The winter months have now placed some distance between us in the here and now and the days when the Occupy Movement created a wave of occupations that seemed unstoppable across the U.S. Was this movement an ephemeral whim of the masses’ imagination, an accident of history, or rather part and parcel of the general and wider struggles put forth by the working class and other non-exploiting strata of society against capitalist oppression? The heat of the movement has clearly dissipated. This seems to be the case when we note that while during the early days of the movement the state’s repressive apparatus had to ‘soften’ its most ferocious tactics of social control in the face of the population’s indignation against police brutality and sympathy with the protesters, by January it was carrying out violent evictions of the most resilient encampments in the nation virtually unhindered. We can also point out that while in Oakland in December the brutal attack against an Iraq war veteran—which resulted in his hospitalization in a coma—sparked the Occupy Oakland blockade of the Longview port and the protest march by thousands of Oakland workers in its support, the social situation today has returned to a relative, if perhaps temporary, calm. Disregarding these signs that the initial vitality and authenticity of the movement have for the moment exhausted themselves, the Occupy Movement’s organizers are planning a ‘general strike’ for May 1st, and are putting forth calls to all affiliated groups to support this action. How successful can this action be in the face of a virtually demobilized movement? Can it develop a perspective for overcoming capitalism -- the root cause of humanity’s suffering-- against which at least initially the movement seemed to be to crystallizing, in isolation, without linking up to the wider struggles of the working class? And, most importantly, who can be the subject of a radical transformation of society today? The activists and organizers who today are largely at the helm of a demobilized movement? The labor parties and attendant unions? Or the non-exploiting masses themselves, consciously and autonomously organized?

Activism: The Need to Understand Its True Nature

As Marxists, we understand that in the period of capitalist decadence the burning questions about the future that decaying capitalism offers –the lack of perspective, the dislocation of a sense of collective, the sense of uncertainty, anxiety, alienation, the never ending wars, the degradation of the environment etc— find expression in spontaneous eruptions, without warning and without being planned in advance, as it used to be the case during the period of the ascendance of capitalism. Then, youthful capitalism had the ability to grant significant and long-lasting reforms. This made it possible to organize struggles with the help of the then existing permanent organizations of the working class –the unions and the socialist parties. But capitalism’s entry in its epoch of decadence irreversibly changed these conditions. The spontaneous nature of the masses’ movement is what has characterized the struggles seen across the globe in the last year and a half. It is what gives them authenticity.

The Occupy Movement in the U.S. did not escape from this fundamental tendency. But once the heat of the struggle is gone, the desire to come together to discuss the big social questions of the day and the determination not to accept the brutalization of existence imposed by capitalism cannot find expression in any permanent form of organization without it becoming co-opted by the superior forces of the state and its apparatus, of which the unions and leftist/bourgeois political organizations have become a part. Without the life given by the spontaneous mobilization of the masses, the call for a general strike is totally voluntarist, when not an outright manipulation by leftist organizations or their activist attendants. An affinity group affiliated with the Anti-Bureaucratic Bloc in Oakland notes how the Occupy Movement has not been able to resist the distortion and usurpation of its originally non-hierarchical General Assemblies by professional activists who established a practice of linking up with the leftist apparatus of the bourgeoisie and the unions. According to this group, this contributed to the de-vitalization of the movement. On libcom.org [1] on January 29, 2012, the day after the Oakland Police Department cleared the encampment there for the second, and last, time, the group writes: “…it was beginning to look like a class-based critique was becoming acceptable discourse. With the usual professional Leftist intelligentsia more firmly in control of the content and direction of Occupy Oakland tactics and strategies, however, the likelihood of a return to that initial wide appeal -- based on the workable and attractive principles (although not without their unique problems) of non-hierarchical decision making and the refusal to issue demands -- seems practically non-existent…bureaucratic tendencies began creeping into the open with [the leadership’s] cozying up to Organized Labor, an early self-destructive move (for Occupy as a whole, not for the leadership, for whom it was an astute career move).” We can discuss with the comrades who posted this on the significance of “non-hierarchical decision making” and the (attractive principle) of “the refusal to issue demands”. But we agree with their general assessment. The Occupy Movement, or whatever is left of it, is today in the hands of experienced activists and organizers. As such, we think it is in great jeopardy of missing the opportunity for a genuine development in the direction of class, proletarian positions.

But what do we mean by this? There's certainly a difference between a small group like Student Loan Justice (a group whose signs were a fixture at the original Occupy Wall Street encampment), for whom the campaign to make student loan debt dischargeable in bankruptcy is probably a sincere expression of a desire to improve the deteriorating conditions of life experienced by the younger generations today, and those professionals who hop from social movement to social movement, turning them toward partial struggles, reformism, or premature fights with the cops. Instead of capitalizing on the common grievances of the protesters and the wider working class, such as the necessity to defend one’s self and each other against the concerted attacks of crisis-ridden capitalism, whether they come in the form of precariousness, evictions, student debt peonage, lay-offs, chronic unemployment, cuts to benefits or social spending, the job of professional activism is to take advantage of the movement’s momentary questioning as to whether or which goals to pose for itself, who to turn to for help, and the real causes of society’s impasse to harness the movement’s genuine openness and derail it into reformist and single-issue campaigns. This only contributes to exhausting the potential and initial elan of the struggle into a myriad of meetings and marches, the aim of which is not to build unity and buoy the sense of self-confidence, but rather to weaken their potential.

This was clearly noticeable in the actions of west coast activists who worked in close ranks with the union apparatus there to fragment the potential for unity and solidarity with the working class which was expressed by Occupy Oakland when it shut down the Longview port in solidarity with its struggling longshoremen (see our article online on this issue). While the ‘rank and file’, genuine base of the Occupy movement on the west coast called on workers’ solidarity and organized meetings with longshoremen and other workers, activists worked around the clock and behind their backs to make sure that the unions’ presence would disrupt, intimidate, and discourage attempts by Occupy protesters and workers to build real ties of unity. This is because the more experienced activists and organizers vie for a position of power and status and identify rather with the bureaucratic tendencies of a union’s apparatus than with any spontaneous and autonomous expression of real class solidarity by the ‘rank and file’ protesters. We think these elements have done and are doing their best to occupy the terrain of the struggle ahead on the May 1st general strike in order to be better positioned to dampen all incipient potential for the movement to start at a deeper, wider, more politicized level than when it first started in September. However, even the kind of activism represented by the campaign to reform the student loan system can be absorbed by the ruling class. This campaign, if successful, would integrate more and more with bourgeois legality to "work out a solution" or it would turn to something disruptive and then disappear, but if it was successful the state would seek to bring it into the fold, so to speak, in order to enhance the mystification about its ‘benevolent’ nature.

Activism fully works for the benefit of the ruling class and in its class terrain. It is no coincidence that the Democratic Party uses the issue of the widening income gap between rich and poor as a campaign issue, posing as the party that champions the plight of the least lucky and the purveyor of benevolent relief. In this way, rather than encouraging a deepening of the understanding of how capitalism works, why it can no longer offer long-lasting reforms, what needs to be done to address the social problems of the world, and who is to do so, activism ties the movement to the belief that the capitalist state can intervene on behalf of the dispossessed, and that capitalism can still offer ‘opportunities’ and prosperity. Whether the terrain of the struggle will be diverted from the real issues posed by decadent capitalism into the dead-end of reformism and the democratic campaign or otherwise will depend largely on the general situation of the class struggle both nationally and internationally. This does not prove that the movement was from the beginning an orchestration of the bourgeois left and had no proletarian expressions of its own. Neither does it necessarily mean that any genuine expressions of possible politicization are defunct. It does mean, we believe, that the direction the movement ultimately finds its roots in its original difficulties and weakness. Whether these will ultimately prove to be the death knell of the movement, it is impossible to say today.

East coast and west coast: the Occupy Movement has the same class nature and same weaknesses

As it is often the case in similar circumstances, there are certainly individuals within activism who are genuinely interested in advancing the cause of the struggle of the exploited and who cannot be identified as ‘the enemy’. However, their political development, their clarity as to the goals and methods of the struggle will not advance so long as they don’t break free of the traps of activism, which will make every attempt to steer them away from real class positions. As we conclude from the https://libcom.org [1] post, and as we discuss in the article on the west coast longshore workers’ struggle, this is the situation on the West Coast, but what of the East Coast? New York City is, after all, the birthplace of the movement. However it cannot be said that it provides any clearer leadership and way forward. On the New York City Occupy website there is a very interesting post on the present state of the General Assembly and spokes council there, with interesting replies as well, clearly showing that the Occupy Movement as it was at its birth is now good and defunct. Here is a little excerpt: “Proposal to end spokes and the GA

I propose that we end both spokes council and the GA for several reasons.

…Spokes and the General Assembly are a recreation of the US Congress, without the judicial and executive branches to check the legislative branches power.

Both spokes and the GA have completely screwed over the most vulnerable occupiers. Spokes showed how at a whim it could just end a housing program for occupiers. Essentially people were thrown to the wolves by this decision. Both bodies have shown a complete disregard for marginalized voices such as the mentally ill or homeless. Violence has broken out not just because disruptors are bad, but the total disregard of body itself for certain voices has triggered some conflicts…

A secret organization like spokes does NOTHING for OWS in terms of public relations. As neither body is functional, both OWS and Spokes are an embarrassment to the movement…Ending spokes and the GA would not hamper the movement at all. Individuals and working groups could still work on their projects. In fact as both the spokes and GA absorb time from events or projects that occupiers could be working on, freeing up this time would help rejuvenate the movement. Spokes council meetings in particular take people away from downtown Manhattan, and this divides the movement.

Activists who are fighting against the system and against laws they consider injustice shouldn’t submit to a new system with equally oppressive structures (out of control legislative process)"1

While the post contains a number of confusions regarding the structure and purpose of a general assembly, it nonetheless gives a good idea of the situation today. To illustrate how very difficult it will be for the movement to express its voice freely and openly as it had been able to do initially, we can take a look at the calendar of events leading up to the ‘general strike’ of May 1st which Occupy’s organizers have set up. It is filled with guest speakers and personalities from the union apparatus, leftist activism, and radical academia who will hold teach-ins about most notably May Day and the general strike. This being said, we still affirm that this movement belonged to the working class. A social movement of this importance cannot be understood in isolation. When we place Occupy in the context of the international situation, as the movement itself did at the beginning, when it clearly stated it found its inspiration in the movements of the Indignant in Spain and in the students’ and workers’ protests in Greece, the broader context of its grievances is immediately grasped. But the movements in Spain and Greece themselves are the product of a historic period that opened up in 2006 with the anti-CPE movement in France and the Vigo, Spain massive workers’ struggle, breaking the reflux in consciousness which resulted from the campaigns around the collapse of the Stalinist bloc in 1989. The Occupy Movement of the U.S. is inscribed in this dynamic, both regarding the incipient, even if admittedly confused, questioning of capitalism, and the difficulties it is facing in finding a clear class terrain, class identity and class consciousness. In this sense, it is important to assess Occupy Movement on the basis of both its origin and its development in order to trace clearer perspectives for the struggles to come and in order to more fully understand the problems the working class faces in the present period. This can inform us as to how to help it overcome its difficulties.

However, it is not the scope of this article to present the weaknesses of the movement since its inception. We invite our readers to see this article on the democratic illusions in the movement [2], and elsewhere in our press and online articles. But we think it is important to at least point out that the Occupy Movement’s confusions regarding its own identity, its goals, its tactics, and its form of organization created the conditions of isolation from the wider struggles of the working class and opened the door to the intrusion and substitution by strata, political groups and individuals that do not belong to the working class terrain and who have expertly manipulated the openness and amorphous state of the consensus process to distort the functioning of the General Assemblies and install themselves at the movement’s helm. Further, the movement’s own illusions in democracy –expressed in its insistence that the ‘injustices’ of capitalism can be addressed by amending the Constitution, or the tax code, or the juridical definition of corporation- block and obscure a clear understanding of capitalism, which is not regarded as a social relationship between exploited and exploiters defended by the state, but as the usurpation of a state otherwise neutral and beneficial by ‘corporate greed’. This can further provide leftists with ammunition to steer the movement in the direction of electoral and reformist campaigns aimed at defending the integrity of the capitalist state. Given these conditions, what can the most genuine elements within the Occupy Movement do to find a way forward to their questioning, to their preoccupations, without drowning in the swamp of reformism and activism?

The proletarian perspective is the only path to the future

Undeniably, the working class is still confronting innumerable difficulties in developing its struggles and its consciousness. It is also true that it has not taken the lead in many of the important mobilizations we have seen in the last year and a half, and that when it has mobilized, even massively, even in general strikes, it has not been able, for the most part, to force the state to relent its brutal attacks. But just as it is impossible to understand the Occupy Movement in the isolation of the U.S., so it is impossible to understand why the working class is the revolutionary class of our epoch if we look at each of its struggles in isolation from their wider historical context. One thing for certain we can say: the string of austerity measures –layoffs, precariousness, cuts to services and wages, cuts to pension and health benefits, cuts to social security in the form of lengthening the stay at work—gives the lie to the ‘theories’ that sprouted up in the 1970’s about the working class having ‘integrated’ as part of some ‘labor aristocracy’! Indeed, one important characteristic of capitalism is that it has created, for the first time in history, a class that is both exploited and revolutionary. This is because capitalism’s mode of exploitation rests on the most developed form of private ownership. The working class does not own the means of production and its existence cannot therefore be based on the exploitation of other classes. On the contrary, it is obliged to sell its labor power to the owners of the means of production. Its conditions of existence are thus completely at the mercy of the market, the general conditions of the production, sale, and realization of commodities. It is this generalization of commodity relations that rests at the basis of the contradictions of capitalism, not ‘corporate greed’, as some occupiers believe, and that generates the crisis of overproduction, with its sequel of layoffs, brutal attacks against the very class that produces all the wealth of society, degradation of the environment as capital desperately tried to reduce its costs of production, wars, etc. A class that produces all the wealth of society without owning a little bit of it has only one interest to defend: the abolition of the conditions of its own exploitation, i.e., the abolition of capitalism itself. This is why the essential place the working class occupies in these generalized relations of commodity exchange puts it at the center of a social conflict which can only be resolved through massive, generalized, and unified class confrontations against the oppression of capital. These confrontations are not inevitable, but it is the working class that will be at their center stage when, and if, they develop. Without a doubt, the working class is still far from developing the capacity to take the system head on and change it through a revolution. But if this task seems enormous from the point of view of the working class, it is because it still needs to find the confidence in itself that when it unites the various threads of its indignation and discontent of which we are seeing the sparks, it will be the unstoppable force in society that can lead the whole of humanity toward the perspective of a new world. For all these reasons, it is when the working class and the Occupy Movement find and forge links of solidarity on a class, autonomous terrain away from unions, activism, and reformism that a real perspective for a real, radical change can open up.

