The inbuilt tendency of capitalism is towards war – ever more destructive generalised warfare. Looking at Syria today massacre follows massacre with up to 20,000 killed; whole districts are destroyed; millions of people are displaced, with many living in overcrowded, insalubrious refugee camps in Turkey or in tents in the Jordanian desert in the  middle of constant sandstorms. Instead of the masses unifying across lines of division, they are now retreating behind them. Alawite, Christian, Druze, Kurd, Sunni and Shia divisions are reinforced on the basis of fear of the next massacre from whatever side. Some are supporting the “Free Syrian Army”, while others fall in behind the regime, fearful of the consequences. Capitalist terror has been unleashed and  is stalking the population throughout Syria and over its borders. What started out, seventeen months ago, as a real, popular uprising across divisions of religion, sex and age, against unemployment and repression, has been subsumed, drowned  for the foreseeable future, under the wave of imperialist war which now threatens to spread throughout the region. To call this development, as some leftists do, a “revolution” is obscene. It is an inter-imperialist free-for-all. On one side stands the one-time ally of the west, the ruthless killer regime of Bashir al-Assad, backed by Russia, China and Iran; on the other side stand the local powers of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and, looming over them, the United States, Britain and France. While this expression of capitalist carnage might look like the old proxy wars of the Cold War, with the US using Turkey as its local agent for example, it's much more unpredictable and dangerous than that, particularly given the stakes for the wider region, the military build up against Iran – which is currently being squeezed in a western vice - and the wild card of Israel.

Britain, America and France push their anti-Iranian front through the war in Syria

There are factors relating to oil here but these are completely secondary. The USA and Britain  are interested  in the strategic value of Syria  in relation to its geographical and political proximity to the real target of this war – Iran. In fact the possibilities for implanting American and British interests in this respect, ie, the basis for the present war, were laid down in Washington under the Bush administration in 2005 in conjunction with Whitehall (see below on the Syrian opposition). That the real target of this war is Iran has been increasingly recognised by a number of international newspaper correspondents, and none of them clearer than Robert Fisk in the Independent,  July 29, who writes with some irony on the position of the British ruling class: “... that all the while we forget the ‘big’ truth. That this is an attempt to crush the Syrian dictatorship not because of our love for the Syrians or our hatred for our former friend Bashir al-Assad, or because of our outrage at Russia, whose place in the pantheon of hypocrites is clear when we watch its reaction to all the little Stalingrad's across Syria. No, this is all about Iran and our desire to crush the Islamic Republic and its infernal nuclear plans – if they exist – and has nothing to do with human rights, or the right to life or the death of Syrian babies. Quelle horreur!” And Jonathan Steele in the Guardian, August 5: “What began as a peaceful uprising and then became local self-defence has been hijacked, under Saudi. Qatari and US leadership, and with British, French and Israeli approval, it has turned into an anti-Iranian proxy war”.

While the regime is responsible for most of the killing in Syria, the main responsibility for the generalisation of war lies with America,  Britain and the French cockerel, the “socialist” Hollande, strutting his stuff in continuity with his predecessor Sarkozy: France is now outbidding its “allies” and calling for the rag-bag and fractious Syrian opposition to form a government in exile which it will recognise. As for the western-backed  “Free Syrian Army” (FSA), already, as early as November 17 last year, the BBC's Newsnight was reporting on atrocities committed by it. On January 18 this year, The Guardian reported a recent article from ex-CIA officer Philip Giraldi that: “...Turkey, a Nato member, has become Washington's proxy and that unmarked Nato planes have been arriving at Iskenderum, near the Syrian border, delivering Libyan volunteers and weapons seized from Gaddafi's arsenal. French and British special forces trainers are on the ground... assisting the Syrian rebels, while the CIA and US Spec Ops are providing communication equipment and intelligence.”(there were also reports that British  and French special forces were on the Lebanese/Syrian border)  The Libyan connection is confirmed in a report by RTE News, August 14, that senior members of the western-trained Libyan rebel unit that took Gaddafi's compound were active in Syria, leading a team of Syrians including specialists in communications, logistics and heavy weapons[1]. On July 26, Newsnight  reported that the Turkish military was making nightly deliveries by the lorryload of arms and ammunition to the FSA accompanied by the CIA in order to make sure the weapons “didn't fall into the wrong hands”. The Daily Mirror reported on August 18 that these weapons included ground-to-air Stinger missiles – which is somewhat credible given that a MIG- 23 jet fighter has already been shot down over the town of Mohassen in the east while bombing rebel positions, one helicopter gunship has been shot down and latest reports say that another jet-fighter has been shot down over Idlib[2]. Talk by William Hague and the US of “non-lethal assistance” to the FSA is a nonsense, given their arms deliveries and their closeness to Saudi and Qatari weapons provision.

