We are very pleased to announce the formation of two new sections of the ICC, in Peru and Ecuador.

The constitution of a new section of our organisation is always a very important event for us. First because it is further evidence of the capacity of the world proletariat, despite its difficulties, to give rise to revolutionary minorities on an international scale; and secondly because it means that our organisation is able to strengthen its global presence.

The formation of two new sections of the ICC is taking place in a situation where the working class has, since 2003, begun to recover from the long period of retreat in its consciousness and its militancy that followed the events of 19891. This recovery has been expressed by a whole series of struggles which show a growing awareness of the impasse facing world capitalism and by the emergence, on an international scale, of internationalist minorities looking for contact among themselves, posing many questions, searching for a revolutionary coherence and debating the perspectives for the development of the class struggle. Part of this milieu has turned to the positions of the communist left and some of these elements have joined our organisation. Thus in 2007 an ICC nucleus was created in Brazil [1]. In 2009 we greeted the creation of two new sections of the ICC in the Philippines and Turkey [2].

The two new sections are also the product of a sustained effort by our organisation and its militants to take part in political discussion and clarification, to make links wherever there are groups or individuals searching for communist ideas, whether or not they enter our organisation.

Our new sections were, before joining us, groups of this kind, whether they turned straight away towards political clarification around the positions of the ICC, as in Ecuador, or whether they came from different political backgrounds, as in Peru. In both cases, they developed through discussion with other political forces as well as through systematic discussion with the ICC on the basis of its platform. They always had a commitment to taking position on the major events of the international and national situation2. Today, they continue to evolve in a milieu which is very rich in contacts.

Based in South America, these two new sections will reinforce the intervention of the ICC in the Spanish language, and its presence in Latin America where the ICC was already present in Venezuela, Mexico and Brazil.

The whole of the ICC send a warm and fraternal greeting to these new sections and the comrades who form them.

ICC, April 2012

This is a translation of an article from our comrades in Switzerland.

In response to the economic crisis, angry and indignant people in Switzerland set up their first general assembly (GA) of the Occupy movement on October 15 2011. Subsequent weekly meetings in front of the big banks on Paradeplatz (Army Square) in Zurich were inspired by much more important international movements such as the Indignados in Spain or Occupy Wall Street in the United States. The very heterogeneous Occupy movement is an expression of the international emergence of a process of reflection and of revolt faced with the impasse of capitalist society. Despite a convergent tendency at the international level to focus (often in a very restricted fashion) on the “world of finance”, some quite diverse experiences unfolded in different countries, deserving to be taken up at the international level. And these happened when disillusionment within the Occupy movement was clearly appearing throughout. Thus we want to share here some experiences drawn from our participation in Occupy’s activities.

“Making proposals for a fairer capitalism” or the traps of democracy

As in New York and other cities in the United States, on October 15 Paradeplatz was transformed into a village of tents, but after two days, threatened with expulsion by the police, the “village” had to move to the central Lindenhof Park. The Occupy movement in Zurich wasn't straight away confronted with direct repression as in Spain, but much more a classical policy of attempting to integrate the movement into the system, with the ruling class in Switzerland resorting to its own version of “direct democracy” to blunt any resistance to capitalism. Here in Switzerland the ruling class had drawn the lessons of events at the beginnings of the 1980s, understanding that it wasn't possible to suffocate social movements by brutality alone and that it could do so much better by offering some possibilities of participation in the system.

Hypocritically, the leaders of the banks and the government thus showed their “understanding” of the Occupy movement. Occupy militants were immediately invited onto one of the most important political TV programmes with the objective of reflecting together with the main bankers and professors as to the possible means to make the financial system better; the leaders  of today couldn't adopt the arrogant attitude that “everything's going well”. During this initial phase, the attacks of the bourgeois press were mainly restricted to criticisms of the absence of concrete political positions on the part of Occupy.

When, in its initial enthusiasm, the Occupy movement accepted offers like that of state television, it was in the hope of greater popularisation. But at the end October, the GA managed, most of the time, to spring the trap of “concrete propositions” aimed at ameliorating the capitalist financial system and the parallel trap of integrating itself into the mechanisms of classic democratic participation.

For the ruling class, the most profitable thing seemed to be to tolerate the movement as a whole and wait for its exhaustion rather than immediately integrate it into the democratic game where it would be hammered. In the almost unprecedented culture of debate in the initial phase of October and November, where almost everyone was allowed to speak, a great strength of the movement was that it settled on the principle: “take time to discuss and don't allow ourselves to be put under pressure”.

Tent village, the movement as a whole and extension

The tent village of Lindenhof, well organised and welcoming towards those who wanted to participate, rapidly became (as the Saturday GA on Paradeplatz) the real centre of discussion for the Occupy movement. As with the Indignados’ movement in Spain, the collective occupation of a public space provided a framework that allowed the movement to unite. Very quickly however, and despite the open attitude of the militants living in the village, two dynamics appeared:

1.  The emergence of an independent community to which only people having the time and staying power to live their lives in this place could participate – whereas that was almost impossible for the majority of people responsible for families and the obligations of wage labour.