Ana, March 2012

The article below was originally published in February of last year in the aftermath of the shooting death in Sanford, Florida of unarmed African-American teenager Trayvon Martin by "neighborhood watch captain" George Zimmerman. The case provoked weeks of protests as local authorities initially refused to prosecute Zimmerman citing Florida's "Stand Your Ground Law," which they claimed gave Zimmerman the right to defend himself.

Since the article was published, a special prosecutor appointed by Florida's Governor filed second-degree murder charge against Mr. Zimmerman. This lead to a two-week long trial that has just concluded with Mr. Zimmerman's acquittal. For weeks, the trial dominated the cable news networks, even knocking the scandal around NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden out of the spotlight. The media's lurid media spectacle around the trial featured legal experts handicapping the state and defense cases as if it were a sporting event, right-wing commentators fearing race riots if Mr. Zimmerman was acquitted, and Civil Rights leaders pinning the future of racial justice on a successful conviction.

Given the media circus around the trial, we think it is appropriate to "republish" our original article on the shooting now. In the article, we argued that whatever the outcome of the investigation and possible trial, there could be no "justice" for Trayvon Martin, his family or any other young person subject to similar treatment obtained through the bourgeois justice system.

Clearly, the trial has been a powerful confirmation of our analysis. Prosecuting one man, regardless of how distasteful we may find his character and actions, cannot solve the deep rooted historical scars that produce racial stereotyping and prejudice as persistent social problems in the United States (and many other countries); nor can it compensate for the galloping social decomposition that produced the ideological and social conditions that are ultimately responsible for the tragic and fatal events of that day in February of last year.

Even when the bourgeois criminal justice system functions as it is supposed to (and it rarely does), it can only ever consider the facts and circumstances of individual cases according to its own very limited legal principles; it cannot get to the root of the social, historical and economic problems that produce the context for these individual cases. Bourgeois justice may have exonerated Mr. Zimmerman for now, but it cannot excuse the violence, tragedy and suffering that the continued existence of capitalism will continue to produce everyday. This would be the case even if Mr. Zimmerman had been convicted and sent to prison. Whatever the verdict was, it was only ever going to be the case that there will be more Trayvon Martins to come, as long as this inhuman system continues to exist.

On February 26th, Trayvon Martin, an unarmed seventeen-year-old African American man, was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a "neighborhood watch captain," as he walked home from a local convenience store in Sanford, Florida. The official investigation into the killing by the local authorities has been fraught with difficulties and controversy. About the only thing we know for sure is that Trayvon was not carrying any weapons at the time he was killed, carrying only a bag of Skittles and an iced tea he purchased moments before his life was tragically snuffed out.

For his part, Mr. Zimmerman claims to have acted in self-defense, shooting Trayvon only after their confrontation turned violent. Citing Florida's controversial "stand your ground law," Zimmerman's camp claim that he had no legal duty to retreat before using deadly force to defend himself. But what was Zimmerman doing in the first place pursuing a young man through the neighborhood for no other crime other than being black and wearing a hoodie?1 Zimmerman's camp claims he was acting to protect his neighborhood, which had been subject to a string of recent burglaries reportedly carried out by young black males. But why should he feel as if it was his job to protect his neighborhood? And protect it from what exactly? In bourgeois society, it seems only individuals can be responsible for crime. Rarely, and only in passing, are social and economic conditions such as the erosion of the social fabric, a pervasive each for their own mentality, mass unemployment and poverty that produce crime in the first place ever considered. No, under capitalism, the poor are considered the "dangerous classes" which it is the duty of all good citizens to keep a watchful eye over. Unfortunately, for Trayvon Martin, in the United States, being young and black is generally enough to raise suspicion that one is up to no good.

Unsurprisingly, this episode has provoked a tremendous outrage in the African-American community in Florida and indeed across the entire country. But the outrage is not just limited to the official African-American spokespersons; a deep sense of remorse and regret are gripping the country over the fact that a young man could lose his life in such a brutal way apparently having done nothing wrong.

The last several weeks have seen Trayvon's case become a cause célèbre for the national civil rights organizations, as well as the national media. Last week, over 30,000 people participated in a rally in Sanford, with similar rallies being held in cities a far afield as Chicago and Washington, DC. The outspoken civil rights activist, Reverend Al Sharpton has taken up Trayvon's case and even President Obama has entered the discussion, saying that, "If he had a son, he would look like Trayvon."2 Of course, the President fails to mention that if he had a son, he wouldn't be walking down the street without Secret Service protection. Even the contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, who have not shied away from playing the race card over the course of their bitter campaign, have been forced to denounce the shooting. 3

From our perspective as revolutionary Marxists, Taryvon's death is indeed a terrible tragedy. How revealing is it that in our day and age, a chain of events can occur where a short trip to a local convienence store ends in a brutal death? This incident stands as a stark reminder that whatever advances might have been made over the past several decades, the quest for true human solidarity across racial lines will always be frustrated as long as capitalist society still stands. Trayvon's family, the African American community and all those concerned with human dignity have every right to be outraged by this terrible event. This incident is but one more example that the social system under which we live—capitalism—is more and more characterized by senseless violence and a total disregard for human life. Even if Zimmerman's fears about a pending burglary were correct, there is no rational reason why this should have lead to Trayvon's brutal death in the neighborhood streets. Under capitalism it seems the protection of property rights trumps the dignity of human life. Clearly, this incident should cause us all to think about the root cause behind this type of senseless interpersonal brutality.

However, the involvement of the various bourgeois civil rights organizations and the narrative being developed by the national media appear to be designed to make sure we never get to the underlying issues that have produced this brutal outcome. Over the last several weeks, the civil rights organizations have turned the outrage over this shooting into a campaign to pressure the state into making an arrest and prosecuting Zimmerman. 4 Calls for "Justice for Trayvon," and "No Justice, No Peace," have been the dominant slogans of the rallies and the press conferences.

Indeed, the local police and prosecutors seem to have bungled the investigation into this case from the beginning. This fact seems to finally have been acknowledged by the bourgeois authorities. The Sanford Police Chief has temporarily stepped down, and the local prosecutor has recused himself from the case. Florida Governor Rick Scott—himself a radical Tea Party Republican—has appointed a special prosecutor and a grand jury is scheduled to examine evidence in the case in early April with the goal of finding out if there is any charges that can legally be brought against Zimmerman at all. Moreover, word is that the federal Justice Department is reviewing the evidence to see if there is anyway that Zimmerman can be charged with a federal hate crime—a charge that could bring a life sentence if he were convicted, since the underlying act led to Trayvon's death. 5

Clearly, the failure of the state to bring any charges against Zimmerman has fueled the outrage that continues to brew. How can a man shoot an unarmed teenager to death in the street and no charges are brought? This must be the result of a racist justice system that does not value the life of black people. If the circumstances had been reversed, had it been an armed black man, shooting a white teenager, certainly the authorities wouldn't be discouraged by the state's odd gun laws from making an arrest?6 Surely, there is a way of making some charges against this man stick? After all, we have all seen Law and Order—we now that when the state wants someone to go to jail, there are always creative ways to find a basis for prosecution. The state's seemingly willful failure to bring any charges of Zimmerman seems to harken back to the brutal days in the struggle for civil rights, when the Ku Klux Klan, and even local law enforcement officers themselves, could murder black people with impunity.

We can certainly sympathize with the frustration and outrage expressed here, but for us these are the wrong questions for getting to the bottom of the senseless and often racist violence that so often characterizes capitalist society. Framing the problem as the lack of prosecution of Mr. Zimmerman, does not escape the horizon of bourgeois justice, which for us is no justice at all in the end. After all, what is the bourgeois justice system? A set of laws and institutions set up above all to protect the sanctity of private property. Its version of justice for the masses is no more than cruel retribution. No serious academic who studies these issues really believes the bourgeois justice system is capable of humanely rehabilitating anyone. Its only purpose is to discipline and punish the bodies of offenders and to convince the rest of us to be content that once the state has extracted its pound of flesh, no further questioning of the root basis of crime is necessary.

We have no way of knowing what motivated Mr. Zimmerman to take the actions that he did. However, given his history of making dozens of phone calls to the police sometimes on the same day, it seems reasonable to consider whether he suffers from some kind of detachment from reality, a perverse identification with the repressive power of the capitalist state, which he strove to emulate. This phenomenon is well known to law enforcement officials, something that has been called "Wanna-Be Cop Syndrome" by some commentators. This may be reason enough to call Mr. Zimmerman's mental health into question, something that even under bourgeois justice could mitigate his personal responsibility for his actions.

However, whatever Mr. Zimmerman's mental state, it seems clear that his actions are only the logical fulfillment of a culture and a society that more and more encourages a "shoot first and ask questions later" attitude towards problem solving. An environment that more and more erodes social solidarity and promotes the most lurid interpersonal competition. Whether it is at the workplace or in the streets, decomposing capitalism seeks to turn everyone into an isolated monad, looking after their own best interests. If you aren't prepared to be brutal and ruthless, you are reduced to the status of a social loser, or worse, in Trayvon's case, cannon fodder in the fulfillment of a sick will to power.

For us, the real story in the Trayvon Martin case is the intersection of such a personality disorder with the social decomposition of capitalist society. Racism may predate the development of decomposition, and maybe even capitalism itself, but today's expression of racial animus take place in a context of the utter degradation of human relations characteristic of a moribund society. Rather than focusing on the question of Mr. Zimmerman's possible individual criminal responsibility (which would allow us to think "justice" could be served by his prosecution), we ask what kind of society produces the conditions that allow a personality such as his easy access to a gun, legitimates his power lust by giving him a position as a "neighborhood watch captain" and then emboldens him to fulfill his power fantasy through the "stand your ground" law? Our answer: a capitalist society in full decomposition.7

The absolutely bizarre law that may or may not allow Zimmerman to escape prosecution in this case seems to us to itself be a function of the social decomposition of capitalist society. These laws—on the books in some two dozen states— revise the common law standard for self-defense by allowing individuals to use deadly force to defend themselves and others without first obliging them to exhaust all opportunities to retreat from the situation. Moreover, many of these laws allow individual citizens to use deadly force to prevent the commission of any felony: even crimes against property such as burglary. Couple these laws with the vast expansion of the right to carry a concealed weapon that has occurred over the last decade and American society begins to resemble more and more the days of the Wild West. In the time of the Tea Party, even law enforcement it seems is being privatized with deadly consequences. American society moves further and further towards embodying the "everyman for himself" mentality that characterizes capitalist decomposition on so many levels.

Not surprisingly, law enforcement officials have generally opposed such laws. As professionals in repression, they know they don't need vigilante loose canons armed to the teeth making their job of policing capitalist society any more difficult.8 Not least because it flies in the face of the ideology of equality and justice and creates a social layer that thinks the only way the law will be enforced is to take it into one's own hands. 9 But in today's political climate, it seems as if doesn't matter what the experts say; the legislative process advances according to its own perverted political calculus that often defies logic. The inordinate weight carried by the National Rifle Association (N.R.A.) in U.S. politics has only been magnified by the Tea Party ascendancy, a political fact that makes the main factions of the bourgeoisie more and more uneasy, even as the Republicans repeatedly seek political gain by exploiting fears that the Democrats will take your guns away, and Democrats strain themselves to convince the electorate of their pro-gun credentials in awkward campaign photo-ops involving shotguns and dead animals.

In the end, we don't think that there can be any "justice" for Trayvon in the bourgeois justice system. Zimmerman may or may not be prosecuted by the state in the end. But even if he is, this will not address the social decomposition that produces the conditions that allow an act like this to transpire in the first place. The only way we can transcend these episodes of senseless interpersonal violence is to abolish capitalism itself altogether. Only then can we advance towards building a truly human community, in which each individual is valued according to his unique capabilities in service of the species as a whole. In such a society, there will be no need for police, "neighborhood watch captains" or "stand your ground laws." While the outrage over Trayvon's killing is indeed justified—we don't think we gain very much by focusing on the prosecution of one man.10 We need to call the entire society itself into question. To do less only lets the real criminal off the hook: capitalism itself.

Henk, 03/25/2012

ICC introduction

Throughout the 1990s, the territory of the former state of Yugoslavia was the scene of a series of horrifying massacres justified by the ideology of ethnic chauvinism. The war in the Balkans brought imperialist slaughter closer to the heartlands of capitalism than at any time since 1945. The local bourgeoisies did all they could to whip their populations into a frenzy of ethnic and nationalist hatred, the precondition for supporting or participating in the bloody slaughter of the Yugoslav wars.