The “axes of resistance”

The diplomatic war also rages across the United Nations' den of thieves. The Annan “peace plan”, largely promoted by the Russians and supported by China, was sabotaged by the US, Britain and France, who threw a spanner in the works with a rival resolution that Annan referred to as “finger-pointing and name-calling”.  There was no real interest from the west in any plan that entertained talks while the regime – which they've been saying for twelve months is “on the verge  of collapse” - remained in place. They were only interested in pursuing the war. For its part Iran has  hosted a “non-aligned” conference in Tehran (week beginning August 27), with over a hundred countries sending delegates, in order to garner support. Notably the new Egyptian president, Morsi, has made a visit, which along with friendly words towards Iran, has caused some concern in the west[3]. Saheed Jalili, Iran's security boss, previously said on Syrian TV: “Iran will not allow the axes of resistance, of which it considers Syria to be a vital part, to be broken in any way” (BBC, August 7). But relations between  Tehran and Hamas in Gaza have already soured over Syria and fighting has spilled over the Syrian/Lebanese border affecting Hezbollah. This “axes of resistance” has been somewhat weakened in this respect but this will by no means attenuate the imperialist drive of Iran which itself has forces fighting alongside the Syrian army. Syria is indeed Iran's main ally in the region and in this spread of war and instability the former has not hesitated to use its ally, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which in turn supports the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which has control of several towns along the Turkish border in northern Syria (AFP, August 2). Troop deployment in these areas are currently being massively reinforced by the Turkish military, adding another dimension to the unfolding chaos.

The Syrian opposition?

Who are these people of the Syrian opposition who appear on western TV and call for “action”. Who are these “democratic spokespeople” in exile urging military intervention and no talks with the Assad regime? Charlie Skelton in The Guardian of July 12 lifts the lid on this nest of vipers who are enmeshed in some of the highest levels of the American and British states and who have been funded by both for the last 6 or 7 years[4] . The Syrian National Council is recognised by both America and Britain as the “main opposition coalition” (BBC) and “a legitimate representative of the Syrian people” (William Hague, British Foreign Secretary). The most senior of these SNC spokespeople is Bassma Kodmani who was promoted from her work for the Ford Foundation in 2005 – after US/Syrian relations collapsed – to become executive director to the Arab Reform Initiative (ARI). This is linked to the powerful US lobby group, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFI), which is linked to the “US Middle East Project” composing senior diplomats, intelligence officers and business people. This in turn is linked to the British Centre for European Reform (CER) headed by Lord Kerr, former head of the British diplomatic service. As Skelton notes, this is not some naive pro-democracy activist but someone who has links with the highest levels of the two states as well as with the French intelligence service DGSE. It's similar for her colleagues in the SNC. In 2005, the year that US foreign policy tilted against Syria, opposition leaders met in a Washington government building for a meeting sponsored by the US Democracy Council and the British Movement for Justice and Development and chaired by Joshua Muravchik, author of the 2006 op-ed “Bomb Iran”. Skelton lays the links and the funding bare[5]

  The Muslim Brotherhood, which Britain has shown interest in, has now split from the Free Syrian Army to set up its own armed faction, “The Armed Men of the Muslim Brotherhood” which is said by its leader to be “trying to raise awareness for Islam and jihad” (Daily Telegraph August 3). There are also Saudi and Qatari backed fundamentalists, jihadists from abroad with many coming back from Iraq, some of whom work under the loose al-Qaida franchise and the Libyan mercenaries. A real recipe for disaster for the Syrian population.

What are the perspectives?

