important event for us. First because it is further evidence of the capacity of the world proletariat, despite its difficulties, to give rise to revolutionary minorities on an international scale; and secondly because it means that our organisation is able to strengthen its global presence.
The formation of two new sections of the ICC is taking place in a situation where the working class has, since 2003, begun to recover from the long period of retreat in its consciousness and its militancy that followed the events of 19891. This recovery has been expressed by a whole series of struggles which show a growing awareness of the impasse facing world capitalism and by the emergence, on an international scale, of internationalist minorities looking for contact among themselves, posing many questions, searching for a revolutionary coherence and debating the perspectives for the development of the class struggle. Part of this milieu has turned to the positions of the communist left and some of these elements have joined our organisation. Thus in 2007 an ICC nucleus was created in Brazil [77]. In 2009 we greeted the creation of two new sections of the ICC in the Philippines and Turkey [78].
The two new sections are also the product of a sustained effort by our organisation and its militants to take part in political discussion and clarification, to make links wherever there are groups or individuals searching for communist ideas, whether or not they enter our organisation.
Our new sections were, before joining us, groups of this kind, whether they turned straight away towards political clarification around the positions of the ICC, as in Ecuador, or whether they came from different political backgrounds, as in Peru. In both cases, they developed through discussion with other political forces as well as through systematic discussion with the ICC on the basis of its platform. They always had a commitment to taking position on the major events of the international and national situation2. Today, they continue to evolve in a milieu which is very rich in contacts.
Based in South America, these two new sections will reinforce the intervention of the ICC in the Spanish language, and its presence in Latin America where the ICC was already present in Venezuela, Mexico and Brazil.
The whole of the ICC send a warm and fraternal greeting to these new sections and the comrades who form them.
ICC, April 2012
1 The collapse of Stalinism which gave rise to huge bourgeois campaigns which, once again, fraudulently identified communism and the form of state capitalism which developed in the eastern countries in the wake of the degeneration of the Russian revolution.
2 Some of these statements have been published in Accion Proletaria, the ICC’s paper in Spain, and on ICC Online in the Spanish language
This is a translation of an article from our comrades in Switzerland.
In response to the economic crisis, angry and indignant people in Switzerland set up their first general assembly (GA) of the Occupy movement on October 15 2011. Subsequent weekly meetings in front of the big banks on Paradeplatz (Army Square) in Zurich were inspired by much more important international movements such as the Indignados in Spain or Occupy Wall Street in the United States. The very heterogeneous Occupy movement is an expression of the international emergence of a process of reflection and of revolt faced with the impasse of capitalist society. Despite a convergent tendency at the international level to focus (often in a very restricted fashion) on the “world of finance”, some quite diverse experiences unfolded in different countries, deserving to be taken up at the international level. And these happened when disillusionment within the Occupy movement was clearly appearing throughout. Thus we want to share here some experiences drawn from our participation in Occupy’s activities.
As in New York and other cities in the United States, on October 15 Paradeplatz was transformed into a village of tents, but after two days, threatened with expulsion by the police, the “village” had to move to the central Lindenhof Park. The Occupy movement in Zurich wasn't straight away confronted with direct repression as in Spain, but much more a classical policy of attempting to integrate the movement into the system, with the ruling class in Switzerland resorting to its own version of “direct democracy” to blunt any resistance to capitalism. Here in Switzerland the ruling class had drawn the lessons of events at the beginnings of the 1980s, understanding that it wasn't possible to suffocate social movements by brutality alone and that it could do so much better by offering some possibilities of participation in the system.
Hypocritically, the leaders of the banks and the government thus showed their “understanding” of the Occupy movement. Occupy militants were immediately invited onto one of the most important political TV programmes with the objective of reflecting together with the main bankers and professors as to the possible means to make the financial system better; the leaders of today couldn't adopt the arrogant attitude that “everything's going well”. During this initial phase, the attacks of the bourgeois press were mainly restricted to criticisms of the absence of concrete political positions on the part of Occupy.
When, in its initial enthusiasm, the Occupy movement accepted offers like that of state television, it was in the hope of greater popularisation. But at the end October, the GA managed, most of the time, to spring the trap of “concrete propositions” aimed at ameliorating the capitalist financial system and the parallel trap of integrating itself into the mechanisms of classic democratic participation.
For the ruling class, the most profitable thing seemed to be to tolerate the movement as a whole and wait for its exhaustion rather than immediately integrate it into the democratic game where it would be hammered. In the almost unprecedented culture of debate in the initial phase of October and November, where almost everyone was allowed to speak, a great strength of the movement was that it settled on the principle: “take time to discuss and don't allow ourselves to be put under pressure”.
The tent village of Lindenhof, well organised and welcoming towards those who wanted to participate, rapidly became (as the Saturday GA on Paradeplatz) the real centre of discussion for the Occupy movement. As with the Indignados’ movement in Spain, the collective occupation of a public space provided a framework that allowed the movement to unite. Very quickly however, and despite the open attitude of the militants living in the village, two dynamics appeared:
1. The emergence of an independent community to which only people having the time and staying power to live their lives in this place could participate – whereas that was almost impossible for the majority of people responsible for families and the obligations of wage labour.
2. The daily concern of housekeeping and of the organisation of the tent village progressively took over the time dedicated to political debate – which was at the origins of the hopes of the Occupy movement.
This situation wasn't freely chosen by the occupants and they can't be reproached for it; it was imposed on them through the objective difficulty of making the tent village an inhabitable infrastructure, and above all because of the permanent threat of being expelled by the repressive apparatus of the police. Contrary to Zuccotti Park in New York, the movement as a whole in Zurich didn't go as far in a dynamic of falling back on itself and fetishising the park. It engaged in its general assemblies with an intense reflection on the way in which the movement could link up with the rest of “99%”.
On the eve of November 3, the GA which occupied the University square in order to hold a collective discussion, inviting students to participate directly, constituted an expression of this aspiration to enlarge the movement. For five weeks, free of the daily concerns of the tent village, these weekly general assemblies were collective moments encouraging reflection on questions of general politics. Faced with the emergence of positions absurdly proposing a “leadership” to the movement or describing themselves in a fatalist fashion as “delusional”, the plenary assemblies were strong enough to pose their collective spirit of self-organisation. But the anger and combativity among the students wasn't developed enough to join the Occupy movement to their own preoccupations. Even if the hope of a strong participation of the students didn't come to fruition (a hope based on the fact that in 2009 a movement broke out at the University of Zurich), these evening meetings, called “GA's on the content”, where some new people made an appearance, constituted an enrichment of the Occupy movement which could no longer be reduced to a village of tents. Occupy had tried concrete measures to spread the movement.
As a matter of fact, the positive dynamic of such “GA's on the content” demonstrates that in the future any movement will be able to avoid transferring fundamental political discussions of the plenary GA to the “GA on the content” - in the same way that political life cannot be exclusively delegated to work groups. On the contrary, the plenary GA must take the time to come together in order to calmly and collectively clarify the fundamental political questions of the movement. In December, Occupy Zurich, strongly influenced by activism, got more and more bogged down in the problem of holding GA's in themselves, treating numerous questions of organisational detail in an exhausting fashion.
The pioneer spirit present in the first great mobilisations of October and November on Paradeplatz settled down. Occupy was not dead, as the bourgeois press would have us believe at the end of December with the slogan “Bye bye Occupy!”, expressing the wish to bury protest against the crisis and the financial institutions. But participation in the GA's rapidly fell during December. The tent village was again emptied by the police on November 15 and some militants had demoralising fines inflicted upon them. By the first GA of 2012, January 4, with a participation of about 70 people, several interventions underlined that “there were less and less numbers”. And, in the space of a month, Occupy clearly went from a spontaneous movement mobilising numerous people to a kernel of militants trying to maintain some near-daily actions whatever the cost.
Quite another atmosphere affected the culture of debate of the GA’s: patience and mutual respect while speaking, so impressive at the beginning, began to give way to tiredness, impatience, tensions and feelings of being excluded from any decision-making. A dynamic developed trying to compensate for the growing isolation by an activism that more and more clearly rested solely on the capacities and on the good will of militants taken individually and not at all on any collective perspective. Occupy Zurich held numerous actions that were really no longer possible with a declining force, as the discussion of the GA about the information stand installed on a public square in Stauffacher showed. Though without doubt well intentioned, but quite desperate, the appeals to discipline (which can’t be the basis for any social movement fighting for the emancipation of humanity because it’s equivalent to the individual moralism of capitalist society) only led to still more tensions.
It's a well-known phenomenon in social movements that the great heights of the beginning are rapidly transformed into frustration when the movement remains isolated from the rest of the working class. The question of isolation is here shown to be a key question. The evident fetishisation of Zuccotti Park in New York wasn't due to the isolation coming from Occupy Wall Street, but was rather an expression of it. There are no “survival recipes” for a movement like Occupy because like other social movements it doesn't originate from an activist “feasibility”, but comes from the political fermentation within society. It arises on the basis of the objective conditions of life.
Marked by the progressive decline of the Occupy Zurich movement, the January 4 GA thus turned to a presentation and the adoption of plans of action in which the participants mostly involved themselves in a very individualistic way. In such a moment, it is more productive to pose the questions: “what do we want?”, “what are our common strengths?”, “why is the movement going backwards?”
For the people involved in the movement of Occupy Zurich, confronted with fatigue and the shrinkage of numbers down to a small kernel, the necessity to pose some quite fundamental questions was clearly shown in the two first weeks of January 2012 in the question of the frequency of assemblies. What this discussion shows, in the framework of a social movement in decline, is the insoluble contradiction between on the one hand the maintenance of frequent assemblies as the lungs of the movement and, on the other hand, its declining strength and participation. At the GA of January 4, this question was settled in favour of the sole solution which seems realistic and reasonable (immediately go for one assembly a week) but with the aid of the “thermometer of fatigue”. It was absolutely correct for one of the most active elements to put in writing the day following this assembly the critique that “the decision to hold one GA a week was not taken unanimously, but by a decision of the majority. From the beginning I was clearly against the reduction in the frequency of GA's, however my arguments were not confronted and my preoccupations ignored. When everyone expressed their opinions it turned out that there was a majority for holding less GA's, which finally ended up, when I again wanted to support my position, with me being barracked by all. Unfortunately, two compromise positions were rejected without discussion. I present my excuses here to those that formulated them; in this situation, put under pressure from all sides, I considered these compromise positions without controlling my emotions, which led me to reject them straight away. I regret it. Looking back on them, both had potential if one had been able to discuss them in detail.”
What this comrade is defending here is not a blind principle of about raising the frequency of GA's independent of the dynamic of the movement, but the preservation of the culture of debate. The consensual method of the Occupy movement, even if it can conceal the latent weakness of prematurely taking the smallest common denominator as a result of the discussion, thus preventing the necessary polarisation, had, at least in the initial phase, the advantage of allowing a place for all opinions. It is clear that sometimes concrete decisions must be taken even if everyone is not in agreement. However, when decisions are taken by the majority they must not fundamentally mean the end of discussions around them. At the GA of January 11, the preoccupation of the participant quoted above couldn't find any place because of the overwhelming amount of information and points concerning action, although his critique went to the heart of the problem: the changes in the operation of the culture of debate.
It's difficult to say where Occupy is going. However, the January 11 GA clearly contained a tendency towards seeing itself as a “permanent movement”, wanting to evolve and transform it into a political regroupment. Given that the struggles for working conditions or against the lowering of wages in capitalism today cannot have a permanent character without falling into a trade unionist policy of rotten compromise and accommodations to representative democracy, similar perils lie in wait for Occupy. In the context of the momentary loss of its strength and its own dynamic, some voices made themselves heard in favour of an alliance with leftist groups such as Jusos and Greenpeace, doubtless with the aim of regaining some strength. For example, the GA got completely drawn into an insignificant offer of cooperation with a political spiritualist group. Instead of defending the autonomy of the movement, of discussing questions that are really on the agenda, the GA restricted itself to a debate aimed at arriving at an immediate decision concerning their relations to this particular group and to religious groups in general. Such a discussion can be interesting in itself, but it's impossible to undertake and clarify in such haste, which has been imposed from the outside and which already gives a foretaste of bourgeois leftist politics. What, at the beginning of the movement had been thrown out of the door with a healthy instinct - the blackmail exerted by the bourgeoisie pushing for the formulation of “concrete demands” with a view to making the financial system better, in other words pressure to obtain a position within the framework of bourgeois politics - now furtively reasserted itself through the window.
If the Occupy movement doesn't want to be dispersed and get lost in supporting parliamentary proposals about “disclosing the financing of political parties” or in democratic initiatives against speculation on basic food products, which some participants have presented to the GA as their political project, it is necessary to return to the question at the beginning: why is there this crisis of capitalism? The Occupy movement has to ask itself the question of whether all the problems so sharply perceived by its participants can find a solution within capitalism – or is it time to go beyond this mode of production as a whole? As it is impossible for such social movements to be permanently maintained, and there will be others, it is important to convey all the positive experiences made to future social movements in case Occupy doesn't find a second wind. Because the crisis of capitalism, the element which unleashed Occupy in the first place, will not disappear as long as this system of exploitation survives.
Mario 16/1/12
President Obama has announced US sanctions against those countries that continue to buy Iranian oil. This is not really a new move so much as the next move in applying pressure, already planned 3 months ago. It follows EU measures against Iranian oil, despite Greece and Italy’s reliance on it. Talks between the US and Israel last month were even more bellicose than usual and accompanied by much speculation on whether Israel would launch a strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.
Iran’s foreign policy, including its efforts to obtain a nuclear arsenal, is shaped by its claim to be a regional power in the Middle East. This brings it into opposition to Israel, as the undoubted leading power in the region, and its US backer. All talk about the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and international law only serve as diplomatic weapons when they are not simply propaganda to obscure the reality of the sordid imperialist interests at stake. Particularly given that Israel’s nuclear capabilities are an open secret. Nevertheless, Iran’s attempt to develop a nuclear arsenal under cover of wanting to develop civilian nuclear power is indeed a threat to Israel’s status as top dog in the Middle East.
For the moment Obama and Netanyahu have agreed to use diplomacy against Iran. This has important advantages in putting pressure on Iran’s big power allies. Russia is closest, with a strategic partnership based on arms and nuclear energy sales, but it has to distance itself from any intention to build nuclear weapons. China has strong economic ties, buying 20% of Iranian oil, with a 20 year energy agreement at prices below those on the world market, very significant for its economy based on cheap production costs. Both these allies have naturally opposed the oil embargo. Oil is, at least in theory, a good weapon to use against Iran, with 10% of the world’s petrol and 17% of natural gas reserves. However, not only are its largest trading partners not going to cooperate, not only do the EU and Japan already have a dispensation to continue trading, but Iran’s economy also relies on agricultural exports and, based on its natural advantages, has a fast growing economy. As always, at the economic level an embargo will hit only the poorest in the country. As an element in the build up of diplomatic pressure it may be very useful in neutralising Russian and Chinese support for Iran, particularly if there is a future military option.
This is perhaps a very opportune time to pressurise Iran, when its most significant regional ally, the Syrian Assad regime, is looking at best distinctly shaky as the country descends into civil war. But Iran still has the capacity to influence events in the region via its clients in Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as by using the ideology of Shiite unity to gain influence, particularly in Iraq which now has a Shiite prime minister, Malaki.
The US has not taken the military option off the table. It never does, and numerous military adventures show it is never backward in launching attacks. There are strategic and diplomatic considerations to take account of first. Many of those willing to support the oil embargo – at least up to a point, provided it doesn’t impair their supply – may oppose a military attack, much as France and Germany opposed the invasion of Iraq. It is also still bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The military option discussed at the time of the Obama-Netanyahu meeting last month was an Israeli strike against nuclear installations. While this would be more difficult than the attack on Iraq in 1981 (further, need for bunker busting bombs to reach underground facilities) Israel has clearly calculated that any Iranian retaliation would be weak, or as Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies says “an Iranian missile strike would be only a symbolic gesture” since it would be unable to hit military targets in Israel (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17261265 [83]). For our rulers civilian casualties are of no real significance! But Iran’s response would not be limited to direct strikes against Israel. It has the capacity to close the Straits of Hormuz, which control 40% of the world’s oil supplies, and blocking this would block Iran and Russia’s main competitors in the petrol trade. Oil trade is a two-edged sword. Iran also has the capacity to use its clients, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, to send missiles into Israel, stirring up more destruction and chaos.
There is one other disadvantage, from the US point of view, to an Israeli strike against Iran – it would tend to unite the country behind the policy of nuclear weapons. Iran has major divisions in its ruling class that were shown up in response to the fraudulent elections in 2009.
The policies of the US and Israel, on the one hand, or Iran and its allies on the other, whether hawkish, or seemingly reluctant to go to war, are not determined by the whims of the regimes involved but are compelled by a material situation that forces every imperialism into conflict with its rivals.
Alex 31/3/12
During the past weeks some abominable acts of violence shocked the world. In early March US Sgt. Robert Bales went on a shooting spree in the Afghan Kandahar province. He went from house to house methodically shooting Afghan civilians. Altogether he killed 16 people, mostly women and children. In mid-March in Toulouse and Montauban the young Algerian born Muhamed Merah killed three French soldiers before gunning down three children and a teacher in a Jewish school.
What do the running amok of the US soldier stationed in Afghanistan and the series of murders by Mohamed Merah have to do with each other?
Mohamed Merah claimed that he wanted to take revenge for the prohibition of the burka in France, the deployment of the French Army in Afghanistan and the oppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli state. Before being shot during the police siege he regretted that he had been unable to kill more people. The motive of the shooting spree by Robert Bales is still unknown. Apparently Merah, by committing as much slaughter as possible, wanted to draw maximum attention to the oppression of his brother and sister Muslims. The spirit of revenge and retaliation drove him to these murders, which he claimed to be carrying out on behalf of al Qaida. On the other hand, it looks like Bales just went berserk – he later claimed that he had no memory of the killings.
How was it possible that the army man Robert Bales, himself a father of two children, lost control to this degree?
The New York Times reported on March 17th that Bales joined the army shortly after 9/11. “I am going to help my country”, was his justification. However, after being sent to the theatres of war, he became aware that the lives of the US soldiers (as that of all ISAF troops) were in danger 24 hours a day. They had to expect an attack at any moment. In four deployments within a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bales suffered from a head and foot injury. The eve before the shooting he witnessed a horrific scene in which one of his fellow soldiers lost a leg in a land mine. We do not know how many victims among civilians or enemy fighters he saw or how many shoot-outs he was involved in. In any case, the experience of Robert Bales in these wars was in no way exceptional.
It is a fact that war creates horrendous psychological damage among soldiers as well as civilians. “More than 200.000 people (i.e. one fifth of all veterans of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan) have received treatment since the beginning of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan in veteran hospitals – all of them were treated because of Posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSD)”. USA Today published these figures in November 2011, referring to studies by the Veterans’ Association. “The estimated number of unreported cases of sick veterans is probably much higher (…) The army only admits some 50.000 cases of PTSD”. (https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,822232,00.html [87]).
Around one third of the veterans of the Vietnam war returned home with massive psychological disorders. Although only one percent of the population served in the US-army, the suicides of US veterans count for 20% of all suicides. Almost 1000 veterans try to commit suicide every month. As veterans report: “It is a horror. War changes your brain. Between war and life at home there is a world of difference. You change, whether you want it or not. Once you return home, you can no longer find a balance.” (www.tagesschau.de/ausland/usarmee128.html [88])
And once they return home many of them have to face unemployment and homelessness. The example of the city of Los Angeles is revealing: “In Los Angeles there are many homeless veterans. They lost everything, their job, their partners, their home. All this because of their psychological disorders and because they do not get any help. Roughly one third of all the homeless of Los Angeles are veterans.” (www.tagesschau.de/ausland/usarmee128.html [88])
Napo, the British National Association of Probation Officers, “estimated that 12,000 [former servicemen] are under supervision of probation officers, with a further 8,500 behind bars in England and Wales. The total of more than 20,000 is more than twice the number currently serving in Afghanistan” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ [89]
If you give patriotism and nationalism an inch, you are drawn into a spiral of destruction which not only damages or destroys the lives of civilian populations, but also the soldiers themselves, who are mentally mutilated and emotionally destabilised. While the ruling class and their ideologues embellish wars by speaking about “humanitarian missons” and “stabilising countries”, the reality inside the theatre of war looks very different. Here the soldiers are dragged into an abyss where their initial anxieties evolve into hatred and paranoia. What is portrayed as a “humanitarian” deployment in reality turns out to be the permanent terrorisation of the population. In these circumstances soldiers often develop a sense of satisfaction if they can damage or destroy symbols which enjoy a high esteem among the local population, or if they can humiliate human beings directly and openly. The local population, which has been pushed into a dead-end, often feels nothing but contempt for the “liberators” – and many of them can easily be mobilised for suicide attacks. The killing machine has come into full swing.
After so many traumatic experiences Bales could no longer feel that he wanted to “help my country”. He was particularly outraged by the fact that after four previous deployments he was being sent to Afghanistan again. According to his wife they would have preferred being stationed in more peaceful outposts like Germany, Italy or Hawaii.
Bales may now be facing the death penalty. Instead of explaining why patriotism and nationalism necessarily lead to orgies of violence, to the destruction of the victims and the perpetrator, the US legal system now acts as prosecutor and judge. The ruling class wants to wash its hands of responsibility for the war, and more precisely, for the army’s systematic dehumanisation of its own soldiers. The army, frequently supported by professional psychologists using the latest techniques of ‘behaviour modification’, has one essential goal: soldiers have to be made fit for combat, which means overcoming any reluctance about killing fellow human beings. The psychologist and film maker Jan Haaken showed in her documentary Mind Zone the role the psychologists play: “We are not here to reduce the number of soldiers. In case of doubt soldiers are diagnosed fit for combat, as long as they can do the job”. https://www.democracynow.org/2012/3/16/mind_zone_new_film_tracks_therapists [90]
Mohamed Merah, who wiped out the lives of seven people because he wanted to take revenge for the all the acts of violence which this society perpetrates against people, only reproduced the murderous methods of an oppressing system. The means he chose are part of a destructive and self-destructive vicious circle. The fact that his application to join the French Foreign Legion and the army was turned down, although he wanted to offer his services to the French state, may cast a light on his readiness to kill in the service of the state and the nation.
“The spiral of violence which wipes out all that is human cannot be broken using the military methods of the capitalist system. In order to overcome an inhuman system, the goal and the means have to cohere..
The proletarian revolution requires no terror for its aims; it hates and despises murder. It does not need these weapons because it does not combat individuals but institutions, because it does not enter the arena with naïve illusions whose disappointment it would seek to revenge. It is not the desperate attempt of a minority to mould the world forcibly according to its ideal, but the action of the great massive millions of the people, destined to fulfil a historic mission and to transform historical necessity into reality”.
(Rosa Luxemburg, ‘What does Spartacus want?’, 14. December 1918, )
Dv. 25/03/12
In many discussions the following is asked: where has all the vitality and combativity, the discussions and occupations of squares gone? Some people tell us “They are being managed by the likes of Democracia Real YA or Assemblies of 15M”[1]. However many think they have simply disappeared and that we shouldn't have any illusions about them.
We are certainly not in an explosive situation like May; does that mean that we have not experienced anything?
Tons of “democratist” rubbish has poured forth from Democracia Real Ya (DRY), likewise the PSOE, in order to bury the militancy, spontaneity, creativity, discussions and mobilisations of the 15M movement. But they cannot draw a veil over these events. Those days in May will remain a reference point for the fact that it is possible to struggle, to decide for ourselves. Each time that discontent and anger overwhelm democratic normality in order to fight back, 15M will be a reference point.
First of all because it was a baptism of fire for the younger generation, for those who had never been in an assembly, who had not felt the solidarity and collective force of the workplace because of the chronic unemployment they suffer. In the squares and demonstrations the youngest and oldest have come together, and begun a transmission of experience, gaining confidence in the possibility of changing things. And this will not be easily forgotten.
It has also made it possible to go to the root of questions. Faced with disgust at reformist, electoral and trade unionist thinking, 15M had the courage to recognise the lack of perspective that this system offers and dared to speak loudly of revolution, although everyone saw its contents differently and it was not posed as an immediate prospect. And this was displayed from the very beginning when the Assembly of the Arrested (Madrid)[2] said in their communiqué: “We are faced with a situation without hope and without a future, a situation we are told to passively accept”.
Furthermore, in the squares, many have discovered for the first time that it is possible to organise the struggle for ourselves, that the assemblies can express a collective reflection, can be a space for experiencing the unity and strength of the movement. The elected commissions did not act on their own, but had to be accountable to the assemblies. The weakening of the assemblies was seen when some commissions elected themselves or where named by DRY or others, and this even included commissions that had initially been elected by the assemblies but which began to function on their own account, trying to impose on the assemblies decisions that they had not made, such as the DRY's “Ten Commandments”.
Despite all the difficulties and differences, 15M saw itself as part of the same thread stretching from Tunisia to Wall Street and has also generated a tremendous solidarity and sympathy; and at times it expressed an internationalist sentiment, seeing itself as part of an international movement of struggle, such as when the first assemblies in the Plaza de Cataluña in Barcelona translated their communiqués of solidarity into different languages.
The movement of the indignant, although not being fully aware of it, is an attempt to respond to the world crisis of capitalism. As we saw at the onset of the movement in Tunisia[3], for example, this was expressed by the fact that many thousands of people felt they could no longer live in a system of commodity and wage relations. We have seen demonstrations of the indignant in Tunisia, Egypt, Spain, Greece, Israel, the USA, Chile, Great Britain....A simultaneity of movements that only has precedents in the 1968 movements or the international revolutionary wave of 1919-20.
The 15M movement continues to be a reference point through the living and active emergence of a considerable (compared with the period immediately preceding) number of minorities who are continuing the process of reflection and preparation for the next struggles.
These minorities cannot be seen as the representatives of the movement, because they have not been elected by the assemblies; nor are they backed by a massive and persistent moblisation. It would be a mistake for them to talk in the name of the 15M movement. Equally it would be an error to think that they have nothing to do with it. Each movement of struggles generates its minorities, who do not represent the whole, but who are part of it. What these groups express is the effort to continue the process of clarifying lessons for the future. They are also creating a network of discussion, of meetings, of confidence and solidarity that will be very important for the organisation of new mass mobilisations. No mass movement, no revolution is possible without the existence of these channels for spreading the struggle and for discussing theory and practice.
Other minorities however, had tried to integrate the militancy of the mobilisations into the channels of the democratic state, following the representative-electoral schema of parliament and the unions. These people, who are characterised fundamentally by the positions of the DRY, aspire to be the official representatives of the movement, putting forwards their programme of demands, calling their own mobilisations, wanting to find a “space” for the spirit of the movement in the bourgeois State. In return they offer to surrender the real movement to the conditions of the system, to take on objectives that are “reasonable” in a situation of crisis. They want a movement without mobilisations, without effective assemblies, without fruitful discussions.
These minorities are not as expression of the 15M but of the totalitarian state, whatever they think they may be doing.
The first spectacular days of 15M, with their massive nature and unity, with all the discussion and emotion, will not spontaneously repeat themselves. The magnitude of the movement surprised the state, though at the same time it did not feel directly threatened and allowed it to run out of steam. The next attempts at massive mobilisation will not find the same open ground; on the contrary, they will only come about through a confrontation. In this sense, things may initially look more like they did in the last days of the movement: manoeuvres in the assemblies, dead end demonstrations etc.
The organizing of sovereign assemblies and massive mobilisations will mean a struggle against the concerted efforts of the DRY, the trade unions, PSOE, and other left parties who will try to maintain their grip over the movement.
Furthermore, the next mobilisations will not be able to avoid a hand to hand struggle with these forces to avoid being trapped on the electoral terrain. The next demands of the struggle will have to be posed directly on the social terrain faced with the gravity of the crisis and the enormous cuts.
There were tentative efforts to bring the workers into the struggle of the assemblies and the 15M movement, particularly in Barcelona, where the local government’s attacks have ignited the public sector[4]. But they were faced with the false dilemma of “if you want to struggle against the cuts, join the union struggle”, because the 15M was a struggle for “electoral reform”. This division of the “political” and “wage” struggles is a knife pointed at the heart of the movement.
This can be avoided by taking further what happened in Catalonia: uniting the workers’ struggles and the 15M assemblies.
In fact there cannot be any more 15M without seeing its content, its forms of struggle and its demands as part of the struggle of the working class,
“The cancer of skepticism dominates ideology today and infects the proletariat and its own revolutionary minorities. As stated above, the proletariat has missed all of the appointments that history has given it during the course of a century of capitalist decadence, and this has resulted in an agonising doubt in its own ranks about its identity and its capacities as a class, to the point where even in displays of militancy some reject the term “working class”.[5] This skepticism is made even stronger because it is fed by the decomposition of capitalism;[6] despair, the lack of concrete plans for the future foster disbelief and distrust of any perspective of collective action.
The movements in Spain, Greece and Israel – despite all the weaknesses they contain – have begun to provide an effective remedy against the cancer of scepticism, as much by their very existence and what they mean for the continuity of struggles and the conscious efforts made by the world proletariat since 2003. They are not a storm that suddenly burst out of a clear blue sky but the result of a slow accumulation over the last eight years of small clouds, drizzle and timid lightning that has grown until it acquires a new quality.” (International Review 147 ‘Movement of the Indignant in Spain, Greece and Israel: From indignation to the preparation of class struggles’). https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201111/4593/movement... [94]
Hic Rhodus 21/01/12
[1] This movement that began on the 15th May with huge demonstrations in Madrid and other cities in Spain has been known since as the 15M. On the meaning of the 15M see https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201111/4593/movement... [95].
[2] This assembly/collective was formed by young people who had been arrested during police violence at the end of the 15th May demonstration in Madrid and were beaten up by the police in police stations. The assembly/collective issued a communiqué denouncing their treatment. This stimulated the occupation of the Plaza del Sol in Madrid and of public squares in other cities in Spain.
[3] A university educated young man who could not find employment but earned a living through selling fruit on the street burned himself alive after the police destroyed his stall. This event was the detonator of the massive movements.
[4] Delegations of transport and health workers have joined up with the assemblies, as have the unemployed.
[5] We cannot deal here with why the working class is the revolutionary class of society and why its struggle represents the future for all other non-exploiting strata, a burning question as we have seen in the movement of the indignant. The reader can find more material on this question in two articles published in International Review 73 [96] and 74 [97], ‘Who can change the world?: the proletariat is still the revolutionary class’.
[6] See ‘Theses on Decomposition [98]’ International Review No 107.
- Main topic: what can we learn from the social movements of 2011?
- Other discussions on art, religion, etc
The ICC invites you to a day of discussion in London on 23 June. The main focus of the day will be a discussion about the significance of the social movements of 2011. What can we learn from the revolts that broke out Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Greece, Spain, the USA, the UK and many other countries? What were their strengths and weaknesses? How do they relate to the more general struggle of the working class against capitalism?
Over the past year we have published a large number of articles and documents about these movements, which can be found on our website. More recently we have published a general statement about them [102]. We aim to start the morning’s discussion with a presentation of this text, but we hope to have time to discuss other contributions and analyses of how these movements took shape in different cities and countries.
In the afternoon we are planning to organise shorter discussions around more general topics. At the moment we have one planned on marxism and art, and another on the origins of Islam, but we are open to further suggestions, and to offers from all directions to present other topics. So far all three discussions will be presented by sympathisers of the ICC rather than ICC members.
We hope that these discussions will be of interest to comrades in or around revolutionary political organisations, to people who have been actively involved in the social movements, and to anyone asking questions about the nature and future of present-day society – and about the feasibility of getting rid of it.
If you are interested in attending, let us know in advance if you can, especially if you have any accommodation, transport or other problems that might make it difficult for you to come along.
The venue is upstairs at the Lucas Arms, 245a Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8QZ. The first session will go from 11-2 and the afternoon sessions from 3-6. Food can be bought in the pub but we are also planning to go to a nearby restaurant after the meeting.
Contact us at [email protected] [103]
Over the last decade or so, the proletariat in China, and the rest of East Asia - Burma, Cambodia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam - have all been involved in a wave of strikes and protests against capitalist exploitation. It's China we want to concentrate on here and to do so we will largely use the information given by the China Labour Bulletin (CLB), the publication of a non-governmental organisation based in Hong Kong with links to Human Rights groups and Radio Free Asia. The Bulletin promotes the idea of a “fairer” Chinese state, which includes advocating its adoption of “Free Trade Unions”.
In a subsequent piece, we will look at further recent elements around the “People's Republic”, including the development of imperialist tensions, decomposition and intrigues around the all-powerful Politburo.
Throughout the last decade the working class in China has been involved in a wave of strikes and protests, counting thousands of workers, as anger and combativity mounts under the weight of capitalist exploitation. The spontaneous strikes, born from the workers themselves, have been over issues across the board: overtime pay, relocation compensation, corruption of officials, wage rises, wage and pension cuts, improved working conditions and reductions in hours, education and health benefits. In sum, the whole gamut of conditions expressed in the intensity of the exploitation of the Chinese state. While largely separate from each other these strikes have shown a definite dynamic and a growing strength to the extent that the China Briefing of 29.11.11 warns investors to get used to labour unrest.
Just a few days ago, in the town of Chongqing, the previous fiefdom of the disgraced Party boss Bo Xilai, there were strikes - unconnected to the Politburo manoeuvres - over wages and pension cuts. This town of 30 million in southern China, like many others, is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy which is a growing concern (local bankruptcies are a big problem for capitalism, witness some states in the USA, regional governments in Spain, and so on). Against the struggle in Chongquing, the authorities, as elsewhere, blocked the microblogging that workers have used to communicate effectively with each other and spread news in the face of the state's blackout.
The China Labour Bulletin, 5.3.12, reports that strikes and protests continued across the county throughout February 2012, the vast majority taking place in the industrial/manufacturing and transport sectors, with demands mainly for higher wages and against bonus reductions. Five thousand workers at the Hanzhong Steel Co., at Shaanxi in the north, struck against low pay and long hours. Several thousand workers left the plant and made for the city streets in order to demonstrate. The report indicates that the workers elected their own representatives. The March issue of the Bulletin also records the highest monthly total of strikes since it began keeping records 15 months ago, and notes the escalation of strikes over pay and relocations. Riot squads and militia units are actively present in many cases and, apart from getting sacked, many militant workers have been “detained” - there's not a whimper about this from the human rights industry in the west. In China, repression and surveillance is of course the speciality of a Stalinist state and, like the Arab regimes, this state also uses gangs of armed thugs that it pays and transports around the country for use against the workers. Internal police spending in China for 2010 and projected for 2011 outstrips the external defence budget – which is not inconsiderable[1].
At the start of the 21st century, millions of poor, young, rural labourers flooded into the factory towns of South China looking for work. These young men and women worked for long hours for very low pay in often dangerous and unhealthy conditions. These were largely helpless lambs to the slaughter. It was upon this basis that the “Chinese Economic Miracle” was founded. But this enforced acquiescence did not last for long. Tempered in the heat of the class struggle, by the end of the decade the era of cheap and docile labour was well and truly over. A significant number of workers, still young but wiser, better educated, more confident and militant, were organising and undertaking strikes and protests. Summer 2010 culminated in a wave of strikes in the manufacturing sector[2].
In mid-decade, the Chinese Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security estimated the number of migrant workers to be 240 million, including 150 million working away from home, with 70% of these in the manufacturing sector. Even with these numbers, labour shortages around 2005 saw workers' struggles taking a further step towards offensive struggles and demands with specific outbursts giving material encouragement for others to launch their own protests. The Chinese state records that there were 80,00 mass incidents in 2007 – the last time the state published official figures[3]. The CLB estimates these figures going up year on year since and the strikes taking on a different intensity. For example, in August 2011, thousands of laid-off workers, victims of China's National Petroleum Corporation restructuring, joined in with a demonstration of a thousand employed oil workers on strike for their own demands. This underlined the greater development of taking to the streets, blocking roads and demonstrations and sit-ins in public squares. Another aspect of the microblogging mentioned above was its use in the Nanhai Honda strike in 2010, where communications were established and a small group of workers set up called “Unity is Victory”. The Chinese authorities attempted to stop this form of communication under the guise of preventing “unfounded rumours”[4]. One of the Honda strike leaders told the New York Times that a minority of workers, about 40 in all, communicated and met up before the strike in order to decide on action and demands. At a PepsiCo strike in November 2011, workers elected their own delegates from their general meeting. Despite increases offered by the management, they extended and lengthened the action[5].
Many strikes end up with pay rises and some satisfaction of demands, but many do not. In both cases, workers are sacked and arrested. And where wage rises are given these are often wiped out by the inflation that is becoming a major curse for the Chinese economy. Wage demands are rising not just in the coastal regions, but, since 2010, in the hinterlands, where workers involved in action have family, friends, etc., posing the possibilities of strike action alongside social protest and thus widening the battlefront. On the other hand, migrant workers settled in other towns are often denied basic education and health benefits for them and their children – which their employers should pay but don't. This has opened another arena of confrontation. All this a far cry from a decade ago when these young, rural elements were used and dumped at will by the Chinese state. Unemployment also looms large with the Federation of Hong Kong Industries saying that a “a third of Hong Kong-owned industries will downsize or close”, affecting tens of thousands of workers at the very least.
The China Labour Bulletin states that workers “had no confidence in the All China Federation of Trade Unions”[6] and its “ability to negotiate a decent pay increase”. They consequently “ took matters into their own hands and organised a wide range of increasingly effective collective actions...” ACFTU is clearly linked to the Party and made up of its members and cadres, and the CLB is drawing attention to a big problem facing the Chinese ruling class: the lack of effective trade unions to control and discipline the workers. Repression is never enough and can add fuel to the fire. As the CLB report notes over the Honda strike mentioned above: “Any workers' organisation that develops during a protest is usually disbanded after the demands that gave rise to it has been addressed”. The pro-state CLB would like to make these workers' organisation permanent and enmesh them into a structure of Free Trade Unions with peaceful relations with the state. The ACFTU branches, such as they exist, are sometimes made up exclusively of managers, such as at the Ohms Electronics factory in Shenzhen, where the twelve managers were all union officials! And in a pathetically desperate effort, which also points to the limits of the Stalinist state, the Shanxi Federation of Trade Unions has ordered its province’s 100,000 union officials to publish their phone numbers so that workers can get in touch with them!! Throughout the country, ACFTU branches have sacked workers, hired scabs and called the police and militias against workers. It is completely part of the discredited Party apparatus. The bourgeoisie, not just in China but internationally, need a renovated, elastic and credible union structure and this is where the China Labour Bulletin and its push for Free Trade Unions comes in. We can see this in its call for “greater participation (of workers) in committees and other union structures” and “new employees to be given information about the union's activities”, as after the recent Foxcomm struggles.
The unions in China – unlike their sophisticated brothers in the west – generally don't even see strikes coming let alone defuse and divide them. This was the case at the Honda car plant in Foshan south-eastern China last summer. It took two weeks and a large pay rise to get the workers back to work. Kong Xianghong, an ex-worker and veteran CP member and now a member of ACFTU, said after the strike (and a further rash of strikes that it provoked): “We realised the dangers of our union being divorced from the masses”. Kong added that China needed “To absorb the lessons of the uprisings in Arab nations”[7].
For the working class in China the struggles are intensifying and for the bourgeoisie the problems are mounting. For the latter, if they are at all a possibility, and that must be doubtful, Free Trade Unions would give them a greater element of control. For the workers, the lesson of the Free Trade Union Solidarnosc in Poland, is that these institutions can be more insidiously destructive to the workers' cause than the Party/State union structures – which at least show the unions as the anti-working class formations that they are.
Baboon. 15/4/12
[1]Bloomberg News, 6.3.11
[2]There were an estimated 180,000 “incidents” in 2010, Financial Times, 2.3.11.
[3]CASS, Social Trends Analysis and Projection Topic Group, 2008-2009.
[4]BBC News, 16.3.12.
[5]World Socialist Web: “Signs of a new strike wave in China”.
[6]“A Decade of Change: The Workers' Movement in China 2000-2010”.
[7]Washington Post, 29.4.11
On 16 December last year in Kazakhstan, in Zhanaozen, a town with a population of 90,000 about 150km from the Caspian Sea, the forces of order carried out a real massacre by opening fire with automatic weapons on a rally of 16,000 oil workers and town dwellers who had come to show their solidarity. The workers had been protesting against lay-offs and the non-payment of back wages. There were at least ten deaths, according to the official figures, but in fact there were probably many more, perhaps up to 70 killed and 700-800 wounded.
The struggles in the oil sector go back to the strike at the beginning of May 2011 by the workers employed by KarajanbasMounai, from where it spread to a number of other oil extraction and refining plants in the region: Ersaï Kaspian Kontraktor, KazMounaiGaz, Jondeou, Krouz, Bourgylaou and AktobeMounaïGaz in the neighbouring Aktobe region, with workers demanding wage increases and improvements in safety because of the frequency of accidents at work. The UzenMounaiGaz factory was out on strike for three months. In December, the decision to organise a festival in honour of the twentieth anniversary of independence in the central square of Zhanaozen, which had been occupied by strikers since July, was a real provocation and was clearly seen to be one. Meanwhile the democratic opposition to the regime tried to manipulate this movement of the working class for its own ends: “On 14 December, two days before the independence celebrations, the paper Respublika published an appeal to demonstrate in Zhanaozen, signed by an anonymous group, ‘a group of residents from the province of Mangistau’. For the first time, the Zhanaozen appeal put forward political demands, and the article’s title was ‘Down with (president) Nazarbayev!’ Leaflets distributed in the town called for demonstrators to rally in the town square on 16 December, Independence Day”. Armed police and troops were stationed on surrounding rooftops and armoured vehicles waited for the signs of disorder. Certain demonstrators in the square (who some strikers believed were agents provocateurs) tore down the festival decorations. Police vehicles drove into the crowd, angering the demonstrators, who overturned and burned one of them. They then set fire to the town hall and the HQ of the UzenMounaiGaz company. This was the pretext for mass arrests (130) and the use of arms by the police. The workers had fallen into a trap set up from start to finish by the state authorities and aimed at breaking their movement, which had by then been going on for several months.
A state of emergency and a curfew were imposed straight away and lasted till 5 January. Despite the cutting off of communications (internet and mobile phones) and the blackout by state TV, this violent repression provoked solidarity movements throughout the oil producing region of Mangistau, on the eastern side of the Caspian Sea. On 17 December, all the oil fields had been shut down. Although Zhanaozen was encircled by armoured cars and Interior Ministry troops sent in, clashes between strikers and soldiers supported by planes and armoured cars continued. In the neighbouring area of Shetpe, hundreds of demonstrators blocked and derailed a train carrying materials for use in the repression. A thousand people demonstrated in Aktau, the main city in the region with a population of 160,000, defying a large contingent of security forces, protesting against the violence and carrying banners proclaiming “Don’t fire on the people! Withdraw the army!” On Monday 19 December, for the third consecutive day, several thousand oil workers demonstrated and confronted the police on the grand square of Aktau, calling for an end to the violence and the withdrawal of troops from Zhanaozen. Their slogans included “We want the soldiers to go. They have killed people here”, “Find those guilty of killing demonstrators”, and “Nazarbayev resign”.
The Kazakh bourgeoisie has done everything possible to force the workers back into passivity, throwing all kinds of slanders at them (“criminals”, “foreign agents”, etc) while also offering the carrot, with Prime Minister Massimov promising to re-employ all the oil workers who had lost their jobs, and Nazarbayev promising financial aid to the 1800 laid-off strikers in Zhanaozen. Savage repression continued: arbitrary arrests and the torture of prisoners. The president even made use of the conflicts inside the ruling class: on 22 December he announced the sacking of the regional governor and of bosses from the giant state enterprise KazMounaiGaz, including his son-in-law T Koulibayev, and from several of its subsidiaries who employed strikers, presenting all these steps as concessions to the workers. The Kazakh bourgeoisie seems to have broken the militancy of the workers, who for the moment are no longer able to organise collective public actions.
As always when it comes to the proletarian class struggle, the big western media have for the most part kept silent about this episode. They are even quieter when it comes to hiding the complicity of the western bourgeoisies in the crimes committed against the exploited. The Nazarbayev clique only had its way thanks to the complicity and tacit support of the bourgeoisie from great powers like France, Germany, Russia and China, with whom it maintains very good relations. Several western states are deeply involved in key sectors of the national economy, particularly those where the strikes broke out: the extraction and transport of oil and gas. Since 2002 these have been regrouped under the state trust KazMounaiGaz. This trust heads a number of subsidiaries which have joint ventures with the global oil companies.
The major states thus have real strategic interest in the maintenance of social stability in the country and thus in the repression carried out by the regime. Russia, obsessed with its own stability, is hysterically defensive about the social and imperialist stability of its “very dear neighbour”. Chinese enterprises such as AO KarajanbasMounai, a joint venture with KazMounaiGaz and CITIC Group were directly implicated, with the workers demanding equal treatment for Chinese and native personnel. As for France, relations with Kazakhstan were closer after the election of Sarkozy: in June 2008 a strategic partnership treaty was signed by the two countries and in 2010 a Franco-Kazakh presidential commission was created. The Nazarbayev regime was, on this occasion, described as “an island of stability and tolerance” by French Interior Minister Claude Guéant.
Finally, there was Nazarbayev’s reception in Germany in February, where he signed a series of important commercial agreements “aimed at improving the security of German industry as regards the supply of raw materials”. This was not even accompanied by the usual hypocritical expressions of concern about the conditions of working people in Kazakhstan by German democracy. Angela Merkel underlined “the great interest for German companies in further investment in Kazakhstan”. In short, any example of a working class fighting to defend its interests and any revelations about the barbarity of the bourgeoisie had to be well hidden!
Despite the difficulty in getting precise information about the events in Kazakhstan, the long series of struggles that has taken place there undoubtedly seems to be an expression of the international revival of class struggles in response to the worsening economic crisis. Having involved over 15,000 workers, this is the biggest strike ever seen in a country run by the Nazarbayev mafia clique, whose power is based on pillaging the economy and the limitless exploitation of labour power. Workers’ wages have been stagnating (in 2009 the average monthly wage was 550 euro) while the cost of living has gone up by 70% since then and the tenge, the local currency, has lost 25% of its value. The struggle of the workers of Kazakhstan shows the same characteristics as the class struggle internationally. The workers of the Soviet era have been replaced by a more combative younger generation, mainly from the provinces, which is not prepared to put up with such cruel exploitation and terrible working conditions. Women have also played a more important role in this recent movement. Finally, the movement of the oil workers testifies to the same change in the mood of the working class as elsewhere in the world, taking the concrete form of the search for and expression of solidarity against capitalist terror and repression.
The struggle of the oil workers of Kazakhstan around the issue of wages goes back several years. The workers of Zhanaozen had already gone on strike to demand their bonuses in October 2009. Those at KarajanbasMounai JSC launched a strike in December 2010 for a wage increase equivalent to those won after a strike by the workers of UzenMounaiGaz, another subsidiary of KazMounaiGaz. Between 4 and 19 March 2011, ten thousand oil workers at KazMounaiGaz went on strike and organised general assemblies, calling for the cancellation of the new method of calculating their wages, which the management wanted to impose on them by threatening lay-offs, and for a bonus for dangerous work. The town was surrounded by a police cordon. The strike was declared illegal and members of the strike committee hauled before the courts. On 9 May, a huge hunger strike began. 1400 people refused to take their mid-day and evening meals as a sign of protest. 4500 workers went on strike on 17 May, held a general assembly and elected six of their number as a delegation to carry out negotiations. The management of KazMounaiGaz and the local authorities declared the strike illegal and announced the firing of all the workers, hoping to starve them into submission. In the end this resort to massive lay-offs affected a total of 2600 strikers. Women hunger strikers were treated with particular brutality. On 26 May, 22 workers from UzenMounaiGaz came out on hunger strike in solidarity with their colleagues at KarajanbasMounai and the next day were joined by 8000 workers from various subsidiaries of KazMounaiGaz, striking for wage increases. Some of the hunger strikers continued their action, surrounded by a huge picket of 2000 workers who protected them from the police. The movement had been confronting police terror from the start. The authorities gave out leaflets declaring the strike illegal: snitches and plainclothes cops organised provocations, and there were hundreds of arrests. On 12 June, the police attacked the strikers’ wives, beating them and accusing them of taking part in an illegal meeting. In the night of 8-9 July the police attempted to attack the tent village set up by the strikers at the UzenMounaiGaz company. 40 strikers poured petrol over themselves and threatened to set themselves on fire. This only delayed the evacuation till the next day. Then the strikers transferred the tent village to the central square in Zhanaozen, which was now permanently occupied by up to 8000 people. Armed gangs carried out more and more attacks on militant workers and independent trade unionists. Some of them were killed along with family members.
From the beginning the strength of the oil workers was their mass mobilisation and the vitality of their general assemblies, where they could discuss how to take the struggle forward and take collective decisions. But the main weakness of the movement was the fact that it remained limited to one sector and to the oil producing region. The demand for an independent trade union (defended by Trotskyist organisations) was raised by the workers at every stage of the movement, but that too was a weakness.
The Kazakh regime, with its fossilised structures and attitudes directly inherited by Stalinism, unable to tolerate any kind of opposition, is in normal circumstances supported by trade unions which are openly in league with the authorities in maintaining social peace. The official union federation denounced the recent strike as illegal. It is thus completely discredited in front of the working class. The demand for a ‘real’ union representation was, along with the wage demands, a focus for the mass mobilisation of the KazMounaiGaz workers at the beginning of May. But far from taking the struggle forward, it served to hold it back.
To be strong and to build the strongest possible front against the capitalist sate, the struggle needs to extend to the whole working class, going beyond all the divisions imposed by capitalism, including, in the long run, national frontiers, because there is no solution to the situation of the working class within the national framework. In our epoch, the epoch of the decadence of capitalism, there is no possibility of winning lasting reforms and improvements for the working class. The proletariat cannot overcome the profound insecurity of its condition without getting rid of the whole wage labour system, which can only be accomplished on a world scale.
We are certainly not questioning the honesty and decency of the militant workers who are active in the independent unions and who are often subjected to repression and persecuted by the bourgeois courts for “inciting social hatred”, “organising illegal marches, gatherings and demonstrations”, etc. What we do question are the methods of struggle which these organisations propose to the working class. By focusing the workers’ attention on the fact that they belong to a particular branch of the capitalist economy (in this case, the oil industry), the union form imprisons the struggle in sectional demands. It thus disperses the potential force of the proletariat, stands in the way of its unity and fragments it sector by sector. By acting within the national framework, trade unionism cannot see beyond managing the conditions for the exploitation of the working class within the social relations of capital. This is why all forms of trade unionism are doomed to act as an obstacle to the real needs of the class struggle – ultimately, to subordinate the workers to the imperatives of exploitation, to do deals with the ruling class and become an integral part of its apparatus for maintaining the established order.
The workers must not allow their horizons to be limited by demands which imprison them in the sector and in the defence of the national economy. The proletariat is an international class and its struggle can only be based on international solidarity: the struggle of any one of its parts is an example and an encouragement to the struggle of the entire proletariat. To strengthen its overall struggle, the different fractions of the proletariat have to enrich their practice with all the lessons acquired from its long history.
Svetlana 28/2/12
From 2007, France had a president, Nicolas Sarkozy, whose arrogance and stupidity knew no limits. His open love of money, his violent tirades against the young people of the poor suburbs and the immigrants, his provocations, his propensity for talking about nothing but himself...all this and more created a very strong feeling of exasperation throughout the population. It was thus no great surprise that the presidential elections ended in his defeat. His replacement, the ‘socialist’ François Hollande, relied almost exclusively on this anti-Sarkozyism to win. Prudently avoiding any promises of a bright tomorrow, even giving to understand that austerity (renamed ‘control of the budget’ or ‘reduction of the deficit’) would be a major axis of his government’s policy, Hollande was happy to present himself as a ‘normal’ president, one who would avoid pointless provocation and bad taste.
This said, it would be a serious error to see this change of colour as no more than the rejection of a particular character, however unpleasant. And it would be even more of an error to hope for a fairer and more just policy now that the left is at the head of the government.
You only have to glance beyond the frontiers of France to see that. Throughout Europe in the last few months, when elections have taken place, the team in power has been replaced, whether it is of the right or the left. In Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Finland, Slovenia, Slovakia...all the governments have been ejected. Why? Quite simply because since 2007 and the severe aggravation of the world economic crisis, all governments have been carrying out the same policy of ‘sacrifices’. There is no difference between right and left, except perhaps in the language they use, the colour of the wrapping paper around their packet of ‘reforms’. In Greece, Portugal, and Spain, from 2007 to 2011, the ‘socialists’ in power beat up on the workers, whether at work or unemployed, retired or still at university. Month after month they imposed increasingly drastic measures, endless attacks on their living standards.
But there is a second point in common in all these changes in government teams. The team that came in didn’t get a honeymoon period. Straight away they pushed through brutal austerity policies and straight away faced social discontent. The economic crisis is not a choice for capital, it is something imposed on it. It is the fruit of a world system which is sick, obsolete. Capitalism today is in decline like slavery in the decadence of the Roman empire or the feudal system in the days of absolute monarchy. The ‘debt crisis’ is only a symptom of this. All those who get elected to parliament, whatever their political party or their country, have to follow the same orientation: reduce the deficit, avoid bankruptcy by pitilessly attacking living and working conditions. The very socialist Monsieur Hollande will be no different.
