After a miserable 2011, characterised by rising unemployment, inflation and increased hardship for workers everywhere, most people were probably hoping that 2012 would offer some hope for improvement or at least some relief from the relentless assaults on living standards.

Unfortunately, such hopes are increasingly utopian as capitalism continues to grapple with the consequences of the worst economic crisis in its history. The remorseless unfolding of the crisis is pushing every aspect of the capitalist social structure towards breaking point at all levels of society.

In the Eurozone, the impossibility of resolving the debt crisis becomes more obvious every day. The head of the IMF has warned that “the world faces an economic spiral reminiscent of the 1930s unless action is taken on the eurozone crisis”. Several countries in Europe were victim of the recent round of credit rating downgrades, most significantly France. France’s situation is important because their rating has a knock-on effect of the perceived stability of the European bail-out mechanisms, which in turn affect market confidence in the ability of Europe to control the crisis.

The reasons given by S&P, the rating agency concerned, is revealing: “we believe that a reform process based on a pillar of fiscal austerity alone risks becoming self-defeating, as domestic demand falls in line with consumers’ rising concerns about job security and disposable incomes, eroding national tax revenues” (www.standardandpoors.com [2]). Without growth, debt reduction becomes impossible - and yet the only way capitalism has to stimulate growth is by government intervention, thus increasing debt! Capitalism is caught in a vicious pincer movement from which it cannot escape.

Closer to home in Britain, the latest GDP figures indicate a contraction of 0.2% in the last quarter of 2011, threatening a new recession. Industrial production is in decline once again, down 2.9% in the year to November, indicating that manufacturing’s brief renaissance on which the ruling class had pinned their hopes has now run out of steam.

Headlines were also made as government net debt passed the £1 trillion mark. The net debt of the state is now 61% of GDP with gross debt at 81%. In fact, Britain’s state debt is lower than that of France and Germany, but its deficit (i.e. the rate at which that debt grows) is much higher. But although it’s state debt that continues to grab the headlines, this focus serves to mask a far deeper problem at the root of the capitalist economy.

Overall debt in Britain (public and private sector) is a staggering 507% of GDP. This means that the entire country would have to work for nothing for 5 years to repay it! The liabilities of the finance sector alone are well over 200% of GDP.

Debt is a form of capital and, like all capital, has to be worked in order to maintain its value and to grow. In practice, this means that it must employ workers who must then produce surplus value (i.e. the value above and beyond what workers have to consume in order to live) which is then paid to the boss in the form of profit. Out of this profit, the capitalist pays back the original capital plus interest. Obviously workers can take out credit too, in which case they pay the interest directly to the capitalist out of their own wages. When governments borrow, they pay back their loans from taxes which are taken from company profits (produced by workers) or wages (again, from workers).

If the borrower cannot squeeze enough surplus value out of the working class to pay off the debt (with interest) then the capital becomes worthless, capitalists go out of business and defaults on the loan while workers are laid off. If many borrowers encounter this problem, a whole wave of such defaults can wipe out the banking system. This is precisely what nearly happened in 2008.

The enormous scale of the debt problem shows quite clearly the underlying structural crisis facing capital, one that can only be answered by extracting more and more value from the working class.

All the left and liberal campaigns about making the rich pay their taxes are thus based on a fantasy. Forcing the rich to pay their taxes so that the state can pay back money to ... the rich! And even were they actually carried out, they wouldn’t begin to scratch the surface of the wider problem as the gigantic level of debt indicates.

What about the argument that austerity measures are self-defeating and should be stopped? The left often points this out and, as we saw earlier, elements within the economic apparatus of the ruling class sometimes also support this view. The problem with this approach is that this inevitably means contracting more debt to fund government spending. It doesn’t help capitalism extract more value from workers (unless, as is often the case, the increased deficit spending creates inflation) and thus doesn’t solve the underlying problem. Growth may appear to take off but actual profits remain depressed, debt increases until it becomes obvious it cannot be repaid, markets panic and the economy falls into recession. In other words, a replay of the same scenario that brought capitalism to the current precipice.1

The so-called “debt crisis” is not really about debt, but a crisis at the level of the capital-labour relationship. Essentially, capitalism cannot exploit us enough to keep itself going and must increase that exploitation as much as it can. Whatever form it takes (government spending cuts, unemployment, pay freezes, etc.), the current austerity is absolutely essential from the point of view of capital and there is no choice about it as long as the system remains in place. The only question is how far they feel they can go in implementing that austerity before the working class feels compelled to respond.

Selling austerity to the workers

So far in Britain, the ruling class has been quite successful in its efforts to impress this reality upon the majority of the population. In spite of some high profile strikes and protests, like the big public sector strike on November 30th, a recent poll   (mobile.bloomberg.com) suggests 74% of the population support the current programme of cuts. Whatever the merits or otherwise of such polls, it is clear that the response to the avalanche of crisis and austerity has had a mixed reaction within the mass of the working class.

Nonetheless, the ruling class is keeping a close eye on the social front. The determination and violence of the student struggles, while not posing any immediate or direct threat to class rule, reminded the ruling class that the proletariat is not completely under the thumb. The naked application of state force against the students had the potential to strip away illusions about democracy from a whole generation. The explosion of long-term unemployment amongst both the young and the old also has the potential to radicalise the population. The present capitalism has to offer young people is highly indicative of the future it has to offer the whole of society, while unemployment amongst older workers makes the programme of attacks on pensioners harder to sustain ideologically - it is difficult to convince workers that they’ll have to work longer when work itself is so hard to come by.

The bourgeoisie have thus maintained a whole series of campaigns with the aim of keeping the myth of democratic debate alive. To start with, the Labour party maintained the position that the cuts were going “too far, too fast”. As public support has shifted behind the cuts agenda, this element is no longer needed and Labour is even more blatantly pro-cuts. This has manifested in the recent questioning of Miliband’s leadership and Ed Balls’ proclamations in favour of a pay-freeze for public sector workers.

One strand of Labour’s ideology that has been taken up more widely, however, is the issue of “fairer capitalism”. Labour has run a sustained campaign on this question and now Cameron has recently jumped on the bandwagon with his recent critique of the “out of control” bonus culture in the banks and talk about making “everyone share in the success of the market”.

The flipside of the “fairer capitalism” campaign is the open season on bankers’ bonuses. The entire media have joined in the circus with politicians and media pundits from across the political spectrum lining up to criticise the £963,000 share option given as a bonus to the boss of RBS, on top of his £1.2 million annual salary. The monolithic nature of this theme across left and right is an indicator that this is no accident but a co-ordinated effort to provide a public target for the growing anger of the masses and allows the ruling class to hide the true depth of the underlying systemic crisis.

What the ruling class fears above all is that the necessary acceleration of the attacks could still trigger a radical response within the working class. With no alternative but to push ahead regardless, the incessant ideological assaults are aimed at ensuring that workers’ questions about the future of society stay locked within the stultifying framework of capitalism. 

Ishamael 28/1/12

1. It will be noted that the explanation for the origins of the present crisis in this article expresses a minority view within the ICC, since it emphasises the problem of extracting sufficient surplus value rather than the problem of realising it on the market. Both approaches, however, are consistent with our overall marxist framework which insists that the crisis does not derive from surface phenomena like the tricks of the bankers but from the fundamental social relation in this society: “the capital-labour relationship”. 

At the time of writing 17 bodies have been found and as many as 20 passengers are still unaccounted for following the shipwreck of the Costa Concordia off the Italian island of Giglo on 14th January.

The captain of the ship became the immediate target of blame after denying that he had rushed to get off before the passengers and was only in a lifeboat because he ‘fallen’ into it and was simply unable to get back on board as he wanted to. He also claimed the rocks he steered the ship onto and which ripped its hull open were not on his map. Reports followed that he might have been drinking or was showing off, possibly to a mystery woman, and that he had delayed getting the passengers off for an hour.

Costa Cruises, which operates a large number of similar ships and whose parent company, Carnival Corporation, owns 10 cruise providers, was quick to join in. The day after the incident, after noting that “the investigation is ongoing”, the company was nonetheless able to conclude “preliminary indications are that there may have been significant human error on the part of the ship’s Master, Captain Francesco Schettino, which resulted in these grave consequences. The route of the vessel appears to have been too close to the shore, and the Captain’s judgement in handling the emergency appears to have not followed standard Costa procedures.”

Whatever blame the Captain may or may not deserve, it is clear that there are wider issues. Concerns had already been raised about the design of the current generation of cruise ships[1] by Nautilus International, a maritime trade union, with safety being compromised for commercial reasons. For example, shallow draughts allow passengers to board easily, but can cause stability problems in certain circumstances. The Costa floated 13 storeys with only 8 metres of hull underwater. The ship was little more than a floating tower block, albeit one with gaudy glamour (such as copy of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the dining room) whose sole purpose is make profits.[2]

This practice seems widespread in the cruise industry as more and more people are crammed on to more and more decks with the addition of swimming pools, shopping malls and other ‘amenities’ to ease the money from their pockets. The next generation of ships may carry 6,000 people with crews of 1,800; the latter no doubt recruited from poor countries where workers are willing to accept low wages and poor conditions just to have a job. Fear of unemployment prevents workers from raising fears about safety or complaining about poor training. On the Costa Concordia a full evacuation drill had not been carried out; the crew seemed unclear what to do (apparently telling passengers to return to their rooms where they may have been unable to escape) and there may have been unregistered passengers on board. The company itself seems to have encouraged the practice of ‘salutes’ with ships sailing very close to the shore.

A ship with a massive superstructure that gives the impression of wealth and power above a shallow, unstable hull, sailing close to ‘uncharted’ rocks, with the captain distracted and looking after number one; the owners focussed on their own interests and ready to throw the captain overboard; the whole ship rolling over and sinking when it hits trouble and gradually slipping under while rescue attempts are made; you could be forgiven for thinking that the disaster was a metaphor for the crisis of capitalism. It might even be funny if the cost wasn’t paid by innocent people. 

North 27/01/12

This article is a contribution to the discussion within the revolutionary movement about the nature of the riots that took place in Britain last August. In the first part of this article, published online[1], we put the question of ‘riots’ within the context of the historical struggle of the working class and argued that the response of revolutionaries to any particular event is not determined by the language and analysis of the ruling class but by the extent to which it advances or holds back the interests of the working class and that this can essentially be determined by the impact it has on the organisation and consciousness of the working class. We looked briefly at how this has been elaborated in theory and practice in the history of the working class. In this second part we turn to the events of last summer and attempt to apply the framework developed in the first part.

This echoes the analysis made by Engels in the 1840s of the response of the newly emerged working class to its situation: “The failings of the workers in general may be traced to an unbridled thirst for pleasures, to want of providence, and of flexibility in fitting into the social order, to the general inability to sacrifice the pleasure of the moment to a remoter advantage. But is that to be wondered at? When a class can purchase few and only the most sensual pleasures by its wearying toil, must it not give itself over blindly and madly to those pleasures? A class about whose education no one troubles himself, which is a playball to a thousand chances, knows no security in life – what incentives has such a class to providence, to ‘respectability’, to sacrifice the pleasure of the moment for a remoter enjoyment, most uncertain precisely by reason of the perpetually varying, shifting conditions under which the proletariat lives? A class which bears all the disadvantages of the social order without enjoying its advantages, one to which the social system appears in purely hostile aspects – who can demand that such a class respect this social order? Verily that is asking much! But the working-man cannot escape the present arrangement of society so long as it exists, and when the individual worker resists it, the greatest injury falls upon himself.”[2] Today, that part of the working class that the bourgeoisie variously describes as the “underclass”, “the criminal elements” or in their more apoplectic moments as scroungers and vermin and “feral youth”, lives in a way that echoes the first decades of the working class. Thus bourgeois society in its senility returns to the weaknesses of its infancy.

The limited nature of the riots

The riots themselves were actually of fairly short duration, scattered across a number of major cities in England,[3] and, with some notable exceptions, causing relatively little lasting damage.[4] In all, it has been reported that about 15,000 took part, but few of the individual incidents seem to have involved very large numbers. The figures collated of those arrested gives a picture of those involved as being mainly young males, from the most deprived areas of the cities involved and often with histories of previous convictions.[5] However, as Aufheben point out in their useful empirical examination of the riots this partly reflects the fact that it was easier to arrest those already known to the police who allowed their faces to be seen.[6]

The primary target seems to have been the acquisition of commodities, usually through breaking into shops, principally large retail chains but also smaller ‘local’ shops. The destruction of people’s homes seems to have been a result of thoughtlessness and indifference rather than deliberate targeting. The police and other symbols of the state were also targets, with the rioters interviewed particularly emphasising this aspect. To a lesser extent ‘the rich’ were also targeted, although it is unclear how intentional this actually was or whether this was a consequence of going after the more expensive commodities in such areas.[7]

Interviews with young people either involved in the riots or living in the areas where they occurred give a mix of explanations, but there is a stress on the lack of hope in the future and the anger this provokes: “People are angry, some people wanted to get the government to listen, some are angry but don’t know why yet ... the younger ones anyway, they’ve got the same shit to come as us, nowhere to go and it will be worse by the time they’re 17 and 18.”;[8] “I’m not saying I know why people kicked off, but I do think most people ... and kids are angry, angry about jobs, no housing, no training... just that theres no help, no way to do better”;[9] “[the looting] was an opportunity to stick two fingers up at the police… People have no respect [for the police] because the police have no respect ... they abuse the badge.”[10] This chimes with research undertaken for the government: “The document said they [the participants in the riots] were motivated by ‘the thrill of getting free stuff – things they wouldn’t otherwise be able to have’, and antipathy towards the police. The death of Mark Duggan, whose shooting by police initially prompted protests in Tottenham on 6 August, which were followed by rioting, motivated some in London to ‘get back’ at the police, the report said. It added: ‘Outside London, the rioting was not generally attributed to the Mark Duggan case. However, the attitude and behaviour of the police locally was consistently cited as a trigger outside as well as within London.’”[11]

This is not to belittle the physical harm suffered by those innocently caught up in the events or targeted by those involved, nor the distress of those who lost their homes and livelihoods. For some of those individuals the impact has been devastating and will remain with them for the rest of their lives. However, every day now workers are losing their livelihoods and their homes as a result of the attacks of the ruling class and many will never recover. Of this the bourgeoisie says nothing, or merely that it is the price “we” have to pay for the extravagance of yesterday and the promise of tomorrow. 

The riots damaged the working class not capitalism

How do this summer’s riots relate to the framework we have set out?

Firstly, the riots reflected the domination of the commodity culture rather than being any challenge to it. In the looting that took place it seems to have been the exchange value of commodities that predominated. The looting of commodities was an end in itself, repeating in a distorted form the message of the bourgeoisie that the accumulation of commodities is how one is defined. To steal a TV without the means to use it – to take the example given by the Situationists in 1965 and echoed in one of the commentaries on the riots[12] – is not to question the commodity spectacle of capitalism but to succumb to it (although the real explanation is probably far more prosaic, with the TV being sold to get the means to buy commodities that the “appropriator” can use – understandable but hardly a threat to the commodity of the spectacle). The notion of “proletarian shopping” put forward as a concept by some, may appear to be opposed to bourgeois laws and morality but outside the proletarian framework of collective action to defend common interests, the individual acquisition of commodities actually never escapes the most basic premise of capitalism: property. At best, such individual appropriation may allow the individual and those around them to survive a little better than before. Again, understandable, but again no threat to the commodity culture.[13]

Secondly, and most damagingly, the riots divided the working class and handed the bourgeoisie an opportunity to undermine the tentative signs of militancy and unity in the working class that have been expressed in some scattered struggles in recent years and which are part of the international development of class struggle and consciousness that is a possibility today. The response of fairly large numbers of people, including members of the working class, of seeking to defend themselves, their families and homes against the riots, while also understandable, did not take place on working class terrain, as some anarchist groups seem to suggest,[14] but on that of the bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeoisie. This could be seen most clearly in the participation in the clean up campaign that saw the likes of Boris Johnson ostentatiously waving a broom around in the air for the cameras.

The riots threw the ideology of the bourgeoisie back into its face. Those involved are no less moral than the ‘responsible’ bourgeoisie whose morality keeps this society of exploitation and despair ticking over. However, the main victim was the working class, partly physically but above all ideologically. The bourgeoisie was not only unscathed but emerged stronger and has pursued a constant ideological campaign since then. The working class did not gain through the experience of self-organisation, quite the opposite, and its consciousness was attacked by the reinforcing of the ideology of look after number one that resulted and of reliance on the state for security. The way the riots have been used by the bourgeoisie to reinforce its material and ideological weapons of control is far more significant than the riots themselves.

Thus, we have to ask to what extent did the bourgeoisie allow the riots to happen? The response of the police to the Duggan family’s protest was provocative, but possibly not more than is often experienced by those on the receiving end of police violence. Much is made of the failures of the police in the first hours, of the lack of numbers, their retreat from the streets and their failure to protect homes and shops. Were the police simply caught off-guard? Possibly. But it is also possible that once the spark had ignited they stood back. In this scenario, the ‘outrage’ of the press and politicians at the police abandoning the streets and the reports of families and ‘communities’ being left to fend for themselves all worked towards the same end of setting one part of the working class against another and of drowning any recognition of its common class interests in a morass of fear and anger.

The working class’ struggle has to go beyond the confines imposed by the bourgeoisie whether it be passivity or riots. Both express the domination of bourgeois ideology that the class struggle has to challenge through its solidarity and collective action and by opposing its perspective of the liberation of humanity from the domination of the commodity and the whole class society that it encompasses to that of the bourgeoisie. In the 19th century this was achieved through the unions as the mass organs of struggle and through the working class’ political organisations. In the present period, faced with the changed historical situation where capitalism is unable to decisively escape from its crisis and faced with betrayals of the unions and many of the original workers’ organisations in dragging workers in war and selling them out in deals with the bosses, the form but not the content of these struggles has changed. Today the mass organisations of the working class tend to form and disappear in the rhythm of the struggle, expressed in open mass assemblies while its political organisations are restricted to small minorities, largely isolated from the working class and frequently hostile to eachother. Nonetheless, they express the historical dynamic of the working class and in future, large scale and more decisive confrontations with the ruling class, the potential exists for the working class to go from mass assemblies to workers councils uniting and organising the collective power of the working class internationally,[15] within which the political organisations that defend the class interests of the working class have the obligation to work together to push forward the class dynamic by offering an analysis based on the historical experiences of the working class and by developing an intervention built on that analysis that enables the working class to navigate its course against the bourgeoisie to victory. 

North 25/01/12

For 5 months electricians have been demonstrating and picketing in order to build resistance to the new Building Engineering Services National Agreement (BESNA) conditions, involving a deskilling and reduction of pay by 35%. Protest meetings and pickets several hundred strong have been held outside construction sites run by the 7 BESNA firms every week around the country, seeking support from sparks whoever they work for, from other building workers, whatever their trade, whether they are unionised or not, from students when they were also demonstrating in London on 9th November, from Occupy London at St Pauls. Where they have sought solidarity they have found it, at least from a minority. On 7th December they expected to be on official strike after 81% voted in favour, only to have the result challenged by the employers and the strike called off. Many of them took part in a militant wildcat strike, complete with pickets several hundred strong going from site to site.

Yet in spite of this effort sparks are more and more frustrated that the struggle isn’t developing, knowing that the present level of action is no-where near enough to defend their current pay and conditions – which are in any case not always honoured, especially by agencies. In particular, strike action continues to be delayed. To make matters worse, after months of the Rank and File calling on workers not to sign the new agreement, not to give in to the employers’ blackmail and threats to terminate their jobs if they don’t, Unite has now advised them to sign the agreements in order to keep their jobs. “Received my letter from unite and telling us to sign the besna … sold down the river by the union and we aint had the ballot yet”, “I can see their thinking from a legal view point but the timing could not be worse” (posts on https://www.electriciansforums.co.uk [11]).

Why is it so hard to struggle today?

This is obviously a tough period, the whole working class is losing out as even those not facing a nominal pay cut are worse off due to inflation. Unemployment is high, jobs are scarce. And in the building industry, with the need to move from site to site and the blacklisting of militant workers, struggle takes real courage.

But there is more to it. Militant sparks have spent all these months pressuring Unite to organise a ballot and strike action, and are now expecting this will lead to a strike in February – after many have been forced to sign the new agreement or lose their jobs. Once the strike starts in Balfour Beatty they hope it will spread to other sites. Rank and File speakers at the pickets in London were very pleased that Len McCluskey had promised them full support at the beginning of the year including an unlimited budget for the struggle, and that there will be an elected Rank and File representative at all meetings with a view to preventing a sell-out.

Frustration with Unite’s delaying tactics has been huge with all sorts of ideas put forward on the electricians’ forum:

* There have been sell-outs and sweetheart deals between union and bosses before. Obviously true, but it doesn’t explain why.

* Self-serving union bureaucrats, “The lazy FTO’s use it for a wage and fat pension”. Many former militant workers become union Full Time Officials, so what is it about the union that corrupts them? Salary and pension or the way the union operates as a negotiating body?

* Unite is too big, “If only we had our own union and not lumped in with half the country”, “All they are interested in is the ‘hard done to’ public sector workers”. In fact the unions treat public sector workers just as badly as any others, for instance when Unison strike teachers’ unions tell their members to cross the picket line and vice versa. The one day protest strike and demonstration organised for public sector workers may have got publicity, but it really hasn’t taken the struggle forward at all.

* “But most of all lads have themselves to blame” for not being willing to struggle. Strangely enough, what makes it hard to enter struggle and to take the struggle forward – for the militant workers on the early morning pickets as well as those who are waiting for Unite to call them out and those who don’t have much confidence that they can do anything – is the view that even though “Unite is not an attractive proposition and has very little credibility with the average working spark”, “many sparks would never join it again”, they also feel “the sad fact is it is all we have and we must use it the best we can”.

The union is not all we have

What the sparks have already done shows that there is an alternative to the union methods of struggle. As was said at one of the protests at Blackfriars in January, it was symbolic that on 9th November Unite wanted to lead them to Parliament to lobby MPs, while workers wanted to go and joint the student protest. Union and rank and file wanted to go in totally different directions.

For the workers “we can only succeed with other trades and occupations reinforcing our ranks and standing alongside us in working class industrial solidarity, in a union or not, in common cause and purpose” (Siteworker), the complete opposite of a union ‘struggle’ limited to their members, and then only those employed by the particular employer they are negotiating with. Workers need to struggle with all their solidarity, with strong pickets, to prevent attacks on their pay, conditions and skills. For the unions the struggle is only an adjunct to negotiation, and time and again they agree to redundancies and austerity just so long as they can get round the table with employers and often government.

Sparks have been demonstrating, picketing, going on wildcats, trying to build a struggle – the only thing that can give confidence to others who may be hesitant to struggle. The union have been delaying with all sorts of excuses about needing to recruit, ballot, to do everything legally. It’s no wonder the full time organisers have been largely absent – what have workers’ protests got to do with that?

If we look further afield we can see that struggle, and sometimes very successful struggle, takes place without unions: textile workers in Bangladesh a couple of years ago; Honda workers in China (who were physically attacked by the state sponsored union). And of course the Indignant and Occupy movements across Europe and the US also show that people can get together and organise a struggle even without unions.

The unions are not all we have; in fact they no longer belong to us at all. All we have is ourselves, the working class.

The struggle is on a knife edge

Despite some upbeat speeches at protests in January, there is a general feeling that the dynamic is ebbing away from the sparks’ resistance to the BESNA attack. Unite’s ballot of Balfour Beatty employees will be announced in early February – the previous one was 81% in favour of action – with the expectation of a strike a week later. But it comes at a dangerous time – after Unite has ordered its members to sign the agreement, when the BESNA employers think they have won and many sparks fear they are right. Time and again unions have called a strike or a big demonstration just at the time when the will to struggle has been frustrated and exhausted, when it is set up for a defeat, leaving workers feeling powerless and demoralised. If this is allowed to happen, the negative lesson will not just hit electricians but all construction workers, giving the building employers an (undeserved) air of invincibility. The defeat of a militant section of the working class will also have consequences for the wider struggle.

Militant sparks are determined to take the resistance to BESNA forward by organising “buses to ferry pickets” and escalating the strike “no doubt other sites will support the BBES strike” (https://siteworker.wordpress.com/ [12]). But this will not be enough if the workers cannot take full control of the fight into their own hands and spread the struggle. Taking control doesn’t mean electing someone from the rank and file to oversee Unite, however militant they may be; it means organising mass meetings to discuss the struggle, take decisions and carry out those decisions collectively. Spreading the fight doesn’t mean just pulling in sparks from other firms; it means drawing in the other building trades and workers in other industries whether public or private sector. This is the only way to win. 

Alex 27/1/12

The preparations for the referendum on Scottish independence, leaving aside Westminster’s legal wrangles over the wording, seem to be going ahead, prompting the question: is this for real, or is it just another form of the democratic diversion?

There’s no doubt that the ‘devolution of power’ to Wales and Scotland was part of the Labour government’s package of ‘reforms’ aimed at convincing the population that it really does have a stake in the governance of the realm. And Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond has given a further pinch of salt to the democratic credentials of Scottish independence. In the recent Hugo Young lecture in London he contrasted Scotland’s retention of social democratic policies like free university education and no prescription charges with the nasty ConDem coalition’s flagrant attacks on education and the NHS.

But the situation has not remained static since the 2000s. What has changed above all is the overt deepening of the world economic crisis and the accompanying signs of serious political divisions within and between the national bourgeoisies of the advanced capitalist countries. The tensions between the Republicans and Democrats over raising the debt ceiling in the USA led, for a while at least, to a near paralysis of the central administration, while differences over the same basic problem – the enormous debts crushing economies like Greece, Italy and Spain – have not only caused governments to fall but more significantly have put a major question over the future of the Eurozone and the European Union itself. The economic impasse facing capitalism is accelerating the tendency for each faction of the ruling class, each national or sub-national unit, to save what it can from the wreckage.

In this situation, the arguments of the SNP seem more in tune with reality than they did in the past. They claim that Scotland, with its potential oil wealth and other assets like the tourist industry, could become a prosperous little Norway if it could just get its hands on the whole Scottish economy without interference (and taxation) from Westminster. And with Cameron clearly marking his distance with the EU over the issue of control over the financial sector, the SNP’s pro-EU position can be used to sell the prospect of an independent Scotland waxing rich under the protection of the European Central Bank.

Of course, given the insoluble nature of the global economic crisis, there will be no real possibility for small countries, or any countries for that matter, to preserve themselves as islands of economic well-being. And in any case, there are some basic realities of the imperialist system which make it extremely unlikely that Westminster will let Scotland detach itself from the UK anytime soon: not only the need to keep the lion’s share of the oil wealth but also the delicate question of the Trident missiles currently housed in Scotland.

Add to this the fact that, despite considerable electoral gains in recent years (above all, of course, its control of the devolved Scottish executive), the SNP can by no means assume that there is a majority in Scotland in favour of outright independence. This is why Salmond has been very careful to preserve the option of ‘devo max’ – a kind of Home Rule for Scotland within a maintained UK – as part of the agenda to be discussed in the lead-up to the referendum. In all probability this is what the SNP is really hoping for.

Leftist speculations

So while there are material forces pushing towards the fragmentation of even the most well-established nation states, full Scottish independence is probably not on the cards for the foreseeable future. But this doesn’t prevent the mouthpieces of pseudo-‘revolutionary socialism’ from indulging in all kinds of ridiculous speculation coupled with a typically reformist daily practice. The Socialist Workers Party for example:

“Socialist Worker backs independence for Scotland. This might seem like a contradiction as we are internationalists.

But we don’t back independence in order to line up behind the nationalists of the Scottish National Party.

The UK is an imperialist power that pillages the world’s resources.

A yes vote in the referendum would weaken the British state.

That’s why Cameron and friends are so desperate to preserve unity”. (Socialist Worker 14 January 2012)

So, while an independent Scotland would not be socialist, it would ‘weaken imperialism’. As a matter of fact, recent experience of the break-up of states into their constituent parts, such as the events in ex-Yugoslavia, shows that such developments merely provide other imperialist powers with added opportunities to intervene and to stir up national hatreds. The gains for the working class and for internationalism are nil.

A more sophisticated approach to the question is provided by the Weekly Worker (19 Jan), who pour scorn on the SWP’s ‘it would weaken imperialism’ claim.

“The SWP - in this instance, comrade Kier McKechnie - has picked up on a frankly idiotic line beloved of Scottish left nationalists, that a Scottish breakaway would be a blow to British imperialism: ‘Britain is a major imperialist power that still wants to be able to invade and rob other countries across the globe,’ he writes. ‘A clear ‘yes’ vote for independence would weaken the British state and undermine its ability to engage in future wars.’

As a factual statement, this is questionable (as a rule, no evidence is ever offered for it). Let us be blunt: it is not the pluckiness and military prowess, however impressive, of the Scots that allows Britain to do these things, but the technological and logistical largesse of the United States”.

But the Weekly Worker soon ends up on essentially the same ground: the discredited slogan of ‘national self-determination’.

 “The only appropriate response to such a referendum is a spoilt ballot - combined with serious propaganda for a democratic federal republic in Britain, in which Scotland and Wales have full national rights, up to and including the right to secession. Our job is not to provide left cover for the break-up of existing states - no matter how far up the imperial food chain they are - but to build the unity of the workers’ movement across all borders, and fight to place the workers’ movement at the vanguard of the struggle for extreme, republican democracy”.

As Rosa Luxemburg pointed out in the early years of the 20th century, the idea of an abstract ‘right’ to national self-determination has nothing to do with marxism, because it obscures the reality that every nation is divided up into antagonistic social classes. And if the formation of certain independent nation states could be supported by the workers’ movement in a period when capitalism still had a progressive role to play, that period – as Luxemburg also showed – came to a definitive end with the First World War. The working class today no longer has any ‘democratic’ or ‘national’ tasks. Its sole future lies in the international class struggle not only across nation states but for their revolutionary destruction. 

Amos 28/1/12

In January a six day general strike in Nigeria was one of the most extensive social movements ever to hit the country. Only 7 million are in unions but up to 10 million took part in the strike, right across Nigeria, with demonstrations in every major city involving tens of thousands overall. The strike was part of a protest against the abolition of fuel subsidies which overnight doubled the cost of not only petrol but also had a similarly massive impact on food, heating and transportation costs. In a country with high unemployment (40% of under forties) and high poverty levels (70% existing on less than $2 a day) the outburst of anger was to be expected.

The major news outlets’ coverage of Nigeria recently has concentrated on the continuing terrorist campaign of Boko Haram, an Islamic fundamentalist group. Over the last two years they have killed more than a thousand people, and have stated their intention to continue the campaign, letting off bombs in crowded public places as well as attacking police stations. There has been a certain amount of sympathy with the latter actions as the Nigerian state rules with a very heavy hand. During the course of the strike, for example, the brutal intervention of the police and armed forces, often firing live ammunition at demonstrators, resulted in the deaths of more than 20, with more than 600 injured. Strictly enforced curfews are still in place in many parts of the country. In Kano, in the North, police helicopter gunships patrol during the day partly to monitor and partly to intimidate the population. Meanwhile in the last week of January nearly 200 people have died in a wave of bombings carried out by Boko Haram. It says that schools could be the next targets.

Despite its brutal nature – a spokesman recently announced that all those who do not follow its sharia law would be killed - Boko Haram has a certain amount of support in the Islamic and poorer North of Nigeria. In the North average annual income is about $718 whereas in the South the figure is $2010. However the violence of Boko Haram has to be seen in context. The general strike involved huge numbers of people from different religious and ethnic backgrounds. In a country with hundreds of languages/ethnic groups, breaking through the divisions to unite in a struggle is important. The fact that the unions called off demonstrations and then the strike so rapidly does not diminish the significance of what happened.

The general strike had been preceded by large scale protests in most of the country and showed the strength of solidarity that exists amongst workers. Nevertheless by focusing the struggle within the framework set out and led by the unions the workers were falling into a familiar trap. While the general strike was running the oil workers union did not participate, allowing Nigeria’s biggest industry to continue. The union leadership negotiated a deal with the government which they presented as a ‘victory’ for the workers when in reality the dampening of the movement was a victory for the bourgeoisie. The response to the deal was one of suspicion amongst large numbers of Nigerians. Many comments in the following days talked about the corruption of the trade union leaders and their collusion with the government.

The problem though lies at a deeper level than the corruption of the leadership. The fundamental requirement for the working class is to control its own struggles and develop its own political programme. This means that it has to organise outside the structures of the trade unions. It needs assemblies and elected committees to co-ordinate its struggle. Then there exists the possibility to extend struggles beyond sector, race and nationality. 

The weight of democratic illusions

We come then to another problem: the democratic fantasy that dominates many of the movements that have appeared in the last few years, such as the Occupy Nigeria movement that sprang up after the fuel subsidy was cut.

The democratic capitalist state exists to make sure that capitalism is working in the national interest. This means in reality the general interest of the national bourgeoisie. Despite the ideal of free market capitalism the economy is incapable of functioning without this state as can be seen by the intervention following the crisis in 2008, and previously in the many laws, agreements and structures put in place nationally and internationally. The job of the state is also to defend the nation against its rivals and also to defend itself against the working class. To defend itself against the working class it absorbs all the traditional organisations of the working class, the unions and the traditional leftist parties that absorb the discontent of the working class and direct it into harmless activity.

The fantasy that exists is one where this state can be taken and moulded to the needs of all, rich and poor. One of the illusions is that because everyone can vote in the democratic system then, in theory, we all have an equal power in society. This is impossible because capitalism is based on an unequal social relationship. While we can vote for whichever candidate we like we cannot vote away capitalism. If capitalism is threatened the bourgeoisie is able to break with the niceties of elections and freedom of speech and use the full force of the state to violently repress the working class. History offers many examples

The unions are an integral part of the democratic apparatus used to keep the working class under control. In Nigeria it was clear what role the unions had played against the development of workers’ struggles. When radical ideas were increasingly being aired union leaders issued a statement which made a point of saying that the “objective is the reversal of the petrol prices to their pre-January 1, 2012 level. We are therefore not campaigning for ‘Regime Change’.” The Financial Times (16/1/12) spotted that the situation had changed in the aftermath of the strike as“the protests have emboldened ordinary Nigerians and raised new awareness of wasteful expenditure. In addition, many feel let down by the unions for agreeing to call off the strike without the subsidy being fully restored.” Disappointment in the unions, alongside an experience of repression from the state and a keen understanding of how little capitalism has to offer, are all factors that could contribute to the development of future workers’ struggles.  

Gina 28/1/12

After a car bomb exploded in Damascus on 6 January the Syrian government rushed to blame it on al-Qaida. From the arrival of the Arab League mission on 26 December 2011 until an announcement from the UN on 10 January 2012, the number of deaths was running at forty a day. From the so-called ‘al-Qaida’ bomb alone 26 died and dozens were injured. As far as the Assad regime is concerned this is all acceptable in the attempt to hold onto office.

After counting more than 5400 deaths in the Syrian state repression that dates back to March 2011, the UN has given up trying to give figures as it can’t reliably monitor the extent of the crack-down. US President Obama has denounced the “unacceptable levels of violence”. Mind you, he was already saying that the “outrageous use of violence to quell protests must come to an end” last April. This is typical hypocrisy from the man who was authorising the bombing of targets in Pakistan within four days of being sworn in as President.

This is how the bourgeoisie operates. It uses brutal military force, as well as propaganda and diplomacy. Army deserters are massacred while Assad blames ‘foreign terrorists’, as he has throughout the last ten months. At the same time he has had no problem in accepting the backing of the Iranian government. Because of the Tehran-Damascus connection, Syrian oppositionists see Iranians as valid targets. Most recently eleven pilgrims were kidnapped on the road to Damascus; in December it was seven workers involved in building a power plant in central Syria.

The mission of the Arab League has achieved nothing. Its intention was to put pressure on Assad, but with little expected beyond some nominal reforms. Their plan for power to go to an interim government run by one of his deputies before eventually holding elections for a government of national unity was a compromise between very different approaches. Qatar has been very loyal to the US, proposing to send in Arab troops and accept US military aid. Egypt and Algeria have been resistant to any proposal that might affect the status quo.

As January drew to a close there was an escalation in government attacks, especially in the areas of Homs, Idlib, and Hama. Elsewhere, including in the suburbs of Damascus, there are increasing clashes between army deserters and the regime’s troops. The only foreseeable prospect for Syria is the continuation of violence, which any intervention from the United Nations can only exacerbate.

Undeclared war against Iran

If there were suspicions over the ‘al-Qaida’ bomb in Damascus there was little doubt about who was responsible for the bomb that killed an Iranian nuclear scientist in Tehran on 11 January. While the Iranian state inevitably blamed the CIA, experienced observers and those with sources in the Israeli state identified Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, as being behind the attack. It is the fourth murder of an Iranian nuclear scientist in the last two years.

The assassinations of scientists are part of a campaign to stop, or at least delay, Iran acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. In an undeclared war, using the many means at their proposals, nuclear powers such as the US, Britain and France are trying to prevent Iran joining their club, and undermine its position as a regional power.

The EU boycott of Iranian banking was a significant, but not a devastating attack on the Iranian economy. However, the EU embargo on Iranian oil sales - no new contracts, and the end of existing contracts by 1 July – is to be taken seriously. A measure of the seriousness of the measure was that, the day before the announcement, six warships from the US, France and Britain entered the Strait of Hormuz. A small fleet including a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, a frigate, a guided missile carrier and two destroyers, following on from a ten day US Navy exercise in the Strait either side of New Year, was there to back up the oil embargo. The Diplomatic Editor of the Guardian (23/1/12) said that this “sets a potential time bomb ticking”. This is because “Unlike previous sanctions on Iran, the oil embargo would hit almost all citizens and represent a threat to the regime. Tehran has long said such actions would represent a declaration of war, and there are legal experts in the west who agree”.

If Iran tries to close the Strait of Hormuz its opponents are prepared. A fifth of the world’s oil in transit passes through the Strait. There is a serious question as to whether the US would use force to keep it open. The US Fifth Fleet is in the Gulf. 15,000 of the US troops that were in Iraq are now based in Kuwait.

“The Iranian military looks puny by comparison, but it is powerful enough to do serious damage to commercial shipping. It has three Kilo-class Russian diesel submarines which run virtually silently and are thought to have the capacity to lay mines. And it has a large fleet of mini-submarines and thousands of small boats armed with anti-ship missiles which can pass undetected by ship-borne radar until very close. It also has a ‘martyrdom’ tradition that could provide willing suicide attackers.

The Fifth Fleet’s greatest concern is that such asymmetric warfare could be used to overpower the sophisticated defences of its ships, particularly in the narrow confines of the Hormuz strait, which is scattered with craggy cove-filled Iranian islands ideal for launching stealth attacks.

In 2002, the US military ran a $250m (£160m) exercise called Millennium Challenge, pitting the US against an unnamed rogue state with lots of small boats and willing martyr brigades. The rogue state won, or at least was winning when the Pentagon brass decided to shut the exercise down. At the time, it was presumed that the adversary was Iraq as war with Saddam Hussein was in the air. But the fighting style mirrored that of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

In the years since, much US naval planning has focused on how to counter ‘swarm tactics’ – attacks on US ships by scores of boats, hundreds of missiles, suicide bombers and mines, all at once” (op cit).

While “swarming” has been identified as a problem, “ultimately, the US response to swarming will be to use American dominance in the air and multitudes of precision-guided missiles to escalate rapidly and dramatically, wiping out every Iranian missile site, radar, military harbour and jetty on the coast. Almost certainly, the air strikes would also go after command posts and possibly nuclear sites too. There is little doubt of the effectiveness of such a strategy as a deterrent, but it also risks turning a naval skirmish into all-out war at short notice” (op cit).

These are the considerations of the military specialists of the ruling class. They consider every possibility because not every imperialism can draw on the same resources, but will do anything that it can to defend the national capital, regardless of human cost.

Not just sabre rattling

There are those who minimise the effects of war in the Middle East. For example, in a recent article in the New York Times (26/1/12) you can read that “Israeli intelligence estimates, backed by academic studies, have cast doubt on the widespread assumption that a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities would set off a catastrophic set of events like a regional conflagration, widespread acts of terrorism and sky-high oil prices.

The estimates, which have been largely adopted by the country’s most senior officials, conclude that the threat of Iranian retaliation is partly bluff. They are playing an important role in Israel’s calculation of whether ultimately to strike Iran, or to try to persuade the United States to do so.”

These ‘calculations’ all sound very rational. The article continues “‘A war is no picnic,’ Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israel Radio in November. But if Israel feels itself forced into action, the retaliation would be bearable, he said. ‘There will not be 100,000 dead or 10,000 dead or 1,000 dead. The state of Israel will not be destroyed.’”

In Iran they have also done their sums. They say they can cope with an oil embargo, as ‘only’ 18% of Iranian oil exports go to the EU, and what doesn’t go to Europe will go to China. In an act of defiance a new law is to be debated in the Iranian parliament that could halt oil exports almost immediately. This would have an immediate impact in Greece, Italy and Spain where they are still looking for alternative suppliers. Although, while it’s claimed that Iran could easily shut the Strait, the economic effects of a blockade would be likely to hurt Iran more than anyone else as, according to some sources, 87% of its imports and 99% of its exports are by sea.

In reality, not only is capitalism not rational, it has also shown its capacity to escalate conflicts from minor skirmishes into all-out war on numerous occasions. The Iranian military might be ‘puny’ but its forces have shown a capacity to intervene in a number of conflicts. Whether supporting the government in Syria, or oppositional forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran seems never far away from the scenes of war. In the Guardian article cited above an Iranian journalist specialising in military and strategic issues is quoted: “I recall a famous Iranian idiom that was quite popular among the military officials: ‘If we drown, we’ll drown everyone with us’.” That applies to the capitalist ruling class in every country across the globe. This is not just at the level of the official military apparatus but in the desperate actions of terrorists. In Iraq, for example, following the US exodus, conflict continues, with suicide car bombs killing dozens in crowded locations on a regular basis. Whoever is behind them is not part of the resistance to capitalism but just adding to the precariousness of life in Baghdad and elsewhere. None of this behaviour is rational, but the bourgeoisie is not going without a fight, whether against other imperialisms or against its mortal enemy, the working class.

Car 28/1/12

The slogan ‘democratise capitalism’ appeared on the side of the Tent City University at the St Paul’s occupation, provoking sharp debates which eventually led to the banner being taken down.

This outcome shows that the occupations at St Paul’s, UBS and elsewhere have provided a very fruitful space for discussion among all those who are dissatisfied with the present social system and are looking for an alternative. ‘Democratising capitalism’ is not a real option, but it does reflect the views of many people participating in the occupations and the meetings they have generated. Again and again, the idea is put forward that capitalism could be made more human if the rich were made to pay more taxes, if the bankers lost their bonuses, if the financial markets were better controlled, or if the state took a more direct hand in running the economy.      

Even the top politicians are jumping on this bandwagon. Cameron wants to make capitalism more moral, Clegg wants the whole world to be like John Lewis, with workers owning more shares, Miliband is against ‘predatory’ capitalism and wants more state regulation.