In a word dire. It's already dire for the masses in Syria and while the thrust against Iran by the west is an open secret here the course events will take are unpredictable and dangerous for the region and beyond. Walid Jumblatt, leader of the Lebanese Druze sect, a politically shrewd veteran fighter in the region, said in The Guardian August 16: “This is the unravelling of the Sykes-Picot agreement”. Here he's referring to the secret Anglo-French agreement of 1919 to carve up their spheres of influence in the Levant after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire – this itself has been a basis for the instability and the running sores of conflict that have ravaged the Middle East for nearly a century. Jumblatt goes on: “We are seeing the end of what was created 90 years ago. The consequences will be very, very grave unless they are managed properly”. Referring to the British/French construction of Middle Eastern borders after World War I, and the “divide and rule” tactics used, one western diplomat talked of “unfinished business at many levels”. Within the framework of the overall weakening of the US to police the world, the go-it-alone tendency of Israel and the centrifugal tendencies at work tearing Syria apart, it's very unlikely  that this will be managed properly. The “management” of the major powers has rather been to push this war and the threat of wider war further forward.

Baboon. 30/8/12

“Where are you going?”

“We are going out brother, we won't work.”

“Well then, let’s go out together, let’s not work.”

The textile workers in the organised industrial zone of Antep, a city on the border of the Kurdish area of Turkey, recently went on a strike against their working conditions, low wages and cuts in their bonuses. The strike, which started with the participation of 3 to 5 thousand workers according to different sources, quickly spread to a total of seven factories in the industrial zone, including a total of 7 thousand workers.

About their working conditions, the workers whose working hour is on average 12 hours were saying the following: “What we want is just wages which will suffice to feed our families and our social rights. We don't want anything else. We have nothing against anyone in particular. Nor do we have ill intentions, we want what we deserve”[1].

A worker who participated in the strike expresses how the Turkish bourgeoisie, which recently has taken an important step in furthering its solid integration into the web of international imperialist relations under the slogan of “becoming a superpower”, was spreading nothing but false hopes in its 'addresses to the nation': “They say we are second only to China in the economy. They say we are pioneers when it comes to exports. No one is asking how much this reflects on the workers, how much bread the workers can afford when going home. No one cares about the worker. We've been on strike here for days, and the human demands of thousands of people are being ignored”[2].

Another important characteristic of the strike is the reaction against the Oz-Iplik-Is Trade Union, a part of the Hak-Is confederation[3] of which a significant part of the strikers are members. The strike from the start was independent from the direction and the orientation of the union, and the workers didn't hesitate to criticise the union. The clearest statement about the situation was made by Nihat Necati Bencan, the Antep Regional Representative of DISK[4], which we feel the need to quote not only for its clarity about how the trade unionists felt about the strike, but also because of its irony: “...Instead, the demands of the workers in 5 factories are expressed by the representatives they've delegated among each other. However none of the factory managements are taking these demands seriously and they aren't taking the necessary steps to meet these demands. Steps need to be taken in order to solve the problem soon. Otherwise the strike wave will continue and expand”[5]

The agreement for a ridiculously low pay rise between the union and a factory boss, for instance, is among the reasons triggering the strike. The workers who, when they figured out that the union negotiated a 45 TL pay rise, which almost means a zero rise, immediately went on strike in July. In fact Mehmet Kaplan, the Antep Regional Chairman of the Oz-Iplik-Is union, was held in the factory by the workers for a while after being met with slogans such as “sell-out chairman, sell-out union!” So the workers had concretised their direct strike against a union from the start.

As the strike went on, the lackeys of the bourgeoisie continued their suppression through different means. The state, which sent its packs of dogs to the factories right from the beginning of the strike wave, tends to be very disturbed by workers' actions which aren't controlled by the unions. The “advice” given the workers by the policemen during the strike were striking: “If you don't accept this, you won't find work anywhere else ever again. The bosses can only afford so much. Accept it and go back to work.” It seems the actual police force is as knowledgeable as the police of the factories, the unions.

On the eleventh day, the strike ended with real gains for the workers. Among the gains was a rise in wages from 780 TL to 875 TL. The workers in the Motif Textile factory will go back to work with 905 TL a month. Also thanks to this strike, the workers will get a 10 day bonus in every major national holiday.