Elections organised by the state are just a moment when the ‘citizens’ choose who’s going to manage the interests of capital. They are entirely inside the system. But today, to put an end to growing poverty for the world’s population, there is only one way to go: the struggle for revolution. Capitalism, this inhuman, mortally ill system, has to be replaced by a world without classes, exploitation, profit and competition. Such a world can only be built by the masses, the masses of employees, unemployed, retired, young people in part time work, united in the struggle. If votes are to be used to really change things, it will be the votes organised by us, the exploited – the votes taken in general assemblies where we decide together, collectively, how we should struggle against the state and its representatives.
Pawel 6/5/12
The president of Mali, Amadou Toumani Toure (ATT), was overthrown on March 22 by a handful of almost unknown soldiers who, not having the means to control the country, have let the rebels (nationalists and Islamists) get a grip on the whole northern region of Mali, sowing their terror and provoking the forced displacement of several hundred thousand people. In reality, this coup has only accelerated the chaos of a state that has been corrupt and degenerating for a very long time. Moreover, the coup has happened in the context of struggles for influence and in a zone which is the theatre of trafficking of all types, notably arms and drugs, where criminal groups (Islamic mafias and others) fall out over the price of hostages and the plundering of migrants. But above all, Mali is the weak link of a region in growing decomposition brought about by imperialist tensions which are unfolding in the greater region of the Sahel. This has been accelerated in particular by the war which has ravaged Libya, whose effects have quickly made themselves felt all the way south to Bamako, the capital and largest city in Mali.
“(...) In Libya the transitional government has hardly supervised the stocks of armaments and the control of its frontiers. In September, the discovery of the disappearance of more than 10,000 ground-to-air missiles has created panic on the international scene. (…) At the same time, the Tuareg fighters hired as mercenaries and armed by Gaddifi have returned to their countries, to Niger and Mali, after the fall of the Libyan regime last August. Since January 2012, Tuareg insurgents of Mali, coming out of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) assaulted towns in the north armed with heavy machine-guns and anti-tank weapons, relaunching an old combat of several decades for the creation of an independent Tuareg state” (The National in Courier international, 11.04.12).
More than Sudan and Chad, Mali today constitutes the principal market for armaments in this region where all kinds of killers come to provide themselves with or exchange their “merchandise”, notably in Gao and Timbuktu. But more sombre still for the future of Mali is the fact that as well as being a “great market “ for professional criminals, this country is also coveted for its raw materials.
In fact, outside of gold, of which it is one of the greatest producers, Mali is on the point of becoming an exporter of rough diamonds and its futures market is already the theatre of intense rivalries between well-known greater vultures such as Total, GDE-Suez, Tullow Oil, Dana Petroleum, CNPC, Repsoi, etc. Clearly these Euro-American and Chinese firms are supported by their respective states in the scramble that they are undertaking for the control and exploitation of the raw materials of Mali.
“Impossible (for example) not to note that the recent coup d'etat is an additional effect of the rebellions in the north which are themselves the consequences of the destabilisation of Libya by a western coalition which has strangely shown no remorse nor feeling of responsibility. This ill wind has blown into Mali, after crossing its Ivorian, Nigerian, Guinean and Mauritanian neighbours...” (Le Nouveau Courrier, Courrier international, 11.04.12).
Far from supporting “peace” and “democracy”, the intervention of the imperialist forces of Nato in Libya have only spread chaos and accelerated the decomposition of the states around the region. From now in fact, no less than twelve countries are affected by conflicts, wars and trafficking that are unfolding in a vast zone of nine million square kilometres.
“The strategic forecast recently launched by Jean-Claude Cousseran, an old boss of the DGSE (French intelligence): 'Africa will be our Afghanistan' , will now be taken seriously. From it we discover the banal but ominous compatibility of operations undertaken by small, radical Islamic groups in Nigeria, Somalia, Libya, in the countries of the Sahel and Mali, (…) In the Quai d'Orsay (French foreign office), the Juppé team is concerned about French hostages and about the future of the threatened states. A high-command has set up plans for intervention in case African bosses, the UN or even Nato decide to 'do something'... And the secret services themselves are in constant touch with French officers working in Mali and the commanders of special operations at their posts in Burkina, Niger and Mauritania (…) The objectives aimed for by the fighting groups (…) could end up creating an immense grey zone in the African Sahel under the banner of religion, or criminal bands drawing profit from different fights between the partisans of Islam, tribal nomads, Salafist groups, the remnants of Al Qaida, soldiers lost through the combats against the Arab Spring... With the result of the risk of the decomposition of these states” (Le Canard Enchaîné, 11.04.12).
French imperialism is in quite a panic faced with the development of chaos in Mali and is preparing itself to intervene in order to try to preserve its interests in the region of the Sahel. In fact, beyond its economic and strategic interests, France is trying to get back its nationals taken hostage by the armed Islamic groups. Remember that the French army led a real war in this zone under the name of the “struggle against Islamic terrorist groups (AQIM)”, in Mauritania and in Niger and that the last military intervention here provoked several deaths.
The United States is furnishing advisers and military material to the same countries, still in the name of the “anti-terrorism” and “securitisation” of the region, from where Washington has been able to establish very tight links with different Malian networks.
On their side, rival powers are also playing their own cards. Thus, Algeria and Mauritania, Niger and Mali have decided to organise their own high-command whose seat is based in Tamanrasset (Algeria). But in reality it's everyone for themselves which is the dominant feature over all these gangsters, and as a result alliances don't last very long, being made and unmade according to the relations of forces and immediate “gains”.
“From the ruins of the Malian state appears a document of three pages classified 'very sensitive'. It is a note sent February last to the president Amadou Toumani Touré. It is entitled 'Mauritania and the secret support for the rebels of Azawad’ (a proposed independent Tuareg state). On reading it, the old general (ATT) must have understood that his end was almost imminent. His secret services warned him, in some detail, of the close contacts between the Tuaregs, who had just taken up the road to war, and the neighbouring regime of Ould Abdelaziz (high-ranking military officer and president of Mauritania). The new national movement for the liberation of Azawad (MNLA) was receiving 'material aid' from (Mauritania's capital) Nouakchott (…) At the same time as representatives of the MNLA were opening an office of information in Nouakchott, others were being received several times at the Quai d'Orsa (i.e in Paris). A simultaneity which wasn't, without doubt, by chance. Mauritania, a big ally of France in the region, would not have lent such a strong hand to the Tuareg independentists without the approval, even tacit, of its mentor (…) The MNLA, still according to the secret note, were engaged to fight Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). A priority for Mauritania and France, who reproached president Touré for his weakness towards the jihadists (…) Stupefaction in the west and in the Sahel: the Tuareg insurgents, considered as the best bulwark against AQIM, were fighting alongside them. After having submitted to one of their worst setbacks in Africa, the French authorities acknowledged their impotence. 'We have a real problem' leaked one high official. 'The Malians are incapable of taking back what they have lost. And send in the French army? Nobody thinks that. Franco-Africa is finished!'” (Le Nouvel Observateur, 12.04.12).
In effect, the French state is aiming both to preserve its global interests in the region and free its hostages held by the groups linked to AQIM. But it's opened itself up to be given the run-around by wretched and obscure tiny mafia groups which it's underhandedly dealt with while giving its support to the Malian president ATT. Today, French imperialism is totally paralysed by the amateurism which it has shown in this affair and it risks losing everything on the table.
In addition to their military presence throughout the region, and having negotiated and obtained some agreements of military cooperation with all the regimes, the Americans have the ear of both the overthrown president and of the leader of the putschists.
“The camp of DJCORNI (French military base) where ATT took refuge on March 21st, is close to and under the quasi-protection of the US ambassador – who had, if one believes the telegrams revealed by Wikileaks, alerted Washington on the state of degeneration of the Malian high-command and on the climate of corruption which reigned among the close entourage (including family) of the president. The bodyguards who protected the fallen chief during his flight were trained by the famous Navy Seals of the US army. And the putschist captain Amadou Sanago willingly talked of his times in the United States: the air base of Lackland (Texas); Fort Huachua (Arizona), specialising in intelligence; the officer's school of Fort Benning (Georgia). A longer stay with the Marines, whose pin he wore on his jacket. In brief, we know that the Americans were very implanted and very well informed about Mali. Without doubt better than the French. We have confirmation of it” (Jeune Afrique, April 7 2012).
France would have known something about the overthrow of the regime of ATT and was aware that the principal cause can be found in the links between the latter and the United States, which is ocne again doing everything it can to oust Paris from its ex-backyard.
Here is a country in a state of advanced decay governed by corrupt gangs who are competing against various carrion crows - Islamic mafias, highwaymen, accompanied by imperialist powers looking for influence and raw materials while disguising their plans of capitalist business “as plans of the securitisation of the zone”. And in the meantime, the populations themselves are dying from hunger, suffering generalised misery, or are simply massacred by one side or the other.
Amina 17/4/12
After the replacement of President Sarkozy by Hollande in France, and the electoral slump of the parties of the outgoing Greek government, a commentator in the Guardian (8/5/12) was not alone in declaring that “Revolt against austerity is sweeping Europe.” Leftists saw “a growing backlash against austerity across Europe” (Socialist Worker 12/5/12), “deep popular opposition to austerity measures” (wsws.org 8/5/12) and even declared that “Europe turns left” (Workers Power May 2012).
In reality, whatever the level of dissatisfaction felt at election time, the ruling bourgeoisie will continue to impose and intensify its policies of austerity. Voting against governments can happen because of the depth of discontent, but it doesn’t change anything. For the working class it’s only through the mass organisation of its struggles that anything can be achieved. The election game is played entirely on the bourgeoisie’s terms, but workers still troop into the polling stations (if in decreasing numbers) because they still have widespread illusions in what could be achieved. There’s still a belief that elections can somehow be used as a means for social change, or that there are alternative economic policies that the capitalist state could follow. There has been no ‘revolt’ across Europe expressed in these elections, although there is definitely a lot of anger which has been impotently misdirected into the various democratic mechanisms. Having said that, if you actually examine what’s happened in recent elections they do reveal a lot about the capitalist class and the state of its political apparatus.
Since the financial crisis of autumn 2008 a number of individual leaders and political parties have been replaced because of their identification with public spending cuts, job losses, wage and pension reductions, and all the other aspects of economic ‘rigour’ and austerity. There is no overall bourgeois strategy, just the removal of parties and individuals and their replacement by others, whether from the left or the right or by coalitions. The ruling class is just reacting to events without a clear idea of how it will arrange its political forces in the future. And it’s not taking long for the new leaders to begin to be discredited as they are exposed as being in continuity with their predecessors.
In November 2008 John McCain was defeated by Barack Obama in the US Presidential election partly because of his connection with the policies of George Bush and the fact that the US economy had been in recession since late 2007 in a crisis deeper than anything since the 1930s.
In the UK, following the general election of May 2010, the Labour Party was replaced by a Conservative and Liberal Democrat government, the first coalition since the Second World War. The British bourgeoisie, usually so assured in its political manoeuvres, was not able to accomplish its usual Labour/Tory swap. Since the election it has also had difficulties in presenting Labour as a viable ‘alternative’.
In Belgium it took 18 months from the election of June 2010 before a government was finally formed.
In the general election in Ireland in February 2011, Fianna Fail, the party that had been the largest since the 1920s, saw its proportion of the vote go from 42% to 17%. The Irish government is now a Right/Left coalition of Fine Gael and Labour. Ireland was in recession in 2008 and 2009. It returned to recession in the third quarter of 2011. The new government has predictably shown itself no different from the previous FF/Green coalition. The myth of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ faded out a long time ago.
In the Portuguese legislative elections of June 2011 the governing Socialist Party saw its support go from 37% to 28%. Electoral turnout declined to a historically low level of 58%. Unemployment continues to rise, up to more than 13%, having been less than 6% in 2002. Portugal is in its worst recession since the 1970s. The conditions for its 2011 bailout from the EU and IMF have meant a vicious series of government spending cuts.
In the Spanish general election of November 2011 the votes for the ruling Socialist Party went from 44% to 29%, and there was growing support for minor parties. Under the conservative People’s Party Spain has fallen back into recession. Unemployment, which has been growing throughout the last five years, has reached record levels with a 24.4% jobless rate (over 50% of under 25s), the highest figures in the EU.
In Italy in November 2011 Silvio Berlusconi was replaced by a government led by economist Mario Monti. His cabinet was constituted of unelected ‘technocrats’. He has introduced a range of austerity measures – with the support of most of both Italian houses of parliament.
In Slovenia in December 2011 there was a parliamentary election in which a new party, Positive Slovenia, that had only been founded in late October, got the highest proportion of the vote. After a period of manoeuvres and negotiations the outgoing 4-party coalition was replaced by a 5-party coalition which only had a Pensioners’ Party in common, but not Positive Slovenia. With the Slovenian economy is in recession, a new programme of austerity measures was adopted by the Slovenian Parliament on 11 May. Major unions which had staged demonstrations against the programme have said they would not oppose it with a referendum. Last year four pieces of legislation were rejected by referendum.
In presidential elections held in Finland in January and February this year the long period of the decline of the Social Democratic Party reached a new low point. The new president is the first in 30 years not to be a Social Democrat. Voter turnout was the lowest since 1950.
In the Netherlands in April this year the coalition government resigned after only 558 days in power. The parties have been in dispute over budget cuts.
In the recent French Presidential election Hollande’s victory was in many ways due to his not being Sarkozy. Despite his claims to have a different approach on questions such as investment he will have no choice but to continue the attack on living and working conditions. Hollande said before his first visit to Angela Merkel that he would bring "The gift of growth, jobs, and economic activity." Although this is the usual politician’s hot air, corresponding to no material reality, at least the situation in France is by no means as desperate as that in Greece.
Following the latest elections in Greece it was clear the parties of the PASOK/New Democracy/LAOS coalition had lost the most support. It should be recalled that the coalition had only been installed last November, to replace George Papendreou’s government and implement the measures required by the IMF/EU/ECB. In the elections, despite there being a choice of 32 parties, there was a significant reduction in the number of people voting to a lowest ever figure of 65%. This contrasts with the previous low figure of 71% in 2009 and previous figures in the high 70s or even more than 80% that Greece was used to. If the French election result mainly expressed opposition to Sarkozy, the Greek result showed mainly opposition to the government coalition and the measures it had undertaken. The fact that the Greek parliament now has four parties of the Left and three of the Right where once it was dominated by PASOK/New Democracy shows the degree to which the bourgeoisie’s political forces have splintered. The prospects of a new coalition without a new election seem limited.
There has been a lot of attention in the media on the role of the leftwing coalition Syriza, portrayed as a new force without whose co-operation or tolerance no government could function. Because they claim to be against austerity they will, for the moment, quite possibly continue to increase their support. However, whether they operate as a buffer between government and striking workers, or actually join a government coalition, they do not represent anything new. Along with its anti-austerity phrases Syriza has clearly stated that Greece should remain in the EU and the euro, debts can not just be written off, but it would prefer some more benign conditions for receiving the latest bailout.
Where the emergence of Syriza is a sign of some residual flexibility from the bourgeoisie, the sharpest evidence of the decomposition of Greek capitalism’s political apparatus is seen in the gains made by Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) at the expense of LAOS. Greece has had right wing parties before (LAOS is the most recent example), and in Metaxas they had a real dictator in the late 1930s, the contemporary of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Salazar. However, Chrysi Avgi isn’t just another racist, right-wing party demonised by the Left. It’s anti-immigrant policies are backed up by physical attacks on foreigners. It has also mounted attacks on its political opponents, tried to intimidate journalists and has links with Nazi groups.
Chrysi Avgi campaigned on the slogan “So we can rid the land of filth” with candidates claiming to be more soldiers than politicians. They claim to be ‘Greek nationalists’ in the mould of Metaxas, rather than being neo-Nazis. You could be forgiven for being confused on this when you see the black symbol on the red background of their party flag. It looks very similar to a swastika, although it is in fact a ‘meander’ or ‘Greek fret.’ Whatever label you want to pin on them, Chrysi Avgi are clear evidence of the further decay of bourgeois politics. Parties in Greece that support the return of the monarchy are barred from standing at elections, but Chrysi Avgi has 21 members in the new parliament.
The Greek elections are the most obvious example of how the bourgeoisie across Europe is coping politically with the economic crisis. It can’t offer any genuine economic alternatives to austerity, but it is also using up its political alternatives as parties take their turns to impose programmes that will not challenge the impact of the economic crisis. There is no particular political strategy, just a day-to-day reaction to events. Bourgeois democracy continues to function, but the ruling class has a decreasing variety of ways to deploy its political apparatus. The number of people who are voting is in decline; new parties and coalitions are emerging to cope with changed situations. But, for the working class there is nothing to be gained by the replacement of one government by another, or in any participation in the democratic game.
All the political parties are factions of one state capitalist class. This is one of the reasons that democracy is so important for the bourgeoisie, because it gives the illusion of offering a number of different choices. For the working class only struggle on its own terms can set in motion a force that can break the social stalemate between the classes. The bourgeoisie has nothing to offer, not in its economy, and not in its elections. The working class can only rely on its self-organisation, on a growing consciousness of what’s at stake in its struggles.
Car 14/5/12
Michael Gove, Tory education secretary, wants “facts” about British history taught in schools and to this end “definitely” wants the right-wing historian, Niall Ferguson, of whom he is “a great fan”, involved in the curriculum for children in Britain. Ferguson is more than an apologist for the crimes of the British Empire which he sees as a model for US foreign policy (New Statesman, 1.6.10) – which in many ways it already is. Gove's and Ferguson's position is summed-up well by the British historian Dominic Sandbrook writing in the Daily Mail a couple of years ago: “Britain's empire stands out as a beacon of tolerance, decency and the rule of law” (Quoted by George Monbiot in the Guardian, 23.4.12). Not a hint here of the exploitation, racism, torture, starvation and massacres that the British bourgeoisie stood for and exported around the world.
One thing for sure is that under Gove, or any other politician of the ruling class, the children of Britain will not be hearing the truth about the the empire's murderous activity in the British colony of Kenya around the 1950s. Monbiot in the article referenced above gives some of the grisly details:
“Interrogation under torture was widespread. Many of the men were anally raped, using knives, broken bottles, rifle barrels, snakes and scorpions. A favourite technique was to hold a man upside-down, his head in a bucket of water, while sand was rammed into his rectum with a stick. Women were gang-raped by the guards. People were mauled by dogs and electrocuted. The British devised a special tool which they used for first crushing and then ripping of testicles. They used pliers to mutilate women's breasts. They cut off inmates ears and fingers and gouged out their eyes. They dragged people behind Land Rovers until their bodies disintegrated. Men were rolled up in barbed wire and kicked around the compound”.
That was part of Monbiot's summing-up of Harvard professor Caroline Elkin's thoroughly researched book, Britain's Gulag: the Brutal End of Empire in Kenya[1]. Elkin started out sympathetic to the British version of events in Kenya but her ten-year work soon lifted the lid on the reality of the “civilising mission”. In a previous article in World Revolution[2], we used the official British government's figures to show that 90,000 Kenyans were detained by the British authorities. Elkin makes it clear that nearly the whole population of one-and-a-half million were confined to the camps and fortified villages. And here, as Monbiot says: “... thousands were beaten to death or died from malnutrition, typhoid, tuberculosis and dysentery. In some camps almost all the children died”. Some camps’ loudspeakers played the national anthem and other patriotic stuff – Gove would have approved of that – while above the gates of others were slogans such as “Labour and Freedom”, echoing the slogans “Work makes you free” erected above the Nazi concentration camps and the work camps of Stalinist East Berlin.
It was revealed a few weeks ago that the British authorities has systematically destroyed the secret documents showing the atrocities in Kenya and lied about others that pointed out their predecessors’ role in the crimes. Elkin shows that these atrocities weren't the result of “rogue elements” – the British ruling class's usual excuse from Aden to Basra – but sanctioned at the highest level of the state up to and beyond the Colonial Secretary of the time, Alan Lennox-Boyd[3]. As in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the British don't (officially) keep body counts and in Kenya there are mass graves that the victims were often forced to dig themselves, containing tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of victims.
The atrocities in Kenya and their cover-up to this day demonstrate the sickening reality of democratic Britain and its concern for “international law” and “human rights”, which are nothing less than a fig-leaf for its own imperialist interests and crimes. Evidence is now emerging (The Observer, 6.5.12) of the cold-blooded murder by British troops of innocent civilians in its Malayan colony. The newspaper shows details of the Batang Kali massacre in 1948 and its continued cover-up. Given the emergence of some of the truth from Kenya, this is probably only the tip of the iceberg in this region with the burning of villages and starvation also being a weapon of the British here. In the World Revolution article on torture mentioned above there's an insight into the modus operandi of the British in general, with reference to the army and RUC approaching the then Northern Ireland prime minister Brian Faulkner: “They told him that the 'in depth' techniques they planned to use (in Ireland) were those the army had used... many times before when Britain was faced with insurgencies in her colonies, including Palestine, Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, the British Cameroons, Brunei, British Guyana, Aden, Borneo, Malaysia and the Persian Gulf”.
Britain was by no means alone in its bestial colonial activities: France, Belgium and Portugal all played out their own murderous versions. If Britain acted from a position of relative strength and intelligence, its whole colonial adventure was steeped in the blood of innocents which can only be the case in a world dominated by imperialism. Britain's process of decolonisation saw the local, equally bloody, gangsters take over and these “liberated” client states, still acting for Britain's interests, immediately immersed themselves in the proxy wars of the west against Russian imperialism. And the end of the Cold War has not brought peace but growing chaos and instability all over Africa, the Middle East and Asia, with Britain's ruling class continuing to manoeuvre and manipulate for the “national interest” of the British state.
Baboon 16/5/12
[1] The Pulitzer prize-winning book is thoroughly documented and there's a fully referenced version of Monbiot's article “Deny the British empire's crimes? No, we ignore them” on wwwmonbiot.com.
[2] World Revolution 290, “A short history of British torture [119]”.
[3] See his modern equivalent, Jack Straw, denying knowing anything about British kidnapping and torture.
In London, on May 10, while civil servants and university teachers came out for yet another ‘day of action’ around the question of pensions, the centre stage in London was occupied by a 20,000 strong march of off-duty police officers, demonstrating against the government’s proposed 20% cut in the police budget, which will lead to job cuts and inroads on pay and conditions. The following week, Home Secretary Theresa May got a very rough ride indeed when she came to speak at the Police Federation annual conference, explaining why these cuts were necessary.
Does his conjunction between police protests and action by sectors of the working class mean that they are all part of the same struggle? Members of Occupy London certainly thought so, expressing their support for the march through London.
The same question was posed to our comrades in Brazil, although in a much more dramatic way, during the recent strike by the Military Police. The statement that follows aims to make it clear that while police officers may often be recruited from the poorest layers of society, and are also being strongly affected by the crisis of capitalism, the essential role of the police is to defend capitalism from the struggles of the working class. There is thus a fundamental opposition between the interests of the police and the interests of the workers.
The strike by Military Police[1] which took place in several states in Brazil at the beginning of 2012, even though not simultaneously, has had important repercussions. It affected the states of Maranhão, Ceará, and Bahia, and spread to Rio de Janeiro. The movement reached its greatest breadth and strength in the state of Bahia where more than 3000 agents of the National Security Force, the Federal Police and the army were mobilised to deal with it. It was essentially in the Bahia capital Salvador that the mobilisation was at its height. The striking policemen and those supporting them occupied the Legislative Assembly.
The Dilma Rouseff government, following the line of her mentor Lula, condemned the strike movement as an assault on democracy and ordered the mobilisation of the army and the Federal Police in Salvador, Rio and other towns with the very clear aim of repressing the demonstrations. Jacques Wagner, the Workers’ Party governor of Bahia, was given the job of directing operations against the strike movement in this state.
The top representatives of the Workers’ Party, the Communist Party and PSOL and PSTU[2], as well as other organisations of the left and right, all felt obliged to pronounce ‘for or against’ the movement. The first two parties, which are pro-government, took a position against the movement, condemning it as a grave threat to law and democracy. The leftists of the PSTU and the PSOL gave unqualified support to the striking police, seeing them as ‘public security workers’. The population, given the huge media coverage of the conflict, and given all the fear about an increase in homicides and violence, was also faced with the problem of deciding whether or not to support the movement.
This strike by the Military Police was not the first in the sector and certainly won’t be the last. It expresses the difficulties of the Brazilian state in maintaining order and cohesion within its apparatus of repression, which is being affected by the economic crisis both at the level of its functioning and of its members’ living conditions.
The proletariat and its class organisations has to be as clear as possible about this strike and what it means for the coming struggles of the Brazilian proletariat against the attacks of the bourgeoisie, which are being accentuated by the world crisis of capitalism.
The capitalist crisis: the main cause of the movement
The Brazilian bourgeoisie glories in being part of the elite of ‘emerging’ countries, a position attained mainly under the Lula government. It’s considered to be one of the countries known as “BRICS”[3]. Like its partners, Brazil has managed to gain this position thanks to the exploitation of the proletariat and the growing precariousness of its living conditions. This in turn has been made possible by a climate of ‘social peace’ obtained mainly via the control over the masses by the left of capital, with the Workers’ Party at the fore.
The police, like the rest of the wage-earning population, don’t escape the constant pressure capital exerts on their living conditions: low wages, job insecurity, deteriorating working conditions and social benefits, etc. However, by going on strike, the Military Police, whatever their status in the hierarchy, as members of the apparatus of state repression and thus remunerated by the latter, have highlighted the conflicts and contradictions inside the ruling class. The bourgeoisie needs to be able to count on a repressive body capable of exerting violence against the proletariat when it fights for its demands, even the simplest ones like a wage that could make it possible to satisfy the most basic needs. But at the same time the personnel of these organs is drawn mainly from working class families who, while being in the front line of defending the interests of the ruling class, are also among the lowest paid of all those working for the apparatus of state repression (police, judges, etc). All this provokes a good deal of discontent and has led to the strike.
The recent conflict with the Military Police, the biggest such movement within this sector up till now, has posed real problems for the Brazilian state. The repressive measures taken by the federal government against some of the leaders of the movement, far from calming the situation, have further radicalised it. Moreover, the wage increases granted don’t at all meet the initial aspirations of the movement. Its original demands were: reintegration of the police expelled from the MP after the ‘historic’ strike of 2001, incorporation of bonuses, payment of a risk bonus, a 17.28% increase backdated to April 2007 and a revision of canteen benefits. What was granted: a proposed 6.5% wage increase and a new bonus increasing gradually up to 2014. The imprisoned police were not given an amnesty.
The strike movement is part of the weakening capacity of the bourgeoisie to impose its order in a situation where certain of its repressive forces are becoming less reliable. The deepening crisis of capitalism and the resulting measures of austerity are playing a central role in this.
It’s a fact that the great majority of police officers, like the majority of wage earners, don’t possess means of production and can only sell their labour power to survive. They belong to the poorest layers of society and put themselves in the service of the state to receive a wage which allows them to support their needs and the needs of heir families. Because of this similarity in social condition and the fact that they are paid a wage, you could be led to think that the interests and demands of police officers coincide with those of the proletariat, which is obliged to mobilise and struggle against the attacks of capital. But it’s not the case; these are movements situated in opposing camps.
The social origins of police officers should not make us forget that they are working in the service of the dominant order, their function being to repress and terrorise the population, as we can see from the following: “in recent months thee have been many new cases of abuse by the police, of gratuitous aggression against the population, rapes, violent repression of Military Police during the demonstrations, as well as the traditional murders and torture. The Brazilian police murders more people than any other in the world and its daily crimes are never subject to inquiries or manhunts...the Military Police was at the University of Sao Paulo to repress the students, just as it did at the demonstrations in Piaui, Recife, Espirito Santo, etc”[4] We can also see the same thing in the recent evacuation of Pinheirinho[5] and the threat to evacuate the community of quilombos (communities descended from slaves) at Rio do Macaco in Bahia, where the Military Police, which had just been on strike, went back to carrying out its repressive function alongside the Marines.
This is why it is necessary and fundamental for the working class and its revolutionary minorities to be as clear as possible about the class nature of the police and the repressive apparatus in general. The class position of the police is not defined by the fact of working for a wage but by the fact that they represent the first force of repression used by the state, and thus by capital, to confront the proletariat.
This distinction comes from the fact that the proletariat is not made up of a sum of all the wage earners, or even the sum of all the exploited. The proletariat is a social class whose interests are antagonistic to those of the class of capitalists, and its struggles for demands are a link in the chain of struggles for its emancipation, which will lead it to a confrontation with the bourgeoisie and its state. When a sector of the proletariat struggles, it’s not only the exploited worker who is entering into the fight, it’s a whole sector of the revolutionary class which is capable of developing its consciousness through its experience as a social force under capitalism.
The police officer, in deciding to ‘sell his labour power’ to the state and join up with its organs of repression, puts his (or her) capacities at the service of the bourgeoisie with the specific mission of preserving the capitalist system through the repression of the proletariat. In this sense, he or she ceases to belong to the proletarian class. When an unemployed worker or a person looking for a job decides to join the police force, he or she accepts the following ‘contract’: be faithful to the mandate of applying the law and maintaining the established order. This places him or her against any social or class movement which is ranged against the interests of capital and its state. This the police officer becomes a servant of the ruling class, and as such, places him or herself outside the camp of the proletariat.
The recent conflict between the police officers and their bosses is a conflict on the terrain of capital. The members of the police apparatus are asking for better wages and working conditions in order to carry out their tasks better and more effectively, i.e their tasks of repression and maintaining social peace.
In this sense, it is an error to call for solidarity from different sectors of wage earners with a police strike, essentially because the function of the police is the defence of the capitalist state. The fact that police officers are recruited from among the poor population does not modify this function, even if can influence them in other aspects.
The state hypocritically accuses the strikers of being responsible for an increase in crime, of leaving the population at the mercy of criminals. The state thus attributes a ‘social’ and ‘useful’ role to the police: the struggle against criminality. This is indeed the social justification for the necessity of these forces. In this way the workers and the population in general are asked to give their support to the strengthening of the repressive organs, justifying the recruitment of more police officers or giving them better equipment. Criminality and social violence are increasing all over the world because of the contradictions of capitalism and the social decomposition which affects not only the police officers but also the high functionaries of the state and its armed forces[6].
There have been circumstances in which the forces of order, mainly the army, have been persuaded to avoid acting in defence of the capitalist state. This can happen during massive struggles of the working class when large sectors of the population are mobilised and when sectors of the military forces refuse to repress social struggles, sometimes even joining up with the struggle and engaging in armed confrontations with the troops who remain loyal to the bourgeoisie. In these cases, there is the possibility and necessity to support and even protect these members of the repressive organs who come out against the orders of the state.
The acceleration of the crisis of capitalism since 2007, which was at the root of the social movements in North Africa and the Arab countries, as well as the movement of the ‘Indignant’ in Europe or ‘Occupy’ in the USA, can give rise to possibilities for fraternisation between the soldiers and the masses in movement. However, such situations have to be analysed with a great deal of political precision to avoid an over-optimistic attitude, as we saw during the movements in Egypt when the army, feigning sympathy with the movement, allowed the police to do the dirty work of brutal repression. In fact, as we know - and this is much clearer today – the army is the pillar of the system in this country.
The democratic illusions of these movements and the fact that the proletariat as a class did not take on their leadership allowed them to be taken in by the false sympathy of the forces of order and the bourgeois institutions. It led them to look for solutions which resulted in the strengthening of the bourgeois camp. It’s only in very advanced revolutionary situations, when the balance of forces between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is favourable to the latter, that we can expect an effective fraternisation with the military forces, as have seen in the past history of the workers’ movement.
There were important episodes of fraternisation during the Russian revolution of 1917. Trotsky gives a brilliant account of this in his History of the Russian Revolution, approving the attitude of the Russian workers in February 1917 towards the Cossacks, who he describes as having “many elements of conservatism” and as being “those age-old subduers and punishers”. He went on:
“But the Cossacks constantly, though without ferocity, kept charging the crowd. Their horses were covered with foam. The mass of demonstrators would part to let them through, and close up again. There was no fear in the crowd. ‘The Cossacks promise not to shoot,’ passed from mouth to mouth. Apparently some of the workers had talks with individual Cossacks...
A worker-Bolshevik, Kayurov, one of the authentic leaders in those days, relates how at one place, within sight of a detachment of Cossacks, the demonstrators scattered under the whips of the mounted police, and how he, Kayurov, and several workers with him, instead of following the fugitives, took off their caps and approached the Cossacks with the words: ‘Brothers-Cossacks, help the workers in a struggle for their peaceable demands; you see how the Pharaohs treat us, hungry workers. Help us!’ This consciously humble manner, those caps in their hands – what an accurate psychological calculation! Inimitable gesture! The whole history of street fights and revolutionary victories swarms with such improvisations”[7].
The proletariat and its revolutionary minorities must keep it in mind that, in the long run, there can be no military victory over the bourgeoisie without the disintegration of the repressive forces. This will be the product of several factors:
It may be that a number of workers and even elements belonging to political groups in the proletarian camp in Brazil sympathise with the MP strike, given that they share with the workers the situation of poverty imposed on us by capital, They may even call on the workers to take the police strike as an example of how to struggle. However, such an approach can only be harmful to the development of consciousness in the class and weaken its capacity to confront the enemy, not only because it sees the police strike as something that belongs to the proletarian struggle, but also because it feeds a lack of confidence in the capacity of the Brazilian proletariat to develop its struggle on its own class terrain after decades of lethargy resulting from the activity of the Workers Party, the other parties of the right and left of capital, and their trade unions.
When the ‘Old Mole’ which Marx spoke about begins to shake the foundations of Brazilian capital, the tenacious and persevering struggle of the proletariat on its own terrain will be obliged to confront and ultimately undermine the repressive forces of the state.
ICC 14/3/12
[1] In Brazil the police is divided up between the federal branch and the states branch (ie belonging to the different regional states of the country). In the federal branch, you have the Federal Police, the Federal Police for Motorways, and the Federal Police for Railways. In the states sphere you have the Civil Police and the Military Police. The Civil Police is responsible for investigations and the Military Police is the institution responsible for public security and the maintenance of bourgeois order. As well as these police organisations there is the National Guard, which is used in cases of ‘public security’ emergencies. It is formed by trained elements detached from various state organisations.
[2] PSOL: Partido Socialismo e Liberdada, made up of several Trotskyist tendencies; PSTI: Partido Socialista dos Trabalhadores Unificado, also Trotskyist
[3] BRIC stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China
[4] ‘PCO, the MP strike: the government wants the police to repress the population’ www.pco.org.br/conoticias/ler_materia.php?mat=34993 [123]
[5] OPOP. ‘We are Pinheirinho: total support and solidarity with the inhabitants of Pinheirinho’, revistagerminal.com/2012/01/24/nos-somos-o-pinheirinho-todo-apoio-e-solidariedade-aos-moradores-do-pinheirinho
[6] See the article in Revolución Mundial, our publication in Mexico, ‘Social insecurity: another reason for struggling against capitalism [124]’ Revolución Mundial n° 125, November-December 2011.
[7] Trotsky: History of the Russian Revolution, chapter 7, ‘Five Days’ https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch07.htm [125]
For some time, the Peruvian state has developed a campaign against terrorism, in particular against certain weakened but well-armed groups such as the Shining Path. Originally, it was a simple campaign to weaken the attempt to legalise a faction of the Shining Path – the Movadef[1] - which is hoping to participate in the political game with the other parties. When terrorist groups, as was the case with the IRA in Ireland, or presently the ETA in Spain, try to integrate themselves “normally” into the political circus, the already established forces within the state always unleash campaigns of discredit, demolition and harassment to ensure that the newcomers are as weak as possible and cannot profit from the prestige that they've acquired previously through the armed struggle. When bourgeois parties make alliances, it's usual for them to get in as many low blows as possible. There's nothing paradoxical about this: each tries to ally themselves with the weakest possible “partner”, because in this pitiless market place not to do so would result in them being weakened in their turn.
But after the attempt at the legalisation of Movadef failed, the campaign of the state then attacked the supposed incursions and so-called acts of violence of the SP (from graffiti on the walls, to car bombs, to assassinations, kidnappings, etc). And with time, we are seeing the state beginning to make a link between certain sectors of the population and terrorist groups, in particular sectors such as the mining industry where conflicts are becoming sharper each day, as is the case for Conga at Cajamarca or for the illegal miners of the Amazonian forest for example. Why has the state invented this link? Why has the state begun to tie in the demonstrations of the miners with the Shining Path?
The answer is evident: because it allows them to more easily exercise an extremely violent repression under the pretext “that the Shining Path has infiltrated members into these movements”. The state has already begun this repression against the impoverished peasants who are struggling against the mining pollution in their villages, who are struggling for their survival. The campaign against the Shining Path serves to justify the state's repression against the protest movements and are a clear warning to the movements which will appear in the future.
This campaign also has the advantage of making a link between communism and terrorism. The struggle of the working class has nothing to do with terrorism and terrorism also has nothing to do with the working class. Terrorism is always the enemy of the class struggle and plays a destructive role towards it. Communists thus openly reject the methods and visions of terrorism. Its practices and its positions are antagonistic to those of the working class.
“Terrorism is in no way a method of struggle for the working class. It is the expression of social strata with no historic future and of the decomposition of the petty-bourgeoisie, when it's not the direct expression of the permanent war between capitalist states, terrorism has always been a fertile soil for manipulation by the bourgeoisie. Advocating secret actions by small minorities is in opposition to the class violence which comes from the conscious and organised mass activity of the working class[2].
Terrorism is thus a practice which has nothing to do with the tradition of the workers' movement. Terrorism allows neither a process of criticism nor or reflection but on the contrary provokes fear and anguish; as in a country at war, bombings do not favour reflection nor consciousness of the reasons for war, but on the contrary provokes exoduses, flights of the population who are pushed to look after themselves, thus generating obstacles for the development of the collective consciousness of the working class.
Terrorist practices (and those of the Shining Path in particular) only express the despair and decomposition of the petty-bourgeoisie through the “exemplary actions” of elitist groups, a practice which is totally opposed to class violence, which comes from the collective and conscious action of the masses in struggle for the destruction of capitalism, as was the case at the time of the emergence of the soviets in Russia, 1917. Proletarian class violence is based upon general assemblies, collective decisions, common practice and on everything which favours the conditions for the development of consciousness. The consciousness of the working class is forged in the unitary and collective struggle.
We thus reject the politics of amalgamation that the bourgeoisie, and the Peruvian state, with the puppet Humala at its head, serving up the same dish of “terrorism and subversion” or any expression of discontent or of struggle against the social order. Their aim is nothing other than to prepare the ground for justifying bloody repression against the working class in Peru, in the context of the world crisis of capitalism which carries with it a string of attacks against the living conditions of our class, provoking reactions of indignation and of struggle.
We can see at what point these terrorist groups are foreign to the working class with the recent confinement of twenty workers from the gas factory of Camisea by a supposed group of Shining Path, which wanted to exchange them for the imprisoned “comrade Artemio”. The capture of Artemio and the legalisation of Movadef, added to the supposed attacks of this terrorist group, serve as a Trojan horse of the state in order to prepare the ground for a brutal repression of the working class which has begun to struggle in other parts of the world (Spain, Greece...) and whose struggle will be concretised as much in Peru as in the rest of the American continent.
Internacionalismo -Peru 5/12
[1]Movadef: “Movimiento por Amnistia y Derechos Fundamentales” (Movement for amnesty and international rights). The Shining Path movement, founded in 1970, is a movement of Maoist inspiration advocating the armed struggle and terrorist acts. Its “guerrilla tactic” has sown terror throughout the country and provoked bloody massacres of the population (about 70,000 deaths) through the 1980s and 90s in Peru, in particular in the countryside and villages from which it undertook its “actions”.
[2]Extract from the “Basic Positions [130]” of the International Communist Current.
Since Correa's[1] arrival to power in Ecuador, attacks against the working class have not ceased raining down, but have on the contrary intensified. “Correaism” has shown itself much more efficient than the other governments which preceded it from 1979. From this date the military withdrew behind closed doors and the roles played in the new scenario makes for a more effective management of the crisis of capitalism which broke out at the end of the 1960s. This policy of management was essentially expressed through the flight into generalised debt by all states.
Faced with the impasse facing decadent capitalism, marked by a galloping decomposition which makes the future more and more uncertain even in the eyes of the most optimistic economists, the bourgeoisie has had to resort to further debt and to the application of economic policies of austerity which have had the consequence of plunging the working class into the blackest poverty.
The Ecuadorian state did not escape this tendency and here exports have decreased these three last years. The so-called health of the economy rests on the growth of national revenues in dollars based upon the price of oil which is apparently generating an expansion of revenues to the order of 13%. In reality this is a mirage due to the exhaustion of world reserves and the speculation that this unleashes. But the key to the measures taken to face up to instability is tightening the belts of the workers. Thus the indirect part of wages given over to health and education tends to disappear with the reduction of spending in these sectors, which also provokes job losses in the working class – as with Obama, Sarkozy, Angela Merket, Rajoy or any other government in the world.
Correa protects the interests of the dominant class, imposes the policies of flexibility of employment, of brutal job cuts, freezing of wages, the suppression of collective agreements while avoiding the “trauma” of demonstrations in the streets... thanks to his cajoling speeches axed around the defence of democracy imposed in the name of “popular power”.
Here are some concrete examples of what's been put forward:
- April 30 2008: the imposition of ordinance no. 8, aiming to normalise the “Tercecizacion e diacion Laboral” which means the sacking of 39,200 workers of which only a part will be re-hired by the firms that they worked for beforehand, but as sub-contractors;
- From April 30 2009, “decree 1701” was applied aiming to limit the “privileges” given by collective agreements signed by public workers and the state. Thousands of workers were immediately prematurely retired and others, after having submitted to “evaluations” of their capacities, were forced to quit; in teaching no less than 2957 teachers were “sent down the road”;
- From July 7 2011, “executive decree 813” was applied, which changed the rules of public service and instituted the “buying up of compulsory resignations”[2]. 7093 posts have thus been eliminated since 2011, particularly undermining the health sector which has suffered most job cuts.
Among the working population of Ecuador (which reaches 55.5% of the total population), 57% have no stable job, that's to say they are tossed about between informal work (selling whatever in the street), precarious work and the zone of abject misery deprived of everything...
But even the workers who have a fixed job don't get enough wages to pay for their most basic needs. A “qualified” worker (technical or other professional qualification) gets about $280 per month, a doctor coming out of university after seven years of studies varies between $500 and $700 a month. Those who alone have had salary increases are the police and forces of order. Correa has decreed an increase in the salaries of the military which varies from 5% to 25%. Today a simple soldier coming out of the barracks, trained to kill, will receive a salary of $900 a month.
This is the essence of Correaism, wrapped up in this aberration baptised the “citizens' revolution”, which is part of the ignoble and abominable ideology of the “socialism of the 21st century” so dear to Chavez.
The promises of Correa and of his ideologues of the “socialism of the 21st century” are not valid options for the workers. Their struggle alone can contain a real perspective for the future.
Internacionalismo-Ecuador 5/12
[1]Rafael Correa Delgado was a professor of political economy who worked in Europe and the United States. He came out of the harem of the bourgeoisie and became advisor to the president, then he was Minister of Finance under the Palacio regime. He presented himself as a “humanist and Christian of the left” and made himself noticed through a brief ideological “crusade” against the diktats of the IMF and the World Bank. Carried to the head of a coalition between different left parties, he was elected in the second round of presidential elections, October 2006 and found himself at the head of the Ecuadorian state from March 2007. He reformed the constitution and was re-elected at the first round of presidential elections, that he set off, in April 2009 (NDLR).
[2]“Compra de renuncias obligatorias”, facilitating the job cuts.
According to the official story, the Queen is above politics. She truly stands for the unity of the people of Britain. So why don’t we all get together and celebrate the Jubilee?
But what could be more political than the idea of national unity? The idea that despite the growing gulf between those at the top of the pile of Britain, and those holding it up from below, we all have the same interests at heart (especially when those interests are pitted against other ‘national unities’).
Kings and queens, in fact, are nothing but symbols of political power – symbols of the state which only came into being because a few thousands of years ago society had split into different classes with conflicting interests. Just as the state didn’t always exist, neither did kings and queens. They were nothing but the personification of the impersonal state power. Their rule was supported partly by armed force, partly by appropriating and thus distorting the old collective rituals and symbols which formerly expressed the unity of the first human communities. Throughout history, there have been those who have questioned the fraudulent legitimacy claimed by the monarchs – such as the Old Testament prophets who saw that when Israel fell under the sway of Kings, it meant abandoning the old tribal solidarity which had once protected the weak and the vulnerable.
The pomp and ceremony that is inseparable from the monarchy is thus an expression of our own alienation, of our loss of control of society and the way it functions. We ‘invest’ in kings and queens and similar celebrities because of the enforced poverty of our own lives.
In mediaeval England, kings and queens were products of the feudal social order. The bourgeois revolution which broke out in the 17th century tried to get rid of them but it wasn’t able to go beyond its own internal divisions. The bourgeoisie, led by Cromwell and his ilk, was unwilling to push the revolution to its conclusion because he feared the rise of radical democracy advocated by the Leveller party and the embryonic proletarian menace taking shape in the True Levellers or Diggers. The British ruling class displayed its fabled ‘genius for compromise’ by becoming a historic compromise between the new capitalist class and the old aristocracy. Capitalist rule in Britain, after a very brief period in which it took the form of a Republic, thus found ways to make the best use of vestiges of feudalism like the monarchy and the House of Lords.
Some people think that it is high time that the bourgeois revolution in Britain was brought to a conclusion and that we should catch up with countries which have got rid of all inherited political institutions. Politicians who represent this way of thinking like to tie us up in knots about why we should dispense with the Lords and set up a fully functioning modern parliamentary system (with a president as the cherry on the cake).
But the time for completing the capitalist revolution is long gone. Capitalism is a system in profound historic decline and the only revolution on the agenda is the revolution that will overthrow capitalism and create a world human community. No kings and queens, obviously. No lords and ladies. But also no bourgeois parliaments, no presidents, no national unities either! In short, no bourgeois republic. If we have outgrown the rule of monarchs it because we have outgrown the rule of the state, and need to finally restore society to itself.
The original idea of a ‘Jubilee’ (see Leviticus 25:9-17) was of a year of emancipation of slaves and restoration of lands, to be celebrated every 50th year. It was proclaimed by the sounding of a ram's horn on the Day of Atonement. On the Jubilee "Ye shall not therefore oppress one another". But the Jubilee we can look forward to is one which lasts more than a year, and brings with it the definitive abolition of all forms of exploitation.
Amos 30/5/12
Since 2008, and the beginning of the present phase of the crisis, growing austerity has developed everywhere. This policy was supposed to reduce the debts and relaunch growth. And then, like a rabbit out of a magician's hat, a new alternative was flourished which was supposed to cure all ills. It was called recovery. It is called for throughout the press, the television and radio. There's a real magic to it: growth could come back and generalised debt reduced. The debt could be “monetised”, i.e. paid off by printing money. What does this jargon of the bourgeois specialists mean? In reality, a few quite simple questions are posed: why this sudden turnaround by the great majority of the leaders of the euro zone? What is the reality of this policy? Has generalised austerity finished? Will the crisis continue to deepen or not in the near future ?
In Greece, Ireland, Italy, and most dramatically in recent weeks Spain, the population has been attacked on all sides during the last years. Workers at work, the unemployed, youth, the retired, each and everyone has seen their quality of life collapse. Hospitals, schools and all the public services have been butchered. The political justification of this economic war against all the exploited was clear. Listen to all the governments that were in power and they said ‘accept these sacrifices today: reduce state and public debt while lowering the cost of labour in order to easier sell the goods produced and thus growth will be re-launched’. Despite the struggles that developed in reaction to this policy, which looks at the working class like a sheep to be mercilessly fleeced, austerity continued to accelerate. But, to the great confusion of the capitalist class, so did the crisis.
Since 2008, the GDP of the euro zone has remained around the same and close to 8900 billion euros. On the other hand total public and private debt has continued to accelerate and has now reached 8000 billion euros. It is incredible to see that all the wealth created through a year of labour practically corresponds to the existing debt and we are only talking about the official part which is recognised as such. Worse than this for the bourgeoisie is that the economy has now settled into recession. In 2012, Germany alone could show a small 0.5% growth. For the other countries of the zone the collapse is evident. In Greece and Spain activity is rapidly retreating and mass unemployment is an established fact. Debt is exploding and practically out of control in these countries – at the very moment when their GDP is collapsing. As to France, which is just managing to avoid the worst, it is now paying its state employees by borrowing money on what is called the financial markets.
So, the bourgeoisie is simply verifying a fact which has been evident for a long time: generalised austerity and the crisis of credit leads to recession and the deepening of debt. What to do then?
The current debates within the bourgeoisie are basically still those that have been going on since 2008: how and when will we be able to repay the debt? It's then that an idea was presented as if it were new. In order to repay the debt, it will be necessary to create wealth. It was just a matter of thinking about it. This idea which has existed at least since the economic crisis of the 1930s has come to the surface once again. We could ask why it wasn't thought of earlier, for example since 2008 when the bottomless pit of debt made its most spectacular appearance.
How do you revive growth? That’s the question which is haunting the bourgeois class. For some, it is necessary to make production in the euro zone more competitive and thus lower the cost of the goods produced. To put it bluntly, it is necessary to look to lowering wages in order to effectively compete with Chinese, Indian, or Brazilian production, or with the countries of central Europe for example, and thus prevent production being moved abroad. Claiming to revive activity through the sharper competitive edge thus obtained would be laughable if it didn’t involve such suffering for the working class.
For others, the states of the euro zone should directly take charge of the recovery of growth. Here the idea is the following: since banks close to bankruptcy cannot lend enough, either to businesses or individuals, it is the state which has to directly take command. From here would come road construction, high-speed rail lines, etc. The companies concerned would get to work, hire wage earners and participate thus in re-launching growth. The problem is the following: where does the extra money come from that must be invested for such a result? Once the funds are used from existing sources, which represent about 450 billion euros, there has to be recourse to further debts taken on by states already at risk of bankruptcy. At present, in the western countries, in order to produce a euro of wealth, it is necessary to go into debt for 8 extra euros. In other words, a recovery plan implies this: a debt which increases eight times more quickly than the GDP. But goods produced are not goods sold. How much supplementary credit will it be necessary to distribute to bled-dry “consumers” so that they can buy these goods? This is absurd and unrealistic. The capital engaged has become too significant for the profit to be made. Given that capitalism can no longer deal with its current levels of debt, how will it be able to do it in the scenario described here? How does it prevent the public deficits exploding and the financial markets demanding exorbitant interest rates in order to continue lending to states? Behind all the ideological and media campaigns at present, this so-called recovery will have to make do with funds presently available and not yet utilised, which can only have a marginal affect on activity.
The new president of France, Monsieur Hollande, has joined in with many other leaders in the euro zone, except Germany of course, in singing a new tune which is supposed to fill us with hope. The title of this song that he hopes will become popular is: monetisation and mutualisation of the debt. Which if nothing else is very poetic. Quite simply monetisation means the printing of money. The central bank is in charge of it and takes in exchange acknowledgements of the debts of the state or the banks, and in general that guarantees the obligations. Mutualisation means that all states of the euro zone take collective responsibility for the debt. The states that are in less difficulty pay for those in more difficulty.
When enough wealth is no longer created and such wealth no longer sold in order to prevent debt dragging the system into the abyss, the financial markets gradually turn away. A recovery without real effect and a still greater debt makes borrowers more and more rare and borrowing more and more dear. Then comes the time to tap the savings banks, the first stage of the monetisation of the debt to come. The state becomes a thief on a grand scale. The increase in taxes of all sorts and compulsory loans have their effect. This borrowing is evaluated as a percentage of taxes paid by everyone. It must be repaid after a certain period and that gives rise to interest payments. It is this that they are currently looking into in France as for the whole euro zone. A responsibility for the state to pay us back tomorrow with the money that it no longer possesses today! It is quite evident that faced with the vast ocean of the bottomless pit of debt all this can only be a droplet . This however feeds into the austerity that we are already suffering from.
But again the general alert is out. Greece and Spain are sounding the alarm. Only a few months after the Central European Bank injected 1000 billion around the banks, the whole public financial system is wavering.
For 2012 alone in the euro zone, and so as to be able to face up to the part of this debt whose payment is now due, it will be necessary to find between 1500 and 4000 billion euro. These figures have nothing to do with reality of course since the Bank of Spain alone is claiming 23 billion. The sums are enormous and out of capitalism's reach. There only remains a road full of pitfalls for capital in its attempts to avoid immediate bankruptcy. In mid-June, Greece holds new elections. If a party refusing the austerity of the euro zone comes to power in this country, the exit of Greece from the euro zone is a possibility. For the population in Greece this would mean a return to their original money and a devaluation of the drachma by about 50%. This country would sink into autarky and misery. Which changes nothing much of the fate that awaits it. On the other hand, the bill for the banks and for the central bank of the euro zone will be pricey. In the accounts of the banks there are still many acknowledgements of Greek debt, close to 300 billion euros. But the fundamental question is not that. If the euro zone lets Greece come out of it through its impotence to keep it in, what will happen with Spain, Italy, etc?
