On 16 December last year in Kazakhstan, in Zhanaozen, a town with a population of 90,000 about 150km from the Caspian Sea, the forces of order carried out a real massacre by opening fire with automatic weapons on a rally of 16,000 oil workers and town dwellers who had come to show their solidarity. The workers had been protesting against lay-offs and the non-payment of back wages. There were at least ten deaths, according to the official figures, but in fact there were probably many more, perhaps up to 70 killed and 700-800 wounded.

The struggles in the oil sector go back to the strike at the beginning of May 2011 by the workers employed by KarajanbasMounai, from where it spread to a number of other oil extraction and refining plants in the region: Ersaï Kaspian Kontraktor, KazMounaiGaz, Jondeou, Krouz, Bourgylaou and AktobeMounaïGaz in the neighbouring Aktobe region, with workers demanding wage increases and improvements in safety because of the frequency of accidents at work. The UzenMounaiGaz factory was out on strike for three months. In December, the decision to organise a festival in honour of the twentieth anniversary of independence in the central square of Zhanaozen, which had been occupied by strikers since July, was a real provocation and was clearly seen to be one. Meanwhile the democratic opposition to the regime tried to manipulate this movement of the working class for its own ends: “On 14 December, two days before the independence celebrations, the paper Respublika published an appeal to demonstrate in Zhanaozen, signed by an anonymous group, ‘a group of residents from the province of Mangistau’. For the first time, the Zhanaozen appeal put forward political demands, and the article’s title was ‘Down with (president) Nazarbayev!’ Leaflets distributed in the town called for demonstrators to rally in the town square on 16 December, Independence Day”. Armed police and troops were stationed on surrounding rooftops and armoured vehicles waited for the signs of disorder. Certain demonstrators in the square (who some strikers believed were agents provocateurs) tore down the festival decorations. Police vehicles drove into the crowd, angering the demonstrators, who overturned and burned one of them. They then set fire to the town hall and the HQ of the UzenMounaiGaz company. This was the pretext for mass arrests (130) and the use of arms by the police. The workers had fallen into a trap set up from start to finish by the state authorities and aimed at breaking their movement, which had by then been going on for several months.

A state of emergency and a curfew were imposed straight away and lasted till 5 January. Despite the cutting off of communications (internet and mobile phones) and the blackout by state TV, this violent repression provoked solidarity movements throughout the oil producing region of Mangistau, on the eastern side of the Caspian Sea. On 17 December, all the oil fields had been shut down. Although Zhanaozen was encircled by armoured cars and Interior Ministry troops sent in, clashes between strikers and soldiers supported by planes and armoured cars continued. In the neighbouring area of Shetpe, hundreds of demonstrators blocked and derailed a train carrying materials for use in the repression. A thousand people demonstrated in Aktau, the main city in the region with a population of 160,000, defying a large contingent of security forces, protesting against the violence and carrying banners proclaiming “Don’t fire on the people! Withdraw the army!” On Monday 19 December, for the third consecutive day, several thousand oil workers demonstrated and confronted the police on the grand square of Aktau, calling for an end to the violence and the withdrawal of troops from Zhanaozen. Their slogans included “We want the soldiers to go. They have killed people here”, “Find those guilty of killing demonstrators”, and “Nazarbayev resign”.

The great powers tacitly approve the repression

The Kazakh bourgeoisie has done everything possible to force the workers back into passivity, throwing all kinds of slanders at them (“criminals”, “foreign agents”, etc) while also offering the carrot, with Prime Minister Massimov promising to re-employ all the oil workers who had lost their jobs, and Nazarbayev promising financial aid to the 1800 laid-off strikers in Zhanaozen. Savage repression continued: arbitrary arrests and the torture of prisoners. The president even made use of the conflicts inside the ruling class: on 22 December he announced the sacking of the regional governor and of bosses from the giant state enterprise KazMounaiGaz, including his son-in-law T Koulibayev, and from several of its subsidiaries who employed strikers, presenting all these steps as concessions to the workers. The Kazakh bourgeoisie seems to have broken the militancy of the workers, who for the moment are no longer able to organise collective public actions.

As always when it comes to the proletarian class struggle, the big western media have for the most part kept silent about this episode. They are even quieter when it comes to hiding the complicity of the western bourgeoisies in the crimes committed against the exploited. The Nazarbayev clique only had its way thanks to the complicity and tacit support of the bourgeoisie from great powers like France, Germany, Russia and China, with whom it maintains very good relations. Several western states are deeply involved in key sectors of the national economy, particularly those where the strikes broke out: the extraction and transport of oil and gas. Since 2002 these have been regrouped under the state trust KazMounaiGaz. This trust heads a number of subsidiaries which have joint ventures with the global oil companies.

The major states thus have real strategic interest in the maintenance of social stability in the country and thus in the repression carried out by the regime. Russia, obsessed with its own stability, is hysterically defensive about the social and imperialist stability of its “very dear neighbour”. Chinese enterprises such as AO KarajanbasMounai, a joint venture with KazMounaiGaz and CITIC Group were directly implicated, with the workers demanding equal treatment for Chinese and native personnel. As for France, relations with Kazakhstan were closer after the election of Sarkozy: in June 2008 a strategic partnership treaty was signed by the two countries and in 2010 a Franco-Kazakh presidential commission was created. The Nazarbayev regime was, on this occasion, described as “an island of stability and tolerance” by French Interior Minister Claude Guéant.

Finally, there was Nazarbayev’s reception in Germany in February, where he signed a series of important commercial agreements “aimed at improving the security of German industry as regards the supply of raw materials”. This was not even accompanied by the usual hypocritical expressions of concern about the conditions of working people in Kazakhstan by German democracy. Angela Merkel underlined “the great interest for German companies in further investment in Kazakhstan”. In short, any example of a working class fighting to defend its interests and any revelations about the barbarity of the bourgeoisie had to be well hidden!

An expression of the world wide revival of the class struggle

Despite the difficulty in getting precise information about the events in Kazakhstan, the long series of struggles that has taken place there undoubtedly seems to be an expression of the international revival of class struggles in response to the worsening economic crisis. Having involved over 15,000 workers, this is the biggest strike ever seen in a country run by the Nazarbayev mafia clique, whose power is based on pillaging the economy and the limitless exploitation of labour power. Workers’ wages have been stagnating (in 2009 the average monthly wage was 550 euro) while the cost of living has gone up by 70% since then and the tenge, the local currency, has lost 25% of its value. The struggle of the workers of Kazakhstan shows the same characteristics as the class struggle internationally. The workers of the Soviet era have been replaced by a more combative younger generation, mainly from the provinces, which is not prepared to put up with such cruel exploitation and terrible working conditions. Women have also played a more important role in this recent movement. Finally, the movement of the oil workers testifies to the same change in the mood of the working class as elsewhere in the world, taking the concrete form of the search for and expression of solidarity against capitalist terror and repression.