But all this, coming from the politicians of capital, is empty chatter, a smokescreen to prevent us seeing what capitalism is not, and what it is.

Capitalism can’t be reduced to the ownership of wealth by private individuals. It is not simply about bankers or other wealthy elites getting too much reward for too little effort.

Capitalism is a whole stage in the history of human civilisation. It is the last in a series of societies based on the exploitation of the majority by a minority. It is the first human society in which all production is motivated by the need to realise a profit on the market. It is therefore the first class-divided society where all the exploited have to sell their capacity to work, their ‘labour power’, to the exploiters. So while in feudalism, the serfs were compelled by force to directly surrender their labour or their produce to the lords, under capitalism, our labour time is taken from us more subtly, through the wage system.

It therefore makes no difference if the exploiters are organised as private bosses or as ‘Communist Party’ officials like in China or North Korea. As long as you have wage labour, you have capitalism. As Marx put it: “capital presupposes wage labour. Wage labour presupposes capital” (Wage Labour and Capital).

Capital is, at its heart, the social relation between the class of wage labourers (which includes the unemployed, since unemployment is part of the condition of that class) and the exploiting class. Capital is the alienated wealth produced by the workers – a force created by them but which stands against them as an implacable enemy. 

Capitalism is crisis

But while the capitalists benefit from this arrangement, they can’t really control it. Capital is an impersonal force which ultimately escapes and dominates them as well. This is why the history of capitalism is the history of economic crises. And since capitalism became a global system round the beginning of the 20th century, this crisis has been more or less permanent, whether it takes the forms of world wars or world depressions.

And no matter what economic policies the ruling class and its state tries out, whether Keynesianism, Stalinism, or state-backed ‘neo-liberalism’, this crisis has only got deeper and more insoluble. Driven to desperation by the impasse in the economy, the different factions of the ruling class, and the various national states through which they are organised, are caught in a spiral of ruthless competition, military conflict, and ecological devastation, forcing them to become less and less ‘moral’ and more and more ‘predatory’ in their hunt for profits and strategic advantages.

The capitalist class is the captain of a sinking ship. Never has the need to relieve it of its command of the planet been so pressing.

But this system, the most extreme point in man’s alienation, has also built up the possibility of a new and truly human society. It has set in motion sciences and technologies which could be transformed and used for the benefit of all. It has therefore made it possible for production to be geared directly for consumption, without the mediation of money or the market. It has unified the globe, or at least created the premises for its real unification. It has therefore made it feasible to abolish the whole system of nation states with their incessant wars. In sum, it has made the old dream of a world human community both necessary and possible. We call this society communism. 

The exploited class, the class of wage labour, has no interest in falling for illusions about the system it is up against. It is potentially the gravedigger of this society and the builder of a new one. But to realise that potential, it has to be totally lucid about what it is fighting against and what it is fighting for. Ideas about reforming or ‘democratising’ capital are so many obstacles to this clarity.

Capitalism and democracy

Like making capitalism more human, everyone nowadays claims to be for democracy and wants society to be more democratic. And that is why we can’t take the idea of democracy at its face value, as some abstract ideal that we all can agree to. Like capitalism, democracy has a history. As a political system, democracy in ancient Athens could co-exist with slavery and the exclusion of women. Under capitalism, parliamentary democracy can coexist with the monopoly of power by a small minority which hogs not only the economic wealth but also the ideological tools to influence people’s thinking (and voting).

Capitalist democracy mirrors capitalist society, which turns all of us into isolated economic units competing on the market. In theory we all compete on equal terms, but the reality is that wealth gets concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. We are just as isolated when we enter the polling booths as individual citizens, and just as remote from exercising any real power.

In the debates that have animated the various occupation and public assembly movements from Tunisia and Egypt to Spain, Greece and the USA, there has been a more or less continuous confrontation between two wings: on the one hand, we have those who want to go no further than making the existing regime more democratic, to stop at the goal of getting rid of tyrants like Mubarak and bringing in a parliamentary system, or of putting pressure on the established political parties so that they pay more heed to the demands of the street. And, on the other hand, even if they are only a minority right now, we have those who are beginning to say: why do we need parliament if we can organise ourselves directly in assemblies? Can parliamentary elections change anything? Could we not use forms like assemblies to take control of our own lives – not just the public squares, but the fields, factories and workshops?

These debates are not new. They echo the ones which took place around the time of the Russian and German revolutions, at the end of the First World War. Millions were on the move against a capitalist system which had, by slaughtering millions of the battlefronts, already shown that it had ceased to play a useful role for the human race. But while some said that the revolutions should go no further than instituting a ‘bourgeois democratic’ regime, there were those – a very sizeable number at that time – who said: parliament belongs to the ruling class. We have formed our own assemblies, factory committees, soviets (organisations based on general assemblies with elected and revocable delegates). These organisations should take the power and then it can remain in our own hands – the first step towards reorganising society from top to bottom. And for a brief moment, before their revolution was destroyed by isolation, civil war and internal degeneration, the soviets, the organs of the working class, did take power in Russia.      

That was a moment of unprecedented hope for humanity. The fact that it was defeated should not deter us: we have to learn from our defeats and from the mistakes of the past. We can’t democratise capitalism because more than ever it is a monstrous and destructive force which will drag the world to ruin unless we destroy it. And we can’t get rid of this monster using the institutions of capitalism itself. We need new organisations, organisations which we can control and direct towards the revolutionary change which remains our only real hope.  

Amos 25/1/12      

This is an extract from a text prepared for a recent internal meeting of the ICC’s section in Britain.

A range of official data allows us to see that the working class’ working and living conditions are under sustained attack.

• Unemployment has continued to increase, reaching 8.4%, in the three months to November 2011, an increase of 0.3% over the preceding three months and of 0.5% compared to the same time a year ago. This amounts to 2.68 million people in total and to an increase of 118,000 compared to the previous quarter and of 189,000 compared to a year earlier. Of this total, 857,000 had been unemployed for over 12 months (a drop of 10,000 compared to the previous quarter but a rise of 25,000 compared to a year earlier) and 424,000 for over 24 months (up 1,000 on the previous quarter). Amongst 16 to 24 year olds the unemployment rate is 22.3%. Excluding young people in education (who are counted if they have been looking for work in the preceding 4 weeks), the total was 729,000, an increase of 8,000 over the previous quarter, making the rate of unemployment amongst young people not in education 20.7%.[1] Public sector employment fell by 67,000 in the third quarter of 2011.[2]

• The rate of redundancies has picked up over the last few months after falling back between November 2009 and November 2010. In the three months to November 2011 164,000 had become redundant (either voluntarily or enforced), an increase of 14,000 over the preceding quarter and of 5,000 compared to a year ago. The overall rate was 6.6 workers per thousand.[3]

• Growth in pay has slowed over the last few months falling to 1.9% in the three months to November 2011 from 2.8% in the previous quarter. The ONS offers an explanation: “This marked drop in earnings growth may reflect a number of pressures in the labour market: the desire by firms to reduce their costs in the face of weak demand; weak wage bargaining power of employees as a result of high unemployment and low employment levels; falling inflation that ease the decline in real wage growth and so reduce the pressure on employers to maintain wage growth; and falling demand and output.”[4] The same report goes on to note that the rate of increase in the public sector in the three months to November was 1.4% compared to 2.0% in the private sector, “This demonstrates the impact of the sustained public sector pay freeze. Both public sector and private sector wage growth are well below CPI inflation and so the sustained decline of real wages has continued.”[5] However, it is worth noting that overall cuts in pay were made much more rapidly in the private sector than the public sector – research by the IFS concluded that “it will take the whole of the two-year public pay freeze and two years of 1% pay increases to return public pay to where it was relative to private sector pay in 2008. This is because private sector pay reacted quickly to the recession. Pay in the public sector did not.”[6] This merely reflects the fact that the economic laws of capitalism take effect more rapidly in the private than the state sector.

• The average number of hours worked per week stood at 31.5 in the three months to November 2011, which is unchanged from the previous quarter. However, the total number of hours worked per week fell by 0.2 million to 916.3 million.[7]

• Labour productivity increased by 1.2% over the quarter to November 2011 while unit labour costs rose by 0.5%. However, this should be put in the context of falls in productivity compared to most major competitors during 2010.[8]

• The total amount of personal debt declined between December 2010 and 2011, falling from £1.454 trillion to £1.451 trillion. The majority of this borrowing is for mortgages, which increased from £1.238 trillion to £1.245 trillion. In contrast consumer credit fell from £216bn to £207bn. This suggests that workers are reducing spending or have less access to credit. Nonetheless, the average amount by owed adults in the UK stood at £29,547 in December 2011. This is about 122% of average earnings. The total owed is still more than the annual production of the country.[9]

• The impact of debt continues with 101 properties being repossessed every day in the last three months of 2011 and 331 people becoming insolvent. However, both figures have fallen since the previous quarter but in contrast it seems there has been a significant growth in the numbers using informal insolvency solutions while nearly a million “are struggling but have not sought help.”[10]

• Older people have seen the value of their pensions eroded by effective rates of inflation that are above the official figures with a third reporting they can only afford the basics, a quarter saying they buy less food, 14% reporting going to bed early to keep warm and 13% saying they only live in one room to cut down on costs.[11]

These figures show the efforts that workers are going to in order to get by: cutting down on spending in order the keep their homes; accepting reductions in pay in order to keep jobs, albeit with limited success. The lower than anticipated rate of repossessions and insolvencies and the apparent willingness of financial bodies to agree informal arrangements to manage debt suggest that the bourgeoisie is also trying to mitigate the impact of the crisis. This makes sense both economically (managing debt means it is more likely to be repaid) and politically. How long this can be maintained is uncertain given that the cuts are only in their first stage:

• “By the end of 2011–12, 73% of the planned tax increases will have been implemented. The spending cuts, however, are largely still to come – only 12% of the planned total cuts to public service spending, and just 6% of the cuts in current public service spending, will have been implemented by the end of this financial year. The impact of the remaining cuts to the services provided is difficult to predict; they are of a scale that has not been delivered in the UK since at least the Second World War. On the other hand, these cuts come after the largest sustained period of increases in public service spending since the Second World War. If implemented, the planned cuts would, by 2016/17, take public service spending back to its 2004/05 real-terms level and to its 2000/01 level as a proportion of national income.”[12]

• “The planned cuts to spending on public services are large by historical standards… If the current plans are delivered, spending on public services will (in real terms) be cut for seven years in a row. The UK has never previously cut this measure of spending for more than two years in a row… if delivered, the government’s plans would be the tightest seven-year period for spending on public services since the Second World War: over the seven years from April 2010 to March 2017, there would be a cumulative real-terms cut of 16.2%, which is considerably greater than the previous largest cut (8.7%), which was achieved over the period from April 1975 to March 1982.”[13] The report by the IFS goes on to note that no country has ever cut spending at the level proposed for the number of years proposed.[14] It should be noted that all of these predictions are based on the assumption that the economy will pick up in the years ahead.

• People retiring in the year ahead expect to have an annual income of £15,500, which is 6% less than those who retired in 2011, and 16% less than those who retired in 2008. One fifth expect an annual income of £10,000 while 18% of those retiring expect to do so with debts averaging £38,200. The ending of final salary pension schemes in the private and public sectors (this is likely to be the reality of any deal stitched by the unions and bosses to resolve the current confrontation) will see far more workers living in poverty in their old age.[15]

• Levels of child poverty are predicted to return almost to the level seen in the late 1990s when the Labour government began efforts to reduce it. By 2020/21 4.2m children are forecast to be living in poverty, compared to 4.4m in 1998/9.[16]

• “The Office for Budget Responsibility’s November 2011 forecast for general Government Employment estimates a total reduction of around 710,000 staff between Q1 2011 and Q1 2017.”[17]   North 08/02/12

The government’s change on the rules for its work experience scheme was marked in a Guardian headline as a “U-turn”. Brendan Barber, the TUC General Secretary, described it as a “climbdown” and Socialist Worker called it a “retreat”. In the Guardian’s small print the new emphasis on ‘voluntary’ rather than ‘mandatory’ is described as a “relatively minor concession” and all those campaigning against the government’s schemes are well aware that sanctions for refusing work placements are still in place for Mandatory Work Activity and the Community Activity Programme.

In reality, the change came because of pressure from big businesses who didn’t like what was happening to their reputations. It’s not good for the image if there’s an impression that you have young employees who are working for you for nothing and under threat of having their ‘benefits’ withdrawn. Sainsbury’s, BHS, HMV, Waterstone’s and a number of charities had already left the scheme, and others were threatening to. Although David Cameron spoke of the need to “stand up against the Trotskyites of the Right to Work campaign” it was the withdrawal of business co-operation that proved decisive.

The government claimed that there were very few sanctions taken against those on work experience schemes. From January to November 2011 of 34,000 on work experience placements 220 had been punished with the withdrawal of two weeks benefits. This rather misses the point. Firstly, if you’re under 25 the current rate for Job Seekers Allowance is £53.45 per week, so you’re already going to be struggling to make ends meet, regardless of whether you’re on a scheme or not, and before you’ve been fined. Secondly, there is no evidence that any of the schemes actually work. Research shows that there is the same outcome, in terms of coming off benefits, for those with or without the unpaid work experience. Of 1400 who had placements with Tesco’s, for example, only a fifth were offered permanent jobs. Thirdly, and most importantly, all these government schemes are part of a policy of intimidation toward the unemployed, to stop them claiming benefits, and, now, just passed by parliament, to impose limits on what can be claimed.

The Work Programme is one of the most notorious government schemes. Where Mandatory Work Activity involves compulsory unpaid work for up to eight weeks, and the Community Activity Programme can send workers for up to 30 hours per week unpaid labour for six months, there is no limit at all with the Work Programme. This includes 300,000 people in what’s known as the work-related activity group and includes people who have been diagnosed with terminal cancer but have more than six months to live; accident and stroke victims; and some people with mental health issues. Last June Tory MP Philip Davies said that people who were disabled or had mental health problems should be paid less than the minimum wage because they were, in his words “by definition” less productive than those without disabilities. There was outrage at the time, but, in practice, those on the Work Programme can be made to work for an unlimited time for far less than the minimum wage, that is, for nothing. On top of this between September 2010 and August 2011 there were sanctions taken against 8440 people because of missing interviews etc. ‘Sanctions’ means loss of benefits.

The difficulties young people face in finding work have not been solved by the schemes of the current government or its Labour predecessor. Mass unemployment is all that’s on offer. With maybe 6 million unemployed, with another 500,000 public sector jobs to go over the next five years, and with even the official figures at their highest for 17 years, there are very few opportunities for young or old. There are more than a million young people between the age of 16 and 24, not in full-time education, who are not in work. Proportionately, and using the official figures, where 75% of older people are in work, of 16-24 year-olds only 66% are in work. Young people are more likely to be laid off, and find it more difficult to get a job because of a number of factors. Ultimately the problems they face are not just an array of dodgy government schemes but a capitalist system that offers none of us any future. That’s why the necessary struggle against new attacks on the unemployed needs to be integrated into the struggle of the whole working class to destroy capitalism.  

Car 1/3/12

Some 8 months after the government paused for a ‘listening exercise’ and repackaged some of the measures in its Health and Social Care Bill, there seems to be something missing from the resurgent opposition. The Bill certainly has some heavyweight opponents with the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Paediatricians balloting on whether to oppose it. On Wednesday 7 March the British Medical Association will join the Unite union in a lobby of parliament. Even Deputy PM Nick Clegg, who was representing the government in the listening exercise last year, is now promising amendments to “rule out beyond doubt any threat of a US-style market in the NHS”. This is not so different from the behaviour of the Labour Party which has gone from imposing cuts in government to politely opposing them in opposition.

In all the words condemning privatisation it is hard to find any equivalent criticism of the cost cutting being imposed. This is in marked contrast to last year when 50,000 job losses in the NHS were well publicised[1]. Twenty billion pounds worth of efficiency savings are still being made over the next few years, and it’s unlikely they’ll all be publicised. And it is these savings that are the real threat to our healthcare as well as jobs, pay and working conditions in the NHS.

Unite’s leaflet tells us the Bill “puts profit before patient care and will destroy the NHS”, and its lobby briefing accepts the £20bn cuts that are due to be made as if they were an inevitable fact of life “This is at the time when the NHS is faced with making 20% cuts…” The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee also accepts the need for the cuts in funding – her answer is NICE rationing. That is, a preference for rationing carried out according to the centralised recommendations of the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence, as opposed to the government idea of rationing by local GPs organised in Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) with the risk of the post code lottery.

In fact there is no real contradiction once you take into account how the state organises its enterprises. The NHS not only took over a number of small businesses, GPs, in 1948, it has been setting them up ever since. This has allowed it to deliver health care more cheaply than it could have done otherwise and often in scandalously poor premises with abysmal facilities. CCGs and more private sector involvement do not mean less state control, or more power locally, or power for patients, as the government says, since the state not only keeps funding on an increasingly tight leash, it is also ready to step in and take over any institution that threatens to go over budget.

The new Health and Social Care Bill is not going to introduce profit into state healthcare. It’s always been there. Drug companies, banks, construction firms building hospitals, employment agencies supplying temporary staff, and others have all been directly making a profit out of the NHS. While all businesses have indirectly benefited from having the state keep their employees relatively healthy for free, or at least for no direct cost. It is not a change in the law allowing NHS hospitals to treat more private patients that leads to less money spent on other patients, it is the cut in services that leads to more demand for private health, in the UK for those who can afford it, or through health tourism to third world and Eastern European countries.

The other odd thing about the new protests about the legislation is that no-one seems the least bothered by the fact that the reorganisation is already well under way. Primary Care Trusts have been run down, many of their staff made redundant, CCGs have been formed and have started work on innovative ways to manage, and when possible mitigate, the effects of a declining and inelastic budget. Anti-privatisation provides a very convenient smokescreen for this reorganisation.

Alex 3/3/12

On 12 November 2011, protesters in Exeter established a camp on the Cathedral Green in the heart of the city in solidarity with similar movements elsewhere in the UK and around the world. The Exeter experience seems to mirror others and serves as a good example of the current efforts to come to grips with the enormous challenges posed by the current epoch, the difficulties encountered in struggle and the lessons to be drawn for the future.

The most significant factor in the Occupation in Exeter has been the emergence of a newly politicised generation, many (but not all) of them very young and only loosely aligned to formal political currents. They have a keen appetite for discussion and a profound desire to understand the historic situation facing humanity.

As usual, the left-wing defenders of capital were also present in the movement. These are the older, more experienced activists who have an explicitly reformist, liberal approach. These individuals often took on key roles as ‘facilitators’ in many of the meetings and ‘working groups’, enabling them to steer the movement along their own agenda. Traditional leftists (Trotskyists, for example) were largely absent from the core movement, although they have been much more active online.

A key component in the early days of the camp was the underlying battle between these two currents in shaping the evolution of the movement. The ICC participated in several meetings of the camp and did our best to polarise the differences between these two opposing tendencies, while supporting the new generation. A full account of the movement is impossible here, but we can point to some key moments.

Who takes decisions?

At the 2nd General Assembly (GA) there was a discussion around a leaflet that was being distributed in the name of the movement. It quickly became obvious that this statement had been produced by a ‘working group’ and had not been agreed or even discussed by the GA, supposedly the decision making organ of the camp. Our comrade at the meeting insisted on the importance of a proper discussion around such statements and was quickly supported by other members of the camp. Many of these had already expressed unease about the way the statement had emerged but had been hesitant to challenge the experienced activists who had put themselves at the head of the movement. Once the question had been raised, however, they quickly began to assert themselves and expressed a desire to keep decision-making power centralised in the GA.

At a subsequent meeting, supposedly on the question of capitalism, a decision appeared to have been taken (no-one seemed quite sure by who) to change the agenda to allow someone to speak on legal matters concerning the camp. We challenged this vigorously and the meeting eventually decided to split the meeting between the two discussions. The ‘legal expert’ turned out to be a proponent of the “Freeman on the Land” movement who treated the meeting to a series of woefully inaccurate claims about English Common Law and some conspiracy theories thrown in for good measure. Most participants struggled to understand the relevance of this pseudo-legal lecture and eventually the discussion was ended.

The following discussion on the nature of capitalism, however, was wide-ranging with many ideas, both reformist and revolutionary, being presented. Against those who argued for nationalisation, pacifism, reforms to the tax system and ‘ethical’ capitalism we argued that the system was beyond repair and that the only way to respond to the current situation was to destroy the state and eliminate the core social relationships of capitalism. This received significant support from many of those there who also asked how such a future society would organise and how that related to the current movement. We insisted that centralisation was important and that the GA showed in embryo how a centralised decision-making process could work. Many struggled with this idea as they were convinced that centralisation had to mean domination by a minority.

Despite many disagreements, it was clear that many wanted the discussion to continue and there was considerable interest in some of the ideas we presented. In an effort to end the discussion, a ‘facilitator’ proposed another meeting where it could be discussed further and suggested we present at that one. We readily agreed.

The appetite for discussion

The subsequent meeting was attended by those with a more open attitude - the usual ‘facilitators’ were conspicuous in their absence. We presented our vision of the historical trajectory of capitalism, explaining why only a revolutionary struggle by the working class could offer a way out. A whirlwind of discussion followed! At first, one participant asked us our thoughts about Salvador Allende, the ‘first democratically elected Marxist’ in Chile. They were shocked when we denounced him as an enemy of the working class and even angered when one of our sympathisers labelled him a Stalinist. But this lead on to a discussion about whether the state can be reformed or not, the role of figures such as Chavez, the nature of nationalisation and national liberation, the role of the state, the nature of communism and Marx’s vision, the nature of the revolution, the role of the national state, the nature of earlier social formations, and much more.

We were very heartened by the hunger for discussion and the understanding show in the meeting and in spite of our intransigent critique of many of the illusions expressed. The passion of the participants during the meeting was maintained in a fraternal atmosphere throughout. We were warmly welcomed by the Occupiers who expressed great interest in having further meetings. The whole experience was very impressive.

At the next meeting, leading up to the public sector strikes, we proposed that the camp link up with the demonstrations, advertising the GA as a place to hold a discussion after the march. Once again, the younger Occupiers were very supportive and the motion was passed.

On the day, around 40 people attended and there was a discussion around how to organise resistance to the cuts and capitalism in general, the relationship between Occupy and the strike, and the role of the unions. We insisted on the need for workers to self-organise outside of union control; it was clear that many struggled with this idea and most supported the unions. But, once again, what characterised the meeting was a genuine desire to engage and understand all the issues. The discussion moved onto communism and another focus for discussion developed. A ‘facilitator’ made an attempt at one point to end the discussion on the pretext of discussing practical matters but we argued for continuing the discussion and the meeting voted in support.

In the ensuing discussion the question was asked as to why the Occupiers didn’t explicitly identify themselves as anti-capitalist. The answer was that most of them still believe in the possibility of a ‘fair’ capitalism and even those that don’t are not sure about what to pose in opposition to the present system. ‘Communism’ is perceived as having a negative connotation - but they could all agree on wanting something more ‘democratic’.

Future potential – and obstacles

Throughout this experience, this conflict between revolutionary and reformist politics lay at the heart of the dynamic of the camp. The hunger for understanding was shown in a remarkable level of spontaneous public political discussion which we haven’t seen for a very long time. Our participation did not ‘create’ this dynamic but it did seem to embolden the revolutionary current in the camp to explore ideas. In particular, by challenging the leftist and liberals in their efforts to keep the discussion on the anodyne terrain of statements, petitions and democracy we enabled the discussions to develop a depth that they might not otherwise have had.

The driving force came primarily from the younger participants, but in spite of their openness and combativity, they were marked by hesitancy in challenging the dominance of leftists and liberals both at a practical and ideological level. While recognising disagreement, they were unable to recognise the fundamental opposition between reformist and revolutionary ideas that have different class origins.

As is happening everywhere, the Occupy movement in Exeter is now coming to an end. The camp has been dismantled and they are now faced with the question of what happens next. Perhaps most significant is the difficulty many have in understanding that an ‘Occupation’ itself can create obstacles against the most positive aspects of the movement: open discussion. Right from the start, there was a tendency for the minutiae of running the camp to dominate discussion - as the practical difficulties increased this became more and more noticeable, with the maintenance of the camp becoming an end in itself. Moreover, the conditions in the camp were off-putting to many of the public, the ‘99%’ the Occupiers wanted to reach. Now the camp has been dispersed, there is a tendency to focus on finding ‘somewhere else to occupy’ rather than focussing on the need for discussion.

There is a very real danger that the newly politicised young people who have made up this movement will be sucked into its negative aspects: the fixation on ‘democracy’ often manipulated into the sabotage of discussions and preventing a genuine confrontation of ideas; the dominance of activism; the failure to connect with other groups despite a genuine desire to do so.

The camps and occupations have raised awareness and created a temporary space for discussion. They are now becoming a dead-end. Rather than attempting to artificially preserve them, the Occupiers should concentrate on deepening their political discussions, developing their understanding and drawing the lessons of this movement, ready to inform and strengthen the new movements that will inevitably emerge as resistance to capitalism gathers strength. 

Ishamael 3/3/12

Up to 100 million workers were involved in a one day strike in India on 28 February. A strike that hit a number of sectors across the country was hailed by some as one of the world’s biggest ever strikes. Called by the eleven central unions (the first time they’d acted together since independence) and 5000 smaller unions, the demands included a national minimum wage, permanent jobs for 50 million contract workers, government measures to tackle inflation (which has been over 9% for most of the last two years), social security benefits such as pensions for all workers, better enforcement of labour laws, and an end to selling off stakes in state-owned enterprises. The fact that millions of workers were prepared to participate showed that, for all the talk of India’s economic ‘boom’, it’s not experienced by the working class.

However, the demands, as put forward by the unions, all make the assumption that the capitalist government of India is capable of responding to the needs of other classes. There are also the erroneous ideas that it could tackle inflation or that stopping the sale of public-sector assets would somehow benefit the working class. And anyway the bourgeoisie has its own problems to worry about. For example, the IT and call centre industry in India is dependent on US companies for 70 percent of its business. This sector has been traumatised by the impact of the economic crisis. No longer a growth area and source of great profits it’s experienced widespread wage and job cuts. This pattern is repeated in many other sectors. The Indian economy can’t stand aside from the world economy and its crisis.

On this occasion the unions all acted together, but they have not been backward in the past in mobilising protests against government measures. There have been 14 general strikes since 1991. But recently we have seen more examples of workers acting on their own initiative and not waiting for union directives.

For example, between June and October 2011 thousands of workers took part in factory occupations, wildcat strikes and protest camps at Maruti-Suzuki and other car factories in Manesar, a ‘boom town’ in the Delhi region. After a union-agreed settlement in early October 1200 contract workers were not rehired and so 3500 workers went back on strike and occupied the car assembly plant in solidarity. This led to further solidarity actions by 8000 workers in a dozen or so other plants in the area. It also led to some sit-in protests and the formation of general assemblies to avoid the sabotage of the unions.

The rediscovery of the general assembly as the most appropriate form for ensuring the broadest participation of workers and the widest exchange of ideas is a tremendous advance for the class struggle. The general assemblies of Maruti-Sazuki in Manesar were open to everyone and encouraged everyone to participate in shaping the direction and goals of the struggle. It didn’t involve millions of workers, but showed that the working class in India is clearly part of the current international development of the class struggle.  

Car 3/3/12

The article in WR 351 on Scottish nationalism [39]prompted some interesting responses on the ICC online forum. There was clear agreement with the article that, despite growing divisions in the ruling class, the period when the working class could support demands for the independence of certain states came to a definitive end with the First World War. But the thread discussed the question of whether there is a ‘rational’ basis for Scottish independence today, and the relative strengths and weaknesses of the UK state.

In order to develop our understanding of these and other related issues, we want to take up some of these questions at a deeper historical level, by examining the formation of the modern British state in the 17th and 18th centuries. This article, written by a close sympathiser, shows how and why the Scottish bourgeoisie’s attempt to form an independent capitalist state failed, and also some of the reasons why Scottish nationalism persists and still finds fertile ground today. It first looks at developments in the English state after the revolution of 1649 .

Restoring the monarchy to restore order

Faced with the common threat from below the whole ruling class had rallied behind Cromwell and the army to crush the Leveller revolt, but once the threat was removed this united front splintered. The short-lived English republic (1649-1660) was constantly plagued by political instability that prevented the consolidation of the bourgeoisie’s victory; the army was actively pressing for more radical reforms and any remaining stability increasingly depended on Cromwell, who in turn depended on the continuing support of the City of London’s powerful financial interests. When Cromwell’s death provoked an attempted army coup and a return of the spectre of widespread social disorder, the English bourgeoisie, led by the City of London, concluded that the only way to preserve the hard-won gains of its revolution was to make a deal with the defeated section of the landowning aristocracy to restore the Stuart monarchy to power.

The Restoration was thus a compromise by the capitalist class in the interests of re-imposing order and discipline on the exploited masses: the army was purged and trusted units kept to garrison key towns; radical elements were expelled from the state and political dissent was suppressed; the mobility of landless labourers was restricted and tenants robbed of any security. The new regime was dominated by the landowning aristocracy, but the fundamental gains of the bourgeoisie’s political revolution remained intact, at least in England. For the English bourgeoisie, the success of the Restoration proved an early and valuable lesson about the usefulness of the monarchy as a source of mystification to disguise the reality of its class dictatorship.

The ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 - a coup d’état to ensure bourgeois supremacy

The ‘Restoration’ provided order and stability for the bourgeoisie but at the price of having to share power with the same semi-feudal, pro-absolutist elements who had been ousted by the revolution of 1649. Before long it was forced to wage a renewed political struggle around the same central issue: the subordination of the monarchy to the interests of capital. Eventually, faced with the threat of a Catholic Stuart dynasty allied to feudal absolutist France, the bourgeoisie, together with a section of the landowning aristocracy, staged what was in effect a coup d’état, inviting an armed invasion by Willem van Oranje, military commander of the Dutch republic and husband of the Protestant Mary Stuart. The bourgeoisie carefully prepared this so-called ‘bloodless revolution’ by manipulating events and exaggerating or falsifying the threat of ‘popish plots’ to whip up anti-Catholic hysteria.

The Dutch-led invasion in 1688 led to anti-Catholic riots and significant clashes in England, as well as serious fighting in Scotland and full-scale war in Ireland. The outcome was a definitive political victory for the English bourgeoisie, confirming the supremacy of its interests in the state and settling the respective roles of parliament and the monarchy. Just as importantly it led to the creation of new state structures to finance English wars and commercial expansion, including the Bank of England and the National Debt. The road was now open for the unprecedented growth of English capitalism without further invasions or major changes in the structure of the state for over a hundred years.

Having thus assured its supremacy by violence, lies and political manipulation, the English bourgeoisie carefully constructed a self-justifying mythology of the so-called ‘Glorious Revolution’ as a natural, ‘evolutionary’ development of parliamentary democracy. Re-writing the story of its ruthless struggle for power, it still prefers to commemorate the ‘revolution’ of 1688 and quietly forget about the time when, in Cromwell’s words, it “cut off [the king’s] head with the crown upon it”. The state institutions that emerged from this time bear the aristocratic features of the landowning interests that played such a key role in their formation (along with the City of London financial interests). Above all the British state reflects the pragmatism and flexibility of this faction of the ruling class.

The making of an English empire

The political struggle of the English bourgeoisie in the 17th century was not only to ensure the supremacy of its interests in the English state but also to extend the domination of English capital to the rest of the British Isles. This struggle led to the formation of the British nation state and the birth of British imperialism as a global power, but also to wars and military conquests, massacres and the destruction of whole populations, leaving a legacy of resentments and hatreds, nationalist divisions and conflicts that helped shape the UK state, and which still influence UK politics today.

The foundation for understanding this issue is the uneven development of capitalism in the British Isles. For a myriad reasons capital was concentrated in the south and east of England (and to a lesser extent in the Lowlands of Scotland). Religious differences, which played such a significant role in the early bourgeois revolutions, broadly reflected this pattern, with the most enthusiastic support for the Protestant Reformation coming from the economically advanced regions, and reactions against it coming from the more backward north and west of England, the Scottish Highlands and Ireland.[1]

This pattern of uneven development had a strategic significance: the greatest external threat to English capital’s survival in the 17th century was the feudal absolutist empire of Louis XIV, whose aims were to destroy England as a rival power, seize its commercially vital North American colonies and re-impose a Catholic absolutist monarchy. Within the British Isles, the main threat of counter-revolution was from an alliance of French absolutism with surviving military-feudal Catholic factions in the Scottish Highlands and Ireland. A strategic priority for the English bourgeoisie was therefore to destroy the power of these factions and impose regimes totally subordinate to its own interests, at the same time breaking down barriers to the penetration of English capital and eliminating any potential economic rivals.

As a result of all these factors, in Wales, Scotland and Ireland the bourgeois revolution was experienced to differing degrees as an invasion from the outside.[2]

The foundations of an English empire in the British Isles were laid in the last stage of feudalism when the centralising Tudor monarchy tried to concentrate power in its own hands at the expense of the weakened nobility by:

• asserting central control over the north and west of England;

• absorbing Wales into the English state;

• imposing direct rule on Ireland, and

• extending English influence over Lowland Scotland.

The resistance of the nobility to these attempts to further weaken its power helped to precipitate the bourgeois revolution in England by fuelling the political confrontation between the absolutist monarchy and the rising bourgeoisie. Ultimately, by further weakening the nobility’s power, the monarchy undermined its principal ally against the bourgeoisie and thus helped to ensure its own downfall, while its centralising efforts helped to create the necessary foundations of a modern capitalist nation state.

The abortive Scottish revolution and the prolonged resistance of the nobility

A small mercantile and agrarian capitalist class emerged in Lowland Scotland but the power of the military-feudal nobility remained firmly entrenched in the Scottish state. In the absence of a bourgeoisie strong enough to assert its own interests, the class struggle in Scotland remained dominated by violent struggles between religious factions that threatened to undermine the conditions for the creation of a stable capitalist regime.

In the Reformation the Lowland nobility adopted a form of Calvinism (Presbyterianism), which served it as an ideological weapon against the absolutist monarchy and enabled it to successfully mobilise other classes in Scottish society against attempts to impose state control on the church. The coalition of interests in the Presbyterian ‘Covenanter’ movement directly helped to precipitate the English revolution by defeating the army of Charles I in 1639-1640 and forging a military alliance with the English parliamentary forces. But, deeply fearful of the popular discontent unleashed by the civil war, the majority of nobles changed sides, invading England with a Scottish army in return for religious and economic concessions. This split the Covenanter movement and led to civil war in Scotland itself. Following the defeat of the Scottish royalists by Cromwell’s army in 1648, the radical Covenanter wing, led by small farmers and supported by anti-royalist nobles, launched a successful insurrection and seized power in Edinburgh.

This was to be the high point of the Scottish bourgeois revolution from within. The new regime – a coalition of anti-royalist nobles, clergy and smaller landowners – purged royalist nobles from the state and took anti-feudal measures. But the ‘Kirk Party’ was dominated by extreme Presbyterian elements and lacked a wider base of support in Scottish society; at this crucial moment the bourgeoisie was not strong enough to assume state power, and there was no equivalent of the English Independents or radical democratic Levellers to push the revolution to the left.

Fearful of social disorder after the execution of Charles I, the nobles at the head of the Kirk Party proclaimed their support for the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in the British Isles. Faced with this clear danger of counter-revolution from the north, Cromwell’s army invaded Scotland in 1650 and forcibly incorporated it into the English republican state. What followed was in effect a bourgeois revolution from the barrel of a musket, with the nobility removed from power and further anti-feudal measures taken by the English rather than the indigenous bourgeoisie, which inevitably provoked resentment among all classes in Scottish society.

Unlike in England, in Scotland the restoration of the monarchy was accompanied by a full-blown counter-revolution that swept away all anti-feudal measures and handed power back to the nobles, who proceeded to entrench their position and unleash state terror against any sign of dissent. Opposition to this restored feudal state was again led by small farmers and artisans in the radical wing of the Covenanter movement and took the form of an intensified sectarian struggle involving armed uprisings, peasants’ revolts and guerrilla warfare.

The deposition of the Stuart dynasty in the 1688 ‘Glorious Revolution’ provoked a political crisis in Scotland, posing the ruling class with a stark choice. The majority of the Scottish nobility decided to accept the new constitutional monarchy, but a sizeable ‘Jacobites’ minority (largely but not exclusively in the Catholic Highlands) actively opposed it, continuing, with French backing, to fight for the restoration of Stuart absolutism in the British Isles as the only way to preserve its waning power and privileges.

In order to neutralise this threat the English bourgeoisie now put the Scottish ruling class under increasing pressure to give up its political and economic independence. A last ditch attempt to establish Scotland as an independent colonial and commercial power failed disastrously in the 1690s, due in part to English sabotage. The Scottish bourgeoisie’s interests were still best served by building up a home market protected by its own state, but the nobility, as large landowners, needed access to English markets, and in 1707, despite opposition from a wide range of interests, the Scottish ruling class agreed to accept its incorporation into the new British state.

The Act of Union did not in itself represent an advance for the bourgeois revolution in the British Isles; in a compromise due to its overriding strategic concerns, the English bourgeoisie left the Scottish military-feudal nobility’s rights and privileges intact, including those of the Jacobites who proceeded to launch a series of insurrections. It was only after the military defeat of this surviving feudal faction in 1746, by combined English and Lowland Scottish forces, that the road was finally clear for the transformation of Scotland into a modern capitalist regime.

The destruction of Highland feudal clan society was an inevitable consequence as the military-feudal clan chiefs, newly transformed into capitalist landowners, proceeded to expropriate their own former clansmen in their quest for profit; these brutal ‘Highland Clearances’ completed the destruction of the peasantry in mainland Britain, a process that had begun four centuries earlier in England, as vividly described by Marx in Capital.[3]

This marked the end of Scotland’s strategic importance as a potential source of counter-revolution and completed a crucial phase of the bourgeois revolution in mainland Britain. The Scottish bourgeoisie was reluctantly forced to give up its attempt to build a rival commercial power and as consolation took the role of junior partner in British imperialism, benefiting from the unfettered expansion of agrarian capitalism that followed the dismantling of feudalism, that in turn enabled all the scientific and intellectual achievements of the ‘Scottish Enlightenment’ (David Hume, Adam Smith, James Watt...).

Unlike in Ireland therefore, in Scotland the ‘national question’ was largely settled through the creation of an English-dominated British state and capitalist power while capitalism was still in its progressive, ascendant phase. But the one-sided terms of the union forced on Scotland by its historic enemy, together with the survival of some distinctive Scottish institutions, encouraged the persistence of anti-English and nationalist ideologies within the UK state.

MH 14/2/12

Capitalism is a bottomless pit of horror. In all four corners of the globe this system destroys, starves and massacres. And in Syria today this system of exploitation is carrying out new acts of barbarity at the point of a bayonet dripping with blood. Life is valued less than bullets.

The UN now estimates that 7,500 have died in the violence and 70,000 have fled to Jordan, although the majority of the population cannot get out.

Saturday 4 February was an afternoon like any other in Homs. An enormous crowd was burying the dead in a mass funeral, and demonstrating against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Since the start of these events in April 2011 there has not been a day without a demonstration being repressed. In less than a year there have been more than 2,500 dead and thousands of wounded.

But on the night of 4 February and morning of 5th the mass assassinations were ratcheted up even further. For hours, in the dark, all that could be heard was Assad’s army’s artillery and the cries of dying men. In the early morning the horror of the massacre of Homs became apparent: in the light of day the streets were strewn with bodies. 250 dead, not counting those who died of their injuries later or who were finished off in cold blood by the military in the pay of the government. The massacre wasn’t finished by the break of day; the injured were hunted down even in their hospital beds, in order to be executed; the doctors caring for the ‘rebels’ were beaten; some residents of Homs were shot dead simply for the crime of carrying medication in their pockets. Neither women nor children were spared the carnage. The same night Al Jazeera announced that large explosions were heard in the region of Harasta, in the province of Rif Damashq. In this town, about fifteen kilometres North of Damascus, there were violent conflicts between the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the forces of the regime. The massacres were abominable there also.

Since then the bombardments and deaths have only continued – at Homs, and at Binnish and Idlib as part of a new offensive in the North of the country. In fact the violence was stepped up during and after a ridiculous referendum on a new constitution.

How is all this possible? How could a movement that began by protesting against poverty, hunger and unemployment be transformed a few months later into such a blood bath?

Who is responsible for this horror? Who orders the killing?

The Syrian regime has done plenty to demonstrate its barbarity. The clique in power will stop at nothing, will not hesitate to massacre, to stay at the head of the state and maintain its privileges. But what is this “Free Syrian Army” which claims to put itself under the command of the “people’s protest”? Another clique of assassins! The FSA claims to fight for the freedom of the people, yet it is only the armed wing of another bourgeois faction competing with Bashar al-Assad’s. And this is the great tragedy for the demonstrators. Those who want to struggle against their intolerable living conditions, against poverty, against exploitation, are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea and they are crushed, tortured and massacred…

In Syria the exploited are too weak to develop an autonomous struggle; and so their anger has been immediately diverted and used by the different bourgeois cliques in the country. The demonstrators have become cannon fodder, enrolled in a war which is not their own, for interests which are not theirs, as happened in Libya some months earlier.

The FSA has nothing to learn from the bloodthirsty nature of the Syrian regime in power. At the beginning of February, among other things, it threatened to bombard Damascus and all the headquarters and strongholds of the regime. The FSA called on the population of Damascus to flee far from these targets, which it knew was impossible. The Damascus residents had no choice but to lie low, terrified, in cellars or underground like moles or rats, just like their exploited brothers in Homs.

But the Syrian bourgeoisie is not the only guilty party in these massacres. Those implicated internationally all have seats in the UN. Ammar al-Wawi, one of the FSA commanders, directly accused Russia and some neighbouring countries, such as Lebanon and Iran, for their involvement, and indirectly the Arab League and the international community for their inaction which gave Assad the green light to massacre the people. What a discovery! The new calls for a resolution at the UN, being drawn up at the end of February, will come up against the same divisions of imperialist interest, against which the professed humanitarian concerns will pale into insignificance:

• China and Russia publicly and politically defend the Syrian regime. Russia, like Iran, supplies it with arms. And it is likely that some of their armed forces intervene directly on the ground under some pretext or other. For capitalist powers neither deaths nor the human suffering that they inflict count in the defence of their sordid imperialist interests.
• Iran relies on Syria for a large part of its power in the near Middle East. That’s why this state does all in its power to support the existing Syrian regime, even with direct military involvement. And today’s proclamations by the ‘great democratic nations’, hand on heart and crocodile tears in their eyes, that the repression of demonstrators by Bashar al-Assad’s army is intolerable, have no real compassion for the bereaved families, only an interest in weakening Iran by putting Syria under their thumb. But this is dangerous because Iran is not Iraq. Iran is a country of 70 million, with a large and well equipped army. And above all with the capacity to create nuisance much greater than Syria. If Iran was forced to block the Straits of Hormuz preventing the supply of oil, what an economic catastrophe that would be! Any direct attack on Iran would unleash uncontrollable chaos. Bloody nights like those in Homs would spread throughout the region.