2.  The daily concern of housekeeping and of the organisation of the tent village progressively took        over the time dedicated to political debate – which was at the origins of the hopes of the Occupy movement.

This situation wasn't freely chosen by the occupants and they can't be reproached for it; it was imposed on them through the objective difficulty of making the tent village an inhabitable infrastructure, and above all because of the permanent threat of being expelled by the repressive apparatus of the police. Contrary to Zuccotti Park in New York, the movement as a whole in Zurich didn't go as far in a dynamic of falling back on itself and fetishising the park. It engaged in its general assemblies with an intense reflection on the way in which the movement could link up with the rest of “99%”.

On the eve of November 3, the GA which occupied the University square in order to hold a collective discussion, inviting students to participate directly, constituted an expression of this aspiration to enlarge the movement. For five weeks, free of the daily concerns of the tent village, these weekly general assemblies were collective moments encouraging reflection on questions of general politics. Faced with the emergence of positions absurdly proposing a “leadership” to the movement or describing themselves in a fatalist fashion as “delusional”, the plenary assemblies were strong enough to pose their collective spirit of self-organisation. But the anger and combativity among the students wasn't developed enough to join the Occupy movement to their own preoccupations. Even if the hope of a strong participation of the students didn't come to fruition (a hope based on the fact that in 2009 a movement broke out at the University of Zurich), these evening meetings, called “GA's on the content”, where some new people made an appearance, constituted an enrichment of the Occupy movement which could no longer be reduced to a village of tents. Occupy had tried concrete measures to spread the movement.

As a matter of fact, the positive dynamic of such “GA's on the content” demonstrates that in the future any movement will be able to avoid transferring fundamental political discussions of the plenary GA to the “GA on the content” - in the same way that political life cannot be exclusively delegated to work groups. On the contrary, the plenary GA must take the time to come together in order to calmly and collectively clarify the fundamental political questions of the movement. In December, Occupy Zurich, strongly influenced by activism, got more and more bogged down in the problem of holding GA's in themselves, treating numerous questions of organisational detail in an exhausting fashion.

The pioneer spirit, disillusionment and personalisation

The pioneer spirit present in the first great mobilisations of October and November on Paradeplatz settled down. Occupy was not dead, as the bourgeois press would have us believe at the end of December with the slogan “Bye bye Occupy!”, expressing the wish to bury protest against the crisis and the financial institutions. But participation in the GA's rapidly fell during December. The tent village was again emptied by the police on November 15 and some militants had demoralising fines inflicted upon them. By the first GA of 2012, January 4, with a participation of about 70 people, several interventions underlined that “there were less and less numbers”. And, in the space of a month, Occupy clearly went from a spontaneous movement mobilising numerous people to a kernel of militants trying to maintain some near-daily actions whatever the cost.

Quite another atmosphere affected the culture of debate of the GA’s: patience and mutual respect while speaking, so impressive at the beginning, began to give way to tiredness, impatience, tensions and feelings of being excluded from any decision-making. A dynamic developed trying to compensate for the growing isolation by an activism that more and more clearly rested solely on the capacities and on the good will of militants taken individually and not at all on any collective perspective. Occupy Zurich held numerous actions that were really no longer possible with a declining force, as the discussion of the GA about the information stand installed on a public square in Stauffacher showed. Though without doubt well intentioned, but quite desperate, the appeals to discipline (which can’t be the basis for any social movement fighting for the emancipation of humanity because it’s equivalent to the individual moralism of capitalist society) only led to still more tensions.

It's a well-known phenomenon in social movements that the great heights of the beginning are rapidly transformed into frustration when the movement remains isolated from the rest of the working class. The question of isolation is here shown to be a key question. The evident fetishisation of Zuccotti Park in New York wasn't due to the isolation coming from Occupy Wall Street, but was rather an expression of it. There are no “survival recipes” for a movement like Occupy because like other social movements it doesn't originate from an activist “feasibility”, but comes from the political fermentation within society. It arises on the basis of the objective conditions of life.

Marked by the progressive decline of the Occupy Zurich movement, the January 4 GA thus turned to a presentation and the adoption of plans of action in which the participants mostly involved themselves in a very individualistic way. In such a moment, it is more productive to pose the questions: “what do we want?”, “what are our common strengths?”, “why is the movement going backwards?”

Culture of debate, permanent movement and alliances as a lifebuoy

For the people involved in the movement of Occupy Zurich, confronted with fatigue and the shrinkage of numbers down to a small kernel, the necessity to pose some quite fundamental questions was clearly shown in the two first weeks of January 2012 in the question of the frequency of assemblies. What this discussion shows, in the framework of a social movement in decline, is the insoluble contradiction between on the one hand the maintenance of frequent assemblies as the lungs of the movement and, on the other hand, its declining strength and participation. At the GA of January 4, this question was settled in favour of the sole solution which seems realistic and reasonable (immediately go for one assembly a week) but with the aid of the “thermometer of fatigue”. It was absolutely correct for one of the most active elements to put in writing the day following this assembly the critique that “the decision to hold one GA a week was not taken unanimously, but by a decision of the majority. From the beginning I was clearly against the reduction in the frequency of GA's, however my arguments were not confronted and my preoccupations ignored. When everyone expressed their opinions it turned out that there was a majority for holding less GA's, which finally ended up, when I again wanted to support my position, with me being barracked by all. Unfortunately, two compromise positions were rejected without discussion. I present my excuses here to those that formulated them; in this situation, put under pressure from all sides, I considered these compromise positions without controlling my emotions, which led me to reject them straight away. I regret it. Looking back on them, both had potential if one had been able to discuss them in detail.”