The struggle of the oil workers of Kazakhstan around the issue of wages goes back several years. The workers of Zhanaozen had already gone on strike to demand their bonuses in October 2009. Those at KarajanbasMounai JSC launched a strike in December 2010 for a wage increase equivalent to those won after a strike by the workers of UzenMounaiGaz, another subsidiary of KazMounaiGaz. Between 4 and 19 March 2011, ten thousand oil workers at KazMounaiGaz went on strike and organised general assemblies, calling for the cancellation of the new method of calculating their wages, which the management wanted to impose on them by threatening lay-offs, and for a bonus for dangerous work. The town was surrounded by a police cordon. The strike was declared illegal and members of the strike committee hauled before the courts. On 9 May, a huge hunger strike began. 1400 people refused to take their mid-day and evening meals as a sign of protest. 4500 workers went on strike on 17 May, held a general assembly and elected six of their number as a delegation to carry out negotiations. The management of KazMounaiGaz and the local authorities declared the strike illegal and announced the firing of all the workers, hoping to starve them into submission. In the end this resort to massive lay-offs affected a total of 2600 strikers. Women hunger strikers were treated with particular brutality. On 26 May, 22 workers from UzenMounaiGaz came out on hunger strike in solidarity with their colleagues at KarajanbasMounai and the next day were joined by 8000 workers from various subsidiaries of KazMounaiGaz, striking for wage increases. Some of the hunger strikers continued their action, surrounded by a huge picket of 2000 workers who protected them from the police. The movement had been confronting police terror from the start. The authorities gave out leaflets declaring the strike illegal: snitches and plainclothes cops organised provocations, and there were hundreds of arrests. On 12 June, the police attacked the strikers’ wives, beating them and accusing them of taking part in an illegal meeting. In the night of 8-9 July the police attempted to attack the tent village set up by the strikers at the UzenMounaiGaz company. 40 strikers poured petrol over themselves and threatened to set themselves on fire. This only delayed the evacuation till the next day. Then the strikers transferred the tent village to the central square in Zhanaozen, which was now permanently occupied by up to 8000 people. Armed gangs carried out more and more attacks on militant workers and independent trade unionists. Some of them were killed along with family members.

The dead-end demand for independent trade unions

From the beginning the strength of the oil workers was their mass mobilisation and the vitality of their general assemblies, where they could discuss how to take the struggle forward and take collective decisions. But the main weakness of the movement was the fact that it remained limited to one sector and to the oil producing region. The demand for an independent trade union (defended by Trotskyist organisations) was raised by the workers at every stage of the movement, but that too was a weakness.

The Kazakh regime, with its fossilised structures and attitudes directly inherited by Stalinism, unable to tolerate any kind of opposition, is in normal circumstances supported by trade unions which are openly in league with the authorities in maintaining social peace. The official union federation denounced the recent strike as illegal. It is thus completely discredited in front of the working class. The demand for a ‘real’ union representation was, along with the wage demands, a focus for the mass mobilisation of the KazMounaiGaz workers at the beginning of May. But far from taking the struggle forward, it served to hold it back.

To be strong and to build the strongest possible front against the capitalist sate, the struggle needs to extend to the whole working class, going beyond all the divisions imposed by capitalism, including, in the long run, national frontiers, because there is no solution to the situation of the working class within the national framework. In our epoch, the epoch of the decadence of capitalism, there is no possibility of winning lasting reforms and improvements for the working class. The proletariat cannot overcome the profound insecurity of its condition without getting rid of the whole wage labour system, which can only be accomplished on a world scale.

We are certainly not questioning the honesty and decency of the militant workers who are active in the independent unions and who are often subjected to repression and persecuted by the bourgeois courts for “inciting social hatred”, “organising illegal marches, gatherings and demonstrations”, etc. What we do question are the methods of struggle which these organisations propose to the working class. By focusing the workers’ attention on the fact that they belong to a particular branch of the capitalist economy (in this case, the oil industry), the union form imprisons the struggle in sectional demands. It thus disperses the potential force of the proletariat, stands in the way of its unity and fragments it sector by sector. By acting within the national framework, trade unionism cannot see beyond managing the conditions for the exploitation of the working class within the social relations of capital. This is why all forms of trade unionism are doomed to act as an obstacle to the real needs of the class struggle – ultimately, to subordinate the workers to the imperatives of exploitation, to do deals with the ruling class and become an integral part of its apparatus for maintaining the established order.

The workers must not allow their horizons to be limited by demands which imprison them in the sector and in the defence of the national economy. The proletariat is an international class and its struggle can only be based on international solidarity: the struggle of any one of its parts is an example and an encouragement to the struggle of the entire proletariat. To strengthen its overall struggle, the different fractions of the proletariat have to enrich their practice with all the lessons acquired from its long history.  

Svetlana 28/2/12

From 2007, France had a president, Nicolas Sarkozy, whose arrogance and stupidity knew no limits. His open love of money, his violent tirades against the young people of the poor suburbs and the immigrants, his provocations, his propensity for talking about nothing but himself...all this and more created a very strong feeling of exasperation throughout the population. It was thus no great surprise that the presidential elections ended in his defeat. His replacement, the ‘socialist’ François Hollande, relied almost exclusively on this anti-Sarkozyism to win. Prudently avoiding any promises of a bright tomorrow, even giving to understand that austerity (renamed ‘control of the budget’ or ‘reduction of the deficit’) would be a major axis of his government’s policy, Hollande was happy to present himself as a ‘normal’ president, one who would avoid pointless provocation and bad taste.

This said, it would be a serious error to see this change of colour as no more than the rejection of a particular character, however unpleasant. And it would be even more of an error to hope for a fairer and more just policy now that the left is at the head of the government. 

You only have to glance beyond the frontiers of France to see that. Throughout Europe in the last few months, when elections have taken place, the team in power has been replaced, whether it is of the right or the left. In Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Finland, Slovenia, Slovakia...all the governments have been ejected. Why? Quite simply because since 2007 and the severe aggravation of the world economic crisis, all governments have been carrying out the same policy of ‘sacrifices’. There is no difference between right and left, except perhaps in the language they use, the colour of the wrapping paper around their packet of ‘reforms’. In Greece, Portugal, and Spain, from 2007 to 2011, the ‘socialists’ in power beat up on the workers, whether at work or unemployed, retired or still at university. Month after month they imposed increasingly drastic measures, endless attacks on their living standards.

But there is a second point in common in all these changes in government teams. The team that came in didn’t get a honeymoon period. Straight away they pushed through brutal austerity policies and straight away faced social discontent. The economic crisis is not a choice for capital, it is something imposed on it. It is the fruit of a world system which is sick, obsolete. Capitalism today is in decline like slavery in the decadence of the Roman empire or the feudal system in the days of absolute monarchy. The ‘debt crisis’ is only a symptom of this. All those who get elected to parliament, whatever their political party or their country, have to follow the same orientation: reduce the deficit, avoid bankruptcy by pitilessly attacking living and working conditions. The very socialist Monsieur Hollande will be no different.

Elections organised by the state are just a moment when the ‘citizens’ choose who’s going to manage the interests of capital. They are entirely inside the system. But today, to put an end to growing poverty for the world’s population, there is only one way to go: the struggle for revolution. Capitalism, this inhuman, mortally ill system, has to be replaced by a world without classes, exploitation, profit and competition. Such a world can only be built by the masses, the masses of employees, unemployed, retired, young people in part time work, united in the struggle. If votes are to be used to really change things, it will be the votes organised by us, the exploited – the votes taken in general assemblies where we decide together, collectively, how we should struggle against the state and its representatives. 