Syria on the brink of imperialist war

Tensions are mounting every day between Iran and a number of other imperialist powers: United States, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Israel, etc. War is threatened, but for the moment is not breaking out. We are waiting, and the sound of boots marching towards Syria is heard more and more, amplified by the Russian and Chinese veto of the UN resolution condemning repression carried out by Bashar al-Assad’s regime. All these imperialist vultures are using the pretext of the Syrian regime’s infamy and inhumanity to prepare for full scale war in this country. We first heard through the Russian media, Voice of Russia, relaying the Iranian Press TV, news according to which Turkey, with American support, is getting ready to attack Syria. The Turkish state is massing troops on the Syrian border. Since then this information has been taken up by all the western media. On the other side, in Syria, Soviet-era ballistic missiles have been deployed in the Kamechi and Deir Ezzor regions, on the border with Iraq and Turkey. All this has followed a meeting in November in Ankara, the start of a series of diplomatic meetings. The Qatari emissary offered Turkish prime minister Erdogan finance for military operations from Turkish territory against President Assad. Meetings were held with the Lebanese and Syrian oppositions. These preparations led Syria’s allies, foremost among them Iran and Russia, to raise the temperature and make barely veiled threats against Turkey. For the moment the Syrian National Council (CNS), which according to the bourgeois press includes the majority of the country’s opposition, has made it known that it is not asking for any foreign military intervention on Syrian soil. There is no doubt that this refusal is still holding back the Turkish armed forces, and ultimately the Israeli state. The CNS couldn’t care less about the human suffering involved in all-out war on Syrian soil, any more than the other bourgeois fractions. What it fears is simply the total loss of the little power it presently holds in the event of a major conflict.

The horrors which we are seeing every day on the television and in the bourgeois press are both dramatic and real. If the ruling class are showing us all this at length it is out of neither compassion nor humanity. It is to prepare us ideologically for ever more massive and blood military interventions. Bashar Al-Assad and his clique are not the only executioners in this genocide. The executioner of humanity is the dying capitalist system which produces the barbarity of inter-imperialist massacres just as surely as storm clouds produce thunder. 

Tino 29/2/12

Image source: yalibnan.com/2012/02/18/is-syria-conflict-civil-war [43]

Britain and Europe

In March, David and Samantha Cameron were received by Barack and Michelle Obama in the White House and accorded a status almost equal to that of a visiting head of state (including a 19 gun salute - just two short of that accorded to a head of state). A few months before Cameron was publicly snubbed by Sarkozy after opposing changes to the EU designed to tackle the economic crisis. To many this showed that the Euro-sceptics now control the Tories and that the ‘special relationship’ is alive and well. In fact, the situation is more complex than this description would suggest. After all, it was the same Cameron who has given funds to support the European bailout and who complied with rulings of the European Court of Human Rights in the face of calls from the press to simply ignore it. It was the same Cameron who on coming into office declared that Britain should have “a solid but not a slavish” relationship with the US, while his Foreign Secretary called for Britain to “elevate key partnerships beyond Europe and North America.”[1]

To understand these apparent contradictions we have to look below the surface and examine some of the economic and imperialist issues that determine Britain’s international relationships and foreign policy.

The economic importance of Europe and the US

Examination of the statistics of Britain’s international trade shows that Europe, as a whole is the UK’s largest partner in terms of exports and imports of both goods and services but that the situation is more complex than this suggests. Although British manufacturing has been in decline for many years and makes a smaller contribution to GDP than the service sector, in terms of value it is still larger than the service sector.

In the trade in goods[2] the EU 27 accounts for well over half of Britain’s exports and imports. However the balance is not only negative but seems to have become increasingly so over the decade. In 2000 trade with the EU accounted for 60% of Britain exports and 53% of its imports, with a negative balance of £5,141m, accounting for 15.5% of the overall deficit of £33,030m in the trade in goods. A decade later the proportion of exports and imports to and from Europe still accounted for more than half of the total (53% and 51% respectively) but now made up more than 44% of the total deficit of £98,462m. This contrasts with Germany where 60.8% of exports were within the EU in 2010 and where the balance is positive.[3] Trade with the US is significantly less than with Europe but it is the only major geographical area where the balance is in Britain’s favour. The USA accounted for about 15% of exports from Britain in both 2000 and 2010 but the balance in both years was positive, with surpluses of £906m and £10,933m respectively. This tenfold increase reflects the increase in exports to the US from £29,371m in 2000 to £37,925 in 2010 and the corresponding fall in imports from £28,465m to £26,992 over the same period. It is worth noting that while trade with China has grown over the decade, as would be expected, and while trade with Asia remains significant, the balance in both cases is negative.

Turning to the trade in services, the first point to note is that the balance in 2010 in all the main geographical areas shown is positive. Overall, the surplus came to £58,778m. A decade previously, the balance with Europe was negative. In 2010 the EU 27 accounted for nearly 19% of the positive balance of trade and the rest of Europe just over 16%. However, these positive balances arise from nearly half of the value of exports. In contrast, in 2010 trade with the US accounted for over a quarter of the positive balance of trade while the trade itself accounted for only 20% of the value of exports. This suggests that trade with the US is more profitable than trade with Europe, although the situation with the latter has improved over the last decade.

Within the overall trade in services, financial services are the largest single category, accounting for 28% of total exports of services in 2009 and 25% in 2010. The Report on the British Situation produced towards the end of 2010 noted that from the 1970s onwards the financial sector grew far faster than the rest of economy and was far more profitable: “From accounting for about 1.5% of the economy’s profits between 1948 and 1970 the sector has grown to account for 15%.”[4] The report also showed that the financial sector stands above all others in the gross value it adds to the economy. Examination of figures over the last two years shows that here too Europe is Britain’s largest market, accounting for 40% of exports and 35% of imports and making up 43% of the total positive balance of trade. However, the data also shows that the US is a significant partner, accounting for 20% of exports and 31% of imports and contributing 17-18% of the total positive balance.

London is the leading global centre of financial services alongside New York. “London is the centre of the UK’s banking industry, which holds the third largest stock of customer deposits of any country in the world. 17% of all global trading in equities took place in London in 2009, a higher proportion than anywhere except New York. And UK fund managers, predominantly in London, managed portfolios worth 11% of the global total - again second only to the US.”[5]

Another aspect of Britain’s international position is the transfer of income from abroad. These include payments to British citizens working abroad, earnings from direct investments overseas and from other types of foreign investment. When these are balanced against transfers out of the country the overall position has been positive in recent years, but this is entirely due to the income from foreign direct investments. In May 2011 the Office for National Statistics reported that: “for the past decade net income flows have generally been positive, meaning that the UK is earning more income from its ownership of overseas assets than it is paying foreigners for their ownership of UK assets. In 2009 this positive net position raised national income by two per cent relative to GDP.”[6] The apparently paradoxical aspect is that this positive return is made from a negative International Investment Position (“that is the difference between its stock of foreign assets and foreign liabilities”[7]).

This examination of Britain’s international trade shows that its economic interests have their main focal points in Europe and US. This helps to explain the actions of the British ruling class in recent years and during the current crisis in particular.

On the one hand, Britain would be seriously affected by turmoil in the EU and so recognises the need for action to be taken to ensure the stability of the EU and its member countries and has little option but to support that action to some extent. This is one of the reasons why Cameron has continued to try and play a role in the EU's decisions, even after his ‘veto’ of the proposed treaty revision in October last year left him formally outside the discussions that led to the recent agreement. The central role that Britain seems to have played in drafting a letter putting forward proposals for growth suggests that this is tacitly acknowledged by other states.

On the other hand, Britain is unwilling to countenance anything that might affect its global position, especially with regard to the financial services sector given its central role in the economy. Hence the ‘veto’ last October and the opposition to a tax on financial transactions (the so-called 'Robin Hood' or Tobin tax). Trade with the US remains vital to British national interests.

While it would be an error to see a mechanical relationship between Britain’s economic and imperialist interests it would also be a mistake to deny any such link. Analysis of the economic dimension reveals some of the foundations of Britain’s strategy of maintaining a position between Europe and the US.

British imperialist strategy and Europe

In the Resolution on the British Situation adopted at World Revolution’s Congress in 2010,[8] we traced the evolution of Britain’s imperialist strategy over the last few years, ending in the impasse that characterised the last years of New Labour. The coalition inherited a serious situation and had to recognise that British imperialism had suffered a further decline in its power and status. However, the resolution underlined that the British ruling class would not simply give up and pointed to the early attempts by Cameron to find a way out “that reached beyond the dominance of the US and Germany (as the main power in Europe)”. The highpoint of this strategy to date was its ‘successful’ intervention in Libya alongside France in 2011. This allowed the British ruling class to play a role on the world stage after all the rebuffs to Blair and Brown and to show its military prowess after all the humiliation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the reduction in ‘defence’ expenditure forced on it by the economic crisis.

Britain’s strategy towards Europe has two key aspects. Firstly, within the global balance of power, Europe can provide an important counterweight to America, not least because it is generally more reluctant to follow the US into wars and imperialist adventures. Secondly, within Europe itself, Britain retains its historical opposition to the growth of German domination. Historically one of the UK’s tactics has been to support the expansion of Europe in order to dilute German influence. More recently, the Defence Co-operation Treaty with France announced in November 2010, while partly a pragmatic response to the cuts in the defence budget, was principally aimed at strengthening the capacity of both countries to act on their own to defend their interests. While couched in the language of international co-operation through the UN and EU, it also stressed the development of bilateral capability to carry out a range of operations. The importance attached to this explains the rapid patching up of relations between Cameron and Sarkozy after the insults and snubs that followed the British veto of the Treaty revision last year.

Within Britain, Cameron has effectively managed the Euro-sceptics, who, on paper, probably now form the majority in the party. Many of the new in-take of Tory MPs were trained by the Young Britons Foundation, a right-wing think tank with strong ties to the neo-cons in the US. At times he has been happy to adopt their language, moving the Tory MEPs from the mainstream centre-right group to one encompassing an assortment of far right parties and promising a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. However, in practice he has worked to maintain British influence in Europe and has been prepared to go against the Euro-sceptics in his party to do so. The promise of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty was scrapped in November 2009 after the Treaty was passed by every member of the EU. Cameron was able to blame the Brown administration for signing and promised he would not ratify another treaty without a referendum. The coalition with the Lib Dems brought former MEPs like Clegg and Huhne into the Cabinet and it is possible that the need to balance the Tory right was a factor in the creation of the coalition. Most dramatically of all, in October 2011 Cameron imposed a three-line whip against attempts by Euro-sceptic MPs to force a vote on a referendum on EU membership. The fact that the vote was lost and no splits appeared in the party suggests a level of pragmatism and discipline that belies the little-Englander outlook of some individual Tories.

With his opposition to the proposed treaty changes in December 2011, Cameron seemed to polish up his Euro-sceptic credentials and won the applause of the Tory right. In fact, far from being a change of approach this was a fulfilment of Cameron’s commitment to defend Britain’s financial and imperialist interests. Blocking the Treaty kept the City free of external restrictions. It also sought to limit Germany’s efforts to use the financial crisis in Europe to strengthen its domination of Europe. Cameron’s subsequent steps to restore relations with France and to re-engage in European efforts to manage the crisis were both rapid and effective. This doesn’t mean that the veto was without cost: over and above the insults suffered at the time it can only have reinforced the perceptions of British duplicity that may contribute to problems in the future. But for now, Cameron has scored another success in European policy.

North 26/03/12

It’s difficult to find anyone with a good word to say about George Osborne’s latest budget. Ed Milliband claimed it “failed the fairness test” and was a “millionaire’s Budget which squeezes the middle” and was an expression of the “same old Tories”[1].

The material attack

Those defending the Budget point to the increase in personal tax allowance to £9,250: i.e. no-one will be taxed on income up to this threshold. Touted as a measure to help “the poor”, in fact this will affect everyone but only by about £14 a month. Taken by itself, one might argue that every little helps – but the reality is that any benefit will be swallowed up by record petrol prices, increasing VAT on “hot food” (which will punish workers who have a main meal at work for example) and the below-inflation rise for the National Minimum Wage (with rates for younger workers frozen entirely). Public sector workers face additional targeted attacks with the proposed introduction of local pay rates. And there was £10 billion which Osborne estimated needed to be cut from the benefits bill, without saying exactly when and how it would be done.

The ideological attack

Predictably, the left leaning press attacked the reduction in the top rate of income tax from 50p to 45p and the decrease in corporation tax and commentators (even those normally considered friendly to the Conservatives) lined up to condemn the “Granny Tax” – a reduction of the tax allowance for pensioners.

The sound and fury of the media is, of course, designed to steer the debate in particular ways and the outrage over the Granny Tax is a good example. There is no question that the erosion of the allowance will cause pain to many pensioners. And, after all, who could be stony-hearted faced with the narrative of ‘hard working’ oldsters, who’ve ‘paid into the system all their lives’ now facing penury in their old age? Against this, another argument is presented: the effects of the crisis have, so far, disproportionately affected young people who suffer from chronic unemployment and low wages, the latter even lower now the age-bands of the minimum wage have been frozen. Shouldn’t older people pay their share?

The masses are thus invited to take sides in a debate about which section of the population should shoulder the burden of the system’s crisis. Class divisions are completely obscured in this debate. No mention is made of wealthy pensioners or young people from wealthy families. They are conveniently forgotten, allowed to carry on in hidden pockets of privilege that are only minimally affected by the various changes, while the rest of society is allowed to fight over the scraps. The fixation on particular items also manages to obscure (without actually hiding) the more draconian elements of the Budget mentioned above.

Of course, the ruling class can’t completely hide the fact we live in a class society. But the rhetoric about the budget being for millionaires once again hides a deeper reality behind a self-evident truth: all budgets are for millionaires! Contrary to the democratic myth, the state is not the expression of ‘the people’ but the highest synthesis of the ruling class, the capitalist class. It rules in the name of the whole population but actually in the collective interest of the capitalists. The state may sometimes appear to be “in hock” to the “business community” or at other times to ruthlessly impose its will upon them, but these are only the surface expressions of an underlying constant: defending the basic capitalist framework of society. Everything the state does – even when it grants concessions to the workers – is done with aim of preserving that framework and the domination of the ruling class.

As long as we allow ourselves to be drawn into arguments about how to manage an economic system in terminal decline, the working class will always lose, no matter what items the Budget contains. Instead, we need to understand the real function of the state in order to destroy both the state itself and the social foundation of exploitation on which the state rests. Only then can society really be organised for the benefit of all.

Ishamael 26/3/12

The furore over the oil tankers’ dispute shows what workers are up against in today’s capitalist system. The workers are fed up with the working conditions imposed on them by the oil companies and the contracting agents they use to hire them. They frequently have to work extremely long hours, which is a dire threat not only to their own safety but the safety of many others given the volatile nature of their cargo. There have also been serious attempts to cut their wages.

But because of the key role they play in the economy – the 2000 employed tanker drivers supply up to 90% of fuel to UK gas stations – this potential conflict has immediately been transformed into a national political scandal by the intervention of the government and its vilification by the press, opposition politicians and union officials.

First the government, faced with a possible strike over Easter, made it known that troops would be called in to ensure that oil supplies were not disrupted. Then we had Francis Maude’s ‘jerry can’ speech which instantly provoked panic buying and fuel shortages around the country, while fears that this would lead to real fire hazards were almost immediately vindicated by the horrible 40% burns suffered by a woman trying to decant fuel in her kitchen.

The trade unions often tell us that the conflicts they are given to manage are industrial and not political, but the response of the government made nonsense of any such claim. A worried Daily Telegraph blogger, ex-Telegraph editor Charles Moore (i.e a Tory!), even brought to light a private memo from Tory MPs to constituency associations which announced the government’s very political intentions in this dispute:

“This is our Thatcher moment. In order to defeat the coming miners’ strike, she stockpiled coal. When the strike came, she weathered it, and the Labour Party, tarred by the strike, was humiliated. In order to defeat the coming fuel drivers’ strike, we want supplies of petrol stockpiled. Then, if the strike comes, we will weather it, and Labour, in hock to the Unite union, will be blamed.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/9176237/Even-Im-s... [53]

It’s debateable whether the main target of the government’s strategy was the Labour party rather than the working class, but in any case, in terms of short term political gains, they have made a real mess of things, since people are now much more likely to blame the government for fuel shortages than the Labour party or the tanker drivers.

On the other hand, the government’s panic-mongering has certainly had a ‘positive’ result as far as dealing with the workers is concerned, because the Unite union has now announced that it will not be calling a strike over Easter. No doubt the union bureaucracy is feeling relieved about being able to return to the negotiating table where it feels most at home, but the workers themselves   must have been confused and intimidated by the huge wave of propaganda directed at their (potential) struggle, making them hesitate about taking action which would immediately make them the target of a hate campaign orchestrated from the highest level.

A strike by oil tanker drivers would certainly damage the capitalist economy more than a strike in most other single sectors. But the class struggle today is fought out on the political terrain even more than on the economic. In this dispute, for all their blunders, the bourgeoisie has won an initial victory against the workers on the political level before the workers could even make use of their ‘economic weapon’. For the oil tanker drivers as for any other sector, there is no substitute for waging the struggle as part of a general movement of the working class against the bourgeoisie and its state.  

Amos 31/3/12

The wave of austerity measures that governments across Europe have imposed because of recession and the debt mountain that stem from capitalism’s economic crisis has been met with a mixed response from the working class. We have seen the rise of the ‘indignados’ in Spain and the angry demonstrations and assemblies in Greece, but there are other countries where workers’ discontent is more held back by the actions of the unions.

On the rack in Portugal

Already the poorest country in Western Europe, Portugal, like Ireland and Greece, has had a bailout package from the IMF and EU. As things stand the Portuguese economy is predicted to shrink by 3.3% in 2012, with no serious economist expecting the economy to pick up in 2013. There will probably be a need for a second bailout before long.

The crisis has led to an array of attacks on basic standards of life. The government has privatised several industries, cut public sector jobs/wages/services, cut welfare benefits, frozen pensions and put up a whole range of taxes. A rise in the mortality rate in February, with a thousand more deaths than usual, is being attributed to the increased costs of heating and health care.

General strikes in November 2010 and November 2011, although expressing workers’ anger, were very much under the control of the unions. More recently the Portuguese government has introduced new labour laws to make it easier to sack workers, to reduce holidays and cut redundancy money. One of the union federations, the UGT, signed up to these measures in January in a pact with the government and employers. The Stalinist federation, the CGTP, declared itself against the latest attacks, denouncing them as, among other things, a “return to feudalism”. The attacks are in reality the latest expression of the crisis of capitalism, and the actions of the Stalinist ‘opposition’ have held back the response of workers. On 22 March there was a further general strike. The ‘Socialist’ UGT was not participating, and the lack of coordination between the demonstrations called by the CGTP and others further served to divide up the energies of different groups of workers. It was also significant that it was mainly workers from the public sector who were involved. There were clashes with the police, who also beat up a number of individuals. However, it’s not just the threat of state violence that workers have to be wary of; the union straitjacket holds workers back everywhere.

Struggle in Spain

Similar measures in Spain have also led to a general strike, the first in 18 months. Recent government measures make it easier to lay workers off and cut wages. This is in a country where half of those under 25 are out of work (the highest rate in the EU) and the overall rate is officially 24%: that’s 5.3million in a population of 47million. The union organisers of the 29 March strike claimed that millions were on the street, attending demonstrations in 110 locations with 80% of the workforce involved. More realistic observers suggested that hundreds of thousands were on the street, which could easily translate into an impressive number on strike. Clashes with the police in a number of places underlined the depth of workers’ anger, and the force that the state has at its disposal.

The trouble is, these union controlled processions provide an outlet for discontent, but are not part of an effective fight. Over the last year there have been two general strikes in Portugal, more than ten in Greece, not as expressions of workers’ discontent but as a means of diverting it. Workers’ anger is channelled into actions that only lead to frustration and a sense of impotence.

On demonstrations in Spain on 29 March the ICC distributed a leaflet that showed where the strength of the working class lies. Any movement that leads towards the holding of workers’ assemblies is a real step forward for the struggle. Against union parades it’s impossible to overestimate the importance of assembles. Holding workplace or street meetings to discuss, to exchange experiences and develop new initiatives – this is a vital means of developing workers’ organisation and consciousness.

The ICC also published on our Spanish website other leaflets produced by radicalised minorities coming out of recent workers’ struggles or the Indignados movement. Their common denominator was the concern to advocate the active participation of the greatest number of workers – which necessarily implies challenging the trade union control of the demonstrations and rallies. As the leaflet of the 15M Assembly Castellón put it:

“At the end of the demonstration we will go the Ma Agustina so that those who agreed yesterday can try to take the stage and read our statement. If that is not possible to do what we agreed:

•   begin to shout “we want to talk” for a period of time
•   to shout “freedom of expression”
•   finally if that still doesn’t work, to leave with a great commotion shouting “they do not represent us”
•   to head towards the Las Aulas

On the theme to be discussed at the end of the demonstration, as was proposed on Wednesday, a letter will be communicated to the main trade unions on Monday which will ask what is the order of speakers at the end in order to know when we will be able to speak”.

Two other appeals are published in this edition of World Revolution

The reason these initiatives are so important is that the attacks of the bourgeoisie are not letting up; on the contrary they are being intensified. On the day after the 29 March strike the Spanish government announced a further 27 billion euros worth of cuts. Central government spending will be cut by a further 17%, public sector workers’ pay is frozen, and fuel bills will go up with tax on gas on electricity. The Finance Minister said it was the most austere budget since 1977. Some commentators criticised the proposals for not cutting enough. The cuts are supposed to keep costs down, but will just as likely further contribute to the deepening of recession.

Against the attacks of the bourgeoisie many have been tempted to emigrate. Maybe half a million have left Greece; a majority of Spanish and Portuguese youth are reportedly considering emigration. But, apart from such choices always being attempts at individual solutions to widespread problems, this ignores the international reality of the capitalist crisis from which no country is immune.

In Germany the lowest unemployment figures in two decades have just been announced. Yet the evidence of a series of strikes in March in the German public sector shows that, whatever the differences between national economies, workers’ anger is an international phenomenon. It’s true that in the latest strikes in Germany workers have been, to a certain extent, used as pawns in pay negotiations between unions and government, but there is clearly real discontent. Ultimately, an international workers’ struggle is the only response to the attacks brought on by an international capitalist economic crisis.   Car 30/3/12

More online - read the article

Spanish indignados’ movement: What remains of 15M?

on our website

We publish here two leaflets produced during the recent general strike in Spain by the Alicante Critical Bloc & Assembly calling for a general assembly & the Workers group of Palencia condemning the role of the Trade Unions.

A CALL-OUT AND PROPOSAL by the ALICANTE CRITICAL BLOC AND ASSEMBLY faced with the general strike.

Workers, unemployed, young people, students, retired, service users, EVERYONE who is participating in initiatives, assemblies and struggles.

We want to propose the formation of a participatory, critical, unitary space, based on self-organisation through assemblies, aimed at the repeal of the Labour Reform and against all forms of exploitation.

We want to take advantage of the “general strike” in order to put forward actions that go beyond what we consider to be an inadequate form of mobilisation. 

WHETHER STRIKING OR NOT, LET’S GET TOGETHER ON THE 29-M

- in the morning: GENERAL ASSEMBLY at 11.00 in the Plaza de la Montanyeta Alicante. To think about and propose alternative actions for the 29th

- Midday: EAT TOGETHER in order to create a space for reflection and discussion.

- In the afternoon:  TO PARTICIPATE AS A BLOC ON THE DEMONSTRATION at 18.00. We will be at the back of the demo.

- At night AN OPEN ASSEMBLY of workers, unemployed...after the demonstration in the Plaza de San Cristobal, around the theme: how to continue the struggle after the 29th?

Participate in the assemblies, no one should decide for you!

We need to go from indignation to action!

Together we can change everything!

FOR A STRIKE WITHOUT INTERMEDIARIES

(Workers’ group of Palencia)

Once again the ruling class has reminded us who is in charge; this time with the Labour Reform which leave workers even more at the mercy of the employer. From now on, whether you keep your job or not will depend exclusively upon the boss’s need to maximise profits. This is not due to this or that government but rather expresses the fact that for Capital we are nothing more than commodities. Faced with this prospect we have no other option than to struggle: What should this struggle be? How to carry it out?

The majority unions offer us their model: they command, we obey. They make a lot of fuss about the Labour Reform, but at the same time they cut deals that make things worse for the workers. In reality, our rights are of no importance to them. For them we are nothing more than a number that justifies their existence and their subsidies. What is important to them is that we are exploited and enslaved while they continue their charade! They are nothing more than puppets in the service of the capitalists. Their real function, which is why they continue to exist, is to absorb, divert and subdue the real struggle of the working class; to stop it becoming a real danger to the system and its ruling class.

... we cannot follow the majority unions nor their strategies. In order to nullify all revolutionary struggle, they have agreed to hold a strike with conditions, the so-called “minimum services”. When have we ever seen a war where a pact has been signed with the enemy in order to “not cause too many problems”? The aim of a strike is to cause harm, to oblige the employers to bend before our interests. To strike where it hurts them most: the economy. This will not be done with an agreed strike and only on one day: it will be achieved through indefinite wildcat strikes.

We cannot give the traitorous unions and the opportunists on the Left of Capital more time. We must organise ourselves and without intermediaries in assemblies, in workers’ councils. Only through determined action and without conditions can we defeat the exploiters and their servants in all areas: from the stopping of the Labour Reform to the destruction of the capitalist system.

AGAINST THE CUTS

ORGANISE OURSELVES WITHOUT INTERMEDIARIES!

This is the second in our series by a close sympathiser examining the formation of the British state in the 17th and 18th centuries. The first article in WR [58]352 [58] showed how English capital expanded to dominate the rest of the British Isles, and why attempts to form an independent capitalist state in Scotland failed. Here we turn to the case of Ireland, and then draw some conclusions about the strengths and weaknesses of the modern UK state and their implications for the class struggle today.

The destruction of feudalism in Ireland and the invasion of mainland capital

Feudalism in Ireland was more fully developed and resistant to external change than in England or Scotland. As part of its attempt to impose direct rule on the island, in the 16th century the centralising English Tudor monarchy began to confiscate the lands of rebellious Catholic nobles and ‘plant’ them with their own colonists, but the north of Ireland only came under English control after the defeat of a Spanish-backed revolt in 1603. The subsequent ‘plantation’ of Ulster with Protestant English and Scottish settlers, financed by the City of London, was the first major colonial project of the English empire in the British Isles.

Faced with this steady destruction of its power, in 1641 the Catholic nobility mobilised the impoverished Irish peasantry in an attempted coup d’état. The ensuing massacre of Protestant settlers in Ulster, and the enfeebled Stuart monarchy’s willingness to make an alliance with the Irish nobility against the Protestant Scots, provided the English bourgeoisie with the perfect propaganda weapon with which to mobilise popular support for its own political struggle against the monarchy under an anti-absolutist, anti-Catholic banner.

Seizing the opportunity presented by civil war in England, the Irish nobility set up what was in effect a separate state, the ‘Catholic Confederation’, with French, Spanish and Papal support. In return for a promise of self-government and religious rights the majority allied themselves with the royalist side, while a minority called for a Catholic state fully independent of England, which led to a brief Irish civil war. The Confederate-royalist alliance was finally defeated by Cromwell’s army in 1653.[1]

The subsequent English re-conquest of Ireland, which included the infamous massacres at Drogheda and Wexford [59], was followed by military occupation and the mass confiscation of land, effectively destroying the power of the Catholic nobility and subordinating the Irish state to the interests of English capital, whose ruthless campaign to impose itself on the island decimated the already impoverished Irish peasantry. From the survey carried out for the government and completed by William Petty in 1656 it has been estimated that over 618,000 people died in Ireland between 1641 and 1653, about 40% of the population, with around 12,000 exported as slaves. Not surprisingly the brutality of this bourgeois revolution from the outside left a lasting legacy of hatred and resentment.

Some land was returned to pro-royalist nobles after 1660 but the restored Stuart monarchy was forced to accept the main terms of the Cromwellian ‘settlement’ in Ireland. The expropriated Irish Catholic landowning class opposed the ‘Glorious Revolution’ in 1688, backing the restoration of the Stuart dynasty as the only chance of regaining its lost power; and, except for Protestant Ulster, Ireland became a stronghold of the ‘Jacobites’ (ie. supporters of the deposed Stuart King James II), remaining under the control of an Irish army with French support until 1690 when, after a campaign that was to become a major source of mythology for future Protestant Ulster Unionism, the forces of Irish Catholic feudalism were finally defeated by the forces of English capitalism led by the Dutch Willem van Oranje (‘King Billy’), with the active support of the Protestant settlers of the north east.

Having regained control, the political priority of the English bourgeoisie was to ensure that its interests in Ireland were protected by a loyal colonial garrison, to be provided by a narrow section of the mostly English Protestant landowning elite. Economically its priority was to open up Ireland to English capitalist producers desperate for new markets while denying the markets of mainland Britain to Irish products, and to this end any Irish economic activity that threatened English industry was ruthlessly destroyed.

The growth of Irish trade and manufacturing despite these restrictions, and the emergence of an indigenous capitalist class in the second half of the 18th century, directly conflicted with these priorities, and the new British state found itself faced with growing political demands for Irish self-government and free trade led by the Presbyterian bourgeoisie of the north east. Weakened by the American Revolution (1776-1783), and under increasing threat from a national liberation struggle led by formerly loyal settlers, the British bourgeoisie was forced to concede Irish legislative independence and free trade within the British empire – but not full self-government.

This failed to disarm the growing bourgeois national movement, which received a further political impetus from the French Revolution; the programme of the Society of United Irishmen, founded in 1791, included religious equality, national independence and an end to English commercial monopoly. Faced with this threat, the British bourgeoisie now played the tried and tested ‘anti-popery’ card, deliberately fomenting religious sectarianism in order to divide the revolutionary national movement and then unleashing state terror against a French-backed insurrection in 1798. Having crushed this movement it imposed direct rule and forcibly incorporated Ireland into the British state. From now on Irish capitalist development was to be totally subordinated to the needs and interests of British imperialism.

With the defeat of its attempted national revolution, the Irish bourgeoisie found itself deeply divided along sectarian lines. This division broadly corresponded to the uneven development of capitalism in the island, where a largely Catholic class of merchants and traders, heavily dependent on agriculture, had emerged in the south, with a Protestant bourgeoisie based on the linen industry (which did not compete with English producers) in the north east. Southern capital needed a protected home market to have any chance of developing, while in the north, large-scale capitalism was able to develop on the basis of its close ties to mainland capital.

These opposing economic interests – themselves shaped by the priorities of English imperialist policy – became the basis for the emergence of the conflicting nationalist movements of Protestant Ulster Unionism and southern Catholic Republicanism. Above all, these sectarian divisions were deliberately sponsored by the British state in order to retain its political and social control in Ireland, and became a major obstacle to the future unification of the working class in Ireland.

Ireland’s forcible incorporation into the new ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland’ in 1801 formally marked the creation of the modern UK state, but the divisions within the capitalist class eventually gave rise to a nationalist struggle by the Southern Catholic bourgeoisie in order to set up its own protected home market. The ‘Irish Free State’ seceded from the UK in 1922. We don’t intend to deal with the complexities of the ‘Irish question’ here, or with the anti-working class nature of nationalist struggles in the epoch of capitalist decadence.[2] We have shown that its roots lie in the uneven development of capitalism in the British Isles, the full-frontal assault of mainland capital in order to impose itself on a resistant feudal state, and the strategic priorities of British imperialism faced with revolutionary threats at home and abroad.

Some conclusions

As a result of its process of formation, from its origins the ‘United Kingdom’ was not a single nation state like, say, France, but a state containing at least four ‘nations’: England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. More specifically, this state reflected the domination of English capital over the rest of the British Isles and the success of its efforts to prevent the emergence of any potential rival, which had involved a series of pragmatic measures and hastily cobbled-together mergers.

It happened differently elsewhere. There are certainly some similarities in the role played by England in the British Isles with that of Prussia in the process of German unification, but whereas the latter resulted at least formally in a federated nation state, even the British bourgeoisie is forced to accept that the UK state today is ‘complex’. But there was never a single process to be followed for the replacement of feudal regimes with state structures defending the interests of the new mode of production, and no single ‘model’ of the bourgeois revolution. It happened differently, over a whole epoch, in the USA, Russia, Japan, the Ottoman Empire... In the UK it left political, economic and ethnic fault lines, some of which, as in the case of Ireland, proved deep and unstable, while others, as in the case of Scotland, were largely but not completely submerged in the pursuit of common capitalist and imperialist interests. These fault lines still shape the British bourgeoisie and the modern UK state.

Given the depth of the capitalist crisis today and the growing tendency towards the decomposition of capitalist society, it would be wrong to dismiss the possibility of the break-up of the UK state. The bourgeoisie everywhere is less and less able to control events or prevent the disintegration of its system. But it is still dangerous to underestimate the continuing ability of the capitalist class to manipulate events and direct campaigns to divide the working class and maintain its rule.

A defining feature of the bourgeois revolution in England is that it was one of the earliest in the world. As a direct consequence the English bourgeoisie is one of the longest-ruling, most experienced factions of the capitalist class. It also had a very valuable early experience of defeating a threat from the exploited masses, which demanded not only cunning and ruthlessness but also intelligence and flexibility. This means it can still teach the rest of the bourgeoisie lessons in how to deal with the class struggle.[3] After the respective roles of parliament and the monarchy were settled by the ‘Glorious Revolution’ there were to be no major changes in the structure of the state for over a hundred years, while due to its insularity the UK state was spared invasions or major convulsions, giving it an almost unprecedented stability compared to its continental counterparts.

This defining feature also shaped the characteristics of the UK state and the institutions that emerged from the bourgeois revolution, which still bear the aristocratic features of the landowning interests that played such a key role in their formation (along with the City of London financial interests). Landowning classes played an important role in the bourgeois revolution in other countries (eg. the Junkers in Prussia or the samurai in Japan), but the English landowning aristocracy was the wealthiest and most powerful, having gradually transformed itself into a capitalist landowning class over a very long period. Even when a manufacturing class did eventually arise from the Industrial Revolution, instead of using its economic power to seize political control of the state and rip out all the symbols of the ‘old regime’ – monarchy, House of Lords, state church, even the colonies – as so many unnecessary ‘overheads’, as Marx at one time anticipated, it largely accommodated itself to the existing state structures.[4]

The British bourgeoisie eventually paid a price for the backwardness of these state institutions, which exacerbated its lack of industrial competitiveness when rival powers like Germany and the USA emerged, but they continued to enable a very subtle and flexible system of rule and mystification. It took a sharp external observer like Trotsky to pinpoint these key characteristics of British capitalist society:

“The British bourgeoisie developed under the protection of ancient institutions, on the one hand adapting itself to them and on the other subjecting them to itself, gradually, organically, ‘in an evolutionary way’. The revolutionary upheavals of the 17th century were profoundly forgotten. In this consists what is called the British tradition. Its basic feature is conservatism. More than anything else the British bourgeoisie is proud that it has not destroyed old buildings and old beliefs, but has gradually adapted the old royal and noble castle to the requirements of the business firm. In this castle, in the corners of it, there were its icons, its symbols, its fetishes, and the bourgeoisie did not remove them. It made use of them to consecrate its rule. And it laid down from above upon its proletariat the heavy lid of cultural conservatism.”[5]

The persistence of these institutions, particularly of the monarchy, still serves the British bourgeoisie in two ways; on the one hand they help to disguise its naked class dictatorship, providing a potent source of mystification that assists in ensuring social order. On the other hand, they allow factions of the bourgeoisie, particularly from the left, to create campaigns around the long-overdue ‘modernisation’ of the state, presenting very modest proposals for changes in state structures as in some way ‘revolutionary’. As we have seen with the devolution issue, this can be an effective tactic to divert attention from the capitalist crisis when combined with nationalist feelings and resentment.  

MH 3/12

The murders committed on the 11, 15 and 19 March in Toulouse and Montauban, as well as their fall-out, are a striking illustration of the barbarity engulfing the present system.

According to President Sarkozy, Mohamed Merah, the young Toulousain who carried out these crimes and was executed by the French police, was a “monster”. This raises some questions:

What is a ‘monster’?

How could society create such a ‘monster’?

Monsters good and bad

If the cold-blooded killing of completely innocent people, people you don’t even know, makes a human being into a monster, then the whole planet is ruled by monsters because many chiefs of state have committed similar crimes. And we are not just talking about a few ‘bloody dictators’ like Stalin or Hitler in the past, Gadaffi or Assad in the present period. What are we to think of Winston Churchill, the ‘Great Man’ of the Second World War, who as early as summer 1943 ordered the bombing of the German cities of Hamburg and Dresden, which took place 13-15 February 1945? These bombings took tens, probably hundreds, of thousands of civilian lives, 50% of them women and 12% children. What are we to think of Harry Truman, president of the great American democracy, who ordered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in August 1945? These also killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, the majority of them women and children. Those killed were not the ‘collateral damage’ of operations aimed at military targets. The bombings were expressly aimed at civilians and in particular, in the case of Germany, those who lived in working class areas. Today the leaders of the ‘democratic’ countries are constantly covering up the bombing of civilian populations, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza or elsewhere.

In order to exonerate the political and military leaders, we are told that all these crimes are the price that had to be paid for winning the war against the ‘forces of evil’. Even reprisals against civilian population are justified in this way: these acts of revenge had the aim of ‘demoralising’ or ‘dissuading’ the enemy. This is exactly what Mohamed Merah said, if we are to believe the policemen who talked to him prior to his execution: by attacking soldiers, he wanted to “avenge his brothers in Afghanistan”. By attacking children who went to a Jewish school he wanted to “avenge the children of Gaza” who have been the victims of Israeli bombings.

But perhaps what made Mohamed Merah a ‘monster’ was that he himself pulled the trigger of the murder weapons? It’s true that the leaders who order massacres are not usually in direct contact with their victims: Churchill did not fly the planes that bombed German cities and did not have the opportunity to see the agonising deaths of the women and children that they killed. But wasn’t that also the case with Hitler and Stalin, who were also rightly seen as sinister criminals? What’s more, the soldiers who, on the ground, murder unarmed civilians, whether following orders or acting out of the hatred that has been put into their heads, are rarely treated as monsters.  Sometimes they even get medals and are considered ‘heroes’.

Whether we are talking about the leaders of states or ordinary people enlisted into a war, there are many ‘monsters’ in the world today, and they are above all products of a society which is indeed ‘monstrous’.

The tragic trajectory of Mohamed Merah clearly illustrates this.

How to become a monster

Mohamed Merah was a very young man, a North African immigrant, brought up by a single mother, a failure at school. When still a minor he committed various violent crimes which got him into prison. He was unemployed on a number of occasions and tried to join the army, which rejected him because of his prior convictions. While this was happening he moved towards radical Islamism, apparently under the influence of his older brother. 

Here we have a classic journey that many young people have been through. Not all these young people end up as killers. Mohamed Merah was a particularly fragile personality, as can be seen by his attempted suicide when he was in prison and the time he spent in a psychiatric institution. But it is significant – as shown by attempts to set up websites that glorify him – that Mohamed Merah is already being seen as a ‘hero’ among many young  people in the banlieues, just like the terrorists who blow people up in public places in Israel, Iraq or London. The move towards violent, extremist forms of Islam is especially strong in Muslim countries and can take on a mass character – witness the success of Hamas in Gaza for example. When it involves young people born in France or other European countries it is, in part at least, the result of the same causes: the revolt against injustice, the product of despair and a feeling of exclusion. The terrorists of Gaza are recruited mainly from the young in a population which for decades has been living in poverty and unemployment, which has been colonised by the Israeli state and is constantly subjected to Israeli bombing raids.

As Marx famously put it in the 19th century: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature. It is the heart of a heartless world, the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” Faced with an intolerable present and the absence of any future, populations find no other consolation or hope than a flight to religion, which promises them a paradise after death. Playing on irrational feelings, since they are based on faith and not on rational thought, religions are the perfect soil for fanaticism, for the outright rejection of reason. When they contain the ingredient of ‘holy war’ against the ‘infidels’ as a way of entering paradise (as is the case with Islam, but also with Christianity), added to poverty, despair and daily humiliation, they can easily be converted into a celestial justification for violence, terrorism and massacres. In the autumn of 2005 the wave of violence which swept through the French banlieues was a symptom of the malaise and despair infecting a mass of young people who are the victims of unemployment and the lack of any future, in particular young people from a North African or Sub-Saharan background. The latter suffer from a dual burden: as well as the exclusion that unemployment itself brings, there is the exclusion that comes from the colour of your skin or your name: starting with equal talents, a Joseph or a Marie has a much better chance of finding a job than a Youseff or a Mariam, especially if the latter wears a veil or a headscarf in deference to her family’s wishes.

In this context, the retreat into ‘identity’ or ‘communitarianism’, as the sociologists call it, can only get worse, and religion is its main glue. And this kind of communitarianism, above all in its most violent and xenophobic forms, has been further fuelled by the international situation, in which the state of Israel, the Jewish state, is seen as the ‘enemy’ par excellence.        

The roots of anti-Judaism

According to the information provided by the police, it was because he couldn’t find any soldiers to shoot on 19 March that Mohamed Merah turned to the Jewish school where he killed three children and a teacher. This horrific act was just the extreme point of the very strong anti-Jewish feelings harboured by many Muslims today.  

However, anti-Judaism is not a historical ‘specificity’ of Islam, on the contrary. In the Middle Ages, the situation of the Jews was better in the countries dominated by Islam than in the countries dominated by Christianity. In the Christian west, the persecutions of Jews, accused of being the murderers of Christ, their use as scapegoats in periods of famine, epidemic or political turmoil, came at the same time as good relations and cooperation between Jews and Muslims in the Arab-Islamic empire. In Cordoba, the capital of Al-Andalus (Muslim Andalusia in Spain), Jews were university teachers and diplomats. In Spain the first massive persecutions of Jews were carried out by the ‘Catholic kings’ who expelled them as well as the Muslims during the ‘reconquest’ of 1492. After that, the situation of Jews would be much better to the south of the Mediterranean than in the Christian countries, whether Catholic or Orthodox. The word ‘ghetto’ originally referred to a small island in Venice where Jews were compelled to live from the early sixteenth century. The word ‘pogrom’ (literally ‘destruction’) comes from nineteenth century Russia. It was in Europe, in response to the pogroms in the east and the wave of anti-Semitism linked to the Dreyfus affair in France, and not in North Africa or the Middle East, that we saw the development of Zionism, the nationalist ideology born at the end of the nineteenth century and advocating the return of the Jews to Palestine and the creation of a state based on Jewish identity in a land mainly inhabited by Muslims.