What this comrade is defending here is not a blind principle of about raising the frequency of GA's independent of the dynamic of the movement, but the preservation of the culture of debate. The consensual method of the Occupy movement, even if it can conceal the latent weakness of prematurely taking the smallest common denominator as a result of the discussion, thus preventing the necessary polarisation, had, at least in the initial phase, the advantage of allowing a place for all opinions. It is clear that sometimes concrete decisions must be taken even if everyone is not in agreement. However, when decisions are taken by the majority they must not fundamentally mean the end of discussions around them. At the GA of January 11, the preoccupation of the participant quoted above couldn't find any place because of the overwhelming amount of information and points concerning action, although his critique went to the heart of the problem: the changes in the operation of the culture of debate.

It's difficult to say where Occupy is going. However, the January 11 GA clearly contained a tendency towards seeing itself as a “permanent movement”, wanting to evolve and transform it into a political regroupment. Given that the struggles for working conditions or against the lowering of wages in capitalism today cannot have a permanent character without falling into a trade unionist policy of rotten compromise and accommodations to representative democracy, similar perils lie in wait for Occupy. In the context of the momentary loss of its strength and its own dynamic, some voices made themselves heard in favour of an alliance with leftist groups such as Jusos and Greenpeace, doubtless with the aim of regaining some strength. For example, the GA got completely drawn into an insignificant offer of cooperation with a political spiritualist group. Instead of defending the autonomy of the movement, of discussing questions that are really on the agenda, the GA restricted itself to a debate aimed at arriving at an immediate decision concerning their relations to this particular group and to religious groups in general. Such a discussion can be interesting in itself, but it's impossible to undertake and clarify in such haste, which has been imposed from the outside and which already gives a foretaste of bourgeois leftist politics. What, at the beginning of the movement had been thrown out of the door with a healthy instinct - the blackmail exerted by the bourgeoisie pushing for the formulation of “concrete demands” with a view to making the financial system better, in other words pressure to obtain a position within the framework of bourgeois politics - now furtively reasserted itself through the window.

If the Occupy movement doesn't want to be dispersed and get lost in supporting parliamentary proposals about “disclosing the financing of political parties” or in democratic initiatives against speculation on basic food products, which some participants have presented to the GA as their political project, it is necessary to return to the question at the beginning: why is there this crisis of capitalism? The Occupy movement has to ask itself the question of whether all the problems so sharply perceived by its participants can find a solution within capitalism – or is it time to go beyond this mode of production as a whole? As it is impossible for such social movements to be permanently maintained, and there will be others, it is important to convey all the positive experiences made to future social movements in case Occupy doesn't find a second wind. Because the crisis of capitalism, the element which unleashed Occupy in the first place, will not disappear as long as this system of exploitation survives.

 Mario 16/1/12

President Obama has announced US sanctions against those countries that continue to buy Iranian oil. This is not really a new move so much as the next move in applying pressure, already planned 3 months ago. It follows EU measures against Iranian oil, despite Greece and Italy’s reliance on it. Talks between the US and Israel last month were even more bellicose than usual and accompanied by much speculation on whether Israel would launch a strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.

Iran’s foreign policy, including its efforts to obtain a nuclear arsenal, is shaped by its claim to be a regional power in the Middle East. This brings it into opposition to Israel, as the undoubted leading power in the region, and its US backer. All talk about the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and international law only serve as diplomatic weapons when they are not simply propaganda to obscure the reality of the sordid imperialist interests at stake. Particularly given that Israel’s nuclear capabilities are an open secret. Nevertheless, Iran’s attempt to develop a nuclear arsenal under cover of wanting to develop civilian nuclear power is indeed a threat to Israel’s status as top dog in the Middle East.

For the moment Obama and Netanyahu have agreed to use diplomacy against Iran. This has important advantages in putting pressure on Iran’s big power allies. Russia is closest, with a strategic partnership based on arms and nuclear energy sales, but it has to distance itself from any intention to build nuclear weapons. China has strong economic ties, buying 20% of Iranian oil, with a 20 year energy agreement at prices below those on the world market, very significant for its economy based on cheap production costs. Both these allies have naturally opposed the oil embargo. Oil is, at least in theory, a good weapon to use against Iran, with 10% of the world’s petrol and 17% of natural gas reserves. However, not only are its largest trading partners not going to cooperate, not only do the EU and Japan already have a dispensation to continue trading, but Iran’s economy also relies on agricultural exports and, based on its natural advantages, has a fast growing economy. As always, at the economic level an embargo will hit only the poorest in the country. As an element in the build up of diplomatic pressure it may be very useful in neutralising Russian and Chinese support for Iran, particularly if there is a future military option.