Pawel 6/5/12

The president of Mali, Amadou Toumani Toure (ATT), was overthrown on March 22 by a handful of almost unknown soldiers who, not having the means to control the country, have let the rebels (nationalists and Islamists) get a grip on the whole northern region of Mali, sowing their terror and provoking the forced displacement of several hundred thousand people. In reality, this coup has only accelerated the chaos of a state that has been corrupt and degenerating for a very long time. Moreover, the coup has happened in the context of struggles for influence and in a zone which is the theatre of trafficking of all types, notably arms and drugs, where criminal groups (Islamic mafias and others) fall out over the price of hostages and the plundering of migrants. But above all, Mali is the weak link of a region in growing decomposition brought about by imperialist tensions which are unfolding in the greater region of the Sahel. This  has been accelerated in particular by the war which has ravaged Libya, whose effects have quickly made themselves felt all the way south to Bamako, the capital and largest city in Mali.

The criminal responsibility of the western imperialist powers in the aggravation of chaos

“(...) In Libya the transitional government has hardly supervised the stocks of armaments and the control of its frontiers. In September, the discovery of the disappearance of more than 10,000 ground-to-air missiles has created panic on the international scene.  (…) At the same time, the Tuareg fighters hired as mercenaries and armed by Gaddifi have returned to their countries, to Niger and Mali, after the fall of the Libyan regime last  August. Since January 2012, Tuareg insurgents of Mali, coming out of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) assaulted towns in the north armed with heavy machine-guns and anti-tank  weapons, relaunching an old combat of several decades for the creation of an independent Tuareg state” (The National in Courier international, 11.04.12).

More than Sudan and Chad, Mali today constitutes the principal market for armaments in this region where all kinds of killers come to provide themselves with or exchange their “merchandise”, notably in Gao and Timbuktu. But more sombre still for the future of Mali is the fact that as well as being a “great market “ for professional criminals, this country is also coveted for its raw materials.

In fact, outside of gold, of which it is one of the greatest producers, Mali is on the point of becoming an exporter of rough diamonds and its futures market is already the theatre of intense rivalries between well-known greater vultures such as Total, GDE-Suez, Tullow Oil, Dana Petroleum, CNPC, Repsoi, etc. Clearly these Euro-American and Chinese firms are supported by their respective states in the scramble that they are undertaking for the control and exploitation of the raw materials of Mali.

“Impossible (for example) not to note that the recent coup d'etat is an additional effect of the rebellions in the north which are themselves the consequences of the destabilisation of Libya by a western coalition which has strangely shown no remorse nor feeling of responsibility. This ill wind has blown into Mali, after crossing its Ivorian, Nigerian, Guinean and Mauritanian neighbours...” (Le Nouveau Courrier, Courrier international, 11.04.12).

Far from supporting “peace” and “democracy”, the intervention of the imperialist forces of Nato in Libya have only spread chaos and accelerated the decomposition of the states around the region. From now in fact, no less than twelve countries are affected by conflicts, wars and trafficking that  are unfolding in a vast zone of nine million square kilometres.

Mali: an African Afghanistan in the south of Europe?

“The strategic forecast recently launched by Jean-Claude Cousseran, an old boss of the DGSE (French intelligence): 'Africa will be our Afghanistan' , will now be taken seriously. From it we discover the banal but ominous compatibility of operations undertaken by small, radical Islamic groups in Nigeria, Somalia, Libya, in the countries of the Sahel and Mali, (…) In the Quai d'Orsay (French foreign office), the Juppé team is concerned about French hostages and about the future of the threatened states. A high-command has set up plans for intervention in case African bosses, the UN or even Nato  decide to 'do something'... And the secret services themselves are in constant touch with French officers working in Mali and the commanders of special operations at their posts in Burkina, Niger and Mauritania (…) The objectives aimed for by the fighting groups (…) could end up creating an immense grey zone in the African Sahel under the banner of religion, or criminal bands drawing profit from different fights between the partisans of Islam, tribal nomads, Salafist groups, the remnants of Al Qaida, soldiers lost through the combats against the Arab Spring... With the result of the risk of the decomposition of these states” (Le Canard Enchaîné, 11.04.12).

French imperialism is in quite a panic faced with the development of chaos in Mali and is preparing itself to intervene in order to try to preserve its interests in the region of the Sahel. In fact, beyond its economic and strategic interests, France is trying to get back its nationals taken hostage by the armed Islamic groups. Remember that the French army led a real war in this zone under the name of the “struggle against Islamic terrorist groups (AQIM)”, in Mauritania and in Niger and that the last military intervention here provoked several deaths.

The United States is furnishing advisers and military material to the same countries, still in the name of the “anti-terrorism” and “securitisation” of the region, from where Washington has been able to establish very tight links with different Malian networks.

On their side, rival powers are also playing their own cards. Thus, Algeria and Mauritania, Niger and Mali have decided to organise their own high-command whose seat is based in Tamanrasset (Algeria). But in reality it's everyone for themselves which is the dominant feature over all these gangsters, and as a result alliances don't last very long, being made and unmade according to the relations of forces and immediate  “gains”.

In Mali, American imperialism muscles out its French counter-part

“From the ruins of the Malian state appears a document of three pages classified 'very sensitive'. It is a note sent February last to the president Amadou Toumani Touré. It is entitled 'Mauritania and the secret support for the rebels of Azawad’ (a proposed independent Tuareg state). On reading it, the old general (ATT) must have understood that his end was almost imminent. His secret services warned him, in some detail, of the close contacts between the Tuaregs, who had just taken up the road to war, and the neighbouring regime of Ould Abdelaziz (high-ranking military officer and president of Mauritania). The new national movement for the liberation of Azawad (MNLA) was receiving 'material aid' from (Mauritania's capital) Nouakchott (…) At the same time as representatives of the MNLA were opening an office of information in Nouakchott, others were being received several times at the Quai d'Orsa (i.e in Paris). A simultaneity which wasn't, without doubt, by chance. Mauritania, a big ally of France in the region, would not have lent such a strong hand to the Tuareg independentists without the approval, even tacit,  of its mentor (…) The MNLA, still according to the secret note, were engaged to fight Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). A priority for Mauritania and France, who reproached president Touré for his weakness towards the jihadists (…)  Stupefaction in the west and in the Sahel: the Tuareg insurgents, considered as the best bulwark against AQIM, were fighting alongside them. After having submitted to one of their worst setbacks in Africa, the French authorities acknowledged their impotence. 'We have a real problem' leaked one high official. 'The Malians are incapable of taking back what they have lost. And send in the French army? Nobody thinks that. Franco-Africa is finished!'” (Le Nouvel Observateur, 12.04.12).

In effect, the French state is aiming both to preserve its global interests in the region and free its hostages held by the groups linked to AQIM. But it's opened itself up to be given the run-around by wretched and obscure tiny mafia groups which it's underhandedly dealt with while giving its support to the Malian president ATT. Today, French imperialism is totally paralysed by the amateurism which it has shown in this affair and it risks losing everything on the table.

In addition to their military presence throughout the region, and having negotiated and obtained some agreements of military cooperation with all the regimes, the Americans have the ear of both the overthrown president and of the leader of the putschists.

“The camp of  DJCORNI (French military base) where ATT took refuge on March 21st, is close to and under the quasi-protection of the US ambassador – who had, if one believes the telegrams revealed by Wikileaks, alerted Washington on the state of degeneration of the Malian high-command and on the climate of corruption which reigned among  the close entourage (including family) of the president. The bodyguards who protected the fallen chief during his flight were trained by the famous Navy Seals of the US army. And the putschist captain Amadou Sanago willingly talked of his times in the United States: the air base of Lackland (Texas); Fort Huachua (Arizona), specialising in intelligence; the officer's school of Fort Benning (Georgia). A longer stay with the Marines, whose pin he wore on his jacket. In brief, we know that the Americans were very implanted and very well informed about Mali. Without doubt better than the French. We have confirmation of it” (Jeune Afrique, April 7 2012).