These hatreds have not been eliminated by the uneasy peace which now reigns in the region, so it is all the more heartening to see signs that there are those in the region who look for a way forward in the social movement against capitalism and not in any dreams of national aggrandisement. We have seen, for example, a number of struggles by students in Serbia and Croatia, which should be seen as another expression of the same international tendency which we have seen in Western Europe and in the USA with the indignados and Occupy movements. And we are now witnessing the development of a genuinely internationalist politicised minority in both countries, a which openly rejects national divisions and seeks cooperation among all internationalist revolutionaries.

One expression of this new movement is the Declaration of the Birov collective in Serbia, which has recently emerged from a growing nucleus there (see their website, www.birov.net [11]). We are publishing it here. The most important thing about this Declaration, it seems to us, is the clarity and directness with which it puts forward a series of fundamental class positions:

• affirmation of the revolutionary nature of the working class against all “post-marxist mystifications”;

• necessity for the self-organisation of the working class in opposition to the trade unions, defined as organs of the capitalist state;

• insistence that the workers’ assemblies and eventually the workers’ councils are the instrument for the mass struggle against capitalism;

• rejection of all national liberation struggles and capitalist wars, seen as a fundamental “border line between revolutionaries and the patriotic, social democratic left”;

• characterisation of the so-called ‘socialist states’ as capitalist regimes.

The last two points are obviously especially important given the recent conflicts in the region, and the increasing use of nationalist rhetoric by the ruling class.

Underlying these revolutionary positions is a definite recognition that capitalism is no longer in its progressive phase and can no longer provide permanent reforms: in other words, that it is a system in decline.1

The Declaration also makes an interesting observation on the transition period, recognising the problem of the conservative ‘drag’ exerted by certain semi-state organisms.

Clearly there remain areas for discussion and clarification among internationalists, for example on the question of organisation, the perspectives for the class struggle, and the meaning of anarcho-syndicalism today. At the very least, we can welcome a healthy realism in the Declaration’s statement that “no revolutionary organization can be larger or stronger than the current workers` general position dictates”. These and no doubt other questions can only be elucidated through open and fraternal debate.

ICC, February 2012

Declaration for revolutionary organization, Belgrade (2011)

“If there was hope, it must lie in the proles” - George Orwell

Aware of the class divisions inside the capitalist system, the brutal exploitation of which all of us are victims, the state oppression which makes that exploitation possible, and also the unsustainabile nature of the current militaristic order which is inevitably heading towards a catastrophe, we organize ourselves into “Birov”, an organization with the goal of radically opposing these social phenomena and of achieving their final eradication through class struggle.

By realizing that the working class, as the class hit the most by today’s social structure, holds the largest revolutionary potential, “Birov” organizes class conscious, militant workers with the intention of spreading class consciousness within the working class, and directing it towards organized workers` struggle realized by means of workers` councils. We reject all “post-Marxist” mystifications which talk about the dying out or non-existence of the working class and therefore negate the class struggle and the crucial role of the workers as an agent of revolutionary change. A member of the working class is anyone who has to sell their labour power to capital : a butcher, a worker in the sexual industry or a girl working in a printing shop alike.

Emancipatory actions must be based on the self-activity of the oppressed, and on autonomous workers` councils, striving towards the creation of a self-managed society, without a state, without classes and without the involuntary institutions of civil society. Every new attempt at overcoming the old society must be directed towards organizing the council system on an international scale, because only a radical change in the balance of class forces can initiate progressive social changes. The council form set up after the dissolution of the traditional, hierarchical capitalist state machinery is not something that revolution should strive for – here it only exists as a conservative organ which exists during the revolution, and the final self-organization and emancipation of the working class will imminently threaten its power, as well as the existence of that order itself. In this imminent conflict revolutionaries must recognize autonomously organized workers as the revolutionary vanguard in the final and decisive battle against the old order and for the society of free producers.

Only the open and unrestricted opposition to divisions created by this society will unleash the subversive potential which the existing workers` struggle holds today. Workers` struggle must be founded on the workplaces, where workers recognize themselves as producers and where class differences are being projected and resolved in their essence. We reject the party as completely inadequate for revolutionary organizing of the working class. Old reform parties which are remembered for winning political freedoms and reduced work hours, weren’t that in the first place : their primary purpose was a struggle for economic and political reforms, where an anti-political consciousness was yet to be and where it was still striving towards traditional –hierarchical forms of representation.

We can conclude that “Birov” can be characterized as an anarcho-syndicalist propaganda organization. It addresses workers in struggle and gathers anarcho-syndicalists which act by forming militant class groups at their workplaces. These groups shouldn`t be mistaken for trade unions because their intention is not to grow in numbers but to participate in assembly movements. They don`t have a formal structure and political programme. These groups are formed at workplaces where there is already a tradition of autonomous workers` organization and where a network of workers tends to continue their activities and develop new ways of struggling.

We consider that today the trade unions cannot have a political program which is not reactionary, and thus the only possible way for the mass of workers to organize can be assemblies; mass organizing in a “permanent” organization isn`t possible until the revolution becomes an immediate goal. Trade unions have, as instruments of reform struggle and a separate economic organization, lost their reason of existence in conditions in which they cannot any longer consistently reflect the aspirations of the working class. They are today nothing less than a state incorporated instrument which keeps the workers` struggle depoliticized and within a strictly limited framework They represent a kind of prison for the working class, without which the workers would be free in their tendency towards self-organization. Paid and often corrupt union bureaucrats are nothing but guards and wardens of those prisons. Therefore, unions are just an arm of a state which implements another kind of oppression of the working class. Capitalism cannot provide permanent reforms anymore: every struggle for the immediate and daily interests of proletariat, where they are not suppressed by trade unions and parties, necessarily evolves towards the revolutionizing of the masses and action against the repressive and exploitative foundations of the capitalist order. Because of that, today, any kind of phenomenon that tends to depoliticize the workers` struggle and keep it in the imposed framework, is necessarily reactionary. Claims about how anarcho-syndicalist organizations should be “non-ideological” are no alternative to the fake divisions imposed by capitalism, but only a re-emergence of the old (unenforceable) idea about separate economic organization, and in practice most often end up as leftist activist networks which reproduce the ideology of the mainstream, nationalist “left”. Opposed to those claims, anarcho-syndicalist organizations are class-militant and political organizations : the only principles of anarcho-syndicalism which are accepted by all members are necessarily political in their content.

We see ourselves not as an organization which necessarily tends towards growth in numbers and thus puts itself as a goal, an idea which often results in radical activism; nor do we consider ourselves as a kind of vanguard of the working class which dictates its interests. Our goal is to develop an organization which will be able to intervene in workers` struggle. We share our accumulated experience with the workers and by that we can increase the capacity of the workers` struggle, thus helping its extension and its further organization. Such a relation creates a mutual dependence and therefore no revolutionary organization can be larger or stronger than the current workers` general position dictates; and because of that we aren`t afraid of workers self-organizing and of “loss of control”; it is, on the contrary, our goal. Consequently, the basis for the unification of oppressed groups in capitalism will not be set by any party or “front”, nor by a mass trade union, or an anarchist group which acts in the preparation phase, the phase of re-grouping of revolutionary forces, but by a mass anti-capitalist struggle organized in workers’ councils under whose wing alone can the true emancipatory vision be articulated. Therefore, the best way of expressing solidarity with oppressed groups is the development of our own struggle at the workplace and constant education about the questions of oppression.

We condemn as completely reactionary any stance on the revolutionary character of ’national liberation’ struggles. Drawing a parallel with bourgeois-revolutionary national movements is wrong and in this period anti-nationalism is a border line between revolutionaries and the patriotic, social-democratic left. In today`s capitalist society every state is imperialist and the growth of national consciousness can only be seen as a means of preserving the capitalist order in conditions of permanent crisis and impending doom. Any acceptance of national, populist discourse can only draw workers towards a bloody imperialist war; it is the prelude to such a historic moment, as we all witnessed during the beginning and the middle of the 20th century.

In total contrast to the ideas of the anti-war movement of the First World War, counter-revolutionary ideology subordinates the workers to the needs of the national bourgeoisie and all in the name of “anti-imperialism” and “peoples’ liberation”. The results are historically recognizable and can be seen in the “socialist revolutions” after the end of the October revolutionary period, which were victims of party instrumentation and suppression of any form of workers’ self-organization and have resulted in totalitarian imperialist regimes of state capitalism, or so-called “real socialism”.

The liberation of the working class will be carried out by the workers themselves, or it won`t be at all.

Belgrade, Serbia, October 2011

From the start, the unions, the left of the bourgeoisie, and even some from among the libertarian milieu on the west Coast have cast the conflict between the Longview (Washington) longshoremen (ILWU Local 21) and Export Grain Terminal (EGT) corporation as a struggle against ‘union busting’. EGT signed an agreement with the Longview Port promising that all cargo work would be done with the International Longshoremen Workers’ Union (ILWU) workers, but has not kept the promise and tried to hire non-union labor unsuccessfully, and then contracted with another union, Operating Engineers Local 701, who incited its workers to cross Local 21’s picket lines. ILWU workers have received the support of the Occupy movement, who, on Monday, December 12 shut down the major west coast ports of Oakland, Portland, Longview, and Seattle. San Diego, Vancouver, and Long Beach partly shut down as well, and echoes of the unrest were felt as far ashore as Hawaii and Japan. EGT has spent $200 million to build an automated grain elevator at the Port of Longview, and had planned to bring in its first ship in mid-January. Operations at Longview, as at other ports, today are highly automated and longshoremen are the highest paid, yet one of the numerically smallest group of workers at the port. This is the result of more than forty years of union’s negotiations with the bosses which, while guaranteeing high wages, benefits, and job security also allowed for attrition of jobs as workers retired and automation in the context of the ongoing economic crisis made the hiring of new workers superfluous. This created the conditions of isolation the longshoremen find themselves in today and the opportunity to create divisions among groups of workers at the port, where the truckers are by far the lowest paid but also the most numerous workers at the port. They are forced to work as independent contractors and are therefore non-unionized. In this context, even some who are critical of the unions have called for the ‘organization of the un-organized’ truckers at the time when the Occupy movement decided to shut down the ports in a sign of solidarity with the struggling workers. This decision by the Occupy movement could have been taken as an opportunity to start establishing real ties of solidarity among the different groups of port and other workers. The open discussions at the General Assemblies organized by the Occupy movement could have been used as spaces where workers could flesh out a set of common demands that can help them unify their forces and strengthen their ability to self-organize. The call for organizing the un-organized, while sounding radical, does nothing more than letting in the usual divisive union tactics through the back door. Under these conditions, EGT has never had an intention to hire workers with ILWU’s salary and benefits. Instead, it understood the opportunity to make use of the existing conditions of isolation and division among the port workers to pit workers against each other and win the day. Further, EGT has known from the beginning of the existing feud between and within the various local unions, who raid each other as union membership dwindles to barely one in ten workers. In the words of Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO president, in response to calls to support ILWU 21, the AFL-CIO won’t take sides because the feud between ILWU and Operating Engineers is a ‘jurisdictional dispute’. What ‘jurisdictional’ means is the opportunity for this or that local union to curry the favor of any given boss by offering ‘deals’ which would secure their position as brokers between that company and the workers. In order to achieve this goal, the unions must also show the bosses how skillful they are in keeping the working class divided and disoriented, while brokering contracts that are advantageous to the bosses. This is precisely what happened during the dispute between EGT and the ILWU. In this sense, Occupy Longview, Occupy Seattle, Occupy Oakland, and Occupy Portland, all of whom organized and participated in several solidarity actions with port workers from December through February, would do well to draw all the necessary lessons about the treacherous actions of both union officials and some of the Occupy’s organizers from the events that happened on January 5th in Portland and January 6th in Seattle, when various officials of ILWU Locals repeatedly disrupted and sabotaged the meetings planned in solidarity with the port workers. In the words of an organizer of the January 6th Longview, WA action planning meeting and solidarity panel in Seattle, we find the excellent intentions and interest in helping the class build unity and solidarity: “The Friday event emphasized the importance of working class unity and solidarity. It was a historic event bringing together rank and file union members, along with those from the 89% of the working class that is not unionized and unemployed. Through this event, we showed that Occupy is a new type of working class movement that goes beyond the limits of traditional trade unionism by bringing together working class people across industrial lines and across lines of race, gender, and national origin. Building off the example of December 12th west coast port shutdown, speakers dare to envision forms of class struggle that exceed the limits set by 20th century labor laws purposed to constraint past struggles into tame truces that are being broken now by companies like EGT.” In the accounts of what followed, union goons provoked fist fights and constant disruptions, attempted to prohibit the attendance to the meeting by their members, and usurped the public microphone to repeatedly warn Occupy protesters that the unions would not accept their show of solidarity to “their’ workers, and insisted that Occupy stop entreating them to come and speak to their meetings. The same writer continues: “We had initially thought we had a functional relationship with the officers of Local 19 (Seattle). Prior to December 12, we had established communications with the union officers where they had expressed respect for our port shutdown efforts even though they said they could not be involved because of labor law constraints and threats from the courts. On November 30th, the President of Local 19, Cam Williams has publicly received a solidarity letter we had written to the local, and in response he held his fist up in the air saying ‘Solidarity Forever’.” This is the same Cam Williams who came to the January 6th meeting with a goon squad who got drunk before showing up at the meeting and who provoked a fist fight. He shoved people around, snatched the microphone and announced that any of his Local’s members present at the event would be penalized their wages for being there. We can only hope the Occupy movement on the west coast will learn from this experience that ‘organizing the unorganized’, contrary to what some present as the way forward for the class struggle, can only lead to the same kind of situation when workers really try to express solidarity and try to unite their struggles. We also hope it is now clear to them that their past insistence on treating the local union official as ‘equal’ partners in organizing the various rallies and marches in support of the port workers was completely wrong. The unions’ divisive tactic, when they can afford to hide their most virulent goon-squad methods, fully aid the bosses achieve the workers’ acquiescence.