This is perhaps a very opportune time to pressurise Iran, when its most significant regional ally, the Syrian Assad regime, is looking at best distinctly shaky as the country descends into civil war. But Iran still has the capacity to influence events in the region via its clients in Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as by using the ideology of Shiite unity to gain influence, particularly in Iraq which now has a Shiite prime minister, Malaki.

The US has not taken the military option off the table. It never does, and numerous military adventures show it is never backward in launching attacks. There are strategic and diplomatic considerations to take account of first. Many of those willing to support the oil embargo – at least up to a point, provided it doesn’t impair their supply – may oppose a military attack, much as France and Germany opposed the invasion of Iraq. It is also still bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The military option discussed at the time of the Obama-Netanyahu meeting last month was an Israeli strike against nuclear installations. While this would be more difficult than the attack on Iraq in 1981 (further, need for bunker busting bombs to reach underground facilities) Israel has clearly calculated that any Iranian retaliation would be weak, or as Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies says “an Iranian missile strike would be only a symbolic gesture” since it would be unable to hit military targets in Israel (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17261265 [9]). For our rulers civilian casualties are of no real significance! But Iran’s response would not be limited to direct strikes against Israel. It has the capacity to close the Straits of Hormuz, which control 40% of the world’s oil supplies, and blocking this would block Iran and Russia’s main competitors in the petrol trade. Oil trade is a two-edged sword. Iran also has the capacity to use its clients, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, to send missiles into Israel, stirring up more destruction and chaos.

There is one other disadvantage, from the US point of view, to an Israeli strike against Iran – it would tend to unite the country behind the policy of nuclear weapons. Iran has major divisions in its ruling class that were shown up in response to the fraudulent elections in 2009.

The policies of the US and Israel, on the one hand, or Iran and its allies on the other, whether hawkish, or seemingly reluctant to go to war, are not determined by the whims of the regimes involved but are compelled by a material situation that forces every imperialism into conflict with its rivals.  

Alex 31/3/12

During the past weeks some abominable acts of violence shocked the world. In early March US Sgt. Robert Bales went on a shooting spree in the Afghan Kandahar province. He went from house to house methodically shooting Afghan civilians. Altogether he killed 16 people, mostly women and children. In mid-March in Toulouse and Montauban the young Algerian born Muhamed Merah killed three French soldiers before gunning down three children and a teacher in a Jewish school.

What do the running amok of the US soldier stationed in Afghanistan and the series of murders by Mohamed Merah have to do with each other?

Mohamed Merah claimed that he wanted to take revenge for the prohibition of the burka in France, the deployment of the French Army in Afghanistan and the oppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli state. Before being shot during the police siege he regretted that he had been unable to kill more people. The motive of the shooting spree by Robert Bales is still unknown. Apparently Merah, by committing as much slaughter as possible, wanted to draw maximum attention to the oppression of his brother and sister Muslims. The spirit of revenge and retaliation drove him to these murders, which he claimed to be carrying out on behalf of al Qaida. On the other hand, it looks like Bales just went berserk – he later claimed that he had no memory of the killings.

How was it possible that the army man Robert Bales, himself a father of two children, lost control to this degree?

The New York Times reported on March 17th that Bales joined the army shortly after 9/11. “I am going to help my country”, was his justification. However, after being sent to the theatres of war, he became aware that the lives of the US soldiers (as that of all ISAF troops) were in danger 24 hours a day. They had to expect an attack at any moment. In four deployments within a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bales suffered from a head and foot injury. The eve before the shooting he witnessed a horrific scene in which one of his fellow soldiers lost a leg in a land mine. We do not know how many victims among civilians or enemy fighters he saw or how many shoot-outs he was involved in. In any case, the experience of Robert Bales in these wars was in no way exceptional.

It is a fact that war creates horrendous psychological damage among soldiers as well as civilians. “More than 200.000 people (i.e. one fifth of all veterans of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan) have received treatment since the beginning of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan in veteran hospitals – all of them were treated because of Posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSD)”.  USA Today published these figures in November 2011, referring to studies by the Veterans’ Association. “The estimated number of unreported cases of sick veterans is probably much higher (…) The army only admits some 50.000 cases of PTSD”. (https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,822232,00.html [13]).