After the First World War a ‘Jewish national homeland’ was created in Palestine under a British mandate that came into force in 1923. During the 1930s many victims of Nazi persecution emigrated to Palestine and this marked the real beginning of antagonism between Jews and Muslims. But it was above all the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, whose objective was to provide a home for hundreds of thousands of survivors of the Shoah, people who had lost everything, which was to feed and aggravate the hostility of many Muslims towards the Jews, especially after 750,000 Arabs fled to refugee camps. The various wars between Israel and the Arab countries, as well as the creation of Jewish settlements in the territories occupied by Israel, further inflamed the situation and provided more oil to the propaganda machine of the governments of the region, who have found that Israel’s colonial policies serve as an excellent way of channelling the anger of populations which these governments have kept in poverty and oppression. The same goes for the rhetorical or armed ‘Crusades’ by the American leaders and their western and Israeli allies in or against Muslim countries such as Iran, Iraq or Afghanistan in the name of the struggle against ‘Islamic terrorism’.

Born out of the barbaric history of the twentieth century, right at the centre of a crucially important region from the economic or strategic point of view, the state of Israel and its policies can only feed tensions in the Middle East and hatred of Jews among Muslims.

What is the perspective?

Mohamed Merah is dead, his body riddled with bullets, but the causes behind his tragic itinerary are not about to go away. With the deepening crisis of a capitalist system in its death throes, with the ineluctable growth of unemployment, of precariousness and exclusion, especially among the young, despair and hatred as well as religious fanaticism have a bright future ahead of them, offering the little chiefs of the drugs game or ‘jihad’ plenty of opportunities for recruitment. The only antidote to this slide into barbarism is the massive, conscious development of proletarian struggles, which can offer young people a real identity, a class identity; a real community, that of the exploited and not of the ‘believers’; a real solidarity, the solidarity that emerges in the struggle against exploitation, uniting workers and unemployed of all races, nationalities and religions; a real enemy to fight and overcome –not the Jews, but capitalism. And by the same token it is the same workers’ struggles which alone will allow the Middle East to come out of its current state of permanent warfare, whether open or hidden, when Jewish and Muslim proletarians, those on both sides of the ‘Wall of Shame’, understand that they have the same interests and have to be in solidarity with each other against exploitation. By developing in all countries, the workers’ struggle will have to take up the only perspective that can save humanity from barbarism: the overthrow of capitalism and the creation of a communist society.  

Fabienne 29/3/12        

The question of ‘the economy’ – that is, rising unemployment, debt and inflation, diminishing pensions and wages and so on, ad nauseam – was at the centre of the recent local government election campaigns in Britain, just it was in the French presidential elections and Greek parliamentary elections. All the parties who take part in these, and all other bourgeois elections, tell us to vote for them because they can deal with the economic crisis, while blaming the other parties for getting us into the crisis in the first place. They are all lying. Whatever policies they follow, this crisis can only get worse.

Britain is officially back in recession, although growth has been so sluggish in the last year most people probably won’t notice much difference. David Cameron blamed the ongoing Euro-crisis; Ed Miliband blamed David Cameron; Mervyn King wasn’t sure if the figures were right but decided to blame over-borrowed consumers for getting us into the mess in the first place. Naturally, no-one blamed capitalism.

Despite the unprecedented austerity programme to bring down government debt, the weak growth may actually see borrowing rise: “Unveiling its new economic outlook, the CBI said net borrowing ... would rise from £126bn to £128.2bn this year, compared with the official forecast of a fall to £120bn. The extra borrowing would more than offset the £18bn of fiscal consolidation planned in 2012.” (Daily Telegraph 3/5/12)

Britain is not alone in its economic difficulties: “Traders were rattled when the US Labor Department said fewer jobs have been created than analysts expected and the labour market as a whole had shrunk. The figures combined with alarming economic data showing that the services sector in France, Italy and Spain contracted last month.” (Telegraph 4/5/12)

Unemployment across the Eurozone is now 10.9%. In Spain, unemployment has now hit 24.4%, with over half (51.1%) of under 25s out of work.

At the global level, the latest report from the International Labour Organisation, stated that “one in three workers worldwide – or an estimated 1.1 billion people – [are] either unemployed or living in poverty”[1]. It estimates that, globally, 50 million jobs are needed just to return the world to pre-2008 levels.

While the ruling class attempts to present the crisis as a local problem, solvable if only we could get the right government in, the widespread nature of these problems shows they are the product of a global system in its deepest ever economic crisis – deeper than the Depression of the 1930s, and even more impervious to any solution, since the economic storms we have been through since 2008 are only the culmination of difficulties which have been mounting up since the end of the 1960s.

In spite of the trillions spent on rescue packages and the vast quantities of money pumped into the economy, the alleged ‘recovery’ is still standing on the edge of an abyss. The austerity programmes that were meant to rebalance the economy and pay off the debt are making the debt problem even worse. Yet more spending is unsustainable but the austerity programmes simply phase in the crisis.

In the end, it is the working class that pays the price for the crisis in the form of unemployment, wage cuts, increasing workloads and declining social services. As the economy continues its slow disintegration workers will be faced with a choice: remain passive and make ever more extreme sacrifices to keep a hopeless system going; or begin to defend their collective interests, resist capitalism’s demands and open the gates to a real solution to the economic dead-end: the revolutionary transformation of society.  

Ishamael 5/5/12

After months of suspense, the verdict is in: Britain has suffered a double dip recession, after experiencing two consecutive quarters of economic contraction (0.2 per cent down in the first quarter of 2012, following a fall of 0.3 per cent in the last quarter of 2011).

Or, at least, the verdict may be in, depending on who is writing the commentary. The differences of opinion on the interpretation of the figures are considerable. The Financial Times (25/4/12) has helpfully put together a compendium of the views being expressed:

“A second consecutive drop in [gross domestic product] in the first quarter leaves the UK meeting the technical definition of recession….But we believe it is fairer to characterise the UK under-delivering on growth, rather than experiencing a double-dip recession.” (Allan Monks, an economist at JP Morgan).

On the other hand:

“Michael Saunders, an economist at Citigroup, said Britain was experiencing ‘the deepest recession and weakest recovery for 100 years…. It is now four years since real GDP peaked in the first quarter of 2008,’ he said, noting that the level of GDP at the end of the first quarter of 2012 stood 4.3 per cent below its pre-recession peak”.

The second of these interpretations is the more direct and simple interpretation of the figures and, indeed, it is not obvious what the difference is between under-delivering on growth and retardation in the rate of growth, which includes the possibility of negative growth. However, there are plenty of commentators who explicitly repudiate the figures, and refuse to take them as a basis of discussion at all. The most common argument is that GDP figures are susceptible to revision (which may not be complete for several years). Therefore, so the argument goes, worrying about a double dip recession, which may turn out not to have happened, distorts the discussion on where the economy is going. Even the Bank of England shares a degree of doubt about the picture painted by the ONS (Office of National Statistics – the body that produces figures on GDP). Since the MPC (the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England) is the body that sets interest rates and determines the level of quantitative easing this is not a minor point.

Like many of the economic commentators, the MPC uses a range of indicators as well as historical information to guide its judgement on these questions; so, if it is not convinced by the ONS figures, then it seems that the British bourgeoisie is simply not sure of the dynamic of its economy at this stage. This, in itself stands in sharp contrast to the way that the economic situation was presented two years ago. It is instructive to compare the bourgeoisie’s discussion then with now.

The bourgeoisie’s expectations of recovery change downwards

At the end of 2010 the bourgeoisie was able to present the following figures for the recovery in the G8 countries (on an annualised basis): US: 3.0% growth in GDP; Germany: 4.1%; Russia: 4.5%; Japan: 2.4%; Canada: 3.0%; France: 1.6%; Italy: 1.3%; UK: 1.7%.

In addition China and India had not suffered a recession and had growth rates of 9.6% and 8.8% respectively.

This provided the context for the discussion of the recovery at that time – the word ‘Recovery’ was then always used with a definite article, to leave no one in doubt about the overall trajectory. Any glitch in the upward curve or any factor that looked unfavourable was treated as a difficulty with the recovery, rather than putting it in question.

And the figures from that period do look quite convincing, taken in themselves. Bourgeois commentators who suggested that there might be a second downturn were regarded as undermining confidence and therefore making a negative outcome a self-fulfilling prophecy (this argument is still deployed, even now).

According to the Financial Times, if the official figures from the ONS are accepted, Britain has just joined the list of countries that have experienced a double dip recession which includes Italy, Ireland, Spain and Portugal. The growth figures for France, Italy and Britain in the ‘good year’ of 2010 were by far the lowest: 1.6%, 1.3% and 1.7% respectively. So, it is not exactly surprising that Britain and Italy have already fallen into recession again (or else into a perspective of very low growth, as some commentators would prefer to put it). It is perhaps more surprising that France has not joined this company. As for Ireland, it was only a few weeks ago that the Financial Times leader referred to Ireland as the ‘poster boy’ for the policy of austerity, since it seemed to be succeeding in developing its export sector strongly as a basis for its eventual recovery.

But politicians are not interested in analysis or explanations, just someone else to blame. Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls has thrown off accusations that the Labour government might have played a role in the development of the economic crisis, but also accuses Cameron of making a “desperate attempt to blame the Eurozone for pushing Britain back into recession”.

While bourgeois politicians are no doubt disposed to blame foreigners for the economic crisis, as a useful get out clause, the reality is that Britain’s economic trajectory is interwoven with that of the Eurozone, and that the Eurozone looks more fragile as time passes. For example, the FT (24/4/12) reported a key development: “The (Dutch) government’s collapse after far-right politician Geert Wilders pulled out of budget talks threatens to move the political battle over austerity from Europe’s peripheral south to the heart of the Eurozone.”

The figures recently released for the Spanish economy, showing one in five people out of work and one in every two between the age of 18 and 25, were widely acknowledged to be as alarming as anything to come out of Greece.

Meanwhile, “In Ireland, the PMI [purchasing managers index] showed very slow growth, falling to 50.1 from 51.5 in March. In the Netherlands the index fell to 49 from 49.6 the previous month as new order declined. A ‘flash’ PMI for the Eurozone, released late last week, showed manufacturing activity in the troubled currency union falling to a 34-month low.” (Any number above 50 indicates growth in this context.)

Europe is screwed but aren’t the US and China doing OK?

On the other hand: “The US purchasing managers’ index recorded a surprise increase from 53.4 in March to 54.8 in April, the strongest since June 2011, assuaging fears of a ‘spring slowdown’ in the world’s largest economy….Meanwhile, the official Chinese manufacturing PMI rose to its highest in more than a year, from 53.1 in March. It was also China’s fifth consecutive month above the 50 level.”

The article in which this information is encapsulated is titled: ‘US and China data eases concerns’. Presumably it will not very effectively ease the concerns of anyone who happens to live in Europe, or indeed anywhere other than the US or China. However, the bourgeoisie do seem now to be contemplating a move towards ‘recovery’ confined essentially to these two countries, with Europe’s fate considered essentially peripheral to the issue:

“The robust numbers from the two world’s two largest economies will raise hopes that the global economy can shrug off the effects of a deepening downturn in Europe.” (from the same article about ‘easing concerns’)

If the alleged global trend towards economic ‘recovery’ has to be accomplished without reference to Europe, then we can see how restricted the bourgeoisie’s concept of economic recovery has become in two short years. In reality, their talk of recovery is no more than self-deception. Capitalism is a global system and it cannot ‘work’ in one or two areas of the globe while other of its vital organs cease to function.  

Hardin 3/5/12

“The public seem to be disgruntled, disillusioned and disengaged” with politics concludes a Hansard Society survey (BBC online news, 25 April). Neither the further revelations at the Leveson enquiry, nor a series of scandals that dominated the news for a short while, and least of all the local elections, have stimulated much interest in the sordid politics of our ruling class.

“…the economic crisis, the summer riots and phone hacking did not lead to any greater interest in or knowledge of politics…” Often the ruling class and their media make a great play of condemning and cleaning up some great scandal to make it appear that they are really to be trusted to govern us and root out the self-serving. These campaigns may also reflect a real conflict being played out in the bourgeoisie, as with the attack on News International and phone hacking at the News of the World, which very effectively scuppered their bid for BskyB (see https://en.internationalism.org/wr/347 [72]).

This is not without risk, and in this case the Leveson enquiry is ‘revealing’ disgusting behaviour that the whole media has been engaged in for many years as well as the very close relationship between all the main parties and the Murdoch empire – such as Cameron hiring Coolson, the former editor of the News of the World, or Blair jetting off to the other side of the world to meet Murdoch, which was a key part of his effort to get elected. The public can become disgusted with the whole sleazy lot of them. And now Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, is being caught up in this scandal. His error was not so much that he maintained the usual close relationship with News International when he should have kept a quasi-judicial independence, but that he did so when it was no longer in the interests of the British state, which feared the Murdochs were getting too powerful and using that power to promote a pro-US and Eurosceptic line that undermined Britain’s efforts to steer a more independent line between the US and Europe.

Other campaigns and scandals have had an ideological aim in mind without representing a real division in the state. On Abu Qatada and the failure to deport him we see a further effort to whip up fear of foreign Islamic terrorists. The scandal of the disputed 3 hour wait to get through immigration goes in the same direction. ‘Jerry can-gate’ on the other hand was a good way of causing panic buying at petrol stations, and trying to create a link in the public mind  between the threat of a tanker drivers’ strike with alarming shortages, thus making any strike action as unpopular as possible. The long running bankers’ bonuses scandal, on the other hand, supported the lie that the crisis was all down to greedy bankers. They are indeed disgustingly greedy, but that is not what caused the crisis.

“Disgruntled, disillusioned and disengaged” is not such a daft response to all this, even if it is not enough. Tedious as it is we also need to understand what the ruling class is up to.

Disillusion with politics

“Worryingly, only a quarter of the population are satisfied with our system of governing, which must raise questions about the long-term capacity of that system to command public support and confidence in the future.” Only 32% voted in the local elections, the lowest for 12 years, and those who did turn out typically voted against the governing parties rather than for any of the local candidates. Hence the Labour Party gained many of the councils they lost when in government. The only exception was the ‘Ken and Boris show’ in which two media personalities, Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson, contested the London mayoral election and the Tory won. But did it really create much interest? Ten cities held referendums for directly elected mayor, with arguments for and against both recognising the general anti-politics mood: for, because the electorate are generally disgusted with local councillors; or against, because we do not need an expensive new layer of self-serving politicians. Only Bristol was in favour with a very low turnout of 24%, 9 against, with Doncaster voting to keep its mayor.

We simply must not fall for the Socialist Worker notion that “Big losses for the Tories” in local elections, which is nothing but the norm for a governing party, means that “voters reject austerity”. Voting means engaging with the electoral system, the state, when the whole ruling class is most concerned that we vote at all, rather than who gets in to run local government. The Hansard Society is right to be concerned about the capacity of the system to command public support. They found that the number of people who do not intend to vote at all has risen to 30%. The number voting in general elections has been falling since the 1950s and is significantly lower than in France of Germany, although higher than Switzerland. “Elections where there is a real choice, and the result matters, attract high turnouts” says Andrew Ellis of the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, based in Stockholm (BBC news online 24.4.12). So when is there a ‘real choice’ in elections? We have only to look at the austerity announced in the last months of the last Labour government and that instituted by the coalition government to see that there never was any real choice at the last general election.

Parliament has classically been the best way for the capitalist ruling class to run its state, with elections allowing its competing interests to jockey for position. This remained true even when universal suffrage was introduced in the late 19th century, since their monopoly of communication and propaganda kept them firmly in control. Then there could be a real choice, albeit a choice of capitalists, some more progressive than others from the standpoint of the working class.

Throughout the 20th century, particularly since the outbreak of the First World War, there has not been such a real choice. During two world wars, the Depression, and the post war boom and since, the state has been required to take measures to direct or intervene in the economy either for the war effort or to defend the economy, and there has been a diminishing margin for manoeuvre for competing capitalist interests to influence policy. And absolutely nothing for the working class to gain from participating in any election, because whoever wins will be equally reactionary.

Disillusion is not enough

Disgust with sordid and often corrupt politics is a natural reaction. But the importance of workers’ disillusion with bourgeois democracy is not so that we can fatalistically put up with whatever the state intends to impose on us – which in the present economic crisis means austerity, cuts in the availability and quality of services, and increased surveillance which will be used to police any response. Disillusion becomes a positive force only when it helps us avoid falling into the trap of relying on democracy in our struggles, for instance the electricians who refused to follow Unite to lobby their MPs and instead tried to join the student demonstration last November; or when it leads to the effort to understand the nature of this society and how to overthrow it. Our ultimate aim is to be rid of capitalism altogether, and with it all professional politicians. 

Alex  4/5/12

The attacks on workers’ pensions - the increase in contributions toward pensions, and the increases in the age for getting pensions - have been met with anger wherever they’ve been proposed or introduced. Unions have been loud in their criticisms of the attacks. In many countries there have been demonstrations and strikes over the issue, for example in Greece where there’s been a 25% cut in basic pension rates.

However, the example of Britain shows that these union-led mobilisations have tended to divide rather than unite different sectors of the working class.

On 28 March for example (see WR 343 “Why are we not united? [75]”) teaching unions such as the NUT and UCU retreated from the prospects of a national strike, and the public sector PCS union actually called off a national strike. What was left was a London strike involving just some from the education sector.

For the strike and demonstrations planned for 10 May there has been a similar carve up by the unions. The PCS and UCU are participating (but not the NUT), and Unite is also mobilising health workers in Unite (but not other sectors it represents). There will also be some transport workers and some workers from other parts of the civil service. Already anticipating that this action will not have much impact, activists in unions such as Unison are calling for a really big demonstration in the autumn, along the lines of the demonstrations of 30 June and 30 November last year (which were bigger, but still not very effective…).

Even the limited actions proposed for this month have been condemned by parts of the bourgeoisie. Because some immigration border staff will be taking part, they have been denounced in some of the press. This is rather ironic because the queues and current disruption at airports such as Heathrow have not been caused by workers’ action but by the government cutting 10% of border staff. Already anticipating the imminent London Olympics, staff who have been made redundant or forced to take early retirement are going to be brought back to try and cope with the arrival of thousands of athletes and officials and hundreds of thousands of tourists. When the state doesn’t feel able to properly fund the security of its frontiers it reveals a lot about the state of the economy.

Tanker drivers and tube workers cut off from public sector workers

Away from the campaign over public sector pensions other UK workers have come up against the manoeuvres of the unions. In the tanker drivers’ dispute shop stewards from the Unite union have recommended that workers reject the ‘final offer’ from fuel distributors. While this raises the possibility of future strike action it is very much framed by the unions as action within one small sector. One of the sticking points for the union is on pensions. At the same time as others are protesting over pensions this is a very clear example of the common interests of workers, and the divisive action of unions.

In April a 72-hour strike by maintenance workers on the London underground also involved the question of pensions. There’s a two-tier system with some workers facing inferior conditions. Again, it’s interesting to note that, during the strike, on the Bakerloo Line, where maintenance workers were actually not on strike, there was still disruption. Rush hour trains were badly disrupted because of a bulging tunnel wall. On the oldest underground system in the world the planned engineering work is inconvenient enough for travellers, but much worse could happen because of the lack of funds made available by the state.

False leftist alternatives

When the PCS leadership called off a 28 March national strike leftists denounced the action. But what they proposed instead was not an effective alternative. Socialist Worker (24/3/12) gave the example of the electricians’ strike saying that “The electricians had the confidence to strike independently of their union leaders—and thus force the unions into action.” While the struggle of the electricians took many ‘unofficial’ forms and expressed a great deal of militancy from the workers involved, it was still ultimately in the hands of the shop stewards. When the SWP says of the struggle against the attacks on pensions that “We have to continue that fight in every union” it’s trying to conceal one of the most important acquisitions of the workers’ movement of the last hundred years. It’s not a matter of being independent of union leaders, but fighting independently of the whole union apparatus and ideology. For workers’ struggles to be effective they need to involve the fighting capacity of all workers, holding assemblies to elect and control strike committees and any other delegations.  

Car 5/5/12

On 19th April 2012, the Indian bourgeoisie launched Agni-V, its version of an intercontinental ballistic missile, and gave another boost to the already raging arms race in Asia.  With this test India joined the select club of global imperialist gangsters who possess intercontinental ballistic missiles. Agni-V is supposed to have a range of 5000KM and is supposed to be capable of hitting Shanghai and Beijing.

The launch of Agni-V provoked a drum beat of rejoicing within all sections of the Indian bourgeoisie. For days on end, the entire print and electronic media was full of boastful propaganda about technical and military achievements signified by this launch. There was reckless talk of the new capability to hit all parts of China and other hostile countries. Factions of the Indian bourgeoisie were busy assuring themselves that with the launch of Agni-V they are now better equipped to confront its enemies and to fulfill its global imperialist dreams. The media also tried to use all these drum beats and propaganda to instigate intense patriotic fever.

Intensifying arms race in Asia

The launch of ICBM Agni-V by India is just one expression of the frenzied arms race developing in Asia today. There are numerous players engaged in this game and India is one of the major players in it.

In the middle of March 2012, Indian and world media were full of stories that over the last three years India has been the biggest arms buyer in the world. According to a report in NDTV on 21 March 2012, India has replaced China as the world’s largest arms buyer, accounting for 10 per cent of all arms purchases during the past five years. In Feb 2012, India placed an order for 126 Rafale MMRCA (medium multi-role combat aircraft) fighter jets from Dassault of France. To cost 20 billion USD (TOI, 1 Feb 2012), it is considered the largest single order for military equipment in the history of capitalism. This order is in addition to another order for 272 Sukhoi-30MKI fighter planes worth $12billion under execution from Russia.

According to the Statesman of 17 March 2012, India has increased its defense spending by 17.6 percent to $47 billion.

But even this frenzied militarisation is not enough for the Indian bourgeoisie.  We can see this in another campaign waged in the Indian media in April 2012, just a few days before the launch of Agni-V. In the beginning of April, the head of the Indian Army wrote a long letter to the Prime Minister. This letter told the PM that the Indian army is not equipped for war as it does not have sufficient arms and ammunitions. The letter was leaked to the press and was taken up by the parliament. After discussions with the heads of Army, Air Force and Navy, the parliament has now declared that Indian forces do not have sufficient arms and ammunition to wage a war. Although having an element of faction fights, this campaign primarily served two functions for the bourgeoisie. One is to swamp and hide the fact from its own people that India is already a huge spender on armaments – the biggest buyer in the global arms bazaar. The second is to convince the exploited population that even more needs to be spent on militarisation.

We should be clear on one thing – the Indian bourgeoisie is not the only one engaged in frantic militarisation. All countries in Asia – Japan, South and North Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia etc are engaged in the same race. Saudi Arabia and its sister Emirates are spending nearly 100 billion USD on militarisation. China is leading the arms race in Asia today and has doubled its military spending to nearly 150 billion USD this year. Even the global cop, the USA, has accelerated its military spending focused on Asia in general and China in particular.

Why this arms race in Asia?

In the beginning of last century capitalism entered its phase of decadence. What this meant was that existing world markets got divided among the main capitalist powers and these markets were no longer sufficient to absorb the products of all the capitalist nations. To expand or even to exist, each capitalist country was compelled to snatch necessary markets from its rivals. The only alternative available to every capitalist country was to confront its rivals in massive global military confrontations and to defeat them or to accept defeat and subordination to its enemies. This was the stark alternative that led to gigantic militarisation throughout Europe and America from the beginning of the 20th century. It was the stark alternative which was monstrously played out in World Wars One and Two, each of which led to the slaughter of millions of people and the destruction of whole nations and continents.

Since the end of the second war, this process of military confrontation and preparation for them has gone on unabated among the old imperialist powers till today. In the period of decadence capitalism can survive only by war. As a result all countries are permanently engaged in furious preparations for war.

In the last few decades the economic power of China, India and many other countries in Asia has multiplied. Now capitalism in these countries is faced with same alternative, the same choices as the advanced capitalist countries started facing last century. And these newly ‘emerging powers’ have been responding to the situation like old imperialist powers, which is to undertake a massive process of militarisation and preparations for war. We can see this underway throughout Asia.

This despite the fact that the working class in these countries, above all in India and China, lives in abject poverty, misery and in a condition of mass unemployment.

As we have seen, the Indian bourgeoisie like its counterparts in other countries is also engaged in an accelerating process of militarisation. The recent launch of the ICBM is situated in this sinister continuity. It is an effort by the Indian bourgeoisie to gain parity in destructive power with its immediate imperialist competitor, the Chinese bourgeoisie.

Bourgeoisie and working class have nothing in common

The arms race is inevitable for a decadent capitalist system. It results from material conditions of advanced phase of decadent capitalism. Today, capitalism lives and can only live by war. The bourgeoisie cannot get rid of this.

On the other hand the working class is the main victim of all the competition between capitalist nations. Wars and war-mongering tends to destroy its unity and weaken it in front of its class enemy, the bourgeoisie. Preparations for war intensify its exploitation and worsen its living conditions. And the wars by which bourgeoisie of different nations try to settle their scores come as the greatest attack on the working class. It is the working class which pays the price of wars of the bourgeoisie by its lives. Due to its position within capitalism, only the working class can put an end to wars of the bourgeoisie by destroying capitalism.

What should the working class do?

The bourgeoisie is never tired of using every means to deepen the impact of nationalistic fervor in the working class and toiling masses. In past, nationalism has been very effectively used by the bourgeoisie to crush revolutionary upsurges of the working class. It is enemy number one of the world working class. The working class should develop strong indignation against the poison of nationalism and firmly defend the principle of internationalism.

The working class cannot and should not take sides in imperialist war and war preparation. It must condemn all war-mongering. Response of the working class in India to the launch of ICBM by ‘its’ bourgeoisie cannot be anything but condemnation and denunciation.

The working class has to intensify its class struggle everywhere in the world against intensifying attacks on its living and working conditions. Self-organisation, extension, politicisation, territorial and international unification of these struggles are indispensable for marching forward toward the goal of putting an end to the global capitalist system, the root cause of all social and economic problems, of the arms race, war-mongering and war. This alone can save humanity. There is no other way.  

S 25/04/12  

We recently cast an eye over the development of class struggle in China[1] and here we want to look at some of the problems that will affect the bourgeoisie of the People’s Republic in the run-up to the  eighteenth Communist Party Conference in autumn this year when the new leadership will be anointed. But first, a murder mystery – or a suspected murder mystery:

A British national called Neil Heywood, living in China with his Chinese wife died in a hotel room in suspicious circumstances in the middle of last November. Bo Xilai, the party boss of Chongqing and son of a veteran of Mao’s “Long March” and of the Cultural Revolution, has been removed from his post and his wife, Gu Kailai, is in jail charged with murder. More intrigue was involved when Bo’s ex-police chief and previous ally, Wang Lijun, defected to the US through its consulate in Chengdu. Reports ascribed Heywood’s death to a coronary and to excessive alcohol. At any rate, there was no post-mortem and the body was quickly cremated. Heywood was a friend and apparently some sort of financial advisor to the family of Bo before a reported falling out. Heywood, one of several ‘class of 84’ Old-Harrovians resident in and around Beijing, with links to the higher echelons of the Chinese state, also worked for the corporate intelligence unit, Hakluyt, set up by ex-MI6 elements. The British security services have said that he wasn’t working for them, which is exactly what they would say. Despite being pressed by Heywood’s British family and the British embassy being very aware of his death and the strange circumstances around it, the Foreign Office only asked the Chinese authorities to open an enquiry into his death in February/March this year – nearly four months after the event. Whatever the murky goings on here, these events have become part of the manoeuvring that, despite its constant references to “unity”, is going on in this Stalinist state. Party unity, or a facade of unity, is important to present both to the population at large and the outside world; and even if Bo has been set up here, events point to some faction fighting within the regime as Bo was likely to be appointed to the standing committee of the Politburo on the basis of his wider support within the ranks of the bourgeoisie. Another factor it points to is the endemic corruption throughout the regime, and the party has long warned that this corruption is a great threat to its grip on power. In contrast to the old party cadres and factions, the current individuals in the elite have made enormous monetary gains which have been spread about through families and cliques. These people generally live above the law and can make a lot of money. They would need advice though on how to get it out of China. This is possibly where the Old-Harrovian connections come in. China World (18/4/12), quotes Bloomberg on the leadership’s wealth. The politically well-connected have thrived in China and the country’s leaders, President Jintao and Premier Jiabao, have amassed staggering amounts of wealth:  “... the families of the various members of the Politburo have very large assets”. Bloomberg went on to say, in a special report on China: “The National People’s Congress 70 richest members added more to their wealth last year than the combined net worth of the US Congress, the president and his cabinet and the US Supreme Court judges”. It estimates their average worth at $1.28 billion, making Mitt Romney look skint.

Even with a projected lower growth rate of around 7.5%, something other capitals would kill for, the Chinese state is facing growing problems. The era of cheap labour has finished and, along with mounting and poisonous corruption, there has been an enormous growth in social inequality. This latter alone will make the so-called “necessity for reforms” all the more problematic. One of the striking aspects of the tens of thousands of reported “incidents” is how many were undertaken by the peasants and the older generation against arrogant and corrupt land seizures and pollution. The whole “democratic” campaign, mostly engendered outside China, extends beyond Free Trade Unions and towards moves to local democracy. This is partly a response to these extremely militant protests against the Party structures and the official unions. For example, the protests against land seizures took on the proportions of an uprising in Wukan last year; this is far from the Chinese leadership’s preaching about the “harmonious society” and is indicative that growth in China has benefited capital and the elite and not the workers and peasants of this country. Further problems will come as the benefit to capital of the “demographic dividend” ie, the excess of young workers which has fuelled the “economic miracle”, fades as a result of the falling birthrate: “In 2000, there were six workers for every over-60. By 2030, there will be barely two” (Tania Branigan, Guardian, March 20). People in rural areas rely on their own work and that of their children but the culture of looking after the parents has been smashed by the needs of the capitalist economy. Children may work far from their parents now and many won’t have the time, money or energy to look after them. And the situation with pensions and care for the old is even worse than in the west, with the World Bank stating that China has only enough care home places for 1.6% of its over-60s.

Another endemic problem for China (and the world) is pollution. In early March Vice Minister of the Environment, Wu Xiaoqing, admitted that three-quarters of Chinese cities do not meet the wildly lenient standards on air quality. US embassy readings in the capital over one 24-hour period showed air quality micrograms-per-metre readings five-and-a-half times greater than upper US limits, and this is by no means the worst affected city. This pollution has an immediate impact on cardiovascular and respiratory diseases as well as lung cancer over the longer term. The World Health Organisation estimated deaths in China from respiratory diseases alone to be 750,000 a year. Decidedly dangerous, heavy metal pollution has increased, with the Chinese Environment Minister admitting to 30 serious incidents since 2009. Carbon dioxide emissions have more than doubled in the last ten years and Environment Ministry studies suggest that 40% of river water will make you sick. Water shortages are becoming critical with extensive droughts forecast and the great leap forward into hydro power has faltered because of the lack of water, while, according to Yang Fuqang of the World Resources Institute, coal increased its share of national energy supply to above 72%. And here, the democratic dreamers appeal to investors to move to cleaner energy – as if they are going to listen. According to Yang, if environmental damage was included, China’s growth rate would be halved.

On the level of imperialism, tensions have increased with India over Tibet (and Nepal) and China has taken political umbrage over India’s position vis-a-vis the Dalai Lama. With the self-immolation of a number of Buddhist monks these last weeks, protests in Tibet against the rigours of Chinese occupation have grown enormously in both size and strength to such an extent that the “People’s Army” have had to withdraw in places or risk a massacre of protesters of Syrian proportions. There have also been demonstrations and protest inside China in Chinqui and Szechuan, home to millions of Tibetans. Unrest is also continuing in the Uighur region. On a wider level, there’s a new generation of Chinese diplomats coming through well versed in the imperatives of China’s national interests world-wide.

A big negative at the moment for China concerns developments in Myanmar (Burma) where Chinese imperialism very much had the upper hand. It began about a year ago when a major hydroelectric dam construction was halted after protests against China’s land purchase and pollution of the environment. There is a battle taking place here for influence, with the USA, as part of the latter’s Asia/Pacific push, coming directly against China’s interests. As the New York Times, 8/4/12 put it: “As Myanmar loosens the grip of decades of military dictatorship and improves links with the United States, China fears a threat to a strategic partnership that offers access to the Indian Ocean and a long-sought short cut for oil deliveries from the Middle East”. Prime Minister Cameron’s break from his arms sales trip last week to visit Aung San Suu Kyi, the democratic pin-up politician, shows Britain backing the US push as well as defending its own imperialist interests in the region. The British intelligence services have a long standing involvement and interest in her “National League for Democracy” – a likely force in the forthcoming elections. Since he got back to the UK, Cameron has lobbied hard in Europe for the lifting of sanctions against the regime – again showing how sanctions are just another weapon of imperialism. Further assertiveness against China by the US is demonstrated in the plans to base American long-range B52 bombers in northern Australia along with the deployment of 2,500 US marines to be based in Darwin (Times, 11.4.12). Both moves show the closer cooperation between the Pentagon and the Australian military which is clearly aimed towards China.

At the end of her recent trip to China Hilary Clinton said relations between the US and China “will determine the course of history in the 21st century” (New York Times online). The real point of the visit, for the US, was to get China to allow the renminbi to appreciate in value against the dollar, and for diplomacy on various conflicts where the two powers have different interests. So the US wanted to neutralise Chinese opposition to sanctions against Syria and support for North Korea. In the media this has been overshadowed by the affair of the blind dissident, Chen Guangcheng, who escaped house arrest and sought refuge in the US embassy, agreed to leave it and then demanded to leave China. This has allowed the US to exert pressure on the issue of human rights and embarrassed China. It is difficult to believe it was a coincidence.

The new leadership, the next generation of gangsters, will come out of the smoke and mirrors of the autumn Party Congress. There will probably be no surprises and the layer of what they call the “princelings” (of which the disgraced Bo was one) are already being prepared or eliminated. There are profound political, economic and social challenges facing the regime, not least a growing property bubble, inflation and bankrupt regions with huge local debts; as well as the deepening crisis of the whole capitalist system and the undefeated and combative working class – a very important battalion of the world proletariat - that we looked at in the first (online) article. 

Baboon  4/5/12

Anders Breivik’s minute by minute account of how he slaughtered dozens of teenagers at last year’s Norwegian Labour Party summer camp makes sickening reading. Breivik’s trial has given rise to much debate about whether he is sane or not, whether he acted alone or is part of an organised fascist network, or whether he should be allowed to use the Oslo court as a platform for his political philosophy[1].

The murders committed by Mohamed Merah in Toulouse were on a smaller scale but they were no less chilling: in the playground of a Jewish school a heavily armed man picks out a teacher and three small children and guns them down at point blank range. Merah, of course, was not given a platform to expound his philosophy: he was killed by police marksmen after a short siege. There has been considerable speculation about this also, with some arguing forcefully that he was a double agent working for French security (www.ilfoglio.it/soloqui/12779 [83]).

There are obvious differences in the way the two cases have been handled. In The Guardian of 21 April, Jonathan Freedland[2] points out that as a general rule Islamic terrorists, even when they are kept alive, are not usually given the chance to explain their motives as Breivik has been. And on the face of it, ideologically, far rightists like Breivik and jihadis like Merah are polar opposites; Breivik’s obsession is with the threatened ‘Islamification’ of Europe, while the jihadis claim not only to be acting in revenge for attacks on Muslims in Iraq, Palestine or Afghanistan, but for the creation of a global Caliphate ruled by Sharia law.   

But what is most striking about the Islamophobics and the jihadis is the similarity of their ideology and their practices. 

For a start, in court Breivik expressed his admiration for al-Qaida’s method of organisation through small decentralised cells. It has been suggested that this is a model which groups of the far right are increasingly turning to. Breivik also praised al-Qaida’s ruthlessness and spirit of self-sacrifice in the service of a higher ideal.

And when you look at their respective ideologies, they also have a great deal in common.

A shared racism

Both are deeply racist: the rightist hysteria about the Islamification of Europe is just the latest version of the ideology of White Christian Civilisation threatened by hordes of dark-skinned foreign invaders. At the turn of the 20th century the main threat was presented as the Jews fleeing the pogroms of Russia; a few decades ago it was the black and Asian immigrants brought in to do jobs at lower rates than ‘native’ workers; today, racism has had to cloak itself in the colours of anti-Islam because overt anti-semitism and anti-black racism are far harder to sell to a population already accustomed to a much more diverse social environment. The English Defence League even has Jewish and Sikh members, united (for now) with white stormtroopers by their hatred of the ‘evil religion’ of Islam. But behind all this is same morbid ‘Aryan’ world-view born as a justification for the imperialist expansion of European and American capitalism from the late 19th century onwards.  

But the jihadis are no less racist. When it first emerged, Islam, like other monotheistic religions, expressed, in ideological terms, a real tendency towards the unification of humanity beyond tribalism. It was thus open to all ethnic groups and maintained a respectful attitude to the Jewish and Christian religions which it saw as bearers of a previous revelation,  But today’s jihadism expresses another historic reality: religion, in all its forms, has become a force for division and the maintenance of a decaying social system. In the mind of the jihadis or Taliban-type groups, the ‘kaffir’ (unbelievers) are indistinguishable from ‘foreigners’, while the Jews are no longer the People of the Book but the evil conspirators of Nazi paranoia, and Christian churches are legitimate targets for bombs and massacres. This doctrine of division is even extended to the followers of Islam – al Qaida in Iraq and Pakistan has probably killed more Shia Muslims than members of any other group.

Their hatreds may be directed at different groups, but both the extreme right and the jihadis are implacably opposed to any real movement for the unification of mankind. 

A shared morality

Breivik and al-Qaida also share the same conception of morality: the end justifies the means. For Breivik, the teenagers he murdered were not innocent because they support a party that imposes the evil of ‘multiculturalism’. But above all they were killed with the intention of sparking off a race war that would lead to the ethnic cleansing of Europe and a new Christian-Aryan millennium. For Merah, small Jewish children can be shot in the head because Israeli jets have killed many more Palestinian children. For Bin Laden and his ilk, killing thousands of civilians in the Twin Towers is a justified response to what the US has done in Afghanistan or Iraq, and will serve the end of rallying the world’s Muslims to the banner of Holy War and the new Caliphate.     

Of course many liberals will make similar points to ours – it’s part of their argument that ‘all extremes meet at the same point’. But the most visible extremists are the tip of a much bigger iceberg. Underneath Breivik are all the EDL-types and ‘populist’ politicians like Le Pen in France and Wilders in Holland who take the line “I don’t agree with his methods, but he definitely has a point about the threat of Islamification.....”. And underneath them are the mainstream tabloids whose headlines ceaselessly scream about the Muslim terrorists in our midst, the mounting flood of asylum seekers, while the ‘respectable’ politicians compete with each other to show how tough they are on immigration and are, after all, in charge of the state that deports asylum seekers fleeing the worst miseries of the present system, or bangs them up in detention camps.

Likewise jihadi ideology is only the child of the official ideology of the Arab states who have long used anti-Zionism and a perpetual state of war with Israel as a way of diverting the anger of the masses from their own corrupt and dictatorial practices. And ‘radical Islam’ also has its ‘revolutionary’ apologists – Galloway, the SWP and the official left, whose response to the latest jihadi atrocity is also “I don’t agree with their methods but...” because they share the same notion that the USA and Zionism are Imperialist Enemy Number One and see Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iraqi or Afghan jihadis as expressions of ‘anti-imperialism’.

All this is the ideological excretion of the real processes at work in contemporary capitalist society: the never-ending drive towards imperialist war, which has become increasingly chaotic and irrational as the system decomposes. The war of each against all, of race against race, of religion against religion, of state against state, is a process which is the most real and devastating threat facing humanity today – the threat of a slide into barbarism and self-destruction. And the liberals who decry extremism and bleat about their humanitarian values don’t represent an alternative. They justify the terror bombing of Japanese and German cities at the end of the Second World War, and indeed the whole nightmarish catastrophe of that war, because it was a means to establishing democratic post-war capitalism. 

The only worldview that stands in opposition to these ideological divisions is working class internationalism: the simple idea that the exploited of all nations and religions have the same interests in combating their exploitation and their exploiters. This is a combat whose end is the real unification of humanity in a stateless, global community. And it is a combat whose means can only be consistent with its ends. It seeks to win over those caught up in the ideology of the exploiters by demonstrating the need for solidarity, not massacre them as unbelievers. It rejects the practice of indiscriminate revenge and mass murder because it knows that these methods can never result in a establishment of a human society.  Yes, the class struggle is a form of war. But the class struggle is truly the war to end war because its aims and its methods are radically opposed to the aims and methods of capitalism and class society. 

Amos 3/5/12

According to Olivier Blanchard, chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, the Eurozone – and the world economy – are in a very dangerous place. In April Blanchard warned that if Greece pulls out of the euro “it is possible that other Euro area economies would come under severe pressure as well, with a full-blown panic in financial markets. Under these circumstances, a break-up of the euro area could not be ruled out. This could cause major political shock that could aggravate economic stress to levels well above those after the Lehman collapse.” Such a shock, indeed, could “produce a major slump reminiscent of the 1930s”[1].

This is why, as predicted in a number of ‘expert’ circles, the EU has been obliged to approve a new bail out package and to initiate moves towards a greater centralisation of the Union. “EU leaders have agreed to use the eurozone’s planned bailout fund to directly support struggling banks, without adding to government debt.

After 13 hours of talks, they also agreed to set up a joint banking supervisory body for the eurozone.

Spain and Italy put pressure on Germany to allow the bailout fund to buy government debt in the markets - a measure to contain borrowing costs”[2].

Although Germany has had to make policy concessions to struggling countries like Italy and Spain, it is at the forefront of a move towards greater EU centralisation. Thus Merkel told the German parliament that if countries want their debts guaranteed by centrally issued eurobonds, this would have to go with greater central control: “Joint liability can only happen when sufficient controls are in place.” This move towards centralisation was already part of the new deal with the decision to set up a joint banking supervisory body, but more ambitious plans are under review:

“European authorities have also unveiled proposals such as the creation of a European treasury, which would have powers over national budgets. The 10-year plan [91] is designed to strengthen the eurozone and prevent future crises, but critics say it will not address current debt problems”.

Merkel has also proposed that in future the president of the EU council should be centrally elected.

In sum, if Germany is to act as the lender of last resort for the whole eurozone, the countries of the zone would have to accept a growing role for German imperialism.

No way out for the EU or capital

Here we can see the fragility of the whole euro and EU projects. Faced with the economic crisis, there is a growing tendency for each country to try to look after its own interests, hastening the break up of the Union. Germany then steps in to try to control the immediate impact of the crisis, but its demands for greater hegemony sharpen national rivalries, again threatening the stability of the Union. Given the history of Europe over the last hundred years, the other main European powers, notably France and Britain, are not going to accept a German-dominated Europe.

But at the economic level as well, the measures being adopted by the bourgeoisie can do no more than slow down the slide towards disaster. As we argue in the article here[3], the global crisis of overproduction has pushed the ruling class into an irresolvable dilemma: going for growth means piling up more debt, and this in turn only pumps up the pressures towards inflation and bankruptcy. Policies of rigour and austerity (and/or protectionism) aggravate the crisis by restricting purchasing power and thus makes the market contract even further.