It is clear that while the longshoremen have been locked in a battle to protect their jobs and benefits, their struggle is identical with the struggle which the truckers and the workers of Operating Engineers Local 701 would wage in defense of their conditions of life against the attacks of capital. This message of unity is what could forge the solidarity workers need to confront capital. The struggle is a class struggle, not one against ‘union busting’, nor one about ‘organizing the un-organized’. As of January 27th, 2012 a settlement has been reached between EGT and ILWU Local 21, just in time for the first EGT ship to arrive. It arrived escorted by armed U.S. Coast Guard vessels and helicopters, the first known use of the military to intervene in a labor dispute on the side of management in 40 years. The ILWU trumpets the settlement as a victory for the workers because ‘union busting’ has not succeeded, and union jobs are back in Longview. It praises the Occupy movement (!!!) for helping achieve this ‘victory’. Those who called for organizing the unorganized may be baffled by the union’s ‘success’ in achieving this ‘victory’ without the involvement of the more numerous, and un-organized, truckers at the ports. Who won? In effect ‘confidential’, i.e., secret, behind closed doors, out of the control of the workers themselves, negotiations between the ILWU and EGT still continue, and it is likely the decisions will not be brought to light until the social situation is deemed calm, because we can rest assured, it will not be a ‘victorious’ contract. The victory, it seems to us, belongs squarely in the hands of the bosses and the bourgeois state, of which the unions are but an arm. The ILWU has won the confidence of the bosses because it has succeeded in freezing and derailing the incipient attempts at solidarity and unity across various sectors of the working class which Occupy correctly had aspired to. The truckers will continue to work under miserable conditions. The longshoremen are very likely to get a bad contract, while the ‘scabs’ who EGT had hired will continue their existence trying to make ends meet somehow, somewhere. Meanwhile, the ILWU across the west coast boast of having done the job that Governor Gregoire could not do when she intervened a year ago to try to settle the dispute. They say the workers have reasons to have confidence in the union! And the workers that produce the grain used by EGT and the soil they produce it from will continue to be exploited. Occupy, along with the rest of the working class, must learn that the only way to end this misery is through building real unity and solidarity across categories, race, gender, and nationality lines as they have started recognizing: by extending the struggle and keeping it firmly in their own hands and outside of unions’ and activists’ control.

Ana, March 2012

After six months of struggle against the BESNA agreement[1], which would have meant pay cuts of up to 33%, serious deskilling throughout the building industry, and unemployment for all those refusing to sign the new contracts, the electricians have forced the bosses to back off. Following a failed injunction against an imminent official national strike called by the Unite union, the main BESNA signatory, Balfour Beatty, announced that it was dropping plans to bring in the BESNA agreement, and most of the other firms involved have now followed suit.

As we have shown in a series of articles about this dispute[2], the electricians have fought this battle with an extraordinary degree of militancy and inventiveness. They have occupied public places, blocked roads, held open-mic debates in the street, disregarded the laws on picketing, accepted the support of other workers at their protests, and tried to link up with others in struggle, such as the students and the public sector workers at the big November demonstrations. The most significant expression of this combative spirit was probably the almost country-wide unofficial strike action that took place on 7 December when Unite called off an official national strike under the threat of an injunction. This is a far cry from the tame rituals which we have associated with the recent series of official days of action against public sector cuts or attacks on pensions. All this was almost completely blacked out by the media, including ‘left’ papers like the Guardian, indicating that the sparks’ tactics and independent spirit were seen as a dangerous example to other workers.

In recent weeks, however, there have been signs that the movement has been ebbing, certainly in the London region which had been the epicentre of the movement for a long time. The weekly demonstrations outside selected building sites were becoming less well attended and there were often more leftist paper sellers there than electricians. These weekly actions were themselves in danger of becoming ritualised and did not often succeed in getting other building workers to join the movement. And as the leadership of the strike, organised in the Rank and File group made up mainly of shop stewards, began putting increasing emphasis on the need to pressure the union into calling a national strike, Unite’s incessant delaying tactics were serving to sap workers’ energies.       

And then in the space of a few days, the picture changed dramatically. On Wednesday February 22nd there was lively demonstration outside the Mayfair hotel where Balfour Beatty bosses and others were gathered for a black tie dinner. Park Lane was blocked for nearly an hour and the mood of the sparks was defiant. The next day it was announced that the courts had thrown out Balfour Beatty’s latest injunction against Unite, who would now have no choice but to organise a national strike. Almost immediately Balfour announced that it was pulling out of BESNA.

The leftist press was exultant, trumpeting ‘victory for the sparks’.   A typical example was provided by Socialist Worker (25/2/12)

“Victory shows workers can win in struggle

The electricians’ victory is a simple answer to those that say the working class isn’t a force or that unions are too weak to win. Their determined campaign has humbled a huge corporation—and at the centre has been rank and file workers’ organisation. Despite being ignored by the mainstream media, workers called protests to build up support and show the bosses the depth of opposition to the attack. The threat of an official strike, and the prospect of spreading unofficial action, was enough to force the bosses to back off.

[…]

Strikes are a direct challenge to the authority of the bosses. They can expose the class divide and show the power of the working class. An astonishing level of hesitancy and conservatism from the union leadership marked the electricians’ dispute.

Nonetheless the rank and file rightly fought to get official backing and an official strike. But they were also prepared to act independently of the union bureaucracy. That process needs to be deepened and extended, building up the confidence and organisation of the workers. This can also help to inspire others, in construction and beyond. There should be no return to the corrupt “company unionism” that has infected construction. And the lesson for the rest of the labour movement is simple—militant tactics win”

On the face of it, this was a vindication of the strategy put forward by the leftists and echoed by the majority of the ‘rank and file’ leadership: carry on with the inventive tactics, act unofficially as much as necessary, but put pressure on the union hierarchy to back the dispute. The very threat of a national strike seems to have forced the bosses to cave in.

It’s certainly true that the bosses were worried by the prospect of a national strike. But the unions were also worried. The events of 7 December had shown that the sparks could organise strike action on a national scale without the support of the union machinery. Given the outward looking tactics of the sparks in their local protests and pickets, there was a real danger that a national strike would get increasingly out of their control, even spreading to other sectors. This is why the union was so quick to get together with the industry bosses after Balfour withdrew from BESNA and to issue a joint statement.

On the libertarian communist discussion forum libcom.org, the announcement that BB was withdrawing from BESNA also led to many calls of ‘victory’, but at least one poster (Jim Clarke) sounded a note of caution:

“Have BB really given up on trying to kill of JIB[3]? From having a read of the document sent round today Unite have called off strike action and agreed to come up with a new agreement for modernising the industry, which means electricians and everybody else will still get fucked over but with union approval this time”.

Our comrade Alf supported this approach:

“I agree with Jim Clarke's caution here. A sudden (apparent) climbdown by the bosses on the eve of a union led strike, followed by the cancellation or indefinite postponement of strike action, points to some kind of back room deal. Plus as Jim says, both bosses and union are talking ominously about modernisation. Not to forget that a large part of the workforce in the building trade is not even covered by the JIB in the first place”.

(https://libcom.org/article/attack-electricians-contracts-wobbles-balfour-beatty-folds [15])

There is no doubt that the sparks have achieved a ‘victory’ in the sense of forcing the bosses to retreat. But this was the result of their own initiative and willingness to break out of the established union rules. It would be a serious error to think that the fight is now over and that the union has finally shown itself to be on the workers’ side. Of course, the majority of sparks still see the unions as in some sense their organisations and certainly feel that it’s possible to organise at the rank and file level through the shop steward system. But the shop steward network that ran the strike from below, despite being made up of many sincere militants, also served as the main vehicle for illusions in the trade unions and the strategy of pressurising the union machinery. This is an argument for workers taking further steps along the road towards independence from the unions, by ensuring that general assemblies rather than shop stewards’ committees are really in control of the coming struggle against the ‘modernisation’ plans that are even now being cooked up by the bosses and the unions together.  

Amos 28/2/12

We are publishing a statement by the occupation of the Athens Law School. This seems significant because it directly attacks all nationalist and state capitalist ‘solutions’ to the debacle of debt in Greek, which it correctly identifies as an expression of capitalism’s global crisis. Such positions no doubt reflect the views of a minority in the present social movement, but it seems to be a growing minority.

Statement by the Occupied Athens Law School

The political and financial spectacle has now lost its confidence. Its acts are entirely convulsive. The ‘emergency’ government that has taken over the maintenance of social cohesion is failing to preserve jobs, and the spending power of the population. The new measures, with which the state aims to secure the survival of the Greek nation in the international financial world, lead to a complete suspension of payments in the world of work. The lowering of the minimum wage is entirely with the full suspension of every form of direct or social wage.

Every cost of our reproduction vanishes. The health infrastructure, the educational spaces, the ‘welfare’ benefits and anything that makes us productive in the dominant system are now a thing of the past. After squeezing everything out of us, they now throw us straight into hunger and poverty.

The securing of the abolition of any form of wage, on a legal level, takes place via the creation of a “special account”. In this way, the Greek state ensures that the money supply will be used exclusively for the survival of capital, even at the cost of our lives. The severity of the debt (not of the state, but of that which is inextricably contained in the relationship of capital) threatens to fall on our heads and eliminate us.

The myth of the debt. The dominant patriotic narrative promotes the idea of the Greek debt, promoting it as a transnational problem. It creates the impression that some stateless loan sharks have targeted the Greek state and our “good government” is doing its best to save us, or, on the other hand, that it aims to betray us, being part of international finance capital.

Against this false nationalist conception, the debt is a result of, and an integral part of political economy, a fact that the bosses know only too well. The economy is based upon the creation of shortages, upon the creation of new areas of scarcity (that is, the destructive creation, with negative, always, long-term consequences). The debt and debt obligations will expand to dominate society for as long as there exists property, the routine of consumption, exchange and money.

When we say that the crisis is structural and systemic we mean that the structures of the political economy have reached an end, that their very core has come under attack — that is, the process of value production. It is clear that for capital, we are surplus (see the sky-rocketing unemployment figures) and that at this point, the reproduction of the labour force is merely an obstacle in the process of capital accumulation. The monetary-debt crisis, that is, the replacement of wages with loans, and the inability of issuing of loans, lead the system into a vicious circle of unsustainability. This happens, because it puts into question the value of work itself, that is, the same relationship through which those from below were part of the system.

Should we then head for socialism and a ‘people’s economy’? All kinds of union professionals and wannabe-popular leaders present their own illusions about a political solution within the system and the current political economy. They might talk of the nationalisation of banks, they might take the form of the rebirth of rational liberalism. Sometimes, they even take the form of integration and an alternative ‘revolutionary spirit’. Sometimes we hear about green development, ecological decentralisation, direct democracy and the fetishism of political forms.

While the market itself and state intervention fail to offer any prospects whatsoever, the political spectacle continues to promote all sorts of products such as a people’s economy and state socialism. The mythologies of the various dictatorships of the proletariat, survive at the same time when the masses of those excluded from production, from institutions, the unemployed, all fail to be a reliable customers for political parties and their unions. The reactionary political position of state capitalism has succeeded the previous empty ideology.

Social war knows no borders. Some, amidst the crisis, see a re-drawing of national boundaries. The national body and the various racists seem to see an opportunity to target immigrants, make attacks and pogroms, and to promote the institutional racism of the Greek state. For them, their resistance is painted in national colours; they struggle as Greeks, not as enemies of exploitation and the social repression they face.

We consciously chose sides, believing that any presence of any national symbol or flag belongs to the camp of the enemy, and we are willing to fight it by all means possible. Because the nazis of the Golden Dawn, the autonomous nationalists and the other fascists promote a pure national community as a solution, the pre-emptive attacks against them and solidarity towards the immigrants is a necessary condition for any radical project.

The only solution is social revolution. Against all the above, we propose social revolution, which we consider the only solution in order to have a life, not just survival. This means, to rise up against any financial and political institution. It requires, through the route of revolt, to take measures such as the abolition of the state, of property and any sort of measurability, the family, the nation, exchange and social genders. In order for us to extend freedom across every part of society.

This is what revolution means! Bringing to this direction any struggle centred on wage demands; any self-organised structure and assembly, especially at a time like the present when the political-governmental form of the systemic crisis can lead to a social explosion.

Statement by the Occupied Athens Law School 9/2/12

see also:

Mass poverty in Greece, it's what awaits us all [24]

Workers take control of the Kilkis hospital in Greece [25]

The workers at the general hospital in Kilkis in Greek Central Macedonia recently occupied their hospital and declared it to be running under their control. Here is the public statement they issued on 4 February:

1. We recognize that the current and enduring problems of Ε.Σ.Υ (the national health system) and related organizations cannot be solved with specific and isolated demands or demands serving our special interests, since these problems are a product of a more general anti-popular governmental policy and of the bold global neoliberalism.

2. We recognize, as well, that by insisting in the promotion of that kind of demands we essentially participate in the game of the ruthless authority. That authority which, in order to face its enemy - i.e. the people- weakened and fragmented, wishes to prevent the creation of a universal labour and popular front on a national and global level with common interests and demands against the social impoverishment that the authority's policies bring.

3. For this reason, we place our special interests inside a general framework of political and economic demands that are posed by a huge portion of the Greek people that today is under the most brutal capitalist attack; demands that in order to be fruitful must be promoted until the end in cooperation with the middle and lower classes of our society.

