In the last issue of WR we carried an article on the railway strike in France. This strike took place against a background of growing discontent and agitation in numerous sectors of the working class. This movement was particularly significant in that it has developed during the Balkans war and despite the campaigns of the ruling class to strengthen the ideology of "national unity" around"national unity" around the war effort. In early June, there was a further expression of this combative mood in the working class: a spontaneous strike around the question of safety in the metro, which rapidly spread to the whole of the metro system and the urban railway in Paris, and also to transport workers in Marseilles and Lyon. Although quickly isolated by the unions, the speed of the workers' reaction was above all an expression of an exasperation with deteriorating wages and working conditions that is common to wide layers of the working class.
In May as well, nurses throughout Denmark came out on strike for higher wages despite the nurses' union recommending acceptance of the government's offer. The government was obliged to pass a new law to make this strike illegal and force the nurses back to work in a very angry frame of mind. Schoolteachers were also striking for wage increases at the same time.
Below, we publish two articles written by our comrades in America which give further evidence of this slow, uneven but real revival of the international class struggle. Of particular significance is the article on the New York transport workers which gives a concrete example of how minorities of workers today are beginning to pose some very profound questions about the nature and role of the trade unions. Such developments are harbingers of the much wider and more conscious class movements thahat are on the agenda for the future.
Despite 'war fever', workers defend themselves against capitalist attacks
The New York City municipal unions have stepped up their campaign to re-establish their credibility in the wake of scandals that have rocked municipal trade unions (we originally reported on this in Internationalism 106, publication of the ICC in the US). A major corruption scandal involving a fraudulent ratification vote for the last contract had thrown District Council 37 (a cluster of local unions in the huge New York City public sector workforce) into turmoil. Getting rid of the most blatant corruption was important for the ruling class, in order to give the appearance that the unions could be relied upon to defend the workers interests.
Of course this changed nothing in the fundamental role of the unions and their relationship to the government. It was all simply a ploy to pre-empt the danger of workers taking the struggles into their own hands in the period ahead.
Following the scandal, the newly installed DC 37 reform leader joined with leaders of the Teachers and Hospital Workers unions to call for a massive rally at City Hall on May 12th. This demonstration was designed to lay the groundwork for union negotiations in the autumn for new city ity contracts. In this sense the rally did not express a dynamic directly stemming from the workers themselves, but rather a move by the unions to prepare the basis for their control of the struggle in the months to come. This was especially necessary because the last corrupt contract saddled workers with a two year wage freeze, and anger is running high among municipal workers, and a major effort was necessary to convince workers to put confidence in the unions.
The demonstration mobilized a massive crowd, estimated at 25,000-50,000 participants, making it the largest such demonstration in more than 15 years. While it was firmly controlled by the unions, it was clear that the workers were angry and ready to fight. The belt-tightening rhetoric of the past few years seems to have lost credibility with the news of a 2 billion dollar budget surplus for the city government.
The demonstration occurred right in the midst of the NATO war in the Balkans. This is significant. Far too often in the past, the working class has been intimidated or cajoled into putting aside their needs and struggles, and sacrifice for the 'good of the nation.' It was clear that the thousands of workers who demonstrated that afternoon had no hesitation to express their need for wage increases even while the nation was at war. Even more significantly, workers at the rally were anxious to accept the ICC's leafletet denouncing the war, many who had passed by came back to ask for copies when they learned it was an anti-war leaflet. These workers saw no contradiction between a leaflet against the war and their demands for higher wages.
Another aspect of the current campaign to spruce up the municipal unions involves stepped-up base unionist activities. Left union bureaucrats with close links to the Association for Union Democracy, a group with social democratic roots, have pushed for greater democracy in the unions, seeking to put new, more 'radical' leadership in place. Their message is that workers can't win unless there are truly democratized unions. This group includes two of the 'honest' local union presidents within DC 37 who helped to expose the corruption by the former council leadership.
A year ago such elements organized the Committee for Real Change (CRC) within DC 37. Lately, they have expanded the group citywide, to include all 'reform' minded bureaucrats and some leftists, such as those affiliated with the International Socialist Organization (the US affiliate of the British SWP). Thus we see that leftists, who are at the extreme left of the ruling class, are preparing to play a back-stop role when workers start to see the manipulative role the 'reform' unionists will pursue.