The monetisation of the debt or the moment the bill is due
And now it’s Spain’s turn: all its banks in real bankruptcy and its regions all financially unmanageable. The mouthful is enormous, too big to swallow. The financial markets and all these institutions which get together the private money available in the world are not mistaken when they claim still more interest to borrow to this country. Presently, the rate over a ten-year state debt is approaching 7%. This rate is the maximum that the state can bear; above it, it can no longer borrow. Mario Rajoy, in a devious manner, appealed for help from the Central European Bank. The latter put up a deaf ear. The Spanish government then announced that it was going to try to finance its banks by going to the market. Soon after that Spain’s banks were given a very substantial lifeline of 100 billion euros. But all this is very odd. Banks in the world have to lend money to the insolvent Spanish state so that it can lend to its insolvent banks which, in exchange, will return with acknowledgements of insolvent debt. The absurdity is total. The impasse manifest.
Then, at one moment or another it will be necessary that at least part of the debt is monetised and mutualised. Paper money will have to be created that Germany will guarantee in part with the wealth that it produces. It is the Gross National Product of Germany that will authorise a certain degree of money creation. Germany impoverishes itself and slows down the general impoverishment of Europe. Why does it do this? Quite simply because it sells a great part of its goods in this zone.
Monetisation of the debt, a recognition of impotence
Monetising part of the debt shows in reality that capitalism can no longer develop, even on the basis of credit. This is the official moment when capitalism tells us: “I am going to create money that is progressively losing its value so that my debt will not explode immediately” I would like to invest it better, create wealth and sell, but I can no longer do so. The debt is too immense. It has me by the throat... quick paper money, more paper money and some time is gained”.
Money, including credit, should represent the wealth produced and the production that will be sold at a profit. For decades, growth has been maintained with credits which they have said would be repaid one day. When? No-one knows. This deadline is always pushed away in time. The wealth produced in ten years is already destroyed in production and sale today. What remains except for debts and still more debts?
Monetisation is the triumph of fictitious capital to the detriment of real capital, that which contains within it real wealth. To create massive amounts of money in order to buy your own debt comes down to the destruction of capital. That provokes galloping inflation of prices, despite the recession. This path also leads to austerity. Because how can you survive if the price of goods is going up every day?
Can capitalism accelerate its own descent into hell? And if Germany was to refuse monetisation thus paralysing the European Central Bank? No-one can totally dismiss such a possibility even if it would lead to a collective suicide. For some months, the German bourgeoisie has made some well-informed calculations in order to evaluate the costs of the break-up of or the financing of the euro zone. In both cases, in time, the bill is too much and unsupportable, but in the short term, what is the most terrifying perspective?
In any case, Germany will demand austerity. For German capital austerity is the hope that through a reduction in the acceleration of public debt, the slate will be a little cleaner. In reality all this is only a tragic illusion which means that proletarians everywhere will face increasingly uncertain living conditions.
The impasse for capitalism at this point is so great that it wants to launch a recovery of the economy at the same time as increasing austerity; to embark upon massive money creation while also reducing debt. Capitalism is becoming mad. It is losing its direction. It no longer knows now how to go forward nor how to manoeuvre in order to avoid the dangerous reefs that surround it on all sides. The euro zone has never been in such a dangerous crisis. The months to come will be those of great economic tempests which will lead to still more devastating shipwrecks, demonstrating the generalised bankruptcy of world capitalism.
Rossi 30/5/12
“The Marxian method affords an opportunity to estimate the development of the new art, to trace all its sources, to help the most progressive tendencies by a critical illumination of the road, but it does not do more than that. Art must make its own way and by its own means.” (Trotsky, Communist policy toward art, 1923)
“Art, which is the most complex part of culture, the most sensitive and at the same time the least protected, suffers most from the decline and decay of bourgeois society.” (Trotsky, Art and politics in our epoch, 1938)
The rise of capitalism unleashes unprecedented, hitherto unimaginable forces of production that bring into being new feelings and new ideas, together with new means for artists to express them. The extension of this new mode of production over the entire surface of the globe and its penetration into all areas of human experience dissolves the barriers between national cultures and local fixed styles, creating for the first time a single world culture.
By constantly revolutionising production and raising productivity, capitalism also destroys old, rigid social relations and turns everything, including art, into a commodity. From being a hitherto ‘revered’ and ‘honoured’ artisan producing directly for a client, the artist is more and more reduced to a paid wage labourer whose products are thrown onto an anonymous market and subjected to the laws of competition.
Beyond its use as an investment or embellishment to the private life of the individual capitalist, capitalism is inherently hostile towards art as a diversion from its single driving force: the accumulation of capital for its own sake. Moreover, as an exploiting system, capitalism is fundamentally antagonistic to the interests of humanity and therefore to the humanist ideals of the best art. The more conscious art is of this, the more it is led to protest against the inhumanities of capitalist society. In this way, the best artists are able to transcend the limits of their epoch and class origins to create powerful condemnations of the crimes and human tragedies of capitalism (Goethe, Balzac, Goya).
This antagonism between capitalism and humanity is not fully apparent in the earliest stages of the new mode of production when the bourgeoisie is still engaged in a revolutionary struggle against feudal absolutism. The best art is able to reflect the progressive moral and spiritual values of this new exploiting class, whose energy and confidence – and generous patronage – enables the artistic achievements of the Renaissance long before its own rule is established.
In the era of bourgeois-democratic revolutions (c1776-1848) art is still able to express the revolutionary aims of the bourgeoisie, but the sordid realities of capitalism are already becoming clear. Romanticism (Blake, Goethe, Goya, Pushkin, Shelley, Turner) reflects the contradictory nature of this period, rejecting feudal and aristocratic values in art but also passionately protesting against the brutal effects of capitalist industrialisation on art and the individual.
Against the ‘rationality’ of the new exploiting class, romanticism argues for the power of subjective experience, imagination and the sublimity of nature, drawing its inspirations from the Middle Ages, mythology and folk art. Politically it often takes a reactionary, backward-looking form, but it also gives rise to a definite revolutionary tendency which expresses an internationalist, communist vision (Heine, Blake, Byron, Shelley).[1] The most profound poetic insights of this tendency anticipate not only the later artistic ideas of Expressionism and Surrealism but also the theoretical developments of Marxism and psychoanalysis.
Once it comes to power and the proletariat appears on the historical stage, the bourgeoisie sheds its progressive values and buries the whole idea of revolution as a mortal danger to its class rule. From this point on, the attempts of art to understand reality and express the interests of humanity inevitably come into conflict with capitalist ideology.
The defining characteristic of bourgeois modern art is that it appears just as the conditions for capitalism’s further progressive development are reaching their zenith.
The decisive victory of industrial capitalism by the mid-19th century in the most advanced countries of Europe and America is reflected in the growth of rationalist, positivist and materialist ideologies in the sciences and philosophy, and realist or naturalist approaches in the arts. Marx and Engels consider realism in literature (Flaubert, Balzac, Elliot) to be the supreme achievement of world art. Realism in the visual arts, (Courbet, Millet, Degas) is a reaction to both classical art and to the emotionalism and subjectivism of romanticism, affirming instead the goals of truth and accuracy and depicting scenes of everyday life, including hitherto ignored harsh realities of working class life. To the bourgeoisie, any art that accurately depicts the ugly realities of life in capitalism is by definition revolutionary and to be rejected.
This period also sees the growth of the workers’ movement, and it is therefore unsurprising that realism gives rise to a revolutionary tendency that explicitly identifies with the working class and the struggle for socialism. Courbet, leader of the realist movement in France, affirms: “I am not only a socialist but also a democrat and a republican, in a word, a partisan of revolution and, above all, a realist, that is, the sincere friend of the real truth.”[2]
Impressionism (Pissaro, Manet, Degas, Cézanne, Monet) is an artistic response to the growth of industrial and urban society; to new technological developments and scientific discoveries (photography and optics), the globalisation of trade (seen in the influence of Japanese prints), and the growth of the middle class as a clientele for new art. It retains a commitment to truth and accuracy but focuses on the subjective perception of movement and light: “Whilst the old academic style said ‘here are the rules (or images) according to which nature must be depicted’, and naturalism said ‘here is nature’, then Impressionism said ‘here is how I see nature’”.[3] Impressionist themes and influences can also be seen in music (Debussy, Ravel) and in literature (Lawrence, Conrad).
As a genuinely modern bourgeois art movement, impressionism is a contradictory development. Whereas the classical art of the Renaissance expresses an underlying sense of unity that derives from the vision and confidence of the revolutionary bourgeoisie, impressionism reflects the victory of capitalism and the atomisation of the individual in industrial society. By basing itself on subjective or sensory perception it correspondingly represents reality as a patchwork:
“And so Impressionism was, in a sense, a symptom of decline, of the fragmentation and dehumanization of the world. But at the same time it was, in the long ‘close season’ of bourgeois capitalism ... a glorious climax of bourgeois art, a golden autumn, a late harvest, a tremendous enrichment of the means of expression available to the artist.”[4]
The period between c1890 and 1914 – the so-called ‘Belle Époque’ or ‘Gilded Age’ – sees capitalism apparently at its most optimistic and technologically advanced, with particularly powerful economic growth that creates fertile conditions for artistic and scientific developments (Freud’s theory of the unconscious, quantum and relativity theory). But beneath the surface this is also a period of gnawing uncertainty and doubt, with the rise of militarism and imperialist tensions, increasing state intervention in society and massive working class struggles: all signs of a growing crisis at the heart of capitalism.
The artistic movements that emerge from this period (cubism, expressionism, symbolism) inevitably reflect these contradictions, expressing both a final flowering of progressive bourgeois art and the first symptoms of its end. Cubism (Picasso, Braque), showing the influence of the latest scientific and philosophical theories, abandons the depiction of objects from one viewpoint, analysing, breaking up and re-assembling them in abstracted form from multiple viewpoints. Expressionism rejects realism altogether, depicting subjective meaning or emotional experience rather than physical reality. It is also influential in literature (Kafka), and in music (Schoenberg, Webern, Berg) where it rejects traditional tonality for a-tonality and dissonance. Symbolism (Baudelaire, Verlaine) is a poetic reaction against realism and naturalism in favour of mysticism and imagination, which is later described as “a dreaming retreat into things that are dying”.[5]
A radical tendency within bourgeois modern art sees itself as the avant garde of a new progressive society with new artistic values, arguing that art has a role to play in modernising capitalist society. This ‘modernist’ avant garde appears just as the possibilities for reforming capitalism from within are about to end. Futurism (Marinetti, Mayakovsky, Malevich), which is influential in painting, poetry, architecture and music in the early 20th century, especially in Italy and Russia, glorifies themes and symbols of capitalist progress such as youth, speed, dynamism, and power. But other modernist elements, especially in Germany, are more critical of capitalist ‘modernity’ and express the alienation of life in bourgeois society (Munch’s ‘The Scream’).
The outbreak of the First World War divides this Modernist avant garde into the glorifiers of capitalist progress like Marinetti and the Italian futurists, who enthusiastically side with barbarism (and later with fascism), and more radical tendencies like the Russian futurists and German expressionists who oppose the war and, in a more or less confused and partial way, begin to relate to the proletarian movement.
The first specific artistic response to the war is dada. An international anti-war and anti-capitalist movement, dada sees the slaughter on the battlefields as proof of the bankruptcy of all bourgeois culture. Its ‘programme’ is close to anarchism: the demolition of culture and the abolition of art, and its practice embraces chaos and irrationality (poems made from randomly-assembled words clipped from newspapers, etc). The Berlin dadaists (Heartfield, Grosz, Dix, Ernst), closer to the anti-war struggles of the working class, take up more explicitly communist positions, even forming their own political party and actively supporting the German revolution.[6]
The October 1917 Russian revolution is the high point of the post-war revolutionary wave and of the attempts by the modernist avant garde to create a liberating art. For a brief period following the soviets’ seizure of power there is a huge surge of artistic experimentation and activity, much of it explicitly identifying itself with the revolution. With the protection of the young soviet state and critical support from the Bolshevik Party, sections of the Russian avant garde (futurists,productivists, constructivists), inspired by Mayakovsky’s declaration “The streets are our brushes, the squares our palettes”, abandon ‘pure’ art for industrial production, embracing architecture, industrial design, cinema, advertising, furniture, packaging and clothes, with the stated aim of using art to transform everyday life. There are heated debates about culture and the future of art. The influential Proletkult movement, tending to reject all previous culture, wants to create a new revolutionary, proletarian aesthetic, while others like Trotsky reject the whole concept of proletarian culture but support the emergence of a new revolutionary art, expecting this to appear imminently.[7]
In the context of the revolutionary wave that shakes capitalism to its foundations in the years from 1917 to 1923 this does not appear unrealistic. The sentence passed by dada on all bourgeois culture and art seems about to be carried out by the world proletariat, in Germany, Britain, America....
But with the isolation of the Russian bastion, and the defeat of the proletariat’s revolutionary attempts in Europe, the Bolsheviks’ initial backing for modernist experimentation is replaced by the suppression of dissent and increasing state control as the Stalinist counter-revolution tightens its grip. Internationally, modernism eventually ends up by being co-opted as an official architectural style by reactionary state capitalist regimes, whether Stalinist, fascist (especially in Italy) or social democratic.
In the deepening bourgeois counter-revolution, the Russian artistic avant garde essentially faces the same choices as the surviving communist opposition: either submission to Stalinist totalitarianism with its enforcement of ‘socialist realism’, silence or exile. With the rise of fascism the European artistic avant garde is also increasingly forced into exile and/or takes up an explicitly political oppositional stance.
Surrealism (Breton, Aragon, Ernst, Péret, Dali, Miró, Duchamp) emerges from dada but only becomes a distinct movement when the practical opportunities for revolution are already receding. It is an explicitly revolutionary artistic movement which becomes closely associated with political opposition to Stalinism.[8] Surrealism draws its ideas from Freudian psychoanalysis as well as Marxism and emphasises the use of free association, dream analysis, juxtaposition and automatism to liberate the unconscious. Its attempt to maintain a permanent revolutionary artistic practice within capitalism in a period of deep defeat leaves it prone to decay and eventual recuperation, but surrealist ideas are a huge influence on the visual arts, literature, film, and music, as well as philosophy and political and social theory.
With the triumph of the bourgeois counter-revolution in the 1930s – “Midnight in the century” (Victor Serge) – we see a full flowering of all the classic symptoms of decadence in capitalist culture:
“Ideology decomposes, the old moral values run down, artistic creativity stagnates or functions in opposition to the status quo, there is a development of obscurantism and philosophical pessimism. [...] In the sphere of art, decadence has manifested itself in a particularly violent way [...] As in other periods of decadence, art, if it does not stagnate in an eternal repetition of past forms, seeks to take up a stance against the existing order, or is very often the expression of a cry of horror.”[9]
Decadence makes the need for a genuinely liberating art all the more pressing but the deepening crisis of the system and its effects on bourgeois society mean that the minimum conditions for the appearance of such an art are progressively undermined, while the traditional social base of art in the radical petty bourgeoisie is even further eroded and isolated from the life of the mass of the working class.
In these conditions, art which ‘seeks to take up a stance against the existing order’ finds itself increasingly isolated, or is recuperated for use as propaganda by one reactionary political faction or another (Picasso’s ‘Guernica’). Art that expresses a cry of horror at capitalist barbarism similarly finds itself rendered increasingly impotent by the sheer scale of its atrocities: World War Two (over 60 million dead, mostly civilians, compared to 20 million in 1914-18), the Nazi death camps, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hamburg, Dresden, Stalinism’s mass crimes... To paraphrase Adorno, after Auschwitz it becomes impossible to write poetry without contributing further to an already barbaric culture.
But capitalist decadence does not mean that the productive forces come to a halt. In order to survive the system must continue to try to revolutionise production and raise productivity. Rather, we increasingly see what Marx termed ‘development as decay’. Similarly in the sphere of art we continue to see a progression of artistic schools, partly in response to new technological developments and changes in society, but this is increasingly characterised by a frantic recycling of previous styles, violent mood swings between hope and despair, fragmentation, and the splintering and disappearance of each school before reaching its complete development. Human creativity never ceases, but it does find itself increasingly stifled, channelled, blocked and corrupted. We still see artistic developments (jazz), and the introduction of new techniques and styles, but increasingly these developments reflect the decay of a society that has avoided its appointment with its executioner and only survives by cannibalising itself.
This is illustrated by abstract expressionism, the most influential artistic school (at least in painting and sculpture) to appear in the ‘post-war boom’. Abstract expressionism is partly a reaction to the explicit political content of 1930s social realism (Rivera). Influenced by Surrealism and the European avant garde it emphasises the expression of unconscious ideas and emotions through spontaneous, improvisatory or automatic techniques to create images of varying degrees of abstraction (Pollock, Rothko, Newman, Still). Influenced by the trauma of WW2 and the repressive post-war climate in the US, it avoids openly political content, turning to primitive art, mythology and mysticism for inspiration. This and its pursuit of pure abstraction facilitates the promotion of abstract expressionism by the US state in the Cold War as a cultural weapon against the ‘socialist realism’ of its Russian imperialist rival.
If art by the mid-20th century displays the classic symptoms of decadence in all class societies, there are also specific developments, especially in the ‘post-war boom’, which transform not only the way that art is produced and distributed in capitalist society but also how it is ‘experienced’ by the mass of the working class. The cumulative effect of these developments is to further undermine the conditions for the emergence of revolutionary art and hasten the disappearance of the surviving artistic avant garde. Many of these developments are themselves symptoms of decadence or attempts by capitalism to overcome the contradictions of its historic crisis. They include:
As a result, for the first time in history capitalism is able to cheaply produce artistic commodities (music, films, etc) for consumption by the mass of the working class, in so doing overcoming its inherent hostility to art as an unnecessary diversion from its drive to accumulate. This greatly facilitates the use of artistic commodities for ideological purposes, not just to help ensure the reproduction of labour by providing means for ‘amusement’ in workers’ ‘leisure time’, but also to recuperate any artistic expression of dissent.
When the proletariat returns to the stage of history in the struggles of ‘May 68, we do see the appearance of radical art movements (Arte Povera) but not on the scale that one might expect. Instead, the most radical descendents of the European artistic avant garde, the Situationists, are distinguished by their critique of ‘the society of the spectacle’, ie. bureaucratic capitalism’s commodification of culture and its use of the mass media to recuperate subversive ideas, and by proposals for practical actions to “bring a revolutionary reordering of life, politics, and art”. The Situationists exaggerate the power of this ‘spectacle’ just at the moment when capitalism’s historic crisis returns, but they are closer to reality in identifying the inability of even the most radical artistic activity to avoid recuperation unless it is explicitly political; that is, in this period, revolutionary.
With the entry of capitalism into its final phase, that of decomposition, the very real possibility exists of the destruction of all human culture, along with art, which will, in Trotsky’s phrase, inevitably rot away “as Grecian art rotted beneath the ruins of a culture founded on slavery”.[10]
By the 1970s modern art is part of official state capitalist culture in America and Europe, supported and subsidised by corporations and government agencies and safely enshrined in museums. Despite successive waves of working class struggle right up to the collapse of the Russian bloc in 1989-91 we see only a further decay of art, accelerated by the spurious economic boom of the 1980s and fuelled by an explosion of debt that leads to a gold rush of speculative investment in art as bullion. The excesses of the market finish off what the counter-revolution, the post-war boom and the rise of the ‘culture industry’ have begun.
The appearance of ‘post-modernism’, especially from the 1980s, is in one sense only the final inevitable recognition of this long drawn-out death of modernism. ‘Post-modernism’ has its origins in the arid regions of the leftist intelligentsia (Derrida et al) as a ‘democratising project’. It theorises the abandonment not only of any further avant garde role for art but also of any concept of forward movement in history itself. It therefore fits perfectly with all the bourgeois ideological campaigns in the 1990s about the ‘end of communism’ and the ‘end of history’, only adding to general demoralisation and despair.
Even before the entry of decadent capitalism into its final stage, that of decomposition, we can therefore point to the advanced decomposition of art, ie. “the vacuity and venality of all “artistic” production: literature, music, painting, architecture, are unable to express anything but anxiety, despair, the breakdown of coherent thought, the void...”[11] In fact this description does not go far enough. We can add to it by identifying a trend in art to destroy itself, to become, in the words of the German artist Anselm Kiefer, ‘anti-art’. In decomposing capitalism, even anti-art is ... art: “Art has something which destroys its own cells. Damien Hirst is a great anti-artist. To go to Sothebys and sell your own work directly is destroying art. But in doing it to such exaggerated extent, it becomes art ... the fact that it was two days before the [2008] crash made it even better.””[12]
Beyond the cynical manipulations of ‘artist/entrepreneurs’ like Hirst, whose exploits now appear as one more symptom of capitalism’s pre-2007 speculative bubble, there is a more fundamental truth. The expressionist poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) compares the artist to “a dancer whose movements are broken by the constraint of his cell. That which finds no expression in his steps and the limited swing of his arms, comes in exhaustion from his lips, or else he has to scratch the unlived lines of his body into the walls with his wounded fingers.”[13] If the artist is indeed like a prisoner in a cell, then in decomposing capitalism the best artists are more and more forced to revert to the equivalent of a ‘dirty protest’ at the intolerable conditions of capitalist life and the impossibility of genuine artistic expression. But even smearing the cell walls with your own excrement is no longer enough, it seems, to avoid commodification and recuperation. In 1961 the Italian artist Manzoni produced a work consisting of 90 tins of his own shit. In 2007 Sotheby’s sold one for 124,000 euros.
MH 6/12
[1] See Heinrich Heine: The revolution and the party of the nightingales’, ICC online. (https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2007/march/heine [140]).
[2] Courbet, a supporter of Proudhon, was imprisoned for his active role in the Paris Commune.
[3] Culture and Revolution in the Thought of Leon Trotsky, Revolutionary History, vol. 7, No. 2, Porcupine Press, London 1999, p. 102 (www.marxist.com/ArtAndLiterature-old/marxism_and_art.html [141]).
[4] Ernst Fischer, The Necessity of Art: A Marxist Approach, Pelican, 1963, p.75. The impressionist Cézanne was well aware of this regression: in the work of the old masters, he says, “It is as though you could hear the whole melody of it in your head, no matter what detail you happened to be studying. You cannot tear anything out of the whole. ... They did not paint patchwork as we do...” (Fischer, p.75).
[5] Edmund Wilson, Axel's Castle, [142]1931. The symbolists were also known at the time as ‘decadents’.
[6] Formed in early 1919, the ‘Central Council of Dada [143] for the World Revolution’ called for “1) The international revolutionary union of all creative and intellectual men and women on the basis of radical Communism; (...) The immediate expropriation of property (...) and the communal feeding of all (...) Introduction of the simultaneist poem as a Communist state prayer.” (Wikipedia).
[7] Trotsky, Communist policy toward art, 1923. For more on the Proletkult movement and the debates within the Bolshevik Party on culture, see the series “Communism is not just a nice idea” in International Review nos. 109, 111.
[8] Although some surrealists like Aragon became apologists for Stalinism while Dali supported fascism. Leading surrealists made contact with Trotsky and the movement became closely associated with the Left Opposition but the leading surrealist poet Benjamin Péret broke with the Trotskyist Fourth International in 1948 over its reactionary political positions and worked closely with Munis’s group.
[9] The Decadence of Capitalism, ICC pamphlet (https://en.internationalism.org/pamphlets/decadence/ch3 [144]).
[10] Trotsky, Art and politics in our epoch, 1938 (https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/06/artpol.htm [145]).
[11] “Theses on decomposition, the final phase of capitalism’s decadence”, International Review no. 107, 2001. We could add to this the whole crisis of the education system and its effects on traditional art skills, knowledge and techniques, etc.
[12] Guardian, 9.12.11.
[13] Quoted in Norman O. Brown, Life against death. The psychoanalytical meaning of history, 1959, p. 66.
We are publishing here an article written by one of our very close contacts in collaboration with ICC militants. We want to salute the comrade’s willingness to contribute to the ongoing discussions and clarification of one of the burning social issues of the time—gay “rights”-- from a working class perspective. We also want to express our appreciation for the focus the comrade chose to give in writing this article. We think it is refreshing to approach the issue from the angle of human emotions. We also agree with the comrade’s political understanding and argumentation. We invite all our close contacts to work in collaboration with ICC militants to write about issues of concern for the clarification and emancipation of working class thought.
The “debate” over whether gay and lesbian people should enjoy the “right” to legally marry and draw from such legal recognition all the financial benefits granted to heterosexual married couples –survivor’s benefits among the most hotly contested— has long been one of those hot button issues the ruling class periodically pulls out of its hat, most notably around election time. In this article we would like to highlight the hypocrisy of the ruling class left, center, and right in taking up the issue from either a “humanistic” point of view—the left’s and center’s—or a moralistic/religious standpoint on the right. The Obama administration likes to show itself as “liberal” and “progressive,” hence its call to reverse the anti-gay marriage laws passed at the state level (most recently by referendum in North Carolina), without, however, attempting to make gay marriage a constitutional “right.” The right needs to satisfy the fears and quell the insecurities of its particularly conservative electoral base, hence the Republican Party to-be-nominee Mitt Romney’s anti-gay marriage stance. The whole “debate” is really a ploy by the Obama administration to appeal to the youth and “independent-minded,” besides the gay electorate itself, and push Romney to discredit himself with the Evangelists if he does not clearly and forcefully come against gay marriage. Romney’s further move to the right risks further alienating the undecided and independent sector of the electorate. It is clear that this legalistic posturing is completely hypocritical. It aims at utilizing a situation which is certainly experienced as dramatic and humiliating by gay and lesbian people by fueling divisions, animosity, and further misunderstandings for the purpose of political gains. Further, the at times vehement opposition to gay marriage expressed by the rights should not confuse us as to the fact that the legalization of an aspect of personal life would do nothing to challenge the established system of capitalist exploitation.
Today, if you turned on the television set and surfed over to any mainstream bourgeois news channel, chances are headlines about the “debate over gay rights” might assault the screen. It is interesting how the bourgeois media is insistent on highlighting our personal human differences, in showing us where we disagree the most as people. But the bourgeoisie and their mouthpieces in the press are highly hypocritical. Especially when “partisanship” is so frowned upon in the current political climate. Now, certain factions of the ruling class claim to support gay marriage. Even further, they claim to do so out of a sense of deeper humanism, often referring to the gay rights struggle as a struggle for “equality” or “civil rights.”
It is at this point we have to ask: “equality” in the name of what? And for which people in society? Is “marriage equality” even an appropriate working class demand? Is sexual freedom even possible under capitalism? As workers, we have to say the answer to both of those questions is negative. Building a world free of homophobia and heterosexism, where each individual is viewed and treated as a human being, rather than a category, is impossible under capitalism.
For some time now, elements of the bourgeois political class have advocated the legal recognition of same-sex marriage. Often times their arguments are coded in language that appeals to workers. They say that legalizing same-sex marriage would improve the quality of life for gay and queer workers, as they would gain access to insurance benefits, divorce and property rights, etc. But under capitalism, human relations are reduced to a matter of exchange. Emotions are nothing but mere commodities and finances to the bourgeoisie. So we can see the economic need of legalizing same-sex marriage, but what about the concept of marriage itself within capitalism?
Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto that, “The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.” They later continued, “The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations...On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie.”
So according to Marx and Engels' definition of marriage under capitalism, we can begin to understand that “equal marriage rights” is a term which only applies to those who can afford the benefits of marriage. Rights which only apply to the propertied classes, the people who can even afford to legally marry in the first place. Marriage is fundamentally about property rights and inheritance. It has historically defined which people the ruling class deemed acceptable to own property, and even which people could be owned themselves! Originally of course, marriage meant the possession of the wife and her property by the husband. In the eyes of the bourgeoisie marriage is not at all about mutual respect and love—it's about possession, ownership, and property rights.
But why do we need a ruling class to tell us what marriage is and who we can and cannot marry? As we previously said in Internationalism #130 and in other places in the ICC press, a communist society would instead “be a society beyond the family in which human relationships will be regulated by mutual love and respect and not the state sanction of law.”
The bourgeois democratic state and its agents never pose the questions surrounding gay rights in terms of human need. What are the needs of gay and lesbian folks? Or even the basic needs of human beings in general? There is no question that the repression of the gay and queer community is real. We see homophobia, heterosexism, and patriarchy manifested everywhere in capitalism; anyone saying otherwise is simply in denial. The bullying of gay and queer youth for example has recently been referred to as an “epidemic” in the bourgeois media. Many of these traumatizing events where gay and queer people are bullied lead to depression, and in some cases even suicide.
But does the bourgeoisie focus on solving these issues? What about parliamentary legislation? Do any of the bills and amendments touch on any of these social issues? No! The debate is almost always framed in the context of religion, or moralism. Especially in the mainstream media, especially in the rhetoric of the ruling class. For all the vaunted talks—all the legalistic gibberish—about “human rights,” receiving the capitalist state’s approval and recognition under the guise of the law can do nothing to extirpate centuries long religious and moralistic bigotry. Religious people are “blamed” for their backward attitude, which further contributes to the polarizing, witch hunt-like atmosphere. In situations like these, legalizing same-sex marriage only helps portray the capitalist state as a “just” and “beneficent” entity.
If there is even a grain of sincerity in the ruling class' support of same-sex marriage, it comes from their need to distract workers and immerse them in the circus of electoral politics and legalism. Of course it is true that growing support of sexual freedom is part of humanity developing a deeper scientific understanding, and a greater sense of general human solidarity. But the ruling class cares nothing about these things, and why should they? If you have money your rights are never at risk, or up for debate. “Marriage equality” does not equal a good relationship or economic equality; it equals further class domination from the bourgeoisie.
Social struggles which only partially address the fundamental problems of capitalism, while expressing real social problems that exist in our society, distract the working class from revolutionary tasks and discussions. We have discussed already how the bourgeoisie can become fixated on the debate over gay rights, almost to the point of obsession. But this fixation happens among so-called “revolutionaries” as well.
Many people use language exclusively directed at workers in order to “organize” them around what is in essence a cross-class, broad social issue. The argument that gay rights will bring us “closer to full equality” is completely irrelevant, when it is a basic tenet of communists that full equality is impossible under capitalism. Why as revolutionaries should we be fighting to get “closer” to an egalitarian society? We need to stand against all of capitalisms injustices at once! Many of these same “revolutionaries” would call the legal and electoral decisions in favor of gay marriage rights “victories” for the workers. But these victories do nothing but bolster the appeal of bourgeois civil society.
The politics of legalism and democratism have nothing to offer the working class. True human emancipation can only come from working class revolution. Workers should always support gay and queer people themselves, especially in a society where they are alienated and ridiculed in such terrible ways. But we have to remain careful of the bourgeois campaigns which surround these debates. Often times they distract and mislead us from our ultimate goal—ending all forms of repression and exploitation for everyone on earth.
Jam 06/11/12
Due to pressure of work and other factors, the June issue of World Revolution was delayed and combined with the July/August issue. We did however continue to update the website with new material. Subscriptions will be extended to cover the issue that has been missed.
This year is the third time that London has staged the Olympic Games, and each occasion has shown something about the changing state of capitalist society.
The 1908 Olympics were originally going to be held in Rome; however, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in April 1906 meant that resources were needed for the reconstruction of Naples. As a global power, with an empire covering nearly a quarter of the world’s land area and a fifth of the world’s population, the UK was in a position to take on the Games at short notice.
In ten months it was possible to organise the finance, find a site and build a state-of the-art stadium. Financially, costs amounted to about £15,000 and receipts were £21,377. The first London Olympics made a profit, and in that sense were a success. What The Times (27/7/1908) regretted was that “The perfect harmony which every one wished for has been marred by certain regrettable disputes and protests and objections to the judges’ rulings. In many newspapers, the whole world over, national feeling has run riot, and accusation and counter-accusation have been freely bandied about.” This is hardly surprising, bearing in mind the growing conflicts between nations as imperialism became capitalism’s only way of functioning, from the Spanish-American War of 1898, the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, and all the antagonisms that led up to the First World War.
In 1908 the judges were all British and there was a complaint from the US team, on average, every day. It started with a refusal to dip the American flag to the King at the opening ceremony and continued throughout the events. In the tug-of-war the Americans complained about the heavy service boots of the team from the Liverpool police. When their protest was dismissed the US withdrew from the event. Or, in the 400 metres, the British officials decided that the final would be re-run because a US runner had elbowed a British runner. The US boycotted the re-run. In the end the UK team won more gold, silver and bronze medals than all other countries. Against teams from 22 countries, involving 2000 competitors overall, the UK won more medals, 146, than it has in any other modern Olympics. As The Times (13/7/1908) had said in advance “This year it may be hoped that we shall do our foreign competitors the compliment of showing them that we have not lost our cunning.”
In the forty years that passed before the London Olympics of 1948 a lot had changed for British imperialism. The Allied imperialisms of Britain, Russia and the US had won the Second World War, but the US was now dominant in the West, with Britain in a far more secondary position.
Britain had been uncertain about taking on the Olympics. With a devastated economy, with rationing (including food, petrol and clothing) being more severe than during the war, with high unemployment, widespread homelessness and many workers’ strikes, the UK was desperate for the US funds it received from the Marshall Plan, but not clear what impact the Olympics would have.
Only a month before the Olympics began there was an unofficial London dockers’ strike during which newly conscripted troops were drafted into the docks. For the first time a government used powers introduced by the 1920 Emergency Powers Act to confront the strike. This was not the only time that workers came up against the austerity regime of the post-war Labour government.
There had at least been two years of preparation for the Games. Although no new venues were built the forced labour of German prisoners or war was used on some construction projects, including the road leading to Wembley Stadium.
Not for nothing have the 1948 Games become known as the Austerity Olympics. Other countries were encouraged to bring their own food, although competitors were allowed rations increased to the level of miners’. Male competitors were put up in RAF camps, female in London colleges. British competitors had to buy or make their own kit.
With 4000 competitors from 59 countries, the 1948 Olympics cost £732,268 (coming in under budget) and took receipts of £761,688. It made a modest profit, but the UK only came 12th in the medals table, and everyone knew the US was going to come first before the Games had started.
Although some countries have claimed to have broken even, or made a profit, for example the dubious claims of Beijing in 2008, the Olympics have been a financial disaster for most recent venues taking them on. Montreal’s dept was so great that they didn’t finally pay it off until nearly 30 years later. The original budget for the Athens 2004 Olympics was $1.6 billion: the final public cost estimate as much as $16 billion, with most venues now abandoned or barely-used and millions still needed for upkeep and security. It’s clear that the Olympic Games were one of the factors that contributed to the scale of the crisis of the Greek economy.
For London 2012 the initial budget estimate was for £2.37bn, but, in the seven years since the bid was won, the guesses on the final figure have ranged from 4 times to as much as 10 times the original cost. Not that the organisers are not planning to do everything to recoup the expenditure. The prices for admission, food, drink, and everything else to do with Olympic venues, are mostly outrageous, even for an expensive capital city. And the interests of the official sponsors are being very fiercely guarded. There are very strict rules on “ambush advertising”, that is, the display of anything (including items of personal clothing) that includes the name of a company that is not an official sponsor.
But the area where it seems that London2012 is keenest to break records is in repression. On the busiest days there will be 12,000 police on duty. There will be 13,500 military personnel available, rather more than the number of 9500 British troops in Afghanistan. It’s also planned to have 13,300 private security guards. They will spend a few days training with troops. A spokesman for the security firm involved said “ part of the venue training was to ‘align values’ between the two groups, so games spectators had the same security experience with military and private guards” (Financial Times 24/5/12).
On top of this there have been well publicised plans to install a high velocity surface-to-air missile system on a block near to the main Olympic site. Presumably this is intended to blow planes out of the sky over a heavily populated residential area.
The organisers of the London Olympics, in conjunction with the British state, seem to have thought of everything. Although they might not be able to cope, the Home Office intends to do security checks on all the anticipated 380,000 athletes, officials, workers and media personnel in any way connected with the Olympics. There will be special Games Lanes on roads that will be reserved for Games-accredited vehicles. You will be fined £135 if you stray into one of these lanes. When entering venues you will be searched and not allowed to take any water past security. It will be against the rules to tweet, share on Facebook or in any other way share photos of events.
There will be more than 200 countries represented in the London Olympics, and the organisers will be doing everything to provide a setting suitable for the usual orgy of nationalism, and an advertising opportunity for Coca Cola, McDonalds, Panasonic, Samsung, Visa, General Electric, Procter and Gamble, BMW, EDF, UPS and all the rest of the gang.
That has become the menu for the modern Olympics: nationalism and commerce. Meanwhile, in the preparation for London2012, the local council for the area where the Olympic Stadium is situated, Newham, has tried to ‘relocate’ 500 families to Stoke-on-Trent, 150 miles away. Local tenants are being evicted so that private landlords can let properties at massively inflated rents. The Olympics are supposed to be an inspiration for young people. Newham has the youngest age structure in England and Wales, with the highest proportion of children under the age of one. It also has the largest average household size, the highest rates of benefit recipiency in London, as well as high rates of ill health and premature death. For children living in the shadow of this year’s Olympics their future is not going to be improved by the spectacle of the battle for medals.
Car 5/6/12
British broadcasters win a High Court ruling against the police, a former Murdoch editor is arrested and the Leveson ‘inquiry’ into Press Standards meanders on: JJ Gaunt peeks behind the headlines and reviews two recent books critical of the media
On an 1886 tour promoting marxism and working class organisation in America, Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling took time out to ridicule and denounce the US press in general and the Chicago Times and Chicago Tribune in particular for their lynch mob coverage of the trial of eight anarchists who had been fitted up by the state of Illinois and faced execution following the infamous Haymarket bomb incident.
More than 125 years and many technological leaps later, modern mass media remain at root little more than megaphones amplifying the ruling class’s ‘values’, its lies, its propaganda, when they are not simply selling its commodities.
Much effort is expended on the part of the ‘fourth estate’ to deny this reality and turn it on its head. Commenting on the High Court’s May 17 decision to overturn a Crown Court judge’s order to hand over unseen footage of the violent police eviction of ‘travellers’ from Dale Farm, Essex in 2011, ITN (Independent Television News) chief executive John Hardie said: "This landmark decision is a legal recognition of the separate roles of the police and independent news organisations. We fought this case on a matter of principle - to ensure that journalists and cameramen are not seen as agents of the state ...” Lawyers for other interested parties – they included the BBC, BSkyB and Channel 5 – had said their clients risked being seen as “coppers’ narks” (police informants) if they had complied with the original order. That would never do, as M’lud wisely agreed.
It also won’t do to have the working class and the rest of the population tune-out of the Murdoch ‘Hackgate’ scandal of criminality, bribery and corruption with the erroneous impression that the media, police and politicians are ‘all in it together’.
It’s to restore public faith in the media mafia that the Leveson Inquiry into Press Standards has been protracted long after the original British state objective of clipping Murdoch’s UK activities had been achieved. (1) With hoards of ‘witnesses’ either denouncing the ‘Evil Empire’ (viz ex-Sunday Times editor Harold Evans) or clumsily attempting to defend the indefensible (viz the testimony of the News International clan itself or the self-serving testimonies of former PM Blair and current Culture and Media Secretary Jeremy Hunt), the ‘inquiry’ has turned into a modern Inquisition to exorcise the devil Murdoch, the better to redeem the rest of the media.
In the same manner, it’s to demonstrate the state’s due ‘impartiality’ and incorruptible nature that the very particular friends of PM David Cameron - former News International golden child Rebekah Brooks and her husband Charlie, Cameron’s old school chum - were arrested and charged with the very serious offence (with apologies to AA Milne) of perverting the course of justice. (2)
These recent events featuring the UK state and its media apparatus are of course merely moments in an historic pattern – one long recognised by critics of the capitalist system. As Marx and Engels often argued, the ruling class’s particular interests are falsely presented as those of society as a whole. It’s the primary function of mass media to reflect and reinforce the resultant ‘dominant ideology’.
This material reality is illuminated and fleshed out in a recent and recommended book called Beyond the Left: The Communist Critique of the Media by UK lecturer Dr Stephen Harper (3).
His ‘Introduction: to guide and bind the world’ grabs the subject by the kishkas: “Having abolished scarcity and made communism possible by the early twentieth century, capitalism today is an obsolete system whose continuance offers humanity only increasing misery. As the social symptoms of this retrogression – poverty, starvation, holocausts, environmental degradation and economies increasingly based upon drugs, arms and gangsterism – become more difficult to disguise, the media play a vital role, it is argued here, in concealing their systemic origins.”
To this egregious end, the 1928 publication of Propaganda by Edward Bernays, American nephew of Sigmund Freud and known variously as the ‘king of spin’ and ‘the father of public relations’, constituted “a direct response to the socio-economic impasses of US capitalism in the 1920s, as a dearth of new markets, a crisis of over-production and the lingering menace of proletarian revolution forced capitalists to devise ever more ingenious methods of mass persuasion...”
One of the media’s most enduring successes in this regard is revealed in the chapter ‘Normalising the unthinkable: news media as state propaganda’ in which Harper notes how the very notion of wage labour – once widely understood as “an outrage against humanity whose essential continuity with earlier forms of bondage found expression in the now antiquated phrase ‘wage slavery’” - is today throughout the mainstream media “accepted as a fact of life”. “Thus, in a period of austerity, the BBC’s Sunday morning television discussion programme The Big Question asks ‘Is It Time For A Maximum Wage?’ (13 March 2010); but it cannot question the legitimacy of the wages system itself.”
Within this marxist framework, which draws on the analyses of past and present day revolutionary organisations (including the ICC and ICT) and recognises both the decadence of capitalism and the primacy of the nation state over ‘supra-national corporations’, Harper’s other chapters include ‘Not neoliberalism: why the state is still the enemy’; ‘Blaming the victims, eroding solidarity: two media discourses on immigration’; ‘”The only honourable course’’: the media and ‘humanitarian’ war’ and ‘Beyond the news: popular culture against the working class’.
Under such headings he utilises the insights of social critics, media researchers and academics from Althusser to Žižek whilst acknowledging their limitations: Harper both quotes approvingly from Herman and Chomsky’s seminal Manufacturing Consent (1998) while roundly denouncing Chomsky for “the statism of his concrete political attachments” (today, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez; yesterday, North Vietnam’s Stalinist Vietcong).
Before dissecting specific events and gauging what the ruling class accomplished from them (the chapter ‘Bogeyman at the BBC: Nick Griffin, Question Time and the ‘fascist threat’’ is exemplary in this regard) Harper insists that “The power of media propaganda to shape our perceptions of the most fundamental aspects of our lives is exercised neither haphazardly nor clumsily”, thus underlining that the bourgeoisie acts consciously against the proletariat, its potential gravedigger.
For the working class, the author insists that there’s nothing to choose between different media ‘slants’: “...the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels ... was excited by the BBC’s ability to maintain the trust of the British public and to have secured a worldwide reputation for the British media as ‘honest, free and truthful.’ Goebbels understood that this made the BBC the perfect propaganda vehicle. Today, as then, the left-liberal media act not as a foil to capitalism but as its last ditch defence, preventing those who reject conservative political positions from accessing or developing radical ideas. In fact, right-wing and left-wing media can be argued to work not in opposition to each other, but in tandem.”
The role of the media and the ‘pluralistic’ division of labour within it as cheerleaders of imperialist war and mystifiers of the gravity of today’s ecological crisis are also explored and expanded upon. For communists and activists of all stripes, Harper’s work is both required reading and an encouraging sign that proletarian perspectives are today spreading to and being embellished by wider layers of society.
Another book – there’s a veritable overproduction of them! – attempting to critique the media is NEWSPEAK in the 21st Century (4), a title recalling George Orwell’s 1984, a satire of mind control by an omnipresent state apparatus. This work also insists that media such as newspapers – including and particularly those which claim to be ‘independent’, ‘left’ or just righteous and liberal – all owe their origins, development and continued survival as vehicles for corporate advertisers on whose revenue they depend and whose patronage they cannot truly offend. Similarly, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has since its foundation in the 1920s been first and foremost an obedient servant of the state’s overall interests as it demonstrated in the 1926 national strike and ever since.
The work is penned by two co-editors of a an organisation called Media Lens which challenges journalists, editors and broadcasters to justify their censorship, sins of omission and downright war-mongering, while providing e-mails to subscribers which highlight examples of the media’s latest outrages.
Indeed, NEWSPEAK reminds us all that facts are not ‘sacred’ but chosen according to taste and ideology while ‘objectivity’ is a nonsense – “nothing is neutral”. In addition it provides a salutary reminder of the depth and extent of the lies, dissembling and patriotic cheerleading around the build-up to the ‘allied’ invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation. It recalls how, as “a shoal of fish instantly changes direction ... as though the movement was synchronised by some guiding hand,” British journalists “all trained and selected for obedience by media all seeking to maximise profits within state capitalist society ... appeared [in 1999] to conclude independently that war on Serbia was a rational, justified response to a ‘genocide’ in Kosovo that had not in fact taken place. In 2002-03, many journalists concluded that war was necessary to tackle an Iraqi threat that did not exist. And yet, to our knowledge, in 2009, not a single journalist proposed military action in response to Israel’s staggering, very visible crimes against the besieged civilian population of Gaza.” The authors demonstrate how the media is again banging the drum for what they say is to be ‘the West’s’ next imperialist adventure: the bombing and possible invasion of Iran.
Similarly, this well-researched and documented work points out the staggering hypocrisy of media demanding ‘action’ over climate chaos as they carry adds promoting cheap flights, powerful motor cars and oil company claims to be forging a ‘cleaner, greener, fossil fuel-free future’.
However, such valid observations are undermined by NEWSPEAK’s own contradictions: despite declaring that ‘democracy’ is “a charade serving privilege and power” its description of the Iraqi slaughter as “an illegal war of aggression” (aren’t all wars ‘aggressive’ and exactly what’s with the fetish of bourgeois legality?); the references to ‘consumerism’ rather than capitalism; to ‘the people’ rather than the working class, etc, speak of an incoherence which ultimately favours the status quo. Equally problematic is the tendency to deal with countries, rather than classes. For example, irrespective of the nuclear issue (the pretext for ‘the West’s’ aggression towards Iran), there’s no mention of the Tehran regime’s own regional imperialist aims and incursions, while the praise lavished by the authors on the state machine of Venezuela’s Chávez is frankly an embarrassment.
These and other elements indicate a set of analyses that fall within the framework of capitalist social relations as do the proposed solutions: the alleged need for ‘awareness, compassion and honest journalism.’ They are not truly radical because they do not go to the roots of the issue. Let’s end with Stephen Harper: “... the radical task is not to ‘work with’ the media industries and their regulatory bodies in order to campaign for ‘better’ media representations of the working class, or to defend so-called ‘public service’ media organisations against the encroachments of the market, but – through what Marx called ‘ruthless criticism’ – to expose the ruses of capitalism’s representational apparatuses until such time as they can be overthrown.”
JJ Gaunt 6/12
Footnotes
This is a presentation that was given to an ICC Day of Discussion held in London on 23 June 2012, prepared by a sympathiser of the ICC
Islam, as a religion, as a historical, revolutionary moment and as a political force in the modern world, has not been adequately dealt with by the Marxist and proletarian movement in general. This is true of all the religions of the world. Marxism with its ingrained and partly - largely in fact- justified distrust of religion has failed to really develop a clear perspective on the meanings and historical origins of religion. For none is this more true than Islam.
This lack of understanding of Islam has long been a tradition in the West, one which has certainly not been improved in recent years. Norman O. Brown author of Life Against Death, the psychoanalytical meaning of history states in Apocalypse that “to bring Islam into the picture (of the history of what he calls the prophetic tradition) is a Copernican revolution; our Copernicus still not sufficiently recognised is Marshall Hodgson (and his work ) The Venture of Islam.”[1] This may sound like hyperbole and Norman O. Brown certainly was fond of exaggeration as a writing technique, but it holds a lot of truth. The role of Islam in world history has long been overlooked by the West and Marxism. If we are to regain a sense of world history (free from Eurocentrist notions) then Islam is of great importance for many reasons, which we will come back to later, but I will outline some major points here.
The historical role of Islamic civilisation is such that without it the Renaissance would either never have happened or would have been completely different in form and content. The study of Islam can also shed a great amount of light on how we understand religion in general and monotheism in particular. We will also touch on another controversial issue within Marxism, the question of the ‘Asiatic’ mode of production and whether this is a helpful term or concept and what role this concept can play if any in our understanding of Islam and world history.
Islam is clearly of huge significance in the modern world and as ‘political Islam’ has become a by-word for terrorism and oppression, and for many people like Breivik, the EDL and others Muslims now play the role of the ‘new Jews’. That is, a new bogey man who is threatening to destroy western civilisation.
It also is a major source of inspiration and motivation for a huge proportion of the world’s population which we as revolutionaries need to understand if we are to build any serious dialogue with members of the international working class who follow the Islamic faith. In particular studying the historical origins of Islam will allow us to understand why it is still such an inspiration for many people and importantly from a Marxist perspective why Islam, or any other religion, is no longer a plausible solution to society’s problems.
While Islam has been under-researched by the Marxist movement, there have still been numerous attempts to discover the ‘class basis’ for the emergence of Islam. Engels evidently had a significant interest in this question and this topic appears relatively frequently in correspondences between him and Marx. Unfortunately neither had a great deal of available information and neither dedicated a published work to the question. Nevertheless both Engels and Marx made a few observations which can serve as a useful starting point for further investigation.
Engels tended to see Islam as emerging from the division of Arabian society into sedentary and nomadic cultures, “it seems to me to have the character of a Bedouin reaction against the settled, albeit decadent urban Fellaheen whose religion was by then much debased.” He saw in this a cyclical pattern, a pattern interestingly noted by the Medieval Islamic scholar Ibn Khaldun in Arabian society, for the settled elites to grow decadent: as Engels puts it “the townspeople grow rich, luxurious and lax in the observation of the ‘law.’ The Bedouins, poor and hence of strict morals, contemplate with envy and covetousness these riches and pleasures. Then they unite under a prophet, a Mahdi, to chastise the apostates and restore the observation of the ritual and the true faith and to appropriate in recompense the treasures of the renegades. In a hundred years they are naturally in the same position as the renegades were: a new purge of the faith is required, a new Mahdi arises and the game starts again from the beginning”[2]
Apart from a few factual errors, such as the fact that the term Mahdi is misunderstood (‘Mahdi’ in fact relates to a character in Islamic eschatology, a character who will bring about a global reign of peace and prosperity in the Last Days). More important however is the fact that Engels’ argument fails to accommodate for the radical ‘newness’ and qualitative difference in the rise of Islam from any other changing of local elites in the area.
Engels himself however at other times seems to be aware of this. For example he sees the expulsion of the Abyssinians from Arab territory 40 years before Muhammad’s birth as “plainly the first act of the Arabs’ awakening national consciousness.”[3] Importantly this recognises the new historical situation which was emerging at this time, that is, a development of ‘civilisation’ and trade had brought about a growing sense of a larger community which transcended the tribal divisions of the old Arab society.
During the 20s there were various Soviet attempts to characterise the social basis and historical context of the origins of Islam. Some seem to have been more valid than others; obviously this period is one in which the Soviet Union was losing its last vestiges of real Marxist thought so its theories have to be seen in this unfavourable context. However I will here simply run through the main trends which you can find in slightly more detail on wikipedia ‘Soviet Orientalist studies in Islam’[4]: the earliest theory put forward by Zinatullah Navshirvanov (at a time it must be noted when the Soviets were keen to build good relations with the Islamic world) basically declared Islam to have been a communist movement, citing ‘primitive communism’ in Muhammad and his companion’s dealings and more overt communist trends in later Sufi movements. This has some validity but overstates the case: Muhammad certainly harked back to Bedouin traditions which had there roots in primitive communism and there was certainly a strong emphasis on equality and caring for the poor and marginalised in society, particularly slaves, orphans and women. However he was not a ‘communist’, he was not against, trade, money or social class. This in itself is an interesting difference between him and Jesus and the early Christians, who came mostly from the urban poor, the ‘proletariat’ of the day, and therefore had a stronger sense of the inherent evils of money and trade, whereas Islam emerged among people in a completely different social setting and therefore had a different attitude, which aimed to make these things fair and to develop a morality which could deal with the new social circumstances.
So what was the social basis of Islam? Well, some, such as Mikhail A. Reisner, argued that Islam was in fact a movement of ‘trade capitalists’ and he saw the Koran, its Law and the tenets of monotheism itself as simply a means by which to unite Arab tribes under one law and religion which could help the weaker tribes and merchants to avoid the constant raids which trading caravans were prey to (the weaker families and traders being the most vulnerable and losing the most from these raids). While this again has a certain amount of truth to it and is certainly part of the story, it is a telling fact that Reisner believed that all the ‘mystical’ elements of Muhammad’s life and teachings were simply added later due to Persian influence; this spiritually blind and rigidly rationalist approach is patently ridiculous and stops such theorists from being able to understand anything of the true nature and source of religious movements.
There was also a theory put forward in 1930 by a Soviet scholar called Mikhail L. Tomara, which claimed that Islam was mainly led by the peasants. This seems at first to be unlikely but may have more validity than at first glance. I am not aiming to answer the question here, only to open the question up. While the peasantry may have played a key role, they alone cannot account for the rise of Islam.