Around one third of the veterans of the Vietnam war returned home with massive psychological disorders. Although only one percent of the population served in the US-army, the suicides of US veterans count for 20% of all suicides. Almost 1000 veterans try to commit suicide every month. As veterans report: “It is a horror. War changes your brain. Between war and life at home there is a world of difference. You change, whether you want it or not. Once you return home, you can no longer find a balance.” (www.tagesschau.de/ausland/usarmee128.html [14])

And once they return home many of them have to face unemployment and homelessness. The example of the city of Los Angeles is revealing: “In Los Angeles there are many homeless veterans. They lost everything, their job, their partners, their home. All this because of their psychological disorders and because they do not get any help. Roughly one third of all the homeless of Los Angeles are veterans.” (www.tagesschau.de/ausland/usarmee128.html [14])

Napo, the British National Association of Probation Officers, “estimated that 12,000 [former servicemen] are under supervision of probation officers, with a further 8,500 behind bars in England and Wales. The total of more than 20,000 is more than twice the number currently serving in Afghanistan” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ [15]

The psychological mutilation of the soldiers

If you give patriotism and nationalism an inch, you are drawn into a spiral of destruction which not only damages or destroys the lives of  civilian populations, but also the soldiers themselves, who are mentally mutilated and emotionally destabilised. While the ruling class and their ideologues embellish wars by speaking about “humanitarian missons” and “stabilising countries”, the reality inside the theatre of war looks very different. Here the soldiers are dragged into an abyss where their initial anxieties evolve into hatred and paranoia. What is portrayed as a “humanitarian” deployment in reality turns out to be the permanent terrorisation of the population. In these circumstances soldiers often develop a sense of satisfaction if they can damage or destroy symbols which enjoy a high esteem among the local population, or if they can humiliate human beings directly and openly. The local population, which has been pushed into a dead-end, often feels nothing but contempt for the “liberators” – and many of them can easily be mobilised for suicide attacks. The killing machine has come into full swing.

After so many traumatic experiences Bales could no longer feel that he wanted to “help my country”. He was particularly outraged by the fact that after four previous deployments he was being sent to Afghanistan again. According to his wife they would have preferred being stationed in more peaceful outposts like Germany, Italy or Hawaii.

Bales may now be facing the death penalty. Instead of explaining why patriotism and nationalism necessarily lead to orgies of violence, to the destruction of the victims and the perpetrator, the US legal system now acts as prosecutor and judge.  The ruling class wants to wash its hands of responsibility for the war, and more precisely, for the army’s systematic dehumanisation of its own soldiers. The army, frequently supported by professional psychologists using the latest techniques of ‘behaviour modification’, has  one essential goal: soldiers have to be made fit for combat, which means overcoming any reluctance about killing fellow human beings. The psychologist and film maker Jan Haaken showed in her documentary Mind Zone the role the psychologists play: “We are not here to reduce the number of soldiers. In case of doubt soldiers are diagnosed fit for combat, as long as they can do the job”. https://www.democracynow.org/2012/3/16/mind_zone_new_film_tracks_therapists [16]

Overcoming barbarism with barbaric means?

Mohamed Merah, who wiped out the lives of seven people because he wanted to take revenge for the all the acts of violence which this society perpetrates against people, only reproduced the murderous methods of an oppressing system. The means he chose are part of a destructive and self-destructive vicious circle. The fact that his application to join the French Foreign Legion and the army was turned down, although he wanted to offer his services to the French state, may cast a light on his readiness to kill in the service of the state and the  nation.

“The spiral of violence which wipes out all that is human cannot be broken using the military methods of the capitalist system. In order to overcome an inhuman system, the goal and the means have to cohere..

The proletarian revolution requires no terror for its aims; it hates and despises murder. It does not need these weapons because it does not combat individuals but institutions, because it does not enter the arena with naïve illusions whose disappointment it would seek to revenge. It is not the desperate attempt of a minority to mould the world forcibly according to its ideal, but the action of the great massive millions of the people, destined to fulfil a historic mission and to transform historical necessity into reality”.

 (Rosa Luxemburg, ‘What does Spartacus want?’, 14. December 1918, )

Dv. 25/03/12

In many discussions the following is asked:  where has all the vitality and combativity, the discussions and occupations of squares gone? Some people tell us “They are being managed by the likes of Democracia Real YA or Assemblies of 15M”[1]. However many think they have simply disappeared and that we shouldn't have any illusions about them.

We are certainly not in an explosive situation like May; does that mean that we have not experienced anything?

A reference point for how to struggle

Tons of “democratist” rubbish has poured forth from Democracia Real Ya (DRY), likewise the PSOE, in order to bury the militancy, spontaneity, creativity, discussions and mobilisations of the 15M movement. But they cannot draw a veil over these events. Those days in May will remain a reference point for the fact that it is possible to struggle, to decide for ourselves. Each time that discontent and anger overwhelm democratic normality in order to fight back, 15M will be a reference point.

First of all because it was a baptism of fire for the younger generation, for those who had never been in an assembly, who had not felt the solidarity and collective force of the workplace because of the chronic unemployment they suffer. In the squares and demonstrations the youngest and oldest have come together, and begun a transmission of experience, gaining confidence in the possibility of changing things. And this will not be easily forgotten.

It has also made it possible to go to the root of questions. Faced with disgust at reformist, electoral and trade unionist thinking, 15M had the courage to recognise the lack of perspective that this system offers and dared to speak loudly of revolution, although everyone saw its contents differently and it was not posed as an immediate prospect. And this was displayed from the very beginning when the Assembly of the Arrested (Madrid)[2] said in their communiqué: “We are faced with a situation without hope and without a future, a situation we are told to passively accept”.