The bourgeoisie is beginning to understand the gravity of the situation. It’s no longer worried about a ‘double dip recession’. It’s talking more and more openly about a 1930s-type depression. You can read how “Italy or Spain going bust could plunge Europe into an unprecedented economic catastrophe”, and how they fear intervention is being delayed as “only at one minute to midnight, with Europe staring into a horrific economic abyss, will political leaders be forced to act”[4].

In fact, the depression has already arrived, and the situation is already worse than it was in the 1930s.  In the 30s, there was a way out of the crisis: the adoption of state capitalist measures  - whether in the shape of fascism, Stalinism or the New Deal - which brought some control over the economy. Today the crisis is precisely a crisis of state capitalism: all the attempts of the ruling class to manipulate the system through the state (especially the state policy of resort to debt) are exploding in its face.

Above all, in the 30s, the road to world war was open, because the working class was in a position of defeat following the failure of its revolutionary attempts after 1917. The push to war made it possible to absorb unemployment by creating a war economy; and the war itself made it possible to reorganise the world economy and launch the boom that lasted until the 1970s.

This option isn’t on the table today; following the collapse of the old bloc system, the imperialist world order has become increasingly multipolar. American leadership has become weaker and weaker. Opposition to German control of Europe is evidence that Europe will never be able to unite itself into a military bloc. Other rising or recovering powers like China and Russia also lack the ability to form a stable international alliance around themselves In short the alliances needed to fight a world war are not in place. And if they were, the destruction unleashed by a third world war would make another ‘post war boom’ impossible.

Above all, the working class of the main capitalist countries is not in the same position of defeat as it was in the 1930s. For all its weaknesses and hesitations, it is showing an increasing willingness to reject the arguments of the rich and powerful, telling it to sacrifice its living standards ‘for the good of all’. In the last few years we have seen mass strikes in Bangladesh and Egypt, social revolts across the Middle East, Europe and the USA, protests against proposed cuts in pensions in France and the UK, student rebellions against increased costs of education in Britain, Italy, Canada...

But these struggles are still well below what is required by the objective situation confronting the exploited class. In Greece, we can see how workers’ living standards are being reduced in the most brutal manner: massive job cuts, wages, pensions and other benefits directly slashed, with the result that countless families who once could expect a modest living standard are dependent on food handouts when they are not actually living on the streets. In Greece, the shadows of the bread queue and the dole queue, which sum up the 1930s for many, is a painful reality, and one that is spreading to Spain, Portugal and all the other countries who are the fist to be hit by the collapse of capitalism’s house of cards.

Faced with such attacks, workers can often hesitate, cowed by fear. They also have a whole barrage of ideology thrown at them – maybe we need to vote left and nationalise the banks, maybe we should vote right and blame it all on the immigrants. There are the unions, actively sterilising their response, as we have seen with the succession of one day general strikes in Greece, Spain and Portugal, the endless public sector ‘days of action’ in the UK.

All these ideologies try to keep alive the hope that something can be preserved inside the present system. The crisis of the system, now shaking all the structures set up to manage it, will argue very persuasively that it cannot.   WR 30/6/12

In the last week of June British banks again made headlines for their greed, dishonesty and incompetence. “Royal Bank of Scotland couldn’t serve its customers because its computers failed; Barclays was fined £290m for trying to manipulate the money markets; other banks will soon be confessing to the same sin and paying their own hefty fines. And now RBS, Barclays, Lloyds and HSBC – the UK’s big four – are compensating small businesses who were hoodwinked into buying complex insurance that they did not need.”[1] Politicians talked about the banking culture and how some aspects of it were ‘shocking’. What commentators, academics and other ‘experts’ never mention at such moments (and is the basis of any serious explanation of what is going on in the world) is that we all live in a class society; a society in which the ruling class exploits and controls the working class. The two classes, bourgeoisie and proletariat, stand opposed, each with its own interests and way of struggling.

The fundamental interest that unites the bourgeoisie is maintaining its domination and the capitalist system of exploitation that it is based on. However, there have historically always been divisions within the bourgeoisie, largely based on conflicting economic interests. There have also been differences over relations with other countries, what marxists analyse as imperialist rivalries. The last twenty or so years have seen the bourgeoisie around the world facing a range of increasing pressures. These come from the economic stresses that continue to break out into open crisis, from the proliferation of conflicts that followed the break-up of the Russian and American imperialist blocs, and from the challenge of maintaining social order. In short, the contradictions that have always run through capitalism have become more acute.

The working class cannot take advantage of the divisions in the ranks of ruling class. In part this is because the bourgeoisie maintains its greatest level of unity against the working class – history has shown that it can put aside the most intense rivalry to save its collective skin – and in part because the working class is not yet acting as a united, class-conscious force.

Why is it important to examine the life of the ruling class? The answer is for the same reasons that the bourgeoisie keeps a close eye on the working class: to be able to wage the class struggle as effectively as possible. Analysing how the ruling class acts and the relations and tensions within it can help us to understand the evolution of the economic situation, the conflicts between nations and the strategies used to maintain social order.

The growing difficulty in managing the economy

Underlying all of the difficulties facing the ruling class lies the question of the economy. Today the difficulties are plain to see, but they are only the culmination of structural problems going back decades. Since the end of the Second World War two approaches have succeeded each other. From the end of the war until the late 1970s Keynesianism dominated economic thinking with state intervention used to manage the business cycle by stimulating demand in the troughs through the use of deficit spending. This approach ended in Britain during the 1970s amid economic stagnation, rising inflation and increasing unemployment.

It was replaced by an approach generally referred to now as neo-liberalism, although at the time it was more usually described in Britain as Thatcherism. This approach is popularly associated with the privatisation of state owned industries, sales of council houses, legislation to control the unions and so on. It was supposed to allow the economic laws of capitalism to operate more freely and the short-lived economic ‘booms’ of the late 1980s and 1990s seemed to show it was effective. In reality, these ‘booms’ were based on the increased exploitation of the working class, and an increase in state and private debt.

The failure of neo-liberalism, like Keynesianism before it, was brutally exposed by the economic crisis that exploded in 2008. The initial response of the bourgeoisie was to throw money at the problem to contain the crisis that seemed to be ripping the financial sector apart. It could not stop the crisis from spreading. The bourgeoisie’s response contains elements that can be seen as Keynesian, such as the various ways money has been created and injected into the economy, and others more associated with neo-liberalism, notably in the measures required by the IMF in return for bailouts. In short, the bourgeoisie does not know which way to turn. The only policy that it is agreed on is attacking the working class.

The ruling class in Britain has followed the international trend, with a little bit of Keynes, some neo-liberalism and a lot of attacks on the working class. The LibCon Coalition proclaimed that the economy would be rebalanced away from dependence on the financial sector and that manufacturing would lead the way out of the crisis. This approach failed. Manufacturing went back into recession over a year ago and the balance of Britain’s trade in goods across the world being almost totally negative. What remains are austerity measures to reduce state debt. The only rebalancing of the economy going on is the forcing down of the living standards of the working class in order to protect profits.

Labour has no disagreement with this last point, other than claiming to want to do it more slowly. Milliband and Balls have begun to associate themselves with the call for policies to promote ‘growth’ following the election of Hollande in France, but have no real disagreements. Their ‘opposition’ is principally designed to fool those who distrust the Tories.

However, a significant development over the last few years has been the growth of the view that sees withdrawal from Europe as being in Britain’s interests. A few years back this faction seemed largely restricted to the likes of UKIP, but the attempt to force through a referendum on Europe last year revealed that it exists within part of the Tory party. The assertion of control by Cameron, while effective, seems to have left a legacy of bitterness within parts of the right, which snipe at the concessions made to the LibDems and call for real Tory policies. This could be seen in the alternative Queen’s Speech published on the Conservative Home website, which had the backing of 20 MPs including David Davis and John Redwood. There was also the attack by Nadine Dorries on Cameron and Osbourne as two arrogant posh boys who don’t know the price of milk, and who subsequently said that she is close to UKIP.

While this points to some incoherence within the bourgeoisie, since leaving Europe is likely to weaken Britain’s economy, as well as leaving it more isolated on the imperialist stage, it is unclear how widespread these views are in the Tory party. Following the 2010 election the right became more dominant in the party, and many Tory MPs are openly Eurosceptic, but this does not imply they all want to leave Europe or that they agreed with last year’s call for a referendum. This suggests that those openly attacking the government are currently a small minority: no one associated themselves with Dorries’ attack.

The recent budget showed the level of challenges facing the ruling class in imposing austerity but, as have argued[2] the handling was relatively skilful since the headlines generated by the cut in the 50% top tax rate, the granny tax and pasty tax allowed the more serious attacks, such as the move towards localised pay, to go through without remark.

Divisions over imperialist policy

In previous articles in World Revolution we have shown the significant role that divisions over imperialist strategy have played in the life of the bourgeoisie over the last 20 years.[3] One of the reasons New Labour came to power was that it was more united than the Tories in defending the aim of developing a strategy that was subservient neither to the US nor Germany. That this is a continuing debate within the bourgeoisie is evident from the shift of the Blair government after 9/11 and of the Tories under Cameron. Cameron has seemed contradictory, sometimes appearing very Eurosceptic, sometimes committed to the line of a more ‘independent Britain’. ‘Debates’ within the bourgeoisie are pursued as much through intrigue and deception as discussion.

We situated the campaign launched against the Murdoch empire last year within this framework, arguing: “Murdoch’s support of US imperialism and strong Eurosceptic views… helped reinforce powerful, pre-existing conflicts within the British ruling class and was increasingly at odds with post-Blair UK imperialist policy…which was to try to play a more independent role following the fiascos of the Afghan/Iraq wars which left the UK weakened.”[4] The struggles to cut him down united disparate parts of the British state and media and the current Leveson Inquiry originated as part of this effort. However, Leveson’s remit to look at relations between the press and the police and politicians suggests it is also part of wider efforts to enforce discipline within the bourgeoisie and, by doing so relatively openly, to continue the campaign about restoring the reputation of democracy that seemed to be the primary purpose of the scandal over MPs expenses.

The Labour Party and the LibDems were fairly quick to jump on the anti-Murdoch bandwagon but the Tories have been more divided. Cameron’s main argument is that politicians across the spectrum allowed themselves to get too close to the media in general and by doing so to water-down the specific criticism of Murdoch and the responsibility of his own party, including himself. The same concerns seem to have been behind the decision by the Tories on the Culture, Media and Sports Committee not to support the recent report that accused News International of wilful blindness and declared that Rupert Murdoch was not a fit person to run a major international company. Few have been as outspoken as the Education Secretary Michael Gove (who worked for years on the Murdoch-owned Times) who described Rupert Murdoch as “one of the most impressive and significant figures of the last 50 years”. In contrast, ex-Prime Minister John Major had no qualms in sticking the knife in when he stated that Murdoch had tried to get him to change Tory party policy over Europe at the time of 1997 election or risk losing the support of the Murdoch press. Major’s government was almost torn apart by the actions of the Eurosceptics, so it is no surprise that he seemed to relish getting his own back.

An interesting current development is the Leveson Inquiry’s role in seeming to put pressure on Cameron, notably through the recent revelations about the contact between Jeremy Hunt and NI, and between Cameron and senior figures such as Rebecca Brookes. The revelations about Hunt were the result of a direct demand by the Inquiry for the emails relating to him. However, NI itself has been a source of some of the information with material being passed to the police by its internal investigation, which raises the possibility that Murdoch is also exacting some revenge for being humiliated.

This may not seem a very direct way to have an argument about imperialist policy, but the need to maintain the façade that Britain is a steadfast defender of peace and co-operation around the world requires it to hide the reality. The fact is that the struggle over imperialist policy has gone on for some two decades and is unresolved. The fact that Cameron gives different messages in his speeches expresses traditional British pragmatism at one level, while, at another, it expresses the historical dilemma of British imperialism arising from the fact that it is a declining power.

Electoral and democratic strategy

One of the first priorities of the ruling class in most ‘developed’ countries is to maintain the democratic game, to draw workers into the drama of the false alternatives. All the campaigns to clean up politics are part of this. While these risk further discrediting politicians and politics, and so feeding already existing apathy and disgust, in the current stage of the class struggle in Britain such disgust is unlikely to be widely transformed into militant struggle. For the minority that begin to question mainstream politics, the far left and right effectively absorb and contain much of this anger, although the likes of UKIP also express the growth of irrationality within the bourgeoisie. The overall impact of the ‘clean-up politics’ campaigns is to keep the majority of the working class within the framework of politics as defined by the bourgeoisie.

The current electoral line-up still suits the needs of the bourgeoisie. The Coalition suffered some battering in the recent local elections because of its attacks on the working class. The LibDems are seen as unprincipled and the Tories as unreformed. The Coalition still promotes the idea that dealing with the economic crisis is more important than party squabbles. In their speeches after the local elections Cameron and Clegg played to this, acknowledging that they would both like to lead a government in which their party had a majority but that they had to deal with the reality of the situation and work in the national interest.

In opposition all that Milliband offers is a slight variation on what is in the ‘national interest’. However, after only two years out of office the Labour Party is beginning to be presented as a viable party of government. This reflects two factors, firstly that there is no particular need for Labour to be in opposition to contain a rising tide of working class anger and militancy. Red Ed has turned out to be rather pale and the most Labour feels it necessary to do is to call for a slightly more restrained austerity with a little dash of ‘growth’. Secondly, that the volatility of the situation makes it prudent for the bourgeoisie to keep its options open.

Containing the working class

The bourgeoisie’s overall strategy to control the working class is based on the principle of divide and rule. It seeks to prevent working class unity and to prevent the proletariat from seeing itself as a class. Over the last few decades the bourgeoisie has introduced its attacks piecemeal, scapegoating the unemployed, the young, single mothers, asylum seekers etc. It has been able to contain and defeat the immediate response of the working class but has found it far more difficult to contain the spread of disaffection and disengagement although, other than in a small minority, this is not accompanied by a questioning of society.

Today, the main challenge for the ruling class is to introduce the scale of attacks required by the severity of the crisis without provoking a response from the working class that escapes control.

Overall, the bourgeoisie has so far succeeded in this. There is a low level of struggle and the unions have maintained a firm grip, corralling anger into a few one day strikes that have not only divided public sector workers from private sector workers but also divided the public sector itself. The tendency that exists to challenge the unions, while an expression of global developments, remains limited and unreported.

Not every manoeuvre works out as planned however. The attempt to reprise Thatcher’s confrontation with the unions over the threatened tanker drivers strike and to turn it into Cameron’s “miners’ strike moment”, as some in the Tory party described it, while successful in whipping up some public panic and creating artificial shortages, ended in the farce of calls for the population to store petrol in the home and tragedy when someone followed this advice.

This does not mean that the bourgeoisie has everything sewn up. The objective conditions for the development of the class struggle continue to develop internationally because the bourgeoisie is unable to contain the crisis and has to increase the scale and extent of the attacks on the working class. The subjective conditions, of a willingness to struggle, recognition of the necessity of class unity and consciousness of what workers are struggling against and struggling for can be seen here and there. While limited at present by a range of factors, including the actions of the ruling class, the development internationally over the last few years confirm that the bourgeoisie cannot rest easy in their beds.  

North 23/06/12

The working class in Spain is facing particularly harsh austerity measures. The explosive economic crisis is making the social situation equally tense. The past year’s struggles in response have often been an inspiration to others. In particular the 15M movement of the Indignados followed the Arab Spring and in turn inspired struggle in Greece and the USA, for example. The anniversary of the 15M and the events surrounding it was followed by the start of a strike by 8,000 miners, mainly in Asturias, against the withdrawal of EU coalmining subsidies which will totally undermine the industry, threatening 40,000 jobs in a country that already has 24% unemployment overall and where half those under 25 are without jobs. This article aims to contribute to the discussion on what we can learn from both the anniversary of 15M and from the miners’ strike.

The difficulties of struggling when they plan to lay you off

The Asturian miners have a proud tradition in the working class, notably in the revolt of 1934, and it is no surprise to see their determined response with a strike that started on 31 May. There can be no denying their courage as they have set up numerous road blocks with tyres and logs, used improvised weapons to repulse the Civil Guard who came to clear one of these on highway N-360, and stood up to beatings, arrests and rubber bullets when they went to Madrid. All this has clearly been an inspiration to contributors on libcom (https://libcom.org/news/coal-mines-ignite-asturias-10062012?page=1 [99]https://libcom.org/article/coal-mines-ignite-asturias-updates?page=1 [100]) and from the ICT (https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2012-06-19/the-struggle-of-the-asturian-miners [101]).

This is very reminiscent of the miners’ strike in Britain in 1984/5, when this militant sector, deeply respected and in many ways carrying the hopes of the whole working class, engaged in a courageous and bitter strike, and engaged in numerous confrontations with the police when faced with unprecedented levels of repression. Like the Spanish miners they faced plans to close many mines in a period of high unemployment. It ended in a defeat that weighed heavily on the working class in Britain in the following two decades.

In the discussion on libcom Fingers Malone raised the difficulty the Spanish miners face due to the nature of the attack that will essentially close their industry: “just striking by itself wouldn’t get them anywhere”. He sees this as a reason for mounting the road blocks as well as the desperate measure of occupying the mine underground in conditions that are unhealthy as well as unpleasant. But does this take them any further in effective struggle? In our view the problem is not just that striking by itself is insufficient, but that struggling by themselves, isolated from other sectors of the working class, puts them into a weak position faced with the might of the state and is likely to lead to defeat. The general strike of 18th June organised by the unions (CCOO and UGT) and the left (PCE and PSOE) was certainly not going to break their isolation, confined as it was to the areas and industries affected by the cut in subsidy. And their demand for a ‘plan for coal’ in Spain, reminiscent of the NUM slogan ‘coal not dole’, is clearly going to increase the strike’s isolation.

In this sense the slogan “we are not indignant, we are pissed off” actually epitomises the limitations of the struggle, with its illusions in their strength as miners capable of fighting off the Civil Guard. In some ways the miners see themselves as expressing a more radical position than that of the Indignados, which was one of the key struggles in the past year, not just in Spain but internationally. But for all their sense of class identity, the isolation of the Asturian miners is a key weakness that could result in a significant set-back for the struggle as a whole.

One year on, what is left from 15M?

However much difficulty the bourgeoisie have in managing the economy we should never underestimate their experience in confronting the working class – as shown by their isolation of the miners, and the union-organised general strike of 29 March (see WR 353 [102]) which was followed immediately by the announcement of a further 27 billion euros of cuts.

Their ‘celebration’ of the anniversary of 15M is another example, a parody of the original events designed to erase, or at least completely distort, the memory of the original events – just when we need to reflect on, discuss and inwardly digest the lessons of this experience. This year the events were called by a cartel of leftist and union organisations, and not the assemblies, which no longer exist, and they have emphasised the democratic and reformist view of the ‘citizen’ as opposed to the working class.

The false alternatives offered by the right wing PP government and by the left complement each other very well. The former has aggressively threatened repression, and accused the Indignados of being a ‘submarine’ for the PSOE. Meanwhile the PSOE, which a year ago misrepresented the 15M movement as petty bourgeois, no-hopers, like a dog walking on its hind legs, now welcomes it as a ‘triumph’, with a great future and a weight in society. The bourgeoisie always denigrate a real movement, but they also love to glorify its memory when they can turn it into an empty shell.

 The anniversary demonstrations were massive, but not as large as at the height of the movement in June, July and October last year. Assemblies were revived in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Valencia, Alicante and elsewhere. However, if the assemblies were greeted with interest and curiosity on the Saturday, they were gradually deserted afterwards, and there was no strength in the movement to resist the control by leftist organisations – people preferred to drift away. Nevertheless there were signs of working class life: massive participation by the young; a healthy and joyful atmosphere; and some good contributions to discussion. In Madrid there was a good discussion on the question of health; voices were raised to support what we have called the proletarian wing of the movement, even if they were less confident than last year. But overall the movement could not break out of the shackles imposed by the bourgeoisie, and it remained a caricature of the 15M, with the air of a day out at the weekend before returning to daily life.

The perspective for the working class

The social movements that took place in 2011 were a very intense experience for the working class with their international dimension, the use of the streets, the assemblies at the heart of the movement where lively debates were held (see ‘From indignation to hope [103]’ in WR 353). In Spain there were massive mobilisations in the education sector in Madrid and Barcelona, in health in Barcelona as well as the young in Valencia. The union strike on 29 March and the miners’ strike are also important experiences to reflect on. (See ‘General strike in Spain: radical minorities call for independent workers’ action [104]’ in WR 353).

Our comrades in Spain have noted that after all these experiences there is a feeling of the movement being checked, of its weakness and the difficulty of developing a struggle that is sufficient for the gravity of the situation and the level of the attacks. This process of questioning is absolutely essential, a vital contribution to the development of understanding in the working class that will prepare the ground for a response that is both a broader movement and goes deeper in putting capitalism itself into question.

There is a growing recognition that capitalism is a bankrupt system, that it has no future, that after five years of crisis the ruling class has no answer and that the system needs to be replaced. For instance at one assembly in Valencia, a woman spoke up to support an ICC contribution arguing that the 15M movement had a revolutionary and a reformist wing and that we need to support the former. But there is also a search for immediate answers or actions, which can lead to sterile or even ridiculous proposals, such as the notion that if we all withdraw our funds from the nationalised Bankia it will “really hit capitalism”.

So, while the question of the need to replace capitalism is raised, there is also the difficulty in seeing how this can be done, and also a hope that perhaps the bankruptcy of the system can be reversed. Here the left and extreme left put forward all sorts of ‘solutions’ to reform capitalism, such as taxing the rich, eliminating corruption, nationalisation, etc. In fact the centre and right can even join in with these ‘radical’ campaigns on corruption and tax avoidance.

It is vital to avoid the trap of reformist alternatives. It is equally vital that disgust with politicians as a whole, and the lies of the left in particular, does not tempt us to retreat into local and isolated groups suspicious of all outsiders. Only by avoiding these traps can we advance the process of reflection on the crisis of capitalism, the need to overthrow it, and how the working class can take its struggle forward, all of which is essential to the preparation of future struggles. 

Alex 30/6/12

Over the past two months the British ruling class has subjected us to a slurry of nationalism, patriotism, the ‘pride in being British’, with Union Jacks and the Cross of St. George rammed down our throats and up our arses. The media, newspapers, TV and radio have not paused for a moment in the task of telling us that, regardless of wealth, social status or class we should all be proud to be British.

We have to be honest and say that this campaign (because it is a deliberate campaign on the part of the bourgeoisie) has had a certain success. Thousands have turned out at the different events; hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent on celebrating the Queen’s Jubilee and billions in hosting the Olympic Games.

For the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee the royal presence was paraded around the country, and maximum press overage was given to street parties and the waving of flags, especially by children. This was all supposed to generate nostalgia for 1952, culminating in Her Majesty graciously opening up Buckingham Palace for a star-studded concert. Soon after that we had the Euro 2012 football: cue blokes dressed in crusader gear and an ad campaign proclaiming ‘we’re not supporting a team, we’re supporting a nation’. We Brits could be united in suffering, knowing that the England team would inevitably be knocked out (but we all know that losing well is also an aspect of ‘Britishness’). Now we are preparing for the third course of this patriotic feast in the run-up to the London Olympics with the Olympic torch travelling around the country.

The reality behind this circus did filter through from time to time. First there was the scandal around the group of jobseekers bussed to London to act as crowd stewards on the day of the royal flotilla. Deprived of proper accommodation, protective clothing and food (and, of course, wages), this incident couldn’t have been a clearer indictment of the slave labour conditions increasingly being imposed on the unemployed through ‘workfare’ and similar schemes.

And then at the end of June, after the grandiose celebration of inherited wealth and status, we had David Cameron speechifying against the ‘culture of entitlement’, castigating people for having too many children when they’re on benefits and generally preparing the ideological ground for phase two of the ‘reform’ of the social security budget. Cameron outlined plans to strip housing benefit from the under-25s, to introduce further time-limits on unemployment pay, and to restrict hand-outs for those with large numbers of children. According to Cameron, this ‘culture of entitlement’ is creating deep social divisions – which apparently are not at all caused by the widening material gap between the ‘entitled’ few at the top and the growing majority at the bottom. No, the real division is between what Cameron calls ‘hard working people who do the right thing’ and the benefit scroungers living off their labour: in other words, between the employed and the unemployed fractions of the working class.

Class struggle poops the party

However, in spite of this massive campaign of patriotism, what Marx called the ‘old mole’ of history, the class struggle, has not disappeared. In June, at the Coryton Oil Refinery in Essex we saw running battles with pickets fighting with the police. 180 workers are to be laid off from the Swiss owned Petroplus Company. This fightback has included workers from the Lindsey and Grangemouth sites.

In Essex, also at the end of June and in response to cuts to frontline services we saw firefighters begin the first of a series of 5 strikes in a long running dispute with the Essex fire authority.

On the London Buses we saw 33 routes disrupted by one day strikes, with crews striking over bonuses for the period of the Olympics. London Underground Tube drivers have also been in action over the payment of Olympic bonuses.

On the same day as the first London bus drivers’ strike, there was a national ‘industrial action’ by doctors over the issue of pensions – an event that you don’t see very often. 

These are all small, dispersed struggles, dominated by the sectional viewpoint promoted by the trade unions. But they are still significant because they took place in the face of a massive campaign to subsume us into the ‘nation’. That they happened at all is testament to the fact that we are part of a class – the working class – which is by definition international, because it is everywhere faced with the same system of exploitation. A system now in deep crisis; and in the near future we are going to be engulfed in it to the same degree as our class brothers and sisters in Greece, Spain and Italy. Then our rulers will expect us to make immense sacrifice for the good of the nation; indeed they already are doing this. In response we can only rely on our class struggle, our class identity, our class consciousness.  

Melmoth 30/06/12

After June’s election in Greece, President Obama hailed the result as an opportunity for a new government to “continue on the path of reform and do so in a way that also offers the prospects for the Greek people to succeed and prosper.”

This has a very hollow ring as the new coalition is politically little different to the coalition that ruled from last November to the elections in May. It was the coalition that replaced Georges Papandreou that accepted the conditions for the most recent 130bn Euro bailout. It was the coalition that intensified the already harsh austerity measures. In the latest election New Democracy and PASOK, the parties that had ruled Greece between them since 1974, stoked up fears that funds would dry up and that an economy already in deep crisis, five years into recession (with a population already suffering severe depredations) was facing an even worse catastrophe. And they’re still in power, with the assistance of a small left-wing party, rather than a small right-wing party.

However, after Prime Minister Samaras had finally named all the figures in the new government, there was a slight change of tune. The coalition parties agreed that they would like to renegotiate some aspects of their agreement with their international creditors. They want “two more years, up to 2016, to bring the public deficit under 3 percent of gross domestic product. This would allow the government to meet its fiscal targets without making further cuts to wages, pensions and the public investment programme. Instead, savings would be made from tackling corruption, waste, tax evasion and the shadow economy” (Kathimerini 24/6/12).

It will be interesting to see how much international sympathy there is to this approach. Pain, and more pain, is the prescribed remedy from the leaders of much of the Eurozone. Seeing as the main participants in the Greek government have been responsible for imposing all previous cuts, other European bourgeoisies are likely to wonder why they can’t continue in the same vein. Although they will be aware that discontent can lead to militant action

Fear, anger and illusions

In the June election the turnout was down to 62.5 per cent. This is even lower than May’s previous lowest ever figure of 65 per cent. Voting is considered mandatory in Greece, although abstention is not met with any legal sanctions. However, it’s clear that more and more people see no prospect of any electoral outcome having a positive impact on their lives.

Of those who did vote, those over 55 tended to turn to New Democracy because it offered the illusions of stability and financial security. Those between 18 and 24 were attracted by Syriza as offering some sort of ‘alternative’. In a survey of those who voted for the neo-nazi Golden Dawn[1] in May, 60% said it was as a protest vote, with fewer than 30% actually wanting to get rid of immigrants. It might seem a strange way to protest, but in many ways no stranger than thinking that Syriza was different to the other left parties.

Many Trotskyist groups were very enthusiastic about Syriza. While admitting that it is a party of reform rather than revolution they see it as the focus for resistance to austerity. Yet if you examine Syriza’s pronouncements and the utterances of its leader, Alexis Tsipras, you will see a model of, in his own words (Reuters 19/6/12), “responsible opposition”.

A commentator on Al Jazeera (18/6/12) wondered whether Syriza “may be privately grateful to escape the responsibilities of governing Greece at this desperate time.” Certainly, in the coming period Syriza will be the focus for opposition to the new government. It will encourage the illusion that austerity can be less harsh. But “Tsipras signalled that Syriza would not call its supporters onto the streets to protest against the austerity measures” (Reuters 19/6/12). He thinks that resistance is not the priority of the moment and says “Our role is to be inside and outside parliament, applauding anything positive and condemning all that is negative and proposing alternatives” (ibid).

Tsipras, who wants fair taxation, a moratorium on debts, and favours certain ‘structural reforms’, puts Syriza in a very mainstream tradition. In an interview in Time magazine (31/5/12) he declared that the New Deal policy in 1930s America was an example to follow, “we will realise that Roosevelt was right and follow that path.” And it’s not just a nostalgia for a lost past; he is an admirer of current state capitalist institutions in the US. Analysing the problems in European monetary union he says it’s partly down “to the lack of a Central Bank which can act as a Central Bank, as [the] Fed does in the USA and which — as a last resort — will be able to lend money to a country which faces problems in the markets.”

In an article for the Financial Times (12/6/12) Tsipras wrote “Syriza is the only political movement in Greece today that can deliver economic, social and political stability for our country. … Only Syriza can guarantee Greek stability because we do not carry the political baggage of the establishment parties that have brought Greece to the brink of ruin.”

This demonstrates Syriza’s concern for capitalist stability, and also that its appeal lies mainly in not being PASOK or New Democracy. They relate to the anger in the population, but with a specific goal “Greece needs courageous and decisive leaders who can use the rage of our people...as a weapon to negotiate for the benefit of the country” (Reuters 19/6/12). The dozen or so leftist groups that make up Syriza want to use the rage of the people … as a weapon in negotiations for Greek capitalism. The main difference with the Samaras government is that the coalition relies on people’s fears rather than their anger.  

Car 25/6/12

We’re publishing here the first presentation to the ICC Day of Discussion held in London on 23 June. Its focus is the significance and lessons of the social revolts of 2011. The other two presentations – on the origins of Islam [112] and on art in ascendant and decadent capitalism [113] – can be found on our website, and we will also publish write-ups of the discussions and if possible an audio version of the day’s debates.

This was a very fruitful meeting. It was well-attended – around thirty people, including ICC comrades and members of three other political organisations (Communist Workers Organisation, Commune, Socialist Party of Great Britain). The discussion was extremely lively, serious, and wide-ranging, and took place in a very fraternal atmosphere; and there was a high level of participation, as evidenced by the fact that the presentations and write-ups have all been undertaken by non-ICC comrades.

At the end of the meeting we discussed various themes for future days of discussion and there were a lot of suggestions: ecology, the causes of the economic crisis, immigration, the relationship between anarchism and marxism. The next meeting will probably take place at the beginning of 2013, so that will give plenty of time to reflect on these (and no doubt other) suggestions and prepare for the debate.

ICC 1/7/12

For many of us who’ve been around a long time, who’ve gone grey (if they’ve still have any hair at all!), the events of 2011 were, in part, a reminder of times gone by: of the barricades of May 68 in France; of the strikes and assemblies the following year – the so-called Hot Autumn in Italy in 1969; of the next year of massive strikes in Poland 1970 and those across the globe in Argentina and then, in Britain in 1972, when it seemed the whole working class was mobilised and on strike.

In what way did the events of 2011 recall the late 60s and early 70s?

First and foremost, the sheer, global extent – the internationalism - of them. And whereas, 40 years ago, this ‘wave’ of struggle rolled out from one country to the next over a matter of years, in 2011 it happened in just months – from Tunisia to Algeria; from Egypt to Bahrain, Libya; from Greece to Chile; from Israel to America to Spain, Portugal and Britain....

Secondly, the massive nature of the movements of 2011 – not tiny minorities of the population but large, angry, ‘indignant’ swathes, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, in total hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, taking to the streets and squares, talking politics and taking action and organising themselves to do so.

The media grouped these expressions under two headings – the ‘Arab Spring’ and the ‘Occupy’ movements. The ICC Statement[1], which is the basis for our discussion here today, aims to draw a ‘provisional balance sheet’ of what it calls the ‘social movements’ or ‘social revolts’ of 2011.

Now I don’t want to go into any great detail about what exactly is meant by ‘a social movement’ as opposed to a workers’ struggle; or into an explanation of what’s meant by ‘non-exploiting strata’, or ‘dispossessed masses’ or various other terms, though the discussion afterwards may want to make these more precise. Perhaps these terms are self-evident, at least to the ICC. Maybe such terms mean different things to different working class organisations, and maybe they’re gobbledegook to others. You’ll have to speak up but perhaps it will become clearer as we continue.

In all events, while as Marxists we insist on the central importance of ‘the working class’, or ‘the proletariat’, we recognise that this term, paradoxically (or dialectically if you like) may include millions who’ve never had the opportunity to work in their lives – the unemployed children of workers, for example. We also insist that while the proletariat is the revolutionary class in capitalist society, and requires its political and organisational autonomy, other classes – in fact the vast majority of the population outside the ruling class - have absolutely nothing to gain from the status quo. To quote from near the end of the statement: “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 what the Communist Manifesto called: the ‘independent movement of the immense majority to the benefit of the immense majority’.”

Therefore, today, whatever labels we employ, we’re not going into sociology or categorization, but understanding a dynamic underway in society, its root causes and its effects on the future. We’re looking at the dynamic underlying and expressed by the movements in 2011.

The first dynamic cited by the statement is the economic crisis. It’s 5 years into its current, ‘open’ phase. That means that whereas in the previous thirty years, people who talked about the crisis of capitalism were largely looked on as lunatics, today almost everyone can see and feel a real blockage in the functioning of the social order, from a massive rise in unemployment, prices, taxes and bank crashes to lower wages, benefits, services and pensions affecting millions upon millions and confronting countless more with destitution and poverty, amidst a growing censorship and a murderous repression of dissent or resistance. In 50 years capitalism’s gone from a debt-fuelled  ‘you’ve never had it so good’ to firms going under, to industries going under, to finance houses going under, to countries bankrupted, to the entire financial system under unprecedented stress and to the probable break-up of an institution like the EU. There is no ‘recovery’. There is no light at the end of this particular tunnel. It’s this dawning realisation, and the sordid, everyday reality that underpins it, that mobilised the masses in 2011.

The second dynamic, as already mentioned, is the international scope of this movement, its simultaneity in different countries, as well as the spread from country to country, even if we shouldn’t “make a strict identity between all these movements, both in terms of their class content and of the response of the bourgeoisie” (International Review 145).

Importantly, this was a ‘knowingly’ international movement, to a degree ‘conscious’ of itself as such, despite all the national flags and undeniable patriotism you could see. Thus 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 New York, a poster says ‘We’re All Khaled Said’ – the 28 year old whose murder by Egyptian security forces in 2010 sparked the Tahir Square events. In Israel they shouted ‘Netanyahu, Mubarak, al-Assad are the same’ and contacts were made with Palestinian workers.” When Occupy Wall Street protesters called for an international day of solidarity, 900 cities around the world participated. While the Spanish Indignados movement of May 15 to July 2011 was influenced by events in Greece and Egypt, it in turn influenced Greek protesters to a new round of demonstrations culminating in assemblies “on the Indignados model”. In France, Belgium, Mexico, Portugal, there have been regular assemblies, though smaller in scale. Internationalism is, of course, the first law of the workers’ movement. It’s not a slogan but a practical and political necessity.

The third dynamic was self-organisation. We see street demonstrations as a matter of routine all over the world: mainly called by unions and or political parties, the routes are announced, the police are informed; there are stewards, there are speeches ... We also know what riots are. We see crowds united in their alienation at football matches or pop concerts. What we saw in 2011, particularly at its highest points, was none of this: it was on a qualitatively different level.

As well as reclaiming the streets and public squares for themselves, and setting their own agendas, “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 ... 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.”

So having arisen, spontaneously, the movements, with greater or lesser success, began to organise. The assemblies permitted attempts at discussion, clarification, and the wielding of action. They were an expression of and an active factor in pushing real solidarity: one for all and all for one. Quote: “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”. In Spain, as in Tahir Square, squads were formed to free those arrested by police. In Spain again, action authorised by the assemblies prevented police harassment of immigrants. In Pisa, Italy, in Greece, in Egypt, in Spain, occupations of empty buildings by the homeless; attempts to prevent evictions; the takeover of hospitals by staff. In Egypt, the self organisation of neighbourhoods against the looting of government thugs. In Greece, today, farmers from Crete continue to distribute their produce free to the impoverished of Athens.

In themselves such actions may or may not be considered remarkable, but taken in isolation, they’re hardly ‘revolutionary’. In the context of an international movement, however, it’s different... They took place amidst widespread thirst for the acquisition of knowledge and exchange of views and information; discussions about the economy, the crisis, a questioning of the existing order. What is democracy? Do we need a revolution? What kind? Are we political or non-political? How best to organise?

The assemblies began to overcome divisions of employed and unemployed, of religion, of generations, of trade or region. In Spain, they attempted a coordination, a political centralisation; in the US, they attempted an extension, particularly towards the workers as at the port in Oakland where workers supported their call for a general strike. The situation in Egypt was transformed when the workers’ strikes for their own demands meshed with the protests. As the statement says: The influence of the working class on the consciousness expressed in these movements has been tangible, both in the slogans and the forms of organisation they have thrown up.” And “All of which starkly contrasted with what is ‘normal’ in this society with its anguished sense of hopelessness and vulnerability.” As was widely heard in Tunisia: “We are no longer afraid....”

Weaknesses

If we spoke about certain similarities between the late ‘60s and 2011, we should begin this section by recalling that, back then, there was no doubt about the power of the working class or its strikes. It was self-evident. In 2011, it’s different. The working class has had many experiences but it’s undeniably harder to go on strike today; there have been many bitter defeats. The ruling class is better prepared.

Anyway... It’s been said, by the ICC at least, that the refusal of the Indignados in Spain and the US Occupy movement to be rushed into defining their demands, to fix limits to their movement, to enter into ‘negotiations’ with the state are further positive signs of an emerging proletarian consciousness, extending in both depth and extent.

But what did the movements demand? Bread, freedom from repression; dignity: certainly. The removal of hated figures: evidently. But it’s less clear the movements could be said to know where they were going, of what historical evolution they were part, even if we could see, here and there, banners proclaiming that ‘the only future is revolution’. In Spain, the frequent call was for ‘all power to the assemblies’. But how to achieve this, and what to do with this power, and against whom to wield it?

The old foe of the workers’ movement – bourgeois democracy, ‘real democracy now’, the abstract and a-historical bourgeois democracy of atomised citizens regrouped behind ‘their’ state, in flagrant contradiction to the movements’ actual internationalism – was very present and often unrecognised by the movement. To quote:

“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.....

“...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 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...”

And as an earlier ICC article says “The working class has not yet presented itself in these events as an autonomous force capable of assuming the leadership of the movements, which have often taken the form of revolts by the whole non-exploiting population.”

And the reverse is also true: where the working class, historically, has been weakest, in Libya, in Syria, popular revolts have quickly been utilised by inter-bourgeois faction fights and drowned in blood. Imperialism was waiting.

In all events, the present Statement insists that this is all just “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 walking this road is the first victory.”

What’s left? What lessons?

The social movements, though they continue (see for example Quebec) are well past their peak: the crisis deepens; austerity accelerates; the unions try to mobilise the employed workers, the core of the proletariat, in sterile general strikes that are in fact anything but generalised and over which the workers have little control or influence at present. On the surface, nothing seems to have changed. And yet...

- There are politicised minorities, in Spain and elsewhere, determined to influence and link up with the main battalions of the working class; they are an immediate residue, a fruit of the movement. Already they are intervening towards the struggles of today in Spain, in the US. They are also facing a fight not to be dispersed, to keep in touch, to prepare for the next moment and to draw the lessons of the last.

- Among these lessons, the experience of the attempted sabotage of the general assemblies by ‘specialists’, experts and ‘working groups’ which seek to seize the momentum and leadership of the movement– is a valuable lesson for the whole proletariat. Assemblies, in themselves are not enough: there’s a political battle to be waged for their soul, for creators to have mastery and control over their own creations and to make the general assembly the sovereign organ of the struggle and to make delegates revocable and responsible to the whole, not the other way around.

Much has been made of the ‘youth’ of the 2011 movements, and it’s true. And while things can seem quiet on the streets today, the following is also true: “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.” (‘What’s Left of the 15M Movement’, ICC Online, April 2012).

This energetic ‘youth’ is largely the product of a decomposing capitalism which cannot hope to integrate them into production, and despite their inexperience of labour, they are in fact part of the reserve army of labour, the unemployed, and it’s not accidental that the ICC used to write that the privileged terrain of the unemployed is the streets...

- On technology: much was made of Twitter, Facebook and mobile phones to link and organise the struggles, to spread news of them. Again, true. It was excellent to be able to participate, from the arse end of England, via the ICC discussion forum, to an intervention into an assembly in America. But I feel we should be wary about putting too much emphasis on the purely technological aspect which still requires the consciousness of a movement to control it. And the fact remains that the ruling class controls even these means of dissemination: they can and did close down networks in this or that country: block Google here or there. The proletarian movement requires real people on the ground. The revolution will not be a virtual affair.

In conclusion, it would be good to hear appreciations of the movement and to try and gauge whether what the ICC statement says is considered broadly correct, or if there should be different emphases and lessons.

For me, looking to the future, and trying to see the new society and the movement that will build it, the lesson of 2011 for the working class is a bit like that voiced by one of the main characters in Spielberg’s Close Encounters: “If you build it, they will come.” As the main battalions of the working class manage to control the content and direction of their struggles, vast layers of society will flock to support, strengthen and enrich them.  

KT 23/6/12

The killing power of the modern state easily dwarfs the crimes of an individual mass murderer like Anders Breivik, currently on trial in Oslo for shooting scores of young people at a Labour youth summer camp, The Assad regime in Syria continues to demonstrate its capacity to sow terror on an industrial scale. Town after town is subjected to intense artillery bombardment and the population is trapped in homes or cellars, deprived of food and electricity for days, even weeks. Army snipers are installed on the rooftops, picking off anyone foolhardy enough to try and forage some food for their families. And when the town finally falls, whole families are wiped out in a more direct and personal way, either by regular soldiers, or more frequently – since so many soldiers have deserted the ranks of the army in disgust at what it was forcing them to do – by shadowy criminal gangs known as ‘Shabiha’ or ghosts. The two most well-known massacres of late took place in just such a fashion in Houla and Mazraat al-Qubair, but they are by no means the only examples.

With the most shameless arrogance, the mouthpieces of the regime justify these bloody sieges by claiming that ‘armed terrorist groups’ have taken hold of the town in question. Very often they even blame the more widely publicised slaughters of women and children as the work of these groups, acting presumably to throw discredit on the government.

The brazen nature of the crimes and lies of the Syrian government is not however the mark of a regime resting on strong foundations. Rather it reflects the desperation of a regime whose days are numbered.