4. The only way to achieve this is to question, in action, not only its political legitimacy, but also the legality of the arbitrary authoritarian and anti-popular power and hierarchy which is moving towards totalitarianism with accelerating pace.

5. The workers at the General Hospital of Kilkis answer to this totalitarianism with democracy. We occupy the public hospital and put it under our direct and absolute control. The Γ.N. of Kilkis will henceforth be self-governed and the only legitimate means of administrative decision making will be the General Assembly of its workers.

6. The government is not released of its economic obligations of staffing and supplying the hospital, but if they continue to ignore these obligations, we will be forced to inform the public of this and ask the local government but most importantly the society to support us in any way possible for: (a) the survival of our hospital (b) the overall support of the right for public and free healthcare (c) the overthrow, through a common popular struggle, of the current government and any other neoliberal policy, no matter where it comes from (d) a deep and substantial democratization, that is, one that will have society, rather than a third party, responsible for making decisions for its own future.

7. The labour union of the Γ.N. of Kilkis will begin, from 6 February, the retention of work, serving only emergency incidents in our hospital until the complete payment for the hours worked, and the rise of our income to the levels it was before the arrival of the troika (EU-ECB-IMF). Meanwhile, knowing fully well what our social mission and moral obligations are, we will protect the health of the citizens that come to the hospital by providing free healthcare to those in need, accommodating and calling the government to finally accept its responsibilities, overcoming even in the last minute its immoderate social ruthlessness.

8. We decide that a new general assembly will take place, on Monday 13 February in the assembly hall of the new building of the hospital at 11 am, in order to decide the procedures that are needed to efficiently implement the occupation of the administrative services and to successfully realise the self-governance of the hospital, which will start from that day. The general assemblies will take place daily and will be the paramount instrument for decision making regarding the employees and the operation of the hospital.

We ask for the solidarity of the people and workers from all fields, the collaboration of all workers' unions and progressive organizations, as well as the support from any media organization that chooses to tell the truth. We are determined to continue until the traitors that sell out our country and our people leave. It's either them or us!
The above decisions will be made public through a news conference to which all the Mass Media (local and national) will be invited on Wednesday 15/2/2012 at 12.30. Our daily assemblies begin on 13 February. We will inform the citizens about every important event taking place in our hospital by means of news releases and conferences. Furthermore, we will use any means available to publicise these events in order to make this mobilization successful.

We call
a) Our fellow citizens to show solidarity to our effort,
b) Every unfairly treated citizen of our country in contestation and opposition, with actions, against his'/her oppressors,
c) Our fellow workers from other hospitals to make similar decisions,
d) the employees in other fields of the public and private sector and the participants in labour and progressive organizations to act likewise, in order to help our mobilization take the form of a universal labour and popular resistance and uprising, until our final victory against the economic and political elite that today oppresses our country and the whole world.

2/12

see also:

Mass poverty in Greece, it's what awaits us all [24]

"In order to liberate ourselves from debt we must destroy the economy" [30]

As February came to an end the Greek parliament rushed through a further package of wage and pension cuts as part of yet another round of measures required to secure a second international tranche of bailout loans. The working class in Greece is being subjected to another vicious round of assaults on its living standards. But it is not alone. On the day this article was written (18/2/12) there were demonstrations in dozens of locations across Europe, and as far away as New York. With slogans such as “We are all Greeks now”, “In solidarity with the Greek people, One world, One revolution” and others, the demos expressed a basic solidarity, and an elemental acknowledgement that there are no national struggles in the epoch of a global capitalist crisis.

Facing the umpteenth austerity plan imposed on the Greek population, anger again erupted on the streets. Between 80,000 and 200,000 people gathered outside parliament in Syntagma Square, during the voting for the latest measures on the night of February 12 to 13, and clashed with riot police. The basic balance sheet of what the media called "night of the urban guerrilla" included 48 buildings that were set on fire and 150 shops that were looted. There were also a hundred injured and 130 arrests. The images of these scenes of violence and of Athens in flames, and later the smoking ruins filmed in the early morning, were used by the media, with constant references to the ravages of war, to impress and frighten the rest of the world. But, according to numerous witnesses on the web, nearly 300,000 people could not reach the Greek parliament, being caught by the police in the adjacent streets or at the exits to the underground. And it was the police who threw tear gas to disperse the crowd into small groups throughout the city centre. The media talked about young thugs but you could see many older women and men participating in or encouraging violence. Whether the fires and looting were the work of provocateurs or the product of desperate acts, the rage of the people was undeniable as demonstrated by the images of those throwing stones or Molotov cocktails at the forces of repression.

Unprecedented austerity measures in a situation of impasse for the bourgeoisie

The final set of measures imposed by the "troika" (International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank) is particularly intolerable. All the protesters were calling out the same thing: we can no longer feed our families or care for our children; we no longer want to continue being suffocated like this. Judge for yourself:

- Reduction in the minimum wage by 22% (reduced from 750 to 480 euros) and a 32% cut for those under 25, with knock on effects for those whose income is determined in relation to the minimum wage – for most workers this means wages have been cut in half;

- The cutting of 150,000 civil servants, over the next two years with an immediate cut to 60% of their current salary;

- Reduction in pensions;

- Unemployment benefit limited to just one year;

- The abolition of automatic wage increases, including those based on seniority;

- Reducing the social security budget, depriving a large segment of the population of any reimbursement of care costs;

- The limitation to three years for collective agreements on wage agreements.

And this list is not exhaustive. The official unemployment rate in November 2011 was 20.9% (up 48.7% year on year). The unemployment rate for youth between 18 and 25 is around 50%.

In two years, the number of homeless has increased by 25%. Hunger has become a daily concern for many, as in the days of the occupation during World War II.

The testimony of a doctor from an NGO was reported in the French daily Libération (30/1/12): "I started to worry when I had one consultation, then two, then ten children who came for treatment on an empty stomach, without having had any meal the day before.”

The number of suicides has doubled in two years, particularly among young people. Every second person suffers from depression as the level of household debt explodes.

The almost unanimous rejection of the latest austerity plan was such that at the time of the vote a hundred deputies abstained or opposed it, including some forty belonging to the two major parties of the right and left, dissociating themselves from the discipline of the party vote. The situation is increasingly chaotic as the two traditional major parties are completely discredited, with opinion polls indicating massive desertion by those who previously supported them. In this climate, the bourgeoisie will have the greatest difficulty in organising the forthcoming parliamentary elections announced for April.

And Greece is one link in this chain of brutal austerity that already surrounds many European countries. After Greece, the "troika" has moved to Portugal to send the same notice. Ireland will be in the spotlight after that. Then comes the turn of Spain and Italy. Even the new Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti,  put in power to administer the same bitter medicine, is concerned about what the future holds for his country, questioning the ”harshness with which Greece is treated.” France, whose economy falters more and more, will be soon on the list. In Germany itself, despite all the praise for its health and economic strength, we see an increasing proportion of its population, especially students, sinking into poverty. Europe is not and will not be the only affected area and no country in the world will be spared. There is no solution to a global crisis that openly reveals the total bankruptcy of the capitalist system.

How to fight against the attacks?

A desperate teacher said: "Before the crisis, I had about 1,200 euros a month, now it’s more like 760. For each day on strike, that’s another 80 euros and there are retroactive measures: this month I took home 280 euros. It is not worth working, better to go and smash everything so they understand we're not going to let it go on. "

This frustration and anger is further strengthened by the proven sterility and impotence of the sequence of days of general strikes against austerity of 24 or 48 hours over the last 2 years that have been called by the two main unions, ADEDY (public sector) and GSEE (private sector - related to PASOK) which share the work with the PAME (arm of the Greek Stalinists) to divide and undermine workers’ struggles

In this situation, social unrest in Greece leads towards solidarity and attempts to organise. Meetings have been held in neighbourhoods, in cities and villages. Food kitchens and distribution has been undertaken. The occupation of the University of Novicki has served as a forum for discussion. There were occupations of ministries (Labour, Economy, Health), regional councils (in the Ionian Islands and in Thessaly), the Megalopolis power plant, the town hall in Holargos. Producers have distributed milk and potatoes. Workers have occupied the newspaper Eleftherotypia that employs 800 people. While on strike they have published their own newspaper.

But the most significant reaction which shows the determination of the movement in Greece also illustrates all its weaknesses and illusions. It took place at the hospital in Kilkis in Central Macedonia in northern Greece. Hospital staff in a general meeting decided to go on strike and occupy the hospital to demand their unpaid wages while taking the initiative to continue to operate emergency services and provide free care for the poor. These workers have launched an appeal to other workers, declaring that “the only legitimate authority to make administrative decisions will be the General Assembly of the workers.” We are republishing this call which shows a clear desire not to remain isolated, not only by appealing to other hospitals but to all workers in all sectors to join in the fight. However, this call also reflects many democratic illusions, in seeking to rely on a "citizens’ reaction" and an amorphous notion of "workers’ unions", or of the “collaboration of all unions and progressive political organisations and the media with goodwill.” It is also heavily imbued with patriotism and nationalism: "We are determined to continue until the traitors who have sold our country have gone”. This is real poison for the future of the struggle[1].

This is the main factor in the decay of the “popular” movement in Greece. It is stuck in the trap of nationalism and national divisions that politicians and unions use every means to promote. All parties and unions increasingly inveigh against "violated national pride"  Prime exponents of this populist demagogy are the Greek Stalinists (KKE), which plays the same role as nationalists of left and right everywhere, and continues to spread its chauvinistic propaganda, accusing the government of selling off the country, of being a traitor to the defence of the nation etc. They put forward the idea that the root of the situation is not the capitalist system itself, but is the fault of Europe, of Germany or the United States.

This poison puts the class struggle on the terrain of rotten national divisions which are the product of specifically capitalist competition. It’s not only a dead end but it a major obstacle to the necessary development of proletarian internationalism. We have no national interest to defend. Our struggle must grow and unite beyond national frontiers. It is vital that the proletarians of other countries enter into struggle and show that the response of the exploited around the world faced with the attacks of capitalism is not and cannot be on a national terrain.  

W 18/2/12

see also:

Workers take control of the Kilkis hospital in Greece [25]

"In order to liberate ourselves from debt we must destroy the economy" [30]

With the recent eviction of the Occupy LSX camp, it seems that the Occupy movement in the UK, for the time being, is winding down. The fact that there was little resistance to the eviction was a clear sign of this.

Occupy London Stock Exchange came in the wake of ‘Occupy Wall Street’ in the USA, which itself followed on from the protests and occupations across north Africa, in Greece, Spain and also in the wake of the student protest movement against increased university fees.  The main positive factor in the occupation movement, both in the UK and internationally, has been having a physical presence in a public space. Most demonstrations, marches, pickets etc tend to be ‘closed’ affairs with pre-determined routes, barriers separating people on the march from others and so on. By contrast the occupations have been open to all and sundry. A whole range of topics have been presented at the St Paul’s occupation’s Tent University, amongst other places, open to members of the public to take part in. We ourselves have presented three meetings there – one on the contribution of Rosa Luxemburg, one on the ecological crisis, and another about communism.

The occupation has been presented in the mainstream media as ‘anti-capitalist’. However even a short survey would show that the vast majority of the meetings and discussions have tended to be of a ‘reformist’ nature, mainly presenting the idea that particular reforms or policy changes, or the application of pressure on the government, can lead to a more ‘democratic’ form of capitalism - that the 1% can be convinced of sharing its wealth and power with the other 99%. Political discussion on actual revolutionary alternatives was much rarer, although it certainly did happen.

In truth, a movement which was generally ‘against capitalism’ without reference to a specific struggle, would have difficulty maintaining itself. This was the contrast with the movements in north Africa, especially in Egypt, where we could see a number of sections of the working class becoming increasingly mobilised. In Spain and Greece, public meetings have been linked with the movement of the ‘Indignants’ (Spain) and with the savagery of the austerity demanded by the EU paymasters (Greece). In the absence of a real focus for the struggle, it would also tend to become the preserve of ‘professional activists’ separated from the population at large.

This is not to say that these occupations are useless, far from it. But we have to recognise their limitations.

Undoubtedly a few people influenced by them have been led to question the entirety of capitalism as a social and economic system. Many others, by contrast, would have come away thinking that significant change could come about ‘If only the government would nationalise the land/banks/railways/industry…’

It’s clear that ‘occupations’ as a tactic are not going away. It’s also clear that, however uneven it is in different countries, the response of the employed working class is beginning to show itself. So there is a significant potential for the two movements to become complementary in future struggles both in the UK and internationally.   

Graham 01/03/12

Exactly a year after the beginning of the uprising in Egypt (25/1/12), the film Tahrir, Liberation Square, by the Italian documentary maker, Stefano Savona, sponsored by the International League for Human Rights (ILHR) and supported by ‘independent’ producers, came out in a number of cinemas in France.

In the preamble to the film, besides an animation of a singer and a musician, celebrating the revolt of Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia, we're reminded that today the mobilisation on Tahrir Square still continues, and that there are still around 15,000 political detainees in the gaols, although the army has symbolically released 200 other prisoners on the anniversary of what all Egyptians proudly call “the Revolution”.

We should remember, however, that the army still holds the reins of power in this country after the recent elections, where two-thirds of the Parliament is composed of Islamic parties (the Muslim Brotherhood who formally have a majority) plus the Salafists. So nothing has changed since the departure of a dictator to be replaced by... the open dictatorship of the army. And above all, besides the repression, there is no improvement in the poverty and the living conditions of the exploited, now stuck between a rock and a hard place, between the army, democratic illusions and the political influence of the Islamic parties.