The CRC is completely following behind official union leadership. It posed nd nothing different from the union leaders in regard to the May 12th demo. The CRC just focused on mobilizing workers to go to the demo. In the future it is possible it that will pose more of an alternative, perhaps as ready-made convenors of a so-called 'co-ordination' should the struggle break out in the open .
The CRC's link to the social democratic Association for Union Democracy (AUD) is instructive of how manipulative the ruling class can be. In June 1998, the AUD organized a conference where reform-minded local presidents within DC 37 decided to organize the CRC. This was before the DC 37 corruption scandal broke. In January of this year, the AUD organized another conference, attended by people from as many as 17 different local unions, from a broad range of public sector categories. This newly expanded CRC held a meeting, attended by about 200 people on the Friday night prior to the City Hall demo. It was not a real workers meeting. Just a lot of speeches by reform officials, with 15 minutes allowed for discussion at the end, after most people had left.
The rise of 'militant' new union leaders in the public sector in NY is therefore the fruit of the behind-the-scenes machinations of the AUD and assorted leftists, not a reflection of ferment within the proletariat. These new union leaders are being put in place to help the ruling class manipulate the growing discontent amomong the proletariat and contain the struggles which will inevitably arise.
New York transport workers grapple with union question
In late May about 25 New York City transit workers were sitting in the waiting room of a transit authority medical clinic and talking about the upcoming contract fight. It was a just a week after the big demonstration at City Hall, where an estimated 25,000 to 50,000 municipal workers had participated in a union-called rally, and just two days after the transit union announced that it was demanding a 30% raise over three years in the new contract next November, and threatening a strike (which would be illegal) on New Year's Eve (which coming on the eve of the new millennium would be sure to isolate strikers). The workers' discussion was quite animated and polarized around two guys who argued opposing views on a key issue facing not only transit workers, but all workers: the union question. For over two hours. the discussion focused on the union, good or no good.
An older worker defended the union, insisting that workers had to go to the union meetings and participate in union activities. In general people jumped on him for this view. Several women talked negatively about the union, how it never helped workers. The main opponent of the union was a younger wr worker who said that the union leaders are like management, and we can't trust them. He said they are corrupt and the question is not to change union leaders, because anyone who gets elected will become the same.
One woman talked about the necessity for workers to get together to discuss what to do about the contract. One worker suggested taking the union money and renting Madison Square Garden for a big meeting. An older worker said he had been active in the union in the past and was ashamed of what he had done. He described how the executive board had manipulated the union meetings, and explained that union meetings mean nothing, that everything is decided elsewhere.
The union defender would not be swayed. He insisted that there was no alternative to the union, but the younger worker attacked again. He said the solution was to dismantle the union. If you have a building that is rotten, you don't repair it, you blow it up, he said. Then there was a debate about going on strike and fears related to the penalties of the Taylor law, a New York State law prohibiting public sector strikes, which was used in 1980 after the last transit strike to fine workers two days pay for every day on strike. Again the question was raised about renting Madison Square Garden, but the young guy said we don't need to do that. He said we have different shops where people can meet and elect two or ththree guys and send them as delegates and to get together. A woman worker suggested that the people in the shops could write down what they wanted the delegates to say.
This episode offers a glimpse of the process by which the working class comes to consciousness, how it grapples with the meaning of its past experiences in struggle and draws out lessons for the future. Even without the intervention of revolutionaries, the workers who discussed those two hours in that waiting room clearly raised the question of the anti-proletarian nature of the unions, the need to push them aside, to take the struggle into their own hands, to create their own autonomous organs of struggle, with elected, mandated delegates. The bourgeois media tells us there is no such thing as the class struggle anymore, that everyone is middle class, except for the very poor. Communism, they tell us is dead and gone. But the discussion that happened that day in May is a clear sign that the perspective for the future is still one of class confrontation.