Faced with the widespread protests which erupted against his rule in the wake of the other massive movements throughout North Africa and the Middle East, Bashir al-Assad tried to follow in his father’s footsteps: in 1982 Hafez al-Assad was faced with another uprising, led by the Muslim Brotherhood and centred in the city of Hama. The regime sent in the army and carried out an atrocious butchery: the death toll has been estimated at anything between 17,000 and 40,000. The uprising was crushed and the Assad dynasty has been able to maintain a more or less uncontested grip over the country for the past two and a half decades.

The situation has changed since 1982

But a quick dose of the most ruthless terror no longer works in the same way, because history has moved on since the mid-80s. To begin with, the relative stability that resulted from the old two-bloc system (in which Syria was the USSR’s most consistent ally in the region) was undermined by the collapse of the eastern bloc and the consequent unravelling of the bloc led from Washington. This profound shift in ‘international relations’ opened the doors of the arena to a whole number of imperialisms, small, medium and large, who were no longer ruled from afar by either of the old superpowers. In the Middle East, Iran was already a troublemaking element before the fall of the blocs, and its ambitions have been strengthened considerably by the US-led invasion of Iraq. Under Saddam, Iraq had been a major counter-weight to Tehran’s position in the region, but after Saddam was toppled the country was crippled by internal disorder and is governed by a weak Shia faction that is highly susceptible to Iranian influence. Turkey, once a reliable ally of the US, has begun playing its own game, increasingly presenting itself as the champion of the Muslim Middle East. Even Israel has been more and more asserting its independence from its US paymasters – a reality which is currently being underlined by the voices in the Israeli state calling for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, a move that the US is reluctant to endorse because of the huge risk of chaos that it would entail[1].

In this cauldron of national ambitions, what began as an unarmed popular protest against the Assad regime has very quickly turned into a proxy war between regional and global imperialist powers. Iran, Syria’s main local ally in the region[2], has been standing firmly by the Assad regime, and there have been reports of Revolutionary Guards or other agents of the Islamic Republic working on the ground as accomplices in Assad’s campaign of terror. Assad has also continued to enjoy the protection of Russia and China, who have been active in the UN Security Council in blocking a series of resolutions condemning the Assad government or calling for sanctions against it. Russia has had to moderate its stance in the face of very sharp criticism, making its first timid criticisms of Assad’s massacres, but its support for a policy of ‘non-intervention’ boils down to making sure that the rebel forces don’t get arms while the official armed forces keep their gigantic arsenal. In fact, Hilary Clinton recently accused Russia of supplying the regime with attack helicopters – to which the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov replied that the helicopters were purely for ‘defensive’ purposes and, anyway, the west was covertly arming the rebels.

This was the first time the Russians have openly made this accusation, but it has been true for a long time. Once the opposition coalesced into a serious bourgeois political force around the Free Syria Army and the Syrian National Council, there have been shipments of arms from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Turkey, meanwhile, has done an about-face, ending its previously friendly relations with the Assad regime, condemning its inhumanity, and offering protection to refugees fleeing the slaughter. On the military level it has amassed considerable forces on its Syrian border; and, in the same speech condemning Moscow for supplying Syria with helicopters, Clinton suggested that Syria’s massing of forces around Aleppo, close to the Turkish border, “could well be a red line for the Turks in terms of their strategic or national interests” (Guardian 13 June). Most recently, Syria’s shooting down of Turkish aircraft, including a military jet which had allegedly violated Syrian airspace, has further heightened tensions between Ankara and Damascus.

Imperialist stalemate

Thus, the policy of terror, far from strengthening Assad’s hold over the country, has embroiled it in an increasingly unpredictable imperialist conflict, which also has the effect of exacerbating the religious and ethnic divisions inside the country: just as the Iranians support the dominant Alawite minority, so the Saudis – and no doubt any number of freelance jihadis attracted to the conflict like the hyenas they are – aim to impose some kind of Sunni regime. There are further divisions between Christians and Muslims, Kurds and Arabs, all of which threaten to become too widespread and too bitter to be manipulated without plunging the country into an even more chaotic situation, on the model of Iraq.

As Syria heads in the direction of becoming a failed state, and UN sanctions and observation missions are revealed as powerless to halt the killing, there have been growing calls for a ‘humanitarian’ military intervention on the part of the western powers. After all, say its partisans, it ‘worked’ in Libya, where France and Britain led the charge to impose a ‘no-fly zone’ which effectively resulted in the victory of the rebels and the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime. But in the case of Syria, states like Britain, France and the US are being much more cautious, despite calling more loudly for Assad to go. There are a number of reasons for their hesitation: the geographical terrain in Syria is much less amenable to aerial warfare than Libya, with its vast expanses of desert. And while in his final days Gaddafi had become isolated internationally, Syria has much stronger ties with Russia, China and Iran. With Israel already goading the US into attacking Iran by threatening to do the job itself, an escalation of the war in Syria could also light the blue touch paper over Iran, with even more devastating consequences. Moreover, Assad’s army is far better equipped and trained than Gaddafi’s. In sum the western powers risk getting bogged down in a real mess in Syria and beyond, just like they have been in Afghanistan and Iraq; and in contrast to Libya there is no danger of valuable oil reserves falling into the wrong hands, since Syria is not blessed with any oil at all. The social and political repercussions of another theatre of war opening up for the big powers in this ravaged region are, for the moment at least, too uncertain to make the risk worthwhile. Turkey as well, despite being most directly threatened by the consequences of the humanitarian disaster in Syria, is also playing its cards with some caution at the moment.

There is a kind of imperialist stalemate over Syria, and meanwhile the deaths pile up. This is not to say that a western military intervention would prevent them from happening. As we can see from the experience in Iraq and Afghanistan (and Libya, where there is also an aftermath of conflict spreading into a number of neighbouring countries[3]), the consequences of western military intervention are anything but humanitarian. Even when it would suit their imperialist interests to impose a certain order over the situation and thus minimise some areas of conflict, the result in all these cases has been to accelerate the tendency towards disorder and chaotic violence. Like the economic crisis which is now facing capitalism like an unassailable wall, the proliferation of wars and imperialist tensions across the planet testify that capitalism has become a total dead-end for humanity.  

Amos 27/6/12

The bread and circuses of the Olympics is over. The circus did a great job of – momentarily - creating a sense of euphoria and national unity, of helping us forget the growing signs that the society we live in is irretrievably breaking down. And for that very reason, there’s not much bread. Not just because the Olympics was a big disappointment as far as most local and national businesses were concerned, and will leave in its wake a major addition to UK’s already gigantic debt mountain. But because the economic crisis is continuing remorselessly, and the ruling class has no alternative but to attack our living standards at every level. In short, to make us eat less and work more.

No country on the planet is spared by recession and unemployment. In Europe the rate of unemployment has already gone past 10% and is hitting young people with particular force. In Greece and Spain it’s up to 50% - and at the same time the European bureaucrats and capitalists are calling for them to work harder, proposing a return to the 6 day week for those ‘lazy’ Greeks. Whole families are being thrown out onto the streets, are unable to feed themselves adequately, but that’s not enough: if any of them have a job, they’ve got to sweat even harder to pay off the national debt.

This is why the ruling class is more and more being obliged to talk tough and show its brutal, repressive nature more openly. If workers aren’t going to knuckle down, and even worse, if they begin to band together and resist this austerity drive, they must be shown who’s boss. This was certainly the aim of the savage slaughter of the miners in South Africa in August. In the more established ‘democracies’ like Britain, we have not yet reached the stage where workers’ demonstrations are crushed with live ammunition. But there are plenty of indications that our rulers are again baring their teeth. We’ve had our summer holiday of Jubilee and Olympic celebrations. Now it’s time to get to work. You saw all those thousands who volunteered to make the Olympics a success? Well, now get ready to work longer hours for less – or even nothing.

The make-up of the new cabinet was one sign that the style of government is going to change. Cameron and Co. used to talk green, now they are putting a climate change sceptic in charge of the environment and are going full steam ahead for airport expansion. No more concessions to ‘diversity’ – three women sacked, one of them the only ‘ethnic’ in the cabinet village. The least popular ministers – Osborne, May and Hunt, who all got booed at the Paralympics – are still very much at the core of things. All this is going to cause more problems for the Lib Dems, who seem helpless to block the coalition government’s shift to the right.

But perhaps more significant are the concrete measures of intimidation taken against minorities who are vulnerable to being isolated and blamed for the problems of the national economy. Like the homeless: squatting has been definitively criminalised, despite the huge number of buildings left unused as a result of the recession and of unrestrained property speculation. Foreign students are also being picked on as their visas are revoked: a number of smaller colleges are affected, but London Metropolitan has been selected as a test case for other universities. The logic behind this is less than clear, given the exorbitant fees that are wrung out of these students, but it seems to be part of the state’s general drive to reduce immigration figures. In other words, it’s another case of scape-goating minorities, a more refined version of the brutal expulsions of gypsies that have been stepped up in France, Italy, Greece and elsewhere. And let’s not forget those who have also been supposedly given such a new and improved image by the Paralympics: the disabled. The very firm that was sponsoring the Paralympics, Atos, has been the government’s muscle in its efforts to force thousands of people off disability benefit and get them back to work.

Another category that was painted in such glowing colours at the Olympics opening ceremony, the health workers, are also under the cosh. With new plans threatening to cut wages by up to 15% while increasing the working week and reducing sick pay, 68,000 health workers in the south west of England are being used to test the waters for further pay cuts and increased rates of exploitation across the NHS and the public sector.

The working class has learned to its cost in the past that it cannot escape harm when parts of its body – whether immigrants, the homeless, ethnic minorities, women, gays, or particular trades and sectors – are singled out and attacked. In a situation where we are all facing massive reductions in our living conditions, the sowing of divisions in our ranks can only weaken our ability to resist effectively. If we are going to defend ourselves from capitalist repression and austerity, we are going to have to affirm our solidarity and unity across all divisions.  

Amos 8/9/12

As the blizzard of patriotism that surrounded the Olympics/Paralympics begins to subside, the crisis of the economy comes back in to view. And, unlike the sporting heroism of TeamGB, it’s increasingly difficult for the ruling class to find anything to celebrate in the face of lengthening stagnation.

The UK has now suffered three consecutive quarters of contraction, but the tendency to stagnation is more deeply embedded than this implies; “output has declined in five of the last seven quarters”[1]. UK output is still “4.5% lower than it was when the economy peaked in early 2008”[2].

Pressure on George Osborne to ‘change course’ and initiate a ‘plan for growth’ is increasing from all quarters. Most recently, some among the 20 economists who supported Osborne’s deficit-reduction programme in the run-up to the last election have begun to break rank[3]. In reality the latest figures show government borrowing up because of the decline in tax receipts.

Naturally, there is no shortage of helpful suggestions on how growth can be restarted. Ministers reportedly want to extend the ‘temporary’ relaxation of Sunday trading laws in the hope this will boost consumption. As expected, this provoked a chorus of criticism from various interest groups: unions talking tough to increase their control over shop workers; Christians worried about further degradation to the Sabbath; Tory MPs concerned about both the religious implications and disruption to ‘family life’, not to mention their irritation at being lied to about ministers’ intentions; small shops (who already can open on an unrestricted basis) afraid of being destroyed by competition with the big supermarkets; and lastly by Big Retail itself in the form of the chief executive of Sainsbury’s.

Could the idea work? One objection is that customers won’t have any more money to spend so simply opening longer won’t make any difference. This isn’t entirely true – longer opening would increase supermarkets outlay on wages, thus pumping a limited amount of demand into the economy. But as it would take a while for this to filter through the economy and the impact would be limited, the most immediate result would be declining profitability for the supermarkets that are already under pressure. Contrary to ruling ideology, capitalism has no intrinsic interest in consumption or production as ends in themselves but only in so far as they generate profit. An increase of consumption that leaves profits stagnant is detrimental to the system.

This underlying rule of the capitalist economy is vital to remember when assessing the worth of the other measures touted as offering a route out of the crisis. Critics of measures such as the above often critique the ‘lack of demand’ in the economy. Is this true? On the face of it, stagnating retail demand, difficulty in capitalists of all types to sell their goods, the general ‘crisis of overproduction’ would seem to support this. And yet, corporate cash reserves in the UK are reported to have reached £750 billion[4]! This is equivalent to twice the total cash pumped out under the Bank of England’s Quantitative Easing programme and is just under half a year’s total GDP. If even part of this reserve could be mobilised in the form of investment, the ‘problem’ of demand could be solved.

So why are businesses hoarding cash rather than investing it? To put it simply, once again, there is no profit in it. Part of the debate within the ruling class is therefore how to persuade business to mobilise their reserves. The irony, of course, is that the reason business supposedly won’t invest is because there is no demand in the economy.

We thus arrive at one of the central contradictions of the capitalist economy. Demand is insufficient because of a lack of investment; there is a lack of investment, because there is no demand! The critics of Osborne lay the blame at his door as the cuts have ‘sucked demand out of the economy’.

This can be overcome, they argue, by the government investing in infrastructure (new motorways, runways at Heathrow, etc.): money is pumped into the economy, increasing demand and thus motivating business to invest. Where does the government get this money? It can borrow it (ironically, from the very banks who hold these stacks of cash) or it can get it can from directly taxing business and workers.

Although something of a simplification, we can see that government spending is actually a forced mobilisation of cash reserves that business won’t invest due to lack of profitability. Such actions certainly create economic activity and will raise demand. But, once again, is this demand accompanied by an increase in profit? Certainly companies that win government contracts are happy – but at the expense of those companies who had their profits taxed in order to pay for it.

The contradiction can be partially overcome where the government borrows the money as the companies – through the intermediary of the banking system – receive a promise from the government to pay it back with interest. But the government’s capacity to pay back the money it borrows is dependent on future taxes that it can leech from the economy i.e. tomorrow’s profits and wages.

The capitalist economy is based on the extraction of profit from the labour force in the form of surplus value i.e. the value produced by the worker beyond what is needed for him to carry on working which returns to him in the form of wages. Crisis occurs when this ratio or the proportion of labour employed as opposed to capital investment (plant, raw materials, etc.) becomes too low. It is this core mechanic which induces crisis and manifests in overproduction.

None of the above strategies actually attack this root cause of crisis, acting only on the surface level of demand. This can certainly keep the economy functioning but unless there is a sufficient change in these core ratios, the underlying crisis is not resolved. Although overproduction is temporarily solved, the crisis manifests in the accumulation of unpaid (and eventually unrepayable) debts. The increasing complexity of capitalist finance kept this staggering explosion of debt hidden for a long time but when it became clear that they had grown beyond a point of no return, the whole edifice began to collapse like a pack of cards.

There is a way for capitalism to return to growth – assaulting our wages and working conditions to increase surplus value and changing the value ratio of plant to labour (the latter can only be brought about by mass bankruptcies, thus flooding the market with cheap equipment). In other words, a cataclysmic crisis which is the very thing the ruling class are trying to avoid as it threatens the stability of the entire system as we saw at the onset of the credit crunch several years ago.

And we finally arrive at the historical reality that this insane system has to offer humanity: its economic survival is dependent on widespread economic destruction. The increasingly desperate antics of the ruling class as they try and grapple with this reality can, at best, only delay this inevitable rendezvous with calamity. To return to the Olympic metaphor at the opening of this article, the capitalist system and its ruling class may have been able to win gold in its athletic youth but it is now aged and decrepit; it is the working class and its struggle for communism that now has the opportunity to go for a victory that will be shared by the whole of humanity. Ishamael 1/9/12

Note: The author of the article defends a minority position within the ICC that considers the rate and mass of profit as the core mechanic behind the economic crisis as opposed to the majority who defend the position of Rosa Luxemburg, which sees the problem of adequate demand as a basic element in the crisis. But although these respective positions differ on how they interpret the factors of profit-rates, demand, overproduction and their implications, both agree on the ultimate futility of ruling class efforts to avoid the decline of their system.

World Revolution 8/9/12

On 16 August, above the mines of Marikana, north west of Johannesburg, 34 people were killed by the bullets of the South African police, who also wounded 78 others. Immediately, the unbearable images of these summary executions went around the world. But, as always, the bourgeoisie and its media tried to distort the class character of this strike, reducing it to a sordid war between the two main unions in the mining sector, and bringing up the ghosts of apartheid.

South Africa is not being spared by the world crisis

Despite investments of several hundred billion euros in the economy, growth is weak and unemployment is massive[1]. The country’s wealth is partly based on the export of mining products like platinum, chrome, gold and diamonds. But this sector, which represents nearly 10% of GNP and 15% of the country’s exports, and employs over 800,000 workers, went through a major recession in 2011. The price of platinum, of which South Africa possesses 80% of world reserves, has been falling since the beginning of the year.

The living and working conditions of the miners, already particularly grim, have now got worse: paid miserable wages, housed in shacks, often working more than 9 hours a day in stifling, choking mines, they are now facing lay-offs and unemployment. South Africa has recently seen a large number of strikes. In February, the world’s biggest platinum mine, owned by Impala Platinum, had already been paralysed for six months by a strike.

The Marikana massacre, a trap set by the unions

It was in this context that on 10 August, 3000 miners from Marikana decided to stop work and demand decent wages: “We are exploited, neither the government nor the unions have come to help us...The mining companies make money thanks to our work and they pay us practically nothing. We are not offered a decent life. We live like animals because of our poverty wages”[2]. The miners launched a wildcat strike and the two unions, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) jumped on the bandwagon, violently clashing to defend their own interests and trapping workers in a dead-end confrontation with the police.

The NUM is a completely corrupt union which is an integral part of the state run by the president Jacob Zuma. Its open support for the governing party, the ANC, has ended up discrediting it among many workers. This has resulted in the created of a more radical sounding union, the AMCU, a split from the NUM. But like the NUM, the AMCU is not at all concerned for the workers. After a very aggressive recruitment campaign, the new union took advantage of the strike to pit its goons against the NUM’s muscle. The result: 10 miners dead and a number of wounded. But this turf war between the unions led directly to the strike being violently repressed by the state, which used this as a way of blocking the dynamic of the workers’ struggle.

After several days of clashes, Frans Baleni, the secretary general of the NUM, called in the army: “We urgently call on the special forces or the South African armed forces before the situation gets out of control”[3][3]...and why not call for an aerial attack on the mine, Mister Baleni? But the trap had already been set. The next day, the government sent in thousands of police officers, equipped with armoured cars and two helicopters, to ‘restore order’. Bourgeois order, of course.

According to several testimonies which, knowing the reputation of South Africa’s forces of repression, are probably authentic, the police proceeded to provoke the miners by firing flash-balls, water-cannon, and tear gas at them, on the lying pretext that the strikers had firearms.

On 16 August, it appears, given the exhaustion of the workers and the excitement stirred up by the ‘union representatives’ – who, by chance, suddenly disappeared - a group of miners had the nerve to ‘charge’ the police armed with sticks. What? This vile mob charging the forces of order? What insolence! And what could these several thousand police, with their guns, their riot shields, their armoured cars, their water-cannon, their grenades and their helicopters do faced with a horde of savages ‘charging ‘ at them with sticks? Obviously they had to shoot to “protect their lives”[4].

And this led to the absolutely disgusting, monstrous images which we all now know. But while the working class can only express its indignation in the face of such barbarity, it also needs to understand that the dissemination of these images also had an aim – that of spreading the mystification that the workers in the ‘truly democratic’ countries are lucky to be able to march freely behind their union banners. This was also a warning to all those who are tempted to rise up against the misery engendered by this system.

The bourgeoisie tries to distort the movement 

Immediately after the massacre, voices all around the world were heard denouncing ‘the demon of apartheid’. The bourgeoisie wants to distort the meaning of this movement by pushing it towards ethnic and nationalist issues. Julius Malema, who was expelled from the ANC in April, took himself off to Marikana to denounce the foreign companies, demanding the nationalisation of the mines and the expulsion of the ‘big white landowners’.

Exhibiting the crassest form of hypocrisy, Jacob Zuma declared to the press: “We must bring out the truth about what happened here. This is why I have decided to set up a commission of inquiry to find out the real causes of this incident”. The truth is this: the bourgeoisie is trying to dupe the working class by disguising the class struggle as a racial struggle. But the trick is a bit obvious: wasn’t it a ‘black’ government that responded to the appeal of a ‘black’ trade union to send in the police? Isn’t it a ‘black’ government which has done all it can to maintain the miners in the most wretched living conditions? Isn’t it a ‘black’ government which is using a police force trained in the apartheid era and which has voted in ‘shoot to kill’ laws? And this ‘black’ government, isn’t it run by the ANC, the party of Nelson Mandela, celebrated all over the world as the champion of democracy and tolerance?

The strike spreads

In the night of 19/20 August, trying to take advantage of the situation, the directors of Lonmin, the firm which exploits the mine, ordered “the 3000 employees on illegal strike to return to work on Monday 20 August, or face possible redundancy”[5]. But the anger of the miners was such that they defied this threat: “Are they going to sack those who are in the hospital and the morgue? In any case, it’s better to get the sack because we are suffering here. Our lives aren’t going to change. Lonmin doesn’t care about our welfare. Up till now they have refused to talk to us. They have sent in the police to kill us”[6]. Lonmin had to retreat, and meanwhile on 22 August the strike spread, with workers in several other mines, owned by Royal Bafokeng Platinum and Amplats, coming out for the same demands.

At the time of writing, after four weeks of the strike, the ANC has signed a deal to return to work, but the AMCU have said they will confront anyone reporting for duty. After the massacre 270 miners were charged with ‘public violence’ which was then changed to murder based on case law from the apartheid era. Eventually the charges were dropped, but 150 miners said they had been beaten while in custody. There have been a number of demonstrations, and a week’s strike at KCD East gold mine. Police fired on pickets, wounding four miners, in a wildcat strike at Modder East gold mine.

Julius Malema has continued to make a name for himself, but his demand for widespread nationalisation is effectively for more control by the capitalist state dominated by the ANC.

But what the Marikana massacre has shown most clearly is the violence of the democratic state. Black or white, all states are ready to carry out massacres against the working class.

 El Generico 22/8/12 (additions 8/6/12)

In the Summer 68,000 health workers (including junior doctors) in the South West of England learnt that their employers were considering cutting their pay by up to 15%, through possible reductions in basic pay of 1%;  a 10% reduction in unsocial hours  pay (many hospital nurses earn up to 30% extra due to working nights, weekends, and evenings); an increase of the working week by 1 hour without extra pay; cutting 2 days of annual leave; reducing sick pay to new staff – which will start at only 50% of pay;  a 10% cut in annual pay increments,  whilst at the same time increasing the power of managers by introducing performance-related pay. Naturally this has caused anger not only amongst those workers affected but amongst other health workers in Britain, who correctly see this as the thin end of the wedge. 

The unions reacted with great ‘anger’ and ‘surprise’ at this news. Unison and the Royal College of Nurses, the main NHS unions, both issued press statements denouncing this plan, called various demonstrations and protests and said they will no longer cooperate with the South West Consortium or NHS Trusts. Such a response by the unions has come as a surprise to many of those workers effected given their almost total absence on the shop floor, but perhaps it’s a case of better late than never? Well, if we look behind all the radical hot air by the unions we will see that they are fully involved in laying the groundwork for this attack.

The Consortium says that their proposal for the introduction of local pay agreements is within the framework of the legal and pay structures already in place. They point to the 2006 Health Act and the Agenda for Change pay structure introduced in the early 2000s, both of which contain provision for local pay agreements. The Health Act was introduced by the Labour Party whilst the unions worked closely with the management to introduce the Agenda for Change, which also contains provision for the performance-related pay that the Consortium want to introduce. The unions have also worked closely with government and management to introduce the £35bn of efficiency and productivity savings put in place by the Labour government in the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review, and they have carried on participating in the same process with the new government. In their statement denouncing the proposed attacks, Unison made clear that it is willing to work with the same 20 Trusts involved in the South West Consortium: “UNISON is willing to work in partnership with these Trusts to help them deal with their financial pressures in a way that doesn’t threaten quality of care. But we will not stand by and let this cartel rip up our nationally negotiated terms and conditions” (https://www.unisonsouthwest.org.uk/campaigns/swnhspaycartel.ashx [130]). So as long as it is done nationally Unison is willing to participate in the proposed attacks. 

As for the protection of quality of care, this will make any health worker laugh given the way the unions have worked with management to impose 3 years of wage freezes, a reduction in the number of health workers - through lay-offs, reorganisations or not replacing those who leave or retire - the increased use of temporary contracts and agency workers, reductions in bed numbers, closure of wards.  Thoroughout the NHS health workers are faced with the daily distress of trying to care for people despite all of the pressures being imposed by the management , with the collaboration of the unions.

The proposed attack is a qualitative development because rather than the hidden cuts of pay freezes, the Consortium is proposing  to directly cut pay, increase hours etc. For example if they impose the 1hr a week increase in work this will give them 3,536,000 extra hours a year for nothing! Combine this with the loss of 2 days annual leave, and the bosses will get 13,736,000 hours of labour extra a year for no more money. Each worker will have to work an extra 67 hours a year!

The unions have known about these plans for months; they have been collaborating with the Consortium up until their recent announcement that they will no longer recognise it. But now they are trying to look like they are defending the workers. What are they doing in reality? They are doing all they can to keep the 68,000 health workers in the region isolated from each other and the rest of the class. They have called protests outside of hospitals (insisting that this is not strike action) and public meetings in this or that city in order to appear to be doing something, but in reality keeping workers confined to their workplace and separate from other health workers who do not work in that  hospital or Trust. For example, in Exeter there was a demonstration of local mental health workers outside of a meeting of a board of their Trust, but the union did not tell the workers in the neighbouring general hospital about this demonstration.  At the moment beyond some public meetings the unions are doing all they can to not provide any potential meeting places between health workers (such as demonstrations) let alone with the rest of the working class. They are aware of the deep respect and solidarity for health workers amongst the working class, and have organised petitions in local towns and cities to reduce this solidarity to the passive signing of useless pieces of paper but not demonstrations where workers could come to show their solidarity.

In fact the only action recommended on the Unison website (under “How can I get involved?”) is to sign the petition, write to your MP or a local paper, comment on Twitter or Facebook, and join the union. Of course they are also calling for support for the TUC demonstration on 20 October for ‘a future that works’ (there’s no such thing in capitalism) which is also a way of appearing to mobilise for the working class while actually just spreading illusions in capitalism and its state.

Unison has publicised a leaked document about the proposed regional pay agreement when actually the Consortium has not announced the precise nature of the attacks it wants to make. This looks like a manoeuvre in which the management and union can test the water to see how ready the workers are to resist, and how well the union can control any response, before making a definitive announcement. It no accident that this attack is being proposed in the South West as it has little history of militancy. However, if the bosses and unions can impose this attack here it will be rolled out gradually over the whole of the NHS, in such a way that any region which resists it will be left isolated and thus crushed.

Faced with this it is important that health and other workers seek to try and contact each other, not to allow management and unions to keep us apart just because we work in different departments or hospitals or belong to different unions. Demand that meetings are open to all, regardless of what job they do, whether they belong to any union or none – all workers are under attack and all need to fight back together. Above all an effective struggle means getting together outside the framework of the union to discuss the attack and how to resist it.

Phil  7/9/12

In July a wave of strikes in Egypt was a clear reminder that the end of Mubarak and the arrival of Mursi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, has meant no change in the conditions in which people live and work. The involvement of 24,000 workers in the state-owned Mahalla Misr Spinning and Weaving Company and the spread of the strike to seven other factories in Alexandria and Mahalla, alongside other protests and demonstrations, show that the working class is still capable of taking militant initiatives. The repression by the state, in Suez with tear gas fired at workers of the Cleopatra Ceramics company, in South Sinai, with live ammunition to disperse protesting health workers, also demonstrate that the current regime behaves in the same way as its predecessor. The fact that the army was not brought in against the Mahalla workers is testimony to the regime’s appreciation of their history of combativity.

While the army is not deployed at every opportunity, it is not the only weapon of Egyptian capitalism. Under Mubarak the official unions were widely recognised as just another arm of the state apparatus. Alongside workers’ struggles some 200 independent unions have emerged, claiming to represent 2.5 million workers. Although these unions are not yet officially authorised they still function in the interests of capital rather than labour. The concern with democracy and legality, the sectoral limitations, and all the other means used to undermine and divide struggles are characteristics of unions everywhere.

But if workers have illusions in the new unions, there are also illusions in the new government, and in the possibility of change through parliament and elections. For analysts outside Egypt there are many questions debated. Does the Muslim Brotherhood have an understanding with the army? Is the MB in conflict with the army? Is it only a matter of time before the army gets rid of Mursi? Inside Egypt, the degree to which different factions of the bourgeoisie act together or are divided is of interest, but, for workers, what is more important is seeing that their class interests are in conflict with all factions of the ruling class.

In this the voice of leftism plays a harmful role. Among the usual variety of views among the leftists there are many who describe what has been happening in Egypt since early 2011 as a ‘revolution.’ In this the Muslim Brotherhood is portrayed as an ‘alternative’ and the post-Mubarak state a step forward. In material from the ‘Revolutionary Socialists, Egypt’ that has been published by Socialist Worker there are many statements calculated to mystify reality for the working class. “The Muslim Brotherhood represents the right wing of the revolution. It is not the counter-revolution. … since 11 February 2011 the Brotherhood has been a conservative organisation. But Shafiq [the ‘military fascist candidate’ in the presidential election] is the counter-revolution. That is why we are mobilising for protests against the military coup alongside the Brotherhood” (19/6/12). The leftists take their sides, and, as usual, it is not with the working class.

Whatever happened to the Arab Spring?

There is no ‘revolution’ in Egypt, but there has been much unrest which can only be understood in an international context. The term ‘Arab Spring’ was used in early 2011 to describe a whole range of phenomena. In Tunisia and Egypt we saw workers’ struggles alongside a wider social protest which was more vulnerable to democratic illusions. In Syria, whatever popular protests there were to start with, there is now an inter-bourgeois war which has drawn in a number of imperialist powers. But also in the Middle East in 2011 there was the largest wave of protest in the history of Israel over housing and other aspects of the cost of living.

So what has happened to these movements? In Syria there is war. In Egypt the struggle of the working class is still a factor in the situation and a potential threat to all factions of the bourgeoisie. In Israel the movement split, so that some protests demanded that the ultra-orthodox not be exempt from military service, in opposition to the concerns of others which are still focussed on real social issues. In July, on the anniversary of the first 2011 protests in Israel, there were divided and much smaller demonstrations. At one demonstration a small businessman set himself on fire and died a week later. There followed a whole wave of attempted self-immolations. In late July an army veteran succeeded in killing himself. These futile individual actions show the extent of the diminution of the movement.

Elsewhere in the region, there were anti-government protests in Sudan in June and July. These, typically, were dispersed by the police or fired on with tear gas. It is significant that when the state is concerned with war the population is protesting about its conditions of life.

So, in the Middle East, the movements of 2011 have not been repeated on anything like the same scale in 2012, even though the Egyptian example shows that the combativity of the working class is still intact. But, as we said above, social unrest can only be understood in an international context. That means not just the region but the world. In movements from India to Turkey, in Greece and in Spain, we have seen the struggles of the working class in response to capitalism’s austerity regimes. But we have also seen the obstacles workers face in their struggles. Repression, nationalism, illusions in democracy, and the sabotage of the unions are found everywhere. And what is seen in the Middle East more clearly than anywhere in the world is the threat of war. Ultimately the struggles of the working class will not only be against material deprivations, but against a system which has the drive to imperialist war at its heart.

Car 7/9/12

For more than a year and a half the politicians and media in the west have been displaying their deep sympathy for the people of Syria. The litany is incessant: Bashar al-Assad is guilty of ‘crimes against humanity’. And indeed, the slaughter being carried out by the Syrian regime has mounted up at a terrifying pace, and has even further accelerated this summer, despite all the UN appeals for a cease-fire. The dictator of Damascus continues his project of wiping out the Syrian ‘rebellion’ with considerable determination, declaring recently that “this will take some time still” and that the growing desertion by senior regime officials amounts to “a self-cleansing operation by the state first of all, and by the nation in general”. 

Since 15 March 2011, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 23,000 have been killed. And how many of the 200,000 injured will not be maimed for life, or will not survive their wounds? Assad certainly leaves little to chance, because he has even been bombing hospitals and sending in his troops to terrorise them and murder his enemies. Al-Qoubir, Damas, Rifha, Aleppo, Dera, Daraya, all these martyred towns are symbols of the extreme brutality that has descended on the country.

We should add to this a situation of humanitarian disaster. Food, milk for children, medicines, care for the wounded, water – there is a catastrophic lack of all these things in most towns and regions. Houses have been destroyed en masse and there is a serious shortage of shelter. Electricity cuts often last 4 to 5 days and supplies may only be resumed for an hour or so, as in Aleppo.

Fleeing the fighting and the exactions of Assad’s army, but also from the Free Syrian Army, which is increasingly being accused of certain massacres, nearly 300,000 people have gone into exile, whether to the south of Syria, towards Lebanon and Jordan, or north towards Turkey and even to Iraq. Masses of refugees are being kept in miserable camps in the hope of one day being able to return home...where everything has been destroyed.

In total, according to the UN, we are talking about over two and a half million people, women, children, the aged, in a ‘situation of distress’.

Tears of the crocodile

These alarming figures have drawn tears from the leaders of the planet, but they are tears of the crocodile. Fabius, the French foreign minister, said that this was “an intolerable and unacceptable situation”. And we would applaud these brave words as the expression of a legitimate revulsion against such horror – if they weren’t part a cynical masquerade. 

On 27 August, François Hollande declared: “I solemnly declare that along with our allies we will remain very vigilant about preventing the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime, which for the international community would be a legitimate cause for direct intervention”. This intervention would follow in the footsteps of Barak Obama who not long before said that the use of chemical weapons would mark a “red line” and would be a reason for sending in troops against the Syrian regime. In other words, as long as the killing is done with ‘traditional’ weapons, that’s OK, but watch out for crossing that “red line”. 

In fact the western bourgeoisie has been threatening to intervene for months, but it’s in no position to do so, and diplomatic initiatives have come and gone, each one more hypocritical than the one before. And even if they did intervene, this would not at all be in order to support the population but to open the door to a new free-for-all, a new escalation of horror whose first victim would again be the Syrian population.

This war of so-called ‘liberation’, this ‘struggle for democracy’, is an imperialist war pure and simple. All the regional and global powers are involved in it, with the USA, Russia, China, France and Britain in the front line. The involvement and responsibility of these gangsters is not restricted to their gesticulations in the UN or elsewhere, but through the arms and cash they are supplying to both camps[1].

The talk of setting up a buffer zone on Syria’s border with Turkey, to offer shelter to the tens of thousands of refugees in the area, is a vast smokescreen, because it’s not viable given Assad’s opposition to it. It would more or less require open war with Damascus because it would serve as a launch pad for most of the imperialist sharks, flying the flag of ‘peacekeeping’, with all the attendant risks for the refugees. We should remember how the UN, and France in particular, allowed thousands of people to be massacred in Srebenica by troops under Milosevic.

If the UN did intervene, we would have to recall the solicitude with which the Afghans, and then the Iraqis, have been treated since 2001 in the name of the ‘war against terror’ or ‘for democracy’. Both countries have been shattered by these interventions, leaving the population prey to rival warlords, each one more backward than the one before.

We should also keep in mind the intrigues and the violence which presided over the establishment of French and British protectorates in this region of the Middle East when the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of the First World War. The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 carved up Syria and Iraq while promising ‘freedom’ to the Arab peoples. The bourgeoisie always makes a great show of its good intentions while hiding its real aims under a mountain of lies.

One thing is for sure, what is happening today under our eyes is not just the expression of the madness of Assad, but of this decadent social system. And it is without doubt the prelude to an unprecedented aggravation of the situation throughout the Middle East. The consequences will be disastrous, as we can already see with the extension of the conflict into the Lebanon.

Wilma 31/8/12         

"Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another (...) And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years".

So wrote Marx in 1848, in the Communist Manifesto. Capitalism, in the end, has lasted longer than Marx expected – but the class struggle is more than ever present around the world. Where the workers of 1848 relied on railways, which were certainly not created for their benefit, the workers and revolutionaries of 2012 rely more and more on the Internet to spread their ideas, to discuss, and – we hope – little by little to forge that "ever-expanding union" of which Marx spoke. The Internet has profoundly modified the way we work, and above all the way we communicate.

When the ICC was formed in 1975, the Internet of course did not exist: ideas were spread through the paper press, distributed in the hundreds of small radical bookshops that sprouted up in the aftermath of May '68 and similar struggles around the world. Correspondence was carried on through the post, by (often handwritten!) letters. To find revolutionaries in other countries, there was no other solution than to travel physically in the hope that it would be possible to make contact.

Today, everything but the physical contact has moved from paper to electronic media. And where once we sold our paper press in bookshops around the world, today our sales take place above all in demonstrations and at workplaces in struggle.

Our press has always relied on sharing articles across national boundaries, and in this way trying to contribute to the development of an internationalist outlook in the working class. Today, the greater speed of electronic media has made it possible for the ICC's sections to work together more closely, especially those sections that share a common language, and we want to use this to increase the international unity of our press.

All this has led us to undertake a re-evaluation of our press, and of the relative place of the electronic and paper press in our overall intervention. We are convinced that the paper press remains a vital part of our arsenal – it is through the paper press that we can be present on the ground, directly in the struggle. But the paper press no longer plays exactly the same role as it did in the past: it needs to become more flexible, adaptable to a changing situation.

Given our limited strength, this has led us to the conclusion that if we are to reinforce and adapt our web site, we need at the same time to reduce the effort we put into the paper press: one of the first consequences of this reorientation of our publications is therefore going to be a reduction in the frequency of our paper publications. Concretely, in the case of our press in Britain, this means that we will be moving to a bi-monthly paper.

We are only at the beginning of our reflections on the subject of the press, and we expect over the year to come to make further modifications, in particular to the way our web site is structured. We would like to involve our readers in this effort, and will shortly be publishing a survey on the site to invite you to give your own opinion. In the meantime, we would be more than happy for our readers to pass on their suggestions through the forum.

Everything we have said above applies, of course, to the situation in those areas where Internet access is widespread. There are still regions where the lack or difficulty of Internet access means that a paper press continues to play the same role that it did in the past. This is particularly true of India and Latin America, and we will be working with our sections in India, Mexico, Venezuela, Peru and Ecuador to determine how best to adapt the paper press to conditions in those countries.

We are writing separately to all our subscribers about what this means for the duration and future of their subscriptions. Obviously we still strongly encourage our readers to support our work by subscribing to our paper publications, as well as taking out extra copies to sell.

It has to be said that even among cinephiles who are used to small art cinemas, certain films provoke cruel prejudices. Going to see David Cronenberg’s  Cosmopolis, it’s easy to be assailed by negative feelings when you queue up for tickets. The title itself is a little off-putting: the direct reference to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis can raise doubts about Cronenberg’s modesty. Another pretentious film costing 20 million dollars and realised with the aid of dodgy loans? And already there have been some harsh words by the critics and audiences walking out en masse before the end of the movie. Even worse, some journalists have acted like verbose intellectuals without really understanding anything. And then the posters feature the film’s lead, Robert Pattinson, better known for his role as a teen-idol in vampire movies.

But what is Cosmopolis? First of all it’s a baroque scenario taken from a book of the same name. The billionaire Eric Packer has but one aim: to get to his hair-stylist! From inside his armoured limousine, on the long road that leads to this insignificant objective, capitalism can be seen collapsing, the population rises up, riots break out. At the beginning of the film, two people enter the café where the billionaire had stopped for a few minutes. Brandishing dead rats, who serve as a kind of imaginary money, they shout out the first lines of the 1848 Communist Manifesto: “a spectre is haunting the world”…the spectre of capitalism. But nothing seems to divert Packer from his absurd aim, even the abstract and mysterious threat hanging over him.

This film is more than a superficially radical critique of capitalism, which was fairly typical of a number of movies in the 70s, even though they were often very good films. Packer is more than a cynical billionaire, more than a diabolical trader; he is a symbol of capitalism itself. The key to grasping the film is there: like the characters of Carlos Saura in Ana y los lobos (Anna and the Wolves), who are illustrations of the social make-up of Francoist Spain, the characters of Cosmopolis are metaphors, incarnations which go beyond the individual strictly speaking. Packer meets up with his fiancée, an incarnation of the artistic milieu and a promulgator of theories; a doctor, full of the illusions and blindness of bourgeois experts for whom everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds; the body guard, an image of the repressive forces; an unemployed worker, a proletarian who struggles to become aware of his strength and the inconsistency of the flamboyant slogans of this world, “dead for a hundred years”, but on which he had staked so much hope: “I wanted you to save me!”.

While the film underestimates the role of the state in decadent capitalism, its author is nevertheless perfectly aware of the vanity of pseudo-revolt, of inoffensive and symbolic actions. An individual, who you think at first is the mysterious threat, arrives merely to throw a custard pie at Packer. Under the camera flashes that ensue, we see a totally simulated brawl. After a ridiculous speech, vaunting his meaningless feats, the pieman can only add pathetically: “right…I’ve gotta go”. Unlike these pseudo-historic gestures, the revolution, for Cronenberg, is a serious thing, a violent confrontation, a radical overturning of bourgeois society.

But the director seems aware of the limits of the exercise; how can you denounce a world in collapse with such a costly film, financed by some of those who have every interest in preserving the system? Through the intermediary of Packer’s fiancée, Cronenberg responds very honestly to this question. A very wealthy artist, she plays at being disinherited in a taxi or in shabby bars, and makes superficial criticisms of her lover. In the end, although she decides to publicly take her distance from him, making a show of breaking with him, she can only carry on secretly supporting capitalism. She thus crystallises all the contradictions of the exercise which, while being a vigorous criticism of capitalism, still has to obey its laws. This is an occasion for an interesting reflection on art under the reign of commerce.

So how do we explain the negative reaction of a large part of the public? First, the film is extremely dense. A bit like the work of Stanley Kubrick, Cronenberg doesn’t leave anything to chance. Although he bases the film on the work of Don DeLillo for the dialogue, each scene, each phrase, each image makes you think. Each detail is charged with meaning in a coherent whole. It’s true that you need to be carrying serious political luggage and several views to grasp all the elements of the film, since there are so many references to the workers’ movement and political literature and so many significant details. But it’s truly rare, given the price of tickets these days, for spectators to desert the cinema so massively and with such irritation, however bad a film may be. There is no doubt something more fundamental involved here. Many people have probably seen something that they are not used to seeing, or have experienced a kind of slap in the face. Cosmopolis is not a simple rigorous demonstration, which can be responded to with other arguments. While it is indeed a radical critique of capitalism, it is first and foremost a poetical one. The strength of great artists is to give their work an emotional dimension which penetrates the spirit and cuts through the cold mechanics of rationality. If such works make people run away or fill them with enthusiasm, if it grates on them or transports them, it’s because they are producing something which is complex and hard to explain: emotion.

El Generico 31/7/12  

This article is based on the presentation to our public meeting in Paris on 30 June, written to introduce and stimulate discussion.