France would have known something about the overthrow of the regime of ATT and was aware that the principal cause can be found in the links between the latter and the United States, which is ocne again doing  everything it can to oust Paris from its ex-backyard.

Here is a country in a state of advanced decay governed by corrupt gangs who are competing against various carrion crows - Islamic mafias, highwaymen, accompanied by imperialist powers looking for influence and raw materials while disguising their plans of capitalist business “as plans of the securitisation of the zone”. And in the meantime, the populations themselves are dying from hunger, suffering generalised misery, or are simply massacred by one side or the other.

Amina 17/4/12

After the replacement of President Sarkozy by Hollande in France, and the electoral slump of the parties of the outgoing Greek government, a commentator in the Guardian (8/5/12) was not alone in declaring that “Revolt against austerity is sweeping Europe.” Leftists saw “a growing backlash against austerity across Europe” (Socialist Worker 12/5/12), “deep popular opposition to austerity measures” (wsws.org 8/5/12) and even declared that “Europe turns left” (Workers Power May 2012).

In reality, whatever the level of dissatisfaction felt at election time, the ruling bourgeoisie will continue to impose and intensify its policies of austerity. Voting against governments can happen because of the depth of discontent, but it doesn’t change anything. For the working class it’s only through the mass organisation of its struggles that anything can be achieved. The election game is played entirely on the bourgeoisie’s terms, but workers still troop into the polling stations (if in decreasing numbers) because they still have widespread illusions in what could be achieved. There’s still a belief that elections can somehow be used as a means for social change, or that there are alternative economic policies that the capitalist state could follow. There has been no ‘revolt’ across Europe expressed in these elections, although there is definitely a lot of anger which has been impotently misdirected into the various democratic mechanisms. Having said that, if you actually examine what’s happened in recent elections they do reveal a lot about the capitalist class and the state of its political apparatus.

Not just the usual seesaw

Since the financial crisis of autumn 2008 a number of individual leaders and political parties have been replaced because of their identification with public spending cuts, job losses, wage and pension reductions, and all the other aspects of economic ‘rigour’ and austerity. There is no overall bourgeois strategy, just the removal of parties and individuals and their replacement by others, whether from the left or the right or by coalitions. The ruling class is just reacting to events without a clear idea of how it will arrange its political forces in the future. And it’s not taking long for the new leaders to begin to be discredited as they are exposed as being in continuity with their predecessors.

In November 2008 John McCain was defeated by Barack Obama in the US Presidential election partly because of his connection with the policies of George Bush and the fact that the US economy had been in recession since late 2007 in a crisis deeper than anything since the 1930s.

In the UK, following the general election of May 2010, the Labour Party was replaced by a Conservative and Liberal Democrat government, the first coalition since the Second World War. The British bourgeoisie, usually so assured in its political manoeuvres, was not able to accomplish its usual Labour/Tory swap. Since the election it has also had difficulties in presenting Labour as a viable ‘alternative’.

In Belgium it took 18 months from the election of June 2010 before a government was finally formed.

In the general election in Ireland in February 2011, Fianna Fail, the party that had been the largest since the 1920s, saw its proportion of the vote go from 42% to 17%. The Irish government is now a Right/Left coalition of Fine Gael and Labour. Ireland was in recession in 2008 and 2009. It returned to recession in the third quarter of 2011. The new government has predictably shown itself no different from the previous FF/Green coalition. The myth of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ faded out a long time ago.

In the Portuguese legislative elections of June 2011 the governing Socialist Party saw its support go from 37% to 28%. Electoral turnout declined to a historically low level of 58%. Unemployment continues to rise, up to more than 13%, having been less than 6% in 2002. Portugal is in its worst recession since the 1970s. The conditions for its 2011 bailout from the EU and IMF have meant a vicious series of government spending cuts.

In the Spanish general election of November 2011 the votes for the ruling Socialist Party went from 44% to 29%, and there was growing support for minor parties. Under the conservative People’s Party Spain has fallen back into recession. Unemployment, which has been growing throughout the last five years, has reached record levels with a 24.4% jobless rate (over 50% of under 25s), the highest figures in the EU.

In Italy in November 2011 Silvio Berlusconi was replaced by a government led by economist Mario Monti. His cabinet was constituted of unelected ‘technocrats’. He has introduced a range of austerity measures – with the support of most of both Italian houses of parliament.

In Slovenia in December 2011 there was a parliamentary election in which a new party, Positive Slovenia, that had only been founded in late October, got the highest proportion of the vote. After a period of manoeuvres and negotiations the outgoing 4-party coalition was replaced by a 5-party coalition which only had a Pensioners’ Party in common, but not Positive Slovenia. With the Slovenian economy is in recession, a new programme of austerity measures was adopted by the Slovenian Parliament on 11 May. Major unions which had staged demonstrations against the programme have said they would not oppose it with a referendum. Last year four pieces of legislation were rejected by referendum.

In presidential elections held in Finland in January and February this year the long period of the decline of the Social Democratic Party reached a new low point. The new president is the first in 30 years not to be a Social Democrat. Voter turnout was the lowest since 1950.

In the Netherlands in April this year the coalition government resigned after only 558 days in power. The parties have been in dispute over budget cuts.

In the recent French Presidential election Hollande’s victory was in many ways due to his not being Sarkozy. Despite his claims to have a different approach on questions such as investment he will have no choice but to continue the attack on living and working conditions. Hollande said before his first visit to Angela Merkel that he would bring "The gift of growth, jobs, and economic activity." Although this is the usual politician’s hot air, corresponding to no material reality, at least the situation in France is by no means as desperate as that in Greece.

Greek politics in a mess

Following the latest elections in Greece it was clear the parties of the PASOK/New Democracy/LAOS coalition had lost the most support. It should be recalled that the coalition had only been installed last November, to replace George Papendreou’s government and implement the measures required by the IMF/EU/ECB. In the elections, despite there being a choice of 32 parties, there was a significant reduction in the number of people voting to a lowest ever figure of 65%. This contrasts with the previous low figure of 71% in 2009 and previous figures in the high 70s or even more than 80% that Greece was used to. If the French election result mainly expressed opposition to Sarkozy, the Greek result showed mainly opposition to the government coalition and the measures it had undertaken. The fact that the Greek parliament now has four parties of the Left and three of the Right where once it was dominated by PASOK/New Democracy shows the degree to which the bourgeoisie’s political forces have splintered. The prospects of a new coalition without a new election seem limited.

There has been a lot of attention in the media on the role of the leftwing coalition Syriza, portrayed as a new force without whose co-operation or tolerance no government could function. Because they claim to be against austerity they will, for the moment, quite possibly continue to increase their support. However, whether they operate as a buffer between government and striking workers, or actually join a government coalition, they do not represent anything new. Along with its anti-austerity phrases Syriza has clearly stated that Greece should remain in the EU and the euro, debts can not just be written off, but it would prefer some more benign conditions for receiving the latest bailout.

Where the emergence of Syriza is a sign of some residual flexibility from the bourgeoisie, the sharpest evidence of the decomposition of Greek capitalism’s political apparatus is seen in the gains made by Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) at the expense of LAOS. Greece has had right wing parties before (LAOS is the most recent example), and in Metaxas they had a real dictator in the late 1930s, the contemporary of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Salazar. However, Chrysi Avgi isn’t just another racist, right-wing party demonised by the Left. It’s anti-immigrant policies are backed up by physical attacks on foreigners. It has also mounted attacks on its political opponents, tried to intimidate journalists and has links with Nazi groups.