For its ‘premiere’ in Paris, the film was also followed by a live debate with the producer in which we participated.

Filmed with a simple hand-held Canon 5D camera, this documentary involves us more closely in the faces and movements of the crowd, the life of tens of thousands of participants and their chance meetings. Over 12 days and, through the eye of the producer, we follow some of the protagonists throughout some of the ‘days of anger’ from the sixth day of the occupation of the square to the announcement of the resignation of Mubarak on 11 February, and in the final images some questions about the future.

The problem with this film is that it pretends, through its aspect of a documentary, to be a witness of living history which is taking place inside Tahrir Square thus giving itself a certain stamp of ‘objectivity’ that's supposedly proper to journalistic reporting showing the reality of life as it happens in front of our eyes. But this film is anything but objective. Not only does it show reality from a certain point of view, but its bias of filming this reality from the inside ends up in partiality, focusing the attention on a very narrow and limited surface as with a magnifying glass, keeping in the shade, or outside the field of vision, the framework which would allow us to see the entirety and understand it.

Whereas the movement in Egypt is not limited to what was happening on Tahrir Square, the latter is presented as the sole point of reference. There's not a single echo, nor any concern for the wave of workers' strikes which swept across the country and which really pushed Mubarak, under pressure from the United States, to quit. If the army did not intervene at this point, if one of the first measures was to forbid strikes, it is because these strikes almost paralysed the country and played a major role in the course of events. The film gives the illusion, the distorted vision, that the sole force of the movement came from the occupation of Tahrir Square. An article on the film in le Monde, (25/1/12) gives the comment: “What does the film show us? First of all an extraordinary effervescence, a palpable intoxication,  an exciting reconquest of  freedom of speech and movement” It's true. And this intoxication overcomes the spectator as well as the participants themselves paralysing any effort of reflection. In this way, the film takes and leads us to immediately share the emotions and feelings of the crowd in placing us in the middle of the participants without allowing any space for reflection, it espouses its point of view with a maximum of empathy, engagement: its angers, its fears, hopes, doubts, its explosions of joy at the announcement of the fall of a tyrant. The le Monde article continues : “Then (it shows) a diversity of faces, ages, sexes, backgrounds, relationships, mixed attitudes, self-respecting, unifying in the same crowd, in the same challenge, the same fight. Some bearded, some clean-shaven, some people praying, others in keffiyehs, young women carrying stones, youths who throw them, older people that support them. In a word, people on the move, a utopia realised”. And this “utopia” was not realised but bore dangerous illusions and a maximum of confusion with a double label: Democracy and the Revolution of the people.

However, even through the deformed prism of this truncated reality, some aspects of the situation at the time are striking to the spectator. First of all the courage given by the collective: “we are no longer afraid”, the determination: “we will go right to the end to get rid of Mubarak” and the solidarity of the participants: men and women unknown to each other beforehand talking together, protecting each other, sleeping side by side in temporary shelters – tent material or shower curtains – without the least problem, each bringing their own food for the collective. It shows the courageous fight, with bare hands, against the police, against the snipers or against the hordes of criminals released and recruited by Mubarak, including killers handsomely paid and sent to attack the occupiers of the square. It shows the impotence of a high grade military machine incapable of making itself understood and the utilisation of Twitter by some youth to appeal to meet up at various points and go to other strategic points where there was a need for reinforcement in order to ‘hold’ onto territory. Information was widely circulated by word of mouth and there were continual movements across the square. Another striking element is the absence of any general assembly, despite “free-speech”. There’s no collective discussions and decisions on the orientation of the movement outside of small informal groups of discussion on the situation or on the future. At the beginning of the film, some of the people raise the question of demonstrations in other towns, their origins, their jobs. At one moment, this diversity is reflected when three youths talk together: one is a country lad, the other a city dweller, the third a Bedouin, sometimes they give their opinion or state their respective sympathies for such or such fraction, three or four at the most. They talk fraternally to each other despite their different convictions, especially religious and secular. We see some speeches followed by small groups of the Muslim Brotherhood, a few fiery individual speeches, often moving in front of the camera and above all the slogans repeated ad nauseam: “The people want regime change”, “Mubarak must go!”, “The Egyptian people are us, we are here”, “Long live Egypt!” in the middle of a sea of national flags held aloft by individuals or some very large ones flown over the crowd. Because nationalism, the preoccupation of the fate and interests of the country is omnipresent in the square and, it seems, is shared by everyone. Each participant recognises themselves with all the others as “the people” without the least class connotation. Here, the mirage of democracy is functioning. And directly, the trap springs shut. The trap is precisely all the ideological values put forward by the bourgeoisie and the speeches full of illusions that run through this film: someone says it: “the people are united here as the fingers on the hand” around the single idea of “getting rid of Mubarak”. But this will to dump Mubarak and his detested regime alone creates an artificial inter-classist unity: “What we want, what everyone wants, is to overthrow this regime”. Young and old, veiled women or not, religious or secular, Muslim or Christian all say the same, and after that we will see what happens. At the end of the film, after the scenes of celebration provoked by the announcement of Mubarak’s departure with many breaking camp to return home, a woman warns however: “now it’s the army which has full power and suspends our liberties, we shouldn’t leave here, it’s against them that we must continue to mobilise and fight”.

In short, the film is entirely to the glory of the conquest of this democratic dream of which “the Egyptian people” are the heroes. Moreover, new arrivals to the square were welcomed with shouts of “Here they are, the heroes of the nation!” Everyone wants to find a hero or an iconic leader, the crowd wanted a young, imprisoned demonstrator, released after 12 days, to come to the tribune, but scared by the ovations he refuses to speak.

The film insidiously invites us to join with and delight in what is shown to the contrary to be great weaknesses, the immaturity of the revolt and above all the nationalist poison massaged by the pride of having got rid of Mubarak. Alongside the weight of religion, these democratic illusions weigh very heavily on the exploited in the uprising in Egypt. It is moreover, the notions of the people, democracy and revolution which are exploited throughout the “debate” after the film. Whereas most questions of the producer asked about the filming process or about the meetings with people followed throughout the film, three questions showed their unease or called into question the term “revolution” use to describe events in Egypt. One of them said that real revolutions hadn't happened very often in history and the film maker replied saying that living through those days had been an exceptional experience and what had happened had a lasting effect on consciousness including his own. And this is what justifies using the term “revolution”. This “contestationist” element briefly spoke to say that, minus the  national flags, the phenomenon was not dissimilar to May 68 in France without anyone calling that a revolution. The response by the producer and his entourage was that this  was the beginning of a revolutionary process which was still ongoing because the mobilisation of those at Tahrir wasn't finished, and he finally responded by saying that the question had unnecessarily pessimistic implications. A comrade from the ICC spoke on several levels: on the absence of any reference to the workers' mobilisation in events, on the fact that the film and the debate takes Egypt as an absolute reference point whereas this movement took  place in the framework of an international social protest recently. This was expressed almost everywhere and we find it with the Indignant movement of Spain or Greece, Occupy in Britain or the United States in the face of a global crisis of the system. Finally, he recalled that the revolt and the birth of the movement in Tunisia took off from economic demands over unemployment,  poverty and the hiking of food prices, not in order to demand more liberty and democracy. He again insisted on the fact that this had been underestimated in the debate on Egypt whereas the precariousness of life and unemployment were strong in Egypt, but the sole expression of this element of protest in the film was one of the protesters shouting out “120 pounds for a kilo of lentils!” The producer tried quite clumsily to counter the importance of element of economic demands, even denying that they played a major role in Tunisia. A member of the team associated with the film more subtly admitted that workers' strikes had also played an important role in the uprising notably since the wave of strikes in 2007/8 in the textile factories of Mahalla and elsewhere in the Nile Delta. And following this the “April 6 Movement” while at Tahrir there were bits of bread stuck to posters expressing the economic aspects. After this the debate, doubtlessly to avoid the discussion taking a more “political” turn, was quickly closed by the organisers.

W (26/1/12)

The books discussed here, and a note on the authors

Carlo Rovelli: Anaximandre de Milet ou la naissance de la pensée scientifique.

Marx/Engels : Lettres sur les sciences de la nature.

John Gribbin: Science, a history – 1543-2001.

Engels: Dialectics of nature and Anti-Dühring

Karl Popper: The poverty of historicism

Carlo Rovelli is an Italian physicist currently working at Marseille university, mainly in the field of quantum gravity (he was one of those responsible for the development of loop quantum gravity theory in 1988).

John Gribbin is a visiting fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex, and a science writer.

Karl Popper is one of the best-known philosophers of science of the 20th century, and as such is a reference for many scientists. One of his major works, The open society and its enemies targeted notably Plato, Hegel and Marx – and he has famously attacked the scientific status of both marxism and psychoanalysis. The open society... being an enormous tome, this text is limited to a slim volume which resumes much of his thinking.

Of Marx and Engels, it was certainly Engels who wrote the most about science (notably in the two works cited above). It is fascinating to read Engels in the light of the history of science described by Gribbin, since this throws light on the remarkable degree to which Engels actually kept in touch with, and was knowledgeable in, the science of his day. Obviously the science itself has moved on, yet Engels still has much to teach us about the way we think about science, and of course about how the scientific method should inform our thinking as marxists.

One of Engels’ main concerns in Dialectics of nature is to show how the laws of nature are themselves dialectical, in other words dominated by the laws of dialectics (transformation of quality into quantity, interpenetration of opposites, the negation of the negation), and that nature has a history. At the time (Engels began preparing the work in 1873), we should remember, many things that we take absolutely for granted today were very recent discoveries or still disputed: Darwin's work on The Origins of Species had been published barely 15 years before (the Descent of Man was only published in 1871, and it seems that Marx and Engels remained unaware of its main message), it was only beginning to be realised that there was no such thing as a “pure gas” (ie a gas that could only exist as a gas), and so on. It is thus very striking to find Engels writing, more than 20 years before the publication of Einstein's theory of relativity in 1905, that matter is only another form of motion. Engels' and Marx's preoccupation with the natural sciences was something that they always considered an important aspect of the development of a materialist view of the world.

What is science?

Like most other questions, we can only address this one historically. Gribbin takes 1543 as his starting point, a year which by a happy coincidence saw the publication of both Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) and Vesalius' De humani corporis fabrica (On the Structure of the Human Body – Vesalius is often referred to as the founder of modern anatomy). Copernicus, Vesalius, and Galileo (born in 1564) all shared a readiness to call into question the accepted authorities of the day – Ptolemaic astronomy in the case of Copernicus and Galileo, Galen’s medical theories in the case of Vesalius.

Gribbin highlights a number of aspects of Galileo’s life and work which represented a critical break with previous thinking about nature, and which lie at the foundations of all the development of science since then. Although doubtless these first scientists did not realise the full implications of the road they were opening up, these aspects are already contained in germ within their thinking:

• an understanding that nature must be studied in its own terms, and that nature is not teleological,

• an insistence that theory must be validated by experiment,

• a realisation that mathematics is the language of nature, that natural laws can be described in the language of mathematics.

Gribbin also points out that the emergence of this new way of thinking was made possible by the advance of technology: in Galileo’s case, the development of glass manufacture which allowed the creation of the first telescopes. This has continued to be the case ever since – old theories have been called into question in part because new technology has made it possible to measure nature’s parameters with ever greater precision (it is no accident that Newton’s achievements coincide with improvements in metallurgy which in turn led to the construction of more accurate clocks, for example) – and this is still the case today.

Until the second half of the 18th century, science remained essentially a way of thinking about the world without any direct effect on the development of technology. Gribbin highlights the work of James Watt (one of the fathers of the steam engine) as the moment when science began to feed its theoretical insights back into the development of technology: Watt was employed at Glasgow University and used the newly emerging understanding of heat and the transformation of water into steam not only to improve on the existing Newcomen engines, but to set up a company which developed steam engines on the basis of the best existing scientific knowledge. From this moment on, we can say that science truly became a productive force in its own right. Indeed, this intimate, dialectical relationship between science and technology (ie production) is a unique feature of capitalist society: capitalism cannot live without a constant revolutionising of its productive apparatus – one reason that decadent capitalism has not (yet) seen the collapse of production and technology that characterised decadent Roman society.

This view of scientific thought’s place in society essentially echoes that of Engels who – to be schematic – makes a clear distinction between three phases of scientific thought: the “brilliant intuition” of the Greeks, the still essentially empirical experimental science that was born out of the Renaissance, and the full flowering of science as a productive force directly related to the development of production that got under way in the 19th century.[1]

For Engels, a true theoretical science (ie one which views the whole natural world in its interconnections, and in its historical movement) could only be born out of the accumulation of empirical knowledge: one-sided empirical natural science is transformed by its own development into a theoretical science.[2] Theoretical propositions must be validated by experiment. [3]

Since Engels wrote, the scientific outlook on the world has been profoundly changed by the work of Einstein and his successors, the emergence of the theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics. Indeed we can say that Engels’ attempt to develop a “dialectics of nature” has been triumphantly vindicated by the historical process which has produced quantum theory, a theory which indeed claims, or attempts, to englobe the whole of nature in a unified theoretical vision, justified and validated by experiment.[4]

It is worth pausing here for a moment to consider Engels’ view of cosmology. In Anti-Dühring, Engels takes Dühring to task for his notion of a “self-equal state of matter”, since “We still do not know where mechanical force was in that state, and how we are to get from absolute immobility to motion without an impulse from outside, that is, without God”. At the time, and given the existing state of knowledge about the universe, Engels was undoubtedly right to attack Dühring’s tendency to smuggle teleology back into the natural sciences. In fact, this provides us with an interesting example of how it is possible for a correct general theoretical approach to lead to incorrect hypotheses.[5] At the time, nothing was known about the red-shift which has demonstrated that the surrounding galaxies are moving away from us (indeed nobody was yet aware that various “stars” and nebulae where in fact galaxies like our own) and that indeed space itself is expanding. The scientific view of the universe (ie the non-teleological view which has no place for God in any form) saw it as in an eternal more or less steady state: this view was still defended by the British astronomer Fred Hoyle in the 1960s.[6] And yet today, the majority consensus among scientists seems to be that the universe emerged from an infinitely small and dense singularity: this consensus is born not from mysticism, but from the mathematics of quantum mechanics. The singularity is explained as the natural, indeed inevitable, consequence of the random variations in the quantum void predicted by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. The advance of science and experimental data has demonstrated that the Big Bang model is currently the best adapted to explaining observed phenomena, while at the same time the development of theoretical and mathematical tools has maintained the basic scientific principle of studying nature on the basis of nature itself.