The electoral results achieved by the extreme right have for some time been feeding the fear of fascism election after election. And this political fringe really is distinguished by a particularly vicious, xenophobic and racist discourse…

And it is also true that this discourse is reminiscent of the nauseating themes put forward by the fascist parties as they rose to power in the 1930s, particularly in Germany and Italy.

Does this similarity mean that there is a danger of fascism coming to power today as it did in the 1930s?

Our view on this question, and its discussion, are the subject of this public meeting.

A number of things seem to suggest an answer in the affirmative:

• Today, as in the 1930s, the economic crisis is hitting the majority of the population very hard;
• Today, as in the 1930s, the extreme right is searching for a scapegoat for all the ills of society. Yesterday the Jews, portrayed as the representatives of big international capital, or of the danger of Bolshevism; today the Muslims, or Arabs or immigrants who “take our jobs” or “cause the trouble” in the world;
• Today, as in the 1930s, the most receptive to these extreme right ideas are often the small artisans or businessmen ruined by the crisis, but also a part of the working class;
• Today the extreme right is developing in many countries, even more than in the 1930s, and tends to increase its political influence:

• In Holland the euro-sceptic, Islamophobic Freedom Party was in coalition with the Liberal and Christian Democratic Parties under a Liberal prime minister from 2010 until this year;
• In Hungary, the prime minister after the legislative elections in 2010, V. Orban, installed an authoritarian government which, according to his democratic opponents “liquidated democracy”. And it is true that in addition to harsh attacks on the living conditions of the working class he suppressed a number of democratic mechanisms;
• In Austria, the 2008 elections gave the two main parties of the extreme right, the Movement for Austria’s Future and the Freedom Party , 29% of the vote between them;
• In Greece, so badly hit by the crisis, the openly fascist Golden Dawn won 18 seats with 7% of the vote in the June election. It has also been involved in intimidating immigrants, as well as getting publicity for slapping another politician on live TV;
• In the USA the Tea Party, which has developed some of the most retrograde propaganda, such as the demand to teach creationism in schools, is an influential force on the right.

Even parties that do not claim to be on the extreme right are openly taking up its themes.  In Switzerland, for example, the populist Democratic Union of the Centre has a campaign showing a white sheep chasing a black sheep, the latter symbolising the Arabs and Romanians, the two nationalities blamed in this country.

All these examples and elements of analysis seem, at first sight, to support the idea of a fascist danger in the present period.

However, we cannot be satisfied with this level of analysis. To compare two historic periods, in this case the 1930s and the present, we cannot limit ourselves to some elements, however important they are – like the crisis, the push of the extreme right, some success for xenophobic and racist propaganda, etc. We have to place these elements in the context of the dynamic of society and within that the relation of force between the bourgeoisie and proletariat.

That is what we will look at here.

What produced fascism in the 1930s?

We have already mentioned the crisis. However, to understand the eruption of this particular form of the domination of capitalism in society in a number of countries we must take account of another factor which we consider essential.

This factor is the heaviest defeat the working class has ever suffered, that of the revolutionary wave of 1917-23. Remember that it took the form of the degeneration of the Russian revolution and the physical and ideological crushing of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie. And that was particularly true in the countries where its revolutionary struggle had gone furthest in putting capitalist order in question. All the Communist parties were transformed into organs for the defence of capitalism in the particular form of state capitalism existing in the USSR.

Such a defeat gave rise to the longest and most profound period of world-wide counter-revolution that the proletariat has ever known. The main distinction of this counter-revolution was that it rendered the proletariat of the whole world increasingly subject to the bourgeoisie’s imperatives. The ultimate submission was its enlistment as cannon fodder in the second imperialist World War.

During the Second World War the belligerent countries showed three different models of the organisation of society; all three were capitalist and all three were built around the strengthening of state capitalism, a general tendency affecting all countries in the world:

• Democratic state capitalism,
• Stalinist state capitalism,
• Fascist state capitalism.

The differences between the democratic capitalist state and the others are obvious. With hindsight today it is also obvious that it is more efficient that the two other forms, as much for the management of production as the control of the working class. There were certainly differences in form between the fascist and Stalinist capitalist states, the latter having developed on the basis of the state bureaucracy which, as the revolution degenerated, took the place of the old bourgeoisie overthrown in 1917.  

Why were some capitalist states fascist at that time?

The fact that the fascist capitalist state (just like the Stalinist) was stripped of all democratic mechanisms destined to mystify the working class was not a problem at the time these regimes were installed in Russia, Germany and Italy. In fact there was no necessity to mystify the proletariat seeing that it had just been bleed dry in the defeat of the revolutionary wave (particularly in the USSR and Germany). What was needed was to maintain that defeat through the violence of a ferocious open dictatorship.

In Germany and Italy fascist parties took on the politics of state capitalism in the interests of national capital, in the context of an economy disorganised by the war and driven to the brink by an economic crisis. The bourgeoisie in these countries needed to prepare a new war. This was done under the banner of revenge for defeat and/or humiliation suffered at the time of the First World War. From the beginning of the 1920s the fascists were the champions of such an option.

In these two countries the transition from democracy to fascism was carried out democratically, with the support of big capital.

We have said that the profound defeat of the working class was an essential condition for the establishment of fascism in the countries where it achieved power. According to a belief widely spread by the bourgeoisie, it was fascism that defeated the working class in the 1920s and 1930s. That is completely false. Fascism did nothing but complete a defeat mainly carried out by the left of the bourgeoisie’s political apparatus. At the time of the revolutionary wave the bourgeoisie was represented by the social democratic parties which had betrayed the working class and proletarian internationalism. During the First World War they called on the working class to support the bourgeoisie’s war effort in different countries, against the very principles of proletarian internationalism.

Why did the social democratic parties play this role? Was it necessary for them to do so? Faced with a working class which is not only undefeated, but is also developing its revolutionary struggle, rendering certain repressive forces inoperative, it would be suicidal for the bourgeoisie to deploy its brute force first of all. Brute force is only effective when it is used as part of a strategy capable of mystifying the proletariat, to use any weakness, to turn it towards impasses, to set traps for it. And this dirty work can only be carried out by political parties which, although they have betrayed the proletariat, still have the confidence of large parts of the working class.

So, in 1919, the very democratic German SPD, last political pillar of capitalist domination at the time of the revolution in Germany, had the task of being the executioner of the revolutionary working class. To this end it was supported by the remains of the army still faithful to the state and set in motion the repressive Freikorps, the ancestors of the Nazi shock troops.

For this reason, of all the enemies of the working class, right wing democrats, left wing democrats, extreme left whether democratic or not, populists whether fascist or not, the most dangerous are those who can mystify the proletariat in order to prevent it advancing towards it revolutionary project. This is primarily the job of the left and extreme left of capital, and this is why it’s so important to unmask them.

What is the situation in the present period?

The great difference with the 1930s is that in 1968 the working class in France and internationally opened a new course of class struggle, a new dynamic that could open up towards major confrontations between the classes. While it has certainly experienced very great difficulties since then, the working class has not suffered a major defeat sufficient to open a period of counter-revolution worldwide, similar to the 1930s.

That is the reason why the essential condition for establishing fascism, a proletariat defeated on the global level, ideologically and physically crushed in several key capitalist countries, does not exist at the present.

In the present period what the proletariat has to fear most is not the peril of fascism coming to power directly, but the democratic mystifications and the old workers’ parties that have gone over to the class enemy. They function to sabotage every attempt by the working class to defend itself from capital and affirm its revolutionary nature. It is no accident that today these parties are the first to raise the threat of fascism in order to push workers into defending democracy and the left.

In these conditions how can we explain the present rise in populist parties with the same themes as the fascists of the 1930s?

It is the consequence of the difficulties the working class is having in drawing out its own perspective, the proletarian revolution, as an alternative to the bankruptcy of the capitalist mode of production.

So, even if the bourgeoisie does not have its hands free to unleash its own response to the crisis of its system - generalised imperialist war - society is rotting on its feet under the effects of the economic crisis. This process of the decomposition of society produces a ragbag of obscurantist, xenophobic ideologies, based on hatred of others who are seen as competitors or enemies. A significant part of the population, including the working class, is influenced by this to a greater or lesser extent.

Faced with this the solution is certainly not a mobilisation or specific struggle against fascism, nor the defence of democracy, but the development of the proletariat’s autonomous struggle against capitalism as a whole. 

ICC  30/6/12

EDL fiasco in Walthamstow

On Saturday 1 September the English Defence League planned a march to intimidate Muslims, immigrants and minorities in the Walthamstow area of London. This was advertised as being against Sharia Law, in line with their incredible claim to not be racist. In the event the EDL could only mobilise 200. “They were outnumbered in Walthamstow because a large number of local people (mainly young and in the typical Walthamstow mixture) turned up as well as the usual professional anti-fascists and blocked the route to the town hall, so the police had to shepherd them down the back streets. The Socialist Worker/UAF claim there were 4,000 to the EDL's 200. The police were visibly protecting the EDL all along the route, and outside the town hall Tommy Robinson made a complete dick of himself by declaiming in front of the crowd without a sound system, looking like Mussolini practicing in front of a mirror. The EDL 'strategy' of parachuting into a 'multicultural' area was once again proved to be self-defeating. I live in Walthamstow and I don't think the EDL have any regular presence here, so they really do present themselves as a bunch of drunken outside troublemakers. This fiasco will probably exacerbate the divisions within the EDL. There were several accounts of rows and even punch ups between EDL members.” (Alf on libcom.org).

The demonstration was called by Unite Against Fascism, and unlike the EDL they were able to get their speakers heard, including “… local MP Stella Creasy, alongside speakers from mosques, trade unions, faith groups and local activists” (Socialist Worker Online). Meanwhile the democratic state has continued its scapegoating of immigrants by summarily excluding thousands of students at London Met, some of them prevented from taking the exam at the end of their course…

War declared on music and dancing, nothing less. “Culture is our petrol... Music is our mineral wealth” says Malian kora player Toumani Diabate in The Guardian on October 23. Unfortunately for the region it is also laden with oil and sought-after minerals. Music, which it’s internationally renowned for, has coursed through the blood of Malians for ages. Now Sharia demands that it is replaced with Qur’anic verse. Not only is the music dying under this capitalist terror but so are many in the region, some through lynchings, stoning to death, whipping and torture, cutting off limbs.... No wonder “No-one is dancing”, and there’s worse to come.

Below we have translated an article on Mali from our section in France written in early September. The basic lines of the article and the overall analysis have since been confirmed about this region’s descent into barbarity and chaos.

As expected by the piece, the UN Security Council has authorised the formation of an African-led military expedition in order to “recapture the north”. The fall-out from the so-called “liberation” of Libya continues to contribute to the downward spiral: the Tuaregs who fled Libya with countless tonnes of weaponry; the jihadist’s “international brigade” coming from all over; and there’s the new major player in the form of the group Ansar Dine, set up by ex-elements of Gaddafi’s “Islamic Legion” composed of “exiles from the Sahel, whom Gaddafi used as cannon-fodder” (Observer, 28.10.12). Ansar Dine has recently formed an alliance with Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb in this cesspit of decomposition. The leaders of Ansar Dine, particularly one Ag Ghaly, killer and kidnapper, are, in the opinion of the US Council of Foreign Relations, the people the US should be negotiating with. The most significant development to be added to the article is that, while the running has been made by the US and France in military intervention, German imperialism, through diplomacy at the moment, is now muscling in on the act.

Mali sinks into chaos and barbarity

Since the military coup of March 22 which tore the country to pieces, Mali is now bathing in a bloody chaos. It is prey to a number of imperialist gangs and powers who are fighting over its body. While hundreds of thousands of its inhabitants quit their homes to try to escape the massacres, others are systematically tortured, coldly beaten and even stoned to death. The people of the towns and the country are living in misery and in frightening insecurity as the bloody armed forces are preparing to aggravate and generalise the killings in the name of the “liberation” of the northern region which is in the hands of the Islamist groups.

“One couldn’t be clearer about the situation: a coup d’etat in the South, in the North a rebellion which wants to set up a theocratic state from another age, Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and its consorts who scoff at the entire world, their bosses, among the most wanted people on the planet, stroll unconcerned around Timbuktu or Gao and whose crimes would surely dispatch them to International Criminal Court along with those those awaiting trial in The Hague.

In Bamako, the acting president, who couldn’t be greatly faulted in the crisis that is hitting his country, is lynched in front of passive or even laughing conscripts and by idle youths who have no chance of existing outside of the present chaos, being brainwashed into committing this abominable crime. The “saviour of the nation”, Amadou Haya Sango, head of the junta which has seized power from the hands of the president on his departure, saves nothing at all (...) And his troops are using torture, whippings and arbitrary imprisonment against all those who don’t support the “cause”.

Every day Mali is sinking a little more into chaos and all the ingredients of a real time bomb are coming together. It’s a new Somalia in gestation, closer and more worrying. Everyone claims their determination not to let AQIM set themselves up, all claim their indignation faced with such a descent into hell”[1].

Here’s the perfect description of a state of terror and of a population taken hostage by civilian, military and Islamic gangsters. Faithful to their barbarous reputation, the latter have set in motion their machine to mutilate, stone to death, get rid of all those who don’t conform to their “Sharia”.

Here’s a characteristic illustration of the mentality and methods of this “tribe” from another age which rules over Gao: “Gao is not too far. The black flag of the Salfists flutters over the road block. The youth who stops myself and my driver is not much more than 14 years old. He’s concerned hearing the music crackling out of the old car radio. ‘Who’s that?’ he yells in Arabic.

- Bob Marley.

- We are in the land of Islam and you’re listening to Bob Marley? We are the jihadists! Get out of your car, we are going to settle this with Sharia.

Beads in one hand and a Kalachnikov in the other, he reminds me of the boy soldiers in Sierra Leone 20 years earlier... The children are often more ferocious than the adults. We hurry to assure him of our faithfulness to Islam before being authorised to carry on (...) Coming from Algeria and elsewhere, all are found at the commissariat of police, now called the ‘Islamic police’: Abdou is Ivorian; Amadou, Nigerian; Abdoul, Somalian; El Hadj, Senegalese; Omer from Benin and Aly from Guinea; Babo, Gambian... A jihadist international!  Dark glasses on his nose, his face covered by an enormous beard, a Nigerian explains that he’s a member of Boko Harum, the group responsible for a number of attacks in the north of his country. He talks of Mali as the “promised land”, denounces the west and the ‘unbelievers’ and swears that he’s ‘ready to die’, if it’s the will of God”[2].

The lives of the populations living under this “government” of diverse Malian cliques who rival each other in barbarity is abominable. But above all the bourgeois world do not care about the suffering of these victims leaving them to rot and cynically waits the monstrous outbursts that are being prepared.

The decomposition of Mali is here for good

After six months of gestures and haggling between the Malian brigands, a heterogeneous coalition of Malian cliques has officially asked for help from the Economic Community of the States of East Africa, “in the framework of recovering the occupied territories of the north and the struggle against terrorism”. According to le Monde of September 8 2012, Paris, which presides over the Security Council of the UN, quickly announced the organisation of an international conference on the Sahel for September 26 in New York on the margins of the General Assembly of the UN, whose support is necessary for a military intervention in Mali. In fact the countries of the East African Community are only waiting for the green light from the Security Council in order to send some 3300 soldiers to the front. We also know that since the beginning of the occupation of the north by Islamists, the big powers, particularly France and the United States, are pushing for the countries in the zone to get involved militarily in Mali, promising them financial and logistical help. Clearly, after embracing Mali by supporting or directly arming the killer bands, France and the United States, with their rivalry, are ready to launch a new war under the pretext of helping Mali to recover its “territorial integrity” and in the name of the fight against “Islamic terrorism”.

Unfortunately, for the working class and the oppressed of this region, all the bourgeois forces around the UN and the East African Community, who hypocritically claim their “determination” and “indignation” in order to better justify an armed intervention certainly don’t want to launch their forces into action with the aim of sparing the population from this descent into “hell”. Who really thinks that French and American imperialism are sincerely indignant faced with the misery that the proletarian masses of this region have to submit to? Who could think that these gang bosses will fight AQIM and its consorts with the sole aim of establishing “peace” and “the security of peoples” in this zone?

Obviously, the answer is no-one. In truth our great democratic barbarians are ready to put the whole region to the torch simply because their strategic and economic interests are directly threatened by these armed groups, preventing the good functioning of economic traffic. This is what can be understood when the French and American authorities talk about “the war against terrorist groups” and “for the security of the zone’s provision of raw materials”. In the same way, certain elements of the bourgeois press are preparing “public opinion” in the sense of better justifying the coming massacres: “It’s no longer hypothetical, it’s a certainty: the more time goes on, the more the decomposition of this broken state is accentuated and the more the humanitarian, strategic and political nightmare of the Somalisation of Mali haunts East Africa, the Maghreb and soon Europe. Even those who, a couple of months ago, accorded the secession of the north some attenuating circumstances through sympathy with the long-time neglected social-economic claims of the Tuaregs, now fear the brutal grip of the most intransigent Islamist groups on whom rest the populations of Azawad. How can terrorism and all sorts of trafficking finding sanctuary throughout the Sahel under the cover of Sharia and the banners of a twisted Jihadism be accepted?”[3].

In effect, from Algeria to Nigeria, from Libya to Niger, from Sudan to Mali, from Chad to Gabon, passing through the Ivory Coast, all this part of Africa is full of the most wanted raw materials the control of which constitutes an extremely high strategic stake. Thus even if they know that they are not going to come out unscathed the various vultures cynically keep the chaos going. We know that France has never stopped its military intervention in this zone, notably Mauritania and Niger in company with the troops of these countries in order to protect its businesses such as AREVA which exploits Nigerian uranium. The United States are also not far behind as the publication Jeune Afrique notes: “Their role (the USA) has become still more vital since the north has fallen into the hands of the Islamists and the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (...) The tension which reigns in the Malian north is also provoking the Pentagon to strengthen its presence in Mauritania (...) The Washington Post has just affirmed that more than 8 million dollars has been released in order to renew a base close to the Malian frontier and undertake surveillance operations together with Mauritanian forces. The two other hot spots prompting the USA to act are Nigeria, with the growing presence of Bako Harum, and Somalia (...) General Carter Ham (who leads the Africom forces) stressed to Congress last March: ‘If we don’t have bases on the continent, our means of ISR (information, surveillance and reconnaissance) will be limited and that will contribute to weakening the security of the USA’ (...) Also in front of the Congress Carter Ham declared that he wanted to be able to establish a new base for surveillance at Nzara, in south Sudan. Here again this project is explained by local circumstances. Tensions between Sudan and its southern neighbour rich in hydrocarbons doesn’t leave Washington, which must assure the security of the petrol companies in the region, indifferent.”

It couldn’t be clearer: the US gang boss and its competitors are going to pulverise the whole region of the Sahel, beginning with Mali, with the aim of securing (amongst other things) the zones that are “rich in hydrocarbons”.

Mali isn’t just an “African Afghanistan” but the face of a moribund capitalism

Here’s a country in total decomposition which can offer no viable perspective to its population and to its children, many of whom, in order to survive, are manipulated or recruited by various mafias and traffickers who transforms them into soldiers and mercenaries. This is how these simple young victims of capitalist misery can become, from one day to the next, killers and cruel “apprentice hangmen”. All these youths, unemployed and those that have not worked, all those who have nothing find themselves at the mercy of all the criminal brigands thirsty for profits and blood: civilian or military “democrats”, putchists, independentists and nationalists, “jihadists” and other “people of God”. 

Amina, 9.9.12

We are publishing here an article, written by a close sympathiser of the ICC in Spain, which recounts and draws lessons from the movement of workers and the oppressed in Palestine. We welcome this initiative. In a region where there is a brutal imperialist conflict which brings enormous suffering to the population, words like class, proletariat, social struggle, proletarian autonomy ...have been buried by the words war, nationalism, ethnic rivalries, religious conflicts etc. This is why these recent mobilisations are so important and need to be made known to workers in all countries. We are offered solidarity with nations, peoples, governments, ‘liberation’ organisations...we have to reject this kind of solidarity! Our solidarity can only go out to the workers and the oppressed in Palestine, Israel, Egypt, Tunisia and the rest of the world. CLASS SOLIDARITY AGAINST NATIONAL SOLIDARITY!

ICC

Massive demonstrations on the West Bank against the cost of living, unemployment, and the Palestinian Authority

In the Middle East, so often on the front pages as a result of military massacres and barbarism, rivalries between different imperialist gangsters who have taken the civil population hostage, and of all sorts of hatreds and nationalist, ethnic, or religious movements (which the ‘democratic’ western powers foment and encourage as it suits their interests); when the bourgeois press has been preoccupied in recent days with the disturbances in the Muslim world  caused by films and cartoons caricaturing Mohammed – virtually nothing is being written about the big demonstrations and strikes during the month of September against the effects of the capitalist crisis on the lives of the proletariat and the oppressed strata in the Palestinian territories on the West Bank. And yet these have been the biggest demonstrations for years[1].     

In an often desperate situation, the proletariat and the exploited population in the Palestinian territories, subject to military occupation, to blockades and total contempt for their lives and their suffering by the Israeli state, finds it very difficult to escape the influences of nationalism and Islamism, to avoid being dragooned by the various organisations that wage ‘armed resistance’ against Israel – in other words, heading for the sacrificial altar faced with a vastly superior military force. But it is the precisely the struggle against the effects of the profound economic crisis of world capitalism which opens up the possibility of massive proletarian struggles on an international scale, of going beyond sectional, national, ethnic or other divisions within the working class, of breaking out of all kinds of illusions and mystifications (illusions in ‘democracy’ under capitalism, in ‘national liberation’, etc).

Strikes and demonstrations

What unleashed the wave of strikes and demonstrations was the announcement by the government led by Prime Minister Fayyad[2] of an increase in the price of basic products like food and petrol. This was the spark which lit the fires of defiance towards the Palestinian Authority. The latter is more and more regarded as a nest of corrupt careerists, protecting a whole caste of Palestinian capitalists of whom Fayyad is the personification. It doesn’t even have a semblance of legitimacy: there has been no electoral circus since 2006 and it’s in conflict with Hamas. It is incapable of solving the least problem of the Palestinian economy which is totally dependent on foreign gifts, which is strangled by the military occupation and Israel’s exhaustive controls over imports and exports, prices, taxes and natural resources (thanks to the Paris accords, the economic annex to the Oslo agreement).

Already during the summer, the malaise gave rise to various protests. For example, at the end of June, a demonstration in Ramallah following the announcement of a meeting between president Abbas and the Israeli Deputy PM, Shauz Mofaz, ended with brutal repression by the Palestinian police.

With massive unemployment (57% according to the UN, and particularly heavy among young people), and a cost of living which means that the majority of population are struggling to eat, and with growing discontent throughout the population (for example, 150,000 government employees are owed back wages), the announcement of the price increases on 1st September was the detonator.

From 4 September massive demonstrations for the improvement of living conditions took place day after day on the West Bank (Hebron, Ramallah, Jenin, etc). The demonstrations were also directed against israeli control of the economy of the territories (the Paris accords), but it was clear that the discontent was not limited to an anti-Israeli or nationalist sentiment. The focus of the demonstrations were living and working conditions. In Ramallah the young people cried “Before we were fighting for Palestine, now we are fighting for a bag of flour”[3].

At the beginning of the protests, Abbas, involved in a power struggle with his rival Fayyad, showed sympathy for the “Palestinian spring”. But as the demonstrations developed and the expression of discontent was aimed not only at the Fayyad government or the Paris accords, but against the Palestinian Authority itself, Fatah, which at the beginning had played a certain role in channelling and even organising demonstrations, did everything it could to prevent their radicalisation and extension.

We can say the same about Hamas, which no doubt profited from the mobilisations to try to destabilise the current PA government, but which drew back in the face of the breadth of the movement and the danger of contagion in Gaza. 

In Nablus, a demonstrator declared: “We are here to say to the government that enough is enough...we want a government which lives like the people live and eats what the people eat”[4]. A placard in the village of Beit Jala put it like this: “We are tired of all the talk of reforms...one government after another...one minister after another...and corruption is still there”[5].

In Jenin, the demonstrators demanded a minimum wage, the creation of jobs for all the unemployed and the reduction of the cost of signing on at university. Prime minister Fayyad announced that he was ready to resign.

The massive demonstrations continued, with road blockades and clashes with the police of the Palestinian authority. On 10 September a general transport strike began on the appeal of the unions. Taxi drivers, truckers, bus drivers participated massively. Many sectors, like the employees of the day nurseries, joined the strike. The movement widened. On the 11th the students and high school pupils struck for 24 hours in solidarity with the general strike.

Workers from all the Palestinian universities, together with the students, called a general strike for September 13.

Faced with this situation, and following a meeting with the trade unions, the government announced that it was postponing the price rises, that it would pay half of the wages owed to public employees since August, and that it would make cuts in the salaries and privileges of the politicians and high officials of the PA. 

On the 14th, the transport union cancelled the call for a strike because “constructive negotiations” had begun with the PA.

Thus, the massive protests seemed to have calmed down, at least temporarily, but the social malaise had not gone away. The unions of the public employees and the primary school teachers announced mobilisations and work stoppages for the 17th. The unions in the health sector announced on September 18 that they would also begin movements if their demands (increased staffing, improved mobility and chances of promotion for the workers) were still ignored by the government.

The movements seem to have been limited to the West Bank area controlled by the PA.

The importance of the movement

Apart from the particular, concrete elements of the movement, its whole importance lies in the region in which it is taking place. This is a region of interminable bloody imperialist conflicts, whether directly between states or via various pawns[6]. It is the civil population which suffers the consequences of all this[7] and has become fertile soil for the development of reactionary nationalist and religious movements. But above all we should stress that the movement is taking place at the same time as similar movements in the region and internationally. Let’s not forget the big mobilisations last summer in Israel against the high cost of living; despite its weaknesses and its democratic illusions, this movement is an important first step towards breaking the ‘national union’ in a highly militarised state like Israel. Let’s not forget the great workers’ strikes in Egypt which were a decisive moment in the fall of the USA’s protégé Mubarak.   

The proletariat and the oppressed strata in Palestine, and everywhere else, need to understand that the only hope for living in peace and dignity, which is the real wish of the immense majority of the Palestinian population, lies in the development of massive struggles alongside all the exploited in the region, beyond all national or religious divisions. Breaking the Palestinian ‘national union’, uniting its struggles, firstly with the exploited and the oppressed in Israel and the entire region – that is the only weapon that can weaken and stay the murderous hand of the Israeli state and of other imperialist gangsters. ‘Armed struggle’ means submitting to the interests of the different nationalist or religious groups and can only lead to endless slaughter and suffering and the strengthening of Palestine’s corrupt exploiting class.

The exploited of Palestine and the rest of the world must have no doubt: if they don’t fight for their own class interests against capitalism, if they allow themselves to be dragged into struggles for national or racial ‘liberation’, if they submit to the ‘general interests of the country’, i.e. the general interests of the bourgeoisie and its state, the present and the future which awaits them under the capitalist system is the same that Mandela’s ANC has reserved for its ‘brothers’ and ‘fellow countrymen’ who work in the mines: poverty, exploitation, and death.

Draba 23 September 2012

Meanwhile the Tories claim that we must accept austerity because “we’re all in it together”. Sacrifices, in other words, are our patriotic duty.

Both are right, and both are wrong. The Tories are waging class war – the war of the ruling class against the exploited class. The sacrifices they demand are not in the interests of the vast majority of the population, but they are essential for the preservation of the system that exploits us.

But Labour is also waging class war – on behalf of the same system. By preaching patriotism it is saying that workers and capitalists have the same interests. By opposing any effective action by the workers to defend their living standards in the face of the government’s austerity policies – Miliband and co. are openly against strikes for example – the Labour Party acts as a phony opposition, an agent of the enemy in the workers’ own ranks. And as experience has shown again and again, when they come to power they are no less ruthless at administering the needs of capitalism.

The nation, let us be clear, is no more than the way capitalism divides up the world to engage in competition and the hunt for profit. Every nation belongs not to the majority of the people who live in its territory, but the small minority who control the state and either own or manage the means for producing wealth.  Every nation is therefore a theatre of the class war between the two main classes in this society: capitalists and workers, exploiters and exploited. Nationalism and patriotism are mere ideologies aimed at hiding this fundamental reality from the working class.

By trying to persuade workers that they have the same interests as those who exploit them, nationalism also serves to divide workers country by country – to prevent the workers from seeing that their real allies are not their rulers but the exploited in other countries, all of whom are facing the same attacks on their living standards demanded by capitalism in crisis.

This is why the capitalist class is stirring up nationalism all over the planet. In Spain there have been huge demonstrations for ‘an independent Catalonia’, where workers and unemployed who last year expressed their ‘indignation’ against the whole of world capitalism are being marched tamely behind the same politicians and capitalists they were denouncing as thieves a year ago (see the article in this issue). In Britain, the SNP (and leftists, in the name of national self-determination) tries to convince Scottish workers that they would be better off under the rule of Scottish capitalists and politicians. In Greece, the trade unions and the left parties tell workers that their real enemy is ‘the Germans’ who are forcing them to pull in their belts in return for fresh credit, while in Germany the ‘lazy’ Greek workers are blamed for the reductions in living standards demanded to pay for these loans. The same story is told about the Spanish and the Portuguese workers.

Meanwhile, there is a sinister renaissance of right wing nationalism across Europe, with increasing attacks on ethnic minorities in Greece, Hungary, France…. It’s another ideology of division: we ‘native’ workers are suffering not because capitalism is dying on its feet but because of these Africans, Muslims, gypsies who come into our country and live off our labour. But persecution of ‘foreigners’ is not the speciality of the right: gypsies are targeted by Hollande’s ‘Socialist’ government in France just as the Labour-run state threw ‘illegal immigrants’ into detention centres in the UK.

In its most concentrated form, nationalism is used to march workers off to war and slaughter each other for the greater glory of capitalism and imperialism. In China, squabbles over disputed islands in the East China Sea give the state an excuse to whip up anti-Japanese demonstrations; Japanese nationalism replies in kind. In the Middle East the capitalist class in Palestine, Israel, Iran calls on the population to prepare for armed struggle and war in the name of anti-Zionism or the defence of the Jewish state. 

Nationalism, whether right wing or left wing, whether spouted by the rulers of existing states or the candidate rulers of future states, is pure poison for the working class. Against all this nauseating propaganda, this cynical cultivation of prejudice and ignorance, against divisions that help the rulers conquer, we must affirm the necessity for the international class struggle across nations and borders.  Against the class war of the exploiters, dishonestly disguised by the false unity of the nation, we must openly and honestly assert the need for the class war of the exploited against capital and its state.  Amos 3.11.12

In the last three months in South Africa 80,000 miners have been involved in a wave of wildcat strikes in gold, platinum and coal mines. In WR 356 (“South Africa massacre of miners: The bourgeoisie uses its police and union guard dogs against the working class”) we looked at the massacre of 34 miners in Marikana. We showed how unions and government acted together against the working class. At the time it was not clear what direction events would go. Since then we have witnessed the largest strike wave since the ANC came to power in 1994.

South Africa is portrayed as the ‘economic powerhouse’ of Africa, leading the continent in industrial output and mineral production. And yet, if you look at the conditions in which the majority of people live, with, officially, 25% unemployment, and more than 50% of children living below the official poverty line, in a society commonly described as the one of the most unequal in the world, the fact that workers have been struggling is no mystery. Behind every ‘economic miracle’ there is growing poverty and there are conflicting class interests. The struggles in South Africa show that country is no exception.

The continuation of the struggle

The Marikana miners continued their strike for six weeks before a deal was signed. A light shone on the condition of all workers in South Africa, the poverty and deprivation of the townships, the misery of the mining camps, and, above all, on the lie that the ANC government represented something other than a capitalist government prepared to shoot down striking miners just like the previous apartheid regime.

The Marikana miners pay deal was for increases between 11% and 22% along with a one off bonus of 2,000 Rand ($240). Rock-drillers (the most dangerous operators in the mine) received the biggest pay rise.

In other workers’ actions, at Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), the world’s largest producer of platinum, a strike that has so far lasted for seven weeks shut five mines in the Rustenberg area. At one point the firm sacked 12,500 workers – 40% of its work force. In unrest at Amplats nine people have been killed. There have been a number of clashes between workers and the police – on at least one occasion with the police using teargas, stun grenades, rubber bullets and live ammunition. As South Africa’s Mail and Guardian (2/11/12) put it: “The strike has so far yielded about three dozen arrests and nothing more than a one-off offer of R2000 as well as a R2500 loan, which was to be paid back in January.”

Alongside the activities of different unions there have been strike committees and shaft committees formed. When the latter meet it’s “to discuss a way of giving impetus to the strike”. There has been a great deal of anger directed at the unions, in particular when a secret deal was struck with the company. The main strike committee rejected the deal. Anger at the unions can be seen in the report that “a NUM office was set alight at the Khuseleka shaft, possibly as a show of anger at management’s response and the NUM’s insistence that it had secured the reinstatement of the Amplats strikers” (op cit).

When the South African Communist Party leader, along with leaders of the Mineworkers’ Union (NUM) and the COSATU union federation attempted to hold a rally in the Rustenberg Olympia Stadium they found that “over 1,000 striking Amplats miners arrived early and took over the venue” (Daily Maverick 27/10/12). “They marched into the stadium … After desecrating ANC and Cosatu hats, scarves and other paraphernalia, they moved back out.” The protesting strikers wore T shirts saying “Remember the Slain of Marikana” and “Forward to a Living Wage R12,500” and carried placards saying, “We are here to bury NUM,” and “Rest in Peace NUM.” The police who proceeded to attack the strikers and protected union figures clearly demonstrated that workers and unions are on different sides.

Meanwhile, Amplats is currently struggling to get 30,000 workers back to work after intimidation and various settlements have ended other strikes. They have offered “hardship allowances” to those who have been on strike, and “loyalty allowances” to those who did not strike.

At AngloGold Ashanti (the world’s third largest bullion producer) 35,000 workers downed tools in an illegal strike that started in late September and continued for almost a month. And after the settlement there were further sit-in protests over early payments of a bonus that involved hundreds of workers.

At the Gold One’s Aurora goldmine at Modder East near Johannesburg security guards shot four picketing miners when they fired on 200 workers. This mine is said to be owned by the nephew of Jacob Zuma and the grandson of Nelson Mandela.

One Gold Fields’ mine remained shut after a strike as the company processed the appeals of 8,500 workers sacked for an unlawful strike. These were from twelve thousand miners at Gold Fields’ KDC East goldmine who were dismissed for refusing to return to work.

Among the more than fifty people killed were two who died after they were shot by security guards employed by Forbes Coal. Striking miners had been chased into a township in KwaZulu-Natal where the guards fired on the workers. This showed the familiar repressive side of the bourgeoisie.

On the other hand, following the higher increases agreed at Marikana, Coal of Africa agreed to a 26% wage rise (including allowances) for workers at its Mooiplaats colliery. The warnings that higher wage rises could further increase unemployment are made at every opportunity.

False friends – in the unions and beyond

The South African ruling class is not bluffing. There has been genuine concern over the impact of the strike wave. The mining industry was already seeing share prices plummet due to the world recession, and then dive even lower. The South African economy is not immune to the current recession. The worldwide recession has seen the production of platinum and palladium, precious metals essential in car manufacture, cut back drastically. Even during the recent mineral boom, production of these metals has diminished by 1% a year. Output has now dropped to its lowest level for 50 years.

In the face of the crisis the ANC and the NUM have entered into a tripartite alliance with the mine owners. It’s not just that ANC and NUM leaders have considerable investments in the mining companies and want to protect that investment. It’s an integral part of their social role to do everything in their power to protect the interests of their fellow bourgeois, to oppose the spread of strikers’ actions, and try and prevent it becoming contagious.

Right from the start of the strike wave the unions involved have sought to divide workers attempting to struggle for a living wage. After the Marikana massacre a meeting was set up. As SABC news (28/8/12) reported “One of five delegates chosen by Lonmin mineworkers, Zolisa Bodlani says workers are skeptical about tomorrow’s meeting between Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant, unions, management and worker representatives. The workers believe unions have failed them and have misrepresented their interests, as well as management which Bodlani has accused of not wanting to meet workers before the fatal tragedy last week that lead to the deaths of 44 people. Bodlani was speaking in an interview on SAfm’s AM Live this morning.

‘We are not sure that we are going to attend tomorrow’s meetings. They promised us today that we will meet the labour minister - we have questions to ask her – we want to know why they decided to call us together with the unions. We are not willing to work with the unions. We have reasons why but we don’t want to disclose that now. We also believe our unions failed us big time. We are not going to use any one of them. We don’t want to be affiliated to any of the unions,’ says Bodlani.”

As well as the unions, other false friends that workers need to beware of include ex-ANCers like Julius Malema who claim to be putting forward an alternative. He has used the miners’ strike for his own ends. On one hand saying that there should be a national miners’ strike, and that a ‘fight to the death’ was needed, while also pushing nationalisation. He declared “They have been stealing this gold from you. Now it’s your turn.” But nationalisation does not mean an improvement in the wages and conditions of miners. It just means state control – control by the capitalist state.

With Malema, it’s not that he turns up to address miners in his Mercedes Benz SUV that makes him a spokesman for the bourgeoisie; it’s the ideology he puts forward. You can see how he has “portrayed Lonmin director and ANC heavyweight Cyril Ramaphosa - who was a leading trade unionist during white minority rule - as a puppet of whites and foreigners” (BBC News 12/9/12). In this view ‘whites and foreigners’ are the enemy. In reality, in the case of Ramaphosa, his call for action against Lonmin workers was in continuity with his activity in the ANC and trade unionism – in defence of the national interest against the interests of the working class.

The current wave of strikes in South Africa appears to be coming to an end. For future strikes a consciousness of the need for workers to rely on their own efforts will be essential.  

M/C/ElG 3/11/12

Nationalism is an ideological poison that the bourgeoisie uses, either to dragoon the working class into its wars, or to divert the struggle of classes onto a corrupt and sterile terrain. The recent nationalist manifestations in Catalonia perfectly illustrate this trap laid by the bourgeoisie for the proletariat. This is why we are publishing a translation of an article by our section in Spain which draws on the essential lessons of these events.

On September 11 last, a million-and-a-half people in Barcelona demonstrated for “their own state inside of Europe”.

This event has been analysed widely in the media: is the independence of Catalonia viable? Why does Catalonia want “a divorce” from Spain? Will Catalans live better after independence? Is it true that Catalonia brings more to Spain than it receives from it? Should a federal state be created?

Another viewpoint is lacking however: that of the proletariat, the social class which through its historic struggle represents the future for humanity. Here is an interpretation of the question from the viewpoint of the struggle between classes, summed up in the phrase: nation or class?

To fight for the nation means fighting for the interests of Capital

On September 11 we saw Felop Puig (Minister of the Interior for the Catalan Generalidad, the man responsible for the violent repression launched against the massive demonstrations of last year and organiser of the twisted police provocations against the demonstrators) amicably walking alongside his victims, young unemployed and precarious workers. We saw nine of the eleven ministers of the regional government, who were in the first line of unleashing ruthless attacks on the health and education sectors,  marching side-by-side with their victims: the doctors and nurses who lost 30% of their wages, the patients who must pay a euro each time they make a visit to the doctor or pay for a part of their medication. We saw bosses, police, priests, union leaders, all sharing the street with their victims: unemployed, workers, retired, immigrants... An atmosphere of NATIONAL UNION presided over the event. Capital  was taking in its exploited and transforming them into useful idiots for its egoistic goals.

It’s highly probable that an important number of demonstrators did not share the goal of independence. Perhaps they were there because they didn’t support the attacks, unemployment, the absence of a future; but what is certain is that their unease has been channelled by Capital towards its terrain - towards the defence of the nation. The anger of the workers wasn’t being expressed for their own interests, still less for the liberation of humanity, but solely and exclusively for the benefit of Capital!

They are telling us that the struggle for Catalonian independence weakens the Spanish state! They are telling us that supporting Catalonian independence sharpens the contradictions of Capital between its “Spanish” and “Catalan” fractions.

If the proletariat fights behind flags that are not its own – and the national flag is completely opposed to its interests – then it will STRENGTHEN Capital and all of its fractions. It’s possible that it will sharpen contradictions between them, but these are channelled into their crises, their wars, their gangster conflicts and family fights. In other words, they end up  being part of the barbaric and destructive machinery of capitalism.

The nation is not the community of all those that live in the same  land, but the private property of all the capitalists, thanks to which it organises the oppression and exploitation of its “beloved citizens”. It wasn’t by chance that the slogan of the demonstration was “Catalonia should have its own state”. The  nation, this lovely, warm word, is inseparable from that is not so lovely, from the cold and impersonal state with its prisons, law courts, armies, police and bureaucracy.

President of the Catalonian Generalidad, Mas, has promised a referendum. Although we don’t know what questions will be put we can be sure that he wants the same as his Spanish “colleagues”: that is, to make us choose between three options, each one worse than the other. Do you want the readjustments and cuts made by the Spanish state? Do you want them to be imposed in the framework of the “national construction of Catalonia”? Or else do you want the Spanish state and the Catalan candidate to bring you together? Capital in Spain has at its disposal two countries to impose the same misery, “Spanish” and “Catalan”.

How did we get to this point?

What are the mechanisms that make the workers march alongside their executioners, who, as a Spanish chief of police (a colleague of the above named Puig) made clear, see the workers as the enemy[1].

There are several of them but in our opinion there are three which are most important:

The decomposition of capitalism. During the first decades of the 20th century, capitalism entered into its decadence, but for almost 30 years this has been further aggravated, leading to a situation which we describe as the decomposition of capitalism. On the political level, this worsening decomposition is shown by a growing tendency of the different fractions of the ruling class to be mired down in “every man for himself”. With the exacerbation of the crisis, this leads to a headlong flight towards chaos. When Mas went to Madrid on September 13 to collect the dividends of the demonstration on the 11th, he said that Spain and Catalonia were like two twins who no longer supported each other. He was correct: nations are a “marriage of convenience” between different fractions of the bourgeoisie. Given the crisis and the decomposition of capitalism, it’s more and more difficult to forge a minimally of serious project which would bind the different fractions together. This pushes each one to play their own game, even if they know that this game would not give them the least perspective. Many nations are being hit by a whirlwind of centrifugal tendencies: Canada with Quebec not wanting to be part of the Federation, in Britain the push towards independence grows in Scotland, not forgetting Belgium, Italy...

But the drama is that these tendencies are infecting and contaminating the proletariat, surrounded as it is by the petty-bourgeoisie – the soup-stock of social decomposition – and both submit to the pressure exercised by the cynical and corrupt behaviour of the dominant class and the propaganda that it spreads around. The proletariat must fight against the effects of this social decomposition and develop the necessary antibodies: faced with the world of frenetic capitalist competition, it must oppose this with solidarity of struggle; faced with a world breaking apart with ruling parties aspiring to become the petty kings of their fiefdoms, it must oppose this with international unity; faced with a world of exclusion and xenophobia, it must oppose this with a struggle based on inclusion and integration.