The bomb attack which led to the deaths of 9 civilians in Antep right after the strike quickly came to dominate the atmosphere in the city and dispersed the air created by the strike. In a country like Turkey where the public agenda is too easy to manage and very changeable, the news, which as in all other countries is managed by the bourgeoisie, is used to stop such movements from meeting up with the rest of the class. In fact the ruling class does everything it can to prevent the rest of the working class from even finding out about such strikes. For instance, while the significant Turkish media companies repeatedly reported the massacre of the South African miners by the police, this strike in the country they operate was evidently not seen fit to be reported, even as the tiniest piece of news in the television or the newspapers. Of course we are not surprised: it’s their public agenda to manipulate. And the workers who said the strike is ours have strengthened themselves.

The bosses in some of the factories want to make the workers sign documents saying “I regret participating in the movement”. Against these maneuvers of the bosses, who are capable of all sorts of repressive measures, the workers are refusing to sign such documents.

This strike is a corner stone for the working class movement in Turkey which progressed as a series of isolated struggles in single factories and workplaces after the TEKEL tobacco workers struggle, such as the struggle of the workers in Hey Textiles who were laid off for no good reason, and the Turkish Airlines strike.

Certain details highlight the significance of the strike. The workers managed to meet almost all their needs throughout the struggle aside from some limited small aid which was given later during the strike. They acted together in subjects such as food, transportation and so on, and they took all their decisions with a committee they had formed among each other. One of the most important qualities of the strike was the fact that the workers had found a way of acting outside the union and among the most important gains of this self-organised strike is the fact that the workers took the initiative to take the struggle into their own hands. For the criticisms towards the union during the strike demonstrate that this is now a burning question for the workers: We don't need the union in our struggle.

Besides, all the bourgeois left press writes on this strike, which was fully independent of the unions and was even against them, is that the workers will be discussing the need for stronger unions. The claim that the workers will discuss this when their struggle has been concretised in a place other than the union exposes another political maneuver. So instead of writing about the wildcat action itself, the bourgeois left can only make news corresponding to their trade unionist and pro-capitalist programs.

Also, we see a remarkable difference when we compare the duration of struggles or strikes controlled by the unions and the ones which aren't. The former, while producing a wide anger against the union formations which are nothing but the apparatus of the state, also cause exhaustion and despair on the part of workers, especially when it comes to taking control of their own struggle. However, we can see, also taking into consideration the experience of the working class world-wide, that the movements managed and directed by the workers themselves always make proletarian history, and tend to be very successful at boosting morale. For the workers organise, manage and as we've seen in this experience, conclude these struggles themselves. On the one hand, the active will of the workers to struggle wins in merely 11 days, and on the other hand the strikes organized by the unions can turn into dead ends, wasting the energy of the workers and pushing them into despair over a period of months; and this results in new bad experiences filled with bitter disappointments for the workers.

“Despite everything our wages rose from 780 TL to 875. This is not much, but is not  a small pay rise. This strike might be over today; our struggle is not”[6].

The workers, following the end of the strike, took the decision to organise a congress by their own struggle committee where they will discuss their own problems. While there are differing accounts of the details of the strike in different bourgeois news sources, what we see as significant is the fact that the workers are creating discussion platforms to clarify the gains of this wildcat strike and the struggle.

“Unions are totally inconceivable without the existence of wage-labor, which in turn presupposes the existence of capital. As long as capital is held by individual owners engaged in competition and represented by many individuals and parties in the government, unions are at least able to bargain for an improvement in the conditions of labor exploitation. Their function is to regularize the sale of labor power, a function which has become indispensable to the modern capitalist system. From this fact comes their importance as complementary structures of the state, if not part of the state itself, everywhere in the world today (…) Their existence as an organization is entirely dependent on the continued existence of the labor/capital duality (…) However, they can side with capital as much as they choose without destroying this duality. On the contrary, they become increasingly indispensable to the maintenance of the capitalist system. As a result, the more gigantic and anonymous the concentration of capital, the more the unions take the side of capital and consider their role to be directly determined by the great ‘national’ interest”[7].