This brings me, by a rather roundabout route, to re-pose the question: what is science? And it seems to me that we can, and should, view science from two angles: on the one hand, science is a productive force, a social form which has emerged from the development of a critique of religious temporal and spiritual authority by the rising bourgeoisie, the development of technology which made new tools available to natural philosophy, and the constant demands of capitalist production for a more advanced productive apparatus. In the period of decadence, science has also become one of the most vital instruments of war. On the other hand, science is a materialist – non-teleological – way of looking at the world which must aim not only to explain but to predict, in other words to justify its theory through experiment.[7]

Anaximander of Miletos

But – as Engels said – if experimental science began with the Renaissance, the materialist view of the world was born long before that, in ancient Greece. As Carlo Rovelli points out in his study of Thales and Anaximander, and of the society of the Ionian city of Miletos during the first millennium BCE, the materialist outlook is highly atypical: by far the greater part of human history has been dominated by religious explanations of the origins of the world and of man’s place in it. Although Rovelli’s explanation of religious thought is superficial (he visibly understands nothing of Marx, who he cites), his explanation of how materialist thought emerged in Milesian society is far more interesting.

According to Rovelli[8] Anaximander’s importance lies in his “intuitions” (Rovelli explicitly uses the same word as Engels) based on direct observation, but also going beyond observation to seek an underlying principle to the world. Not only does Anaximander propose a model where the heavenly bodies are no longer confined to a dome over a flat earth, but placed at varying distances from a cylindrical earth floating in space, he also proposes the notion of apeiron as the universal constituent of all matter. As Rovelli says, “Anaximander thus proposes that all substances of our common experience can be understood in terms of something else; something which is both natural and foreign to our daily experience. The central intuition here is that in order to explain the world’s complexity, it is useful to postulate, to imagine, the existence of something else, which is not one of the substances we experience directly but which can play the role of an element that unifies all of them”. Anaximander, in fact, sets human thought on the road to quantum mechanics. Rovelli also shows here that intuition is an important element in scientific thought. Experiment and observation are critical, but they cannot take place without the presence of a hypothesis whose validity they are supposed to test, and the hypothesis necessarily precedes the experiment (though of course the hypothesis may itself be the result of previous experiment or observation).

Rovelli goes on to pose the question of how Anaximander’s thought arose in Miletos: what was specific about Milesian society, and later Greek society, that made possible those “brilliant intuitions” that lay the basis for materialist thinking?[9] When we see the answers that Rovelli gives to this question, one can hardly help wondering whether he is not a reader of the International Review, so close are his ideas to those expressed in the article on the Culture of debate. Let us just highlight briefly some of his main points.

Firstly, there is the importance of Miletos as a trading city, in other words a place where many different cultures and strands of thought came together. Amongst these different cultures Egypt played a particular role since it forced the Greeks to recognise that those outside Greek culture were not “barbarians”, indeed that there existed a civilisation whose antiquity was greater than their own legends. All this helped to liberate thinkers like Thales and his successors from their own religious and social prejudices.

The development of trade in turn led to the emergence of a new social structure which destroyed the dominance of the previous aristocratic or oligarchic rule to replace them with a democracy, where decisions are taken by majority vote after discussion. This capacity for debate is in itself a social discovery: “The cultural basis for the birth of science is thus also the basis for the birth of democracy: the discovery of the effectiveness of criticism and dialogue, between equals. Anaximander, who openly criticises his master Thales, does nothing other than transfer onto the terrain of knowledge the common practice of Miletos’ agora: not to approve uncritically and reverentially the god, demi-god, or lord of the moment, but to criticise the magistrate. Not out of lack of respect, but out of an awareness that a better proposal may always exist (...) This is the discovery in the domain of knowledge: that allowing criticism to take its course, and ideas to be called into question, giving the right to speak to all and taking every proposal seriously, does not lead merely to sterile cacophony. On the contrary, it makes it possible to put aside hypotheses that do not work, and to allow better ideas to emerge” (p97).

Rovelli insists on the difference between Anaximander – who challenged the teachings of his master Thales – and the Chinese savants whose main concern was to build and comment on the works of the masters. Anaximander both built on the ideas of Thales and subjected them to criticism, contrary to the Chinese practice (this goes along with a frequent insistence by Gribbin, that whatever the role played by men of genius such as Newton, science is fundamentally incremental, a collective activity of humanity as a whole).

The ability to criticise the ideas of others also implies a willingness to subject one’s own ideas to criticism and debate. But as Rovelli points out, it is the sign of an idea’s strength, not weakness, that it can be called into question. When we are confident in our ideas, in our theories, then we cannot be afraid of debating them – if debate reveals weaknesses or gaps in this or that aspect of a theory then the theory itself can only be strengthened. And even if the theory itself turns out to be wrong (for example, Copernicus’ theory that the sun was at the centre of the universe), by posing the right questions it will have allowed debate to go forwards and the sum of knowledge to increase.

Rovelli writes “in praise of uncertainty”. Science can never take the theories of today as the final “truth”, they are only the best available at any given moment – and we must live with the awareness that we do not know everything, that maybe it will never be possible for mankind to know everything.

Karl Popper and The poverty of historicism

It would need a text in itself to examine Popper’s ideas, and subject them to criticism. Such a text will be necessary if we want to treat the question of science seriously since Popper is the reference for scientific epistemology: no scientist talking about method will feel unable to refer to Popper. Perhaps his most important idea (at least the most commonly known), is the principle that to be scientific, a theory or hypothesis must be open to invalidation. In other words it must be possible to prove the theory false experimentally. While a hypothesis may attain the status of a theory (or even a “strong theory”) if it proves able to make enough positive predictions, it can never attain the status of “truth” since one contradictory observation or experiment is always enough to overturn the theory. This does not amount to pure empiricism: “I believe that theories are prior to observations as well as to experiment in the sense that the latter are significant only in relation to theoretical problems” (p90).

Up to a point, this vision of scientific thought can be of value, especially in the field of science itself and in the reflection on experimental procedure. It is not, however, complete. Two brief examples, both drawn from La Recherche n°433 in which several articles are devoted to problems of cosmology and the theory of the “multiverse”, can illustrate this point. The various theories of the existence of multiple universes are certainly materialist, and they are certainly scientific in the sense that they are built on some of the current models of the nature of matter which have proven experimentally successful. And yet in themselves, they cannot be tested since if multiple universes exist they are inherently inaccessible to us. Even if we stick to the known universe, it is impossible to test experimentally theories as to the internal structure of black holes, since the very nature of black holes is that no information can escape from them.[10]

In fact, a critique of Popper’s scientific philosophy would have to start with Engels’ critique of metaphysics, in its inability to accommodate historical change. For Popper, it is impossible to have a science of history, or historical development; indeed, it is also impossible to have a law of evolution because “The evolution of life on earth, or of human society, is a unique historical process (...) Its description is not a law, but only a single historical statement (...) we cannot hope to test a universal hypothesis nor to find a natural law acceptable to science if we are forever confined to the observation of one unique process” (p99). Popper is obliged – almost despite himself – to recognise Darwinism as a “scientific hypothesis” because of its demonstrated explanatory power. He also rejects the idea that it is possible to talk of social “laws” in a scientific sense, because historical “laws” are said to be valid only for particular historical periods (Marx and Engels certainly considered that the economic laws of capitalism that they had laid bare only held good for capitalist society), whereas “it is an important postulate of scientific method that we should search for laws with an unlimited realm of validity”.

Popper’s “critique” of marxism is vitiated by the fact that what he understands by "marxism" is in fact nothing but Stalinist ideology.[11] Most notably, Popper seems incapable of seeing the importance that Marx and Engels give to human consciousness as an active factor in the evolution of society – and the factor of consciousness, and humanity’s ability to act consciously on its own history, is one of the most important elements that distinguishes the natural sciences from the materialist, marxist view of history which must take account both of the unconscious factors at work in society, and of the development of conscious human activity on the world: humanity is capable of teleology whereas nature is not.

That said, I do not propose to enter here into a critique of Popper’s social thinking so I will conclude here with a word on his theories of science. The fact that he denies any scientific validity to marxism, to psychoanalytical theory, and even up to a point to Darwinism, reveals the limits of his theoretical approach: a narrow materialism which, when it comes down to it, has little room for a materialist, scientific approach which it may be impossible (at least in the immediate) to test, but which allows science and even society to look at the world in a new way. The example of Copernicus can serve to illustrate this. According to Rovelli, the Copernican theory (the earth revolving around the sun) is in fact inferior to the fully evolved Ptolemaic system, in terms of its predictive power: yet the important thing about the Copernican theory is that for all its faults, it poses the right questions. Others, beginning with Galileo, were to take up the challenge.

Jens 2/9/09

The general strike called by trade unions representing 100 millions workers spread all across India took place on 28 Feb 2012. All national unions, belonging to all political parties, including the Hindu fundamentalist BJP, joined the strike, as did thousands of local and regional unions. Bank employees, postal and state transport workers, teachers, dock workers and many other sectors of workers participated in the strike. The fact that all unions agreed to call this strike together goes to show the dynamic of workers’ struggles behind it.

The unions put forward a mishmash of demands: defend the public sector, control prices, compulsorily register unions within 45 days, strict enforcement of labour laws, increase of minimum wages to Rs. 10000.00 per month and social security etc. They made no effort to show that the bourgeoisie is mercilessly attacking workers today as its system is in crisis and sick and rotten. Instead, the unions’ efforts were aimed at building trust in the system – the bourgeoisie can concede anything, if it wishes to do so.

But the way the unions went about this whole strike showed their real intent. For one, they did not ask several millions of their members to even formally join the strike. More than one and a half million railway workers, equal or even bigger number of state power sector workers, many others workers, most of whom are members of these unions, were not even called upon to join. While proclaiming a ‘general strike’, unions agreed to millions of their members going to work as usual and not disrupting the smooth flow of the main arteries of capitalism.

Even in sectors whose unions pledged to join the strike, their attitude was more one of proclaiming a ritual strike. Most workers who participated did so by staying at home. Unions made no big efforts to bring them onto the streets and together or organise demos. Not much effort was made to involve millions of private sector workers, who belong to striking national unions, in the strike. We can see the seriousness of this exclusion when we recall that recently and for quite some time private sector workers have been far more militant and less respectful of the laws of the bourgeoisie. Even industrial areas like Gurgaon and auto hubs near Chennai and factories like Maruti at Gurgaon and Hyundai near Chennai that have recently witnessed major strikes did not join this strike. In most industrial areas, in hundreds of big and smaller cities all across India, while public sector workers joined the strike, millions of private sector workers continued to work and their unions did not join the strike. 

Why then did the unions call the strike?

It is clear that unions did not use the strike to mobilise workers, to bring them onto the streets and unify them. They used it as a ritual, as a means to let off steam, to keep workers apart, to keep them passive and demobilised. Striking workers sitting at home and watching TV do not strengthen workers’ unity or consciousness. It only encourages a sense of isolation, a sense of passivity and of a wasted opportunity.  Given this attitude, why did unions then call the strike? And what made all of them, including BMS and INTUC, join it?  To understand this we have to look at what is happening at the economic and social level and within the working class in India.

Worsening living conditions of workers

Despite all the big talk about economic boom by the Indian bourgeoisie, the economic situation has been worsening over the last few years. Like capitalism everywhere, the capitalist economy in India too has been in crisis. According to statistics issued by the government, the growth has stalled and come down from nine percent to nearly six percent.  Many industries have been badly hit by the crisis. These include the IT sector but also other sectors like textiles, diamond processing, capital goods industries, infrastructure, private power companies and airlines. This has led to intensified attacks on the working class. General inflation has been hovering around ten percent for more than two years. Inflation in food and other items of daily use has been much higher, sometime going up to 16%.  This has made the life of the working class miserable.

Development of class struggle

In the midst of these deteriorating living and working conditions, the working class has also been discovering the path to class struggle. Since 2005 we have seen a slow acceleration of class struggle all across India. Of course this is not unique to India but part of a global resurgence of the class struggle. The years 2010 and 2011 have seen numerous strikes in many sectors, including in auto hubs at Gurgaon and Chennai. Some of these struggles, as the strikes by Honda Motor Cycle workers in 2010 and Maruti Suzuki workers in 2011, had shown great militancy and determination to confront the security apparatus of the bosses. This has also been the characteristic of strikes in Hyundai Motors in Chennai, where workers struck work several time against casualisation and other attacks of the bosses. These strikes showed strong tendencies toward solidarity and spread across factories. They also expressed tendencies toward self-organization and setting up general assemblies, as seen in strikes by the Maruti workers who occupied the factory against the advice of ‘their’ union.  

In addition to this slowly rising tide of class struggle, the struggles taking place in Middle East, in Greece, in Britain and the global ‘occupy movements’ have been having an echo in the Indian working class.

