Caught between the anvil of the local mafia gangs under Maskhalov and Bassev, who are wrangling over who controls the country, and the Russian military, often forced to join up behind one or the other, nearly two million people are hostages and victims of this new imperialist war. The bombing goes on, devastating entire villages. Yeltsin, a blood-stained buffoon who is a worthy successor to Stalin, has been using one of the classic Stalinist recipes for mass repression: you encircle an area and massacre everyone in it.
Contrary to the previous Chechen war, the government this time has ‘prepared’ the Russian population with a repulsive propaganda barrage about the Chechen ‘terrorists’ (Chechen=terrorist and vice versa). All the Chechens are thus held responsible for the terrorist bombings and thus for their own misfortune. With the gross lies being spewed up by Yeltsin’s ‘western-style, democratic government’, the current regime shows its direct continuity with the methods of Stalinist terror.
Russian imperialism caught up in its own decomposition
Once again then, horror stalks the Caucasus, victim of the desperate plight of the Russian bourgeoisie. Let’s not forget the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of deaths, Chechen and Russian, claimed during the fighting between Moscow and Doudaev between January 1995 and the end of 1996. The unleashing of the first Chechen war enabled Moscow to impose its authority over a whole series of republics of the former USSR which had an urge towards independence. Chechen served as an example in a particularly taut situation in which Russia was trying to prevent the explosion of its empire through the creation of the CIS.
The Caucasus region, in which the combat between Armenia and Azerbaijan had blown up even before the collapse of the eastern bloc, has long been a powder keg. It came to the fore when Georgia quit the CIS and then was torn by war against Abkhazia ann by war against Abkhazia and Ossetia which were still under the control of Moscow. Now Russian imperialism is again caught in a spiral of mass destruction. There is a lot at stake for the Russian government. First of all, it has to keep control of an ever-deteriorating political situation at home, given the accelerating decomposition of the central power, the incapacity of the Yeltsin clique to maintain a credible image, and the growth of rivalries between mafia bosses, of whom Yeltsin is a primary representative. In one sense, especially with the presidential elections coming up, the Chechen operation is a way of diverting attention from these problems and giving the regime a strong and decisive image.
But Chechnya is itself of considerable importance. As in 1995 it is vital for Moscow to issue a warning to all the republics who are thinking of breaking away from Moscow, since as Russia gets weaker, the push towards secession gets stronger. And this time around, Moscow has drawn lessons from its 1995 defeat: for the moment it is only trying to control part of the country, the region around Grozny, with the long term aim of installing a puppet government.
Thus Russia has to keep hold of a region which is strategically vital. Chechnya is at the centre of a line, still not fully controlled by the Runot fully controlled by the Russian bourgeoisie, which goes from the Black Sea to the Caspian, and which is a defensive frontier and above all one of the few traditional means of access to the Mediterranean and the southern seas. To allow an independent Chechnya to carry out its own foreign policy would open a major hole in Russia’s line of defences.
But another aspect of the Chechen war is the need for Russia to keep control over oil reserves and the Caucasian pipeline which goes through Chechnya. This is of increasing importance to Moscow and what remains of its economy and its army, above all from the strategic-military point of view. A loss of control of its own oil reserves would be a threat to Russia’s independence and would open the door wide to the machinations of the great powers, especially the USA which is out to block the growing influence of Germany in the region.
The complicity of the great powers
It is certain that the big western powers, in particular the European ones, would like to get their fingers in the Caucasian pie and can’t help but savour the difficulties of Russian imperialism in that area. During the wars between Armenia and Azerbaijan at the beginning of the 90s, we could already see Germany, hand in hand y see Germany, hand in hand with Turkey, trying to discretely pull strings in order to strengthen its position in the region. However, these same great powers do not have an interest in the total collapse of the CIS. This is why, despite the hypocritical declarations of their politicians, the advanced bourgeoisies do not have the immediate intention of getting mixed up in what Clinton already called in 1995 "an internal matter for Russia". On his recent return from a ‘mediating’ mission in Moscow, the European commissioner for foreign affairs declared laconically that Russia was not at all "ready" to accept any foreign intervention, even diplomatic.