Furthermore, in the squares, many have discovered for the first time that it is possible to organise the struggle for ourselves, that the assemblies can express a collective reflection, can be a space for experiencing the unity and strength of the movement. The elected commissions did not act on their own, but had to be accountable to the assemblies. The weakening of the assemblies was seen when some commissions elected themselves or where named by DRY or others, and this even included commissions that had initially been elected  by the assemblies but which began to function on their own account, trying to impose on the assemblies decisions that they had not made, such as the DRY's “Ten Commandments”.

Despite all the difficulties and differences, 15M saw itself as part of the same thread stretching from Tunisia to Wall Street and has also generated a tremendous solidarity and sympathy; and at times it expressed an internationalist sentiment, seeing itself as part of an international movement of struggle, such as when the first assemblies in the Plaza de Cataluña in Barcelona translated their communiqués of solidarity into different languages.

The movement of the indignant, although not being fully aware of it, is an attempt to respond to the world crisis of capitalism. As we saw at the onset of the movement in Tunisia[3], for example, this was expressed by the fact that many thousands of people felt they could no longer live in a system of commodity and wage relations. We have seen demonstrations of the indignant in Tunisia, Egypt, Spain, Greece, Israel, the USA, Chile, Great Britain....A simultaneity of movements that only has precedents in the 1968 movements or the international revolutionary wave of 1919-20.

Minorities, reflection and preparation of the struggles

The 15M movement continues to be a reference point through the living and active emergence of a considerable (compared with the period immediately preceding) number of minorities who are continuing the process of reflection and preparation for the next struggles.

These minorities cannot be seen as the representatives of the movement, because they have not been elected by the assemblies; nor are they backed by a massive and persistent moblisation. It would be a mistake for them to talk in the name of the 15M movement. Equally it would be an error to think that they have nothing to do with it. Each movement of struggles generates its minorities, who do not represent the whole, but who are part of it. What these groups express is the effort to continue the process of clarifying lessons for the future. They are also creating a network of discussion, of meetings, of confidence and solidarity that will be very important for the organisation of new mass mobilisations. No mass movement, no revolution is possible without the existence of these channels for spreading the struggle and for discussing theory and practice.

DRY: surrendering the movement to the bourgeois state

Other minorities however, had tried to integrate the militancy of the mobilisations into the channels of the democratic state, following the representative-electoral schema of parliament and the unions. These people, who are characterised fundamentally by the positions of the DRY, aspire to be the official representatives of the movement, putting forwards their programme of demands, calling their own mobilisations, wanting to find a “space” for the spirit of the movement in the bourgeois State. In return they offer to surrender the real movement to the conditions of the system, to take on objectives that are “reasonable” in a situation of crisis. They want a movement without mobilisations, without effective assemblies, without fruitful discussions.

These minorities are not as expression of the 15M but of the totalitarian state, whatever they think they may be doing.

From spontaneity to confrontation

The first spectacular days of 15M, with their massive nature and unity, with all the discussion and emotion, will not spontaneously repeat themselves. The magnitude of the movement surprised the state, though at the same time it did not feel directly threatened and allowed it to run out of steam. The next attempts at massive mobilisation will not find the same open ground; on the contrary, they will only come about through a confrontation. In this sense, things may initially look more like they did in the last days of the movement: manoeuvres in the assemblies, dead end demonstrations etc.

The organizing of sovereign assemblies and massive mobilisations will mean a struggle against the concerted efforts of the DRY, the trade unions, PSOE, and other left parties who will try to maintain their grip over the movement.

Furthermore, the next mobilisations will not be able to avoid a hand to hand struggle with these forces to avoid being trapped on the electoral terrain. The next demands of the struggle will have to be posed directly on the social terrain faced with the gravity of the crisis and the enormous cuts.

Spread the 15M to the workers: towards a struggle for social transformation

There were tentative efforts to bring the workers into the struggle of the assemblies and the 15M movement, particularly in Barcelona, where the local government’s attacks have ignited the public sector[4]. But they were faced with the false dilemma of “if you want to struggle against the cuts, join the union struggle”, because the 15M was a struggle for “electoral reform”. This division of the “political” and “wage” struggles is a knife pointed at the heart of the movement.

This can be avoided by taking further what happened in Catalonia: uniting the workers’ struggles and the 15M assemblies.

In fact there cannot be any more 15M without seeing its content, its forms of struggle and its demands as part of the struggle of the working class,

“The cancer of skepticism dominates ideology today and infects the proletariat and its own revolutionary minorities. As stated above, the proletariat has missed all of the appointments that history has given it during the course of a century of capitalist decadence, and this has resulted in an agonising doubt in its own ranks about its identity and its capacities as a class, to the point where even in displays of militancy some reject the term “working class”.[5] This skepticism is made even stronger because it is fed by the decomposition of capitalism;[6] despair, the lack of concrete plans for the future foster disbelief and distrust of any perspective of collective action.