Nevin 3/9/12

Readers may be aware that we have had a problem finding articles using the grey tabs on the front page. Following intensive efforts at repair by our dedicated team of technicians (let us dream a little...) the problem should now be fixed. If you find any unattached articles "floating" or you notice any problems, then please let us know on the forum or by using the site contact form.

The transport sector is crucial for capitalism. Air transport is particularly important. In Turkey on 29 and 30 May a strike movement in the national air company, Turkish Airlines, paralysed Istanbul airport, with hundreds of flights being cancelled or delayed.

The working day in this sector can reach up to 16 or 18 hours. Some airlines oblige their flight crews to sleep in the same apartment to reduce labour costs when the employees are away from home. Pilots also have to work long hours, sometimes after no more than 2 or 3 hours sleep, in complete disregard for their health, their social life and human needs. Before the strike broke out, the industry minister carried out a real provocation by threatening to ban the right to strike “in strategic sectors like transport”. The unions, who had done nothing when hundreds of workers were made redundant at Sabiha Gokeen airport in Istanbul, or when workers were forced to work extra hours on miserable wages, now addressed an “urgent” message to the airline workers, calling on them to “exercise their right to strike”. And the workers did indeed launch an “illegal” strike on 26 May. Turkish Airlines used this as a pretext for massive sackings. Thus, when they were on the picket line, 305 strikers, most of them women, were sent a text informing them that “your work contract has been terminated”. All this shows that these attacks by the bourgeoisie were done hand in hand with the unions.

The workers therefore had to fight not only against the administration of Turkish Airlines, but also the unions they belonged to. Thus, the May 29 Association, formed by employees of the air companies as an organ of struggle independent of the unions, declared, mirroring the Platform of Workers in Struggle after the Tekel strike: “the administration of the Hava-Is union, of which we are members, has played a major role in the fact that this justified protest was declared ‘illegal’ by taking no responsibility for an action which it had itself called. The bosses of Turkish Airlines count on taking advantage of this situation to get rid of some employees and treat others almost like slaves. Does the administration of Hava-Is lack experience so it could not foresee what would happen when it left hundreds of its members on their own against the administration of Turkish Airlines? What kind of trade union mentality does that reflect?”

The bourgeois left has waged a campaign deploring the lack of support for the workers shown by the president of the union, who also described the May 29 Association as “dividers of the struggle”. On the contrary, the Association puts the accent on the importance of solidarity and has called for the extension of the movement to defend the interests of the working class as a whole and for the organisation of assemblies open to all proletarians.  

Arno 31/8/12

The new ‘Socialist’ government in France came to power with the slogan “the change is now”. But like the previous government, the new one has made use of the summer period to mobilise its cops against gypsies. The forces of repression carried out a real manhunt in the suburbs of Lille and Lyon. Nothing like the summer holidays, when so many people are away, to push through such brutal measures with less risk of any reaction from the population.

The fact that the Socialists are carrying out the same policies as the UMP government should come as no surprise. In the 1980s, the Socialist government built up a real arsenal of repression against immigrants[1]. The ‘Voix des Roms’ association has commented ironically that the new minister of the interior, Manuel Valls, “could wear the UMP colours in 2017”. So there’s no ‘betrayal’ here, even if, during his presidential campaign, François Hollande hypocritically declared “we can no longer accept families being chased from one place to another”[2].

In reality, this persecution of marginal, vulnerable populations, who are easily criminalised, is a general practice of the bourgeoisie. All governments, whatever their political colouring, are obsessed with ‘public order’ and are always looking for scapegoats, above all in a time of crisis. Thus, at almost the same moment that Valls and his cops were doing their dirty work in France, the Greek police in Athens were engaged in a vast anti-immigrant operation, baptised ‘Xenos Zeus’, in which 1595 people were arrested and 6000 more were issued with summons. The real aim of this was to criminalise illegal immigrants and blame them for the dramatic economic situation, when they are its first victims. The Greek minister Nikos Denias came out with this nauseating statement about the operation: “in the name of your patriotism and the survival instinct of the Greek citizen, I ask you to support this effort. The question of illegal immigration is one of the country’s biggest problems, along with the problem of the economy”[3]. The police were so violent that an Iraqi they were chasing was killed.