What seems to ‘shock’ the leaders of the ‘civilised’ world is the Russians’ methods. Not the mass bombings, not all the brutal measures against the population - after all, they are still fresh from the butchery in Serbia and Kosovo - but the fact that it can all be seen so easily. Since the beginning of the war Clinton has advised Yeltsin to be less obvious about it. The French bourgeoisie, through its minister of the interior has been whispering in the Russians’ ears that they should "pay attention to the way things are perceived". Meanwhile the flower of international bourgeois repression, the iourgeois repression, the interior and justice ministers of the G8, have been meeting in Moscow while the war rages to talk about the problem of international crime. They have had no problem with giving Russian intervention a legal gloss by adopting a resolution against "international terrorism" as demanded by Russia.
The cynicism of this class of gangsters knows no limits. They are the terrorists and the gangsters, and the planet runs red with the blood of the massacres they have perpetrated in the name of humanity and democracy and anti-terrorism. Whatever suits them in their flight into chaos and destruction, they will use. It’s not just Russia which is trying to shoot its way out of its decline, but the entire capitalist world.
KW
The October military coup in Pakistan marked a serious intensification of instability in South Asia. The new military leader General Pervaiz Musharraf reassured the 'international community' about his peaceful intentions and the military's determination to try and rescue the collapsing economy and to fight endemic corruption. But, this was only cover for a bitter struggle within the Pakistani bourgeoisie, above all over imperialist strategy.
Pakistan is being savaged by the deepening world economic crisis. Tens of millions live in utter poverty. The economy is bankrupt and survives on international loans. Foreign debt stands at £19.9 billion. The ruling class wallows in corruption and is divided by sharpening struggles, as it picks over the corpse of the national economy. For example,Hasin Sharif, the deposed prime minister, is reckoned to have given his supports and backers £245 million in cheap loans from the bank, whilst the Prime Minister before him Benazir Bhutto has been charged with corruption. Meanwhile it is the workers and poor peasants of Pakistan that is suffering as a result of the dead end capitalism is in.
Pakistani was born out of the imperialist machinations after World War 2, wracked, by religious, ethnic and tribal tensions. Following decades of economic crisis, with the pressures of fulfilling a role in the US bloc, and previous military take-overs behind them, the bourgeoisie in Pakistan, like those in many other weaker countries, is in a state of decomposition.
"With the loss of any concretely realisable project, except ‘saving the furniture’, in the face of the economic crisis, the lack of perspective facing the bourgeoisie tends to lead to losing sight of the interests of the state or of the national capital as a whole.
The political life of the bourgeoisie, in the weaker countries, tends to be reduced to the struggle of different fractions or even cliques for power or merely survival. This in turn becomes an enormous obstacle to the establishing of stable alliances or even of a coherent foreign policy, giving way to chaos, unpredictability and even madness in relations between states.
The dead end of the capitalist system leads to the break up of some of those states which were established late... or with artificial frontiers such as in Africa, leading to an explosion of wars aimed at drawing frontieof wars aimed at drawing frontiers anew." (Report on imperialist conflicts, International Review 98).
Sharif and his fraction's placing of their interests above that of the state and national capital certainly accelerated the decline of the economy. The anti-corruption and economic polices of the new armed-forces-lead ruling fraction, based on imposing austerity on the working class and poor masses, received a wide welcome amongst the bourgeoisie in Pakistan and abroad.
However, it was the question of imperialist orientation that was the determining factor. The decision of the Sharif fraction to withdraw from the parts of Kashmir that Pakistan had occupied in May and to try and improve relations with imperialist rival India, under US pressure, was more than the armed forces and other bourgeois fractions could stand.
This rejection of the US's attempts to stabilise the situation in the region, faced with the accentuation of tensions between Pakistan and India (two nuclear powers) is an demonstration of the consequences of the collapse of the imperialist blocs. With the end of the Cold War the Pakistani bourgeoisie has been pursuing it's own imperialist ambitions without too much regard for US interests. It is no accident that Musharraf should lead the coup. He planned and led Pakistan's invasion of Kashmir.
Speaking after the coup he stated Pakistan's determination to pursue its imperialist aims towards India. "We shall continue our unflinching moral, political and diplomatic support to our Kashmiri brethren in their struggle to achieve their right of self-determination. India must honour the UN resolutions and its own commitment to the people of Kashmir. It must also end its repression of the Kashmiri people and respect their fundamental human rights" (The Dawn, a Pakistan English language newspaper, 18.10.99).
He also made clear his fraction's committment to the use of nuclear weapons. "Last year, we were compelled to respond to India's nuclear tests in order to restore strategic balance in the interest of our national security and regional peace and stability" (ibid).