What we can say for certain is that Muhammad and Islam (and the prophetic tradition in general) represents in essence an attempt to synthesise the old ‘primitive communism’ with the new world of ‘civilisation’. To create and establish an order of civilisation which does not offend the moral standards of people recently leaving the tribal community, even if those tribal communities have been degenerating for some time, while also seeing in civilisation on a profound level the possibility of peace and of the unity of humanity in one community which was the dream of Islam, and of Judaism, and represents in essence all that is positive about civilisation and ‘empire’.
In terms of the historical context of the rise of Islam we should look at a few main points of departure. Firstly as has been alluded to the Islamic idea of a Jahiliyyah (age of ignorance) has a lot of validity; that is, pre-Islamic Arabia was at a particular stage of development in which the old tribal customs no longer offered a viable model and faced with the new social environment of trade and private property had completely degenerated into a proud love of wealth, disregard of their neighbour, and the endemic violence of the vendetta.
There is a long held tradition in the West of denigration of Muhammad, stretching back to the time of Charlemagne. Karen Armstrong in her biography of Muhammad gives a good account of this tradition, showing how Muhammad has been used like a Jungian shadow, held up as an image of whatever vice or insecurity the western world happened to harbour most strongly at the time. Islam as a religion has subsequently been viewed for a long time as a mere hodge-podge admixture of Judaism/Christianity and Arabian paganism with nothing new or worthwhile in it al all, lead by a charlatan interested only in personal political power.
Maxime Rodinson (a Marxist of sorts) in his biography of Muhammad makes a good case against such a view, While it is undoubtedly true that some of Muhammad’s later revelations have an air of being suspiciously convenient for Muhammad, as his wife Aisha is in fact recorded as saying, there seems little evidence and little reason to doubt Muhammad’s fundamental sincerity or that he did experience the major revelations he claimed to have experienced. While we may argue about their exact source - God, the unconscious etc, the experiences themselves seem genuine, for many reasons. Firstly as Rodinson points out, Muhammad’s personality seems to conform to a man perfectly suited to a prophetic or mystical career: “Muhammad’s psycho-physiological constitution was basically of the kind found in many mystics”[5] Also, we have to take into account the way in which his experiences themselves conform to universal motifs and characteristics. This is especially true of his famous Night Journey which is extremely similar to many reports of visions from shamans across the world.
Rodinson also insists that the role of Muhammad was of vital importance for the course of history and argues against “some kind of primitive determinism or an elementary form of Marxism (which might say that) ‘if Muhammad had never been born, the situation would have called fourth another Muhammad in his place.”[6] A good example of this view with regard to a Marxist analysis of a founder of a world religion is Kautsky in his Foundations of Christianity in which he takes the view that the origins of Christianity can be explained without regards to “this person” (Jesus). This view is clearly ridiculous. If Trotsky (in his History of the Russian Revolution, vol 1 chapter 16) could say of Lenin that his personality had a decisive role in the triumph of the October Revolution, then how much more true is this of founders of the great religions, which gained so much of their impetus and force from the personality of great individuals who seemed to offer an embodied answer to the question of ‘how man should live’.
This should be qualified by saying, Muhammad was not Jesus, he was not a saint (it is telling that among many Sufis there has been a certain kind of preference for Jesus over Muhammad: one saying goes “Muhammad was the seal of the prophets, Jesus was the seal of the Saints”) and was definitely nothing other than a human being. He was a prophet in the mould of the Old Testament, that is one capable of great extremes of emotion and action, given to anger, joy, love, compassion, ruthlessness, desire and asceticism, also a prophet armed, ready to die and kill for his vision of a better world.
This is a question I can only pose. I would need years to research and answer this accurately. It has been called a form of the ‘Asiatic’ mode of production, it has been called a form of Feudalism and there are many other theories besides, none of which I have had time to really get to grips with.
Marx spoke less about Islam than Engels did, Marx’s main comments were in answer to Engels and in particular he urged Engels to focus on the question which he felt was central to the whole history of ‘the East’; the lack of private property in land. Marx seems to have over generalised about the ‘East’, and the mode of production in Islamic civilisations seems to have been significantly different to say China and India.
It was clearly an extremely dynamic mode of production for a while. From a Marxist perspective its forward looking view of history would suggest a basis in a civilisation that was not as closely tied to the primitive communist view of the world as civilisations that kept to a purely cyclical view of history. Norman O. Brown sees Islam as a synthesis of the western historical mode of thought and the Eastern cyclical view. In the Islamic synthesis, history is a series of cycles in which prophets are sent, their knowledge is lost or corrupted and a new revelation is necessary. However in these cycles their is progress, not only in that Muhammad brings the final and most perfect revelation but also because there is a view of a definite end to history in the Hour of Judgement. Whether this means that Islamic civilisation can be said to be a synthesis of Feudalism and Asiatic despotism may be a step too far in mechanically applying Marxism to what I know.
What a real study of Muhammad brings to the attention is the truly revolutionary nature of early Islam. In fact we can see that historically all three Abrahamic religions began as a revolutionary movement of some strata of the oppressed. Norman O. Brown says: “to apply the term ‘revolutionary’ to the politics of Islam is to suggest that the origins of modern radical politics lie in the transformation of prophetic radicalism into a political movement prepared to seize power”[7].
This reiterates and expands what Engels said about early Christianity - that we as communists are the heirs to the Early Christians; we are also the heirs of the Old Testament Prophets and to Islam and Muhammad. This is the starting point for any dialogue with religious workers.
We obviously would say that we are unique, in that it is Marxism and the proletarian movements which alone can carry forward the search for ‘how man should live’. Only the proletarian movement can allow the dreams of the past to be made flesh.
Jaycee 23/6/12
[1] ‘The Prophetic Tradition’ in Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis, University of California Press, 1991, p46
[2] Engels, On the History of Early Christianity, 1894.
[3] Engels to Marx, 6 June 1853
[5] Maxime Rodinson, Mohammad, New York, 1971, p 56
[6] ibid, p 298
[7] Apocalypse, p 52
Since mid February the students of Quebec have been fighting against increased tuition fees, but for about three of these months there was a more or less unanimous press blackout outside the country. The 82% increase came on top of previous rises, and, faced with the repressive and provocative attitude of the Charest government, the students have shown that they are not willing to accept such measures passively. Their rallying cry has been “demonstrations every day until we win!”. Most of the media from the start focused on the highly ideological issue of the ‘popularity or unpopularity’ of the movement; but the movement itself has shown a tendency to generalise and go beyond the education sector.
In order to have a better understanding of the context in which this movement is taking place, let’s look at some of the similar measures taken by the government in the last few years, and at the conditions the students are facing[1].
The austerity we are seeing all over the world today is the result of the historic crisis of capitalism. So the rise in tuition fees, like all the other measures aimed at reducing the deficit, are not at all new or specific to Quebec. During Robert Bourassa’s second term as Premier in 1990 the government broke the ceiling on tuition costs, which since 1968 had been fixed at C$540 Canadian dollars a year. They were now increased threefold to C$1668 a year. Then in 2007 it was the centre right government of Jean Charest who carried on in the same vein with an increase of C$500 over five years, mounting up to C$2168 for the year 2011-12. With fees like that (even though still only half what they are in the USA) a large number of students can no longer afford to go on to university. In Canada, 80% of students work while in full time study, but even then half of them live on C$12,200 a year (the poverty line for a single person was C$16,320 in 2010).
In the Quebec budget announced on 18 March 2011, the Charest government confirmed its intention to increase tuition fees by C$1,625 over 5 years, taking them up to nearly C$4,500 by 2016 if you add the extra costs that can be demanded by the universities. Following this announcement, the reaction was not long in coming. On 31 March 2011, several thousand students demonstrated in Montreal, and on the initiative of the FEUQ student union a camp was set up every weekend outside the offices of the education minister.
Was this a method of struggle which would allow the movement to extend by looking for solidarity?
That’s by no means certain. In any case, for the next year there were no major developments. It wasn’t until 22 March 2012 that there was a student demonstration which was surprisingly big. Between 200,000 and 300,000 took part, bringing together both students and workers in the centre of Montreal. The demands put forward were part of a wider historic movement. Some people talked about the ‘Printemps érable’ (i.e., Maple Spring) in reference to the revolts in the Arab countries. The underlying anger being expressed was much wider than the question of tuition fees alone, and there was a clear affirmation of solidarity with the Occupy movement. This movement showed that the increasing difficulties of daily living are pushing a growing part of the population to react.
On 7 April, at a cycle of conferences in Montreal, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, a spokesman for the ‘Coalition Large de l’Association pour la Solidarité Syndicale Etudiante’ (CLASSE) had to recognise the breadth of the movement: “our strike is not the affair of a generation, it’s not the affair of a single spring, it’s the affair of a people, it’s the affair of a world. Our strike is not an isolated event, our strike is just a bridge, it’s just a step along a much longer road”. For the Charest government, it’s clear that the students cannot be allowed to occupy the streets, because of the risk that they could win the solidarity of other sectors and spread the movement more widely. The government therefore passed the so-called ‘Law 78’ on 18 May, making any unannounced demonstration illegal. These are the broad lines of this ‘special’ law[2]:
“it removes the right to demonstrate without prior agreement with the police: eight hours in advance, the time, duration, route and means of transport have to be given to the police (this restriction applies to any gathering of more than 50 people. It can impose very heavy fines on organisers of strike pickets: from 1,000 to 5,000 dollars for a single individual and from 25,000 to 125,000 dollars for an association of students – double on the second conviction”.
For the present government, the idea is to strike hard in order to break the mobilisation and remind demonstrators of who makes the laws. These repressive methods bring to mind the violence used against the Spanish or Greek demonstrators in the past year. In France, it is rather similar to the violence used to intimidate the students and school pupils demonstrating in Lyon in 2010, where the police kettled them for hours in Bellecourt Square before finally releasing them one by one after demanding to see their IDs[3]. That looked like an experiment in how to intimidate, to frighten demonstrators, and break their militancy. This also seems to be the aim of the Charest government with Law 78. But events haven’t quite turned out as the Quebec ruling class planned. Far from breaking the movement and bringing the students to heel, this ‘special measure’ was seen as a provocation by the demonstrators and it had the effect of radicalising and spreading the movement. In contrast to most previous student movements in Quebec, students at the major English language universities, McGill and Concordia, have also been on strike.
Police attempts at intimidation were followed by even bigger protests and regular ‘casserolades.’ These are nightly demonstrations, held since 21 May, where workers, unemployed, students and pensioners bang pots and pans, in defiance of the government ban. And the state has responded: “more than 700 people were arrested on the night of Wednesday/Thursday in Montreal and Quebec City on charges of holding demonstrations judged illegal by the police force. Among the 518 arrests carried out after the thirtieth consecutive night of demonstrations in the city, 506 were arrested as a group and 12 as isolated individuals; 14 of them on the basis of the Criminal Code and one on the basis of a municipal rule proscribing the wearing of a mask ‘without reasonable motive’” (le Devoir 25 May 2012)
It’s clear that the strength of this movement is the combative and determined attitude of the younger generation. We can only support this, along with the attempts at extension and the presence of workers from other sectors within it. In one sense, the lack of subtlety and the brutality of the Charest team could serve to generalise the movement. However, the movement does contain a lot of weaknesses and there are many traps that need to be avoided if it is to avoid getting bogged down behind sterile demands.
First there is the idea that that Quebec is different from the rest of North America and can somehow have a more socially responsible ‘non-anglo’ government. Student debt is a central issue, familiar to students across the world, but there is an illusion that Quebec can somehow escape the general tendency. The movement has not really extended beyond Quebec, even though there have been student demonstrations in Ottawa and Toronto. Expressions of solidarity from students in British Columbia can be put alongside demonstrations held in Paris, Cannes, New York, London and Chile. Solidarity from afar, but the struggle has not spread.
Perhaps the most important illusion is that it is possible to live in a better world inside capitalism; the illusion that this system of exploitation can be changed through reforms and through ‘democratic’ channels[4]. This illusion is being peddled by the unions, and particularly by CLASSE with its talk about ‘civil disobedience’. Law 78 also foresees a suspension of courses until August in establishments which are on strike, without the cancellation of the term, and this means that it is difficult to say how the movement is going to continue. What can be said however is that all the workers’ movements throughout the history of capitalism prove that the only way to offer a real perspective is to seek the widest possible solidarity and extension. Toward the end of June demonstrations were still taking place, although not involving the same numbers as at the peak of the movement when 170,000 students were on strike. Meanwhile student unions are engaged in legal battles over Law 78.
Canada is not a backwater in the class struggles. In the revolutionary wave of 1917-23 the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 was a significant episode in the working class’s attack on capitalist social order[5]. In the international wave of struggles that emerged at the end of the 1960s, 300,000 workers were involved in the Quebec general strike of 1972, during which factories and radio stations were occupied, and towns taken over. In the current struggles the lessons for Quebec students are the same as elsewhere with the need to escape the control of the unions and hold general assemblies, open to all, where political questions are debated openly, without handing them over to ‘specialists in the struggle’. These are vital steps towards any struggle becoming effective, along with the concern to spread the struggle to other sectors.
Enkidu/Car 29/6/12
[2] According to Rue89.com
[3] See this eyewitness account of the events in Lyon https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2010/11/lyon-repression [166]
[4] This is what some of the Spanish indignados were criticising when they raised slogans like ‘They call it democracy and it isn’t!’ ‘It’s a dictatorship but you can’t see it!’
We have recently been saddened by the news of the death in hospital of comrade Il Jae Lee, a militant of the Left Communist Group in Korea: he was 89 years old.
Il Jae was born in 1923 in the town of Daegu, in what is now South Korea but which was known at the time by its historical name of Chosun. At the time, the whole of Korea was a Japanese colony valued for its raw materials and agricultural wealth, destined to support the war effort of Japanese imperialism. Official Japanese policy was to reduce Korean culture to the status of a folk curiosity; at school, children were required to learn Japanese, and Il Jae spoke Japanese fluently.
In the midst of the war, not yet 20 years old, he was already taking part in workers' struggles. With the departure of the Japanese occupying forces in August 1945, the country was reduced to chaos and in many places the workers took control of production themselves in what Il Jae described as workers' councils (the Changpyong, or Choson National Workers' Council) – though in the conditions of the time it was impossible for such councils to do much more than produce the bare essentials of life in a war-shattered country.
Il Jae joined the Communist Party in September 1946, and was a leading member of the general strike that broke out in Daegu during the same year. With the suppression of the workers' struggles by the US occupation authorities, Il Jae joined the partisans fighting in the south of the country, being wounded in the leg in 1953.
In 1968, under the dictatorship of Park Chung Hee, he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment for his continued political activity. His health was permanently damaged by his time in prison, and his face still bore the marks of the torture he suffered there. In 1988 he was released on probation, which did not stop him from involving himself immediately in political activity in Daegu. He became a leading member of the Korean Trades Unions in 1997.
For a young worker to enter the Communist Party in 1946 was perfectly natural. But no matter how sincere and courageous many of its members undoubtedly were, the Party in Korean was in effect no more than the tool of Russian and Chinese imperialism, then at the end of the Korean War, of a particularly grotesque and barbaric caricature of Stalinism: the hereditary dictatorship of the Kim family.
Had this been all there was to his life then we would not be writing this homage: history is full of heroism in the service of bad causes. But Il Jae was truly remarkable in being able, as he neared his 80th year, to call into question the struggle of a lifetime. In 2002 he became active in the Socialist Political Alliance, a new group which was beginning to introduce the ideas of the Communist Left into Korea. When a delegation of the ICC travelled to Korea in October 2006 to take part in the International Marxist Conference organised by the SPA, we met comrade Il Jae. In the debates during the conference, while we disagreed with him on many questions – notably the possibility of reviving the trades union as an organisational form for workers struggle – it was clear to us that we were in the presence of a real internationalist: above all on the key question of North Korea, he rejected any support for that odious regime.
In our discussions with him during his last years, comrade Il Jae was concerned above all with two questions: the international unity of the working class, and in Korea, breaking down the barriers between workers on permanent contracts, casual workers, and the immigrant workers from Bangla Desh and the Philippines who are beginning to appear in Korea. The latter question made him break with the recognised unions, although he still had not given up the hope of using the union form of organisation. He attended the ICC's 17th Congress in 2007, and had hoped to accompany an ICC delegation to Japan in 2008: sadly his declining health made it impossible for him to do so.
Comrade Il Jae Lee was an indomitable fighter for the proletarian cause whose spirit remained unbroken by hardship and prison. He remained an internationalist to the end of his life. Above all, he had the moral courage to continue searching for the truth, even if this meant calling into question the ideas for which he had fought and suffered in the past. The working class is poorer for his loss: it is richer for his example.
The world economic crisis is getting more on more destructive. The bourgeoisie needs the workers' labor more and more in order to strengthen its capital further. With the economic crisis deepening every day, the bourgeoisie started calling more and more for wars, barbarism and exploitation. And in a period as such, the bourgeoisie is increasing its suppression over the working class with its police forces, its governments and all sorts of organs. Preparations against the reaction of the working class is already being made in certain sectors.
The transportation sector is one of the life veins of capitalism. Because of this, the air transportation has an immense significance. So when the Turkish Minister of Economy Ali Babacan said “No offense to anyone, strikes will be banned in strategic sectors such as this one! For example imagine if there is a strike in a bank for three days, it would go bankrupt instantly... The fact that we are stopping strikes is among the elements which made the Turkish Airlines so successful. As a matter of fact I read in a foreign magazine, it said the Turkish Airlines is better than Lufthansa because there are no strikes”, he was clearly expressing not only the significance of this sector but also what was to come.
The working hours in the air transportation sector can go up to 16-18 hours in Turkey. Certain companies are even forcing the cabin crew to sleep in the same rooms to reduce the workers cost when they have to stay outside their hometowns. In a situation like this when the workers have to work for long hours having slept only 2-3 hours before at the expense of their health, social life and human needs, a right such as “the right to strike” has to be out of the question!
For years, strikes weren't banned in the air transportation sector in Turkey; and not a single significant and real strike was planned for the workers who had the right to strike. A strike wasn't declared when hundreds of workers were fired from the Sabiha Gokcen Airport in Istanbul. When Ali Babacan openly declared the governments intentions in the statement quoted above, in other words when the rubber met the road, the union which had done nothing when the workers were fired, when they were forced to work for low wages or for long hours, but when the union itself was losing its area of authority sent a message to workers titled “Urgenttt” declaring that the workers were to use their “not being ready for the flight” right. The workers, responded to the fact that the problems they were experiencing were their problems, answered the call and effectively went on a strike on May the 29th. What followed, the firing of 305 workers, a worker being left abroad because he was on an international flight when he got fired, the workers being text messaged by the company informing them that they've all been fired demonstrated the barbarism the Turkish Airlines was unleashing on the working class. And these attacks of the bourgeoisie were done hand in hand with the unions, who still had the nerve to claim to be workers' organizations. Like the Tek-Gıda-Is1 union in the recent TEKEL workers struggle and DISK2 in the workers' uprising of 15-16th of June 19703, Hava-Is, the air transportation workers' union was ready to play its role. The Hava-Is union didn't claim any responsibility for this action taken in the aviation sector.
Now it was clear for the workers that there was a need to struggle not only against the Turkish Airlines administration and the government but also the union they were members of. The May 29th Association, just like the Platform of Struggling Workers which followed the TEKEL struggle, formed by the airline workers as an organ of struggle independent from the union, took the task to deal with the unions attitude in the process and made the following statement: “The administration of the Hava-Is union we are members of played a large role in the declaration of this justified protest as 'illegal' by not even claiming responsibility for an action they themselves had called for. The bosses of the Turkish Airlines intend to take advantage of this ground and suppress all the employees and almost turn them into slaves. Was the Hava-Is administration so inexperienced that they couldn't foresee this outcome when they left hundreds of their members alone in the face of the Turkish Airlines administration? What sort of a union mentality is this?”4 What is significant about this statement is how it exposes the real face of the union these workers are members of, as well as its role.
To be sure, the Hava-Is union has set up a resistance tent in the Turkish Airlines. However the only people present are Atilay Ayçin, the president of the union, and a number of shop stewards and union officials. The bourgeois left which can't find enough words to describe how combative the chairman of the union is occasionally looks back at the tent and manages to ask the question “Where are the workers?” and the chairman of Hava-Is responds by complaining about how the workers aren't acting with him, thus continuing the game. These unions, who say “the worker pays the price if necessary” have never paid the price for anything in their existence; the chairman of the Turk-Is Confederation of which Hava-Is is a member of kept adding fortune to his fortune, and as they say, the workers paid the price in the Turkish Airlines strike as they did in the TEKEL struggle. Besides, as the May 29th Association says, it is the understanding of showing off which makes “a discrimination between workers who supported the struggle and those who didn't” when it comes to the aids to be given to the workers who 'paid the price'.
The bourgeois left claims that the union is in a position to unite the thousands of workers of the Turkish Airlines, while the May 29th Association is dividing the struggle. However the May 29th Association aims to extend the struggle in the interests of the working class as a whole amongst unionized and non-unionized workers alike and emphasized the importance of solidarity.
The public workers strike of May 23rd where 500,000 public workers participated also demanded the right to strike along with a demand for higher wages. The Turkish Airlines workers went on strike only for the strike ban; the main role played by the unions in both events was to isolate the ripened dynamic in order to prevent it from meeting with the other sectors of the class. In accordance with their role to divide the workers into sectors, the unions tried to melt down the energy present in these two struggles within sectoral limits.
The workers know that they can only rise the struggle with their own hands, what happens when those who aren't workers take the decisions and that the interests of themselves and the interests of the unions are antagonistic. The May 29th Association shows this to us. A significant note in the history of the working class in Turkey has been written by the workers of Turkish Airlines. And this note is that only organizations where the workers can take their own decisions can push the struggle forward. As the practice of the May 29th Association has shown, the workers are capable of coming together in the struggles and organize open meetings and mass assemblies; and these assemblies have to appear as the form of workers' self-organization in every real struggle if it is to succeed.
Gül
1The Union of Tobacco, Alcoholic Beverage, Food and Related Industry Workers of Turkey
2The “Revolutionary” (or Progressive as it is rather ridiculously translated nowadays) Workers Unions Confederation was an allegedly revolutionary and socialist split from the Turk-Is, the Turkish Workers Unions Confederation which had been founded based on the AFL-CIO in the United States.
3A massive workers uprising of the Istanbul proletariat where 150,000 workers took to the streets and clashed with the police and the army.
4 www.29mayisbirligi.com [172] and https://imza.la/ [173]
The main factions of the U.S. bourgeoisie have been slapping themselves on the back in raucous celebration the past two weeks after the Supreme Court dealt it two key victories in its vicious faction fight with the insurgent right-wing factions in the Republican Party. First, the Court threw out just about about every provision of Arizona’s contentious anti-immigrant law (SB 1070). Although, the court let stand a provision that requires police officers to check the immigration status of anyone they have in custody for another crime if they have reason to suspect they are in the country illegally, this provision does not represent a dramatic departure from what police officers already do in most cases. The court threw out the other more contentious provisions of the law that were a direct challenge to federal authority, including making it a state crime for an illegal immigrant to be Arizona and allowing police officers to stop and question anyone they had probably cause to believe was in the country illegally (the so called “Papers Please” provision).
Later the same week, the Court released its decision on President Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement—his plan to reform the nation’s health care system that has become known as “Obamacare.” This decision was nothing less than a political stunner as the Court upheld the central tenant of the law—the so called “individual mandate” that requires everyone who does not otherwise receive health care insurance to purchase a policy from a private insurance company or pay a tax penalty. This decision flew in the face of most political prognosticators and court watchers, who after the court heard oral arguments on the law in March, were fairly certain either the entire law or the individual mandate upon which the rest of the law’s provisions depend—would be ruled unconstitutional.
What was even more surprising was that in each of these decisions, the George W. Bush appointed, generally conservative Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the court’s liberal justices (Breyer, Ginsberg, Soto-Mayor and Kagan) to side with the Obama administration. In fact, it was Chief Justice Roberts’ vote that delivered victory to the President in the health care case when even the Court’s only acknowledged “swing vote” (Kennedy) sided with the court’s right-wing justices (Scalia, Thomas and Alito) to strike down the individual mandate.
This represented a double victory for the President and the main factions of the bourgeoisie he represents. First, on the policy level, his health care reform survived a very aggressive legal challenge from the right and is now the constitutionally validated law of the land. Second, the fact that it was Chief Justice Roberts who sanctioned the law, allows him to make the political case that the law does not represent some attempt to install a Western European socialist style health care system in the United States.
These two legal victories for the President set off a virtual media cavalcade on all sides of the bourgeois spectrum. For the mainstream media, these decisions represented a break in the growing partisan rancor threatening to tear the country apart. According to this narrative, the Supreme Court, and with it the entire American political system, would soon regain a measure of its legitimacy as it dawned on people that despite the growing ideological divide, the nation’s political institutions could come together to get something done of importance for the national interest after all. For the more left leaning media outlets, these decisions, while not ends in themselves, were important moments in checking the right-wing backlash against the President and opening the road to more progressive reforms to come: such as establishing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and “Medicare for all.” Not surprisingly however, the right-wing cacophony of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, etc. was stunned by the decisions. Expecting victory from a Supreme Court that many have described as the most conservative in generations, they got the shaft once again, fueling a vicious outburst in which some right-wing commentators were moved to question Chief Justice Roberts’ mental health.
So, what do these two decisions in the Obama administration’s favor represent for the life of the U.S. ruling class? Regular readers of Internationalism will be familiar with our analysis of the political crisis of the U.S. bourgeoisie, which we have been developing since at least the disputed 2000 Presidential election that brought George W. Bush into office against the consensus of the main factions of the ruling class. As part of this analysis, we have drawn attention to the increasing difficulties of the U.S. state to act in the overall interests of the national capital due to the reciprocal forces of social decomposition that have manifested themselves within the U.S. political apparatus as a deepening ideological decline of the Republican Party. According to our analysis, the GOP has undergone a progressive process of right-wing ideological hardening such that its ability to act as a credible party of bourgeois national government has been called into question.
However, more than simply a process affecting the Republican Party alone—these tendencies have forced the Democratic Party to move ever further to the right itself in order to negotiate the structures of the American state within which it must function. The result of all this has been a general paralysis of the American state capitalist apparatus on many of the burning issues facing the national capital, especially at the domestic level—immigration and health care chief among them.
Does the Obama administration’s recent victories on these issues in the Supreme Court call our analysis into question? Do they mark a reversal in the process of ideological decomposition of the U.S. political apparatus? Simply put, we don’t think they do. It is true that the main factions of the bourgeoisie won two important victories with these decisions. But it is important to put them in the proper perspective, which we will attempt to do below.
On the immigration issue, it must be acknowledged that the Obama administration only won a defensive victory when the Arizona law was ruled unconstitutional in its main provisions. The President’s victory must be seen in the context of the severity of Republican run Arizona’s challenge to federal authority[1]. If upheld, Arizona’s law would have foreshadowed a serious thereat to the national government’s ability to set immigration policy for the entire country. The spectre of each state having its own immigration laws was obviously too much for the national state to tolerate, and as such the Supreme Court’s decision to back the Obama administration is not surprising. However, it should be kept in mind that three justices actually voted to uphold Arizona’s law. The conservative justice Scalia even used his bench statement to attack the Obama administration’s entire approach to the immigration issue expressly sanctioning each state’s pursuit of its own immigration policy. While Scalia’s view may be in the minority on the court at this time, it is telling of the overall crisis facing the U.S. bourgeoisie that such political sentiment can be uttered from the bench of the nation’s highest court—the supposedly “apolitical” branch of government. Scalia’s actions stand in sharp contrast to the Court’s consensus on crucial issues in previous eras of state capitalism, such as its unanimous decision to end segregation in schools in Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954. Scalia’s vitriol is sure to incite the anti-immigrant right and give the right-wing factions of the bourgeoisie a glimmer of hope that a different court—or a different Chief Justice—would have given them different results.
Clearly, the President’s legal triumph on this issue represents only a defensive victory. The political prospects for enacting comprehensive immigration reform anytime soon seem doubtful. This is an issue that the main factions of the bourgeoisie have been trying to address for some time now, including some of the more rational figures in the Republican Party who fear a coming “Balkanization” of American society. The need to establish a rational immigration policy that integrates the more than 10 million illegal immigrants living within its borders into society, gains their cooperation with police and the state bureaucracy and which faces the coming demographic changes to American society is one of the most important domestic issues facing the U.S. national capital today. However, it is unlikely that much progress will be made on this issue as long as the Obama administration faces a hostile Congress dominated by a Republican Party that seems intent on exploiting anti-immigrant sentiment for immediate political gain. Moreover, it is likely that as the economic crisis deepens the issue of immigration will become an even more divisive issue as the state struggles to manage the crisis and maintain its ideological control over the working-class. While it is true that the stream of illegal immigration to the United States has slowed as a result of the economic crisis, this does not mean the issue will go away anytime soon.
On the health care issue, it is true that the Supreme Court’s upholding of Obamacare is a major victory for the main factions of the bourgeoisie. While we can’t go into all the details of the issue here,[2] the need to address the US’s costly and inefficient healthcare system, which is a major drag on its competiveness, is of the upmost importance to the national capital. If Obamacare had been struck down by the court, it would have a serious political and policy catastrophe for the entire US bourgeoisie and President Obama in particular. First, this would have destroyed the only major piece of legislation to reform the nation’s healthcare system to actually make it through Congress in a generation—forcing the main factions of the bourgeoisie to start from scratch. Second, it would have invalidated the President’s signature domestic policy achievement calling the prospects for his reelection this fall into sharp question and raising the spectre of a Republican President governing with a Republican controlled Congress—an arrangement that the last time it was tried delivered disastrous results for the national capital.
Nevertheless, the President’s victory on this issue is only impressive in the context of how close it was to an actual defeat. In the days after the decision was delivered, it was revealed that Chief Justice Roberts originally sided with the court’s conservative justices voting to rule the individual mandate unconstitutional before ultimately changing his mind to uphold this provision. Although Justice Roberts rejected the Obama administration’s argument that the individual mandate should be ruled constitutional under Congress’ authority to regulate interstate commerce; he nevertheless found an alternate legal basis to uphold it: Congress’ authority to tax. [3]
In fact, it has been reported that the court’s supposed swing vote—Justice Kennedy—spent months lobbying Roberts to change his mind once again and vote with the conservatives to overturn the law. So torn was Roberts that it appears he actually wrote both the majority opinion to uphold the law, as well as the bulk of the minority opinion to strike it down! In the end, the fate of the President’s most ambitious policy to date, and perhaps his entire Presidency, rested in the hands of one man—whom Obama as a Senator had voted against confirming to the Court. So much for the rule of the people! It appears likely that it was only a massive media campaign around the growing illegitimacy of the Court in the public’s eyes, its deepening partisanship and ideological decay that moved Roberts to change his vote in order to prove to the nation that the Court can still be a respected legal body that rules according to the law rather than politics.[4] Either that, or somebody other than Justice Kennedy was partaking in some serious arm-twisting behind the scence. In either case, while the main factions of the bourgeoisie celebrated their victory, they probably couldn’t help but be extremely nervous by how close it appears to have come to being a total rout.
However, the upholding of Obamacare does not in any way represent an overcoming of the healthcare issue for the U.S. national capital. Not by a long shot. As we analyzed in our previous article on the issue, Obamacare is at best a modest reform that leaves many of the structural inefficiencies of the system in place. In its main, it is a mechanism for reducing “free riding” by getting more and more people to pay into the health care system, but it does not attack the basic features of the system that make it so expensive.
Beyond this though, just because the law was held to be constitutional by the Supreme Court, does not make it politically legitimate. Although public opinion polls released in the days after the decision showed a modest uptick in support for the law, it remains far from popular with the electorate. Moreover, Republicans have shown no indication that they will let up in their opposition to the law and Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney greeted news of the Supreme Court decision with a vow to “repeal and replace” the law as soon as he is elected President. Of course, the fact that Romney was the original author of Obamacare at the state level in Massachusetts has not prevented him from running against his own plan on the national level.
Many pundits have stated their belief that the court’s decision now gives President Obama and the Democrats the opportunity to resell this law to a skeptical public. And certainly they have not passed up the opportunity. But the ideological terms upon which they have decided to approach this have been curious indeed. All of a sudden, as Democratic operative after Democratic operative on the talk shows have stated, Obamacare is really a law to prevent people from “freeloading,” by forcing them to buy insurance. In the end this shouldn’t be surprising. The Democrats have adopted Republican rhetoric to try to sell a law that was originally devised by Republicans. The hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie—left and right—couldn’t be more obvious! All the talk about how the law will help those without insurance has been downplayed, as the cruel language of punishment has surged to the forefront. In bourgeois politics the logic couldn’t be more utilitarian—whatever it takes to win the election.
However, even more ominous is the fact that despite upholding the individual mandate—the Court struck down the part of the law that mandated the states’ to expand Medicaid coverage (the complex state/federal program that provides modest medical coverage to the poor). This provision of the law required states to expand eligibility for Medicaid to all persons whose income is within 133 percent of the federal poverty level or risk losing all federal Medicaid funding. In ruling this provision unconstitutional, the court made participation in the expanded Medicaid program optional for each state. Despite the fact that the federal government would cover the entire cost of this expansion for the first three years and then 90 percent after that, a number of Republican Governors have already said they will refuse to participate in Medicaid expansion. At least 17 million of the supposed 32 million people who would gain access to health care coverage under Obamacare would have gotten it through the expansion of Medicaid. If a number of Republican controlled states refuse to participate, this number will have to be revised downward, as will the expected overall economic benefits of the law to the national economy that are supposed to accrue from expanded coverage.
In addition to a possible fight over Medicaid expansion, some Republican Governors have already stated their intention to obstruct the setting up of the state level insurance exchanges through which people forced to buy insurance through the individual mandate would obtain coverage. This poses the threat of another round of costly and drawn out legal battles between the Obama administration and the various “red states” surrounding the implementation of the law. While some political pundits believe these Republican Governors to be engaged in a cynical political bluff, as many of them did about acceptance of federal stimulus money, others caution that the virulent revulsion to Obamacare in the Republican Party should not be underestimated.
In the final analysis, it is this political opposition emanating from the Republican Party, incited by its Tea Party faction, that represents the most serious threat to the ability of the state to act in the overall interests of the national capital. Driven more by ideology than a practical approach to the problems facing the state, it is perfectly possible that a Republican President governing together with a Republican Congress might completely overturn Obamacare rendering the last four years a total waste. While this is still an unlikely outcome, it is not impossible to imagine. In the current political climate, the very continuity of the state and its policies is threatened by a deepening ideological decomposition, which is reflected in the vitriolic political clashes that are now common place within the US political class, even on issues that seem as if they should bring a more general consensus.
As for the Supreme Court, it would probably be a mistake to view Chief Justice Roberts’ defection on the issues of immigration and healthcare as indicative of some kind of return to normalcy. Later in the year, the Court is expected to take on yet another series of controversial cases that, if Roberts’ prior rulings are any guide, could see the court invalidate long standing precedents on affirmative action and civil rights. The court is also set to take up the contentious issue of gay marriage. While we can’t say which way the Court will rule on these issues, it seems likely it will continue to be a central factor in the overall political crisis of the bourgeoisie, even if it has received a temporary reprieve of its image as a result of Robert’s defection.
From our perspective, the political crisis of the U.S. bourgeoisie is likely to continue indefinitely. On the same day that the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare, the Republican Congress voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress in their investigation into the “Fast and Furious” gun-waking program. So strange is the Republican obsession with this issue, that it appears their interest in the case is motivated primarily by adherence to a bizarre conspiracy theory according to which the Obama administration was trying to stoke violence in Mexico in order to use it as an excuse to abolish the second amendment right to own guns in the United States. It is this far-out belief that has led to the first ever contempt charge against a sitting cabinet member in United States history.[5]
The forces of social decomposition and their reciprocal effect on the structures of the state are driving this ideological deterioration of the US ruling class. While there will be moments when the main factions of the bourgeoisie win battles (it is not for nothing that they are the “main factions” of the bourgeoisie), it is likely that the US state will continue to be plagued by a certain level of paralysis on the main issues facing the national capital, political vitriol of unprecedented proportions and a deepening crisis of legitimacy in the institutions of bourgeois government.
At the root of these developments is the insuperable crisis of the global capitalist system, which shows no real signs of abatement. Even the more rational factions of the US bourgeoisie are beginning to realize that their ability to manage this crisis is fleeting. The talk shows are rife with fearful discussions of the changing nature of the economy—an economy that many now acknowledge will be marked by high unemployment, low consumer demand and continued financial turbulence indefinitely. While Obamacare may be a rational mechanism for addressing some aspects of the crisis in the US healthcare system—one must wonder what the legal obligation to buy private health insurance will do to the economy. The younger generations of workers already have to pay 10 to 15 percent of their income towards their government-backed student loans. Now, under Obamacare, another chunk of their paycheck will go towards health insurance or the tax penalty, before they have even spent a dime in the consumer economy! The bourgeoisie really does seem to be running out of tricks!
Still, there are even more dangerous rocks ahead for the US bourgeoisie. The volatile nature of the situation in Europe presents a political and economic variable they simply do not control. At the same time, the growing imperialist tensions in the Middle East threaten to spiral out of control as the threat of a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran looms. Domestically, another round of contentious political battles over the debt ceiling and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts are not far off. The announcement of terrible job numbers for the month of June were a strong reminder that whatever Mitt Romney’s political difficulties on health care and his reputation as a “vulture capitalist”, Obama’s reelection is no sure thing.
Against this sordid world of bourgeois politics whose crisis only continues to deepen, revolutionaries pose the class struggle. For all those who seek a more humane and rational world, the path there does not lie through the institutions of the bourgeois state, bourgeois politics and bourgeois legalism. Only the collective struggle of the working class and all the exploited across the globe can point the way forward for humanity today.
Henk 6/7/12
[1] Arizona’s law was only the tip of the iceberg, as a number of other red states had passed anti-immigrant laws of their own. Alabama’s law was probably even more draconian than Arizona’s, making it illegal for anyone to knowingly assist an illegal immigrant in even the most banal of ways, such as giving them ride in one’s automobile.
[2] See our article, “Obamacare: Political Chaos for the Bourgeoisie, Austerity for the Working-Class” Available at: https://en.internationalism.org/internationalismusa/201205/4927/obamacare-political-chaos-bourgeoisie-austerity-working-class [175]
[3] The significance of the decision to uphold the law on taxing authority rather than through the commerce clause is not yet clear. However, it has caused some anxious political moments for all sides as they struggle to explain the difference between a “tax” and a “penalty.”
[4] Of course, if the leaks emerging from the Court about the decision process on Obamacare are true, it is hard not to see Roberts’ actions as a real capitulation to political pressure, rather than pure jurisprudence. What could be more political than changing one’s legal analysis based on public opinion?
[5] Not even any of George W. Bush’s cabinet members were ever held in contempt of Congress, despite strong suspicion by many that certain cabinet members were guilty of war crimes and other gross violations of the law.
The German Bauhaus 1919-1933, the world's most famous art school, was planned as a model of socialistic design and production. Bauhaus, literally translated into English, means ‘house of construction’.
Let us therefore create a new guild of craftsmen without the class-distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsmen and artist! Let us together desire, conceive and create the new building of the future, which will combine everything - architecture and sculpture and painting - in a single form which will one day rise towards the heavens from the hands of a million workers as the crystalline symbol of a new and coming faith.
Bauhaus manifesto, April 1919.
The architect Walter Gropius, former chairman of the Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Art Soviet), wrote this rather romantic manifesto as founder of the new school. He distilled its aims more prosaically a few years later in the slogan ‘Art and technology, a new unity’.
The intention was to breakdown the distinction between:
high and low art (the Bauhaus incorporated the old fine art academy and the school for crafts in Weimar)
luxury art for the privileged and poorly made junk for the masses
industrial and handicrafts production
Artistic creation was to become an integral part of social life rather than a privileged niche within it. he creative process, previously surrounded by mystery, was to be clarified. Printing, pottery, textiles, metal work, furniture, theatre, were all to be integrated within a new modern architecture of light and space. Festivals, plays, parties, play were deliberately fostered to link the artistic community together and help put student and teacher on an equal footing. Hence the aptness of the title of the Barbican exhibition 'Art as Life'. And the title Lyonel Feininger gave to a woodcut illustrating the first Bauhaus manifesto: 'The cathedral of socialism'.
Despite its short life the Bauhaus has had an immense impact that is felt to this day. For example:
modernist architecture, known as the international style, of which the Bauhaus was a progenitor, has left an indelible imprint on building design. Even architectural trends that have reacted against it, like post-modernism, show by their very name that the international style remains a reference point
graphic design (advertising, magazine, newspaper and web design) would be impossible today without the Bauhaus pioneers
art education today retains the main innovation of the Bauhaus curriculum: a foundation course of basic principles and investigation, to be followed by several years specialisation in a particular field
The October Revolution in Russia in 1917 and the revolutionary wave it inspired throughout Europe in the following years, especially in Germany, seemed, after the mass destruction of the First World War, to offer a new way of living. In the world of art the Bauhaus exemplified this spirit of modernity that today, walking around the exhibition, still inspires. In a society that seems to conspire against man, the Bauhaus held out the hope that modern industry could be re-fashioned for his benefit.
The Bauhaus was part of a wider international movement that attempted to break the stranglehold of bourgeois philistinism on art. Trends like Dada and Expressionism in Germany, De Stijl in Holland, Le Corbusier’s L’Esprit Nouveau in France, all shared similar goals. The Bauhaus was staffed by some of the best known international talents of the time: Walter Gropius himself, and later the architect Mies Van der Rohe, and painters like Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky.
Indeed, in the same period, a Constructivist art school, the Vkhutemas (Higher Art and Technical Studios), with similar principles, but with far fewer resources, was founded in Russia, with the belief that a new proletarian artistic culture could be created on the ashes of the bourgeois regime. Kandinsky, who had helped formulate the curriculum of the Vkhutemas, moved to the Bauhaus in 1921.
Architecture and design were to be brought into harmony with mass industrial production. Hitherto these disciplines had lagged far behind the progress of technology and were still trying to imitate outmoded forms that were appropriate to pre-industrial methods of production, a trend heavily influenced by the conservatism of the bourgeoisie. According to the Bauhaus new forms had to be developed to express the possibilities of new technology at the service of the masses.
The Bauhaus’ radical espousal of modern materials and techniques (such as buildings made of steel and glass; furniture made from metal tubing); their principles of 'less is more', ‘truth to materials’ (elimination of decorative imitation and embellishment) and 'form follows function' (to take a small example: a chess set displayed in the exhibition was designed according to the moves of the pieces rather than composed of traditional figures!), created a new aesthetic sense and developed the appropriate skills to satisfy them.
Ironically in Russia the new materials were so scarce that wood was often used by constructivist architects to imitate the appearance of steel!
Capitalism, in certain periods, has shown a capacity for tolerating educational experiments like the Bauhaus. In the early twenties, in the midst of working class revolt, and the threat of revolution, the Social Democratic Party, the main support of the Weimar Republic, had a strong interest in presenting the latter as a socialist alternative to the danger of a German October. With the reflux of the proletarian movement however the Bauhaus found funding increasingly difficult to obtain and in 1926 it was forced to move from Weimar to Dessau, and from there, in a last ditch move, to Berlin in 1932 where it was finally forced to close by the newly elected Nazi Government in 1933. For the latter modern art itself was ‘cultural Bolshevism’. The National Socialists had no intention of spending ‘German taxes’ on the upkeep of an avantgarde institution that included foreigners and Jews.
In Russia, the Bolsheviks, through the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment, founded the Vkhutemas in 1920. Anatoly Lunacharsky, the commissar, favoured the artistic avantgarde. Nevertheless Lenin and Trotsky didn't subscribe to the idea of the former Bolshevik Alexandr Bogdanov that it was possible to create a new proletarian culture from scratch within the isolated soviet bastion. The political power and the relations of production of the bourgeoisie had first to be crushed on a world scale before an extended process of developing a new classless culture could begin in earnest. Within this perspective the working class would have to absorb the achievements of previous cultures rather than simply recreating anew.
The Vkhutemas were closed in 1930 as the Stalinist counter-revolution was tightening its grip on cultural life under the doctrine of socialist realism.
In the end, whatever advances are made within capitalism in the field of education, the ruling class is obliged to subordinate them to its imperialist, political and economic objectives.
The Bauhaus ethos presupposed a system of social production orientated toward consumption and the satisfaction of human needs. But capitalism, while it must satisfy human needs in order to sell goods, nevertheless subordinates this aim for a more pressing one: profit. And if this aim can’t be met, due to the lack of solvent buyers for example, neither can human need.
Capitalist production, in its quest for profit, tries to reduce the consumption of the masses as much as possible by keeping wages to a minimum and by cheapening the production of consumer goods.
For this reason it has proved impossible, despite the great impact of the Bauhaus style, to bridge the gap between quality production for a small luxury market, and low-cost, badly made substitutes for the mass of the population.
Moreover, in the capitalist production process, the quest for profit demands a strict hierarchical division of labour and the unquestioning obedience of the worker, even in the ‘creative industries’. Instead of elevating the craftsman to the status of an artist, as the Bauhaus wanted, capitalism tends to demean him still further to the level of a machine minder – when it is not making him unemployed!
In 2005, according to the United Nations, about 100 million people were homeless in the world. 1 billion people were living in shanty towns. No doubt these numbers have increased since then. The beautiful dream of the Bauhaus appears to have been completely dashed.
But the productive forces of society, which include those of artistic culture, will continue to rebel against the grip of the capitalist relations of production. They will continue to point toward a new society and inspire us.
In this sense it is not the Bauhaus that has failed – it will remain an historical landmark of cultural progress – but capitalism itself.
Como 24/7/12
Why such a title today? Isn't it just a bit anachronistic? Here we are, after all, in the 21st century. Aren't women's rights, the equality of women, recognised in a plethora of conventions and solemn declarations throughout the world?
In reality, the question of woman's suffering in a society which to this day remains fundamentally patriarchal, continues to be of the greatest importance.1 Around the world, marital violence, ritual genital mutilation, reactionary and outdated ideologies like religious fundamentalism, continue to reign and even to develop.2
What the socialists of the 19th century called "the woman question" thus remains posed to this day: how to create a society where women no longer suffer from this particular oppression? And what should be the attitude of communist revolutionaries towards "women's struggles"?
One thing we should say from the outset: capitalist society has laid the foundation for the most radical change that human society has ever seen. All previous societies, without exception, were based on the sexual division of labour. Whatever their class nature, and whether the situation of women in them was more or less favourable, it went without saying that certain occupations were reserved for men, others for women. Men's and women's occupations might vary from one society to another, but the fact of this division was universal. We cannot study why this should have been the case in depth here: suffice to say that the division probably goes back to the dawn of mankind, and originated in the constraints of childbirth. For the first time in history, capitalism tends to eliminate this division. From the outset, capitalism transforms labour into abstract labour. Where before there was the concrete labour of the peasant or artisan, regulated by the guilds or customary law, now there is nothing but labour power, accounted by the hour or by piecework: who actually does the job is immaterial. Since women were paid less, they replaced male labour in the factories – this was the case, for example, of the weavers in the 18th century. With the development of machinery, work demands less and less physical strength, since human labour power is replaced by the vastly greater power of the machine. Today, the number of jobs still requiring male physical strength is extremely limited, and more and more women are entering domains once reserved for men. The old prejudices about women's supposed "irrationality" are dying away almost of themselves, and more and more women are to be found in the scientific and medical professions once thought only suitable for supposedly more "rational" men.
Women's massive entry into the world of associated labour3 has two potentially revolutionary consequences:
The first, is that by putting an end to the sexual division of labour, capitalism has opened the way towards a world where men and women will no longer be limited to sexually determined occupations, but will be able to realise their talents as full human beings. This in turn opens up the possibility of establishing the relations between the sexes on an entirely new basis.
The second, is that women gain an economic independence. A woman wage worker is no longer dependent on her husband for survival, and this for the first time opens up the possibility for the mass of women workers to take part in public and political life.
Under capitalism, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the demand to participate in public life was not limited to working women. Women of the upper and middle classes also put forward the demand for equal rights, and the right to vote in particular. This posed the problem for the workers' movement of the attitude to adopt towards the feminist movements. Whereas the workers' movement was opposed to all oppression of women, the feminist movements – because they posed the question from the standpoint of sex not class – denied the need for a revolutionary overthrow of the existing order by a social class made up of men and women: the proletariat. Mutatis mutandis, the same question is posed today: what attitude should revolutionaries adopt towards the women's liberation movement?
In an article on the struggle for women's suffrage published in 1912, the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg made a clear distinction between women of the ruling class, and women proletarians: "Most of those bourgeois women who act like lionesses in the struggle against 'male prerogatives' would trot like docile lambs in the camp of conservative and clerical reaction if they had suffrage (…) Economically and socially, the women of the exploiting classes are not an independent segment of the population.. Their only social function is to be tools of the natural propagation of the ruling classes. By contrast, the women of the proletariat are economically independent. They are productive for society like the men".4 Luxemburg thus makes a clear distinction between working class women's struggle for the vote, and that of bourgeois women. She insists, moreover, that the struggle for women's rights is a matter for the whole working class: "Women’s suffrage is the goal. But the mass movement to bring it about is not a job for women alone, but is a common class concern for women and men of the proletariat."
The rejection of bourgeois feminism was equally clear for the Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai, who in 1908 published The social basis of the woman question: "Class instinct – whatever the feminists say – always shows itself to be more powerful than the noble enthusiasms of 'above-class' politics. So long as the bourgeois women and their 'younger sisters' are equal in their inequality, the former can, with complete sincerity, make great efforts to defend the general interests of women. But once the barrier is down and the bourgeois women have received access to political activity, the recent defenders of the 'rights of all women' become enthusiastic defenders of the privileges of their class (...) Thus, when the feminists talk to working women about the need for a common struggle to realise some 'general women’s' principle, women of the working class are naturally distrustful".5
World War I was to demonstrate that this distrust described by Luxemburg and Kollontai was wholly justified. At the outbreak of war, the suffragette movement (movement for women's voting rights) in Britain split in two: on one side were the feminists led by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel who gave their wholehearted support to the war and the government; on the other were Sylvia Pankhurst in Britain and her sister Adeline in Australia, who split from the feminist movement to defend an internationalist position. During the war, Sylvia Pankhurst abandoned little by little any reference to feminism: her "Women's Suffrage Federation" became the "Workers' Suffrage Federation" in 1916, and in 1917 her paper the Women's Dreadnought changed its name to become the Workers' Dreadnought.6
Luxemburg and Kollontai accept that the struggles of feminists and women workers may from time to time find themselves sharing a common ground, but not that women workers should dissolve their struggles into the feminist movement purely on the basis of "women's rights". It seems to us that revolutionaries should adopt the same attitude today, adapted of course to the conditions of our own epoch.
We want to conclude with some thoughts about "equality" as a demand for women. Because capitalism treats labour power as a book-keeping abstraction, its vision of equality is also a book-keeping abstraction: "equal rights". But because every person is different, equality in law quickly becomes inequality in fact,7 and this is why ever since Marx, communists have never demanded "social equality". On the contrary, the slogan of communist society is: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs". And women have one need which men will never have: to bear children.
Every woman should therefore have the possibility of bringing her children into the world, and of caring for them during their first years, without this contradicting either her independence or her full participation in every aspect of social life. This is a need, a physical need, that society must support; it is a capacity of women whose expression a society has every interest in encouraging, since society's future depends on it.8 It is thus easy enough to see that a truly human society, a communist society, will not try to impose an abstract "equality" on women, which would only be an inequality in fact. It will try on the contrary to integrate this specific capacity of women into social activity as a whole, at the same time as it completes a process that capitalism could do no more than begin, and put an end for the first time in history to the sexual division of labour.
Jens
1According to a French national inquiry into violence against women, published in the year 2000, "in 1999, more than 1.5 million women have been confronted with a situation of verbal, physical, or sexual violence. In 1999 about one woman in 20 suffered physical aggression, from blows to attempted murder, [while] 1.2% were victims of sexual aggression, from molestation to rape. This figure rises to 2.2% in the age group of 20-24" (cf. http ://www.sosfemmes.com/violences/violences_chiffres.htm [180])
2To take just one example, according to an article published in 2008 by Human Rights Watch, the USA witnessed a dramatic increase in violence against women during the previous two years. See (cf. http ://www.hrw.org/news/2008/12/18/us-soaring-rates-rape-and-violence-against-w... [181])
3It goes without saying that women have always worked. But in class societies before capitalism, their labour remained essentially in the private, domestic domain.
5https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1909/social-basis.htm [183]. The "younger sisters" was the condescending term used by the feminists to refer to women of the working class.
6The name was a reference to a type of British battleship
7"Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only -- for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored" (Marx, Critique of the Gotha programme).
8Obviously we are speaking here in general terms. Not every woman feels this need to the same degree, or even at all.
This is a summary of the discussion that took place after the presentation on art. The full version of this can be found here: https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201206/4977/notes-toward-history-art-ascendant-and-decadent-capitalism [188]
The presentation introduced the online text and summarised its main points.