Chrysi Avgi campaigned on the slogan “So we can rid the land of filth” with candidates claiming to be more soldiers than politicians. They claim to be ‘Greek nationalists’ in the mould of Metaxas, rather than being neo-Nazis. You could be forgiven for being confused on this when you see the black symbol on the red background of their party flag. It looks very similar to a swastika, although it is in fact a ‘meander’ or ‘Greek fret.’ Whatever label you want to pin on them, Chrysi Avgi are clear evidence of the further decay of bourgeois politics. Parties in Greece that support the return of the monarchy are barred from standing at elections, but Chrysi Avgi has 21 members in the new parliament.

The Greek elections are the most obvious example of how the bourgeoisie across Europe is coping politically with the economic crisis. It can’t offer any genuine economic alternatives to austerity, but it is also using up its political alternatives as parties take their turns to impose programmes that will not challenge the impact of the economic crisis. There is no particular political strategy, just a day-to-day reaction to events. Bourgeois democracy continues to function, but the ruling class has a decreasing variety of ways to deploy its political apparatus. The number of people who are voting is in decline; new parties and coalitions are emerging to cope with changed situations. But, for the working class there is nothing to be gained by the replacement of one government by another, or in any participation in the democratic game.

All the political parties are factions of one state capitalist class. This is one of the reasons that democracy is so important for the bourgeoisie, because it gives the illusion of offering a number of different choices. For the working class only struggle on its own terms can set in motion a force that can break the social stalemate between the classes. The bourgeoisie has nothing to offer, not in its economy, and not in its elections. The working class can only rely on its self-organisation, on a growing consciousness of what’s at stake in its struggles.

Car 14/5/12

Michael Gove, Tory education secretary, wants “facts” about British history taught in schools and to this end “definitely” wants the right-wing historian, Niall Ferguson, of whom he is “a great fan”, involved in the curriculum for children in Britain. Ferguson is more than an apologist for the crimes  of the British Empire which he sees as a model for US foreign policy (New Statesman, 1.6.10) – which in many ways it already is. Gove's and Ferguson's position is summed-up well by the British historian Dominic Sandbrook writing in the Daily Mail a couple of years ago: “Britain's empire stands out as a beacon of tolerance, decency and the rule of law” (Quoted by George Monbiot in the Guardian, 23.4.12). Not a hint here of the exploitation, racism, torture, starvation and massacres that the British bourgeoisie stood for and exported around the world.

One thing for sure is that under Gove, or any other politician of the ruling class, the children of Britain will not be hearing the truth about the the empire's murderous activity in the British colony of Kenya around the 1950s. Monbiot in the article referenced above gives some of the grisly details:

“Interrogation under torture was widespread. Many of the men were anally raped, using knives, broken bottles, rifle barrels, snakes and scorpions. A favourite technique was to hold a man upside-down, his head in a bucket of water, while sand was rammed into his rectum with a stick. Women were gang-raped by the guards. People were mauled by dogs and electrocuted. The British devised a special tool which they used for first crushing and then ripping of testicles. They used pliers to mutilate women's breasts. They cut off inmates ears and fingers and gouged out their eyes. They dragged people behind Land Rovers until their bodies disintegrated. Men were rolled up in barbed wire and kicked around the compound”.

That was part of Monbiot's summing-up of Harvard professor Caroline Elkin's thoroughly researched book, Britain's Gulag: the Brutal End of Empire in Kenya[1]. Elkin started out sympathetic to the British version of events in Kenya but her ten-year work soon lifted the lid on the reality of the “civilising mission”. In a previous article in World Revolution[2], we used the official British government's figures to show that 90,000 Kenyans were detained by the British authorities. Elkin makes it clear that nearly the whole population of one-and-a-half million were confined to the camps and fortified villages. And here, as Monbiot says: “... thousands were beaten to death or died from malnutrition, typhoid, tuberculosis and dysentery. In some camps almost all the children died”. Some camps’ loudspeakers played the national anthem and other patriotic stuff – Gove would have approved of that – while above the gates of others were slogans such as “Labour and Freedom”, echoing the slogans “Work makes you free” erected above the Nazi concentration camps and the work camps of Stalinist East Berlin.

It was revealed a few weeks ago that the British authorities has systematically destroyed the secret documents showing the atrocities in Kenya and lied about others that pointed out their predecessors’ role in the crimes. Elkin shows that these atrocities weren't the result of “rogue elements” – the British ruling class's usual excuse from Aden to Basra – but sanctioned at the highest level of the state up to and beyond the Colonial Secretary of the time, Alan Lennox-Boyd[3]. As in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the British don't (officially) keep body counts and in Kenya there are mass graves that the victims were often forced to dig themselves, containing tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of victims.

The atrocities in Kenya and their cover-up to this day demonstrate the sickening reality of democratic Britain and its concern for “international law” and “human rights”, which are nothing less than a fig-leaf for its own imperialist interests and  crimes. Evidence is now emerging  (The Observer, 6.5.12) of the cold-blooded murder by British troops of innocent civilians in its Malayan colony. The newspaper shows details of the Batang Kali massacre in 1948 and its continued cover-up. Given the emergence of some of the truth from Kenya, this is probably only the tip of the iceberg in this region with the burning of villages and starvation also being a weapon of the British here. In the World Revolution article on torture mentioned above there's an insight into the modus operandi of the British in general, with reference to the army and RUC approaching the then Northern Ireland prime minister Brian Faulkner: “They told him that the 'in depth' techniques they planned to use (in Ireland) were those the army had used... many times before when Britain was faced with insurgencies in her colonies, including Palestine, Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, the British Cameroons, Brunei, British Guyana, Aden, Borneo, Malaysia and the Persian Gulf”.

Britain was by no means alone in its bestial colonial activities: France, Belgium and Portugal all played out their own murderous versions. If Britain acted from a position of relative strength and intelligence, its whole colonial adventure was steeped in the blood of innocents which can only be the case in a world dominated by imperialism. Britain's process of decolonisation saw the local, equally bloody, gangsters take over and these “liberated” client states, still acting for Britain's interests, immediately immersed themselves in the proxy wars of the west against Russian imperialism. And the end of the Cold War has not brought peace but growing chaos and instability all over Africa, the Middle East and Asia, with Britain's ruling class continuing to manoeuvre and manipulate for the “national interest” of the British state.

Baboon 16/5/12

Introduction to the English translation.

In London, on May 10, while civil servants and university teachers came out for yet another ‘day of action’ around the question of pensions, the centre stage in London was occupied by a 20,000 strong march of off-duty police officers, demonstrating against the government’s proposed 20% cut in the police budget, which will lead to job cuts and inroads on pay and conditions. The following week, Home Secretary Theresa May got a very rough ride indeed when she came to speak at the Police Federation annual conference, explaining why these cuts were necessary.

Does his conjunction between police protests and action by sectors of the working class mean that they are all part of the same struggle? Members of Occupy London certainly thought so, expressing their support for the march through London.

The same question was posed to our comrades in Brazil, although in a much more dramatic way, during the recent strike by the Military Police. The statement that follows aims to make it clear that while police officers may often be recruited from the poorest layers of society, and are also being strongly affected by the crisis of capitalism, the essential role of the police is to defend capitalism from the struggles of the working class. There is thus a fundamental opposition between the interests of the police and the interests of the workers.