Fear of the contagion of class struggle

In the face of this situation the bourgeoisie has really been worried about the spread of class struggle. At times the bourgeoisie has been very scared. This fear has been clearly expressed in the face of many of the recent strikes.

At the time of violent confrontations at Honda Motor Cycles and in the face of repeated strikes in Maruti-Suzuki, this fear could be seen clearly. Each time the media was full of stories that strikes could spread and engulf other auto companies in Gurgaon and paralyse the whole area. These stories were not speculation. While the main strikes were in a few factories, other workers went to the gates of the striking companies. There were workers’ joint demos, even one strike across the whole industrial city of Gurgaon. The provincial government was itself seriously concerned about the spread of the strike. The Chief Minister and Labour Minister of Haryana, at the prompting of the Primer Minister and Union Labour Minister, brought management and union bosses together to dampen down the strike.

Like the rest of the bourgeoisie, unions have been even more concerned over loosing control over the workers if the militancy increases. Again, this was evident in strikes at Maruti in 2011 where workers took many actions against the directions and the wishes of the union.

This fear has been pushing the unions to appear to be doing something. They have called a number of ritual strikes including a bank workers’ strike in November 2011. The present strike, while without doubt an expression of the rising tide of anger and militancy within the working class, is also the latest effort of the unions to contain and channel it.

Taking the struggle into our own hands

Workers need to understand that going on a ritual strike and sitting back at home does not take us anywhere. Nor does it help to gather in a park and listen to speeches of union bosses and party MPs.  The bosses and their government are attacking us because capitalism is in crisis and they have no way out. We need to understand that all workers are under attack, all are in the same boat. Remaining passive and isolated from each other does not discourage bosses from intensifying their attacks against workers. Workers need to use these occasions to come out on the streets, to mobilise themselves, to come together and discuss with other workers. They need to take their struggles into their own hands. This will not immediately solve workers’ problems but it will make it possible for us to mount a genuine struggle against the bosses to defend ourselves, to push the bosses back. It will help us develop our struggle against the whole of capitalism and work toward its destruction. As those occupying the Athens Law School in Greece in February 2012 said, in order to liberate ourselves from present crises of capitalism, “we must destroy the (capitalist) economy.”

Communist Iinternationalist, 9/3/12

Thousands of teachers are striking in London on 28 March against the governments pension ‘reforms’

But is it just teachers who have a reason to protest?

No. It’s the whole public sector. All pensions are under attack, and the latest budget, with its ‘granny tax’,  has made it worse. Last November the civil servants, local government employees and others were out alongside those who work in education. Why have the unions decided not to bring them out today?

It’s the whole private sector, where growing numbers of workers can’t look forward to any kind of pension at all.

Is it just pensions?

No. More and more workers face long term pay freezes, worsening conditions at work – if they have a job at all. Over 20 percent of young people between 16 and 25 are out of work.

Is it just London?

No. These conditions are faced by workers up and down the country

Is it just Britain?

No. the brutal austerity measures being imposed on the working class and the entire population in Greece, Portugal and Spain, where wages and pensions are already being directly cut and hundreds of thousands of jobs wiped out, are what lie in store for all us, because the crisis of this system is world wide and terminal

Why then are we being divided, if we all face the same attack, and need to fight back together?

There are many reasons. The widespread feeling that there is no alternative, the hope that it will all go away, the lack of confidence about taking things into our own hands.

But this lack of perspective and lack of confidence means that those who falsely claim to represent our interests – above all our ‘official’ trade union representatives – can keep us divided into countless little sectors, trades, and categories, call us out on separate days, cancel strikes when the courts give the order, and imprison us in trade union legislation which makes us fight with one hand tied behind our backs. 

Despite all this, can we unite?

Yes, if we cut across professional and trade union divisions and come together in assemblies open to all workers.

If we ignore laws about ballots and use these assemblies to make actual decisions about how to struggle.

If we ignore trade union laws about ‘secondary picketing’ and use massive delegations to call on other workers to join our struggle.

If we open out to casual workers, students, the unemployed, pensioners.

If we use demonstrations, occupations and street meetings not to listen passively to speeches by the experts but to exchange experiences of struggle and discuss how to go forward.

If we rediscover our identity as a class – a class which everywhere, in all countries, has the same interests and the same goal: the replacement of this rotten system with a real human community.

International Communist Current, 23/3/12

www.internationalism.org [45]

This is an international statement that tries to draw a provisional balance sheet of the social movements of 2011 in order to contribute to a wider debate about their significance

2011: from indignation to hope

The two most important events in 2011 were the globe crisis of capitalism[1], and the social movements in Tunisia, Egypt, Spain, Greece, Israel, Chile, the USA, Britain...

Indignation has taken on an international dimension

The consequences of the capitalist crisis have been very hard for the immense majority of the world's population: deteriorating living conditions, long-term unemployment lasting years, precarious work making it impossible to have even a minimum of stability, extreme poverty and hunger...

Millions of people are concerned about the disappearance of the possibility of having a stable and normal life and the lack of a future for their children. This has led to a profound indignation, attempts to  break out of passivity by taking to the streets and squares, to discussions about  the causes of a crisis which in its present phase has lasted 5 years.

This anger has been exacerbated by the arrogance, greed and indifference shown towards the suffering of the majority by the bankers, politicians and other representatives of the capitalist class. The same goes for the powerlessness of governments faced with such grave problems: their measures have only increased poverty and unemployment without bringing any solution.

This movement of indignation has spread internationally: to Spain, where the then Socialist government imposed one of the first and most draconian austerity plans; to Greece, the symbol of the crisis of sovereign debt; to the United States, the temple of world capitalism; to Egypt and Israel, focus of one of the worst and most entrenched imperialist conflicts, the Middle East.

The awareness that this is an international movement began to develop despite the destructive weight of nationalism, as seen in the presence of national flags in the demonstrations in Greece, Egypt or the USA. In Spain solidarity with the workers of Greece was expressed by slogans such as “Athens resists, Madrid rises up”. The Oakland strikers (USA, November,2011) said “Solidarity with the occupation movement world wide”. In Egypt it was agreed in  the Cairo Declaration to support the movement in the United States. In Israel they shouted “Netanyahu, Mubarak, El Assad are the same” and contacts were made with Palestinian workers.

These movements have passed their high points and although there are new struggles (Spain, Greece, Mexico) many are asking: what did this wave of indignation achieve?  Have we gained anything?

Take to the streets! The common slogan of these movements

It is more than 30 years since we have seen such multitudes occupy the streets and squares in order to struggle for their own interests despite the illusions and confusions that have affected them.

These people, the workers, the exploited who have been presented as failures, idlers, incapable of taking the initiative or doing anything in common, have been able to unite, to share initiatives and to break out of the crippling passivity to which the daily normality of this system condemns them.

The principle of developing confidence in each others’ capacity,  of discovering the strength of the collective action of the masses, has been a morale booster. The social scene has changed. The monopoly of public life by politicians, experts and ‘great men’ has been put into question by the anonymous masses who have wanted to be heard[2].

Having said all this, we are only at a fragile beginning. The illusions, confusions, inevitable mood swings of the protesters; the repression handed out by the capitalist state and  the dangerous diversions  imposed its forces of containment (the left parties and trade unions) have led to retreats and bitter defeats. It is a question of a long and difficult road, strewn with obstacles and where there is no guarantee of victory: that said the very act of starting to walk this road is the first victory.

The heart of the movement: the assemblies

The masses involved in these movements have not limited themselves to passively shouting their displeasure. They have actively participated in organising assemblies. The  mass assembles have concretised the slogan of the First International (1864) “The emancipation of the working class is the work of the workers themselves or it is nothing”. This is the continuation of the tradition of the workers' movement stretching back to the Paris Commune, and to Russia in 1905 and 1917, where it took an ever higher form, continued in Germany 1918, Hungary 1919 and 1956, Poland 1980.

General assemblies and workers' councils are the genuine form of the struggle of the proletarian struggle and the nucleus of a new form of society.

Assemblies which aim to massively unite ourselves point the way towards breaking the chains of wage slavery, of atomisation, “everyone for themselves”, imprisonment in the ghetto of a sector or a social category.

Assemblies in order to think, to discuss and decide together, to make ourselves collectively responsible for what is decided, by participating together both in the making of decisions and their implementation.

Assemblies in order to build mutual confidence, general empathy, solidarity, which are not only indispensable for taking the struggle forward but can also serve as the pillars of a future society free of class and exploitation.

2011 has seen an explosion of real solidarity that has nothing to do with the hypocritical and self-serving “solidarity” that the ruling class preaches about. The demonstrations in Madrid called for the freeing of those who have been arrested or have stopped the police detaining immigrants; there have been massive actions against evictions in Spain, Greece and the United States; in Oakland “The strike Assembly has agreed to send pickets or to occupy any company or school that punishes employees or students in any way for taking part in the General Strike of the 2nd November”. Vivid but still episodic moments have happened, when everyone can feel protected and defended by those around them. All of which starkly contrasted with what is “normal” in this society with its anguished sense of hopelessness and vulnerability.

The light for the future: the culture of debate

The consciousness needed for millions of workers to transform the world is not gained through being handed down by the ruling class or through the clever slogans of enlightened leaders. It is the fruit of an experience of struggle accompanied and guided by debate on a massive scale,  by discussions which  take into account the past but which are always focused on the future, since as a banner said in Spain “There is not future without revolution”.

The culture of debate, that is, open discussion based on mutual respect and active listening, has begun to spring up not only in the assemblies but around them: mobile libraries have been organised, as well as countless meetings for discussion and exchange of ideas... A vast intellectual activity has been carried out with very limited means, improvised  in the streets and squares. And, as with the assemblies this has reanimated a past experience of the workers' movement “The thirst for education, so long held back, was concerted by the revolution into a true delirium. During the first six months, tons of literature, whether on handcarts or wagons poured forth from the Smolny Institute each day, Russia insatiably absorbed it, like hot sand absorbs water. This was not pulp novels, falsified history, diluted religion or cheap fiction that corrupts, but economic and social theories, philosophy, the works of Tolstoy, Gogol, Gorky”[3]. Confronted with this society’s culture that is based on the struggle for “models of success” which can only be a fount of millions of failures, the alienating and false stereotypes hammered home by the dominant ideology and its media, thousands of people began to look for an authentic popular culture, making it for themselves, trying to animate their own critical and independent criteria. The crisis and its causes, the role of the banks etc, have been exhaustively discussed. There has been discussion of revolution, although with much confusion; there has been talk of democracy and dictatorship, synthesised in these two complementary slogans “they call it democracy and it is not” and “it is a dictatorship but unseen”.

The proletariat is the key to the future

If all of this makes 2011 the year of the beginning of hope, we have viewed these movements with a discerning and critical eye, seeing their limitations and weaknesses which are still immense.

If there is a growing number of people in the world who are convinced that capitalism is an obsolete system, that “in order for humanity to survive, capitalism must be killed” there is also a tendency to reduce capitalism to a handful of “bad guys”  (unscrupulous financiers, ruthless dictators) when it is really a complex network of social relations that have to be attacked in their totality and not dissipated into a preoccupation with its many surface expressions (finance, speculation, the corruption of political-economic powers).

While it is more than justified to reject the violence that capitalism has exuded from every pore (repression, terror and terrorism, moral barbarity), this system will however not be abolished by mere passive and citizen pressure. The minority class will not voluntarily abandon power and it will take cover in its state with its democratic legitimacy through elections every 4 or 5 years; through parties who promise what they can never do and do what they didn't promise; and through unions that mobilise in order to demobilise and end up signing up to all that the ruling class puts on the table. Only a massive, tenacious and stubborn struggle will give the exploited the necessary strength to destroy the state and its means of repression and to make real the oft repeated shout in Spain “All power to the assemblies”.

Although the slogan of “we are the 99% against the 1%”, which was so popular in the occupation movement in the United States, reveals the beginnings of an understanding of the bloody class divisions that affect us, the majority of participants in these protests saw themselves as “active citizens” who want to be recognized within a society of “free and equal citizens”.

However, society is divided into classes: a capitalist class that has everything and produces nothing, and an exploited class -the proletariat- that produces everything but has less and less. The driving force of social evolution is not the democratic game of the “decision of a majority of citizens” (this game is nothing more than a masquerade which covers up and legitimises the dictatorship of the ruling class) but the class struggle.

The social movement needs to join up with the struggle of the principle exploited class -the proletariat- who collectively produce the main riches and ensure the functioning of social life: factories, hospitals, schools, universities, offices, ports, construction, post offices. In some of the movements in 2011 we began to see its strength, above all in the wave of strikes that exploded in Egypt and which finally forced Mubarak to resign. In Oakland (California) the “occupiers” called a general strike, going to the port and gaining the active support of the dockers and lorry drivers. In London striking electricians and the Saint Paul's occupiers carried out common actions. In Spain certain striking sectors have tended to unite with the assemblies in the squares.

There is no opposition between the class struggle of the modern proletariat and  the profound needs of the social layers exploited by capitalist oppression. The struggle of the proletariat is not an egotistical or specific movement but the basis for the “independent movement of the immense majority to the benefit of the immense majority” (The Communist Manifesto).

The present movements would benefit from critically reviewing the experience of two centuries of proletarian struggle and attempts at social liberation. The road is long and fraught with enormous obstacles, which calls to mind the oft repeated slogan in Spain “It is not that we are going slowly, it is that we are going far”. Start the most widespread possible discussion, without any restriction or discouragement, in order to consciously prepare new movements which could make it clear that capitalism can indeed be replaced by another society.

International Communist Current 11/03/12