Art and culture are closely related to the widening discussions in the ICC on questions of ethics, science, etc., and in particular to the deepening of our understanding of decadence. The effect of decadence on art and culture tells us more about the nature and evolution of decadence.
The text started as a personal attempt to understand modern art. It doesn’t answer questions on ‘what is art?’, the role of art, or art in previous class societies. It also became clear that artistic movements cannot be defined or judged in the same way as political movements.
Bourgeois art history is completely mystified about modern art ‘modernism’ because it lacks an understanding of decadence – the key piece of the puzzle. It’s necessary to go back to Marx and Engels and particularly Trotsky who is an important point of departure on art in decadence.
A summary of key points from the text:
The discussion recognised that this can only be an introduction to the subject but underlined the importance of art and literature to the workers’ movement. Art enhances the appreciation of life, eg. the cave paintings of Lascaux. It is the externalisation of our inner life, our humanity.
We need to go back to the beginning to revive the Marxist view of art, as with religion. The Second International was able to devote more time to this but its work is not easily available. With the revolutionary wave and decadence and the ensuing fragmentation revolutionaries have not had the time to devote to the question. It has taken the ICC time to get round to these questions.
Some of the limitations of the text were highlighted, eg. it doesn’t mention female artists or folk art or art outside Europe. Art is a global historical phenomenon. We also need to recognise that the activity of ‘artists’ in class society is based on the suppression of the ability of others.
There is no such thing as Marxist art or ‘socialist realism’. Marxism provides an historical framework for understanding the different phases of artistic expression and critical judgement of artistic representation.
Decadence is not a total halt to the ‘creative forces’, eg. James Joyce’s Ulysses was important for the development of literature. Artistic creativity didn’t die in decadence but it changes the historical context it takes place in.
Can we talk of ‘bourgeois art’? What makes it bourgeois? There is no corresponding ‘proletarian art’. Also, can we generalise about the meaning of individual artistic works or do they remain personal? eg. Munch’s ‘Scream’.
‘Retro’ popular culture is a symptom of culture in decadence. Historically this was also a sign of the onset of decadence, eg. Russia in 1905, harking back to an earlier, more stable and comforting epoch, at the same time as experiments in theatre flowered in the revolution.
Since the beginning of 20thc the visual arts have been regurgitating Dada. There has been very little new since then; even progressive developments like Surrealism could only have come from Dada. Surrealism is arguably the most significant artistic development in decadence, owing a huge debt to Dada. It tried to develop a theoretical understanding of art and human revolution taking on Marxism and psychoanalysis but this was unachievable with the revolution in decline.
We need to understand the extent of state control of art in decadence and its complete commodification, not just by fascism and Stalinism: it was most pernicious in the west – eg USA and the rise of cinema, with funding of different art movements as a tool of imperialism.
Cultural developments are related to massive social struggles, eg in the 60s music was a harbinger of the class struggle but the connection is not mechanical.
‘Postmodernism’ seems to be acknowledgement by bourgeois academia that they have run out of ideas – everything is just another story. But this also gives people liberty to do anything as nothing matters any more.
The working class is arguably the driving force of art in last 1-200 years but it is hijacked by bourgeoisie, eg. hip hop. The split between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art leads to a kind of workerism which rejects certain forms of art, eg. opera.
Capitalism has the technological capability to create new forms of art but it also means the legal fetters of copyright to ‘own’ and therefore restrict access to it, ie. a form of censorship.
The summing up accepted the point that there is no ‘bourgeois modern art’ but rather ‘modern art movements in bourgeois society’. The best tendencies in art always tends to go beyond the limitations of the ideology of the society where they emerge.
The text does not pretend to be a history of global art but we need to understand the most advanced tendencies in the capitalist system, which are clearest in the heartlands of Europe and USA.
While movements like jazz, Bauhaus etc., have their roots in the revolutionary wave, art in the post-war period is much more characterised by decadence. Munch’s ‘The Scream’ illustrates the point that while the subject matter may be personal, the expression of alienation as a valid subject for art was a sign of the onset of decadence.
The discussion has only begun. There is a lot more to say about the culture industry and the way capitalism developed after the post-war boom - Adorno and others have written a huge amount on this. The capitalist state’s ideological apparatus has a huge effect on cultural production. Finally, we have not really said anything about art in the specific phase of decomposition.
MH 7/12
Since last April, a tempest of the same nature as the one initiated by the “Arab Spring”, which itself encouraged a multitude of mobilisations of “indignant” populations all over the world (Spain, Greece, United States, Canada, etc.) blew over the Japanese archipelago. And as in a good number of these movements, we again see a real blackout of the bourgeoisie and its media. In Japan itself, outside of the areas where the discontent took place, there's an identical silence. Thus, for example, a demonstration of more than 60,000 people in Tokyo, has been completely hidden from the eyes of the general public. According to the very words of an “independent” Japanese journalist, M. Uesugi, “in Japan , control of the media is worse than China and similar to Egypt”[1] .
These demonstrations, of some hundreds of people in April, rapidly growing into thousands, unfolded on a real wave of anger which got bigger and bigger. Thus, by the beginning of July, crowds from different regions (Tohoku-north-east, Island of Kyushu-south, Shikoku-south-east, Hokkaido-north, Honsu-centre-west) converged in great numbers close to the Yoyogi Park in Tokyo in order to take over the streets. Very quickly the “monster demonstration” reached close to 170,000 protesters. We've not seen such a demonstration against conditions of life in Japan since the 1970's: the last one of comparable size was against the war in Iraq in 2003.
The factor that unleashed this discontent is linked to the trauma of Fukushima, to the strong indignation faced with the lies of the Japanese authorities and their willingness to pursue a suicidal nuclear programme. The latest national plan envisages the construction of 14 new reactors from now to 2030! Following the catastrophe of Fukushima, the government has no better way of “reassuring” the population than saying: “You will not be immediately affected.. (…) It's not that serious, just like going on an aeroplane or going through an X-ray”. What cynicism! It's not surprising that the angry population asks for a “nuclear halt”, beginning with the station of Hamaoka, 120km from Nagoya, situated in a zone of considerable seismic activity.
Outside of the large numbers, which have taken the organisers themselves by surprise, we see the same dynamic role played by the internet, twitter and the new generation, particularly students and school pupils. For a good number, these are their first demonstrations. Among the almost daily protests, some have been organised by the schoolkids of Nagoya via the social networks and by a collection of anti-nuclear groups[2]. Criticism broke out throughout the web, videos spread and alternative sites swelled. A little in the image of the blog of an old worker from the Hamaoka station, denouncing the lies of the so-called “security” of the nuclear installations, spirits became animated. A student of Sendai (north-east), Mayumi Ishida, wanted a “social movement with strikes”[3]. This movement expressed in depth the accumulation of social frustrations linked to the economic crisis and brutal austerity. In this respect, the movement in Japan well and truly connects up with the other expressions of the international movement of the “indignant”.
Some very angry people didn't hesitate to speak at the assemblies, even if it's difficult to give much of an account because of the lack of precise information.
But, as in many places, this movement shows great weaknesses, notably democratic illusions and marked nationalist preconceptions. The anger rests largely channelled and hemmed in by the unions and above all, in the circumstances, by the official anti-nuclear organisations. Some locally elected critics, through their demagogy and lies, often succeeded in playing on people’s dissatisfaction, isolating them one from the other, and pushing them into sterile actions, solely focussed against such and such a project of the nuclear industry and above all against the “fusible” Prime Minister, Naoto Kan.
Despite these numerous weaknesses, this movement in Japan is symbolically very important. It not only shows that the Japanese proletariat’s relative isolation from other fractions of the class (linked to historic, geographical and cultural factors) is beginning to be overcome[4], but also that all the nauseous propaganda of the bourgeois media about the so-called “docility” of the Japanese workers rests on prejudices which are used to hold back the internationalism of the exploited.
The workers of the whole world are slowly beginning to glimpse the social force it can be in the future. Little by little, it is learning that the street is a political space that it can take over to struggle and express solidarity. In Japan as elsewhere, these are the foundations for building an international revolutionary force that can destroy capitalism and construct a society free from exploitation and its barbarities. It's a long, a very long road, but it's the only one that leads to the reign of liberty.
WH 21/7/12
[1]https://blogs.mediapart.fr/edition/japon-un-seisme-mondial/article/201111/fukushima-occuper-tokyo-des-manifestations-de-ma [190]
The "post war boom" came to an end in 1967; this brief period of relative economic prosperity came in the wake of the horrors of the First World War, the Great Depression and World War II. The spectre of the economic crisis reappeared in that year. During the first half of the year, Europe fell into recession, in the second half there was a crisis in the international monetary system. Since then, unemployment, insecurity, deteriorating living and working conditions have become the daily lot of the exploited. Just a quick survey of the major events of the twentieth century, one of the most catastrophic and barbaric in the history of mankind, is enough to understand that capitalism has become, like slavery or feudalism before it, an obsolete and decadent system.
But this historic crisis of capitalism was partly obscured, buried under a load of propaganda and lies. In each decade, it was the same old tune: one country, one part of the planet or one economic sector that was doing a little better than the others, was given prominence to create a false impression that the crisis was not fatal, that it was sufficient to carry out effective "structural reforms" to capitalism for it to revive and bring growth and prosperity. In 1980-1990, Argentina and the "Asian Tigers" were brandished as models of success, then after the start of 2000 it was the turn of Ireland and Spain ... Invariably, of course, these "miracles" would turn out to be "mirages": in 1997 the "Asian Tigers" proved to be paper tigers, in the late 1990s, Argentina was declared bankrupt and now Ireland and Spain are on the brink of bankruptcy ... On each occasion, "the incredible growth" was funded by a resort to credit and each time the false hopes were eventually sunk by the burden of debt. But, banking on the short memories of the majority of us, the same charlatans are at it again. To believe them, Europe's sickness is due to specific reasons of its own making: difficulties carrying out reforms and 'mutualising' (i.e. sharing the burden of) its debts between its members; a lack of unity and solidarity between the countries; a central bank unable to boost the economy because it can't print money at will. But these arguments don’t stand up to much scrutiny. The crisis has hit Europe because there's a lack of reform and competition and we have to learn from Asia? Nonsense, these countries are also in trouble. The recovery is not sufficiently under the European Central Bank's control and the answer lies in printing money? That's crazy: the United States and its central bank have championed every kind of money creation since 2007, but they are also in bad shape.
The acronym "BRICs" refers to the four countries whose economies have been most successful in recent years: Brazil, Russia, India and China. But as with Eldorado, this good health is more myth than reality. All these "booms" are financed largely by debt and end up, like their predecessors, sinking into the horror of recession. Furthermore, that ill wind is upon us right now.
In Brazil, consumer credit has exploded over the past decade. But as in the United States during the 2000s, "households" are less and less able to keep up their repayments. The scale of "consumer defaults" has beaten all the records this time around. Worse still, the housing bubble looks identical to what was experienced by Spain before it exploded: large newly built housing complexes stand desperately empty.
In Russia, inflation is getting out of control: it's officially 6%, but it’s more like 7.5% say independent analysts. And prices of fruits and vegetables have literally shot up in June and July, increasingly by almost 40%!
In India, the budget deficit is widening dangerously (it's estimated to be 5.8% of GDP for 2012); the industrial sector is in recession (- 0.3% in the first quarter of this year), consumption is slowing sharply, inflation is very strong (7.2% in April, last October the soaring food prices had risen almost 10%). The financial world now considers India a risky country to invest in: it is rated triple B (the lowest rating in the "below average quality" category). It is under threat of soon being be ranked with countries that are considered bad investments.
China's economy continues to slow and there are growing danger signals. Manufacturing activity contracted in June for the eighth consecutive month. The prices of apartments have collapsed and the sectors associated with construction are less and less busy. A very clear example: the city of Beijing alone, has 50% of it dwellings vacant - more than in the entire U.S. (3.8 million homes are empty in Beijing compared with 2.5 million across America). But the most worrying thing without any doubt is the state budget for the provinces. For if the state is not officially collapsing under the debt, it is only due to the fact the burden of debt is all at the local level. Many provinces are on the verge of bankruptcy. Investors are well aware of the poor health of the BRICs, which is why they avoid these four currencies – the real, the ruble, the rupee and the yuan - like the plague; they have been falling continuously for months.
The city of Stockton, California filed for bankruptcy Tuesday, June 26th as did Jefferson County, Alabama and Harrisburg in Pennsylvania before it. Yet for three years, the 300,000 inhabitants of this city have endured every "sacrifice necessary for the recovery": budget cuts of $90 million, 30% of fire-fighters laid off along with 40% of other municipal employees, a cut of $11.2 million to the salaries for municipal employees, a drastic reduction of the retirement pension funds.
This concrete example shows the real state of decay of the U.S. economy. Households, businesses, banks, cities, states and the federal government, every sector is literally buried under mounds of debt that will never be repaid. In this context, the future negotiation between the Republicans and Democrats when the debt ceiling is raised this autumn is very likely to turn into a psychodrama as it did last summer. We can say that the American bourgeoisie is facing an insoluble problem: it must generate ever more debt to revive the economy while it must reduce debt to avoid bankruptcy.
Each indebted part of the economy is a potential time-bomb: here's a bank close to bankruptcy, there's a city or a company almost bankrupt ... and if a bomb explodes, just watch the chain reaction. Today the "student loans bubble" is a concern to the financial world. The cost of studying is more and more expensive and young people find less and less work on leaving their university courses. In other words, student loans are becoming increasingly essential and the risk of default ever more likely. To be more specific:
- after their university studies, American students are on average in debt to the tune of 25,000 dollars;
- their outstanding loans exceeds that of all consumer loans in the country and is $904 billion (it has almost doubled over the last five years) and corresponds to 6% of GDP;
- the scale of unemployment for university graduates under 25 years is more than 9%;
- 14% of graduate students who have taken out loans have defaulted three years after graduating.
This example is very significant of what capitalism has become: a sick system that can only sign away (literally as well as metaphorically) its future. Young people today must live in debt and "spend" the future salary ...they're not going to see. It is no coincidence that in the Balkans, in England and in Quebec, the new generation has mounted powerful demonstrations in the last two years at the increased costs of enrolling for university courses: drowning in debt for 20 years and facing the prospect of unemployment and falling pay in future years, this is the perfect symbol of the "no future" that capitalism has to offer.
The United States, like Europe, like every country in the world, is sick; and there will be no real and lasting respite under capitalism because this system of exploitation is the source of the infection. After reading this article, can anyone continue to want to hope and believe that an "economic miracle" is still possible? If you are one of these people ... please note that the budget of the Vatican is in the red.
Pawel, 6/7/12
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This is a leaflet produced by our section in Spain to denounce the ruthless attacks on working class living conditions now underway in that country. It’s also an analysis of the situation which tries to make proposals to take the struggle forward.
In 1984, the PSOE (Socialist Party) government brought in the first Labour Reform. Just three months ago, the present PP government (the right wing Popular Party) brought in the most serious Labour Reforms up till now. In 1985, the PSOE government brought in the first Pensions Reform; in 2011, a different PSOE government brought in another. When will the next one be? For more than 30 years, the living conditions of the workers have gradually got worse and worse, but since 2010 the deterioration has speeded up at a dizzying rate and with the new measures by the PP government, it has reached levels which, unfortunately, are already low compared to what lies in store. There has also been a sharpening of police repression: violence against the students in Valencia last February, savage beating of the miners and the use of rubber bullets which injured children among others. Meanwhile, Congress has been explicitly protected by the police in the face of the spontaneous demonstrations which have been developing since July.
We, the IMMENSE MAJORITY, exploited and oppressed, but also indignant, we workers of the public and private sectors, the unemployed, students, pensioners, immigrants...we are posing a lot of questions about everything that’s going on. We need to pose these questions collectively, in the streets, on the squares, in the workplaces, so that we can come up with answers together and make a massive, powerful and sustained response.
Governments change, but the crisis keeps on getting worse and we keep getting hit harder. Each summit meeting of the EU, of the G20 etc is presented as the ‘definite solution’...and the next day it’s revealed as a total failure. We are told that the blows aimed at us will reduce the risks to the economy, and the next day we find that the exact opposite is true. After so much bloodletting in our living standards, the IMF recognises that we will have to wait until 2025 (!) to get back to the living standards we had in 2007. The crisis advances implacably and inexorably, leaving in its wake millions of broken lives.
Of course, some countries are doing better than others, but we have to look at the world as a whole. The problem is not limited to Spain, Greece, or Italy, nor can it be reduced to the ‘euro crisis’. Germany is on the edge of recession and has 7 million mini-jobs (with wages around 400 euro a month). In the USA, unemployment is soaring at the same speed as house repossessions. In China, the economy has been slowing down for 7 months, despite a crazy construction bubble which has meant that in Beijing alone there are 2 million empty apartments. We are experiencing in our bones the world-wide and historic crisis of the capitalist system which is pulling in every state, regardless of its official ideology, whether ‘communist’ as in China or Cuba, ‘21st century socialism’ as in Ecuador or Venezuela, ‘socialist’ in France’ ‘democratic’ in the US, ‘liberal’ in Spain and Germany. Capitalism, having created the world market, has for a century been a reactionary system which has plunged humanity into the worse kind of barbarism: two world wars, innumerable regional wars, the destruction of the environment....and, having benefited from moments of artificial economic growth, based on financial and speculative bubbles of all kinds, today, since 2007, it is crashing into the worst crisis in its history with firms, banks and states sinking into bankruptcy. The result of such a debacle is a gigantic humanitarian disaster. While famine and poverty spread throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America, in the ‘rich’ countries millions of people are losing their jobs, hundreds of thousands are being evicted from their homes, the majority have nothing left at the end of the month, the increasing cost and reduced availability of social services are making life increasingly precarious, and on top of all this is the crushing weight of direct or indirect taxation.
Capitalism divides society into two poles: the minority pole of the capitalist class which possesses everything and produces nothing; and the majority pole of the exploited classes which produce everything and receive less and less. The capitalist class, the 1% of the population as the Occupy movement in the US put it, appears to be more and more corrupt, arrogant and insulting. It is piling up riches with indecent cheek; it shows itself to be quite unfeeling towards the suffering of the majority and everywhere it demands that we put up with austerity. So why, despite all the big movements of social indignation which unfolded in 2011 (Spain, Greece, USA, Egypt, Chile, etc) is it able to apply policies which go against the interests of the majority? Why is our struggle, despite the precious experience it has brought us, so far below what is necessary?
An initial answer can be found in the fraud of the democratic state. This is presented as the emanation of all citizens, but in reality it is the exclusive and excluding organ of the capitalist class. It serves the latter’s interests entirely, and to do this it has two hands: the right hand made up of the police, the prisons, the courts, the laws, the bureaucracy, which it uses to repress us and crush any attempt at revolt. And a left hand made up of parties based on all kinds of ideology, of trade unions which are apparently independent, of social cohesion services supposedly there to protect us....in sum, of illusions to deceive us, divide us and demoralise us.
What has been the result of all the votes cast every four years? Has any government emerged from the election and carried out one of its promises? Whatever their ideology, whose side have they been on? The electors, or Capital? What has been the result of the countless reforms and changes they have made in education, social security, economics, politics, etc? Haven’t they really been a real expression of the principle that ‘everything must change in order to stay the same’? As the 15 May movement said at the time: “they call it democracy and it’s not, it’s a dictatorship and we don’t see it”.
Capitalism is leading us into generalised misery. But we should not see only misery in misery! In the entrails of this system is the principal exploited class, the proletariat, which, with its associated labour – labour not limited to industry and agriculture but including education, health, social services etc – ensures that the whole of this society functions. And by the same token, this class has the capacity to paralyse the capitalist machine and open the door to the creation of a society where life is not sacrificed on the altar of capitalist profit, where the economy of competition is replaced by production founded on solidarity and aiming at the full satisfaction of human need. The way of life in this society, by contrast, is based on competition, on the struggle of each against all, on atomisation and division.
An understanding of these problems, open and fraternal debate about them, the critical re-appropriation of the experience of over two centuries of struggle, all that can give us the means to go beyond this situation, to respond to the attacks. The very day (11 July) that prime minister Rajoy announced the new measures we saw was the beginning of a response. Many people went to Madrid to express their solidarity with the miners. This experience of unity and solidarity was concretised in the days that followed with spontaneous demonstrations organised through social networks. It was an initiative by public sector workers, outside the unions. The question is how to do we carry on with it, knowing that the struggle will be long and difficult? Here are some proposals:
United struggle: unemployed, public and private sector workers, apprentices and employees, pensioners, students, immigrants: TOGETHER, WE CAN. No sector must remain isolated and imprisoned in its own corner. Faced with a society of division and atomisation, we have to show the power of solidarity.
Open general assemblies: capital will remain strong as long as we leave everything in the hands of professional politicians and specialists in trade union representation, who always betray us. Assemblies to reflect, discuss and decide together. So that we become responsible for what has been agreed, so that we experience the satisfaction of being united, so that we can break the barriers of solitude and isolation and cultivate empathy and confidence.
Look for international solidarity: defending the nation makes us cannon fodder in wars; xenophobia and racism divide us, set us against the workers of the whole world when they are the only ones we can trust to create the force capable of pushing back the attacks of capital.
Group together in the workplaces, in the neighbourhoods, in the collectives, on the internet, to reflect on everything that’s going on, to organise meetings and debates which will prepare the struggles to come. It’s not enough just to fight! We have to fight with the clearest possible consciousness of where we are going, of what are our real weapons, of who are our friends and who are our enemies!
Every social change is inseparable from an individual change. Our struggle cannot be limited to a simple change in the political and economic structures. It’s a change in the social system and thus in our own lives, in our way of seeing things, in our aspirations. This is the only way we can develop the strength to resist the innumerable traps we will meet along the way, the physical and moral blows that will be aimed at us. A change of mentality in the direction of solidarity, collective consciousness, which will cement our unity today, but will also be the pillar of a future society free from the ferocious competition and commercialism of capitalist society
International Communist Current 16/7/12
If you want to contact us, collaborate, work together, you can find us as [email protected] [200] or via es.internationalism.org.
This leaflet is available as a PDF so it can be reproduced and distributed.
The day of study decided to take up the question of Islam because it is an important issue in today’s world. On the one hand it is presented as the bogey man threatening to destroy civilisation, political Islam has become synonymous with terrorism and oppression, but on the other hand it is a source of inspiration for a huge proportion of the world’s population.
In order to get to grips with what Islam represents today, the discussion looked at its origins and the role it has played in history (specifically its contribution to the Renaissance), situating it within the context of the social significance of religion generally. These are enormous questions that merit time and reflection and the day of study could obviously do no more than make a beginning by providing a basis and raising relevant questions to be developed in subsequent discussions.
There was general agreement among those who spoke that religion cannot provide a solution to today’s social problems but the question was raised as to whether or not Islam arose initially as a revolutionary movement. Various hypotheses were put forward as to the historical situation and the factors that gave rise to it; these points could not be adequately dealt with at the day of study and are well worth deepening in future debates. Supporting the idea that it did in fact begin as a revolutionary movement, it was stated that, even though it did not have a position against trade, money or class (as early Christianity did), it too began as a movement of the oppressed classes against their oppression but that the revolutionary message was watered down from very early on in its history – from the Roman period in fact.
Another question raised was the significance of the historical development from a mystical, religious view of the world to the attempt to interpret it scientifically.
Certain interventions insisted on the importance of the scientific method and the social significance of the Enlightenment as an important step forward, saying that one of the benefits of capitalism was the overcoming of religious superstition through rationalism and that Marxism is able to take this evolution even further.
Other interventions warned of the danger of deifying science, noting that rationalism begins with capitalism and expresses the bourgeois world view and that there are aspects of previous societies that it rejects out of hand, unable to integrate their knowledge into its own vision; aspects such as the celebration of society and its cohesion through shared beliefs and religious rites, the practice of linking up with the whole of humanity by means of meditation techniques (the ‘species being’ that Marx talks about in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts).
In response to this, the point was made that the going beyond the individual self towards the development of a true, shared humanity cannot be achieved individually; it can only be undertaken collectively by means of a social movement and that the religious framework creates a false, idealist consciousness. The search for our ‘species being’, a sense of unity with the rest of humanity, against the moral and emotional barrenness of society today, is very valid but to seek it through any form of religion is to look in the wrong place. The religious world view externalises our shared humanity, calls it god and worships it, we are alienated from it. To the working class’ need to reflect, question and discuss, it opposes the injunction to ‘have faith’; to the need for a real human morality, it opposes blind obedience to a higher power. As such, religious authority today is a means of social control and oppression, it aims to act as a brake on the development of proletarian consciousness, which needs free and open discussion and a fearless analysis of the society in which we live.
Another question raised was on how to address Islamic workers.
One suggestion was that we point out the revolutionary origins of religion and the prophetic tradition, that we show that the working class and its revolution are heir to the early religious movements (Islam, Christianity) and are able to realise their aspirations for a society free of oppression.
Many who spoke said that we do not in fact speak to Islamic workers as such, we address workers as a whole; our message is the same whether they are Christian, Muslim, non-believers. First of all we have to discuss what unites us – the fact that we are all exploited and have to defend ourselves against the attacks and how to do so. Religious belief, on the other hand, tends to be divisive; it unites ‘us of the true faith’ against all the rest, who are unrighteous: discussion about it often gives rise to tensions and defensiveness because it is felt as key to the individual’s sense of worth and security. An open discussion involving the whole of the working class on the nature of religion will be possible only late in the revolutionary development of consciousness when the class has sufficient confidence in itself as a class to confront such differences openly and frankly.
A discussion that stimulated a great deal of interest and reflection. It is important to pursue it.
VJ
This was the first meeting in Britain of the International Communist Party which publishes Communist Left in Britain and Il Partito Comunista in Italy. They announced it as their opportunity to “introduce themselves to the British proletariat”, and, gathered in front of a very smart and probably brand new red ICP banner resplendent with the hammer and sickle, they laid out their wares. This report will not attempt to dissect the ICP’s presentation on the ‘The Historical Need for Communism’, a six and a half page text that was delivered by the presidium following a brief introduction. It may eventually be published on the ICP’s website for readers to devour at their leisure and those who defend an internationalist perspective will find much to agree with. They have also written their own report of the meeting which, again, readers will find provides much food for thought[1]. Rather, the focus of this report is on what we think was missing from the meeting: discussion, which for us is central to the communist project. It is the lifeblood of the workers' movement as it struggles to clarify the many questions thrown up by the class struggle and in its fight for communism.
The ICP’s report makes much of the contributions from the floor following their presentation and as they describe these gave valuable examples of the hardships suffered by workers who have been, or still are, struggling to defend their interests. But as the report infers these contributions were perceived as and responded to, as questions, to be answered individually, one to one, by the presidium, all of which prevented a deeper exploration of the different positions held by those present. While no one was actually prevented from speaking, this ‘method’ effectively stifled discussion. There was no opportunity, or desire, to challenge alternative positions, no clash of ideas, so the meeting descended into a sterile ‘question and answer’ session ending far too quickly. If, like on many websites, we had been provided with some FAQs at the door the meeting need never have taken place. We could have digested the ‘correct’ position in the comfort of our own homes.
This attitude was most clearly demonstrated in the response to ‘questions’ on the Occupy movement, not worthy of a mention in their report, and on the need for those organisations who defend the communist left to discuss with each other. On Occupy, despite the article, ‘From Occupy Wall Street Movement to the blockade of the West Coast ports’, in Communist Left No. 31/2, which puts forward many of the same criticisms the ICC has made of the Occupy movement, the ICP’s response to our ‘question’ demonstrated a very different method in attempting to understand and respond to this phenomenon. The Occupy Movement, argued the ICP, is infected, watered down, by other, particularly petit bourgeois, class interests. It is not a progressive movement. It is an inter-classist movement. Full stop, question answered. On the communist left they were just as unequivocal, no discussion, 'we are the party': “The rebirth of the Party in 1952 on firm and clear foundations, after the period of elation that followed World War II, meant a neat and definitive separation from the ‘Internationalists’[2] and from their positions. To talk now of mergers or joint actions is therefore deprived of any historical significance. But, of course, any revolutionary who sees in the International Communist Party the party of the revolution can join as an individual basis”.
It is this ‘method’, which finds its justification in the idea that Marxist theory is one invariant block and expressed in statements and texts, often written in capital letters to emphasise their importance, like, “we represent the continuity of Marxism”, ‘The unitary and invariant body of party theses’ and “we represent the views of the Communist Left” that reinforces the commonly held view that the organisations who historically defend the Italian left, especially those in the Bordigist tradition, are sectarian, sclerotic parodies of what a communist organisation should be. ‘We are right you are wrong’ – there is no space, for example, for a shared agreement on the fundamental class line of internationalism – appears to be the rallying cry of the ICP. So much for Marx’s useful reminder to ‘question everything’. They could, without irony, adopt Millwall FC’s infamous terrace chant: ‘nobody likes us but we don’t care’.
More seriously, swimming against the tide of bourgeois ideology, communist organisations, especially those like the ICP who have never betrayed internationalism, don’t, of course, exist to be ‘liked’. But this attitude, a consequence of the invariance they so proudly defend, is hardly the way to convince those interested in discussing the communist programme or building the future party. You need to engage with what's been said by others; their questions, hesitations and misunderstandings, not demand that they engage with you solely on your terms. We have to dispel the image of the monolithic party. Unless, of course, you see yourself as the teacher, the guru, the only one competent to impart knowledge. Workers will only be convinced of the need for, and the possibility of creating, a future world communist party by the words and deeds of the current revolutionary minorities. A key part of this process is the ability of different tendencies to discuss differences - capital letters are no substitute for this.
So, what does this meeting tell us? As Alf, for the ICC, put it on a recent post on libcom, the ICP are “a current which - for all its weaknesses, especially on the national question - has not abandoned the principles of internationalism” and “that's why we have to approach this meeting from a standpoint of solidarity - even though this may not be reciprocated by the [ICP]”[3]. It wasn’t but Alf was correct. Over the last ten years the ICC has had to learn some hard lessons about the way it is perceived by, and responds to, others, especially in the ‘Internet age’. We are concerned about the need to improve relations, to create a culture of debate, within the internationalist milieu, of which, at least in our eyes, the ICP is a member, and approached this meeting from a standpoint of solidarity with this in mind.
Given the positions defended by the ICP their attitude didn’t surprise us - invariance, after all, suggests a certain stagnation, an inflexibility, which was clearly demonstrated at this meeting – but it did disappoint us. In a period where the crisis of capitalism is deeper and more evident than ever and the challenge facing the working class greater than ever, it is imperative that revolutionaries, i.e. those that intransigently defend internationalism, find a way to, at the very least, talk to each other and those interested in the positions they defend. We are not talking about mergers here, just the absolute basics of proletarian debate and solidarity. The ICP’s ‘method of discussion’ at this meeting prevents this. The same goes for their method of intervention on web forums like Libcom and Red Marx, where they simply upload recent articles or historic texts and make no attempt whatever to respond to the comments and criticisms that they may provoke.
Although we doubt they’ll listen we encourage the ICP to stop building an ever higher wall around themselves and lower their trowels and buckets of cement, or at least turn the caps lock off, just long enough to start engaging with those who want to discuss with them, help build a culture of debate amongst revolutionaries, before it’s too late and they’re completely walled in.
Kino 1/8/12
[2] ‘Internationalists’ is a reference to the other half of the split, the ‘Damen’ tendency which kept the name Internationalist Communist Party and published Battaglia Comunista. It is now the Italian affiliate of the Internationalist Communist Tendency
The inbuilt tendency of capitalism is towards war – ever more destructive generalised warfare. Looking at Syria today massacre follows massacre with up to 20,000 killed; whole districts are destroyed; millions of people are displaced, with many living in overcrowded, insalubrious refugee camps in Turkey or in tents in the Jordanian desert in the middle of constant sandstorms. Instead of the masses unifying across lines of division, they are now retreating behind them. Alawite, Christian, Druze, Kurd, Sunni and Shia divisions are reinforced on the basis of fear of the next massacre from whatever side. Some are supporting the “Free Syrian Army”, while others fall in behind the regime, fearful of the consequences. Capitalist terror has been unleashed and is stalking the population throughout Syria and over its borders. What started out, seventeen months ago, as a real, popular uprising across divisions of religion, sex and age, against unemployment and repression, has been subsumed, drowned for the foreseeable future, under the wave of imperialist war which now threatens to spread throughout the region. To call this development, as some leftists do, a “revolution” is obscene. It is an inter-imperialist free-for-all. On one side stands the one-time ally of the west, the ruthless killer regime of Bashir al-Assad, backed by Russia, China and Iran; on the other side stand the local powers of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and, looming over them, the United States, Britain and France. While this expression of capitalist carnage might look like the old proxy wars of the Cold War, with the US using Turkey as its local agent for example, it's much more unpredictable and dangerous than that, particularly given the stakes for the wider region, the military build up against Iran – which is currently being squeezed in a western vice - and the wild card of Israel.
There are factors relating to oil here but these are completely secondary. The USA and Britain are interested in the strategic value of Syria in relation to its geographical and political proximity to the real target of this war – Iran. In fact the possibilities for implanting American and British interests in this respect, ie, the basis for the present war, were laid down in Washington under the Bush administration in 2005 in conjunction with Whitehall (see below on the Syrian opposition). That the real target of this war is Iran has been increasingly recognised by a number of international newspaper correspondents, and none of them clearer than Robert Fisk in the Independent, July 29, who writes with some irony on the position of the British ruling class: “... that all the while we forget the ‘big’ truth. That this is an attempt to crush the Syrian dictatorship not because of our love for the Syrians or our hatred for our former friend Bashir al-Assad, or because of our outrage at Russia, whose place in the pantheon of hypocrites is clear when we watch its reaction to all the little Stalingrad's across Syria. No, this is all about Iran and our desire to crush the Islamic Republic and its infernal nuclear plans – if they exist – and has nothing to do with human rights, or the right to life or the death of Syrian babies. Quelle horreur!” And Jonathan Steele in the Guardian, August 5: “What began as a peaceful uprising and then became local self-defence has been hijacked, under Saudi. Qatari and US leadership, and with British, French and Israeli approval, it has turned into an anti-Iranian proxy war”.
While the regime is responsible for most of the killing in Syria, the main responsibility for the generalisation of war lies with America, Britain and the French cockerel, the “socialist” Hollande, strutting his stuff in continuity with his predecessor Sarkozy: France is now outbidding its “allies” and calling for the rag-bag and fractious Syrian opposition to form a government in exile which it will recognise. As for the western-backed “Free Syrian Army” (FSA), already, as early as November 17 last year, the BBC's Newsnight was reporting on atrocities committed by it. On January 18 this year, The Guardian reported a recent article from ex-CIA officer Philip Giraldi that: “...Turkey, a Nato member, has become Washington's proxy and that unmarked Nato planes have been arriving at Iskenderum, near the Syrian border, delivering Libyan volunteers and weapons seized from Gaddafi's arsenal. French and British special forces trainers are on the ground... assisting the Syrian rebels, while the CIA and US Spec Ops are providing communication equipment and intelligence.”(there were also reports that British and French special forces were on the Lebanese/Syrian border) The Libyan connection is confirmed in a report by RTE News, August 14, that senior members of the western-trained Libyan rebel unit that took Gaddafi's compound were active in Syria, leading a team of Syrians including specialists in communications, logistics and heavy weapons[1]. On July 26, Newsnight reported that the Turkish military was making nightly deliveries by the lorryload of arms and ammunition to the FSA accompanied by the CIA in order to make sure the weapons “didn't fall into the wrong hands”. The Daily Mirror reported on August 18 that these weapons included ground-to-air Stinger missiles – which is somewhat credible given that a MIG- 23 jet fighter has already been shot down over the town of Mohassen in the east while bombing rebel positions, one helicopter gunship has been shot down and latest reports say that another jet-fighter has been shot down over Idlib[2]. Talk by William Hague and the US of “non-lethal assistance” to the FSA is a nonsense, given their arms deliveries and their closeness to Saudi and Qatari weapons provision.
The diplomatic war also rages across the United Nations' den of thieves. The Annan “peace plan”, largely promoted by the Russians and supported by China, was sabotaged by the US, Britain and France, who threw a spanner in the works with a rival resolution that Annan referred to as “finger-pointing and name-calling”. There was no real interest from the west in any plan that entertained talks while the regime – which they've been saying for twelve months is “on the verge of collapse” - remained in place. They were only interested in pursuing the war. For its part Iran has hosted a “non-aligned” conference in Tehran (week beginning August 27), with over a hundred countries sending delegates, in order to garner support. Notably the new Egyptian president, Morsi, has made a visit, which along with friendly words towards Iran, has caused some concern in the west[3]. Saheed Jalili, Iran's security boss, previously said on Syrian TV: “Iran will not allow the axes of resistance, of which it considers Syria to be a vital part, to be broken in any way” (BBC, August 7). But relations between Tehran and Hamas in Gaza have already soured over Syria and fighting has spilled over the Syrian/Lebanese border affecting Hezbollah. This “axes of resistance” has been somewhat weakened in this respect but this will by no means attenuate the imperialist drive of Iran which itself has forces fighting alongside the Syrian army. Syria is indeed Iran's main ally in the region and in this spread of war and instability the former has not hesitated to use its ally, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which in turn supports the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which has control of several towns along the Turkish border in northern Syria (AFP, August 2). Troop deployment in these areas are currently being massively reinforced by the Turkish military, adding another dimension to the unfolding chaos.
Who are these people of the Syrian opposition who appear on western TV and call for “action”. Who are these “democratic spokespeople” in exile urging military intervention and no talks with the Assad regime? Charlie Skelton in The Guardian of July 12 lifts the lid on this nest of vipers who are enmeshed in some of the highest levels of the American and British states and who have been funded by both for the last 6 or 7 years[4] . The Syrian National Council is recognised by both America and Britain as the “main opposition coalition” (BBC) and “a legitimate representative of the Syrian people” (William Hague, British Foreign Secretary). The most senior of these SNC spokespeople is Bassma Kodmani who was promoted from her work for the Ford Foundation in 2005 – after US/Syrian relations collapsed – to become executive director to the Arab Reform Initiative (ARI). This is linked to the powerful US lobby group, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFI), which is linked to the “US Middle East Project” composing senior diplomats, intelligence officers and business people. This in turn is linked to the British Centre for European Reform (CER) headed by Lord Kerr, former head of the British diplomatic service. As Skelton notes, this is not some naive pro-democracy activist but someone who has links with the highest levels of the two states as well as with the French intelligence service DGSE. It's similar for her colleagues in the SNC. In 2005, the year that US foreign policy tilted against Syria, opposition leaders met in a Washington government building for a meeting sponsored by the US Democracy Council and the British Movement for Justice and Development and chaired by Joshua Muravchik, author of the 2006 op-ed “Bomb Iran”. Skelton lays the links and the funding bare[5]
The Muslim Brotherhood, which Britain has shown interest in, has now split from the Free Syrian Army to set up its own armed faction, “The Armed Men of the Muslim Brotherhood” which is said by its leader to be “trying to raise awareness for Islam and jihad” (Daily Telegraph August 3). There are also Saudi and Qatari backed fundamentalists, jihadists from abroad with many coming back from Iraq, some of whom work under the loose al-Qaida franchise and the Libyan mercenaries. A real recipe for disaster for the Syrian population.
In a word dire. It's already dire for the masses in Syria and while the thrust against Iran by the west is an open secret here the course events will take are unpredictable and dangerous for the region and beyond. Walid Jumblatt, leader of the Lebanese Druze sect, a politically shrewd veteran fighter in the region, said in The Guardian August 16: “This is the unravelling of the Sykes-Picot agreement”. Here he's referring to the secret Anglo-French agreement of 1919 to carve up their spheres of influence in the Levant after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire – this itself has been a basis for the instability and the running sores of conflict that have ravaged the Middle East for nearly a century. Jumblatt goes on: “We are seeing the end of what was created 90 years ago. The consequences will be very, very grave unless they are managed properly”. Referring to the British/French construction of Middle Eastern borders after World War I, and the “divide and rule” tactics used, one western diplomat talked of “unfinished business at many levels”. Within the framework of the overall weakening of the US to police the world, the go-it-alone tendency of Israel and the centrifugal tendencies at work tearing Syria apart, it's very unlikely that this will be managed properly. The “management” of the major powers has rather been to push this war and the threat of wider war further forward.
Baboon. 30/8/12
[1]Just over a year after the end of the western-backed war, Libya is in a complete mess with the highest-ever unemployment and armed gangs of all persuasions terrorising the increasingly impoverished population. The wider north African region is hit by further war and terrorism as a direct consequence.
[2]The Daily Telegraph, August 2, reports that the Taliban have opened an office in the eastern Iranian city of Zahedan and that communications intercepted from there suggest that Iranian Quds forces planned to send surface-to-air missiles to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Iran has been supplying the Taliban with fairly basic weapons to use against the Americans in Afghanistan but this, if true, would be a real escalation.
[3]This is all part of the inter-imperialist game. Egypt has recently also made overtures towards China. Prior to the Libyan war, Egyptian access granted to Iranian warships through the Suez Canal caused alarm in the US and Britain. But at the “non-aligned” conference Egyptian President Morsi outraged the Syrian delegation and upset the Iranians by referring to the Syrian “rebels” as similar to the Palestinians.
[5]For references to this and a good analysis of the overall situation in Syria, see Syria, Imperialism and the Left, parts (1), (2) and (3) on libcom, written by rooieravotr. libcom.org/blog/syria-imperialism-left-1-08082012 [209]
“Where are you going?”
“We are going out brother, we won't work.”
“Well then, let’s go out together, let’s not work.”
The textile workers in the organised industrial zone of Antep, a city on the border of the Kurdish area of Turkey, recently went on a strike against their working conditions, low wages and cuts in their bonuses. The strike, which started with the participation of 3 to 5 thousand workers according to different sources, quickly spread to a total of seven factories in the industrial zone, including a total of 7 thousand workers.
About their working conditions, the workers whose working hour is on average 12 hours were saying the following: “What we want is just wages which will suffice to feed our families and our social rights. We don't want anything else. We have nothing against anyone in particular. Nor do we have ill intentions, we want what we deserve”[1].
A worker who participated in the strike expresses how the Turkish bourgeoisie, which recently has taken an important step in furthering its solid integration into the web of international imperialist relations under the slogan of “becoming a superpower”, was spreading nothing but false hopes in its 'addresses to the nation': “They say we are second only to China in the economy. They say we are pioneers when it comes to exports. No one is asking how much this reflects on the workers, how much bread the workers can afford when going home. No one cares about the worker. We've been on strike here for days, and the human demands of thousands of people are being ignored”[2].
Another important characteristic of the strike is the reaction against the Oz-Iplik-Is Trade Union, a part of the Hak-Is confederation[3] of which a significant part of the strikers are members. The strike from the start was independent from the direction and the orientation of the union, and the workers didn't hesitate to criticise the union. The clearest statement about the situation was made by Nihat Necati Bencan, the Antep Regional Representative of DISK[4], which we feel the need to quote not only for its clarity about how the trade unionists felt about the strike, but also because of its irony: “...Instead, the demands of the workers in 5 factories are expressed by the representatives they've delegated among each other. However none of the factory managements are taking these demands seriously and they aren't taking the necessary steps to meet these demands. Steps need to be taken in order to solve the problem soon. Otherwise the strike wave will continue and expand”[5]
The agreement for a ridiculously low pay rise between the union and a factory boss, for instance, is among the reasons triggering the strike. The workers who, when they figured out that the union negotiated a 45 TL pay rise, which almost means a zero rise, immediately went on strike in July. In fact Mehmet Kaplan, the Antep Regional Chairman of the Oz-Iplik-Is union, was held in the factory by the workers for a while after being met with slogans such as “sell-out chairman, sell-out union!” So the workers had concretised their direct strike against a union from the start.
As the strike went on, the lackeys of the bourgeoisie continued their suppression through different means. The state, which sent its packs of dogs to the factories right from the beginning of the strike wave, tends to be very disturbed by workers' actions which aren't controlled by the unions. The “advice” given the workers by the policemen during the strike were striking: “If you don't accept this, you won't find work anywhere else ever again. The bosses can only afford so much. Accept it and go back to work.” It seems the actual police force is as knowledgeable as the police of the factories, the unions.
On the eleventh day, the strike ended with real gains for the workers. Among the gains was a rise in wages from 780 TL to 875 TL. The workers in the Motif Textile factory will go back to work with 905 TL a month. Also thanks to this strike, the workers will get a 10 day bonus in every major national holiday.
The bomb attack which led to the deaths of 9 civilians in Antep right after the strike quickly came to dominate the atmosphere in the city and dispersed the air created by the strike. In a country like Turkey where the public agenda is too easy to manage and very changeable, the news, which as in all other countries is managed by the bourgeoisie, is used to stop such movements from meeting up with the rest of the class. In fact the ruling class does everything it can to prevent the rest of the working class from even finding out about such strikes. For instance, while the significant Turkish media companies repeatedly reported the massacre of the South African miners by the police, this strike in the country they operate was evidently not seen fit to be reported, even as the tiniest piece of news in the television or the newspapers. Of course we are not surprised: it’s their public agenda to manipulate. And the workers who said the strike is ours have strengthened themselves.
The bosses in some of the factories want to make the workers sign documents saying “I regret participating in the movement”. Against these maneuvers of the bosses, who are capable of all sorts of repressive measures, the workers are refusing to sign such documents.
This strike is a corner stone for the working class movement in Turkey which progressed as a series of isolated struggles in single factories and workplaces after the TEKEL tobacco workers struggle, such as the struggle of the workers in Hey Textiles who were laid off for no good reason, and the Turkish Airlines strike.
Certain details highlight the significance of the strike. The workers managed to meet almost all their needs throughout the struggle aside from some limited small aid which was given later during the strike. They acted together in subjects such as food, transportation and so on, and they took all their decisions with a committee they had formed among each other. One of the most important qualities of the strike was the fact that the workers had found a way of acting outside the union and among the most important gains of this self-organised strike is the fact that the workers took the initiative to take the struggle into their own hands. For the criticisms towards the union during the strike demonstrate that this is now a burning question for the workers: We don't need the union in our struggle.
Besides, all the bourgeois left press writes on this strike, which was fully independent of the unions and was even against them, is that the workers will be discussing the need for stronger unions. The claim that the workers will discuss this when their struggle has been concretised in a place other than the union exposes another political maneuver. So instead of writing about the wildcat action itself, the bourgeois left can only make news corresponding to their trade unionist and pro-capitalist programs.
Also, we see a remarkable difference when we compare the duration of struggles or strikes controlled by the unions and the ones which aren't. The former, while producing a wide anger against the union formations which are nothing but the apparatus of the state, also cause exhaustion and despair on the part of workers, especially when it comes to taking control of their own struggle. However, we can see, also taking into consideration the experience of the working class world-wide, that the movements managed and directed by the workers themselves always make proletarian history, and tend to be very successful at boosting morale. For the workers organise, manage and as we've seen in this experience, conclude these struggles themselves. On the one hand, the active will of the workers to struggle wins in merely 11 days, and on the other hand the strikes organized by the unions can turn into dead ends, wasting the energy of the workers and pushing them into despair over a period of months; and this results in new bad experiences filled with bitter disappointments for the workers.
“Despite everything our wages rose from 780 TL to 875. This is not much, but is not a small pay rise. This strike might be over today; our struggle is not”[6].
The workers, following the end of the strike, took the decision to organise a congress by their own struggle committee where they will discuss their own problems. While there are differing accounts of the details of the strike in different bourgeois news sources, what we see as significant is the fact that the workers are creating discussion platforms to clarify the gains of this wildcat strike and the struggle.
“Unions are totally inconceivable without the existence of wage-labor, which in turn presupposes the existence of capital. As long as capital is held by individual owners engaged in competition and represented by many individuals and parties in the government, unions are at least able to bargain for an improvement in the conditions of labor exploitation. Their function is to regularize the sale of labor power, a function which has become indispensable to the modern capitalist system. From this fact comes their importance as complementary structures of the state, if not part of the state itself, everywhere in the world today (…) Their existence as an organization is entirely dependent on the continued existence of the labor/capital duality (…) However, they can side with capital as much as they choose without destroying this duality. On the contrary, they become increasingly indispensable to the maintenance of the capitalist system. As a result, the more gigantic and anonymous the concentration of capital, the more the unions take the side of capital and consider their role to be directly determined by the great ‘national’ interest”[7].
Nevin 3/9/12
[3]Hak-Is is a pro-government and Islamist trade union confederation.
[4]DISK, the Revolutionary (or Progressive, as it is nowadays translated by the confederation) Workers' Unions Confederation, is the main leftist union in the Turkish private sector.
[7]Munis, G. Unions Against Revolution, https://libcom.org/article/unions-against-revolution-g-munis [215]
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The transport sector is crucial for capitalism. Air transport is particularly important. In Turkey on 29 and 30 May a strike movement in the national air company, Turkish Airlines, paralysed Istanbul airport, with hundreds of flights being cancelled or delayed.
The working day in this sector can reach up to 16 or 18 hours. Some airlines oblige their flight crews to sleep in the same apartment to reduce labour costs when the employees are away from home. Pilots also have to work long hours, sometimes after no more than 2 or 3 hours sleep, in complete disregard for their health, their social life and human needs. Before the strike broke out, the industry minister carried out a real provocation by threatening to ban the right to strike “in strategic sectors like transport”. The unions, who had done nothing when hundreds of workers were made redundant at Sabiha Gokeen airport in Istanbul, or when workers were forced to work extra hours on miserable wages, now addressed an “urgent” message to the airline workers, calling on them to “exercise their right to strike”. And the workers did indeed launch an “illegal” strike on 26 May. Turkish Airlines used this as a pretext for massive sackings. Thus, when they were on the picket line, 305 strikers, most of them women, were sent a text informing them that “your work contract has been terminated”. All this shows that these attacks by the bourgeoisie were done hand in hand with the unions.
The workers therefore had to fight not only against the administration of Turkish Airlines, but also the unions they belonged to. Thus, the May 29 Association, formed by employees of the air companies as an organ of struggle independent of the unions, declared, mirroring the Platform of Workers in Struggle after the Tekel strike: “the administration of the Hava-Is union, of which we are members, has played a major role in the fact that this justified protest was declared ‘illegal’ by taking no responsibility for an action which it had itself called. The bosses of Turkish Airlines count on taking advantage of this situation to get rid of some employees and treat others almost like slaves. Does the administration of Hava-Is lack experience so it could not foresee what would happen when it left hundreds of its members on their own against the administration of Turkish Airlines? What kind of trade union mentality does that reflect?”
The bourgeois left has waged a campaign deploring the lack of support for the workers shown by the president of the union, who also described the May 29 Association as “dividers of the struggle”. On the contrary, the Association puts the accent on the importance of solidarity and has called for the extension of the movement to defend the interests of the working class as a whole and for the organisation of assemblies open to all proletarians.
Arno 31/8/12
The new ‘Socialist’ government in France came to power with the slogan “the change is now”. But like the previous government, the new one has made use of the summer period to mobilise its cops against gypsies. The forces of repression carried out a real manhunt in the suburbs of Lille and Lyon. Nothing like the summer holidays, when so many people are away, to push through such brutal measures with less risk of any reaction from the population.
The fact that the Socialists are carrying out the same policies as the UMP government should come as no surprise. In the 1980s, the Socialist government built up a real arsenal of repression against immigrants[1]. The ‘Voix des Roms’ association has commented ironically that the new minister of the interior, Manuel Valls, “could wear the UMP colours in 2017”. So there’s no ‘betrayal’ here, even if, during his presidential campaign, François Hollande hypocritically declared “we can no longer accept families being chased from one place to another”[2].
In reality, this persecution of marginal, vulnerable populations, who are easily criminalised, is a general practice of the bourgeoisie. All governments, whatever their political colouring, are obsessed with ‘public order’ and are always looking for scapegoats, above all in a time of crisis. Thus, at almost the same moment that Valls and his cops were doing their dirty work in France, the Greek police in Athens were engaged in a vast anti-immigrant operation, baptised ‘Xenos Zeus’, in which 1595 people were arrested and 6000 more were issued with summons. The real aim of this was to criminalise illegal immigrants and blame them for the dramatic economic situation, when they are its first victims. The Greek minister Nikos Denias came out with this nauseating statement about the operation: “in the name of your patriotism and the survival instinct of the Greek citizen, I ask you to support this effort. The question of illegal immigration is one of the country’s biggest problems, along with the problem of the economy”[3]. The police were so violent that an Iraqi they were chasing was killed.
The Italian bourgeoisie uses the same methods in hunting gypsies: very regularly, camps are viciously destroyed in Milan and Rome. In Germany, although the Nazi past imposes a certain level of discretion, the 10,000 gypsies who fled the war in Kosovo are also fearfully expecting expulsions since Berlin decided to kick out 2500 people a year. Even in a ‘social’ country like Sweden, where 80% of gypsies are unemployed, begging is a pretext for deportation. 50 gypsies have already been deported this year[4]. We could multiply examples of this kind of contempt and terror[5].