The strike by Military Police[1] which took place in several states in Brazil at the beginning of 2012, even though not simultaneously, has had important repercussions. It affected the states of Maranhão, Ceará, and Bahia, and spread to Rio de Janeiro. The movement reached its greatest breadth and strength in the state of Bahia where more than 3000 agents of the National Security Force, the Federal Police and the army were mobilised to deal with it. It was essentially in the Bahia capital Salvador that the mobilisation was at its height. The striking policemen and those supporting them occupied the Legislative Assembly.

The Dilma Rouseff government, following the line of her mentor Lula, condemned the strike movement as an assault on democracy and ordered the mobilisation of the army and the Federal Police in Salvador, Rio and other towns with the very clear aim of repressing the demonstrations. Jacques Wagner, the Workers’ Party governor of Bahia, was given the job of directing operations against the strike movement in this state. 

The top representatives of the Workers’ Party, the Communist Party and PSOL and PSTU[2], as well as other organisations of the left and right, all felt obliged to pronounce ‘for or against’ the movement. The first two parties, which are pro-government, took a position against the movement, condemning it as a grave threat to law and democracy. The leftists of the PSTU and the PSOL gave unqualified support to the striking police, seeing them as ‘public security workers’. The population, given the huge media coverage of the conflict, and given all the fear about an increase in homicides and violence, was also faced with the problem of deciding whether or not to support the movement.

This strike by the Military Police was not the first in the sector and certainly won’t be the last. It expresses the difficulties of the Brazilian state in maintaining order and cohesion within its apparatus of repression, which is being affected by the economic crisis both at the level of its functioning and of its members’ living conditions.

The proletariat and its class organisations has to be as clear as possible about this strike and what it means for the coming struggles of the Brazilian proletariat against the attacks of the bourgeoisie, which are being accentuated by the world crisis of capitalism.

The capitalist crisis: the main cause of the movement

The Brazilian bourgeoisie glories in being part of the elite of ‘emerging’ countries, a position attained mainly under the Lula government. It’s considered to be one of the countries known as “BRICS”[3]. Like its partners, Brazil has managed to gain this position thanks to the exploitation of the proletariat and the growing precariousness of its living conditions. This in turn has been made possible by a climate of ‘social peace’ obtained mainly via the control over the masses by the left of capital, with the Workers’ Party at the fore.

The police, like the rest of the wage-earning population, don’t escape the constant pressure capital exerts on their living conditions: low wages, job insecurity, deteriorating working conditions and social benefits, etc. However, by going on strike, the Military Police, whatever their status in the hierarchy, as members of the apparatus of state repression and thus remunerated by the latter, have highlighted the conflicts and contradictions inside the ruling class. The bourgeoisie needs to be able to count on a repressive body capable of exerting violence against the proletariat when it fights for its demands, even the simplest ones like a wage that could make it possible to satisfy the most basic needs. But at the same time the personnel of these organs is drawn mainly from working class families who, while being in the front line of defending the interests of the ruling class, are also among the lowest paid of all those working for the apparatus of state repression (police, judges, etc). All this provokes a good deal of discontent and has led to the strike.

The recent conflict with the Military Police, the biggest such movement within this sector up till now, has posed real problems for the Brazilian state. The repressive measures taken by the federal government against some of the leaders of the movement, far from calming the situation, have further radicalised it. Moreover, the wage increases granted don’t at all meet the initial aspirations of the movement. Its original demands were: reintegration of the police expelled from the MP after the ‘historic’ strike of 2001, incorporation of bonuses, payment of a risk bonus, a 17.28% increase backdated to April 2007 and a revision of canteen benefits. What was granted: a proposed 6.5% wage increase and a new bonus increasing gradually up to 2014. The imprisoned police were not given an amnesty.

The strike movement is part of the weakening capacity of the bourgeoisie to impose its order in a situation where certain of its repressive forces are becoming less reliable. The deepening crisis of capitalism and the resulting measures of austerity are playing a central role in this.  

The police serve the bourgeoisie against the proletariat

It’s a fact that the great majority of police officers, like the majority of wage earners, don’t possess means of production and can only sell their labour power to survive. They belong to the poorest layers of society and put themselves in the service of the state to receive a wage which allows them to support their needs and the needs of heir families. Because of this similarity in social condition and the fact that they are paid a wage, you could be led to think that the interests and demands of police officers coincide with those of the proletariat, which is obliged to mobilise and struggle against the attacks of capital. But it’s not the case; these are movements situated in opposing camps.

The social origins of police officers should not make us forget that they are working in the service of the dominant order, their function being to repress and terrorise the population, as we can see from the following: “in recent months thee have been many new cases of abuse by the police, of gratuitous aggression against the population, rapes, violent repression of Military Police during the demonstrations, as well as the traditional murders and torture. The Brazilian police murders more people than any other in the world and its daily crimes are never subject to inquiries or manhunts...the Military Police was at the University of Sao Paulo to repress the students, just as it did at the demonstrations in Piaui, Recife, Espirito Santo, etc”[4]  We can also see the same thing in the recent evacuation of Pinheirinho[5] and the threat to evacuate the community of quilombos (communities descended from slaves) at Rio do Macaco in Bahia, where the Military Police, which had just been on strike, went back to carrying out its repressive function alongside the Marines.

This is why it is necessary and fundamental for the working class and its revolutionary minorities to be as clear as possible about the class nature of the police and the repressive apparatus in general. The class position of the police is not defined by the fact of working for a wage but by the fact that they represent the first force of repression used by the state, and thus by capital, to confront the proletariat.

This distinction comes from the fact that the proletariat is not made up of a sum of all the wage earners, or even the sum of all the exploited. The proletariat is a social class whose interests are antagonistic to those of the class of capitalists, and its struggles for demands are a link in the chain of struggles for its emancipation, which will lead it to a confrontation with the bourgeoisie and its state. When a sector of the proletariat struggles, it’s not only the exploited worker who is entering into the fight, it’s a whole sector of the revolutionary class which is capable of developing its consciousness through its experience as a social force under capitalism.

The police officer, in deciding to ‘sell his labour power’ to the state and join up with its organs of repression, puts his (or her) capacities at the service of the bourgeoisie with the specific mission of preserving the capitalist system through the repression of the proletariat. In this sense, he or she ceases to belong to the proletarian class. When an unemployed worker or a person looking for a job decides to join the police force, he or she accepts the following ‘contract’: be faithful to the mandate of applying the law and maintaining the established order. This places him or her against any social or class movement which is ranged against the interests of capital and its state. This the police officer becomes a servant of the ruling class, and as such, places him or herself outside the camp of the proletariat.

The recent conflict between the police officers and their bosses is a conflict on the terrain of capital. The members of the police apparatus are asking for better wages and working conditions in order to carry out their tasks better and more effectively, i.e their tasks of repression and maintaining social peace.

In this sense, it is an error to call for solidarity from different sectors of wage earners with a police strike, essentially because the function of the police is the defence of the capitalist state. The fact that police officers are recruited from among the poor population does not modify this function, even if can influence them in other aspects.

The state hypocritically accuses the strikers of being responsible for an increase in crime, of leaving the population at the mercy of criminals. The state thus attributes a ‘social’ and ‘useful’ role to the police: the struggle against criminality. This is indeed the social justification for the necessity of these forces. In this way the workers and the population in general are asked to give their support to the strengthening of the repressive organs, justifying the recruitment of more police officers or giving them better equipment. Criminality and social violence are increasing all over the world because of the contradictions of capitalism and the social decomposition which affects not only the police officers but also the high functionaries of the state and its armed forces[6].   