The Italian bourgeoisie uses the same methods in hunting gypsies: very regularly, camps are viciously destroyed in Milan and Rome. In Germany, although the Nazi past imposes a certain level of discretion, the 10,000 gypsies who fled the war in Kosovo are also fearfully expecting expulsions since Berlin decided to kick out 2500 people a year. Even in a ‘social’ country like Sweden, where 80% of gypsies are unemployed, begging is a pretext for deportation. 50 gypsies have already been deported this year[4]. We could multiply examples of this kind of contempt and terror[5].

The fact that France is being put under scrutiny by the European Commission over its ‘management’ of the gypsies is just hypocrisy, like the dishonest proposals of politicians who use similar tactics. Thus, Manuel Valls, who claims that his policies have nothing to do with the methods of Nicolas Sarkozy, uses exactly the same justifications as former foreign minister Bernard Kouchner when he defended the former president over his measures against the gypsies: “the president of the republic will never stigmatise a minority on account of its origins”[6]. A real carbon copy! Similarly, Michel Rocard, when the Sarkozy team was in place, exclaimed “we haven’t seen this kind of thing since the Nazis!” In response, we got a lot of stories about ‘problems of hygiene’, ‘criminality’, ‘threats to public order’ being handed down by the team in power, and they are being repeated today.

Behind both the open crudity and the hypocritical concern of the ruling class lies the cold mechanics of capital. The working class can only express its anger and indignation in the face of this barbarity.  RI 5/9/12

Governments everywhere are cutting jobs, services and wages in the attempt to reduce sovereign debt. Sometimes they still increase borrowing, but that’s another story.

In Britain, in August, the government announced the success of its efficiency savings for the year 2011/12. Included in the list of savings were reduced spending on consultants, cutting staff, cutting services, stopping IT projects, making more processes digital, renegotiating with suppliers, reducing building costs, avoiding major projects, and other forms of avoiding waste.

In the campaign against waste in the public sector there has been a widespread introduction of what are known as Lean practices. These are based on the Toyota production system. It could be argued that the need to recall millions of Toyota vehicles in recent years was not a good advertisement for such a way of working, but governments have a habit of following fashions in such things.

In dealing with waste, the Lean/Toyota approach means eliminating, among other things: unnecessary product/file movements, people moving more than is needed, unnecessary waiting, overproduction, duplication, over-processing, and defects that have to be fixed (get it right first time). In practice it means a good old fashioned time and motion study of all working practices, so that time is spent more and more on productive activity. Efficiency savings end up in focussing on individual workers and how much the employer can get out of them.

Taylor against laziness

That efficiency savings should be among the watchwords of modern governments would not have surprised Frederick Winslow Taylor whose Principles of Scientific Management was published in the US just over a hundred years ago in 1911. Taylor’s approach to getting the most out of workers was brutal but effective. In the 1880s he was able to reduce the number of workers shovelling coal at the Bethelem Steel Works from 500 to 140 without loss of production. Every part of a work process was timed with the aim of identifying what could be omitted from the process, and which workers should take on what task.

In the Principles Taylor had a very low view of workers – “the natural laziness of man is serious”. But he also knew that straight repression was not the best way to exploit workers. He described his approach as scientific, but it was as much ideological: “One of the very first requirements for a man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type. … Therefore the workman who is best suited to handling pig iron is unable to understand the real science of doing this class of work.” In the case of handling pig iron the best candidate for the job “was a man so stupid that he was unfitted to do most kinds of laboring work, even.”

Critics of the Taylorist method saw it as dehumanising in the way it exploited, deskilled and alienated workers. In reality “Scientific management did not - as Taylor liked to claim - ensure that workers ‘look upon their employers as the best friends they have in the world (!)’ Rather, it sowed class conflict on an epic scale” (Mike Davis https://libcom.org/history/stopwatch-wooden-shoe-scientific-management-i... [22]). Describing the wave of strikes in the US between 1909 and 1913 Davis says that “It is particularly significant that the storm centers of these strikes were located in the industries being rationalized by scientific management and the introduction of new mass-assembly technologies”. This is hardly surprising as Taylor wanted workers to "do what they are told to do promptly and without asking questions or making any suggestions." (quoted in Davis op cit). This goes against human nature: unlike machines people are questioning and creative. Not for nothing did Lenin denounce Taylorism as the “enslavement of man to the machine”.