He also emphasized Pakistan's continuing close relations with its main regional imperialist backer China. "We will maintain and further reinforce our traditional and time tested friendship and co-operation with China." (ibid).
The same speech also underlined that "the strengthening of brotherly ties wiening of brotherly ties with the Islamic countries will be a central pillar of our foreign policy". Of particular interest are the developing relations with Turkey, another former firm ally of the US playing its own imperialist game. Musharraf told a Turkish journalist that his first visit would be to Turkey. These imperialist orientations will worsen tensions throughout the continent.
There was a cautious response from the great powers. Britain and the Commonwealth have suspended Pakistan. The US has stopped some aid, but also made some friendly remarks. However, behind the scenes they are very concerned: the US to see Pakistan going alone and trying to reduce the US influence in the region, and Britain to see the main rival of its regional imperialist ally India becoming more belligerent.
The Indian bourgeoisie has expressed its grave concerns and put its armed forces on high alert. Unofficially it has expressed its understanding of the real meaning of the coup "Says a senior government official, if the army coup took place partly because of the army's dissatisfaction with Sharif's wilting under international pressure over Kargil, then the new army rule is likely to take a more confrontational stand with India" (Outlook online, an Indian magazine hostile toIndian magazine hostile to Pakistan).
This can only feed the insane idea of a 'final war' between India and Pakistan being spread by the Indian bourgeoisie.
This madness is matched by the growing justification for nuclear war in the Pakistani military and bourgeoisie, under the guise of a Muslim's duty to "strike terror into the heart of the infidel", ie India.
The perspective for the region is grave and underlines the perspective laid out in the leaflet issued by our nucleus in India against the war in Kashmir.
"The present war may not spread... but it can only be a temporary reprieve. The desperation of both Indian and Pakistani ruling gangs, the bitterness of their conflict, the determination of the Chinese bourgeoisie to keep Indian ambitions in check and the growing free-for-all and rivalry amongst the world's main powers - all this is bound to explode in yet another war in this area. Sooner rather than later. With a far higher level of death and destruction" (WR 227)
Phil
Despite the wishes of the ruling class, the class war is not over. In fact over the past 18 months there has been an intensification of the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Our television screens have not been full of pictures of struggling workers, but, then you’d hardly expect the capitalist media to tell you the truth. An obvious example of this is the nurses strike in the Irish republic. Involving 27,000 workers, it’s the biggest strike since the 1920s and yet has hardly been mentioned in the media.
Internationally the working class is struggling to defend itself. May 1998 saw half a million workers on strike in Denmark. Since then workers in Europe, America and other parts of world have been in struggle.
In France transport workers have struck against their appalling working conditions, a struggle that spread from Paris to Lyon and Marseilles. Other workers have struck against the attacks that the used the 35 hour week campaign to disguise.
In Belgium there have been struggles in the private sector (VW in the private sector (VW cars, banks etc) and public sector (the post, public transport, etc) against falling wages, lay offs. Whilst in Britain struggles have broken out at Fords, the Post Office, council workers, construction
In America, workers in health, construction, education, airlines, car plants and other have struggled faced with attacks on wages and condition. In South Africa there have been important struggles in the public sector.
In South Korea car workers and other have fought to defend themselves against the price they were expected to pay for the crisis there, that is, with attacks on their jobs and wages.
These struggles are clearly not at the same level as the struggles of the 70s and 80's, but they are still significant. The very fact that the ruling class has blacked out information about struggles is particularly relevant. In 1995/96 the media was full of information about the struggles in France, Germany, Belgium and the US. Then they wanted workers to see these union-controlled struggles in order to boast the unions image. Today's blackout reflects the fact that the working class is becoming more militant.
Another reality that they want tonother reality that they want to keep concealed is the growing number of smaller unofficial strikes. Many of these are against deals agreed by the unions. For example: the strike by 11,600 teachers in Detroit, was not only against the wishes of the unions, who were negotiating a deal with the administration, but also illegal according to Michigan state law. In France, the struggle by public transport workers in Paris began as an unofficial strike against union wishes.
The spontaneity of this strike is not an isolated event. The struggle by drivers on Belgium railways (SNCB) rapidly spread from depot to depot. In Britain recent strikes by postal workers in Lothian, Scotland, and by workers on Parcel Force in Canning Town, London, were spontaneous reactions to attacks.