The fact that France is being put under scrutiny by the European Commission over its ‘management’ of the gypsies is just hypocrisy, like the dishonest proposals of politicians who use similar tactics. Thus, Manuel Valls, who claims that his policies have nothing to do with the methods of Nicolas Sarkozy, uses exactly the same justifications as former foreign minister Bernard Kouchner when he defended the former president over his measures against the gypsies: “the president of the republic will never stigmatise a minority on account of its origins”[6]. A real carbon copy! Similarly, Michel Rocard, when the Sarkozy team was in place, exclaimed “we haven’t seen this kind of thing since the Nazis!” In response, we got a lot of stories about ‘problems of hygiene’, ‘criminality’, ‘threats to public order’ being handed down by the team in power, and they are being repeated today.
Behind both the open crudity and the hypocritical concern of the ruling class lies the cold mechanics of capital. The working class can only express its anger and indignation in the face of this barbarity. RI 5/9/12
[1] The Joxe law, arrests and deportations under the minister Edith Cresson, etc.
[2] Cited in www.ldh-france.org [220]
[3] www.lepoint.fr [221]
[5] In Britain of course we have had the Dale Farm evictions of travellers and gypsies, and more recently the new laws against squatting and the expulsion of foreign students.
[6] Cited in Révolution Internationale 415
Governments everywhere are cutting jobs, services and wages in the attempt to reduce sovereign debt. Sometimes they still increase borrowing, but that’s another story.
In Britain, in August, the government announced the success of its efficiency savings for the year 2011/12. Included in the list of savings were reduced spending on consultants, cutting staff, cutting services, stopping IT projects, making more processes digital, renegotiating with suppliers, reducing building costs, avoiding major projects, and other forms of avoiding waste.
In the campaign against waste in the public sector there has been a widespread introduction of what are known as Lean practices. These are based on the Toyota production system. It could be argued that the need to recall millions of Toyota vehicles in recent years was not a good advertisement for such a way of working, but governments have a habit of following fashions in such things.
In dealing with waste, the Lean/Toyota approach means eliminating, among other things: unnecessary product/file movements, people moving more than is needed, unnecessary waiting, overproduction, duplication, over-processing, and defects that have to be fixed (get it right first time). In practice it means a good old fashioned time and motion study of all working practices, so that time is spent more and more on productive activity. Efficiency savings end up in focussing on individual workers and how much the employer can get out of them.
That efficiency savings should be among the watchwords of modern governments would not have surprised Frederick Winslow Taylor whose Principles of Scientific Management was published in the US just over a hundred years ago in 1911. Taylor’s approach to getting the most out of workers was brutal but effective. In the 1880s he was able to reduce the number of workers shovelling coal at the Bethelem Steel Works from 500 to 140 without loss of production. Every part of a work process was timed with the aim of identifying what could be omitted from the process, and which workers should take on what task.
In the Principles Taylor had a very low view of workers – “the natural laziness of man is serious”. But he also knew that straight repression was not the best way to exploit workers. He described his approach as scientific, but it was as much ideological: “One of the very first requirements for a man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type. … Therefore the workman who is best suited to handling pig iron is unable to understand the real science of doing this class of work.” In the case of handling pig iron the best candidate for the job “was a man so stupid that he was unfitted to do most kinds of laboring work, even.”
Critics of the Taylorist method saw it as dehumanising in the way it exploited, deskilled and alienated workers. In reality “Scientific management did not - as Taylor liked to claim - ensure that workers ‘look upon their employers as the best friends they have in the world (!)’ Rather, it sowed class conflict on an epic scale” (Mike Davis https://libcom.org/history/stopwatch-wooden-shoe-scientific-management-i... [226]). Describing the wave of strikes in the US between 1909 and 1913 Davis says that “It is particularly significant that the storm centers of these strikes were located in the industries being rationalized by scientific management and the introduction of new mass-assembly technologies”. This is hardly surprising as Taylor wanted workers to "do what they are told to do promptly and without asking questions or making any suggestions." (quoted in Davis op cit). This goes against human nature: unlike machines people are questioning and creative. Not for nothing did Lenin denounce Taylorism as the “enslavement of man to the machine”.
However, following the overthrow of the Russian state in 1917, Lenin thought that capitalist production methods could be adopted. In The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government Lenin wrote: “The Russian is a bad worker compared with people in advanced countries. It could not be otherwise under the tsarist regime and in view of the persistence of the hangover from serfdom. The task that the Soviet government must set the people in all its scope is - learn to work. The Taylor system, the last word of capitalism in this respect, like all capitalist progress, is a combination of the refined brutality of bourgeois exploitation and a number of the greatest scientific achievements in the field of analysing mechanical motions during work, the elimination of superfluous and awkward motions, the elaboration of correct methods of work, the introduction of the best system of accounting and control, etc. The Soviet Republic must at all costs adopt all that is valuable in the achievements of science and technology in this field.” This approach, along with the militarisation of labour and one-man management, seemed appropriate to some Bolsheviks in a period when the young Soviet Republic was surrounded and fighting for its life in war against the White armies and their imperialist backers. Other Bolsheviks, especially Left Communists like Ossinski, opposed the introduction of such methods, which undermined the capacity of the working class to direct production and was one of the factors that exacerbated the gulf and ultimately the conflict between workers and the Soviet state.
Taylorism was dictated by the needs of capitalist exploitation but in its pure form it proved to be inefficient in drawing on workers’ talent and potential. In time the bourgeoisie recognised the inadequacies in Taylorism, and crude Taylorist methods were mostly deemed obsolete by the 1930s. This didn’t, however, mean the end of time and motion measurement.
Among newer management theories have been the Theory X and Theory Y that were introduced by Douglas McGregor in the 1960s. Theory X assumes that workers are lazy and will only respond to the carrot and stick, to reward and punishment. Theory Y relies on workers’ self-motivation. Workers have to identify with the needs of their employers and bring their own initiatives to the work process, so that they end up taking the lead in their own exploitation.
Today, with the Lean practices introduced into major departments of the British civil service (including HMRC, DWP, MOJ, and MOD), workers have ‘efficiency savings’ as an integral part of their job. There are regular meetings (often daily) on work priorities; these are held standing up, for reasons of efficiency. Workers time the work processes, identify forms of waste, and propose changes in work practices. This ‘bottom-up’ approach goes along with an increasing emphasis on management being described as ‘leaders’. Efficiency savings are made from workers’ suggestions, the ‘leaders’ try to enforce impossible targets, and decide whose post is next to be eliminated.
As part of the precariousness of employment workers must now worry not only about losing their jobs, but also have to propose measures which, in the name of efficiency, might put them out of work. Human creativity and ingenuity can be directed towards the greatest of achievements, but they are manipulated or crushed within the brutality of capitalist social relations.
Car 7/9/12
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On Monday, September 10th 2012, 26,000 teachers in Chicago struck for the first time in 25 years and after years of suffering attacks on their benefits, wage freezes, and ever more appalling and degrading working conditions.
This strike is in continuity with those that have sprung up during the summer by Con-Edison workers in New York City, the janitors in Houston, the pizza workers at Palermo pizza factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin -to mention just some of the better publicized strikes- and, stretching back more than one year, with the Verizon workers strike, in New York City, and the Madison, Wisconsin public workers mobilizations. Teachers are finally catching up! As part of the working class, teachers have not been spared by the economic crisis and our rulers’ relentless attacks against their living and working standards. Yet, because of their position as a part of the public sector in charge of educating the future generation of workers to fulfill the needs of capitalism’s drive for profit and competition, teachers have been particularly denigrated and demonized by a brutal media campaign which has two fundamental aims:
1. To divide the working class, to pit one sector of it against another
2. To justify the draconian attacks against job security, benefits, and working conditions with the claim of a much needed “education reform”.
These attacks and media campaign are an international phenomenon taking place in France, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, and the rest of the world. The reactions have often been massive not only in the European countries but also in India, in Africa (Swaziland ) and Latin America. The mobilization of the Chicago teachers inscribes them in the international arousal of working class combativeness against the bosses’ attacks.
There are many reasons for teachers’ discontent. Regardless of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s claim that the strike has no economic cause and, on this ridiculous basis, his request that an injunction be brought against the ‘illegally’ striking union, there are plenty of economic concerns that have moved the teachers to strike: a longer school day and year; a freeze on health insurance contribution rates; the introduction of a new teacher evaluation tied to students’ test performance, i.e. an attack on job security, particularly in the context of the threatened closure of at least 100 schools; and more. The ‘wage increase’ peddled by the contract would not even be enough to pay for the extended school day and year, and they call it an increase! Are these not economic issues?? Only our bosses and rulers, who have no economic concerns to keep them awake at night, can conceive of these attacks as non-economic! But of course, teachers are totally correct in going beyond the economic issues. They command the respect of all their class brothers and sisters by fighting for their dignity as human beings, by refusing to subject their passion for teaching to a matter measurable by standardized tests; and by refusing to subject their students to the bosses’ mentality and practice that views human beings as objects to quantify according to the law of capitalist profitability and competition, reducing humans to mere commodity to sell or toss away. This in essence is the meaning of their vaunted education “reform”! It amounts to an actuarial calculation: how much are the bosses willing to ‘waste’ on public education in light of the restructuring of the workforce forced upon them by the relentless economic crisis of capitalism! We can only say to our fellow teachers: We admire and support your courage! You are an inspiration for all of us in your same conditions!
In the media, the ruling class and bosses express their concern at what this strike will mean for the perspective of re-electing a Democratic president versus a Republican. Are they worried that the working class will more and more be able to see through their smoke and mirror mystifications and realize that whether painted blue or red, the size, aims, and content of the attacks is virtually the same? If they are worried that the working class puts it in its head that the real struggle has to be waged in the streets, alongside other workers, and not at the ballot box, the working class would do well to reflect about the role each party plays in the implementation of the attacks, and hence ask the question: who is our real friend? Who do we need to turn to for help? Is the official “uniondom” the answer to this question? How can the answer be “yes”, when the union leaders negotiate with the bosses behind closed doors? How can it be possible they are our friends when contract after contract our working and living/economic conditions have deteriorated? How to believe them when they trumpet what to every worker is a defeat as a “victory” because it could have been even “worse”? Isn’t this what Karen Lewis has had the nerve to say when she peddled that Rham Emanuel scaled down his proposal of having the teachers evaluated on the basis of students’ test performance from 40% to 25%? But, if we cannot trust the official union, what else do we have?
The most effective way to wage a struggle is by establishing open General Assemblies, as workers have historically done and are re-learning to do. We have seen these first attempts at re-taking the destiny of the struggle in our own hands in Spain, during the Indignado movement, and here in the States, by the Occupy movement. What these movements point to is the need to create a space for open discussions where we can freely and creatively consider real solutions to our problems. We are the only “experts” and the accountability for our decisions should rest solely in the workers’ General Assemblies themselves, controlled by the workers themselves. When we are able to hold the struggle in our hands, it is possible to extend it to other sectors and workers, to parents and students, and, in this way, gain real strength, unity, and solidarity, and break free of the isolation in which our unions trap us! The sympathy that your strike has aroused in many other workers, even among parents who have been up to a million difficulties to find care for their kids, is a testimony to the urgent need to extend the struggle, to express real solidarity, to trust the rest of the working class. This strike has for now been drowned in isolation and teachers have returned to work without having gained anything in terms of the contract. But if teachers are able to gain in terms of the lessons about how to struggle more effectively in the future, and who our real class friends and enemies are, they will not have lost.
In the two weeks before the final ratification of the contract, teachers should meet to discuss and draw the lessons of this struggle, and prepare to break out of the isolation imposed by the union by going out to other workers and hold open discussion forums where decisions can be made collectively and can stay in the hands of the workers themselves.
Internationalism 10/9/12
At the time the papers said that “they came in triumph”; Cameron and Sarkozy went to Tripoli and Benghazi around a year ago in order to accept the cheers of a war-weary crowd and to “hail a new dawn for Libya”. This after supporting both anti and pro-Gaddafi factions of the Libyan state and shortly after killing an unknown number of Libyans as they “liberated” them from the grip of Gaddafi with bombardments from the air and their special forces on the ground. The war, contrary to early reports, was fully backed by American imperialism from the beginning, who, “leading from behind”, pushed the British and French to secure this vital oil region for their own interests while also opening up a further scramble among the other imperialist players to gain what influence they could. Germany, who played a back seat role during the war, seems to have done particularly well from Libyan contracts by dint of its economic clout and contacts; and German economic strength is a growing factor on the imperialist chessboard. The local and wider spread of imperialist barbarity goes beyond any possible economic advantages coming from the Libyan war. Another factor in pushing forward this war forward that must have weighed on the imperialist scales from the US point of view was the growing instability in the eastern Mediterranean with the post-Mubarak regime in Egypt suddenly ambiguous towards Israel and allowing Iranian warships to pass through the Suez Canal.
It's not that the first anniversary celebrations of such an important event have been muted; the one year on celebrations of the “triumph of liberation” from Cameron et al have been non-existent. Not surprising really. This was supposed to be the war where they finally learnt the lessons about Iraq in securing and rebuilding the nation after the fall of a tyrant. But, for the greater population of Libya, the “liberation” and its aftermath has brought nothing but more misery, with terror, intimidation, shortages, inflation and unemployment – one of the triggers of the original uprising – higher than it's ever been. The country itself is riven by various warring factions including a resurgent jihadist force linked to al Qaida. On August 27 the US State Department issued a statement warning US citizens against unnecessary travel in Libya adding: “Political violence, including car bombings in Tripoli and assassinations of military officers and alleged former regime officials in Benghazi, has increased. Inter-militia conflict can erupt at any time or any place in the country”. Simon Tisdall, who gave the quote in The Guardian on September 13, goes on to say about the breakaway army in Misrata controlling 30,000 small arms with “revolutionary brigades” controlling “more than 820 tanks, dozens of heavy artillery pieces and more than 2,300 vehicles equipped with machine-guns and anti-aircraft weapons”. Looking further afield in the region, the fallout of the war in Libya has spread more war and bloody instability throughout Mali and the Sahel giving a “new dawn”, if you like, to the Islamic fundamentalists of al-Qaida in the Maghreb. In Libya itself, the British Consulate in Benghazi had already been hit in June this year with the ambassador lucky to escape alive. It's these sorts of events that could well presage an Iraq-style breakdown along with an unremitting Afghan-type war. It's not a matter of America, Britain, etc., “learning the lessons” from their disastrous wars of the recent past, because imperialism generally, and these imperialisms in particular, can, whatever their intentions, only spread more chaos, instability and war.
The killing of US ambassador Stevens and three other embassy staff in Benghazi, September 11, is being put down by the US administration to reactions to a now notorious film denigrating Muslim beliefs. But the date is the clue and the way the supposed secret US safe house in Benghazi was also targeted, as well as the previous unpublicised warnings from the US Bureau of Diplomatic Security, suggest a much deeper and more worrying plot for the Americans and their allies. The attack was thought to be a pre-emptive assault against a CIA operation, which then necessitated a large number of US personnel to get out of the country quickly – according to officials in Washington.
It's more or less established that the al-Qaida linked Islamist brigade of Ansar al-Sharia was responsible for the US killings. The acting president of Libya's parliament, Mohamed al Magriaf, said he would be considering action against the militants and went on to say that this, the fifth attack on diplomatic targets in Benghazi since April, was “part of a wider campaign to destabilise Libya” (The Guardian, September 17). Magriaf was a leader of the National Front for the Liberation (Salvation) of Libya since 1981. He has historic links to the American and British establishment and his group was reportedly funded by the CIA and Saudi Arabia. It had hardly any support in Libya and this victor of the liberation and friend of the western coalition is presently president of the National Transitional Council government – a clear indication of the extent of western implantation in this so-called liberated country. But while Magriaf was “considering” action against the Islamists a quite extraordinary uprising of the local population took things into their own hands on September 22. After a demonstration of over 30,000 people in the afternoon against the militias, many hundreds, mostly unarmed young men, took on the militia at their compound, resulting in about 20 of them being killed, but driving the hated militias out. It wasn't just the anti-American Ansar al-Sharia that was attacked but the pro-government, pro-American Islamist militiamen of Rafallah al-Sahiti which was licensed by the government and answered to the Libyan Ministry of Defence. Since the end of the war there have been a small number of strikes and demonstrations in the country against the appalling conditions and there's been particular anger against the Islamist militias (and other militias) with their check-points, searches, kidnappings, swaggering around pointing their guns at anyone. But while there was certainly a kernel of social discontent underlying this mass movement, it has already been recuperated as “support for the army and the government” and in the west, reported as a “pro-democracy movement” (Channel 4 News, 23.9.12). Jihadist militias were also attacked and driven out of Derna in the east by the local population. Derna has long been a hot-bed of Islamic fundamentalism, tolerated, perhaps encouraged by the Gaddafi regime with the idea of creating a problem that it can then be seen “dealing with” in order to curry favour with the Americans and British.
The recent history of British imperialism's manoeuvres in Libya is marked by its particular low cunning and ruthlessness in dealing with the “Arab World”. Britain welcomed and sheltered anti-Gaddafi terrorists in the 1990's and paid large sums of money to an anti-Gaddafi al-Qaida cell in Libya in 1996. Then after Tony Blair's embrace of Gaddafi in 2004 the former British terrorist allies were delivered up, rendered in fact, to the Libyan regime's torturers. The deadly imperialist circus lurches around and once again the western powers backed the fundamentalists in the war against Gaddafi and now begin to reap the whirlwind. There's nothing new about this, it's just that it get progressively worse and more dangerous. It was the CIA and MI6 that set up the fundamentalists and the Taliban for the war across the AfPak border. The Americans and British in Iraq worked alongside the forces of Islamic fundamentalism in order to pursue their own aims and protect their own backs. In Basra particularly, the British used the Shia fundamentalists for both self-protection and to keep the local population under control. It was the Americans that funded, trained and armed the Chechen jihadists for their war in Bosnia in the 90s. And today, in Syria, the Americans and British are once again using the forces of Islamic fundamentalism to further their own aims. There have already been links here between the Foreign Office and the Muslim Brotherhood and the US has transported Libyan elements, some religious, through Turkey and into Syria. It's not that they keep on making the same mistakes, or that they don't learn from their mistakes – it's that imperialism has nowhere else to go except to arouse and utilise the forces of reaction, death and destruction. Imperialism is itself the condemnation of the impasse of decadent capitalism. And the forces of Islamic fundamentalism are particularly useful to the major imperialisms. There's something distinctly ironic in that while a large number of mainly peaceful protests by Muslims are taking place against another crap movie, the activities of the governments of Britain and America have been engaging in the financial, military and political support of the worst kind of Islamic fanatics across the most sensitive regions of the world. We have the Orwellian vision writ large of the bourgeoisie actively promoting the very forces of destruction that we are supposed to be at war with.
The famous film, or rather the clip of it, debasing the prophet Mohamed, has been used by all sides. It's been used by local religious and political leaders to shore up their support base by mobilising demonstrations and in one case a Pakistani minister offered a bounty on the film-makers' head. Over twenty people were killed in Pakistan in demonstrations against the film and the perceived insult. It isn't too difficult to raise a demonstration against the US in Pakistan given the pounding the country is receiving from the US military[1]. On the other hand, in the west, the issue around the film (or its trailer) has been turned into one of the defence of “our way of life”, “freedom” and “defence of free speech” with Salman Rushdie and various other artistic personalities wheeled out to testify in favour of democracy.
There is another, growing, factor of the decomposition of capitalism here that the ICC has long analysed: the historic weakening of US imperialism following the collapse of its Russian adversary and the appearance of the “New World Order” of 1990. The centrifugal tendencies of an imperialist free-for-all are increasing as are the challenges posed to US domination. Relations between the US and Israel are growing ever more estranged and bitter, and with a US ally like Pakistan who needs enemies? Despite their apparent rapprochement, there are tensions between the US and Turkey and its role in the region. The governments, such as they are, of Iraq and Afghanistan tend to go their own way and despite a $1.2 billion “grant” to it every year, a week ago Obama refused to describe Egypt as an “ally”. And despite enormous, sustained, high-level diplomatic efforts, the USA's “Asia/Pacific Vision” is already being seriously undermined by the actions of Chinese imperialism. As the “triumph of the liberation of Libya” turns rancid, it offers one more example of the weakening of US imperialism and its British and French allies – for now - and a further twist down in the spiral of imperialist chaos, instability and war.
Baboon. 25/ 9/12
[1]There was a report out yesterday from Stanford and New York Universities that US drone attacks on the Pakistani tribal areas have a “militant kill rate” of just 2% and the latest wheeze is to send in another Hellfire missile some time after the first attack. This was originally a terrorist tactic to get the rescuers, emergency services, relatives and concerned passers-by. These are a real weapon of terror beyond the scale of the Nazi V-I rockets. They are visible in the air all day and can be heard all night. Any gathering, wedding, party, whatever, is a potential target. This is another example of the Obama administration going beyond the Neocon's wildest dreams. The British currently have an advertisement running on TV for the air force telling the lie that there are no civilian casualties. Otherwise the British military and media remain very quiet about the increasing number of British drone attacks.
On 15 September, 700,000people hit the streets of Lisbon and 30 other towns and cities in Portugal to demonstrate against the austerity policies of the new government of Pedro Coelho. The 7% increase in the TSU – Single Social Tax – for the workers, together with a 5.75% reduction in the contributions of the bosses, was behind this spontaneous outbreak of anger which outflanked the official unions. The demonstration had been organised largely through social networks. Faced with the massive scale of these demonstrations, the government temporarily appeared to retreat. But there should be no illusions: this will only be to come back more effectively tomorrow with the same measures, and more besides, with the assistance of unions like the CGTP (General Confederation of Portuguese Workers), who next time will be better placed to occupy the terrain, as they have been doing for more than a year, and make their own contribution to getting the austerity measures through. The CGTP reacted fast to regain control of the movement. It immediately called for a new demonstration policed by its own stewards and under its own slogans for the 29 September...a demonstration which was much less well attended.
In Greece, following the third general strike called by the unions, the Pame union in particular, there were new demonstrations on 26 September in Salonica and Athens, drawing over 30,000 workers. The anger was such that we once again saw new violent clashes with the police, including between striking policemen and other forces of order!
In Spain, tens of thousands of demonstrators came to express their rage on 25 September in front of a parliament protected by 2000 police officers. There were outbreaks of wild police violence “like in the days of Franco” according to many witnesses. 5 days later, on 29 September, parliament was again surrounded.
In Italy, 30,000 civil servants were on the streets of Rome on 28 September to protest against a new series of austerity measures dealing with pensions and “re-grading”.
In short, the last week of September has seen rising anger in a number of European countries in response to the brutality of the attacks and the endless succession of austerity plans.
The governments as well as the opposition parties and unions pin responsibility for these measures on the ‘Troika’ composed of the EU, the Central European Bank and the IMF. All these people want us to believe that the problem of the crisis can be solved country by country and try to fill our heads with the illusion that the whole world is not in the same boat, that some countries can avoid the worst, can get their economy going again if they make the necessary effort. The reporting on the economic situation of the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) has the aim of reinforcing the false idea that things aren’t so bad in Britain or France, who are in fact carrying out the same kinds of attacks on our living and working conditions. And this is the lot of the working class all over the world: increasing exploitation, a growing battle to survive, and the whip of repression if we revolt.
The bourgeoisie does all it can to prevent us becoming aware that workers are under attack everywhere, to block the development of an understanding that we belong to one international class. This is why the media say very little about movements of resistance against austerity, unless they become too big to hide. And then they focus our attention on scary images of violence or on this or that weakness of the movement. And this is why it’s all the more important for us, the exploited, to look beyond the frontiers, to discuss these experiences, these present and past struggles, and draw the lessons for the struggles that lie ahead.
There is no way out of this crisis. This has to be clear and unambiguous. Although everyone wants a brighter economic future, this capitalist system can offer us only poverty and misery. For 30 years now they have been telling us that things will be better tomorrow, if only we agree to sacrifices today. But then every sacrifice just opens the door to the next one, which is even worse! It’s not simply a matter of the bad intentions of the bosses or the state. It’s the inexorable plunge into bankruptcy which imposes this implacable logic on the entire system[1].
Despite the growing anger, expressed by increasingly regular confrontations with the police, the official ‘days of action’ have proved to be useless. For decades we have seen that this kind of ‘action’ serves as a means of sterilising and containing the class struggle, lining us up behind union banners, dividing us up into different sectors, trapping us between police lines and union loudspeakers which prevent any real discussion.
The working class more or less knows this, but if it doesn’t affirm consciously and massively a clear understanding that it has to take charge of its own struggles, put forward its own demands, any advances in the movement will come to nothing.
Here the example of Spain is very striking. Last year, the movement of the Indignados was a real and powerful demonstration of the will of the population and of the working class to come together in a collective way, outside the trade unions, to look for and discuss the way to fight against the attacks and express disgust with the miserable conditions being imposed by the Spanish state. The most significant aspect was the creation of spaces for discussion in the street through a whole number of general assemblies, open to everyone, and to all the struggles being waged across the world. In Spain, when a worker from ‘abroad’ took the mic to bring his/her solidarity to the movement and sometimes to describe what was happening in the country they were from, the sympathy was immediate and palpable, the welcome warm and enthusiastic. At that point few national or regional flags were in sight and those who wanted to limit the struggle to the demand for regional independence were not especially welcome; in any case their speeches were not widely supported. And the Indignados movement did not stay locked up inside the borders of Spain. It had children in many countries from Israel to the USA and the UK with the Occupy movement.
The bourgeoisie itself is well aware of the potential danger in the ripening of such preposterous ideas in the minds of the exploited: from its point of view, it’s never a good thing for feelings of solidarity to be born in the course of workers’ struggles, above all when this happens on an international scale. We are now seeing a counter-offensive by the bourgeoisie, aimed at instilling the poison of nationalism and regionalism in the whole working class. Thus during the day of action on 15 September, the ‘social summit’ (CO, UGT[2] and 200 other platforms) was called in Madrid under the slogan “we mustn’t let them steal the country from us”. On 25 September an umbrella of organisations made up of a whole series of groups, from the classical left of capital like the CP to the decomposed remnants of the 15M movement, organised an action to protest “against the sequestration of national sovereignty by the markets” in front of the Chamber of Deputies. All this ended in confrontations with the cops (in which provocations by shady elements was obvious). The day after that, the most radical trade unions (in other words, the CGT and the CNT[3]) called, alongside nationalist unions like ELA, LAB, etc[4], for another general strike in certain parts of the state, and in others a day of struggle. In other words, calling on workers to struggle behind nationalist interests, which are not theirs. The real and serious danger of this kind of recuperation was underlined by the fact that on 15 September we had seen a million people taking part in a Catalan nationalist demonstration.
What was most promising about the Indignados movement and the discussions that took place within it was the hope for a different world. This hope, this self-confidence that the working class needs to develop, are powerful levers to breaking out of the traps set by a desperate bourgeoisie. This will make it possible to go beyond methods which can only end in demoralisation.
This will not come about through the touch of a magic wand but through a profound understanding that the only perspective for humanity is the one offered by a working class that is united internationally and heading towards the overthrow of this decaying social order. The gravity of the crisis brings with it a huge amount of anger, but it also has a terrifying aspect: it makes it clear that it’s not a question of beating this or that boss, kicking out this or that minister, but of a radical change in the system, of struggling for the liberation of the whole of humanity from the chains of exploitation.
Are we capable of doing that? Can we, the working class, carry out such a task? How could it come about? Given that capitalism can offer us nothing but mounting barbarism, all these questions are being raised in our minds, whether consciously or not. The proletariat does have the ability to unite, to make solidarity something real, but the path is never an even one, as Karl Marx noted in the early years of the workers’ movement:
“proletarian revolutions....constantly criticize themselves, constantly interrupt themselves in their own course, return to the apparently accomplished, in order to begin anew; they deride with cruel thoroughness the half-measures, weaknesses, and paltriness of their first attempts, seem to throw down their opponents only so the latter may draw new strength from the earth and rise before them again more gigantic than ever, recoil constantly from the indefinite colossalness of their own goals – until a situation is created which makes all turning back impossible, and the conditions themselves call out:
Hic Rhodus, hic salta!
- Here is the rose, here dance!”
Wilma 28/9/12
[1] Under the heading, ‘could you tell a bigger lie?’, we have to put the last editorial of the ‘revolutionary’ paper Lutte Ouvrière, which explains that there is no crisis, it’s all down to the bosses lining their pockets.....
[2] The CO (Workers’ Commisions) and the UGT (General Union of Workers) are the majority unions in Spain. The first is linked to the Communist Party, the second to the Socialists
[3] The CGT in Spain is an anarchist union, a split from the historical anarchist union, the CNT
[4] ELA and LAB are two Basque nationalist unions: the first one is ‘moderate’ (originally created to counter the ‘marxist and anarchist’ unions; the second is part of the abertzale (patriotic) left.
The film that appeared on Youtube on September 11, The Innocence of Muslims, is by all accounts a very poor and extremely stupid one, the product of a small-time Californian fraudster who claims to be a Coptic Christian. But for two weeks it was at the centre of the world’s attention. This denunciation of the prophet Mohammed and his followers, presented, among other caricatures, as immoral, brutal paedophiles, has provoked reactions throughout the Muslim world. Angry demonstrations have led to confrontations and violence aimed mainly at the USA, including the murder of the US ambassador to Libya.
These mobilisations, led by Salafist radicals, have been given a lot of coverage in the western media. But we are talking about a maximum of some tens of thousands of protesters scattered over a number of countries from Tunisia to Pakistan via Yemen. This isn’t really a lot when you consider that there are hundreds of millions of Muslims in the Arab countries alone, not counting the millions of Muslims who live in Europe or America.
It’s not a question of minimising the violence which took place, but these events have been deliberately played up to fuel the idea of the ‘Muslim danger’. In Germany Angela Merkal expressed her “great disquiet”, while in France Manuel Valls was shaken by “threat to the Republic” contained in the tiny demonstration at the Élysée which took place “without official permission”. In the US, we heard Hilary Clinton declare that “the Arab countries did not swap the tyranny of a dictator for the tyranny of the crowd”, referring to the “Arab revolutions” of spring 2011. And then we had the Pope calling for the eradication of fundamentalism (Muslim, obviously)!
In this concert of concern by the politicians, a few commentators did point out the evident ideological manipulation going on here, on both sides:
It’s clear that there was an escalation on both sides at a time when new military interventions and massacres are on the horizon. These kind of campaigns serve to prepare the ground on the ideological level.
The ruling class and all its fractions, whatever their religion, will use events like this to divide and intimidate the exploited. But above all, for all their hypocritical appeals for calm and reason, their aim is to justify new steps towards the barbarism of war.
Mulan 28/9/12
[1] We should reflect on the fact that this video was up for two days on Youtube, a branch of Google, whose charter says that “we will not authorise speech inciting hatred or which attacks or slanders a group on the basis of race, ethnic origin, religion, handicap, sex, age, veteran status or sexual identity”
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According to the TUC’s pamphlet ‘A future that works’, to the Labour party, to François Hollande in France, to the whole ‘left’, the present economic crisis is the fault of the bankers and need never have happened; but then again, getting into debt isn’t as bad as all that and by using a bit more of it we can grow the economy out of the recession.
We want to argue against all these ideas, not from a conservative point of view, but from a revolutionary one.
According to the TUC, the answer to the present recession and the accompanying austerity is to go for economic growth.
But ‘growth’ in this society (by which we mean the whole world economy, not just Britain) can only mean the accumulation of capital, the hunt for profit. And it is this growth which is at the root of the crisis.
Capitalism’s crisis is the product of its own contradictions, which would still be there even if there were no bonuses for the bankers and all the billionaires paid their taxes.
The TUC also talks about investing in a ‘green economy’, but a capitalist economy can never be green. Remorseless rivalry between companies and countries means that if you don’t go for all out growth, you get destroyed by the competition.
As for the idea that “there’s nothing dangerous” about countries being in debt, this not only plays down the astronomical, impossible to repay levels of debt weighing on the world economy, but ignores the fact that for several decades now, capitalism has been injecting itself with debt to keep itself from collapsing altogether. What happened in 2008 was just the point where the medicine of debt turned poisonous from over-dosing.
Capitalism has actually reached a historic dead-end. If it goes for ruthless austerity, it further restricts the market and makes the recession worse. That much in the TUC pamphlet is true. But if it follows the lead of Obama and the ‘left’, and tries to pay its way out of the crisis by printing money and racking up even more debt, it will pave the way to even bigger credit crunches while generating huge pressures towards runaway inflation.
If by some miracle capitalism was able to start ‘growing’ again it would pose an even greater threat to the natural environment which sustains our very existence. And increasing capitalist competition not only pollutes the planet, it accelerates the drive to war between capitalist factions and nations.
Wherever it turns, capitalism is faced with crisis and self-destruction. And whether the management team is ‘right’ or ‘left’, the system can only protect its dwindling profits by attacking the living standards of those who actually create wealth – the working class – through unemployment, precarious work, wage freezes, cuts in pensions and social benefits, the deterioration of housing, and all the rest of it.
Almost a hundred years ago, when they were faced with the choice between supporting the capitalist world war and defending the interests of the workers, the Labour Parties and TUC’s of the world chose the side of capitalism and war. When the working class in Russia, Germany and elsewhere tried to make a revolution against this barbarism, the Labour Parties and the TUC’s of this world chose the side of the counter-revolution. They have remained on that side ever since, and that is why we cannot look to them for honest answers to the present crisis of the system.
Faced with the austerity policies of the ruling class, the working class needs to respond. It can’t just lie low and hope the storm will pass. But to respond effectively we can’t use the old, outworn institutions that pose as our friends but in reality keep our enemies alive. We need forms of organisation that can unite us across divisions of job and union, where we can debate about the best methods of fighting and the overall goals of our fight; where we can make and enforce decisions, where we can exert our real power. The movement of the ‘Indignados’ in Spain or similar revolts in Greece and the Middle East have given us a glimpse of what happens when thousands of the exploited – students, unemployed, precarious workers - assemble on the streets, seek to take control of social life, and recognise that they are part of a world-wide struggle. But these kinds of movements can only move onto a new level if the employed working class adds its decisive weight by taking up the challenges they posed: self-organisation in assemblies; extension of resistance across all national borders; a struggle not just against this or that aspect of capitalism, but against capitalism as a system, against wage labour and production for profit.
Revolution will be dismissed by the ‘realistic’ politicians of the left as a utopia. But the utopians are those who think that capitalism can be saved, reformed, or improved. Revolution is not only possible: it’s a necessity if humanity is to have any future at all.
International Communist Current
Write to us: [email protected] [239] or BM Box 869, London WC1N 3XX
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This article is available as a leaflet here [238] to download and distribute. If you wish to help us distribute it during the TUC rally on October 20th in London then please get in touch via email [240].
We are publishing below the translation of an article written by Internacialismo, our section in Venezuela, which was written before the election result was announced.
The presidential elections of 7 October in Venezuela represent a moment of heightened tension between bourgeois factions: the ‘Chavistas’ and the opposition parties. The latter, grouped together in the Platform of Democratic Unity have chosen Henrique Capriles as their candidate, while the official power is counting on its perpetual candidate, Hugo Chavez, who disposes of his party apparatus and hundreds of millions of bolivars1, to win votes, mainly among the working masses, who have been ground down since the arrival of the Chavista regime and before that by thirty years of political confrontations.
The rise of Chavez was the product of the decomposition of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie, in particular the political forces which governed the country prior to his coming to power in 1999. Because of his strong popularity, various sectors of capital supported him, with the aim of struggling against very high levels of corruption, of re-establishing the credibility of official institutions and above all of the government. In other words, of improving the system of oppression and exploitation in the interests of the nation and thus of the bourgeoisie. The opposition forces, though weakened, quickly entered into a trial of strength with the regime, most notably at the time of the coup d’Etat in 20022 and the blockade of oil production at the end of the same year. This proved fruitless in the end and merely reinforced the power of Chavez, who was re-elected in 2006.
After more than a decade of Chavismo, the crisis has pushed the different factions of the bourgeoisie into dispute over the central state power. The opposition forces are benefiting from the regime’s loss of popularity, which can be traced to two main causes;
the growing decomposition of the Chavista regime, which we characterised in a previous article in Internacialismo: “New civil and military elites have been formed and divided up the posts at the top of the state bureaucracy. They have failed in their aim of overcoming the problems accumulated by previous governments since they are much more concerned with their personal interests and with dividing up the booty from the oil industry, resulting in an exponential growth in corruption and a progressive abandonment of serious state management. This situation, intensified by the megalomania of the Chavez regime which has the ambition of extending the “Bolivarian revolution” to the whole of Latin America, has little by little emptied the state coffers. It has also exacerbated the political and social antagonisms which have raised the inability to govern to a level even worse than it was in the 90s”.
the intensification of the crisis of capitalism in 2007 acted against the aspirations of the Chavez regime to develop its project of “21st century socialism”. Although Chavez, like other governments, declared that the Venezuelan economy was “armour-plated”, in reality the world crisis of capitalism has shown up the historic fragility of the national economy: it is utterly dependent on the price of oil. To this can be added the fact that the regime’s populist schemes have been made possible by attacks on wages and the reduction or suppression of ‘gains’ like the collective agreements which Chavismo has got rid of, referring to them as ‘tips’ for the workers.
The strategy of the opposition candidate, Henrique Capriles, based on daily ‘house to house’ tours trough the towns and villages of the country, is to exploit the failures of Chavismo and widespread feelings of social abandonment. According to the opinion polls there has been a sharp rise in his popularity. His tactic is to propose social, populist programmes similar to those of Chavismo, while avoiding direct confrontation, and it has brought results. Hugo Chavez, on the other hand, has put a lot of emphasis on the (pseudo-)success of his projects towards the poor and on his quality as the “guardian or order” against the anarchy threatening Venezuelan capital as a whole.
Despite all its weaknesses (losing control of provincial governments, conflicts of interests in its own ranks, the illness of Chavez, etc) Chavismo does not intend to abandon power and in the last few month has not neglected any details in areas where the opposition might draw an advantage: it has introduced obligatory membership of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (the Chavista party) for public sector employees; placed obstacles against votes from abroad, especially from Miami and Spain; neutralised the parties which support the opposition (PODEMOS, PPT, COPEI) through convictions pronounced by the supreme court, etc. To which can be added the control exercised over the media and the means of communication which gives Chavez a decisive advantage at the level of election propaganda.
Chavez has also elaborated other strategies aimed at helping him win. He as already announced that the opposition has a plan for denouncing electoral fraud. To carry through this strategy, he is relying as always on the state power and especially the army, which has abandoned its status as “professional force at the service of the nation, non-decision making and apolitical” in favour of being “a patriotic, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and Chavista force”. We can understand from this what lies behind the frequent threats made by Chavez and his entourage against opponents.
The party in power also accuses the opposition of refusing to recognise the results that are due to be announced by the National Electoral Council (NEC): this is why the government is issuing an alert to prevent opponents from agitating the population when the NEC announces the triumph of Chavez. For its part, the opposition has explained that it can’t give a blank cheque to the NEC, which is both judge and participant, and which has issued sanctions against the opposition without criticising the government’s manipulation of the rules. To sum up: this is simply a confrontation between bourgeois parties in which each clan is using the tricks typical of that class to boost its bid for power.
The Venezuelan proletariat has to stay on its guard and not become the victim of this ‘final battle’ between the forces of national capital, who are trying to mobilise it behind their power struggles.
Chavismo has some very powerful ideological weapons for mobilising the “poor” and the “excluded” who still hope that Chavez will keep to his promises, especially those about the “Missions”, which are in theory directed “against the predatory bourgeoisie, who want to go back to the past”. But Chavez is also preparing for an armed confrontation if that proves necessary. He knows he can count on the Bolivarian militia and on the shock troops constituted in various “collectives”, both in Caracas and in the interior of the country, and which are armed by the state.
The opposition forces, for their part, although they don’t have a public strategy in case there is a show of strength, won’t stand with folded arms. They include traditional parties like the social democratic Democratic Action, which has decades of experience in the organisation of armed “collectives”. In the ranks of the opposition, there are also organisations of the left who supported Chavismo in the beginning and are well acquainted with its methods of confrontation.
The workers must be aware that it is impossible to fight against precarious work and exploitation by changing the government. The crisis of capitalism will remain and deepen whoever wins, Chavez or Capriles. Both will bring in austerity programmes.
We must not fall into the ideological trap being dug by those who claim that this election is about ‘communism vs democracy’ or ‘the people against the bourgeoisie’. Chavez and Capriles both defend state capitalist programmes that can only be based on the exploitation of the Venezuelan proletariat.
The electoral dispute is just a moment in the confrontation between different factions of national capital. The proletariat must refuse to let itself be pulled into the conflicts between bourgeois gangs. It has to break with democratic ideology, draw the lessons from its own struggles, continue its efforts to rediscover its class identity, its unity and solidarity.
Revolucion Mundial, October 2012.
1 The local currency
2 Between 11 and 13 April 2002 the coup, led by Pedro Carmona, vainly tried to dislodge Chavez from power
The article we are publishing below appeared in Acción Proletaria, the paper of the section of the ICC in Spain.
In September 2011, the education sector workers in Madrid reacted to 3000 layoffs and the lengthening of the working day with mass general assemblies that united teachers, students and all the workers in the education sector. The five unions in the field of education did their best to stifle the initiative and to control the struggle. What was the outcome? The mass assemblies were replaced with "inquiries" and with meetings of union committees, keeping the teachers isolated, and successive demonstrations got progressively smaller. In the end, the struggle was terminated and the measures of the regional government eventually prevailed.
In February 2012, the students of Valencia, who had experienced brutal repression, went out onto the streets each day and called for workers' solidarity. This movement spread across Spain and the central government had to withdraw its repressive measures. The unions were quick to take control of the struggle against repression and against reform of the Labour Code. They organised a one-day "general strike"- to let off steam – for March 29th, which was a huge con. Deceiving many workers, they promised new mobilisations. They limited themselves to calling for demonstrations at the end of April and on May 1st. The result: the state introduced the reform of the Labour Code with all its dramatic consequences.
On July 11th, the government of Rajoy adopted the worst austerity program for over fifty years. The unions remained silent. But on the same day spontaneous demonstrations broke out, especially in Madrid. After this, the unions "woke up" and offered their "loyal services": they called for demonstrations across Spain on July 19th. But in view of the support and the rage inside the population, the unions - once again - postponed the action to a later date, and as far away as possible: a march on Madrid for September 15th, a referendum for October, a new one-day "general strike" scheduled for who knows when. This amounted to throwing a bucket of cold water over the struggle and the workers' anger!
A few days after the (postponed?) demonstration on July 19th, we learned that the leaders of the CCOO and the UGT had met Mrs Merkel in early July. This visit was combined with another one to the Moncloa Palace to discuss with Rajoy. We are left in no doubt about the purpose of these secret meetings: Merkel, the Spanish government and the unions in all probability agreed on a strategy against the workers.
And, before the March 29th strike, Rajoy had met separately with each union leader. The Vice-President of the Government even acknowledged holding 33 "technical meetings" between government representatives and the unions!
This is nothing new. Throughout history, many blows have been struck against workers through secret meetings between its enemies (governments) and its false friends (the unions and left parties). In 1980-81 when Poland was hit by a massive strike, at the time of the supposedly "Communist" regime, the trade union Solidarity gradually demobilised the workers to make the coup de grace possible: the martial law declared by General Jaruselski, the then Head of State, on December 13th 1981. However, two days before the coup, a secret meeting was held between the general, the Cardinal Primate of Poland and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa![1] You don't have to be especially clairvoyant to see that this cabal prepared the repression, sending hundreds of workers to their deaths and thousands of others to prison, with the army flooding the mines with the miners trapped inside!
We know perfectly well what the governments and employers do. Nobody has any illusions where they are concerned. They don't even attempt to hide their desire to impose the worst sacrifices on workers. But what do the unions do? What is their role?
A first task of trade unions is to organise mobilisations which, in reality, only demobilise and divide workers. The "struggles" led by the CCOO and UGT only serve to dampen their spirits. The union appeals are systematically inopportune: when people are eager to struggle, the unions demobilise and make no appeals, whereas when people are tired and disoriented, they want to step up the "militant activity". Many people are sick of the posturing with the "general strike days", the "protest marches", the isolated struggles confined to one particular sector or to one particular company.
This is the problem that the miners' strike had to face. The miners were trapped in a struggle to "save the nation's mines". All the combativity and all the anger were channelled into sterile confrontations with the police to block the rail lines or highways. However, on July 11th during the miners' march on Madrid, many workers in the capital joined the demonstration in solidarity and entered the struggle on their own account. The unions then hastily sent the miners back to where they had come from, cancelled the appeals for support and promised some future mobilisations but on dates far into the future.
The unions called for the demonstration on July 19th with the slogan: "They want the country to fail!" They say that Merkel wants to see Spain suffer and the Rajoy government behaves like a willing servant. The aim of the struggle should be to "save the country" from Merkel and Rajoy.
Machiavelli, the philosopher who inspired governments of successive generations since the sixteenth century, said that a good statesman should make the state appear to defend its subjects. One of the best lies the exploiting minority uses to establish its domination is the assertion that the nation belongs to all of us, that the exploiters and the exploited are part of a community that share a common interest and a common bond. This "common interest" is the disguise for the specific and selfish interests of the capitalists.
What is the nation? The nation is the private property of a group of capitalists who conduct their operations from within a country. Defending the nation means defending private property. In other words, we, the workers, set aside our own interests and the future of all mankind to serve as pawns of the capitalists, and sometimes as cannon fodder in their wars against other capitalist states.
Rajoy continues repeating the claim that the austerity measures are being taken "for the good of all Spaniards." Each time, fewer people believe this lie. So, how is it possible to further credit the mystification that the national interest is "everyone's interest"? This is where unions play their part by deflecting the workers towards inter-classist demands, alongside the police, the "honest" politicians, the business leaders, the "entrepreneurs", etc.., demands which are based on saving the country.
Struggling in defence of the national interest is the best way to submit to austerity, layoffs, unemployment, evictions, and what is the ultimate sacrifice, war.
Just as they bind us to the national capital, the unions divide us from and oppose us to workers the world over, the only people on whom we can rely, the only people with whom we can forge a united front and solidarity against capital with a view to creating a new society, free of classes, states and national borders, a global human community.
Before the budgetary cuts, the unions proposed an alternative: a referendum on the Rajoy government. They argued that Rajoy has committed a fraud on the voters, he was elected on one programme and once in government, he adopted another. They are right, but this is what all governments do, not just Spain's, but in every country of the world! Elections are always a fraud because all parties promise things and are quick to do the opposite when they are in power. When they are in opposition, they claim they will do what nobody else will do, and when they are in government, they do what nobody else says they would do. This is the essence of the democratic state: the party that wins continues the work of its predecessor, just as the one that succeeds it will do too... And the alternative offered by the unions is a referendum to topple Rajoy for the fraud of the new government and for a new fraud! That would mean we are drawn into a permanent fraud! How can we break this endless chain of fraud?
Firstly we should break with the union proposal and refuse to participate in the referendum and in elections. The vote is always a trap and always a con. It is based on a supposed “free vote" exercised by a sum of supposed sovereign citizens. But it is a deception! Because we are subjected to alienating and atomising living conditions that put us in competition with one another; because we suffer from the intoxicating daily media and propaganda that condition our thinking; because the dominant ideology produces conflicts amongst us, which mean fighting for the interests of a minority instead of struggling for our own interests. Under such conditions, there is no other choice but to elect those that capital and the state have chosen for us. The vote given to one party or another will, no matter who is elected, only serve the needs of capital.
Also, voting only consists in delegating the management of our affairs to a minority of professional politicians and union leaders who are given a blank check to "defend us", when what they always do - and it can't be otherwise - is to defend the interests of capital and the state.
By setting the referendum as the goal of the struggle, the unions divide us and sabotage what would be the source of a solution to the serious problems facing workers and humanity: the general assemblies and the united, direct and massive struggle. These assemblies rely on the strength that comes from association: building unity on the basis of solidarity and empathy so that everyone can give the best of themselves for a common goal, debating, taking joint decisions and taking responsibility for all those decisions. The alternatives are clear: the struggle inside the unions, with its demobilisation and its traps, or the autonomous struggle of the exploited class.
Acción Proletaria, 31/08/12.
[1] We should also point out that Mr Walesa eventually went from being boss of the union to head of state in the 1990s.
Over the last several months, the bourgeois media has been in an uproar over the efforts of a number of Republican controlled state governments to restrict access to the ballot box in this November’s Presidential election. According to many analysts, there appears to be an orchestrated campaign by the national Republican Party to use Republican controlled state governments to impose new legal requirements for voting. Typically, this has involved passage of a new “Photo ID” law, which—under the guise of preventing voter fraud—requires voters to produce a state approved photo identification in order to cast a vote. Other tactics involve using federal government immigration records to purge the voter rolls of suspected non-citizens (Florida) or passing confusing restrictions on early voting (Ohio).
Many of these laws have been passed in staunchly conservative states such as Texas and Georgia (states that Republican Mitt Romney would almost certainly win anyway), but what seems to concern the main factions of the bourgeoisie is that these laws, and other tactics, are also being put into place in many of the “swing states” that will ultimately decide the Presidential election in November. Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida have all been in the headlines recently over the efforts of Republican controlled state governments to implement various measures to “suppress the vote.” According to the analysis, the Republicans are out to make it much more difficult for traditionally Democratic constituencies to have their votes counted. The photo identification requirements would almost certainly impact the poor, minorities, and the young (particularly students attending college out-of-state) the most—groups that tend to vote for Democrats. One Republican legislator in Pennsylvania is even on record as saying that the new photo identification law is what is going to allow Mitt Romney to win Pennsylvania and become the next President of the United States. [1]
For their part, the main factions of the bourgeoisie (centered in the Democratic Party)[2] have counterattacked against these Republican tactics with a concerted campaign around defending the right to vote, protecting the foundations of American democracy and preventing the Republicans from “stealing the election.” According to this narrative, many of these new voting restrictions, in particular the requirement to produce a photo ID, which can be very costly to procure for lower income voters, amounts to a “poll tax” reminiscent of efforts by racist authorities to prevent African Americans from voting in the pre-civil rights era South.
So, how should revolutionaries interpret these events? The ICC has long argued that voting in bourgeois elections is a complete distraction for the working class that ties it to the bourgeois state and prevents it from finding its own class terrain. We have often maintained that, under the conditions of state capitalism, bourgeois elections are mere moments through which the state manages society by keeping up the appearance of democracy, an illusion that keeps the working class from searching out its own answers for the burning problems that plague humanity. Bourgeois elections tend to be decided well in advance of Election Day, mainly through well–coordinated media campaigns that tend to bring the consensus candidate of the main factions of the bourgeoisie to power. While sometimes mistakes can happen (such as the fiasco of the 2000 Presidential Election), and sometimes election campaigns have been used to decide real differences within the bourgeoisie, under the conditions of state capitalism they tend to be mostly managed events that the working class would do best to avoid. [3]
So what about this current furor over “voter suppression”? What exactly is happening here? Is this a mere ideological campaign to try to reinforce the importance of participating in the “democratic process” among the working class or is there something deeper taking place that reflects a significant level of difficulty on the level of the cohesion of the US state? Do these events call into question the way revolutionaries have conceptualized bourgeois elections in the period of state capitalism?
The Growing Political Crisis of the US Bourgeoisie
First, in order to understand the nature of these voter suppression efforts, we need to review some of the main developments in the life of the bourgeoisie over the last 12 years (since the Bush-Gore election fiasco of 2000). While we cannot get into depth of detail here, it would be useful to review some of the main features of this period:
· The 2000 election was a total disaster for the US bourgeoisie. The consensus candidate of the main factions of the bourgeoisie, Al Gore, lost the election in the Electoral College despite winning the popular vote. This brought the clumsy, inarticulate and mostly incompetent George Bush into office, while it also called the democratic process itself into question among a significant percentage of the population. While Bush did not necessarily represent the right wing of the Republican Party, his cavalier style and lack of diplomatic skill would soon become a major problem for US imperialist relations. [4]
· In the aftermath of 9/11, the Bush administration launched the very unpopular invasion of Iraq, sparking major civil war in that country, bogging down the U.S. military in what many believed was an unnecessary war and completely alienating foreign governments and international public opinion.
· In the 2004 Presidential election, the main factions of the US bourgeoisie, despite the need for a major course correction, failed to unite behind John Kerry with enough time and resources to allow him to win the Presidency. Bush was thus reelected. Nevertheless, allegations of Republican “voter suppression” first came to the surface in this election with reports of poor and minority voters being forced to wait in line for hours to cast their votes in Ohio.
· Bush’s second term was characterized by continued chaos in Iraq and the completely botched response to Hurricane Katrina that saw a major US city completely devastated. In the 2006 mid-term elections, under a major media campaign around “changing the course”, the Democratic Party won control of both houses of Congress, with the intention of acting as a counterweight to a rapidly deteriorating Bush administration.
· As the 2008 Presidential election approached, the main factions of the bourgeoisie united around Barack Obama—a candidate with “rock-star” appeal—who it was thought could reignite the population’s enthusiasm for democracy after eight disastrous years under Bush. After a tough primary campaign against Hillary Clinton[5], Obama surged to the Presidency, just as the global economy entered the worst crisis in its history since the Great Depression.