Only the development of the proletarian struggle can dissolve the organs of repression

There have been circumstances in which the forces of order, mainly the army, have been persuaded to avoid acting in defence of the capitalist state. This can happen during massive struggles of the working class when large sectors of the population are mobilised and when sectors of the military forces refuse to repress social struggles, sometimes even joining up with the struggle and engaging in armed confrontations with the troops who remain loyal to the bourgeoisie. In these cases, there is the possibility and necessity to support and even protect these members of the repressive organs who come out against the orders of the state.

The acceleration of the crisis of capitalism since 2007, which was at the root of the social movements in North Africa and the Arab countries, as well as the movement of the ‘Indignant’ in Europe or ‘Occupy’ in the USA, can give rise to possibilities for fraternisation between the soldiers and the masses in movement. However, such situations have to be analysed with a great deal of political precision to avoid an over-optimistic attitude, as we saw during the movements in Egypt  when the army, feigning sympathy with the movement, allowed the police to do the dirty work of brutal repression. In fact, as we know  - and this is much clearer today – the army is the pillar of the system in this country.

The democratic illusions of these movements and the fact that the proletariat as a class did not take on their leadership allowed them to be taken in by the false sympathy of the forces of order and the bourgeois institutions. It led them to look for solutions which resulted in the strengthening of the bourgeois camp. It’s only in very advanced revolutionary situations, when the balance of forces between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is favourable to the latter, that we can expect an effective fraternisation with the military forces, as have seen in the past history of the workers’ movement.

There were important episodes of fraternisation during the Russian revolution of 1917. Trotsky gives a brilliant account of this in his History of the Russian Revolution, approving the attitude of the Russian workers in February 1917 towards the Cossacks, who he describes as having “many elements of conservatism” and as being “those age-old subduers and punishers”. He went on:

“But the Cossacks constantly, though without ferocity, kept charging the crowd. Their horses were covered with foam. The mass of demonstrators would part to let them through, and close up again. There was no fear in the crowd. ‘The Cossacks promise not to shoot,’ passed from mouth to mouth. Apparently some of the workers had talks with individual Cossacks...

A worker-Bolshevik, Kayurov, one of the authentic leaders in those days, relates how at one place, within sight of a detachment of Cossacks, the demonstrators scattered under the whips of the mounted police, and how he, Kayurov, and several workers with him, instead of following the fugitives, took off their caps and approached the Cossacks with the words: ‘Brothers-Cossacks, help the workers in a struggle for their peaceable demands; you see how the Pharaohs treat us, hungry workers. Help us!’ This consciously humble manner, those caps in their hands – what an accurate psychological calculation! Inimitable gesture! The whole history of street fights and revolutionary victories swarms with such improvisations”[7]. 

The proletariat and its revolutionary minorities must keep it in mind that, in the long run, there can be no military victory over the bourgeoisie without the disintegration of the repressive forces. This will be the product of several factors:

• The economic crisis
• The pressure of the class struggle, the perspective of proletarian power as an alternative to the rule of the bourgeoisie
• In this context, the fact that the repressive forces are composed essentially of elements from the poor or exploited layers of society makes them receptive to appeals for fraternisation by the proletariat

It may be that a number of workers and even elements belonging to political groups in the proletarian camp in Brazil sympathise with the MP strike, given that they share with the workers the situation of poverty imposed on us by capital, They may even call on the workers to take the police strike as an example of how to struggle. However, such an approach can only be harmful to the development of consciousness in the class and weaken its capacity to confront the enemy, not only because it sees the police strike as something that belongs to the proletarian struggle, but also because it feeds a lack of confidence in the capacity of the Brazilian proletariat to develop its struggle on its own class terrain after decades of lethargy resulting from the activity of the Workers Party, the other parties of the right and left of capital, and their trade unions.

When the ‘Old Mole’ which Marx spoke about begins to shake the foundations of Brazilian capital, the tenacious and persevering struggle of the proletariat on its own terrain will be obliged to confront and ultimately undermine the repressive forces of the state.

ICC 14/3/12

We are publishing here a translation of an article made by our new section in Peru.

For some time, the Peruvian state has developed a campaign against terrorism, in particular against certain weakened but well-armed groups such as the Shining Path. Originally, it was a simple campaign to weaken the attempt to legalise a faction of the Shining Path – the Movadef[1] - which is hoping to participate in the political game with the other parties. When terrorist groups, as was the case with the IRA in Ireland, or presently the ETA in Spain, try to integrate themselves “normally” into the political circus, the already established forces within the state always unleash campaigns of discredit, demolition and harassment to ensure that the newcomers are as weak as possible and cannot profit from the prestige that they've acquired previously through the armed struggle. When bourgeois parties make alliances, it's usual for them to get in as many low blows as possible. There's nothing paradoxical about this: each tries to ally themselves with the weakest possible “partner”, because in this pitiless market place not to do so would result in them being weakened in their turn.

But after the attempt at the legalisation of Movadef failed, the campaign of the state then attacked the supposed incursions and so-called acts of violence of the SP (from graffiti on the walls, to car bombs, to assassinations, kidnappings, etc). And with time, we are seeing the state beginning to make a link between  certain sectors of the population and terrorist groups, in particular sectors such as the mining industry where conflicts are becoming sharper each day, as is the case for Conga at Cajamarca or for the illegal miners of the Amazonian forest for example. Why has the state invented this link? Why has the state begun to tie in the demonstrations of the miners with the Shining Path?

The answer is evident: because it allows them to more easily exercise an extremely violent repression under the pretext  “that the Shining Path has infiltrated  members into these movements”. The state has already begun this repression against the impoverished peasants who are struggling against the mining pollution in their villages, who are struggling for their survival. The campaign against the Shining Path serves to justify the state's repression against the protest movements and are a clear warning to the movements which will appear in the future.

This campaign also has the advantage of making a link between communism and terrorism. The struggle of the working class has nothing to do with terrorism and terrorism also has nothing to do with the working class. Terrorism is always the enemy of the class struggle and plays a destructive role towards it.  Communists thus openly reject the methods and visions of terrorism. Its practices and its positions are antagonistic to those of the working class.

“Terrorism is in no way a method of struggle for the working class. It is the expression of social strata with no historic future and of the decomposition of the petty-bourgeoisie, when it's not the direct expression of the permanent war between capitalist states, terrorism has always been a fertile soil for manipulation by the bourgeoisie. Advocating secret actions by small minorities is in opposition to the class violence which comes from the conscious and organised mass activity of the working class[2].

Terrorism is thus a practice which has nothing to do with the tradition of the workers' movement. Terrorism allows neither a process of criticism nor or reflection but on the contrary provokes fear and anguish; as in a country at war, bombings do not favour reflection nor consciousness of the reasons for war, but on the contrary provokes exoduses, flights of the population who are pushed to look after themselves, thus generating obstacles for the development of the collective consciousness of the working class.

Terrorist practices (and those of the Shining Path in particular) only express the despair and decomposition of the petty-bourgeoisie through the “exemplary actions” of elitist groups, a practice which is totally opposed to class violence, which comes from the collective and conscious action of the masses in struggle for the destruction of capitalism, as was the case at the time of the emergence of the soviets in Russia, 1917. Proletarian class violence is based upon general assemblies, collective decisions, common practice and on everything which favours the conditions for the development of consciousness. The consciousness of the working class is forged in the unitary and collective struggle.