Exploitation and efficiency

However, following the overthrow of the Russian state in 1917, Lenin thought that capitalist production methods could be adopted. In The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government Lenin wrote: “The Russian is a bad worker compared with people in advanced countries. It could not be otherwise under the tsarist regime and in view of the persistence of the hangover from serfdom. The task that the Soviet government must set the people in all its scope is - learn to work. The Taylor system, the last word of capitalism in this respect, like all capitalist progress, is a combination of the refined brutality of bourgeois exploitation and a number of the greatest scientific achievements in the field of analysing mechanical motions during work, the elimination of superfluous and awkward motions, the elaboration of correct methods of work, the introduction of the best system of accounting and control, etc. The Soviet Republic must at all costs adopt all that is valuable in the achievements of science and technology in this field.” This approach, along with the militarisation of labour and one-man management, seemed appropriate to some Bolsheviks in a period when the young Soviet Republic was surrounded and fighting for its life in war against the White armies and their imperialist backers. Other Bolsheviks, especially Left Communists like Ossinski, opposed the introduction of such methods, which undermined the capacity of the working class to direct production and was one of the factors that exacerbated the gulf and ultimately the conflict between workers and the Soviet state.

Taylorism was dictated by the needs of capitalist exploitation but in its pure form it proved to be inefficient in drawing on workers’ talent and potential. In time the bourgeoisie recognised the inadequacies in Taylorism, and crude Taylorist methods were mostly deemed obsolete by the 1930s. This didn’t, however, mean the end of time and motion measurement.

Among newer management theories have been the Theory X and Theory Y that were introduced by Douglas McGregor in the 1960s. Theory X assumes that workers are lazy and will only respond to the carrot and stick, to reward and punishment. Theory Y relies on workers’ self-motivation. Workers have to identify with the needs of their employers and bring their own initiatives to the work process, so that they end up taking the lead in their own exploitation.

Today, with the Lean practices introduced into major departments of the British civil service (including HMRC, DWP, MOJ, and MOD), workers have ‘efficiency savings’ as an integral part of their job. There are regular meetings (often daily) on work priorities; these are held standing up, for reasons of efficiency. Workers time the work processes, identify forms of waste, and propose changes in work practices. This ‘bottom-up’ approach goes along with an increasing emphasis on management being described as ‘leaders’. Efficiency savings are made from workers’ suggestions, the ‘leaders’ try to enforce impossible targets, and decide whose post is next to be eliminated.

As part of the precariousness of employment workers must now worry not only about losing their jobs, but also have to propose measures which, in the name of efficiency, might put them out of work. Human creativity and ingenuity can be directed towards the greatest of achievements, but they are manipulated or crushed within the brutality of capitalist social relations.  

Car 7/9/12

On Monday, September 10th 2012, 26,000 teachers in Chicago struck for the first time in 25 years and after years of suffering attacks on their benefits, wage freezes, and ever more appalling and degrading working conditions.

The situation of teachers

This strike is in continuity with those that have sprung up during the summer by Con-Edison workers in New York City, the janitors in Houston, the pizza workers at Palermo pizza factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin -to mention just some of the better publicized strikes- and, stretching back more than one year, with the Verizon workers strike, in New York City, and the Madison, Wisconsin public workers mobilizations. Teachers are finally catching up! As part of the working class, teachers have not been spared by the economic crisis and our rulers’ relentless attacks against their living and working standards. Yet, because of their position as a part of the public sector in charge of educating the future generation of workers to fulfill the needs of capitalism’s drive for profit and competition, teachers have been particularly denigrated and demonized by a brutal media campaign which has two fundamental aims:

1. To divide the working class, to pit one sector of it against another

2. To justify the draconian attacks against job security, benefits, and working conditions with the claim of a much needed “education reform”.