The difficulties of the working class. At the moment the proletariat has no confidence in its own strength, the majority of workers not recognising themselves as such. This was the Achilles Heel of the Indignant movements in Spain, the United States and elsewhere, where, despite the positive and purposeful elements, the majority of the participants (precarious workers, unemployed, individual workers...) didn’t see themselves as members of their class but as “citizens”. This left them vulnerable to the democratic and nationalist mystifications of capital[2]. This explains why these young unemployed or precarious workers who, a year ago occupied Catalonia Square in Barcelona from where they launched appeals for international solidarity, renaming this place “Tahrir Square”, are today being mobilised behind the national flag of their exploiters.

Nationalist intoxication. Quite conscious of the weaknesses of the proletariat, today the bourgeoisie  is playing the nationalist card. Nationalism is not the exclusive patrimony of the right and the extreme right but a common ground shared by the whole political range from the extreme right to the extreme left and also by what is called the “social organisations” (bosses and unions).

The nationalism of the right, attached to its rancid symbols and a repugnant aggressiveness towards foreigners (xenophobia), is not very convincing for the majority of workers (except its most embittered sectors). The nationalism of the left and the unions is more of a draw because it appears as more “open”, more understanding of the realities of daily life. Thus the nationalist speeches of the left propose to us a “national outcome” from the crisis, and for this to happen its asks for a “fair share” of sacrifices. More than justifying sacrifices with their enticement of “make the rich pay”, this also introduces a national vision, presenting a “national community” made up of workers and bosses, exploiters and exploited all united under the “Spanish Flag”. What’s the difference with what was said by Primo de Rivera, leader of the Spanish fascists “workers and bosses, we are in the same boat” (reminiscent of both Cameron’s and Miliband’s ideas).

Another approach prefers the left and the unions, saying “Rajoy is imposing cuts because he doesn’t defend Spain, he is a flunky of Merkel”. The message is clear: the struggle against cuts is a national movement against German oppression and not what it really is - a movement for our human needs against capitalist exploitation. In fact, Rajoy is also an “Espanolista” as was Zapatero, as would be a hypothetical government of Cayo Lara[3]. They all defend Spain by imposing “blood, sweat and tears” on the workers and the great majority of the population.

The union mobilisations of September 15 were called because “they (the government) want to destroy the country”, which means that we, the workers, must fight not for our own interests, but in order to “save the country”, which puts us on the terrain of Capital, the same ground upon which Rajoy proposes to save Spain with the sacrifices of the workers.

The groups which have kept the name “15-M”[4] defend the “most radical” of things but are no less nationalist. They say that we must fight in order to defend “food sovereignty”, which means that we must produce “Spanish” and consume “Spanish”. They also talk about making an “audit of the debt” in order to reject the debts on the grounds that they were “illegitimately imposed on Spain”. Once again: a nationalist position pure and simple. The left, the unions and the  fraudulent remains of 15-M are doing great work for the “formation of a national spirit”. It’s similar to what was known in the days of the dictator Franco as a compulsory school subject: today these are the democratic lessons we are being asked to swallow.

 Above all we shouldn’t think that all this nationalist poison is only affecting Spain! This is being served up in its local sauce in other countries. In France, Melenchon, leader of a so-called radical Left Front, proclaims that “the battle against the treaty (of “stability” being signed by the “soft” left of Hollande) is a new revolutionary episode for the sovereignty and independence”[5]  Nothing less. It takes you back to the times of Jeanne d’Arc!

The  nationalist onslaught has no other outcome than making workers fight amongst themselves. Workers in Germany are told that the causes of their sacrifices are the workers of southern Europe, wasters who have been living beyond their means. The workers in Greece are given to understand that their misery is the product of privileges and the luxury in which the German workers live. In Paris, workers are told that it’s better that job cuts are made in Madrid rather than France.

 As we see, they bind us up with a Gordian knot of lies that we must break by understanding that the crisis is world-wide, that the cuts are hitting every country. This hammering on about the national problem means that only the 700,000 unemployed of Catalonia are seen or, at its limits, the five million of Spain, and the 200 million unemployed globally are not seen at all. When one only sees the cuts in Catalonia and Spain, one doesn’t see the monstrous cuts imposed, for example, on the “privileged” workers of Holland. When one only sees “our own misery” in Catalan or Spanish terms, one doesn’t see the misery of the world from a proletarian point of view. When one looks through the national optic, narrow, petty and exclusive, one is ready to think, following the honourable Senor Mas, that “if Catalonia is paid the ten billion owed to it, the cuts would be unnecessary”, a regional version of “if Spain weren’t so bound up by Germany, there would be money for health and education”.

Against the division of the world, a struggle for the human world community

Capitalism has created a world market, it has generalised throughout the planet the reign of commodities and wage labour. But that can only work through the associated labour of the whole of the world’s workers. A motor car is not the work of an individual worker, nor of the workers of one factory, not even of the country where it is made. It is the product of the cooperation of many workers of different countries and also of different sectors: not only automobiles, but the metal industry, transport, education, health...

The proletariat has a fundamental strength faced with capitalism: it is an associated producer of the majority of products and services. But it also has the force to give a future to humanity: associated labour which, free of capitalist chains – of the state, of the market and of wages – will allow humanity to live in solidarity and in a real community dedicated to the full satisfaction of its needs and to the progress of the whole of nature.

In order to move in this direction, the proletariat must orientate itself towards the international solidarity of all proletarians. Chained to the nation, the proletariat will always be chained to misery and all sorts of barbarity: chained to the nation, it will always be poisoned by anti-solidarity falsifications, xenophobia, exclusion, patriotism... Chained to the nation, it accepts division and confrontation within its ranks.

No solidarity with our exploiters! Our solidarity must look to the workers of South Africa being crushed by their so-called “black liberators”[6], our solidarity must look towards the youth and the Palestinian workers who are demonstrating today against their exploiters of the Palestinian “proto-state”. Our solidarity is with the workers of every country.

Unity and solidarity is not with “our citizens”, capitalist Spain or Catalonia, but with the exploited workers of the entire world!

The working class has no country!

Accion Proletaria (ICC, Spain), 16.9.12

Eleanor Marx said that her father, Karl Marx, often said “We can forgive Christianity much, since it taught us to love children.” The decay of capitalism however has brought to light the role of religion, as part of the state apparatus, as one of the prime movers in the organised trafficking and sexual abuse of children. But it is by no means the only part of the state to be involved in this violence against children, as recent and more historical events have shown.

Not just vile Savile

The revelations from the Jimmy Savile affair have also lifted a very big lid on the contempt that the British state has for the care and protection of children - especially working class and vulnerable children. The BBC and the rest of the British state has long vaunted the probity, independence and objectivity of this broadcaster but, as the Iraq War and the miners’ strike showed, the organisation is nothing less than the voice and visage of the British ruling class and a very useful tool in its ideological war against the working class. It’s no wonder that the BBC was much admired by the Nazi Minister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels - his machine could never reach the heights of effective propaganda and lies maintained by the BBC for decades.

That the leering, grotesque image of this serial child abuser, Jimmy Savile, should be the ‘face’ of the BBC over decades, the organisation which created and cosseted him, is entirely appropriate. Although the reporting and enquiries around the Savile affair are now turning into a spectacle, the initial determination of some Newsnight reporters (not Paxman and Mason) has to be saluted - in a similar way that the determination of the Hillsborough families to expose the dark reality at the heart of the state also has to be supported.

It’s clear that the abuse of children by Savile at the BBC wasn’t just tolerated but that it was complicit in it and then tried to cover it up with even more sickeningly fulsome tributes to the ‘national treasure’. But it’s not just the BBC that was involved in his disgusting decades-long abuse but the whole gamut of the British state: the police who ignored the various complaints from all over the country over many, many years; the Catholic church who made him something of a saint - a role the BBC built on; Broadmoor prison, where a young girl was locked in solitary after complaining against him and then saw a grinning Savile rattling the keys to the cell through the porthole; the media - and here one must give a special mention to The Sun and Cameron’s mate’s Rebekah Brooke’s vacuous campaign against paedophiles, while obviously being fully aware of the stories around Savile’s abuse; the charities, the politicians who gave him the access he needed; the gormless Prince Charles (who sent his love to his ‘young ladies’) and the rest of the royal baggage that made him a Knight of the Realm - the whole rotten lot of them. Lots of people, mainly workers, complained, but in a system based on exploitation, hierarchy, money and the status quo, there was no advantage to capitalism to pursue such complaints. In fact it was in all their interests to hide them and cover them up.

The rotten system

But this example of Savile’s abuse and the complicity of the ruling class institutions in it, is nothing new, nor exceptional, for the British state.

In 2009, Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologised - as if this ‘apology’ meant anything - for the one hundred and fifty thousand 3 to 14 year-old British children who were cut off from their families, sometimes told that their parents were dead, and, between 1920 and 1967 were sent to Australia, Canada, and other Commonwealth countries, where they faced sexual, physical, mental abuse, and were used as cheap or unpaid labour. It wasn’t only the governments of the right and left that organised this massive child trafficking but charities such as Barnado’s, the Salvation Army, the Children’s Society and, of course, the Catholic Church. In a fine twist, reminiscent of Saddam Hussein charging the families of his murdered victims for the bullets, the state set up a scheme called “Sunny Smiles” where, through charities, working class children lucky enough not to be kidnapped and trafficked on such a scale, were asked to collect monies to help pay for their fares to ‘a better place’.

And the Protestant brand of religion isn’t backward when getting involved in child abuse. In the 1970s a paedophile ring was operating in and around the Kincora boy’s home in Belfast. The Free Presbyterian Church was involved, the protestant DUP, MI5 (who were no doubt recording all the comings and goings and more besides), the Tory government, the Democratic Unionist Party and British royalty (the mentor of gormless Charles, Lord Mountbatten, reportedly visited the place). At the highest levels of the state, children were being used and abused as sexual playthings.

But things have changed you might say. It’s a different world now, there’s no longer the exploitation of children. Not a bit of it. Like all the major democracies, child labour is rife in Britain. One result of the 2001 census showed that 175,000 children in Britain, some of them as young as eight, were social carers for a parent or parents. The Labour government made this a priority to the point that it did absolutely nothing about it. Trafficked children continue to pour into Britain and despite the 2004 Asylum and Immigration Act there has not been one prosecution against it in the eight years since. On the other hand, despite Coalition heavyweight Nick Clegg saying otherwise recently, young children with their ‘suspect’ parents are still being locked up in goals in immigration centres.

Another recent shocking example centres around the Rochdale abuse case, which itself is indicative of a much wider phenomenon of the knowing exploitation and abuse of children by the British state. Vulnerable children taken into care in southern England are being shipped hundreds of miles away from family and sent to homes run by private businesses. Thousands are being regularly transported to private-sector homes in the Midlands and the north where these firms buy up cheap housing in insalubrious areas, often with high numbers of sex offenders around, who then charge the state some £250,000 per child per year. Castlecare, which runs 40 homes in Northampton, was charging £378,000 per child per year with only 2% of its homes being rated by Ofsted as ‘outstanding’. Rochdale, for example, an area of cheap housing, has 44 ‘care homes’, more than all the London boroughs put together. In 2011, in Greater Manchester, one thousand children were “placed out of borough” - or dumped, as some experts call it. This blatant abusive trafficking has continued for years with the government’s dedicated “Children’s Minister” saying nothing.

Its treatment of children tells you much about this decomposing system and the rottenness of its elements. Will the government, as with all governments complicit in the abuse of children so far, do anything to remedy the situation? Of course not. Just a couple of months ago David Cameron was attacking what he called the “culture of entitlement”. Why, we can ask, should children, particularly vulnerable children whose parents are legally the state, feel entitled to protection from exploitation, trafficking and sexual abuse? The state has been instrumental in facilitating this abuse and will continue to do so even more widely as the cuts rain down on children’s services and social payments to families with children.  

Baboon 2/11/12

Note: This article was contributed by a sympathiser of the ICC.

Recently, the Turkish agenda has been shaken by the possibility of war with Syria; a situation which is still, more or less, intact. Following the deaths of five civilians as a result of the shelling of a town called Akçakale, near the city of Urfa, the government rapidly included Syria in the new bill it was preparing, giving it the right to militarily intervene in Iraq. It was altered to give the government the authority to militarily intervene abroad in general. It was also declared that Turkey had started shelling Syria. As the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and members of his Justice and Development Party started openly expressing the possibility of the war option, death dealers quickly appeared among the Turkish bourgeois press, going as far as accusing those opposed to war of cowardice.

Despite all this, what actually happened remains uncertain. It turns out that while it didn’t claim lives, the Turkish side of the border had been a target for bombs before the Akçakale attack. Moreover, it isn’t really certain who launched these bombs or the Akçakale shelling. The Syrian government’s reaction was one of denial, declaring they will investigate the situation and expressing how sorry they were at the deaths of the victims and expressing their condolences to the relatives of the deceased, thus denying any responsibility for the shelling. The part of Syria bombed by Turkey, on the other hand, is a zone where the clashes between the Free Syrian Army and the Assad regime are quite intense and which is mostly under Free Syrian Army control. It seems that Turkey, under the guise of retaliation, has been responding in kind to all the previous shellings as well. Soon followed the rumour that the shells have been fired from the area controlled by the Free Syrian Army, that the shell itself was produced by NATO and was not used by the military forces of the Assad regime, and that indeed the Free Syrian Army had fired the shells.

Whatever the truth of this rumour, it is not in the Syrian regime’s interests to bomb the Turkish border, an act which would obviously increase Turkey’s enmity towards the Assad regime, while fighting a fully-fledged civil war against the Free Syrian Army and suppressing Sunni dissidents in an extremely brutal fashion. Besides, Syria does not have anything to gain from such shellings or from killing a handful of civilians in Akçakale. On the other hand, it is not difficult to see that these shellings did indeed work to the advantage of Erdogan’s government and the Free Syrian Army, giving Turkey the legal basis for giving the Free Syrian Army the much needed strategic air support against Assad, as well as enabling Erdogan to pass the war bill in the parliament and strengthen the pro-war nationalists. The strongest possibility is that the Free Syrian Army did this attack in contact with and under the orders of Turkey itself.

Nevertheless, despite the pro-war mood which the government is trying to create, a Turkish invasion of Syria still remains rather unlikely. The first reason for this is that the Turkish state itself is already engaged in war in Turkish Kurdistan, and far from looking like winning it, they seem to be doing rather poorly. At the moment, there are territories within the borders of the Turkish state which are controlled by the Kurdish nationalist PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) which the Turkish army can’t enter by land and which are expanding, although slowly. It wouldn’t be very reasonable for a state which is fighting such a war within its own borders to attempt to invade another country.

The second and more important reason is that the working class doesn’t want to fight, and even has a certain reaction against the idea of war. The war between the Turkish state and the PKK, which has been going on for over thirty years, has resulted in a growing hostility to war among a significant amount of people living in Western Turkey, and in the recognition of the fact that those who died weren’t the children of the rulers but their own children. In this sense, it is possible to say that there isn’t a pro-war mood among the Turkish working class in general.

In this situation there have been a number of ‘anti-war’ demonstrations across Turkey. Although called to oppose the government on a pro-Assad, populist or pacifist basis they have attracted far more people who would not usually attend such demonstrations and may not support the reactionary slogans of the groups who called them. While we cannot be sure what this represents, we can see that the state has responded by brutally repressing them.

There were clashes at the demonstrations in the city of Hatay, where the Syrian refugee camps are located. Called by an ultra-nationalist and Turkish chauvinist structure called the Workers’ Party, it was themed “Syria and Turkey are brothers” (by which they mean support for the Assad regime) and held on September 16th, attended by well over ten thousand people. Although the governorship of Hatay officially banned the demonstration, thousands who didn’t have a relation to any political organization gathered in the declared demonstration area. These masses argued with the Workers Party representatives and eventually kicked them away from the demonstration after the supposedly dissident Workers’ Party members made a press announcement and told the masses to disperse. The Hatay residents were attacked by the police after the Workers’ Party members left and some of them were taken into custody. However the masses fought back against the police who kept attacking them. Clashes lasted till night in neighbourhoods of the city, until the police eventually had to release those who were detained.

Other than that, it’s worth mentioning the demonstration in Akçakale itself right after the shelling, where hundreds including the relatives of the deceased participated, shouted anti-government slogans and called for the resignation of the governors of Akçakale and Urfa. The mayor of Akçakale, a member of the ruling Justice and Development Party who was on TV during the demonstration, which clearly showed that something was going on in the area, declared that he didn’t understand why this demonstration was taking place; in the meanwhile the police were attacking the demonstrators. This demonstration also led to clashes with the police.

Lastly there were the anti-war demonstrations in numerous cities in Turkey on 4 October when the war bill was passed. All of these demonstrations, the largest of which took place in Istanbul, where according to some accounts up to a hundred thousand gathered, were violently attacked by the police.

The state reaction manifests itself in the form of brutality against all sorts of anti-war demonstrations, from the tiniest ones to the most massive. This pushes the masses to face and clash with the armed forces of the state more or less instantly and shows the masses that in order to succeed against war, there is a need to struggle – the fact that the demonstrators in Hatay and Akçakale, an overwhelming majority of which were apolitical before the demonstrations, effectively resisted the attacks and spontaneously clashed with the police is a proof of this phenomenon. This being said, especially the organizations of the bourgeois left are creating very large illusions and confusions among the anti-war masses, with pro-Assad, populist or pacifist slogans. In this way they help to prevent the reaction against imperialist war developing on a class basis.

Against all sorts of pro-Assad, populist and pacifist illusions, for the anti-war movement to be successful and the working class to avoid giving the lives and blood of its children for the interests of the imperialist Turkish state, we can only raise the slogan Lenin put forward against World War 1 in 1914:

“Revolutionary class war against the imperialist war!” 

Gerdûn  October 2012

At first sight, everything seems to favour an explosion of working class anger. The crisis is obvious and no one can escape it. Less and people believe that it’s coming to an end despite the daily assertions to the contrary. The whole planet seems to be in a desolate state: wars, barbarism, famine, epidemics, the devastating manipulation of nature and our health in the name of profit.

With all this in front of us, it’s hard to imagine that any feeling other than indignation and revolt could seize hold of our minds. It’s difficult to think that workers can still believe in a future under capitalism. And yet the masses have not fully taken the path of struggle. Are we to conclude that the game is up, that the steamroller of the crisis is just too powerful, that there’s no going beyond the demoralisation it has brought with it?

Major difficulties

It can’t be denied that the working class today is experiencing major difficulties. There are at least four reasons for this.

The first, and by far the most crucial, is quite simply that the proletariat is not conscious of itself, that it has lost its ‘class identity’. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 1990s saw a huge propaganda campaign to convince us that we had witnessed the historic failure of communism. The boldest – and most stupid – commentators even announced ‘the end of history’, and the final triumph of peace and democracy. By amalgamating communism and the rotting carcass of the Stalinist monstrosity, the ruling class sought to discredit in advance any perspective aimed at the overthrow of the capitalist system. Not content with trying to wipe out any prospect of revolutionary change, it went on to portray any kind of working class struggle as no more than a ‘cultural memory’, like dinosaur fossils or the cave-paintings of Lascaux.

Above all, the bourgeoisie has insisted over and over again that the working class in its classical form has disappeared from the social and political scene[1]. Sociologists, journalists, politicians and tabloid philosophers peddle the idea that social classes have disappeared, lost in the shapeless magma of the ‘middle classes’. The bourgeoisie has always dreamed of a society where the proletarians see themselves as mere ‘citizens’, divided into a whole series of socio-professional categories – white collar, blue collar, employed, casual, unemployed, etc – who are separated by divergent interests and who can only express themselves politically by trooping one by one into the election booths. And it’s true that the barrage about the disappearance of the working class, pumped ceaselessly from books, papers, TV and internet, has served to prevent many workers from seeing themselves as an integral part of the working class, still less as an independent social force.  

In the second place, this loss of class identity makes it extremely difficult for the proletariat to affirm its own struggle and its own historical perspective. In a context where the bourgeoisie itself has no perspective on offer except austerity, every man for himself and a scramble to survive, the ruling class takes advantage of the lack of class consciousness by setting the exploited at each others’ throats, by dividing them and blocking any unified response, by pushing them towards despair.

The third factor, a consequence of the first two, is that the brutality of the crisis is tending to paralyse many workers, who fear falling into absolute poverty, fear being unable to feed their families and ending up on the street, isolated and exposed to repression. Even if some of them, with their backs to the wall, have been driven to express their anger openly, like the ‘Indignados’ in Spain, they still don’t tend to see themselves as a class in struggle. Despite the relatively massive character of these movements, this limits their capacity to resist the mystifications and traps created by the ruling class, to re-appropriate the experiences of history, to step back and draw lessons with the necessary depth.

There is a fourth important reason to explain the current difficulties of the working class to develop its struggle against the system: the whole arsenal of bourgeois control, whether the openly repressive parts, like the police, or more insidious and much more effective ones like the trade unions. On the last point in particular the working class has still not overcome its fears of struggling outside the domination of the unions, even if less and less workers have deep illusions in the capacity of the unions to defend their interests. And this physical containment is reinforced by an ideological containment which has been more or less mastered by the unions, the media, the intellectuals, the left parties, etc.

The key to this ‘mind control’ is without doubt the ideology of democracy. Every significant event is exploited to vaunt its benefits. Democracy is presented as the framework where freedom can flower, all opinions can be expressed, and power is legitimised by the people; where everyone can take initiatives, have access to knowledge and culture. In reality, democracy only offers a national framework for the cultivation of the power of an elite, the power of the bourgeoisie. All the rest is illusion, the illusion that by entering the ballot box you are exercising some kind of power, that the voice of the population can be expressed by voting for its ‘representatives’ in parliament. We should not underestimate the weight of this ideology, just like the shock caused by the collapse of the Stalinist regimes at the end of the 80s, which greatly strengthened the hold of democracy.

We should also add the influence of religion to this ideological arsenal. It’s not new, since it has accompanied humanity from its first attempts to make sense of the world around it, and has long been used to legitimate all kinds of hierarchical power. But what’s different about today is the role it plays in diverting the thought of a part of the working class confronted with the need to understand a capitalist system in a state of bankruptcy, in particular by explaining the ‘decadence’ of the current order by showing how far it has strayed from the values elaborated thousands of years ago by religion, especially the monotheistic religions. The strength of religious ideology is that it does away with the extreme complexity of the situation. It offers simple answers, easy to follow solutions. In its fundamentalist forms, it only convinces a minority of the proletariat, but it general it feeds like a parasite on the reflection going on in the class.         

And a huge potential

The picture we have painted might sound a bit desperate: faced with a bourgeoisie which knows how to use its ideological weapons, with a system which threatens most of the population with poverty, when it’s not already deep inside it, is there still room to think positively, to find some hope? Is there really a social force that can undertake a radical transformation of society, no less? We can answer this question without hesitation: yes! A hundred times yes!

It’s not a question of having blind confidence in the working class, a semi-religious faith in the writings of Karl Marx, or of gambling desperately on a revolution. It’s a matter of taking a certain distance, serenely analysing the situation and going beyond the immediate, trying to understand the real meaning of the present struggles of the class and studying in depth the historic role of the proletariat.

In our press we have already argued that since 2003 the working class is in a positive dynamic compared to the retreat it went through after the collapse of the eastern bloc. This analysis has been drawn from a number of more or less significant struggles, but all of them have the characteristic of showing that the working class has been tending to rediscover its historic reflexes, like solidarity, collective discussion, or more simply an enthusiastic response to adversity.

We saw these elements at work in struggles like the one against the ‘reform’ of pensions in France in 2003 and 2010, in the struggle against the CPE, again in France, in 2006, but also in a less extensive way in the Britain (the wildcats at Heathrow, the Lindsey refineries), the USA (New York subway), Spain (steelworkers of Vigo), in Egypt, Dubai, China, etc. The Indignados and Occupy movements in particular reflected something more general and ambitious than the struggles in the enterprises. What did we see in the Indignados movement? Workers from all horizons, unemployed, part-time, full-time, coming together to take part in a collective experience and to get a better understanding of what’s at stake in this period. We saw people regaining their enthusiasm simply from being able to discuss freely with others. We saw people talking about alternative experiences and considering their gains and limits. We saw people refusing to be no more than victims of a crisis which they didn’t bring about and which they refuse to pay for. We saw people coming together in spontaneous assemblies, adopting forms of expression that favour reflection and the confrontation of ideas, and which put limits on those who come to disturb or sabotage debate. Finally and above all, the Indignados movement gave rise to an internationalist sentiment, an understanding that everywhere in the world we are subjected to the same crisis and that our struggle crosses all frontiers.

Certainly we did not hear many talking explicitly about communism, proletarian revolution, working class and bourgeoisie, civil war, etc. But what these movements did show is above all the exceptional creativity of the working class, its capacity to organise itself, which derive from its inalienable character as an independent social force. The conscious reclaiming of these characteristics is still at the end of a long and tortuous road, but it is undeniably in motion. It will inevitably be accompanied by a process of decantation, reflux, partial discouragement. But it will fuel the thinking of minorities who are placed in the avant-garde of the struggle of the working class on a world scale, and whose development has been visible and quantifiable in the last few years.       

Finally, even if the difficulties facing the working class are enormous, nothing in the situation permits the conclusion that the game is up, that the working class will no longer have the strength to engage in massive and then revolutionary struggles. On the contrary, the living expressions are multiplying, and by studying what they really are, not on the surface where only their fragility is obvious, but in depth, then the potential, the promise for the future that they contain can be grasped. Despite their sporadic, dispersed, minority character, we should not forget that the main qualities of a revolutionary are patience and confidence in the working class[2]. This patience and this confidence are based on an understanding of what the working class is, historically speaking: the first class which is both exploited and revolutionary, and has the mission of liberating the whole of humanity from the yoke of exploitation. This is a materialist, historical, long-tern vision. It is this vision which enabled us to write, in 2003 when we were drawing up a balance sheet of our 15th international congress:

“As Marx and Engels said, ‘it’s not a question of considering what this or that proletarian, or even the proletariat as a whole, takes to be true today, but of considering what the proletariat is and what it will be led to do historically, in conformity with its being’. Such an approach shows us that, faced with the blows of the capitalist crisis, which will give rise to more and more ferocious attacks on the working class, the latter will be forced to react and to develop its struggle”. https://en.internationalism.org/wr/264_15cong.htm [161]

GD, 25.10.12  

In the last issue of World Revolution we republished one of the ICC’s first attempts to draw a balance sheet of our experience with groups of militant workers, responding to the need for independent class struggle, that came out of the struggles of the 1970s[1]. In this issue, we look at examples of this phenomenon in the 1980s.

The period 1983-88 saw a wave of international workers’ struggles in response to the very severe attacks being mounted on living standards, often under the leadership of right wing teams like the one headed by Thatcher in Britain and Reagan in the US. This was the period of the miners’ and printers’ strikes in the UK, quite massive strike movements in Belgium and Denmark, and militant struggles in a whole series of other countries: Spain, Holland, Yugoslavia, Brazil, South Africa.... In 1986 and 87 workers in Europe took some important steps towards self-organisation: in France, railway workers launched a very determined strike against the advice of the unions and took charge of the struggle through general assemblies and coordinations. In Italy, education workers and again railway workers formed base committees to keep their strikes and the extension of their movement in their own hands. 

Alongside these developments, smaller groups of militant workers again began trying to get together to fight against union sabotage and call for the self-organisation of struggles. International Review 50 (third quarter of 1987) published an editorial on the development of workers struggles and devoted a section of the article to the reappearance of struggle committees within these movements:

A particularly significant expression of the maturation going on in the working class is the embryonic appearance of struggle committ­ees, regrouping combative workers around the problems posed by the necessity to struggle and to prepare the struggle, outside of the traditional union structures.

In spring ’86 in Belgium, a committee was formed in the Limburg mines and took the initiative of sending delegations to push for extension (to the Ford factory in Ghent, to rallies in Brussels); in Charleroi, some railway workers came together to send delegat­ions to other stations and other sectors in the region, such as urban transport; in Brussels a coordination of teachers (Malibran) was also formed, regrouping unionized and non-unionized teachers with the aim of “fighting divisions in the struggles”. These committees, arising out of the spring ’86 movement, finally disappeared as the movement retreated, after being gradually being emptied of their class life and taken over by the base unionists.

Such regroupments don’t only appear as the fruit of an open struggle. In an open struggle they tend to regroup a larger number of partic­ipants, at other moments they regroup smaller minorities of workers. In Italy, for example, in Naples, committees of sanitation and hospital workers have existed for several months. The hospital workers’ group, made up of a small minority of workers, meets regularly and has intervened through leaflets and posters and by speaking up at assemblies called by the union, in favour of extension and against the proposals of the unions. It has had an import­ant echo in this sector (the unions no longer call assemblies in the hospital!) and even outside it among railway workers. Committees of this kind have also appeared in France. At the beginning of the year, the unions did all they could to involve the whole working class in the defeat of the railway workers, by organizing a dead-end extension under the auspices of the CGT - which hadn’t hesitated to condemn the rail strike when it began. In the face of such sabotage, workers in gas and electricity, then in the post office, set up committees to draw the lessons of the railway workers’ struggle, to make contacts between different workplaces, to prepare the next round of struggles.

Even if these experiences of struggle committees are at their beginnings, even if the committees haven’t managed to keep going for long and fluctuate a lot in the wake of events, this doesn’t mean that they are simply ephemeral phenomena linked to partic­ular situations. On the contrary. They are going to appear more and more because they correspond to a profound need in the working class. In the process towards unification of struggles, it is vital that the most militant workers, those who are convinced of the need for unity in the struggle, should regroup in order:

-- to defend, within the struggle, the necessity for extension and unification;

-- to show the necessity for sovereign general assemblies and for strike committees and coordinations elected and revocable by the assemblies;

-- to push forward, both within and outside moments of open struggle, the process of discussion and reflection, in order to draw the lessons of previous struggles and to prepare the struggles to come;

-- to create a focus for regroupment, open to all workers who want to take part, whatever their sector and whether or not they are unionized.

Such regroupments don’t have the task of constituting themselves into political groups, defined by a platform of principles; neither are they unitary organs englobing all the workers (general assemblies of the employed and unemployed, committees elected and revocable by the assemblies). They regroup minorities of workers and are not delegations from unitary organs.

In 1985, with the relative dispersal of struggle, the growing distrust towards the unions led many workers to take a wait-and-see attitude; their disgust with the unions made them retreat into passivity. The acceleration of the class struggle in 1986 has been marked not only by more massive struggles and by a tendency for workers to take charge of their own actions, but also by more numerous attempts by the more combative workers to regroup in order to act upon the situation, The first experiences of struggle committees correspond to this dynamic: a greater determin­ation and self-confidence which is going to develop more and more in the working class and which will lead to the regroupment of workers on the terrain of the struggle, outside the union framework. And this isn’t just a possibility, but an imperious necessity if the working class is going to develop the capacity to unite, against the bourgeoisie’s manoeuvres aimed at keeping it divided.

This is something the bourgeoisie has already understood. The main danger facing the struggle committees is trade unionism. The trade union representatives and the leftists are now themselves promoting ‘struggle committees’. By introducing to them criteria for participation, platforms, even membership cards, they are aiming to recreate a variety of trade unionism. And by maintaining them in a corporatist framework and proclaiming them as ‘representatives’ of the workers, whereas they are only the emanation of those who participate in them and not of general assem­blies of workers, they again drag them back onto the terrain of trade unionism. For example, in Limburg in Belgium the Maoists managed to deform the reality of the miners’ struggle committee by proclaiming it as a ‘strike committee’ and thus turning it into an obstacle to the holding of general assemb­lies of all workers. In France militants of the CNT (anarcho-syndicalist) and elements coming from the PCI (Programme Communiste - which has now disappeared in France) tried to recuperate the committees of postal workers and gas and electricity workers. They proposed a platform of membership “for a renewal of class unionism”. Thus introducing in a ‘radical’ manner the same objectives as any union. And against the principle defended by the ICC of the need to open up to any workers who wanted to participate, an element from the CNT even talked about “the danger of seeing in these committees too many ‘uncontrolled’ workers”!

Despite the difficulties there are in constituting such workers’ groups and keeping them alive, despite the danger of being strangled at birth by base unionism, the struggle committees are an integral part of the constitution of the proletariat into a united, autonomous class, independent from all the other classes in society. Like calling for the extension and self-organization of struggles, supporting and impulsing such committees is something which revolutionary groups must take up in an active manner. The development of struggle committees is one of the conditions for the unification of workers’ struggles[2].

Members of the ICC were involved with groups of this kind in a number of countries. In a future WR we will look at our experience in the UK, but perhaps the most important episodes as far as our own militants were concerned were in France. In Révolution Internationale 154, published in March 1987, we published a general article on the struggle committees that had emerged in the wake of the railway workers’ strike, and a leaflet produced by one of these committees. We reproduce both of them here. 

Struggle committees - Preparing the struggles to come

Despite all the attention, hopes, sympathy and enthusiasm shown by workers towards the railway workers’ strike, a certain feeling of anger, bitterness and powerlessness emerged at the end of the strike. Anger and powerlessness when the railway workers went back defeated. Anger and powerlessness about not having come out on strike when it was most needed, at the beginning: “we missed our chance, we should have been out with them, all together”.

To a large extent this feeling was the product of the counter-offensive of the bourgeoisie against the struggles which began in January. Once the danger of extension to other sectors had passed, once the railway workers had got bogged down in a sectional dead-end, in ‘blocking the trains’ and so on, all the bourgeois forces got to work.  The objective was to try to turn the failure of the railway workers into a rout for the whole working class. On the one hand, the government hardened its tone against the strikers and against...the CGT[3], which had actually been rejected by the strikers; on the other hand, the unions called for a ‘tough, unlimited strike’ in other sectors when they had been against the rail strike from the start.

This is a real trap for the workers. A false alternative: either follow the CGT and the other unions in isolated strikes with no perspective, into defeat; or else do nothing and take the risk of making it seem that we are accepting the government’s austerity policies.

Don’t remain passive about union manoeuvres

The two prongs of this trap did not completely ensnare the workers. Yes, the SNCF (national rail) workers were defeated. And with them, the whole working class. However, the near universal refusal, especially in the public sector, to follow the CGT did not allow the union to transform the failure into a rout. Neither the workers in EDF (electricity), RATP (bus and metro), and still less the PTT (post office), to mention only the most militant sectors, have been exhausted, demoralised, or disoriented by a long, tiring, isolated strike which is what the unions were calling for.

So the trap didn’t shut completely because the workers didn’t follow the unions, but neither did they all do nothing. In the assemblies, where there was a strong participation, in the workshops, the post offices, the EDF agencies, the bus and metro depots etc, there were many discussions: “now, it’s too late, we should have done something at the beginning, like the railway workers. Now it’s not the moment, especially not with the CGT! We can’t let the CGT and the others get away with their usual manoeuvres!”

Group together!

There were several responses to this situation. One of them, in this atmosphere of mobilisation and discussion, was the regroupment of workers in struggle committees. We saw this among workers in different EDF agencies in the south of Paris, whose leaflet we publish below. Similar groups were set up, or tried to form themselves, in the Paris sorting offices and among the van drivers. These groups, which refused to allow the unions to monopolise things, had the aim:

- of establishing links between different workplaces

- of drawing a balance sheet of the railway workers’ strike

- of preparing the struggles to come.

For our part, as revolutionaries, despite the return to work at the SNCF, RATP and PTT, we pushed for the formation of such committees. Our militants working in the post office took part in the formation of the struggle committee which called itself ‘Postiers en colere’ (Angry postal workers) and in the distribution of its leaflet:

“....we have decided to form a struggle committee. This is not a new trade union but has on the contrary been decided by those at the base. We don’t want to leave the monopoly of information to the unions, nor the choice of the moment to call for a struggle. We’ve had enough of manoeuvres and lies! We need to prepare the struggle:

- by setting up contacts and information between the different offices

- by preparing for the widest possible unity at the base, unionised and non-unionised

- by proposing the most unifying demands for all workers: 700 francs for everyone; against job-cuts and unemployment. Despite what we are told, unemployment is also hitting postal workers, at least indirectly by jobs being suppressed and the freeze on transfers”

The leaflet ends with a call to join the committee, addressed to all those who agree with the lessons of the railway workers strike:

- it’s the general assemblies which take the decisions, which nominate their strike committees and revocable delegates;

- it’s the general assemblies which formulate the demands and, when necessary, negotiate by coordinating their efforts;

- it’s the general assemblies which take charge of extension towards other sectors.

The two committees, the one in the EDF and the one in the post, made contact with each other and held two meetings with the aim of creating an inter-category struggle committee. About 15 workers took part in these meetings. Unfortunately the ability to mobilise for a real activity fell away very quickly. At the second meeting, those present decided to stop the PTT committee for the moment given its lack of echo, to verify the real level of mobilisation among the EDF comrades and to maintain contacts with a view to future struggles. That’s where we are today. We encourage readers to let us know about any similar experiences they may know about. 

Committees to prepare the struggle

However limited these experiences were, the emergence of struggle committees is likely to take place again in the near future.

This is because they correspond to a necessity that is felt more and more among workers, to regroup and organise themselves with the aim of preparing the struggle and not give a free hand to the unions, to break their monopoly on information. To oppose their efforts to sabotage and isolate the struggle. To defend the need for general assemblies to organise the extension and unification of workers’ struggles.

They also correspond to a possibility: the railway workers’ strike has awakened the consciousness of many workers. This awakening is bound to be expressed in the preparation and unfolding of the coming struggles.

These committees are not new trade unions, even if they do face this danger. But this means their death. They are not and cannot be embryos of future general assemblies or strike committees which have to be elected by the assemblies. Such strike committees cannot survive outside of an actual strike.

On the other hand, the struggle committees we are talking about here can play a very important role:

- developing contacts and links between different sectors and categories, during and even before the struggle;

- drawing lessons from previous struggles, being a place for discussion;

- being places where workers from different sectors, or the unemployed, can get together

- faced with the unions, being instruments that can propagate the lessons of strikes like that of the railway workers, that can defend the need for every struggle to break out of the prison of isolation and spread;

- to organise themselves to carry out that task, intervening with leaflets, speaking out in strikes and assemblies, not only in their own sector, but in others’ as well.

This is the main focus of our intervention in the various committees which appeared during and after the railway workers’ strike, and this is how we intend to intervene in the committees which we are sure will re-appear in future struggles – and, we are sure, quite soon. 

RL 21.2.87

Leaflet by a struggle committee

To all the electricity and gas workers

To all workers and unemployed

We are a group of workers from combined energy agencies in the southern suburb of Paris. We have decided to coordinate and get together in a STRUGGLE COMMITTEE to defend our interests by ourselves.

We applauded the struggle of the railway workers in December 86, and their ability to extend the struggle nationally despite the opposition of the trade unions. At the beginning of this strike, as with the EDF strike in Paris at the end of ’86, it was non-unionised workers who were at the origin of the strike.

The way the rail workers controlled their struggle has made it clear that we need

-            to function on the basis of general assemblies

-            elected and revocable strike committees

-            elected delegates to coordinate different depots

BUT THE RAILWAY WORKERS WERE ISOLATED BY SECTIONALISM

Like workers from other sectors, we electricity and gas workers were not able to come out on strike at the same time as the railway workers or establish direct contacts with them. Neither did the rail workers understand the urgent need to right from the beginning send massive delegations to find us.

When the isolation in the SNCF sector was obvious, in January, the trade unions – with the CGT at the forefront – started talking about extension. But this was a dead-end kind of extension. We saw this at Montrouge, Massy, Sceuax, Bourg la Reine, etc. We had every reason to go on strike like the railway workers because we are subjected to the same attacks by the government and we are seeing our spending power diminishing more and more while the burdens of the job get heavier. And what have the unions done about this?

They have kept us cooped up in our agencies.

They advised us against contacting our comrades on strike in the RATP or the SNCF or other sectors.

They manoeuvred to stop us looking for solidarity outside or seriously informing the population.

They organised power cuts at any given moment, without consulting us, which had the effect of setting workers in the private sector against us, and to make a laughing stock of the power cuts that were necessary to show that we are on strike (but could be less brutal and not at hours when other workers are going to work)...

Their full timers, as usual, told lies at one agency to the next, making a parody of consultation, and then pushing us to come out on strike at precisely the moment when the railway workers’ strike was being defeated.

These specialists in top-down strikes also got us wasting our time guarding the centre at Bagneux against fictional attacks by extreme right wing shopkeepers, all in order to distract us from any real EXTENSION to other sectors carried out and controlled by ourselves.

When we asked for an account of what they’d been doing at our general assemblies, they arrogantly informed us that they had gained 200 new CGT membership cards. This is not what we went on strike for! It’s a mockery, especially when you consider that there has been no small number of membership cards given back or torn up!

WE HAVE TO CIRCULATE INFORMATION ABOUT WHAT’S HAPPENING:

Just as at the SNCF the unions pushed workers into dead-end days of action, in 86, they tried to lead us into a week of inaction. But in several agencies many of us didn’t go along with this or obey our union leaders or seconds in command; others, with tears of rage in their eyes, stopped taking part in this new push-button strike aimed at buffing up the image of the unions.

At Montrouge however, the strike was ended collectively with a will not to allow ourselves to get demoralised, and several of us tore up our union cards or are going to do it.

At Vanves, a majority refused to let themselves be manipulated, not out of passivity but because they don’t want to come out on strike in any old way on the orders of people who want to decide things for us: here the CGT violated the decision of the general assembly by quietly calling its members to come out on a two hour strike! This is division in action!

DON’T LET OURSELVES GET PENNED IN LIKE SHEEP!

Many of us have lost several days pay for nothing but a bitter taste of defeat. But despite all the union intrigues, we mustn’t get discouraged.

Whether you’re in a union or not, we call on you to join us to prepare for the coming struggle. Here is the truth: the government and the unions are each playing their role in attacking us and preventing us from achieving UNITY, which is the only guarantee of our strength.

The more we stay mobilised and grouped together, the more we will hold onto the lessons of the SNCF and the false extension by the unions at the beginning of 87. We have had enough of union manoeuvres. LET’S PREPARE THE STRUGGLE TOGETHER.

For the next struggle, let’s establish direct contacts at the EDF and with other sectors:

-            CIRCULATE AND CHECK THE INFORMATION ABOUT STRUGGLES IN DIFFERENT AGENCIES, DIFFERENT CENTRES AND IN OTHER SECTORS

-            PREPARE THE GREATEST POSSIBLE UNITY BETWEEN UNIONISED AND NON-UNIONISED, without having any illusions in the Intersyndicales[4]

-            MAKE SURE WE FUNCTION THROUGH GENERAL ASSEMBLIES, ELECTED STRIKE COMMITTEES, AND ELECTED AND REVOCABLE DELGATES TO THE COORDINATIONS

-            TAKE CHARGE OURSELVES OF EXTENSION TO OTHER SECTORS

-            GENERAL ASSEMBLIES AND COMMITTEES SHOULD BE OPEN TO ALL OTHER WORKERS AND UNEMPLOYED WHO WANT TO FIGHT WITH US

FOR ONCE, LET’S DO SOMETHING CONCRETE! LET’S GET TOGETHER! LET’S UNITE!

20 January 1987.

Struggle Committee