"A victory for democracy", proof that this was a "just war", a war for the rights of man in international relations. From Blair to Clinton via Kofi Anan, this is how, after three months of butchery, the representatives of the western bourgeoisie are describing their operation in Yugoslavia. Having destroyed and slaughtered onoyed and slaughtered on a grand scale, they are now claiming to be instituting "peace", guaranteeing the "safety" of peoples, and reconstructing the ruins.
Lies!
Lies, because the military intervention in the Balkans was never motivated by the "humanitarian" desire to stop Serbian tyranny in Kosovo. In reality, it was the expression of the deadly imperialist rivalries between the great powers, however much they kept up the mask of "unity" during the bombings.
Lies because hardly had the "liberation" of Kosovo been proclaimed, than the first "post-war" deaths came about, and a new wave of refugees - this time, Serbians - had reached figures of tens of thousands.
Lies because NATO's "ending" of Milosevic's ethnic cleansing will merely change its form, this time through the partition of Kosovo, like what we saw at the end of the fighting in Bosnia.
Lies because these "peace" accords, which actually consist of a strong-arm intervention by all the "civilised" bourgeoisies, will only prepare the ground for new confrontations. Kosovo is being occupied by 50,000 soldiers, armed and equipped to the teeth, there to defend the interests of the different countries which sent them, and manipulating the various local cliques to serve their ends. Kosovo today is nothing but a powder keg.
The whole history of the 20th century shows that "peace accords" only pave the way to even more savage conflicts. Let's justs just look at recent history. The Dayton accord was supposed to pacify the region of ex-Yugoslavia. In fact since the signing of this deal we have seen the different great powers deliberately stirring the ingredients which formed the most recent Yugoslav war.
And as the capitalist world sinks deeper and deeper into decay, even when a brief halt to hostilities is called in one area, wars and threats of war raise their heads elsewhere. At the very time that these powers were fighting to impose their "order" in the Balkans, relations between India and Pakistan degenerated into open conflict, carrying the real threat of nuclear war. At the same time the two Koreas have been rattling sabres at each other, especially after two North Korean gunboats were sunk by the South Korean navy. The war in former Zaire, which involves eight African countries and has sown death and famine on a huge scale, continues unabated. In the Middle East, hardly had the new Labour prime minister declared his intention to continue the "peace process" begun by Rabin, than Israeli planes were launching murderous strikes in southern Lebanon in response to actions by Hizbollah.
This is the real face of this decomposing system. This is the reality of the capitalist world that our leaders are so keen to hide from us.
Peace under capitalism is impossible. The more this senile social order plunges into an economic crisis that has no solutionion, the more it will resort to massacres and militarism. The capitalist system has long proved its bankruptcy. Only the working class, by developing and unifying its struggles in all countries, can offer humanity any future. ICC
Imperialist vultures squabble over their prey
Milosevic's capitulation, and the deployment of NATO forces in Kosovo, marks the end of one phase of the Balkans war, but not of the war itself. The "peace" accord in Yugoslavia has in fact brought the tensions between the great powers over this region to a level not seen since the world wars. It in no way implies any let-up in their imperialist rivalries, which are the real reason for wars in general and this war in particular.
The main protagonists of the NATO intervention against Serbia knew that they would have to see to the end the operation launched by the USA, despite their bitterness about being subjected to American leadership. If they hadn't taken part in it, they would have risked losing their places in the international arena and losing all influence in the Balkans.
The great powers divide up Kosovo
The dividing up of Kosovo into protectorates run by the main powers that took part in the operation (USA, France, Britain, Germany and Italy) is the reward fard for all their efforts, but not everyone has got what they would have liked.
Britain has taken the lion's share by occupying the central and most extensive zone, which also includes the capital Pristina. This dominant role vis-…-vis the other powers reflects the power and efficiency of its land forces, which have benefited from being part of a professional army for many years. Britain's military strength, which would have given it the leading role in the land war had it taken place, also enables it to assume overall command of the other four K-for contingents. Its own contingent, at 13,000, is the biggest of all four. Thanks to this success, Britain can now play the role of a major European power at the forefront of 'solving crises" (see the article opposite).