The way in which the struggles developed, particularly in France and the USA during the period of the Balkans war, is particularly important. In New York, on the 12th of May, between 25-50,000 city workers took part in a demonstration against attacks by the administration. Though controlled by the unions, it demonstrated the workers’ discontent. On this demonstration workers were keen to take the ICC's leaflet against the Balkans war, and many who walked passed came back when they learnt that our lhen they learnt that our leaflet was about the war.
International: the struggle and capitalism’s attacks
The ICC does not want to exaggerate any aspect of the situation, because it is clear that struggles are still on a small scale and unfolding in a very hesitant and slow manner. Nevertheless, it is important for workers to understand that what they feel is not some isolated desperation but a reflection of the international working class's growing discontent.
The combativity can only grow with the continuation of capitalism’s war on workers’ conditions of life and work. Millions of jobs have been wiped out in the Far East, Latin America and in Russia by the effects of the devastating crisis in the Far East. Tens of thousands have also been laid off in the main industrial countries as well. In the US, on average, 36,000 manufacturing jobs have gone each month this year. In Western Europe, the recent mergers between Renault and Nissan, are expected to lead to 11% of the workforce in these companies loosing their jobs. Japan has the highest levels of unemployment since WW2. It is not only unemployment that workers face. Their working conditions are also being put under pressure in tso being put under pressure in the name of 'flexibility'. Generalised insecurity is the norm for those in work, as is part time and temporary work. On top of that, workers are faced with the slashing of social spending on health, education etc, as governments cut costs.
The ruling class does not only attack the living and working conditions of the proletariat, it also mounts ideological attacks mystify the reality of capitalism. There is, for example, the whole campaign that says we are all equal ‘stakeholders’ in society. However, the main weapon against workers’ growing resistance is the unions. The unions divide up struggles, keeping workers trapped in their own sector or industry. There has also been the increased use of ‘militant’ rank and file unionism, attempting to give unions’ credibility when workers are becoming suspicious of what unions do to their struggles. A good example of this is the electricians in Britain (see article on page 3).
Above all, on top of the traps laid by the unions, workers still have a lack of confidence in their ability to struggle. The examples that we have given show that, internationally, the capitalist class are sustaining their attacks on the working class, but also that the working class is makin that the working class is making a response. Workers should be in no doubt that their only strength lies in the growing struggles, which can only begin to have an impact if they become more massive and under workers’ own control.
WR
The fall of the Berlin Wall led to a media orgy on a scale not seen before in this century. For 3 days there was an almost uninterrupted flow of images, showing nearly 3 million East Germans crossing the wall and invading the West of the city of Berlin. In this first phase there was no need for propaganda. The images spoke for themselves; the bourgeisie’s message was directly attached to them and hammered home implicitly: "This historic day marks the total and definitive victory of democracy over totalitarianism", "People of the world, rejoice in this glorious day when capitalism has demonstrated its absolute superiority over the socialist regimes".
In the weeks and months which followed the most euphoric declarations and promises bombarded us from the ‘great and the good’: the end of the cold was going to usher in a "new world order" where all the countries of the world "North and South" would be able to "prosper and live in harmony" (as US president , George Bush, said). Gorbachev himself added another layer by declaring that a "new era, free from threat, from terror, stronger in the search for justice" was dawning. According to these eulogists for the capitalist system, relations between states would "from now on be founded on respect and co-operation", etc.
But, above all, the bourgeoisie attacked the working class directly with a sustained and intensive campaign of brainwashing, the effects of which are still being felt today. In spreading the greatest lie in history, according to which the collapse of the Stalinist regimes was the collapse of communism, the ruling class launched itself into a gigantic attempt to weaken the working class and to annihilate its class consciousness. In this way it sought to destroy in embryo any will to radically and definitively call its rule into question, as well as any idea that there can be an alternative to its barbaric system. Its aim was to eradicate the revolutionary perspective once and for all.
The causes for the collapse of the stalinist regimes
The collapse of the stalinist regimes was the most important event since the end of the Second World War and the historic resurgence of proletarian combat at the end of the 1960s. It was the first time in history that a country, the head of an imperialist bloc, collapsed without resistance, without open world war or a revolutionary development. This fall was the conclusion of a whole historic process. The capitalist state in Russia was reconstructed on the ruins of the 1917 proletarian revolution which had eliminated the Tsarist bourgeoisie. Neither the latter, nor any part of the ‘classic’ bourgeoisie, was able to take control of the counter-revolution in Russia which was produced by the defeat of the world revolution.