These attacks and media campaign are an international phenomenon taking place in France, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, and the rest of the world. The reactions have often been massive not only in the European countries but also in India, in Africa (Swaziland ) and Latin America. The mobilization of the Chicago teachers inscribes them in the international arousal of working class combativeness against the bosses’ attacks.

Why are teachers striking?

There are many reasons for teachers’ discontent. Regardless of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s claim that the strike has no economic cause and, on this ridiculous basis, his request that an injunction be brought against the ‘illegally’ striking union, there are plenty of economic concerns that have moved the teachers to strike: a longer school day and year; a freeze on health insurance contribution rates; the introduction of a new teacher evaluation tied to students’ test performance, i.e. an attack on job security, particularly in the context of the threatened closure of at least 100 schools; and more. The ‘wage increase’ peddled by the contract would not even be enough to pay for the extended school day and year, and they call it an increase! Are these not economic issues?? Only our bosses and rulers, who have no economic concerns to keep them awake at night, can conceive of these attacks as non-economic! But of course, teachers are totally correct in going beyond the economic issues. They command the respect of all their class brothers and sisters by fighting for their dignity as human beings, by refusing to subject their passion for teaching to a matter measurable by standardized tests; and by refusing to subject their students to the bosses’ mentality and practice that views human beings as objects to quantify according to the law of capitalist profitability and competition, reducing humans to mere commodity to sell or toss away. This in essence is the meaning of their vaunted education “reform”! It amounts to an actuarial calculation: how much are the bosses willing to ‘waste’ on public education in light of the restructuring of the workforce forced upon them by the relentless economic crisis of capitalism! We can only say to our fellow teachers: We admire and support your courage! You are an inspiration for all of us in your same conditions!

What is the most effective way to struggle?

In the media, the ruling class and bosses express their concern at what this strike will mean for the perspective of re-electing a Democratic president versus a Republican. Are they worried that the working class will more and more be able to see through their smoke and mirror mystifications and realize that whether painted blue or red, the size, aims, and content of the attacks is virtually the same? If they are worried that the working class puts it in its head that the real struggle has to be waged in the streets, alongside other workers, and not at the ballot box, the working class would do well to reflect about the role each party plays in the implementation of the attacks, and hence ask the question: who is our real friend? Who do we need to turn to for help? Is the official “uniondom” the answer to this question? How can the answer be “yes”, when the union leaders negotiate with the bosses behind closed doors? How can it be possible they are our friends when contract after contract our working and living/economic conditions have deteriorated? How to believe them when they trumpet what to every worker is a defeat as a “victory” because it could have been even “worse”? Isn’t this what Karen Lewis has had the nerve to say when she peddled that Rham Emanuel scaled down his proposal of having the teachers evaluated on the basis of students’ test performance from 40% to 25%? But, if we cannot trust the official union, what else do we have?

Take it to the street and the General Assembly!

The most effective way to wage a struggle is by establishing open General Assemblies, as workers have historically done and are re-learning to do. We have seen these first attempts at re-taking the destiny of the struggle in our own hands in Spain, during the Indignado movement, and here in the States, by the Occupy movement. What these movements point to is the need to create a space for open discussions where we can freely and creatively consider real solutions to our problems. We are the only “experts” and the accountability for our decisions should rest solely in the workers’ General Assemblies themselves, controlled by the workers themselves. When we are able to hold the struggle in our hands, it is possible to extend it to other sectors and workers, to parents and students, and, in this way, gain real strength, unity, and solidarity, and break free of the isolation in which our unions trap us! The sympathy that your strike has aroused in many other workers, even among parents who have been up to a million difficulties to find care for their kids, is a testimony to the urgent need to extend the struggle, to express real solidarity, to trust the rest of the working class. This strike has for now been drowned in isolation and teachers have returned to work without having gained anything in terms of the contract. But if teachers are able to gain in terms of the lessons about how to struggle more effectively in the future, and who our real class friends and enemies are, they will not have lost.

In the two weeks before the final ratification of the contract, teachers should meet to discuss and draw the lessons of this struggle, and prepare to break out of the isolation imposed by the union by going out to other workers and hold open discussion forums where decisions can be made collectively and can stay in the hands of the workers themselves.

Internationalism 10/9/12