The movements in Spain, Greece and Israel – despite all the weaknesses they contain – have begun to provide an effective remedy against the cancer of scepticism, as much by their very existence and what they mean for the continuity of struggles and the conscious efforts made by the world proletariat since 2003. They are not a storm that suddenly burst out of a clear blue sky but the result of a slow accumulation over the last eight years of small clouds, drizzle and timid lightning that has grown until it acquires a new quality.” (International Review 147 ‘Movement of the Indignant in Spain, Greece and Israel: From indignation to the preparation of class struggles’). https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201111/4593/movement... [20]

Hic Rhodus 21/01/12

- Main topic: what can we learn from the social movements of 2011?

 - Other discussions on art, religion, etc

The ICC invites you to a day of discussion in London on 23 June. The main focus of the day will be a discussion about the significance of the social movements of 2011. What can we learn from the revolts that broke out Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Greece, Spain, the USA, the UK and many other countries? What were their strengths and weaknesses? How do they relate to the more general struggle of the working class against capitalism?

Over the past year we have published a large number of articles and documents about these movements, which can be found on our website. More recently we have published a general statement about them [29]. We aim to start the morning’s discussion with a presentation of this text, but we hope to have time to discuss other contributions and analyses of how these movements took shape in different cities and countries.

In the afternoon we are planning to organise shorter discussions around more general topics. At the moment we have one planned on marxism and art, and another on the origins of Islam, but we are open to further suggestions, and to offers from all directions to present other topics. So far all three discussions will be presented by sympathisers of the ICC rather than ICC members.

We hope that these discussions will be of interest to comrades in or around revolutionary political organisations, to people who have been actively involved in the social movements, and to anyone asking questions about the nature and future of present-day society – and about the feasibility of getting rid of it.  

If you are interested in attending, let us know in advance if you can, especially if you have any accommodation, transport or other problems that might make it difficult for you to come along.

The venue is upstairs at the Lucas Arms, 245a Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8QZ. The first session will go from 11-2 and the afternoon sessions from 3-6. Food can be bought in the pub but we are also planning to go to a nearby restaurant after the meeting.

Contact us at [email protected] [30]

Over the last decade or so, the proletariat in China, and the rest of East Asia -  Burma, Cambodia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam -  have all been involved in a wave of strikes and protests against capitalist exploitation. It's China we want to concentrate on here and to do so we will largely use the information given by the China Labour Bulletin (CLB), the publication of a non-governmental organisation based in Hong Kong with links to Human Rights groups and Radio Free Asia. The Bulletin promotes the idea of a “fairer” Chinese state, which includes advocating its adoption of “Free Trade Unions”.

In a subsequent piece, we will look at further recent elements around the “People's Republic”, including the development of imperialist tensions, decomposition and intrigues around the all-powerful Politburo. 

The class struggle

Throughout the last decade the working class in China has been involved in a wave of strikes and protests, counting thousands of workers, as anger and combativity mounts under the weight of capitalist exploitation. The spontaneous strikes, born from the workers themselves, have been over issues across the board: overtime pay, relocation compensation, corruption of officials, wage rises, wage and pension cuts, improved working conditions and reductions in hours, education and health benefits. In sum, the whole gamut of conditions expressed in the intensity of the exploitation of the Chinese state. While largely separate from each other these strikes have shown a definite dynamic and a growing strength to the extent that the China Briefing of 29.11.11 warns investors to get used to labour unrest.

Just a few days ago, in the town of Chongqing, the previous fiefdom of the disgraced Party boss Bo Xilai, there were strikes - unconnected to the Politburo manoeuvres - over wages and pension cuts. This town of 30 million in southern China, like many others, is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy which is a growing concern (local bankruptcies are a big problem for capitalism, witness some states in the USA, regional governments in Spain, and so on). Against the struggle in Chongquing, the authorities, as elsewhere, blocked the microblogging that workers have used to communicate effectively with each other and spread news in the face of the state's blackout.

The China Labour Bulletin, 5.3.12, reports that strikes and protests continued across the county throughout February 2012, the vast majority taking place in the industrial/manufacturing and transport sectors, with demands mainly for higher wages and against bonus reductions. Five thousand workers at the Hanzhong Steel Co., at Shaanxi in the north, struck against low pay and long hours. Several thousand workers left the plant and made for the city streets in order to demonstrate. The report indicates that the workers elected their own representatives. The March issue of the Bulletin also records the highest monthly total of strikes since it began keeping records 15 months ago, and notes the escalation of strikes over pay and relocations. Riot squads and militia units are actively present in many cases and, apart from getting sacked, many militant workers have been “detained” - there's not a whimper about this from the human rights industry in the west. In China, repression and surveillance is of course the speciality of a Stalinist state and, like the Arab regimes, this state also uses gangs of armed thugs that it pays and  transports around the country for use against the workers. Internal police spending in China for 2010 and projected for 2011 outstrips the external defence budget – which is not inconsiderable[1].