It was the bureaucratic party-state resulting from the internal degeneration of the revolution in the USSR which carried it out. The Russian bourgeoisie was recomposed from the stalinist counter-revolution and monopolised all the means of production through the state which became an all-encompassing monster. Straight away the USSR, arriving too late on the capitalist world scene in the period of over-production on a planetary scale, was hit by obvious economic backwardness. Its seizure of the ‘popular democracies’ at the end of the Second World War, which elevated it to the rank of leader of one of the two imperialist blocs, accentuated the tendency which had allowed it to survive since its origin: "the ever-greater concentration of the economy in the hands of the state at the service of the war economy." (International Review 34, p.2).
So, because the eastern bloc couldn’t rival the western bloc, its only resource faced with the economic and military pressure from the west was to mobilise its whole productive apparatus for military production. The considerable deepening of the crisis throughout the 1980s bled it dry. Lacking the power to compete with the opposing bloc, and given the impossibility of a world war because of the global resistance of the world workial resistance of the world working class which would not allow itself to be mobilised to defend the state as it had been in the 1930s, the eastern bloc imploded. But this is not the only factor to take account of in the disappearance of the eastern bloc. In effect, as we have already written:
"The most obvious, and the most widely known, characteristic of the Eastern bloc countries - the one moreover which is the basis for the myth of their socialist nature - is the extreme statification of their economies. (...) state capitalism is not limited to those countries.
This phenomenon springs above all from the conditions for the capitalist mode of production’s survival in its decadent period (...) While the tendency towards state capitalism is thus a universal, historical fact, it does not affect all countries in the same way." (ibid, p.4).
In fact, in the advanced countries this tendency is manifested by an interweaving of the ‘private’ and state sectors, allowing the bourgeoisie to avoid being dispossessed of its capital and privileges and to keep competition and the sanction of the market functioning.
"In countries under Stalinist regimes, the system of the ‘Nomenklatura’, where virtually all economic responsibility is tied to party status, the obstacles to improving the productive apparatus’ competivity develop on a far vaster scale. Whereas the ‘mixed’ economies of the developed Western countries oblige state enterprises, and even state administrations, to have at least a minimum degree of concern for productivity and profitability, the form of state capitalism prevalent under Stalinist regimes has the characteristic of stripping the ruling class of any sense of responsibility.(...)
In such conditions, these countries’ economies, most of which are already backward, are particularly ill-equipped to confront the capitalist crisis and the sharpening competition it provokes on the world market." (‘Theses on the economic and political crisis in the USSR and the Eastern countries’, International Review 60, p.8, 1990).
History will have to overturn the great lie of this century, which has been hammered home since the fall of the Berlin Wall, that it was communism which collapsed in the USSR and Eastern Europe when it was the most brutal and instructive manifestation of a capitalist economy in crisis which has been tonomy in crisis which has been torn to pieces. The stalinist way of managing the economy was founded on the ferocious exploitation of the labour power of workers.
"But this ferocity is not generally concerned with increasing the productivity of labour power. It appears essentially in the workers’ wretched living conditions and the brutality with which their economic demands are met." (ibid).
The stupidity of the bourgeoisie’s promises
The least that can be said is that, since the beginning of the ‘era of peace and prosperity for humanity’ opened with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disappearance of the Eastern bloc and the USSR, this era has been revealed as being more the ‘era of wars and economic crises’. We have unceasingly denounced ‘the peace which prepares new wars’.
In effect, faced with the bourgeoisie’s brazen lies,"the end of the division of the world into two imperialist constellations has put an end to neither antagonistic relations between capitalist nations nor military confrontations which are the consequence of them. The truth is quite the contrary. With the disappearance ary. With the disappearance of the blocs, a period of military confrontations and militarism has been opened." (Revolution Internationale, no.198, Feb 1991).
Throughout the decade we have seen an orgy of local conflicts and wars. Militarism has never been so prominent, nor the manufacture and sale of armaments, nor the threat of nuclear proliferation so dangerous.
Barely eight months after the fall of the Wall, the Gulf ‘crisis’ broke and six months later the very democratic ‘international community’ unleashed a bloodbath which was more efficient in extermination than any conflict during the ‘cold war’. According to official estimates there were between 300,000 and 500,000 Iraqi dead. The first ‘breach’ of the promised new era of peace, the Gulf War was the start of a spiral of bloody military conflicts and chaos which have not spared any corner or continent of the planet, and in which conflicts of imperialist interests have been unleashed everywhere, in the permanent war of each against all.