Germany has obtained an area equivalent to that of the US and France; its force of 8,500 is second only to Britain's. This constitutes an undoubted imperialist success for Germany. For the first time since the second world war, it has deployed an army in a "foreign" crisis without raising the spectre of Nazism, either at home or abroad. Germany has also won a considerable diplomatic success, since it has played a very active part in the negotiations which led to Milosevic's surrender. The strengthening of Germany's influence in the world can now be based on a diplomacy that is all the more effective for having an armed force at its disposalal. But Germany's gains don't end there. Through its direct military presence, it is strengthening the sphere of influence it has procured through its special relationship with Croatia.
Italy, which has hardly enjoyed any military victories since the beginning of the century, must be very satisfied with the protectorate it has obtained in Kosovo. This was its reward for allowing NATO to use its territory as a base for the bombing of Serbia.
France has managed to pull something out of the fire. The protectorate it has been given in the north of Kosovo will be some sort of compensation for what it has lost by taking part in the war against Serbia, which has always been the essential outpost of its influence in the Balkans.
The part given to the US, equivalent to that of the European powers, but less than Britain's, is highly significant. There is a huge gap between, on the one hand, its crushing aerial superiority, which was clearly demonstrated during the war and which was the decisive factor in bringing Milosevic to his knees; and, on the other hand, the very modest "reward" it has obtained as a result. Such a situation very sharply illustrates the tendency towards the decline of US world leadership. From now on the USA's crushing aerial superiority will not in itself guarantee its position as the world's cop.
Russia, because it took no part in the war, could not expect any any rewards. But to ensure a presence all the same, it had to rush in and interpose itself between the NATO forces. This kind of action only confirms that Russia today is a second rate imperialist power.
The decline of American world leadership
It was the way the war ended, without a land offensive, which deprived the US of concretising its military advantage on the ground.
This land offensive had long been called for by Britain which, with its experienced professional army, was best placed to carry it through. This threat was definitely an essential factor in the capitulation of Milosevic, who was all the less ready to face up to it, given that the bombing had seriously weakened his industrial and military potential, and that desertions and rebellions in his army would only have been broadened by further military disasters.
The USA had been preparing its public opinion for this step. The effectiveness of over two months of bombing enabled it to envisage carrying out a land war without a major risk of troop losses (a factor the US bourgeoisie has had to take into account ever since the Vietnam war).
But the USA got short-circuited by other NATO powers, Germany and France in particular, with the help of Russia. These countries had little interest in fighting a land war which would only have further emphasised their subordinordinate position. They thus redoubled their diplomatic initiatives towards Milosevic in order to make him understand that they all had a mutual interest in avoiding a land war. And so, in contrast to the Gulf war, where the USA was able to carry out its military strategy from start to finish, this time the Americans were unable to stop these initiatives in their tracks.
The result has been that in the dividing up of Kosovo, the US can't impose its will to the detriment of its partners and rivals in NATO. As for Britain, although it didn't have to use its troops in a land war, it has still been able to take the lead role in the maintenance of "order" in Kosovo.
The great powers face up to each other in the Balkans
The fact that the US has lost out in this race, and that outside circumstantial alliances it finds itself alone against the other powers, doesn't mean that any of the latter have forged any durable alliances either. We are seeing the reign of every man for himself on the imperialist arena, in contrast to the period when the existence of two imperialist blocs channelled these rivalries towards the two poles.
The installation of a 50,000-strong "peacekeeping force" in Kosovo, far from representing any stabilisation of the region, will actually be the main factor in aggravating imperialist tensions. The different armed corps rps are only there to defend the imperialist interests of the powers which have dispatched them. The general course of the class struggle imposes limits on the scope of imperialist conflicts, in particular by preventing them from turning into direct confrontations between the major powers. This is why, since the break up of Yugoslavia in 1991, the tensions between the great powers have been expressed via the actions of the various local armed gangs who act on their behalf. But the massive presence of these powers on the ground will heighten tensions throughout the region. It has created an irreversible situation from which it will be extremely difficult for any of the western powers to pull out.
There will certainly be no reconstruction of Serbia, with or without Milosevic; this could only be a pure loss for any investors. Neither will there be any peace in the Balkans. Social decomposition will accelerate under the rule of armed gangs and mafiosi; and even this will only be a temporary status quo as the material for new explosions bubbles under the surface.