· Although the Obama election provided a major boost to the Democratic illusion, over the course of his first term he has faced trenchant opposition to his policies from an increasingly belligerent and aggressive Republican Party, which after 2010 controlled the House of Representatives. In the 2010 mid-term elections, the Republicans road the Tea Party wave to power in Congress, but just as importantly, it won the governorship and control of state legislatures in a number of states that are considered toss-ups in Presidential elections.
· Since the 2010 mid-term elections, Obama has faced increased opposition to his agenda, including a strenuous legal campaign to have his signature health care reform legislation thrown out by the courts. Although Obama would ultimately prevail on this score in the Supreme Court, the Republican Party continues to vow to repeal it at the first opportunity.
This context suggests that the current furor over voter suppression is not simply an ideological campaign to reinforce the democratic illusion. It may have that effect, but the main factions of the bourgeoisie, who are now united behind Obama’s reelection, really do fear that Republican voter suppression tactics could ultimately throw the election to Mitt Romney. In a close election, in which the country is already mostly divided up into ideological camps, the success of this or that party ultimately lies in voter turnout. In high turnout elections, the Democrats will have an advantage (Obama’s victory in 2008), while a low turnout election will favor the Republicans (the Tea Party wave of the 2010 mid-terms). Although the key to the election is now voter turnout, this only makes the fight over the dwindling number of persuadable voters that much more intense.
Under the conditions of state capitalism, in which the state has tended to structure the political life of the bourgeoisie into more or less stable and predictable structures, it could be expected that getting the “wrong result” in an election probably would not have been a total disaster for the bourgeoisie. Both candidates would have been carefully vetted to prevent this and each party could be more or less trusted to pursue a broad general program that worked in the overall interests of the national capital as a whole. However, since the 2000 election, the US bourgeoisie is finding that this is less and less the case. While Bush’s incompetence may have been more of a personal flaw than a reflection of an overall crisis of the political system, today the US bourgeoisie is more and more finding out that the structures of its state, and most importantly its electoral process, no longer function as they used to.
Over the last decade and a half, the forces of social decomposition—which emanate from the inability of the bourgeoisie to find a solution to the economic crisis which dogs its system—have begun to work their effects on the bourgeoisie’s own political structures. In the United States, this has mostly been manifested as an ideological decline of the ruling class. While no faction of the bourgeoisie has been immune to this process, it has disproportionately affected the Republican Party to the point where it has been mostly taken over by its Tea Party right wing.
More and more, the Republican Party is becoming unable to function as a credible party of bourgeois government. Increasingly, it puts its own confused ideology ahead of attempting to solve the burning problems facing the entire national capital in a rational way. It is for this reason that the main factions of the ruling class have united behind Obama’s re-election. While Mitt Romney may not be a feverous right-wing ideologue on the order of Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich, in order to win the Republican primary he had to move dramatically to the right and openly embrace some of the more extreme elements of Tea Party ideology. While this may not be who Romney is on a personal level, for the main factions of the bourgeoisie it is clear that he simply cannot be trusted. At this point, there is no telling what a President Romney, faced with a Congress beholden to the Tea Party, that would expect to get its way, might be compelled to do. Would he repeal Obamacare? Would he fail to address the need for comprehensive immigration reform? Would his campaign clumsiness on foreign policy issues carry over into office? Would he be forced to implement some of the more extreme attacks to Medicare and Social Security, as advanced by his Vice Presidential running mate Paul Ryan, too quickly? For the main factions of the bourgeoisie, there are just too many questions about what a possible Romney Presidency would mean to comfortably support his candidacy.
The Structure of the US State and the Crisis of State Capitalism
Whatever the preference of the main factions of the bourgeoisie for a second Obama term, they are growing increasingly concerned that their efforts to bring this about may actually come to naught. Although Romney has, so far, proven himself to be something less than a blockbuster candidate, making one mistake after another on the campaign trail—something which the bourgeois media has relished in documenting—there is a growing realization that a concerted media campaign may no longer be enough to determine the outcome of a Presidential election.[6]
Today, when it comes to manipulating the outcome of Presidential elections, the American bourgeoisie is being haunted by two key developments:
· The ideological decay of a significant part of the ruling class (particularly the Republican Party), which correlates with the ideological hardening of society in general. More and more, American society is divided into two ideological-political blocs, each counting for slightly less than half of the voting population. Increasingly, society is divided into two opposed cultural narratives, between which little rational discourse and exchange is possible. As a result, politics degenerates more and more into a pure power contest. There are so few voters left that are “persuadable,” that each side engages in a increasingly fierce contest over the few remaining “undecideds” in which fewer and fewer tactics are ruled out.
· In the context of these ideological developments, the federal structure of the US state is now making it more and more difficult for the main factions of the bourgeoisie to dominate politics and set the agenda for the entire nation. State and local politicians are becoming increasingly emboldened in challenging federal authority, leading to an increasingly chaotic situation in which state and local officials can actually impact national politics.[7] In a situation in which the country is so closely divided, the most important figure in the Presidential election may not be President Obama or Mitt Romney, but the Secretary of State of Ohio—in whose hands rests the administration of the electoral process in his state.
It is in this context that the trend towards voter suppression in Republican controlled swing states has the main factions of the bourgeoisie so concerned. If these laws are enacted, it could exclude enough Democratic leaning voters to actually throw the election to the Romney against the preferences of the more rational elements of the ruling class. However, more and more they are beginning to realize that the structures of the US state they have inherited from the late 18th century mean that there may be little they can do about it. The Presidential election may be to decide the leader of the world’s last remaining super power, but the elections themselves are run by state and local officials. In the past, when the main factions of the bourgeoisie were capable of building a more unified national narrative about where the country should go, this might not have been such a problem. However, today, in the context of ideological decay, it is becoming a big impediment.
Fortunately, for the main factions of the bourgeoisie, the courts have taken a grim view of these Republican voter suppression efforts and many of these new laws have been invalidated or put on hold. Still, a great deal of concern remains that the mere fact that these laws were put forward will confuse enough voters that they will in the end have their desired effect, even if they do not reflect the current law. For example, although the courts in Pennsylvania have ruled that voters do not need to produce an ID to vote this November, they are still allowing local election officials to ask voters to produce an ID! This alone may be enough to dissuade enough voters to make a difference in a close race.
We appear to have reached a critical point in the evolution of the crisis of US state capitalism. Over the course of the twentieth century the trend in most of the central countries has been to extend the franchise as deeply as possible throughout society in order to give the working class the feeling of having a stake in national politics and to enroll them in the electoral circus. The more workers became enrolled in the electoral process, the less likely they would be to search for solutions to their problems on their own class terrain. As state capitalism became more entrenched over the course of this period, elections became more and more moments of a predetermined process. Extending the franchise was no longer dangerous to bourgeois class rule and in fact actually buttressed it. The bourgeoisie has every reason to make sure as many people are participating in the electoral process as possible, and certainly that is what we have seen: endless campaigns about “Rocking the vote,” commandments from hip hop moguls to their fans to “Vote or Die!,” voter registration drives in minority and poor neighborhoods, etc. In decadence, under the managed conditions of state capitalism, the extension of the franchise has been in fact, one of the central weapons of the bourgeoisie against the development of proletarian consciousness.
Today, however, the tables seem to have been partly turned on their head. A militant and aggressive faction of the bourgeoisie is now engaging in a more or less open campaign to suppress the vote, to make sure as few minorities, poor and young people vote as possible in order to reap the short-term electoral benefits for their preferred candidate. The furor over voter suppression thus reflects a very real concern on the part of the main factions of the bourgeoisie that the sanctity of the electoral process is now being put into question—by a faction of their own class!
This furor is thus another example of the increasing “short-termism” of much of the bourgeoisie faced with the deepening crisis of the society they preside over. In the case of US politics, this is manifesting itself in the increasing decay of the Republican Party, as it is more and more taken over by an extreme right-wing element that appears to have lost any serious consideration of the long and medium term needs and goals of the national capital. [8]
While the main factions of the bourgeoisie are certainly exploiting this situation to run a countervailing campaign on the terrain of bourgeois legalism about protecting the right to vote, this situation reflects more than a mere attempt to revive the democratic illusion. It is also an inter-bourgeois fight about what constitutes acceptable means for settling differences within its ranks. The main factions of the bourgeoisie must attempt to reinforce a level of respect for certain boundaries. After all, it was not that long ago that the main factions of the US bourgeoisie fought a long and messy campaign with certain retrograde elements in the South to fully extend the vote to African Americans, making sure that they would be included with the electoral process. Today, the fruits of that campaign are spoiling with the putrid air of ideological decomposition as an insurgent faction of the bourgeoisie puts the very right to vote itself into question. In the end, this fight is ultimately about the continuity of the bourgeois state and its policies.
The furor over voter suppression reflects the growing crisis of US state capitalism as a result of the reflexive effects of social decomposition on the life of the ruling class itself. While the main factions of the bourgeoisie continue to attempt to manage the economic crisis and national politics the best they can, they are increasingly hampered in this travail by the deepening fracturing of society under the weight of social decomposition. Just as society itself more and more splits apart, the bourgeoisie itself appears to be losing its discipline and the state is less and less able to enforce the level of unity necessary for it to act in the overall interests of the national capital.
While we should be careful not to overstate this process—there will certainly be moments in which the main factions of the bourgeoisie will be able to enforce its will—it is very real and is causing increasing difficulties in the functioning of US state capitalism.
When it comes to the electoral circus, these developments do not change the fundamental message of revolutionaries since the entry of capitalism into its decadent phase: the working class should have nothing to do with the bourgeois electoral process. The problems that continue to haunt capitalist society cannot be solved there. The road forward for humanity can only lie in a world beyond capital and this can only come from the working class struggling on its own class terrain. Participating in bourgeois elections can only distract us from this goal.
Part of the bourgeoisie may be currently attempting to keep us from voting, but this is not because the nature of the bourgeois electoral process has changed. It is only because they think this gives their faction a better chance of sniffing power. This is not our fight. Our struggle must take place outside of the electoral arena. Only our massive struggle, through general assemblies and workers’ councils can pose any real alternative to this system.
For revolutionaries, the developments in the internal life of the US bourgeoisie are not without significance. They stand as powerful evidence of the deepening crisis of bourgeois society, which more and more manifests itself as a crisis of state capitalism. While the fundamentals of the revolutionary analysis of state capitalism have not changed, we do need to be more attuned to the new realities of a period in which the reflexive effects of social decomposition pose novel developments that may not appear to fit some of our past schemas.
The nature of the electoral process itself may not have changed, but this does not mean that all factions of the bourgeoisie are united in the foresight that the extension of the franchise is in the overall interests of all those fighting to preserve bourgeois rule. While the old dictum, “If voting changed anything, they would outlaw it” remains true—this doesn’t mean that, today, some factions of the bourgeoisie might not want to outlaw it regardless, if it fits their short-term political interests.
--Henk
10/06/2012
[1] Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuOT1bRYdK8 [244]
[2] We understand that readers may demand a better definition of who exactly constitutes the “main factions of the bourgeoisie.” Indeed, this subject is something that must be developed further. However, it is clear that today the “main” or “central” factions of the US bourgeoisie are located in the center of the Democratic Party. While there are some moderate Republicans that belong to this faction as well (possibly Mitt Romney himself); it is clear that the Tea Party represents a faction that cannot be trusted to act in the overall interests of the national capital.
[3] Of course, corruption and allegations of “vote fixing” are not new in American politics even at the Presidential level. It is widely suspected by many that John F. Kennedy only won the 1960 election after his father and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley engaged in wide scale voter fraud through big city political machines allowing Kennedy to win a tight race against the sitting Vice President Richard Nixon. Still, this occurred in a much different period in which the differences between Kennedy and Nixon were not of such depth as to make the choice critical. Moreover, part of the 2000 post-election chaos involved paranoia on the part of Republicans that Al Gore was trying to steal the election by counting “dimpled chads” and the like.
[4] For more on the 2000 election see our article "Election of George W. Bush [245]".
[5] However, as soon as he won the Presidency, Obama was quick to offer the jilted Clinton a position in his cabinet as Secretary of State in order to preserve the unity of the Democratic Party.
[6] Of course, a large part of this difficulty lies in the changing nature of the media itself. The splintering of “news media” along ideological lines only further complicates the task of building a general narrative. This process has only deepened since Obama’s election. Today, it is becoming more and more problematic to talk about a “bourgeois media” in the singular, even if it remains true that some media outlets command more respect that others.
[7] The challenging of federal authority by state and local officials has been a constant theme in the debate over illegal immigration and Obamacare. See our article, Recent Supreme Court Rulings on ”Obamacare” and the Arizona Anti-Immigration Law: A Momentary Respite in a Downward Spiral at https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201207/5061/recent-supreme-court-rulings-obamacare-and-arizona-anti-immigration-law-moment [246]
[8] Republican voter suppression efforts are only tip of the many ways in which this party has succumbed to short-term thinking in a way that puts its long-term viability into question. Its often open hostility to minorities, frequent appeal to white racial fear and strong anti-immigrant streak threaten to make the Republican Party electorally irrelevant on the national level in the near future if current demographic trends hold. It is for this reason that some more moderate Republicans. such as former Florida Governors Jeb Bush and Charlie Christ, have openly questioned the direction of the party. Christ, defeated in his race for Senate by the Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio, has left the Republican Party altogether. All of this, of course, poses a different problem for the US state capitalism—the destabilization of its two-party system.
November 2012
All around the world people have seen the images of coastal towns’ destruction and the desolation of the hundreds of thousands left homeless –40,000 in New York City alone. They evoke the recent memories of last year’s tornado in Joplin, Missouri; of last year’s hurricane Irene; of 2005’s hurricane Katrina, to name only a few, and only the ones that struck the US. Each time the same questions are raised: Why, with growing awareness of the link between of global warming, rising sea levels, shifting sea currents and weather patterns, and more frequent and violent storms, is nothing done to prevent similar catastrophes from inflicting the damage which is to be expected? Why are the so-called rescue efforts never enough to address the needs of the population? Why aren’t the pre-storm evacuations better planned and organized? Is there even a way to prepare for and then to organize the necessary relief, given the chaotic and irrational way in which urban development is ‘planned’ and implemented? Each time these questions are raised after a new disaster, the ruling class avoids a direct confrontation with them, resorts to outright lies, or chooses to focus on how to make political hay out of real human loss and suffering.
Pre-storm preparedness: the bourgeoisie is unfit to rule
Much of the blame for the human hardship in the aftermath of ‘Superstorm Sandy’ has been laid on the choice individuals made not to leave their homes and relocate to shelters. Indeed, ever since the criticisms prompted by the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the ruling class has been intent on refurbishing the image of its state. In an attempt to restore the masses’ confidence in its apparatus, it needs to project the idea of a state capable of safeguarding the well-being of its population. However, cutting through the state apparatus’ byzantine layers of bureaucracy to get the help required in an appropriate time frame has proved impossible time and again.
Even making the communication faster and better between the various federal agencies charged with warning of the potential dangers of a storm is a task that the capitalist state is not able to fulfill. In the words of Bryan Norcross, a well-respected meteorologist for more than twenty years, “They [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA] made outstanding forecasts. Their strength forecast was essentially perfect, and their storm surge forecast for New York City was absolutely as good as a forecast can be these days.” Indeed, forecasts of potentially destructive storms can be made quite accurately one week ahead of their hitting land these days. But the National Hurricane Center chose not to issue any hurricane advisory until just one day before Hurricane Sandy landed because it kept receiving information that the storm may change its path and weaken to a tropical storm. By the time it had become clear the storm wasn’t changing its path and wasn’t weakening, and the Center finally issued the hurricane warning, not enough time was left for people to clearly understand what was about to happen and prepare accordingly. Considering the magnitude of the storm and the fact it was on course to slam into the most populated part of the country, it really was not rational, certainly not responsible, on the side of the agencies and authorities in charge, to decide not to issue the hurricane warning earlier. It certainly is not rational to downplay a storm that was described as a ‘super-mega-combo’ freak of a storm the like of which had never been seen.
NOAA has one set of warnings for tropical storms and another set for northeaster or winter storms. Partly because Hurricane Sandy was a hybrid-type storm which did not fit the description of any prior storm, NOAA got tangled up as to which warning to issue, not knowing which guideline to follow. Without a doubt this had the effect of hindering the ability of the Center to issue the most appropriate warning in time. However, the Center’s decision to issue a clear hurricane warning only one day before the storm’s impact cannot be explained by its sclerotic bureaucracy alone. It also offers a view into the tattered infrastructure of capitalist metropolises and begs the question to our rulers as to what solution, if any, they have to confront similar storms in the future? It seems impossible, under the present conditions of urban ‘development’ under capitalism, to organize a rational protection and evacuation of areas at risk for several reasons: 1. the sheer number of people living in those areas; 2. the lack of infrastructures needed to mobilize them for the evacuation and shelter them in the aftermath of a storm; 3. the destruction of the natural environment and the continued urban development of areas that should not be developed for urban uses; 4. the displacement of financial, human, technological resources toward military goals. These resources could be used for research, innovation, and building of new infrastructure capable of confronting the threats to the environment and human life posed by climate change.
In the case of New Jersey, which was hard hit by the storm, most of the communities on the barrier islands along its coast have been developed to attract tourists and summer residents. For decades, concrete sea walls, rock jetties, or other protective barriers have lined the barrier islands to spur the development of the tourist industry. This kind of urban development has meant that since 1985 80 million cubic yards of sand has been applied on 54 of the state’s 97 miles of developed coast line: a truckload of sand for every foot of beach. Aside from the fact that this periodic replenishment of artificial beaches with natural sand from elsewhere means an increased toll on the highways (trucks filled with sand are extremely heavy) and the depletion of a natural resource, rising sea levels and more frequent storms wash away replenishment projects sooner than expected. Buildings, houses, and roads also pin down the beaches, which contributes significantly to making these communities more vulnerable to rising sea levels and storms and to the further deterioration of the natural protection once provided by undeveloped beaches. Undeveloped beaches deal well with storms. Their sands shift; barrier islands may even migrate toward the mainland, in this way protecting it. But the need for capitalist profit, rather than a harmonization of nature’s own principles with human needs, is what drives the choice to continue the development of artificial beaches. In the logic of capitalism, economic benefits, even though temporary, outweigh the cost of protecting human lives.
New York City has suffered a similar fate, but on a much larger scale. Now that Superstorm Sandy hit and everyone realizes how vulnerable the city and its millions of inhabitants are, the inevitable cacophony about what to do for the future has started again. Proposals for the human engineering of what used to be the harbor’s own natural protective barriers are being considered. Some of these proposals are quite interesting and creative; some even take into account the recreational uses of such projects and their aesthetic attraction. This shows that at the technological and scientific levels humanity has developed the ability to potentially put science at the service of human needs. Storm-surge barriers have been built around the city of St. Petersburg in Russia; Providence, Rhode Island, and in the Netherlands. The technological know-how is available. However, the geography of New York City is such that building a storm-surge barrier to protect Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn could affect tidal flow in such a way that a surge bouncing back against the barrier would double-up its strength against parts of Staten Island and the Rockaway, among the hardest hit by Superstorm Sandy. It is not impossible that an engineering solution can be found to this problem, but, given the track record of capitalist development and the realities of the economic crisis, it is not far-fetched to imagine that New York City will rather recede in what engineers call “resilience”, a term that describes small scale interventions such as installing floodgates at sewage plants and raising the ground level of certain areas in Queens. Considering that New York City is a multi-million inhabitant city that runs part of the world economy and whose infrastructure is very complex, old, and extensive, small interventions of this sort clash against the simplest common sense. It is also not far-fetched to foresee that if the choice will go in favor of a proposal for a storm-surge barrier, the question of who gets included to be behind the gate, and who doesn’t will be answered by the needs of capitalist profit rather than those of human beings.
The aftermath of the storm: we are on our own
President Obama’s electoral campaign saw in Hurricane Sandy an opportunity to revamp the dispute between the most conservative right wing of the ruling class and its more liberal wing over the role of government. Of course, it did so to its own political advantage. It has been claimed that the present administration’s response has been more effective than the response of the George W. Bush’s administration in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The images of the New Orleans convention center, where thousands were stranded for days and where the most awful conditions of survival set in, have been juxtaposed to the images of the National Guard in Hoboken, New Jersey moving in the day after the storm struck to deliver food and water and rescue stranded residents. The message was to be clear: the government is there to help people in need and can do a better job at it if Democrats are at the helm of the state. It was quite obvious from the publicity the Obama administration received from the supposedly ‘prompt’ response by the mass media, and their bashing of the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina, that the media were completely open to helping Obama out in winning the election.
But human reason must stand to the test of facts. Anybody can read or watch the news to get a sense of the real catastrophic conditions in which hundreds of thousands of people are living in two weeks –at the time of writing- after the storm. From reopening schools that are also serving as shelters, to the continued power shortages for vast swaths of the population across the area, to the fuel rationing and the recent plan by mayor Bloomberg to have the most devastated neighborhoods in the metropolitan area resuscitated through his Rapid Repair program - which promises to be a quick-fix aimed at quelling the population’s rising anger and frustration, the test of facts shows that the ruling class and its extensive bureaucratic state apparatus have hit an impasse and are unable to efficiently and meaningfully address the urgent and long-term needs of its population.
But we do not conclude from this, as the right wing conservatives do, that we need to replace the government with charities and encourage people to save for the rainy days. This is would link the masses to the whims of the ruling class anyway, either by making them dependent on the magnanimousness of philanthropic and religious organizations, or the capitalist market’s swings between periods of employment and unemployment, with the resulting instability as to the ability to save. This does not help the exploited masses raise their consciousness from the level of resignation to the system of exploitation they are subjected to, since it makes no difference whether we are directly repressed and exploited by the state, or by the market, or by the individual capitalist who also happens to be a philanthropist. What we think is needed is the revolutionary and autonomous action of the masses aimed at taking political power. This is the only way to ensure that all important decisions are made in the interest of what needs to be done to create, administer, deliver, and distribute the resources of society for society’s own needs, and not for the needs of profit, capital, the government, or the philanthropist.
Probably learning from the experience of the recent climatic events linked to climate change, most notoriously Hurricane Katrina, that the ruling class and its various agencies, such as FEMA, won’t help, or won’t give the help needed, or enough of it, or as promptly as needed, it is the population itself that poured in its resources, time, money in a significant show of real solidarity. This shows the fundamental and significant sense of identity that exists among the exploited and that it is them who have the potential to create a new world.
The working class is the only class with a future
In each instance of a ‘natural disaster’, the ruling class has been particularly keen on preventing deeper questions of a more general nature from being posed and given a revolutionary answer: What is the perspective for the future of the planet and the human species under the rule of a social class that shows no regard for the safety and well being of the classes it exploits? If the future under capitalism has nothing more to offer other than more environmental destruction and greater threats to the survival of the human species, what needs to be done? What alternatives for the construction of a different, new world? Because it has no particular economic interests to protect and no position of power to maintain and defend in capitalist society, the working class and its revolutionary minorities are the only social forces who can give answers that are stripped of ideological mystifications and that aim at searching for the truth. It is only on the basis of knowing the truth about how economic, social, and political factors determine our human existence that the exploited classes can find in themselves the confidence in their own ability to offer a different vision of the world and ultimately concretize it.
Ana, November 10, 2012
The 2012 Presidential election has come and gone with a positive result for the main factions of the U.S. bourgeoisie. Beating back a firm challenge from his Republican rival Mitt Romney, President Obama has secured re-election meaning the Democratic Party will now survive to guide the ship of state for another four years.
The post-election media narrative has been deafening. Obama won in a landslide they tell us, taking 332 Electoral College votes to Romney’s 206 and beating his rival by over 3 million popular votes. All the doomsday scenarios of another contested election like 2000 came to naught.[1] All of the state level GOP attempts to suppress the votes of likely Obama supporters hardly mattered at all. Obama now has a national mandate to govern and Obamacare is set to remain the uncontested law of the land. The Republicans, still licking their wounds from a trouncing that also saw them lose seats in the Senate, will almost certainly have to moderate their rhetoric and come to the negotiating table. Finally, after four years of obstinate obstructionism, the GOP will be forced to get a grip on reality and strike the grand bargain on deficit reduction that eluded the US bourgeoisie throughout Obama’s first term.
The more rosy pundits even expect that this election will spell the end of the Tea Party insurgency within the Republican Party. They claim the more rational elements within the GOP (Jeb Bush perhaps?) will now be able to assert themselves and regain control of the party, reinvigorating a healthy two party system once again. Still others foresee a civil war in the GOP as it struggles to come to grips with a new demographic reality in which its commitment to race baiting, retrograde sexual politics, anti-science conspiracy theory and immigrant bashing will never again permit it to secure the Presidency.
For our part, against the optimistic interpretations, we feel the results of the election, and the preceding campaign, confirm the analysis we have developed since Obama’s initial election regarding a developing “political crisis” of the American bourgeoisie. We should review what we have analyzed as some of the main features of this crisis:
So, does Obama’s reelection spell the end of these difficulties, what we have labeled a “political crisis’? Are the main factions of the bourgeoisie right to celebrate their victory, believing, as they do, that it will mark a return to political normalcy in which the business of the nation will be the top priority once again? What about the working class? What role did it play in this election? Was the bourgeoisie able to maintain its momentum from 2008 and keep the population convinced that electoral democracy is the best way to protect its interests? What does Obama’s victory mean for the working class? What can it expect from his second term in office? We will try to shed some light on these questions, from a Marxist perspective, here.
The Meaning of Obama’s Victory For the Working Class
We should have no illusions about what Obama’s second term will mean for the working class. We can sum it up in one word: austerity. For all the campaign rhetoric the Obama team spewed, aided by their union and “progressive” allies, about protecting Social Security and Medicare from the right-wing “evil genius” Paul Ryan, it is clear that cuts to both programs have always been on the agenda for Obama’s second term. The only question is how deep the cuts will be and how fast they will be implemented.
It is pretty simple really. The US bourgeoisie, Democrat or Republican, left or right, are all in agreement that the nation’s fiscal course is simply unsustainable. They all recognize that in order to attempt to get the deficit under control “reforms” will have to be made to the so-called “entitlement” programs, which account for a large share of the nation’s budget woes. It is true that the policies advocated by former VP candidate Ryan, such as turning Medicare into a voucher program, were simply too draconian to enact at this time. It is also true that the main factions of the bourgeoisie reject the right-wing trope by which Social Security must be privatized in order to “save it”. However, none of this means that they will endeavor to preserve these programs as they are now. On the contrary, painful cuts are in the offing.
President Obama has already signaled his willingness to slash these programs. It was a major part of the so-called “grand bargain” he was in the process of negotiating with Republican House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner in the lead up to the debt ceiling crisis in the summer of 2011. The only real difference in that matter was the President’s desire to bundles the cuts with certain tax increases on the wealthy in order that he could sell the bargain to the population with the poll-tested language of “shared sacrifice.” It was only Tea Party intransigence that prevented Boehner from agreeing to the grand bargain, forcing the complex machinations that now pose the threat of the so-called “fiscal cliff”: automatic tax increases and draconian spending cuts to kick in at the beginning of the new year unless a deal can be reached.
In fact, the political pundits are already on record that this is the real import of the election. Obama now has the political capital he needs to force the Republicans into a grand bargain that, at the very least, includes some tax increase for the wealthy that can be sold to the population as “shared sacrifice.” We don’t know for certain how deep the cuts will be or how fast they will be implemented, but there is little question that they are coming. The left of the Democratic Party can cry all it wants about “protecting the Big Three[2],” but can one really doubt that in the aftermath of whatever deal is reached, they won’t try to sell us on the idea that it could have been much worse if the Republicans controlled the White House? Or try to make us feel a little bit better that at least the billionaires will be kicking in their fair share? Of course, how exactly any of that helps the Medicare beneficiary who just saw their benefits slashed or their premiums go up, or the 65 year old coal miner, who will now have to wait another year or two to collect his measly Social Security check is never explained.
In terms of the overall economic picture, it is not at all clear that the situation can get any better in Obama’s second term. While the bourgeoisie turns its attention to deficit reduction, any thought of providing more stimulus for the economy is completely abandoned. There is simply no political will for any more government spending, despite the fact that the more serious bourgeois economists like Paul Krugman and Robert Reich have continuously called for another round of stimulus in order to try to pull the economy out of the doldrums.
It’s symbolic of the dead-end the bourgeoisie finds itself in that its focus on deficit reduction runs smack into the face of stimulating economic growth. The best the pundits can do on this score is to hark back to the glory days of President Clinton, who raised taxes and balanced the budget while presiding over the “largest economic expansion in American history.” So ahistorical and short sighted has the bourgeoisie become that they fail to remember that much of the “growth” of the Clinton years was the result of the debt fueled tech-stock and real estate bubbles that led to the current Great Recession! They seem to believe that the recipes of the Clinton era can be resurrected and applied today, regardless of the historical and economic context.
It is unclear whether or not the Obama administration really believes all its campaign hype about how much better the economy is getting under its tutelage. Regardless, even if it does recognize the need for further stimulus, there isn’t a whole lot it can do about it. Whatever new mood of cooperation the GOP may acquire as a result of their electoral “trouncing,” it is unlikely they would agree to a new round of stimulus. With Congress gridlocked on this issue, the Federal Reserve has recently been compelled to act on its own by buying up more mortgage securities, but most serious economists agree that this amounts to nothing more than a peashooter, when what is needed is something closer to a howitzer. In the end however, even if there were political will for such an endeavor, its unclear where all the money would come from—the printing press? Borrow more from China? All of this would fly directly in the face of the pressing need for deficit reduction. The bourgeoisie is truly stuck between a rock and a hard place. Even if they are able to pull off another round of stimulus, this would—in the end—amount to nothing more than kicking the can down the road.
All of this makes it patently clear that Obama’s triumph was not as victory for the working class. On the contrary, he now has enough political cover to enact the austerity he has planned all along and which the needs of the national capital demand. While there remains a certain danger to the bourgeoisie that the Democratic Party will be perceived as the party that presided over the looming cuts, this is tempered to some degree by the Obama administration’s ideological success in selling the population on the fact that under the Republicans, the cuts would have likely been much worse. It is most likely for this reason, rather than through a deep conviction and support for Obama’s policies, that many working class people bit the bullet in this election and voted for the Democrats. The logic of the lesser of the two evils appears to have carried the day.[3]
However, those workers who still have illusions in Obama’s Presidency, who still believe that he can “restore the middle class” or that he is some kind of champion of “workers’ rights,” need look no further than the events surrounding the Chicago Teachers’ Strike to get a real sense of where the President stands on these issues. We must not forget that it was the President’s cronies in Chicago that carried through these assaults on the teachers.[4] Can there be any doubt that this vision for the education sector—indeed for the entire working class—is ultimately shared by the President himself? The original architect for Mayor Emanuel’s plan to reform the Chicago school system was none other than former Chicago School Chancellor Arne Duncan—Obama’s current Secretary of Education!
We must assert against all the possible electoral calculations that the interests of the working class lie elsewhere—in its autonomous struggles to defend its working and living conditions at the point of production. It is understandable that workers fear the Republicans’ draconian attacks. It is quite possible that this party has lost any mooring in reality and would proceed to enact the most retrograde policies at the national level if it ever makes it back into office. However, should this mean we have to find solace in the Democrats? It’s clear that the only real difference between the parties at this point is how fast and how dramatic the cuts will be. In the end, both roads lead to the same place. When we vote for Democrats, it is we workers who are kicking the can down the road. The only real solution for our condition is to return to the road of our own autonomous struggles around class issues.
Is the Political Crisis Finished?
This brings us to the issue of the political crisis of the US bourgeoisie itself. Will Obama’s re-election put an end to the all the rancor within the ruling class as the bourgeois media has been telling us? Will the Republicans’ electoral “trouncing” cause the more rational factions in that party to reclaim it from the Tea Party lunatics? Is a new era of cooperation and progress in the offing in which both parties will turn their attention toward governing in the best interests of the national capital?
In answering these questions, it is first necessary to address the issue of the alleged electoral “trouncing.” It is true that Obama won by a large margin in the Electoral College, but only in the context of recent American politics can a 51 to 48 percent margin in the popular vote be considered a “landslide.” On this level, the election results only seem to confirm the reality that the United States is a deeply divided country. The population is so sharply divided that even month after month of relentless campaign propaganda painting Romney as a greedy vulture capitalist and Obama as an un-American socialist barely moved the final election tallies from 2008, when Obama bested McCain by 53 to 46 percent. So hardened have the ideological lines in society become that the challenge of building a national narrative is more severe than ever.
It is likely true that the emerging demographic trends within the electorate spell serious trouble for the GOP. If it is intent on continuing its brand of hard right policies based in large part in playing to white racial fear and gender based demagoguery, it is unlikely a Republican Presidential candidate will ever be able to build a broad enough electoral coalition to make it competitive against a strong Democratic one[5]. However, can we conclude from this reality that the GOP will necessarily be able to right its ship as the media predicts? This seems unlikely. Having stoked the flames of the white male backlash it does not seem reasonable to expect this element in the party to go quietly into the night. Should the Republican leadership compromise with Obama on comprehensive immigration reform (as most pundits suspect it will try to do), it seems quite possible that there could be a split in the Republican Party—something that would throw a major spanner in the works of the US two-party system. While we can’t say for certain that this will happen, the fault lines within the GOP are clear. It will be torn for some time between a wing of the party seeking to refurbish its image in order to maximize electoral success, and another intent on preserving ideological purity.
However, the Republicans are not the only ones with a demographic problem. Obama lost the white vote by a large margin. Whatever his advantages among blacks, Latinos, single women and young voters, he suffered severe deficits among blue-collar whites (in particular men). While in the context of a high turnout Presidential election, this arrangement favors the Democrats going forward, it remains unclear whether or not this will translate into lower turnout mid-term, state and local elections. The GOP, in whatever form, reformed or retrograde, will likely continue to be a force at these levels. In fact, even in the current Presidential year—largely due to corrupt gerrymandering—the GOP was able to retain control of the House of Representatives. The perspective appears to be one of continued partisan bickering rather than real cooperation.
On another level, the US bourgeoisie will continue to be dogged by the practical “reversal” of its traditional division of ideological labor. If it were obliged to keep the Democrats in power indefinitely pending a resolution of the Republican Party’s meltdown, this would pose serious problems for the legitimacy of the Democratic Party itself. Forced to preside over the coming austerity, the Democrats would have to own the policies they enact. This is something we saw play itself over the course of the recent campaign. What an odd sight it was, in the midst of a terrible recession, for the Democratic candidate to have to run on the illusion that the economy was improving, while the Republican candidate ran as the voice of the long-term unemployed whom the President had failed to help! How long can this situation hold? The Democrats only response to this is to argue that an intransigent GOP forces them into these policies and prevents them from being able to act to their fullest capabilities. While they have had some success with this tactic so far, how much longer can they keep it up before the Democrats become viewed as the party of austerity?
We should also acknowledge that President Obama’s first term was marked by the emergence of a genuine extra-parliamentary movement around the issues of the economic crisis in the Occupy Movement, which captured the public imagination for a period of time in the fall and winter of 2011. It appears that the U.S. bourgeoisie was able to recuperate much of the energy of this movement into Obama’s re-election campaign under the same “lesser of the two evil” logic that moved many workers to support the President. However, now that the election is over, it is reasonable to consider whether or not there is a perspective for the reemergence of similar movements should the economic situation fail to improve given that there will no longer be a pressing electoral campaign with which the bourgeoisie can blackmail it? If the Democrats come to be viewed as the party of austerity, will it continue to be able to divert the energy of future extra-parliamentary social movements into the electoral dead-end?
In the realm of foreign policy, it is clear that the Obama administration will continue to face growing threats to US hegemony, which it will find increasingly difficult to head off. Although foreign policy may not have been a major issue in the Presidential campaign, as evidenced by the third and final debate in which Romney basically agreed with Obama on most major issues of foreign policy, this does not mean that there are no tensions within the US bourgeoisie on these issues. Already, just a week after the election, President Obama is dealing with a major public relations debacle regarding the sexual indiscretions of CIA Director and Iraq surge hero General Petraeus.
While it is not clear what the ultimate import of this crisis will be, it seems the Republicans smell blood in the water and will certainly use this scandal to ramp up their investigations into the administration’s mishandling of the Benghazi consulate attack that left the US Ambassador to Libya dead. However this plays out, the US bourgeoisie will continue to face severe challenges to its imperialist hegemony including the possibility of a wider war emerging from the Syria crisis, continued tensions with Iran, increasing difficulties keeping its Israeli running dog in line and the growing threat to its hegemony coming from an increasingly aggressive Chinese imperialism.
In the end, while we think the main factions of the US bourgeoisie may have won another victory with Obama’s re-election, this does not completely reverse the tendency towards political crisis that has been gripping the US bourgeoisie for over a decade. While we do not have a crystal ball and we cannot tell how this situation will play out exactly, it seems likely that the road will continue to be very rocky. It is instructive that some political scientists who study US politics think we are on the verge of another party realignment. What shape that will take is not quite clear. The reality of decomposition makes it very difficult to predict with any certainty.
From our perspective, the re-election of President Obama does not herald a new era of peace, prosperity and cooperation. While it is true that there will probably be an attempt by the more rational factions of the Republican Party to retake it from the Tea Party, this does not guarantee success. Moreover, it would be a mistake to reduce the problems of the US bourgeoisie to this alone. The challenges facing it are immense and in all probability insurmountable. For the working class, the conclusion is clear—there is no salvation in this mess of bourgeois electoral politics. We can only pursue our interests on a fundamentally different terrain—that of our autonomous struggles around class issues.
--Henk
11/14/2012
[1] It is worth noting that the election in Florida was another disaster. Although it was ultimately decided in Obama’s favor—it was by a razor thin margin and it took nearly a week to count the votes, amidst allegations that the election was run in third world fashion.
[2] This is left wing Democrat and talk show host Ed Schultz’s term for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
[3] It should be noted, however, that the electorate was about 10 percent smaller this year than it was in 2008.
[4] See our article/leaflet “Solidarity With the Chicago Teachers” here: https://en.internationalism.org/internationalismusa/201209/5162/solidarity-chicago-teachers [252]
[5] Of course, it is worth considering that even a “rock star” candidate as Obama was barely able to move the results much beyond a “margin of error” victory. One wonders what the results would have been with a less sensational candidate without such compelling personal appeal?
Once again, Israeli jets and missiles have been pounding Gaza. In 2008, ‘Operation Cast Lead’ led to almost 1,500 deaths, the majority of them civilians, despite all the claims made about ‘surgical strikes’ against terrorist targets. The Gaza Strip is one of the most impoverished and densely populated areas in the world and it is absolutely impossible to separate ‘terrorist facilities’ from the residential areas that surround them. With all the sophisticated weapons at the Israelis’ disposal, the majority of causalities in the current campaign are also women, children, and the old.
Not that this concerns the militarists at the head of the Israel state. Gaza is once again being collectively punished, as it has been not only through the previous onslaught but through the blockade which has crippled its economy, hampered efforts to rebuild following the devastation of 2008, and kept the population at near starvation levels.
Compared to the firepower wielded by the Israelis, the military capacities of Hamas and the more radical jihadist groups in Gaza are puny. But thanks to the chaos in Libya, Hamas has got its hands on longer-range missiles. Not only Ashdod in the south (where three residents of a block of flats were killed by a missile fired from Gaza) but Tel Aviv and Jerusalem itself are now in range. The numbing fear that grips Gaza residents every day is also beginning to make itself felt in Israel’s main cities.
In short: both populations are held in hostage to the opposing military machines that dominate Israel and Palestine – with a little help from the Egyptian army that patrols the borders of Gaza to prevent undesirable incursions or escapes. Both populations are in the firing line in a situation of permanent war – not only in the form of rockets and shells, but through being compelled to shoulder the growing burden of an economy distorted by the needs of war. And now the world economic crisis is forcing the ruling class on both sides of the divide to introduce new cuts in living standards, new increases in the prices of basic necessities.
In Israel last year, the soaring price of housing was one of the sparks that lit the protest movement which took the form of mass demonstrations, street occupations and assemblies – a movement directly inspired by the revolts in the Arab world and which raised slogans like “Netanyahu, Assad, Mubarak are all the same” and “Arabs and Jews want affordable housing”. For a brief but exhilarating moment, everything in Israeli society – including the ‘Palestinian problem’ and the future of the occupied territories – was open to question and debate. And one of the main fears of the protestors was that the government would respond to this incipient challenge to national ‘unity’ by launching a new military adventure.
This summer, on the occupied West Bank, rises in fuel and food prices were met by a series of angry demonstrations, road blockades and strikes. Workers in transport, health and education, university and school students and the unemployed were on the streets facing the police of the Palestinian Authority and demanding a minimum wage, jobs, lower prices, and an end to corruption. There have also been demonstrations against the rising cost of living in the Kingdom of Jordan.
For all the differences in living standards between the Israeli and Palestinian populations, despite the added oppression and humiliation of military occupation suffered by the latter, the roots of these two social revolts are exactly the same: the growing impossibility of living under a capitalist system in profound crisis.
There has been much speculation about the motives behind the recent escalation. Is Netanyahu trying to stir up nationalism to boost his chances of re-election? Has Hamas been stepping up rocket attacks to prove its war-like credentials in the face of a challenge from more radical Islamist gangs? Does the Israeli military aim to topple Hamas or merely to degrade its military capacities? What role will be played in the conflict by the new regimes in Egypt? How will it affect the current civil war in Syria?
These are all questions worth pursuing but none of them affect the fundamental issue: the escalation of imperialist conflict is totally opposed to the needs of the vast mass of the population in Israel, Palestine and the rest of the Middle East. Where the social revolts on both sides of the divide make it possible for the masses to fight for their real, material interests against the capitalists and the state which exploits them, imperialist war creates a false unity between the exploited and their exploiters and sharpens divisions between the exploited on one side and the exploited on the other side. When Israeli jets bomb Gaza, it produces new recruits for Hamas and the jihadists for whom all Israelis, all Jews, are the enemy. When the jihadists fire rockets into Ashdod or Tel Aviv, it makes more Israelis turn to ‘their’ state for protection and for revenge against the ‘Arabs’. The pressing social issues which lay behind the revolts are buried in an avalanche of nationalist hatred and hysteria.
But if war can push back social conflict, the opposite is also true. In the face of the current escalation, ‘responsible’ governments like those of the USA and Britain are calling for restraint, a return to the peace process. But these are the same governments currently waging war in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. The USA is also Israel’s main military and financial backer. We cannot look to them for ‘peaceful’ solutions any more than we can look to states like Iran who have openly armed Hamas and Hezbollah. The real hope for a peaceful world does not lie with the rulers, but with the resistance of the ruled, their growing understanding that they have the same interests in all countries, the same need to struggle and unite against a system which can offer them nothing but crisis, war, and destruction.
Amos , 20/11/12.
The massacre of innocent lives at Sandy Hook elementary school is a horrific reminder that short of a thorough revolutionary transformation of society the spread and depth of decomposing capitalism can only find expression in ever more barbaric, senseless, and violent acts. There is absolutely nothing in the capitalist system that is capable of offering a meaningful understanding of why such an act could even be conceived, let alone a viable proposal for change: not in the media, not among the politicians, whether left, right, or center, and not among the academic talking heads. It is impossible, under the yoke of capitalism, to truly address the problem, and even truly understand how to. In the aftermath of the Connecticut school butchery, as has been the case in all such violent sprees in recent memory, all the different parts of the ruling class have offered an ‘explanation’. How is it possible that in Newtown, Connecticut, dubbed “the safest town in America” a deranged individual could find a way to unleash such horror and terror? Whatever ‘explanations’ are offered, their primary purpose is to create a fig-leaf for the ruling class and cover up its own murderous mode of life.
The Right lays the blame on individual agency, effectively suggesting that Adam Lanza’s action can be explained by his choice to allow the ‘evil’ side of ‘human nature’ to take over. They claim that there is nothing psychological or behavioral in the shooter’s action. In the words of Nancy J. Herman, associate professor of sociology at Central Michigan University, “Today, the medicalization of deviant behavior has made it difficult for us to accept notions of ‘evil’. The diminution of religious imagery of sin, the rise of determinist theories of human behavior, and the doctrine of cultural relativity have led further to the exclusion of ‘evil’ from our discourse.” Accordingly, the ‘solution’ the Right offers to this problem is the revival of religious faith and collective prayer. This is how the Right dismisses the advances made in many decades of studies of human behavior which can actually offer a window into the understanding of the complex interconnections between individual and society proposed in particular by evolutionary studies of human social and anti-social behaviors. It is also how the Right justifies its proposal to just lock up those who express a deviant behavior, because they criminalize it by attributing to it a moral nature.
From various reports we learn that the 20-year old gunman had Asperger’s syndrome, a condition that can lead to social awkwardness and isolation, but there is no connection between the disorder and violence. It is also the case that only 5% of all gun-related violence in America is linked to any mental illness. This fact alone should be enough to dispel the widely-held belief that mental illness and violence are mechanically and deterministically linked. However, this does not mean that Lanza’s behavior was determined by a rational choice, or the choice of doing ‘evil’, as the Right claim. Also, it does not mean that his action can be understood simply as the act of an individual isolated from the social context in which he grew up. Much attention is given to “profiling” potential shooters when what needs to be done is develop a profile of the society that produces people driven to such drastic measures. Whatever surveys are used to measure the extent or increase of mental illnesses among the population, they have all gone up dramatically in recent years. These surveys also show a general decline in empathy in society. It is a painful irony, and proof of their hypocrisy, that while the bourgeoisie talks about gun control, they are also deploying in Turkey, thinking about keeping China in check, and also continue to encircle Iran. The nature of violence cannot be understood divorced from the social and historical context in which it is expressed. Mental illnesses have existed before, but it seems their expression has reached levels of paroxysm in a society under siege by an 'every man for himself' mentality, the loss of social solidarity and empathy, and even the weakening of the most basic human interaction. People feel they have to 'protect' themselves against...against who? Everybody is a potential enemy, and this is an image, a belief reinforced by the nationalism, militarism, and imperialism of the bourgeoisie. Yet, the ruling class poses as the guarantor of ‘rationality’ and carefully skirts the issue of its own responsibility in the spread of anti-social behavior. This is perhaps clearest in cases when the United States Army court-martials soldiers who engaged in acts which are considered ‘atrocious’—and which certainly are—as with Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who went on a rampage and killed 16 civilians in Afghanistan, at least nine of whom were children. Never mind Bales’ use of alcohol, steroids and sleeping aids to soothe his physical and emotional pains, and the fact that he was deployed in one of the most intense battlegrounds in Afghanistan for the fourth time.
If media and games violence teach or reinforce the value that fighting - even killing - is an acceptable way to resolve a conflict, they are not the source of anti-social behavior, as many on the left like to point out. It is both the competition embedded in capitalist mode of functioning and its militaristic expressions which inform the content of the media and video games. When children grow up in a culture that celebrates fighting and violence as an acceptable way to win, and when society teaches that one must win at all costs, they are highly likely to acquire those ‘values’. These ‘values’ exist pervasively under capitalism all over the world, and what we see in the media and video games is just a reflection of this. Violence is not an American prerogative, even if it can be argued that gun violence is particularly pernicious in this country. It is true that with less than 5% of the world's population, the United States is home to roughly 35–50 per cent of the world's civilian-owned guns, heavily skewing the global geography of firearms and any relative comparison. It is true that the ratio of gun to people in America is roughly 88 to 100, which is higher than in Yemen, which comes in second. Yet the prizes for gun-related murders go to countries like Jamaica and Puerto Rico. 42% of the homicides that occur on the planet happen in a part of the world where only 8% of the world population lives: Latin America. This is not to trivialize the pervasiveness of violence in the United States, but rather to highlight that the context in the present period is one of a society dangerously developing a ‘culture’ of suspicion and fear in other fellow creatures, and a disposition toward ‘every man for himself’ in which murder, rather than human solidarity, becomes the ‘solution’ to differences, conflicts, and personal problems.
This is what lies at the root of Adam Lanza’s mother’s obsession with guns and her practice of taking her two children, including Adam himself, to the shooting ranges. Nancy Adams was a survivalist. The ideology underpinning survivalism is that of the ‘each for themselves’ in a pre and post-apocalyptic world. It preaches self-reliance, or, rather, individual survival, and relies on weapons as the instruments for individual protection and appropriation of vital and scarce resources. In preparation for the collapse of the American economy, as survivalists believe is about to happen, they stockpile weapons, ammunition, food, and teach themselves ways to survive in the wild. This type of social psychosis may have been heightened by the recent esoteric predictions about the end of the world supposed to have happened on December 21, with the end of the Mayan calendar, and which many survivalists followed. Is it so strange that Adam Lanza may have felt overwhelmed by this sense of no future? Or that he may have perceived children as future competitors over scarce resources that need to be eliminated? Whatever the actual mental landscape Adam Lanza experienced, it is certain it was not a rational, clear-minded, happy state of mind.
At the time of this writing, it is less than a week after the Newton killings. The initial vow by President Obama that “This time the words need to lead to action” and that he “…will use all the powers of this office to help advance efforts aimed at preventing more tragedies like this” is already showing up for what it really always had boiled down to be: a political arm-wrestling exercise between two factions of the ruling class that have been at each other’s throats on virtually every social issue for the last decade. Their divisions are so insurmountable that not even a massacre of these proportions can instill at least a minimum of decency in their diatribe over gun control and the care of the mentally ill. For its part, the National Rifle Association expresses a paroxysm of paranoia and total irrationality when it proposes that there should be an armed officer in every school in America because “a bad guy can be stopped only by a good guy”. Schools are already half-way from becoming full-fledged jails and have been so for a number of years. This insanity does not only show the bankruptcy of the Right’s ideology, but also its total infection of decomposition: in a society that cannot offer viable answers and solutions to its problems, the only possibility is for each individual to be against everybody else. Leading House Republicans, fearing the loss of the NRA’s support, have already openly restated their firm opposition to new limits on guns or ammunition, setting the stage for yet another legislative battle and drawn out sessions over the Second Amendment. It is so obvious that whatever ‘concern’ and urge for ‘action’ the ruling class feels is not for the well being and safety of the population, but rather for their own political purposes. The Left offers the narrative that if only the Right were more reasonable and flexible, it would be possible to pass meaningful and effective health care legislation to better address the needs of the mentally ill. It would also be possible to reduce the daily bloodshed from gun violence if only the Right could be persuaded. In this narrative, the inaction over the issue of gun violence in America is the result of the Right’s hardened stance. It is a sorry fact, however, that there are so many guns privately owned by Americans that any new restriction would do virtually nothing to control any violence. This was already the case for the eight years between 1996 and 2004 when a ban on assault weapons was enforced in the wake of the Columbine High School shootings. Even though the National Rifle Association has recently lost some of its clout and its opposition may be slightly easier to resist, Republicans are posed to carry out a long and vicious battle. And even if there was less animosity between the two factions of the American ruling class, the changes proposed by the Administration amount to mopping up a flood with a Kleenex. In their disgusting political self-interest, the faction of the ruling class now in power is manipulating the natural horror that the Connecticut school slaughter raised in order to weaken their opposing faction and pass for the defenders of the social safety net and being intent on making preventative service accessible to everyone. For their part, the Right’s proposes to strengthen the repressive apparatus so that anyone who is potentially dangerous can be locked up. In their vision they see schools as prisons in which teachers become wards and policemen in a public place that needs to be on lockdown.
It is natural to feel horror and deep confusion at the assault on innocent victims. It is natural to look for possible explanations of what is obviously a completely irrational behavior. This expresses a deeply felt need to reassure ourselves that we can have at least a degree of control over our own destiny, that humanity can get out of what appears to have become an endless and ever more extreme spiral of violence. But the ruling class can only capitalize on the present emotions of the population and manipulate its need to trust in order to channel it into the mythology according to which the state is willing and capable to resolve society’s problems. Revolutionaries must affirm clearly that it is rather the continued existence of class society and class rule, and the protraction of the relations of capitalist exploitation that are solely accountable for the exponential increase in irrational behaviors and the patent inability to reverse this trend.
Ana, 21 December 2012
As the CGT and the CCOO-UGT regrouping five different unions in Spain called for yet another 24-hour ‘general strike’ for October 31 and November 14 respectively, comrades of the Assembly movement - Indignant and Self-Organized Alicante Workers - published and distributed a declaration called "In the face of the 24-hour strikes: What strike do we want? The mass strike!".
These workers have been actively involved in a struggle for more than two years and have the merit of having denounced mobilizations which only de-mobilize and demoralize, and which only complement the attacks of the Rajoy government. But this is not all they have done. They have posed a perspective: to struggle for the mass strike. Faced with the unions’ demobilizations, this is the orientation which the workers’ struggles have tended to take since the 1905 Russian Revolution.
It is a mistake to think that there are no alternatives to the unions “mobilizations to demobilize”. Following in the steps of the Alicante workers, we think a debate has to develop to clarify the alternative which the proletariat has had since 1905. The two contributions by two workers which we are publishing here go in that direction.
We salute the declaration and the contributions, and we would like to encourage other workers and groups to give their input.
ICC November 1, 2012
Why is a 24-hour strike, a strike? Most importantly, how can it benefit the working class?