Migrant labour is no longer docile

At the start of the 21st century, millions of poor, young, rural labourers flooded into the factory towns of South China looking for work. These young men and women worked for long hours for very low pay in often dangerous and unhealthy conditions. These were largely helpless lambs to the slaughter. It was upon this basis that the “Chinese Economic Miracle” was founded. But this enforced acquiescence did not last for long. Tempered in the heat of the class struggle, by the end of the decade the era of cheap and docile labour was well and truly over. A significant number of workers, still young but wiser, better educated, more confident and militant, were organising and undertaking strikes and protests. Summer 2010 culminated in a wave of strikes in the manufacturing sector[2].

In mid-decade, the Chinese Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security estimated the number of migrant workers to be 240 million, including 150 million working away from home, with 70% of these in the manufacturing sector. Even with these numbers, labour shortages around 2005 saw workers' struggles taking a further step towards offensive struggles and demands with specific outbursts giving material encouragement for others to launch their own protests. The Chinese state records that there were 80,00 mass incidents in 2007 – the last time the state published official figures[3]. The CLB estimates these figures going up year on year since and the strikes taking on a different intensity. For example, in August 2011, thousands of laid-off workers, victims of China's National Petroleum Corporation restructuring, joined in with a demonstration of a thousand employed oil workers on strike for their own demands. This underlined the greater development of taking to the streets, blocking roads and demonstrations and sit-ins in public squares. Another aspect of the microblogging mentioned above was its use in the Nanhai Honda strike in 2010, where communications were established and a small group of workers set up called “Unity is Victory”. The Chinese authorities attempted to stop this form of communication under the guise of preventing “unfounded rumours”[4]. One of the Honda strike leaders told the New York Times that a minority of workers, about 40 in all, communicated and met up before the strike in order to decide on action and demands. At a PepsiCo strike in November 2011, workers elected their own delegates from their general meeting. Despite increases offered by the management, they extended and lengthened the action[5].

Many strikes end up with pay rises and some satisfaction of demands, but many do not. In both cases, workers are sacked and arrested. And where wage rises are given these are often wiped out by the inflation that is becoming a major curse for the Chinese economy. Wage demands are rising not just in the coastal regions, but, since 2010, in the hinterlands, where workers involved in action have family, friends, etc., posing the possibilities of strike action alongside social protest and thus widening the battlefront. On the other hand, migrant workers settled in other towns are often denied basic education and health benefits for them and their children – which their employers should pay but don't. This has opened another arena of confrontation. All this a far cry from a decade ago when these young, rural elements were used and dumped at will by the Chinese state. Unemployment also looms large with the Federation of Hong Kong Industries saying that a “a third of Hong Kong-owned industries will downsize or close”,  affecting tens of thousands of workers at the very least.

The China Labour Bulletin states that workers “had no confidence in the All China Federation of Trade Unions”[6] and its “ability to negotiate a decent pay increase”. They consequently “ took matters into their own hands and organised a wide range of increasingly effective collective actions...” ACFTU is clearly linked to the Party and made up of its members and cadres, and the CLB is drawing attention to a big problem facing the Chinese ruling class: the lack of effective trade unions to control and discipline the workers. Repression is never enough and can add fuel to the fire. As the CLB report notes over the Honda strike mentioned above: “Any workers' organisation that develops during a protest is usually disbanded after the demands that gave rise to it has been addressed”. The pro-state CLB would like to make these workers' organisation permanent and enmesh them into a structure of Free Trade Unions with peaceful relations with the state. The ACFTU branches, such as they exist, are sometimes made up exclusively of managers, such as at the Ohms Electronics factory in Shenzhen, where the twelve managers were all union officials! And in a pathetically desperate effort, which also points to the limits of the Stalinist state, the Shanxi Federation of Trade Unions has ordered its province’s 100,000 union officials to publish their phone numbers so that workers can get in touch with them!! Throughout the country, ACFTU branches have sacked workers, hired scabs and called the police and militias against workers. It is completely part of the discredited Party apparatus. The bourgeoisie, not just in China but internationally, need a renovated, elastic and credible union structure and this is where the China Labour Bulletin and its push for Free Trade Unions comes in. We can see this in its call for “greater participation (of workers) in committees and other union structures” and “new employees to be given information about the union's activities”, as after the recent Foxcomm struggles.

The unions in China – unlike their sophisticated brothers in the west – generally don't even see strikes coming let alone defuse and divide them. This was the case at the Honda car plant in Foshan south-eastern China last summer. It took two weeks and a large pay rise to get the workers back to work. Kong Xianghong, an ex-worker and veteran CP member and now a member of ACFTU, said after the strike (and a further rash of strikes that it provoked): “We realised the dangers of our union being divorced from the masses”. Kong added that China needed “To absorb the lessons of the uprisings in Arab nations”[7].

For the working class in China the struggles are intensifying and for the bourgeoisie the problems are mounting. For the latter, if they are at all a possibility, and that must be doubtful, Free Trade Unions would give them a greater element of control. For the workers, the lesson of the Free Trade Union Solidarnosc in Poland, is that these institutions can be more insidiously destructive to the workers' cause than the Party/State union structures – which at least show the unions as the anti-working class formations that they are.

Baboon. 15/4/12