We thus reject the politics of amalgamation that the bourgeoisie, and the Peruvian state, with the puppet Humala at its head, serving up the same dish of “terrorism and subversion” or any expression of discontent or of struggle against the social order. Their aim is nothing other than to prepare the ground for justifying bloody repression against the working class in Peru, in the context of the world crisis of capitalism which carries with it a string of attacks against the living conditions of our class, provoking reactions of indignation and of struggle.

We can see at what point these terrorist groups are foreign to the working class with the recent confinement of twenty workers from the gas factory of Camisea by a supposed group of Shining Path, which wanted to exchange them for the imprisoned “comrade Artemio”. The capture of Artemio and the legalisation of Movadef, added to the supposed attacks of this terrorist group, serve as a Trojan horse of the state in order to prepare the ground for a brutal repression of the working class which has begun to struggle in other parts of the world (Spain, Greece...) and whose struggle will be concretised as much in Peru as in the rest of the American continent.

Internacionalismo -Peru 5/12

We're publishing here a translation of an article from our new section in Ecuador.

Since Correa's[1] arrival to power in Ecuador, attacks against the working class have not ceased raining down, but have on the contrary intensified. “Correaism” has shown itself much more efficient than the other governments which preceded it from 1979. From this date the military withdrew behind closed doors and the roles played in the new scenario makes for a more effective management of the crisis of capitalism which broke out at the end of the 1960s. This policy of management was essentially expressed through the flight into generalised debt by all states.

Faced with the impasse facing decadent capitalism, marked by a galloping decomposition which makes the future more and more uncertain even in the eyes of the most optimistic economists, the bourgeoisie has had  to resort to further debt and to the application of economic policies of austerity which have had the consequence of plunging the working class into the blackest poverty.

The Ecuadorian state did not escape this tendency and here exports have decreased these three last years. The so-called health of the economy rests on the growth of national revenues in dollars based upon the price of oil which is apparently generating an expansion of revenues to the order of 13%. In reality this is a mirage due to the exhaustion of world reserves and the speculation that this unleashes. But the key to the measures taken to face up to instability is tightening the belts of the workers. Thus the indirect part of wages given over to health and education tends to disappear with the reduction of spending in these sectors, which also provokes job losses in the working class – as with Obama, Sarkozy, Angela Merket, Rajoy or any other government in the world.

Correa protects the interests of the dominant class, imposes the policies of flexibility of employment, of brutal job cuts, freezing of wages, the suppression of collective agreements while avoiding the “trauma” of demonstrations in the streets... thanks to his cajoling speeches axed around the defence of democracy imposed in the name of “popular power”.

Here are some concrete examples of what's been put forward:

- April 30 2008: the imposition of ordinance no. 8, aiming to normalise the “Tercecizacion e diacion Laboral” which means the sacking of 39,200 workers of which only a part will be re-hired by the firms that they worked for beforehand, but as sub-contractors;

- From April 30 2009, “decree 1701” was applied aiming to limit the “privileges” given by collective agreements signed by public workers and the state. Thousands of workers were immediately prematurely retired and others, after having submitted to “evaluations” of their capacities, were forced to quit; in teaching no less than 2957 teachers were “sent down the road”;

- From July 7 2011, “executive decree 813” was applied, which changed the rules of public service and instituted the “buying up of compulsory resignations”[2]. 7093 posts have thus been eliminated since 2011, particularly undermining the health sector which has suffered most job cuts.

Among the working population of Ecuador (which reaches 55.5% of the total population), 57% have no stable job, that's to say they are tossed about between informal work (selling whatever in the street), precarious work and the zone of abject misery deprived of everything...

But even the workers who have a fixed job don't get enough wages to pay for their most basic needs. A “qualified” worker (technical or other professional qualification) gets about $280 per month, a doctor coming out of university after seven years of studies varies between $500 and $700 a month. Those who alone have had salary increases are the police and forces of order. Correa has decreed an increase in the salaries of the military which varies from 5% to 25%.  Today a simple soldier coming out of the barracks, trained to kill, will receive a salary of $900 a month.

This is the essence of Correaism, wrapped up in this aberration baptised the “citizens' revolution”, which is part of the ignoble and abominable ideology of the “socialism of the 21st century” so dear to Chavez.

The promises of Correa and of his ideologues of the “socialism of the 21st century” are not valid options for the workers. Their struggle alone can contain a real perspective for the future.

Internacionalismo-Ecuador 5/12

According to the official story, the Queen is above politics. She truly stands for the unity of the people of Britain. So why don’t we all get together and celebrate the Jubilee?

But what could be more political than the idea of national unity? The idea that despite the growing gulf between those at the top of the pile of Britain, and those holding it up from below, we all have the same interests at heart (especially when those interests are pitted against other ‘national unities’).

Kings and queens, in fact, are nothing but symbols of political power – symbols of the state which only came into being because a few thousands of years ago society had split into different classes with conflicting interests. Just as the state didn’t always exist, neither did kings and queens. They were nothing but the personification of the impersonal state power.  Their rule was supported partly by armed force, partly by appropriating and thus distorting the old collective rituals and symbols which formerly expressed the unity of the first human communities. Throughout history, there have been those who have questioned the fraudulent legitimacy claimed by the monarchs – such as the Old Testament prophets who saw that when Israel fell under the sway of Kings, it meant abandoning the old tribal solidarity which had once protected the weak and the vulnerable.

The pomp and ceremony that is inseparable from the monarchy is thus an expression of our own alienation, of our loss of control of society and the way it functions.  We ‘invest’ in kings and queens and similar celebrities because of the enforced poverty of our own lives.

In mediaeval England, kings and queens were products of the feudal social order. The bourgeois revolution which broke out in the 17th century tried to get rid of them but it wasn’t able to go beyond its own internal divisions. The bourgeoisie, led by Cromwell and his ilk, was unwilling to push the revolution to its conclusion because he feared the rise of radical democracy advocated by the Leveller party and the embryonic proletarian menace taking shape in the True Levellers or Diggers. The British ruling class displayed its fabled ‘genius for compromise’ by becoming a historic compromise between the new capitalist class and the old aristocracy. Capitalist rule in Britain, after a very brief period in which it took the form of a Republic, thus found ways to make the best use of vestiges of feudalism like the monarchy and the House of Lords.

Some people think that it is high time that the bourgeois revolution in Britain was brought to a conclusion and that we should catch up with countries which have got rid of all inherited political institutions. Politicians who represent this way of thinking like to tie us up in knots about why we should dispense with the Lords and set up a fully functioning modern parliamentary system (with a president as the cherry on the cake).

But the time for completing the capitalist revolution is long gone. Capitalism is a system in profound historic decline and the only revolution on the agenda is the revolution that will overthrow capitalism and create a world human community.  No kings and queens, obviously. No lords and ladies. But also no bourgeois parliaments, no presidents, no national unities either! In short, no bourgeois republic. If we have outgrown the rule of monarchs it because we have outgrown the rule of the state, and need to finally restore society to itself.  

  The original idea of a ‘Jubilee’ (see Leviticus 25:9-17) was of a year of emancipation of slaves and restoration of lands, to be celebrated every 50th year. It was proclaimed by the sounding of a ram's horn on the Day of Atonement.  On the Jubilee "Ye shall not therefore oppress one another". But the Jubilee we can look forward to is one which lasts more than a year, and brings with it the definitive abolition of all forms of exploitation.

Amos 30/5/12