We identify with the political positions of internationalism and proletarian autonomy. We think that all action by conscious minorities should be orientated toward generating class consciousness, unity, and the self-organization of the working class. We know that there have been many mobilizations as of late and a great effort toward organization by the working class. This period of new and massive mobilizations has started, symbolically, in May 2011 and is the answer against the ever more brutal attacks against the population’s conditions of life. This development has not been linear and has gone through different phases. At first, there is a strong impulse toward self-organization and an embryonic, yet wide-spread movement toward the creation of General Assemblies. Later, the unions and the left of capital take advantage of the exhaustion and visible decrease in the masses’ participation to gain the center-stage. This leads the mobilizations toward the typical union-inflicted defeat: mobilization which are controlled by them, mobilizations which break the unity and are carried out sector by sector, demoralizing mobilization led into dead-ends and which only generate a sense of isolation and disgust in the participants. This is why the absence of a majority of the workers in these mobilizations is only logical, since they are perceived as alien to their own interests, opening the possibility of reflection.
We need to think, learn from our experiences and look for the path toward our own self-organization. This will not be given birth to by ‘specialized vanguards’ or anxious impulses, even if these may have the best of intentions.
It is the workers themselves who have to call for and extend everywhere, the kind of strike which we is needed and efficacious. It is the workers who have to occupy all the spaces and create new types of relationships and social communication. This type of strike does not detain life, it rather generates it. This type of strike is the mass strike, which during the last century has become a feature of the struggles, and which all its enemies-all bourgeois strata- have conscientiously silenced until its memory has become blurred. This is because the bourgeoisie fears its attraction and legitimacy for the proletariat.
A true strike is a massive and integral movement which does not consist solely in a work stoppage. It is the fundamental weapon of a working class in the process of taking control of its life, expressed by the fact that the working class struggles against all aspects of exploitation. In this process, the exploited class also expresses the human society to which it aspires. However, this is not a process that can be prepared ad hoc, not even with the best intentions. It is a part of the process by which the class struggles and comes to its consciousness. It is not a question of 24, or 48 hours, or of indefinite time. Its radical nature is not a matter of time. Its radical nature is based in the real movement of the working class as it organizes and leads itself.
The mass strike results from a particular phase in the development of capitalism starting in the XX century. Rosa Luxembourg developed it from the revolutionary movement of the workers in Russia in 1905. The mass strike “is a historic phenomenon at a given moment because of a historic necessity resulting from social conditions”.
The mass strike is not an accident of history. It is neither the result of propaganda nor of preparations taking place ahead of time. It cannot be created artificially. It is the product of a specific stage in the development of capitalist contradictions. The economic conditions which produced the mass strike were not inscribed in one country only. Rather, they had an international dimension. Such conditions generated a type of struggle which has historic impact, a struggle which was a fundamental aspect of the birth of proletarian revolutions. In short, the mass strike “is nothing more than the universal form of the working class struggle, resulting from the present stage of capitalism’s development and its relations of production.” This "present stage" was capitalism’s final years of prosperity. The new historic circumstances accompanying the birth of the mass strike were: the development of imperialist conflicts and the threat of world war; the end of the period of gradual improvements in the conditions of life of the working class; the growing threat against the very existence of the class under capitalism. The mass strike is the product of a change in the economic conditions at a historic level. Today we know those conditions marked the end of capitalism’s period of ascendance and heralded capitalism’s decadence.
The great concentrations of proletarians in the advanced capitalist countries had acquired great experience with collective struggles, and their conditions of life and work were similar everywhere. In addition, as a result of economic development, the bourgeoisie was growing into a more concentrated class who more and more became identified with the state apparatus. Like the proletariat, the capitalists too had learned how to confront their class enemy. The new economic conditions made it more and more difficult for the working class to gain durable reforms at the level of production. In a similar way, the decomposition of bourgeois democracy made it more and more difficult for the proletariat to consolidate gains at the level of parliamentary activity. Therefore, the political and economic contexts of the mass strike were not the product of Russian absolutism, but rather of the growing decadence of bourgeois rule in every country. In the economic, social, and political spheres, capitalism had laid the foundations for the great class confrontations at a world level.
The goal of the union form of organization was to obtain reforms and betterments within the framework of capitalist life. Under decadent capitalism, this was more and more difficult to accomplish. In this period the proletariat does not engage in struggles with a perspective of gaining real improvements. The great demonstrations of today, the strikes of today gain nothing. As a result, the role of the unions to obtain economic improvement within capitalism has disappeared. But there are other revolutionary implications deriving from the dislocation of the unions by the mass strike:
The struggle needs to be joined to the reality in which it happens. It cannot be posed as a separate entity. Since the beginning of the last century the decadence of the system has dried up the extracapitalist markets. In this way capitalism’s insatiable need for growth has been severely blockaged. In turn, this has caused a constant crisis and constant social cataclysms -wars and unprecedented misery for humanity.
The period since 1968 expresses the permanent nature of capitalism’s crisis. It express the impossibility for the system to expand and the acceleration of imperialist antagonism, the consequences of which threaten the entire human civilization. Everywhere the State takes charge of the interests of the bourgeoisie and extends it repressive apparatus. It is confronted with a working class who, admittedly numerically weakened in relation to the rest of society since the 1900’s, is ever more concentrated, and whose conditions of existence are becoming shared in all countries at an unprecedented level. At the political level, the decomposition of bourgeois democracy is so evident that it can barely mystify its true function as a smokescreen for the terror of the capitalist state.
In which way do the objective conditions of the present class struggle correspond to the conditions of the mass strike? Its nature rests in the fact that the characteristics of the present period express the highest point reached by the contradictions of capitalism, starting in the 1900’s. The mass strikes of that period were the answer to the end of capitalist ascendance and the dawn of decadence. Taking into account the fact that these conditions today are chronic, we can conclude that what pushed toward the mass strike is today much stronger and much more wide-spread. The general consequences of the development of international capital which were at the root of the historic birth of the mass strike have continued to ripen since the beginning of the century.
What can we do to foster the development of the mass strike, the international self-organization of the proletariat, and its indispensible unity? Our contributions cannot be more than that: contributions of a conscious part of our class. We cannot do more, nor less.
One such contribution is the very critique of the mistakes which fetter self-organization and the deepening of consciousness. Even with the best intentions activism, base-unionism, leftism…all are part and parcel of the barriers that workers have to overcome to accomplish class autonomy. Another contribution is to encourage reflection and the clarification of the experience of the struggle. We can also aid in the re-appropriation of the memory of our struggles and their fundamental weapon: the mass strike
ALACANT 2010
Assembly
Indignant and Self-organized Workers “for a pro-worker, anti-capitalist 15M”
At the end of 2011 comrades of the Indignant and Self-organized Workers (“Take the Square” commission) proposed the idea to collaborate with various groups in favor of the workers’ assemblies. We made the proposal to TLP and addressed ourselves mainly to organization such as the CNT, CGT, and SO which had taken part in joint actions and theorized in favor of the workers’ assemblies. This is what we call “the extension of the assemblies movement”, a project which sponsored what its name suggests from the point of view of the exploited and going beyond party divisions. We put it in writing and made a first attempt at contact. At the time of the 29M strike a Critical Bloc (1) is formed, reflecting our idea about unifying initiatives in order to extend the movement of workers in the assemblies in a wide sense, and question the present situation globally. In the assemblies that were generated that day, a rough outline of how to continue to work was drafted. From this outline followed different orientations. Several supported self-management, others centered on the organization and the struggles by the workers. I took part in the second, which gave birth to several interesting proposals: a solidarity commission with the workers to take care of the work-places, a solidarity fund - which TIA (2) still keeps - protocols for the realization of assemblies after massive mobilizations - and many assemblies took place - protocols for how to respond to repression.
In the summer of 2012 TIA makes an attempt to re-start the Bloc through summer meetings centered on the debates taking place in the Carolinas Community Garden. The initial idea was to meet workers and militants to share experiences and see if activities would surge. This is how the first meeting took place, in which it did not matter at all which group any one participant belonged to. This dynamicchanges once a group who had not attended any meeting makes the proposal to take part in the day of struggle of September 26 within the framework of the national day of struggle organized by several organizations. This was the last act by this bloc-transformed into 'Space': the September 26 day of struggle. This day of struggle changed for me the meaning of what I understood to be the aim of the bloc: "the extension of the movement of the workers’ assemblies".
What happened in this day of struggle? We can analyze it in two parts, according to how the events were posed. On the one hand, there was the assembly. It was participatory, sometimes dispersed, as it often happens. We talked about many subjects but not of the fundamental issue: the workers’ means of struggle, without labels or party identification. It was respectful and at times emotional. It provided a sense of unity and posed the question of a collective reflection.
On the other hand, there was the demonstration. There were many slogans, many blocs separated from each other, a superficial ‘radicalism’ and the absence of common perspectives that go beyond the slogans, totally isolated from the few people in the street who looked on with strange gazes. The feeling was of a disconnect with reality and a lack of unity. In my opinion, the wide-ranging debates that took place before the two events were joined in a kind of consensus which only peddled a false unity. On the one hand there were people who posed the question of a contribution to the generation of consciousness, unity, and workers’ self-organization and who thought that the best place for this is the general assembly. For us, the movement is the autonomous movement of the proletariat, and nothing can change it or direct it other than itself. Obviously, this movement only comes to the forefront in small and short explosions, but this only reinforces the idea that the emancipation of the workers is either the workers’ own action, or it won’t happen. This is why we give priority to ‘horizontal’ spaces that have no labels and where we look for all that we can have in common and what we can pose in common, even though we are open to collaborate with comrades who belong to organizations with their own slogans and ideology.
However, those who defend the idea that it is the organizations of the ‘radical left’ who must unify because they represent the workers, want a common front with a minimum common program, yet they also want to preserve their differences (which are many) and peculiarities and even their own activities. It is not difficult to see who was in favor of the assembly and who for the demonstration, who wanted labels and who didn’t, and who valued a common, general, name with each any worker could identify with, and who was more interested in the particular labels, but not in the importance of a common name.
After all this, we need to pose what we want to do. We were wise in leaving the disputes for later and to postpone the assessment of the event. An assessment will necessarily imply a confrontation of the two tendencies which appeared and which are not likely to consent with each other eternally. However, a serious assessment needs an understanding of the reality in which we move and needs to answer a number of questions: why did the bloc’s conception change? How is it possible to move from posing the question of a space for reflection to a leftist posture within a day? How can we consider a success the fact that we had a night stroll with other 500 people? Certainly, the dynamic has changed. When the bloc developed the idea to extend the assembly movement, this was then a possibility because of the number of massive struggles taking place, and a certain tendency toward self-organization-i.e., the first assemblies of the 15 M, the first moments of the mobilization of the teachers…). But the situation has changed and the mobilizations have been first controlled by the unions and others, and then de-mobilized or taken into a dead-end. The extreme left sees this movement as its property, where they have to denounce the role of the ‘bad managers’ in order to create a pole of attraction toward their positions. From this perspective, the present mobilizations have a meaning. For us, THEY DON’T.
If the workers are not mobilized right now, it is because they know that they can’t get anything with these ‘leaders’ and these ‘struggles’, even though they know things have to change…but they do not know how. For us, this is a moment of collective reflection. We have to contribute toward helping the workers develop a sense of confidence and find the path toward their autonomous organization and their own direction of the future struggles. It is now the time to learn the lessons, be loyal to our class, and not abandon our class.
About one year ago something like the day of struggle of September 26 was inconceivable because the masses would have gone beyond it, since they would have not allowed any organization to take center stage. If today these organizations try to substitute themselves for the participation of the masses, it is precisely because the masses are not ready to mobilize at all. Without understanding this we cannot understand anything else, and we can only end up following the dynamic of activism, which has nothing to do with the real rhythm of the working class struggles. It is possible that some of us felt less lonely in these actions than if we were in our small groups, but the need for ‘company’ is not a political imperative, at least for a working class politics. What is indeed needed are coherence and honesty. Revolutionaries are not ‘lonely’. We are a part of a class that needs and can change the world. Outside of this we lack meaning and we become something else.
What are the conditions for the formation of a permanent collaboration amongst comrades of different groups? We need to understand two things:
I mean permanent collaboration, not an occasional one based on tactical questions.
I mean honest comrades with whom we have serious differences, but of whom we don’t doubt their commitment to the cause of the exploited.
Here, I will explain how, in my opinion, we can have a permanent space for meetings and discussion. Assuming the following premises:
That it be a space of debate, struggle, and meeting with comrades who may or may not be in other organizations, but who give priority to creating common organizational spaces for the working class.
That it be a space for assemblies, both in form and content. Not only is it organized as an assembly, but it also tries to transmit this model to the working class as the embryonic form of the future society.
That is be radically critical of the capitalist system and that it search for the way to transform reality to create a society capable of satisfying all human needs.
That it be a unitary space which searches for a workers’ unity that goes beyond borders, categories, sectors, and organizations. It is a space without labels.
That it be an internationalist space because workers unite as a world community who defends human interests. We belong to the same class, not a fatherland, flag, ideology, or organization.
I am aware that these premises do not exist today, and I have no pretensions of coming to an agreement on questions which each one of us considers fundamental. That is the false unity I referred to before. If I think that these positions are necessary and basic for the struggle of our class, it is obvious I cannot renounce them in favor of a ‘consensus’. When do I think will these conditions exist? When the very autonomous dynamic of the proletariat imposes them. Therefore, debating over them would be absurd. Until then, until the moment that history decided, we can only keep discussing all of the above and much more. I think that we cannot aspire to anything more or less than this in the present period.
V
I am adding some incomplete reflections in the context of the present situation, taking account of the recent texts, “The organization of the proletariat outside periods of open struggle” and “Analysis and reflection about the Alicante’s bloc”.
Draba
Notes
It is often said that the history of the class struggle in America for the last four decades, that is, since the late 1960’s, is the history of an almost uninterrupted wave of defeats and rollback. Indeed, looking across the Atlantic toward Europe, and south, and east, we would have to make the same conclusion. This is perhaps more spectacularly so in the case of Greece, where in the last year alone six general strikes have been called by the unions, yet not even this has stopped the onslaught of brutal austerity measures in that country. To come back to America, over the course of the last four decades the decline in the standard of living of the American worker has been relentless, quite brutal, and undeniable. In the course of the last four decades, the ruling class has imposed a series of very deep cuts and changes to the entire apparatus of exploitation needed to secure the reiteration of the process of capitalist production: from cuts to education and its increasing costs, to cuts to real wages, to the increase in the work week and the intensification of exploitation, to the erosion of employer-sponsored health care benefits, all the way down to the more recent practice of creating new tiers for new hires in which traditional defined benefit pensions are shifted to 401k-type schemes. The working class has often put up very intense struggles and it has also gone through somewhat lengthy periods of relative quiet, all of which we have written about in this press. However, its attempts at defending its living and working conditions, attempts at times very bold and courageous and carried out notwithstanding the threat of losing one’s job, have not succeeded, for the most part, in deterring the ruling class from proceeding with what have become ever more brutal, more frequent, and more frontal attacks. The frontal nature of the more recent attacks, and those to come, are without a doubt a reflection of the economic impasse in which the bourgeoisie finds itself.
Is it then correct to conclude that the working class has lost its battle against capitalism? Should we accept that we are at the point where the reversal of the balance of forces in favor of the working class is no longer possible? Are the struggles that the working class still engages in a sign of its waning, a reflection of a slow, but irreversible process toward all-out defeat? Does all of this mean that the working class is no longer the social force in society that has the potential and historic mission to destroy capitalist relations of exploitation and give birth to a communist world? Yet, as quiet as it's kept, the working class in the United States continues to wage struggles and there are some signs of reflection and strategizing in the willingness to fight for a younger generation of workers as this has become a subject of capital’s particularly vicious attacks. Despite the weakness and lack of confidence workers feel - which gives the unions a relatively free hand to run the struggles - workers don't exactly trust the unions either.
We do not think that the working class has exhausted its potential. We think that it is going through, and has for some time, a very difficult process of re-discovering its class identity and confidence, of understanding how to confront the class enemy on its own class terrain, and of transforming the lessons and defeats of the past into acquisitions that can be used as sign-posts for the struggles to come. We think that the most decisive struggles for the fate of humanity have not been waged yet, and that the working class is still at the center of history and is a fundamental actor in its development. But in order to have this conviction, we need a method of analysis and understanding. We need to place the struggles of the class in a wide historical setting and assess the balance of forces between the two major classes in society not on the basis of the number of struggles waged and not even in terms of any temporary victory, or painful defeat. A struggle can be massive and protracted without bringing to the class any fundamental theoretical, organizational gain and without helping the class to strengthen solidarity and class-identity, as in the recent examples from Greece. On the other hand, a struggle which on a strictly economic level does not bring even the least of temporary relief, can foster an important sense of self-identity and confidence, politically much more significant than a temporary economic victory - if any can still be obtained. As the economic crisis that started in 2007-2008 continues unabated, it is particularly important that the class continues to develop its struggles with a new understanding of what is at stake, and that its self-identity and confidence be restored.
From 1989 to 2003 the working class globally went through a protracted reflux in its consciousness and combativeness, the result of the campaigns about the ‘end of communism’, and ‘the end of history’ unleashed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The first signs of the return of the class struggle were seen in Austria and France starting in 2003, and in the U.S. these struggles were echoed in the New York City MTA (transport) strike of 2005. More struggles happened everywhere, with a significant increase in combativeness, and, most importantly, the emergence of intergenerational class solidarity. In particular, the MTA strike of 2005 was waged in support of the younger generation of workers, for whom the MTA bosses had proposed a new tier with a reduced benefits package. This went on until about the 2007 financial crisis, which, when it hit, created a momentary paralysis amongst workers at the point of production. In 2009 there were record lows of only 5 major work stoppages, after which there has been an uptick in the combativeness of the class, most notably with the mobilization of students and public sector workers in Madison, Wisconsin in 2011, which clearly linked itself to the movement of social protest going on in the Arab world. Soon after, the Verizon strike involved 45,000 workers and then in the same year we saw the movements of protest of Occupy Wall Street, borrowing methods of struggle of the working class through the formation of the General Assemblies, but also going beyond bread and butter demands, opening up a space for a wider questioning of capitalism, of humanity’s future under it. A big component of the context of the struggles in the US has been the election campaign, which had a dampening effect on the class struggle, and which also gave ammunition to the unions against the working class. The unions have made use of the union-busting posture of many Republicans and even some Democrats to rally the workers to their defense. This proved somewhat problematic to do, especially in the case of the Chicago teachers’ strike of last September, which saw a Democratic mayor pitted against the teachers union, a stance that threatened to abort the unions’ usual work of mobilizing public sector workers votes in favor of the Democratic candidate. Notwithstanding the deafening noise of the electoral campaign, disputes at the work place returned as early as the summer of 2012.
In New York City Con-Edison workers went on strike over changing pension plans for new hires. The union decided to call the strike, but when the company asked for one week’s notice, the unions refused, and Con-Edison locked out the workers. The whole campaign then turned to reinstating the workers who had been locked out, and the proposed changes to the contract receded in the background, until on the verge of a storm Governor Cuomo intervened by forcing Con-Ed to reinstate the workers. This tactic has been utilized in the past, particularly during the Verizon strike: the union went on strike because of stalled negotiations. Workers ultimately went back to work without a contract.
Attacks against the workers are being implemented even without contract negotiations. In some cases, step increases linked to longevity have been frozen. New budgets assume no raises for any number of years, when contracts for city workers already expired in some cases as long as four years ago. Retired workers are not being replaced. In New York State, a new tier for new hires at the Department of Education has been approved by the legislation of the state, without any contract negotiations. The issue becomes one of getting the workers back to work or re-starting the negotiations, rather than talking about the new contract per se. This is a strategy of the unions and the bourgeoisie to confront the older, more experienced workers who have shown on several occasions that the attacks against the young generation of workers only stimulate their willingness to struggle in the youngsters’ defense. It seems clear that the ruling class, at least where the workers are more greatly concentrated and experienced, consciously tries to avoid a direct confrontation with the existing workforce because it has learned that the older generation of workers is in a different mood than during the years of its reflux from 1989 to 2003.
This strategy has happened consistently enough to have become a pattern--whether it was a well thought out strategy at the beginning or whether the ruling class has learned from it. It started with General Motors about four years ago with the creation of two tiers for different pension and salary plans. After GM every company has tried to do the same thing. This situation does add the element of demoralization to workers who have struggled - the Lockheed strike, which also was going on during the summer, went on for a couple months, also over the creation of a new tier for the next generation of workers. The strike ended in a terrible defeat for the workers, with all major concessions won by the bosses, including the provision about the new tier. However, as it was apparent by the reactions of many Lockheed workers, workers are having a deeper reflection on the role of the unions. This time, the union could not brag about its outcomes.
While the Lockheed strike was going on, janitors in Houston also walked out, followed by a number of other janitors in several cities across the country. Their demands were around wages and working conditions, and their struggle was successful. But this was not at all thanks to the unions’ mobilization. Indeed, their demands, even though they were on the class terrain, were very modest: a wage increase to a little over $10 an hour is something that JPMorgan - who contracts out the janitors’ bosses - can afford, especially after four years of bad publicity! This little victory by the Houston janitors poses a larger question: what do the Lockheed workers think about seeing the janitors get a little bit while they've gotten nothing? Does it make them doubt their own strength or does it put union methods in question? It is a terrible thing to have to go back to work having lost a struggle for one's posterity; however, this has not succeeded in inflicting a sense of defeat amongst the working class and it has not destroyed the sense of solidarity people feel. In fact, while this strategy has been successful in the past, it is now resulting not as much in a sense of demoralization but in resentment about this strategy - the working class is starting to see that this is what is becoming the pattern. There's an attempt to recuperate the sense of solidarity that the bourgeoisie has tried to attack. As we wrote before, this intergenerational solidarity is something that appeared clearly already in 2005 with the MTA workers’ strike. This is an important dynamic that has the potential for an interesting development in the struggles to come.
That the workers doubt their own strength may not be all that negative after all, if they are able to turn that sense of doubt in a deeper reflection on how to struggle more effectively. The reason the unions make such a deafening noise in cases of small victories is not simply to refurbish their own image, but specifically to try and sap the incipient questioning of union tactics among the larger, more experienced sectors of the working class. The strategy is to isolate and wear down the larger workforces while showcasing small victories in less important and insecure sectors of the working class such as the janitors.
Also in the summer we saw the Palermo pizza workers strike over wages, benefits, and condition s of work. The company fired more than 80 workers on pretense of a presumed immigration check by ICE at the same time as the unions were running a unionization campaign. The company was ultimately forced by ICE to reinstate the fired workers. This strike showed the mood of defiance the working class is getting in. Even immigrant workers without papers showed they did not fear to struggle. However, we should be cautious and not conclude from this that the working class is prepared to defend itself against the attacks of the repressive apparatus of the ruling class. ICE - and Palermo - took a step back in the face of the angry complaints by the union, who pointed out that federal intrusion into illegal immigration - a vital source of cheap labor for small and medium-size companies like Palermo - risked sabotaging the drive to unionize immigrant workers, an important sector of the working class which the unions across the country have been courting in an attempt to shore up the dwindling numbers of their membership. Again, this instance was showcased as a union victory.
Another component of the ruling class’ strategy is, in struggles where there are no gains to be won, long battles of attrition lock the workers in desperation and demoralization. This has been the case of the Crystal Sugar workers strike, run by the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union, which is part of the AFL-CIO and which also represents the Hostess workers, 15,000 of whom have just recently been fired by the company after being locked out. 1,300 Crystal Sugar workers were locked out after a majority of its workers rejected a contract proposal three consecutive times. The company hired replacement workers for the sugar beet season, and shows no intention of wanting to re-hire the fired workers, while the AFL-CIO is launching a boycott campaign to 'force Crystal Sugar to rehire its workers'. In both instances, Crystal Sugar and Hostess, the lockout followed stalled negotiations and workers were drawn into a protracted battle of attrition. This is an example of how the unions mystify the workers on several accounts:
Unions may talk about unity. During the Con-Ed strike in New York City, all the major unions came out. Yet, at the Con-Ed pickets the union had posted a banner clearly reading: “At this time we are not addressing any other union’s grievances”, while workers belonging to a different union stood across the streets with signs that expressed their solidarity with the Con-Ed workers. In a similar way, in the case of the janitors’ strike where the unions really conducted a national campaign of support, demonstrating with other workers, engaging in rolling strikes city by city, the Lockheed workers were totally isolated and not a word was said about them. At the end, concessions are made behind the backs of the workers, not enshrined in the contracts.
It is clear that the working class has not given up its fight. Its combative mood under the most difficult historical conditions since the counterrevolution - a ferocious economic crisis, the threat of an environmental catastrophe, ever bloodier and more dangerous wars, the decomposition of the social fabric - can lay the foundations for even more combative struggles tomorrow. The most fundamental dynamic that surfaces in all the struggles the working class in America has undertaken since 2005 with the MTA workers strike is an incipient development of class identity and solidarity which is apparent in the working class’ open willingness to fight on behalf of the next generation of workers. Its potential to develop further is linked to a series of factors: the bourgeoisie’s ability to manipulate and mystify the workers, the dynamic of the class struggle world -wide, the aggravation of the crisis. The stakes are very high, but the decisive battles are yet to be fought.
The bourgeoisie is always very keen on spreading the idea among the working class that the class struggle does not pay, even that it is over. Indeed, if we were to base ourselves on the statistics, trends, academic studies and the propaganda of the ruling class, we would be very hard placed in making an adequate and dispassionate assessment of where the class struggle is now, and worse placed yet in tracing its perspective. This is because the bourgeoisie has an obvious interest in trying to destroy the working class sense of self-confidence and discredit the class’ own theory of history and its revolutionary project. Our rulers dream of a proletariat without a vision. For the class itself and its revolutionary minorities, though, the whole question about how to assess the class struggle, its history, its weaknesses, strengths, and perspectives is a very serious business that cannot be understood through statistics alone, by ignoring the historic context or though academic studies the aim of which is not to understand reality, but rather to mystify it. The class and its revolutionary minorities must study and understand as carefully and objectively as possible the development of the class struggles in order to be able to see the underlying dynamics and tendencies, because their task is to help to orientate, to give a general line of march to their movement, to foster reflection and generate an understanding of how to move forward in the struggles to come.
The importance for the working class to develop and strengthen its own class identity, its confidence, and its solidarity cannot be overstated. As the first exploited class in history that also has the potential to take humanity to the next level of historical development, the working class is in a unique and contradictory historical situation. On one hand, capitalism itself has developed the productivity of labor necessary to make abundance - the freedom from necessity and the realm of communism - possible. On the other hand, the unleashing of society’s productive potential at all levels, including, but not limited to, the economic level, cannot be concretized until capitalist relations of production are destroyed. As an exploited class, the proletariat is constantly subjected to the pressure of bourgeois ideology and propaganda about the superiority of the capitalist system. This includes the mystification of how wealth and value are created through the separation of the laborer from the means of production, the specialization of production, the piecemeal fashion in which production takes place, and also, very importantly, the expropriation of the producer’s ability to make decisions about how to produce, for which goals, and how to distribute production to the full benefit of all of society’s members. In the chaos generated by the anarchic way capitalism produces - each capitalist entity blindly setting in motion tremendous human resources as it furiously seeks profit in an ever-shrinking market- the worker experiences the entire process of production as an incomprehensible, alien and alienating activity. However, because it is only the proletariat that can produce value which capital transforms into profit, the worker inevitably becomes the target and victim of ferocious attacks against his own conditions of life and work. The relations of capitalist production inevitably force the capitalist to attack, and the worker to defend himself. It is during this struggle that the worker can become aware of being part of a social class, not just an alienated member of society. Historically, it is this confrontation against the exploitation by capital that has helped the class forge its own identity, understand the need for solidarity, and become attracted to the theory of communism.
Ana
November 22 2012
On the face of it, if it was at all possible to weigh up the phenomena of current wars, the recent Israeli-Hamas conflict around the Gaza Strip wouldn't be the worst slaughter taking place. British-backed Rwandan 'rebels' have killed, raped and brutalised their way deep into the so-called Democratic Republic of Congo, itself a wider field for massacres, rape, child-soldiers and terror which, when not directly orchestrated by them, are allowed to happen by the big powers while the United Nations watches. Further north in Africa, across the Sahel, again the widespread killings of civilians, rape, child-soldiers, big power manoeuvres and rivalries, along with the abject barbarity of religious fundamentalism. In Syria, over the same days as the recent Israeli operation "Pillar of Defence" took place, many more were killed and wounded within an ongoing general slaughterhouse. But the conflict between Israel and Palestine has a particular resonance for revolutionaries, which is also glimpsed by wider layers of the working class, because it shows the permanent expression of militarisation and war which is the hallmark of a decayed and further decaying social system. Whatever its specifics, strategies and rationales - and there are certainly plenty of those - the Israeli-Palestine conflict is first and foremost the expression of a decomposing capitalism that holds an enormous threat for the working class and the whole of humanity. This particular conflict, increasingly along with the whole geopolitical situation of the Middle East, represents the tendency towards greater militarism, imperialist war, instability and chaos. Its absurdity, intractability and irrationality perfectly sums up the future that this crisis-ridden system offers to us and the generations to follow. There can be no peace here, no meaningful negotiations, and any possible Palestinian two-state solution, if it ever sees the light of day, would only be a contributing factor to deeper instability and war. The Middle East shows how, even in the face of chaos, the nations and cliques are inevitably driven to growing tensions, rivalries and military competition planet. Every major nation has become a military monster and all of the national state creations in decadence are created in their own image, where every aspiring clique or 'national liberation' force are also monstrous expressions of the universal decay. Israel and the 'Palestinian question' shows this in spades.
The Department of Political Science at Oslo University, in collaboration with the Peace Research Institute, has concluded in 2009, through the person of its Professor Havard Hegre that, in relation to war "the number of conflicts is falling" and "we expect this fall to continue"[1]. It's the imperialist version of economic crisis denial and the putting forward of an everlasting more or less peaceful capitalism. It's pure fiction! We've already mentioned the wars in Africa and the wider Middle East above, wars that show every sign of extending and deepening. To these we can add the war in Libya, which the good professor above categorises, along with the war in Syria, as "democratisation processes", as if that was some sort of excuse and in whose view, like many bourgeois academics, capitalism can maintain equilibrium, become more humane and even progress towards eternal life. To the wars above we can add the continuing war and bombings in Iraq which are more and more threatening to link up and slot in with the wider Syrian war, or the 'Kurdish Question' which is a war in itself and a potential war across several countries, again threatening to link in with the Syrian war. Then there's the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the de facto declaration of war by the western powers against a Russian and Chinese backed Iran (in a line-up similar to Syria); and in this vein we mustn't forget the myriad tensions and rivalries around and emanating from an aggressive and voracious Chinese imperialism. And we must add, for future reference, the fragile and militarised imperialist fault-lines of the Balkans, the Caucasus and the ex-Russian republics, Africa (Somalia, the Sahel, Congo). Everywhere we look we see greater tendencies not towards peace, rationality and coherence, but to incoherence, fragmentation, separatist centrifugal tendencies that, in the relatively economically weaker areas of the world - a growing, expanding area of the globe - show a slide into permanent militarisation and war. This is the direct consequence of an economic system that, for all its former glories, is now staggering about on its last legs.
The Middle East is made up of economically incoherent territories where ethnic and religious divisions are manipulated and manoeuvred by all the major imperialisms. In the early 1900s, as the capitalist system had covered the globe and there was no room for any real, new expanding nations, countries like Iraq, Yemen, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories were all creations, or rather abortions, of imperialism in general and specifically Britain and France[2] which used the arbitrarily imposed borders of these newly created countries to divide-and-rule and defend their own imperialist interests. Later, the US used the terrorist factions of Zionism in order to help dislodge the British, and later on, during the Cold War, Russia used the whole region as its one of its stamping grounds in order to confront the USA. The Israeli state, like all the Arab states mentioned above, which, incidentally, have killed more Palestinians than the Israelis, is a permanent expression of militarism and war which, as the economic crisis deepens, will become more and more unstable. Within this process, not just the Palestinians but the Israelis and the masses of the Arab populations become hostages and pawns in the unfolding chaos and contradictions of imperialism, which has been expressed more widely in a situation of more or less permanent war from around 1914.
When capitalism was a vibrant, progressive and expanding system wars and divisions were still part of it, but overall the system tended towards a certain coherence at the level of the construction and unification of the nation state, as all elements, religious, ethnic, etc., tended to merge for the greater good of a more effective process of capitalist accumulation. This wasn't because of the 'moral superiority' of capitalism but emanated from its fundamental need for successful exploitation and expansion. In decadence however we see that the formation of new states does not lead to the integration of different groups in society into a higher capitalist unit but more often results in ethnic cleansing, the reinforcement of racial, religious and ethnic divisions, the expulsion of different groups or their ghettoisation. We've already mentioned above the Balkans, the Caucasus, the ex-Russian republics - and we could add the Indian sub-continent - regions where many of these 'nations' were created for and by imperialist interests and whose very existence is founded on ethnic and religious tensions, centrifugal forces and the defence of every man for himself. Exactly the same is true for the 'nations' of the Middle East: Jordan, Syria, etc., and particularly Israel whose specificities and existence as a fortress state very precisely reflects the general decay of capitalism. Many of these nations are not viable economic units and mostly rely on a bigger imperialist shark or sharks and become a focus for greater tensions. They express not a positive move forward but rather a real fetter on the productive forces.
But does this mean that around the Middle East there are no rationales in this equation, no strategic and economic motives at work; oil production and distribution for example, electoral motives, tactical considerations and so on? No, there are bundles of them. They come thick and fast in the Middle East but the point is that they are all entirely secondary to the overwhelming tendency towards breakdown. In fact they can only contribute to the latter within the absurdity of the defence of borders, arbitrary divisions and of the framework of a profound, insurmountable impasse only worsened by the deepening economic crisis. This infernal spiral towards destruction won't stop and cannot be attenuated or negotiated away. Whatever the bourgeoisie does to try to 'regulate' the situation only rends the situation still more fragile, and this is exemplified in the Middle East where we first saw the clearest signs of the weakening of the world cop, the USA, as its reach is stretched and compromised, opening the door to still more centrifugal tendencies. This phenomenon of a society being torn apart in a series of wars with different ethnic, religious and racial groups fighting each other with hidden imperialist interests behind is a typical expression of a decadent society - a repetition of what both the Roman Empire and feudal Europe saw in their epochs of decline.
If it was President Netanyahu's intention to strengthen his political position by launching operation "Pillar of Defence" in mid-November once the US elections were out of the way and before the Israeli elections next January then, like much manoeuvring in the Middle East, it's gone badly wrong. Hamas, which had been losing credibility within the Gaza Strip for several years now, has been enormously strengthened by the outcome of the 8-day war. The brutality of the Israeli response comprising of tank fire, huge naval guns, attack helicopters and fighter jets into the narrow, densely populated strip has backfired politically. Hamas, which along with its more fundamentalist 'allies' has been firing rockets into Israel for months from the same densely populated areas, has been strengthened by signing a truce with Israel and through further talks aimed at 'facilitating' the movement of goods and people in and out of the Strip. In return Hamas has said that it will stop the rocket attacks on Israel and to this end has also strengthened itself against more militant groups like Islamic Jihad. Hamas has also strengthened itself against the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas on the West Bank where the stock of Hamas has risen to the detriment of the former. This accounts from the warning this week from Abbas to Europe and the US (The Guardian, 28.11.12) that some crumb of statehood (i.e. giving the Palestinians some sort of Vatican-like status within the UN) has to be given to the PA or Hamas will be further strengthened. To the disappointment of the US and the rest of the Middle East Quartet (special envoy Tony Blair), Hamas has become more included in the whole process and its isolation is broken with support coming not just from Iran but also from Qatar, Tunisia, Egypt (officials from all three countries have visited Gaza recently) and others. British Foreign Secretary Hague welcomed the Egyptian-brokered truce as "an important step to a lasting peace" . No such thing of course but it shows how Hamas and the smaller groups have to be taken into account now by all those that were trying to isolate it. The US administration knew that an Israeli invasion of Gaza would be a disaster given the geopolitical issues, held its nose and rapidly gave the Egyptian/Hamas ceasefire deal its full seal of approval.
Another 'winner' in this whole shaky process has been the Muslim Brotherhood leader and Egyptian president, Mohamed Mursi, who, with his spy chief Mohamed Shehata (echoes of ex-president Murabak and his spy chief Omar Suleiman) met with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and the leader of Islamic Jihad, Ramadam Shalah (Christian Science Monitor, November 22) to do the deal which Hillary Clinton had to personally welcome on behalf of the administration. Only a few months ago, the US was trying to undermine Mursi and, just to underline the volatility and fragility of the whole region, the US is again denouncing Mursi and his Muslim Brotherhood for taking on Murabak-type dictatorial powers just days after his ceasefire 'victory'[3].
Further factors from this imperialist cesspit are that Israel would like Egypt to take more responsibility for Hamas, and according to that view the West Bank and Gaza - at either ends of Israel - could be further isolated one from the other if Egypt's scrutiny over Gaza could be reinforced. Mursi has rebuffed such moves and doesn't want Israel to dump the problem of Gaza onto Egypt. While there have been tensions and a certain distancing between Hamas and their previous backers Iran (a vacuum that Qatar stepped into) over the war in Syria, there appears to be something of a re-warming given the perceived role that Iranian weapons (particularly anti-tank weapons) provided to Hamas had in dissuading an Israeli ground assault on Gaza. Not surprisingly there are splits in Hamas regarding its relations with Iran which is a further complicating factor. There's suspicion at least from Saudi Arabia towards the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt as there is in the United Arab Emirates, a major investor in Egypt. Then there is the ambiguous attitude of the Brotherhood towards Iran, typical of the ever-more tangled relationships in the Middle East. The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood is a further unpredictable factor expressed in the elements above and its increasing activity in Jordan is contributing to making this country more and more unstable. All this, along with major questions over Iran and Syria, makes for further problems for US imperialism and its "Light Footprint" strategy for the Middle East (as it 'rebalances' or 'pivots' towards its greater priority of the Asia/Pacific and the increasing threat that China poses to its dominance in this region).
Whereas in 2008/9, at the time of the last Israeli incursion into Gaza, there was a relative 'calm' on the borders with Syria and Lebanon, while Turkey was still friendly with Israel, Mubarak could be relied upon in Egypt and US/Iranian tensions weren't as sharp. Now the situation is much more unpredictable with many of the nations playing their own game and deepening the tendencies toward each for themselves.
The leaders of the stateless Palestinian bourgeoisie, Fatah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas, have nothing to offer their population except increasing misery and martyrdom. They are nothing but an expression of the despair and hatred whose aim is to kill as many Israeli civilians as possible. They can offer no constructive alternative but, similar to the war lords of Africa whose child armies kill, rape and plunder - another phenomenon of decomposing capitalism - they can only push desperate young Palestinians into revenge and rages of destruction for their empty nationalist projects. The Israeli state feeds the spiral of terror and violence with daily indignities, collective punishments, land-grabs, random shootings and blowing up civilians who happen to be near the Palestinian gangsters.
Despite repression and the permanent atmosphere of war, the Middle East has seen many signs of the social protest against the crisis of capitalism and leaders on all sides: over the last couple of years we've seen social protest in Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and more recently Jordan; and these movements have mainly been directed against fundamental questions such a price rises in food, energy, etc., as well as all the regimes that impose and police these measures. Such movements, while not revolutionary in themselves, have to be welcomed by the working class because they show that, even in these more militarised and brutal regimes, even with the hatreds and enmities that emanate from the ruling cliques, there is still the will and ability to fight back. While many workers of these regions have taken part in the protests they have largely done so as individuals and not as a distinct, independent force. The nearest expression of this is that of the working class in Egypt, where the organised working class was, and remains, a real factor in the class struggle. But the reality of the working class in the areas around Israel is that it is too weak and will find a way forward out of the ambient barbarism very difficult without the moves of their brothers in the more central capitalist nations.
These social movements in the region around Israel involving the working class are important but, while they can destabilise the bourgeoisie or cause it problems, they are not strong enough to continue to push the ruling class back - nor could they be due to their own limitations. As a cry of the oppressed and exploited the social movements throughout the Middle East were part of an international wave of protests that continues to reverberate. But here the contradiction is that the weakness of that positive movement has left something of a vacuum that imperialism has poured into, leading, in part, to the wars in Libya and Syria. It has also contributed to reinforcing the wider destabilisation of the regimes which in turn have tended to further weaken the USA's control over the region and promote more centrifugal, independent tendencies among the local bourgeoisies. We don't expect an upward, linear movement of force against capitalism even with the stronger development of class struggle. The region of the Middle East will be particularly difficult for the exploited and oppressed that live there and there will be very hard times for the class struggle overall with imperialism being an ever-present threat and danger. Only significant developments of the class struggle in the capitalist centres can push imperialism back and begin to question the fragmentation and war that it imposes.
Baboon (this article was contributed by a sympathiser of the ICC)
29.11.12
[2]See the three parts of "Notes on the History of Conflict in the Middle East" in International Reviews nos. 115, 117 and 118.
[3]The British bourgeoisie and its intelligence agencies have been more supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood. They have supported it historically in the 1940s and 50s and there have been reports of its direct support to the MB as a fighting force in Syria over the last year. Like Murabak and his spy chief Suleiman, whom Britain backed to the hilt, we can imagine similar support to Mursi and his vicious crew. A press release dated March 2012, for the updated version of Mark Curtis' book: Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam, states: "Foreign Office officials have recently held various meetings with the MB, which have been unreported in the British media. The policy is one of "insuring" Britain in the event of the Brotherhood playing a key role in Egypt's transition and protecting an £11 billion investment by BP. Freedom of Information requests by the author for more details on these meetings have been refused by the F.O. on the grounds of 'public interest'".
Links
[1] https://kentcommunistgroup.blogspot.com/
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201111/4593/indignados-spain-greece-and-israel
[3] mailto:[email protected]
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/intervention
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/development-proletarian-consciousness-and-organisation/british-communist-left
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/undefined
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/conspiracy.jpg
[8] http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/26/newsid_4396000/4396893.stm
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/1976/machiavellianism
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1231/occupy-london
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1251/conspiracy-theories
[12] https://www.ippnw.de/commonFiles/pdfs/Atomenergie/Zu_den_Auswirkungen_der_Reaktorkatastrophe_von_Fukushima_auf_den_Pazifik_und_die_Nahrungsketten.pdf
[13] https://news.ippnw.de/index.php?id=72
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/japan
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/earthquake-japan-2011
[16] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/nuclear-power
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/discussion
[18] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1255/manchester-anarchist-bookfair
[19] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/turkey
[20] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/kurdistan
[21] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/china.jpg
[22] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/china
[23] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-struggle
[24] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/economic-crisis
[25] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/port_saidjpg_2.jpg
[26] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/revolt-egypt-and-tunisia
[27] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1256/football-violence
[28] https://libcom.org/
[29] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalismusa/201112/4629/occupy-movement-response-capitalism-s-attacks-hampered-illusions-dem
[30] http://www.nycga.net/2012/03/15/proposal-to-end-spokes-and-the-ga
[31] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/50/united-states
[32] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1268/occupy-seattle
[33] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/justice-for-trayvon-martin.jpg
[34] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1850/trayvon-martin
[35] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1851/george-zimmerman
[36] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1270/trayvon-martin-shooting
[37] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1849/george-zimmerman-trial
[38] http://www.birov.net
[39] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/balkans
[40] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1230/occupy-movement
[41] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/electricians.jpg
[42] https://libcom.org/article/attack-electricians-contracts-wobbles-balfour-beatty-folds
[43] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201110/4522/electricians-actions-hold-promise-class-unity
[44] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201111/4566/electricians-solidarity-across-industries-key
[45] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201112/4611/sparks-don-t-let-unions-block-struggle
[46] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201201/4654/illusions-unions-will-lead-defeat
[47] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/britain
[48] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/unions-against-working-class
[49] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/electricians-strikes
[50] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201203/4703/mass-poverty-greece-it-s-what-awaits-us-all
[51] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201203/4701/workers-take-control-kilkis-hospital-greece
[52] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/student-and-workers-struggles-greece
[53] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1257/occupation-athens-law-school
[54] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/kilkis.jpg
[55] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201203/4699/order-liberate-ourselves-debt-we-must-destroy-economy
[56] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1258/workers-occupation-general-hospital-kilkis
[57] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/we-are-all-greeks1-300x148.jpg
[58] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1228/general-assemblies
[59] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/film-review
[60] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/egypt
[61] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/contribution-discussion
[62] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1232/science
[63] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1266/marxism
[64] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/rajpura-punjab2.jpg
[65] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/61/india
[66] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/union-manouevres
[67] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/28_march.leaflet.pdf
[68] https://world.internationalism.org
[69] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/general-and-theoretical-questions/economic-crisis
[70] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1269/teachers-strike
[71] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/2011_movements_lft2.pdf
[72] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/ciudadanos_indignados_organizadores_alian_barcelona_justicia_social.jpg
[73] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201203/4744/economic-crisis-not-never-ending-story
[74] http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2101745_2102132_2102373,00.html
[75] https://www.marxists.org/archive/reed/1919/10days/10days/ch1.htm
[76] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/social-revolts
[77] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/306/brazil-nulceus
[78] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2009/philippines-turkey
[79] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/life-icc
[80] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/peru
[81] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/ecuador
[82] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1277/occupy-movement-zurich
[83] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17261265
[84] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/260/iran
[85] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/imperialist-rivalries
[86] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1244/nuclear-weapons
[87] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,822232,00.html
[88] http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/usarmee128.html
[89] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1216015/More-British-soldiers-prison-serving-Afghanistan-shock-study-finds.html#ixzz1qEGoRWsa
[90] https://www.democracynow.org/2012/3/16/mind_zone_new_film_tracks_therapists
[91] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1276/mohamed-merah
[92] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1278/robert-bales
[93] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/massacres
[94] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201111/4593/movement-indignants-spain-greece-and-israel-indignation-preparation.
[95] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201111/4593/movement-indignants-spain-greece-and-israel-indignation-preparation
[96] https://en.internationalism.org/content/3585/who-can-change-world-part-1-proletariat-revolutionary-class
[97] https://en.internationalism.org/content/3416/who-can-change-world-part-2-proletariat-still-revolutionary-class
[98] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/107_decomposition
[99] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/spain
[100] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/indignados
[101] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/obsoleto.jpg
[102] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201203/4766/statement-social-movements-2011
[103] mailto:[email protected]
[104] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/days-discussion
[105] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/chinese_workes_on_strike.jpg
[106] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/state-repression
[107] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1287/oil-workers-strike-kazakhstan
[108] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1288/killing
[109] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/sarko.jpg
[110] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/france
[111] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/attacks-workers
[112] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1289/french-presidential-election
[113] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/calb2312mali_coup_d___tat_jpg.jpg
[114] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/decomposition
[115] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1290/mali
[116] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/greekelections7.jpeg
[117] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/elections-0
[118] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/mau_mau_round_up.jpg
[119] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/200512/1558/short-history-british-torture
[120] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/6/1294/british-empire
[121] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1293/michael-gove
[122] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/protestosab7847.jpeg
[123] http://www.pco.org.br/conoticias/ler_materia.php?mat=34993
[124] https://es.internationalism.org/revolucion-mundial/201111/3241/la-inseguridad-social-un-motivo-mas-para-luchar-contra-el-capitalismo
[125] https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch07.htm
[126] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/brazil
[127] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/police-agents-state
[128] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1295/police-strikes
[129] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/shiningpath_tv.jpg
[130] https://en.internationalism.org/basic-positions
[131] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/terrorism
[132] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/bourgeois-maneuvers-0
[133] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/rafaelcorrea_1392296c.jpg
[134] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1296/rafael-correa
[135] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1297/diamond-jubilee
[136] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1298/monarchy
[137] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1299/republicanism
[138] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/eurofall.jpg
[139] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1305/eu
[140] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2007/march/heine
[141] http://www.marxist.com/ArtAndLiterature-old/marxism_and_art.html
[142] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel%27s_Castle
[143] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dada
[144] https://en.internationalism.org/pamphlets/decadence/ch3
[145] https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/06/artpol.htm
[146] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1284/art-and-decadence
[147] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/gay_rights.jpg
[148] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/oppression-gay-people
[149] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/icc_logo.jpg
[150] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1300/world-revolution
[151] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/missiles_on_roof.jpg
[152] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/nationalism-sport
[153] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1301/olympic-games
[154] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/41zos3gybxl._aa160_.jpg
[155] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/347/ni-murdoch-scandal
[156] http://www.relativeautonomy.com
[157] https://www.medialens.org/
[158] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1302/stephen-harper
[159] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1303/david-edwards
[160] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1304/david-cromwell
[161] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/media-campaigns
[162] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/book-review
[163] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Orientalist_studies_in_Islam
[164] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1309/islam
[165] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/quebec_students.jpg
[166] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2010/11/lyon-repression
[167] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/151/winnipeg-general-strike
[168] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/student-struggles
[169] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1310/quebec
[170] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/korea
[171] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1311/il-jae-lee
[172] http://www.29mayisbirligi.com
[173] https://imza.la/
[174] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1312/turkish-airlines-strike
[175] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalismusa/201205/4927/obamacare-political-chaos-bourgeoisie-austerity-working-class
[176] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/immigration
[177] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/health-care
[178] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/cathedral.of_.the_.future.jpg
[179] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/6/1313/undefined
[180] http://www.sosfemmes.com/violences/violences_chiffres.htm
[181] http://www.hrw.org/news/2008/12/18/us-soaring-rates-rape-and-violence-against-women
[182] https://marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1912/05/12.htm
[183] https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1909/social-basis.htm
[184] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/kollontai
[185] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/rosa-luxemburg
[186] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1314/sylvia-pankhurst
[187] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/dada.lhooq_.lg_.jpg
[188] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201206/4977/notes-toward-history-art-ascendant-and-decadent-capitalism
[189] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/japan_protest.jpg
[190] https://blogs.mediapart.fr/edition/japon-un-seisme-mondial/article/201111/fukushima-occuper-tokyo-des-manifestations-de-ma
[191] https://www.slate.fr/story/37717/japon-antinucleaire
[192] https://www.ouest-france.fr/actu/actuDet_-Japon-manifestations-anti-nucleaires-monstres_3637-2097031_actu.Htm?xtor=RSS-4&utm_source=RSS_MVI_ouest-france
[193] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/112_japan.html
[194] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/114_japan.htm
[195] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1315/protests-japan
[196] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/brics.jpg
[197] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1316/brics
[198] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/austerity_in_spain.pdf
[199] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/firemen-participate-protest-government.jpg
[200] mailto:[email protected]
[201] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/marx-and-bible.jpg
[202] https://www.international-communist-party.org/English/MeetLive.htm
[203] https://libcom.org/forums/news/public-meeting-historical-need-communism-05062012
[204] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/bordigism
[205] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1317/international-communist-party
[206] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1318/public-meeting
[207] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/chaos-in-syria.jpg
[208] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/12/syrian-opposition-doing-the-talking
[209] https://libcom.org/article/syria-imperialism-and-left-1
[210] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/syria
[211] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/antep_workers_on_strike.jpg
[212] http://www.medya73.com/iscilerden-insanca-yasmak-istiyoruz-grevi-haberi-1017780.html
[213] http://www.agos.com.tr/gaziantepte-4-bin-tekstil-iscisi-grevde-2304.html
[214] http://www.soldefter.com/2012/08/20/antep-iscilerinin-grevi-sona-erdi-bir-adim-one
[215] https://libcom.org/article/unions-against-revolution-g-munis
[216] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/wildcat-strikes
[217] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1323/antep-textile-workers-strike
[218] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/turkish_airline_strike.jpg
[219] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/persecution_of_gypsies.jpg
[220] http://www.ldh-france.org
[221] http://www.lepoint.fr
[222] https://www.rfi.fr/fr/europe/20100826-europe-expulsions-roms-sont-monnaie-courante
[223] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/racism
[224] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1324/gypsies
[225] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/time_and_motion.jpg
[226] https://libcom.org/history/stopwatch-wooden-shoe-scientific-management-industrial-workers-world
[227] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1325/taylorism
[228] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/striking_chicago_teachers.pdf
[229] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/chicago.jpg
[230] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1326/chicago
[231] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/libya.jpg
[232] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/829/libya
[233] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/war-libya
[234] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/no_to_austerity_-_portugal.jpg
[235] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/1347647482-jamat-e-islami-protest-against-anti-islamic-movie-released-in-us_1447060.jpg
[236] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/islamophobia
[237] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1327/innocence-muslims
[238] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/capitalism_has_no_future-leaflet.pdf
[239] mailto:[email protected]
[240] https://en.internationalism.org/contact
[241] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1328/tuc
[242] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/venezuela
[243] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/hugo-chavez
[244] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuOT1bRYdK8
[245] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/116_election.htm
[246] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201207/5061/recent-supreme-court-rulings-obamacare-and-arizona-anti-immigration-law-moment
[247] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/barack-obama
[248] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1263/mitt-romney
[249] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1262/us-elections-2012
[250] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/17/1185/us-presidential-elections-2012
[251] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1342/hurricane-sandy
[252] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalismusa/201209/5162/solidarity-chicago-teachers
[253] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/obama
[254] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/57/israel
[255] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/58/palestine
[256] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/gaza-bombardment-israel
[257] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/32/decomposition
[258] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1358/sandy-hook-massacre
[259] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/128/historic-course
[260] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/the-future-of-war-is-looking-bleak-8344462.html