The disappearance of the eastern bloc was also the end of the western bloc. The USA rapidly became aware of this in the months which followed the disappearance of the easte disappearance of the eastern bloc, since their former allies started to show clearer and clearer impulses to ‘independence’. They attempted to disengage from American tutelage in order to play their own cards in the world imperialist arena, free from the iron grip of the blocs. The outbreak of the Gulf War was fundamentally motivated by the will of the USA to constrain its old allies to support it anew, by agreement or by force, at the expense of Iraq.
The Yugoslav conflict which broke out in 1992 is another confirmation of the position we have advanced since 1989 on the development of chaos and barbarity all over the globe. While the Iraqi corpses were still warm, Yugoslavia, in the process of dislocation provoked by the shock wave of the disappearance of the eastern bloc, became a free for all. The great powers which, according to their own strategic imperialist interests have continually fanned the flames, dismembered the territory, fomented and covered up the unending atrocities in this region at the heart of Europe. With the last war in Kosovo, this region has become one of the most militarised in the world, like those such as the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
The great powers have been quick to rely on their respective pitbulls, militias or local pitbulls, militias or local armed bands in their pay, in order to settle their scores. So much for the ‘peace dividend’! It is the logic of capitalism which makes the great powers continually encourage the renewal of ethnic antagonisms in the service of their interests. This war, like those which are racking the ex-USSR, Chechnya, Dagestan, Africa and even East Timor, show once more that capitalism is war. There is no question of the ‘harmony’ between nations predicted by the cheerleaders for the capitalist system in 1989. Every man for himself is the only law, to conserve or absorb zones of influence and hunting grounds which has been one of the characteristics of imperialism since the existence of the two imperialist blocs. So barbarism, relations of military force, incessant destabilisation which all powers unleash against others, reigns supreme spreading suffering, death and massacres without hesitation.
The bankruptcy of capitalism
And what of the ‘dividend’ of the end of the cold war on the economic level promised by the bourgeoisie? Where is the promised economic prosperity, the ‘end of sacrifices’, when the largest enterprises themselves, even whole sectors are laying workers off en masse? According tf en masse? According to the ILO in 1996 the number of unemployed and under-employed had already reached the billion mark. Where is the ‘share of growth’, when poverty is continually growing in the working class, when living conditions are becoming ever more insupportable, when working conditions are increasingly precarious, allowing capital to exploit the workers to the limit according to its needs? What has developed massively in the 1990s has been under-employment and unemployment and the policy of reducing various social benefits as well as the lowering of nominal wages etc. This reality doesn’t only make a nonsense of the promises of ‘prosperity for all’, it is revealing about something more profound: the bankruptcy of the capitalist system as a whole.
As soon as the so-called ‘communist bloc’ collapsed the bourgeoisie enthused about the new Eldorado which the markets of Eastern Europe appeared to be. Where are these fantastic markets that were to spring up like mushrooms in the territories ‘freed’ from the old Russian bloc? The complete decay of the industrial infrastructure and the transport anarchy immediately shows how absurd such a perspective was. Between 1989 and 1997 Russia lost 70% of its industrial production!
Not only has the ‘liberation’ of the Eastern European economies not brought the promised ‘second wind’ to the world economy, but, on the contrary, history has shown that the collapse of the stalinist states was nothing but the collapse of one face of the world capitalist system, and that it is nothing but a symptom of the incurable illness of this world system. It announces that further violent economic and social upheavals are inescapable.
The recession of 1991-3 showed that the flight into credit is less efficient at relaunching production each time. Japan is a case in point. All the sectors which had previously escaped the crisis were affected in turn - information technology, telecommunications, armaments, banking. The impossibility of massive capital investment in production brought unbridled speculation, and this permanent cheating of the laws of the system can only increase its fragility. Capitalism is in crisis and facing the permanent threat of chain reactions, provoking economic and social devastation, like those in South East Asia. In 1997 the Asian ‘tigers’ and ‘dragons’, which had been presented as ‘pioneering’ economies, showed that the new ‘youth’ of capitalism was bankrupt with the crash. The shockwave rith the crash. The shockwave reached Brazil, Venezuela and, once again, Russia.
At the same time the legendary ‘economic health’ of the old models - Germany, Japan, Switzerland - caved in. Faced with the crisis the ruling class is making a permanent effort to push the consequences of the contradictions of its system to the peripheral zones of the globe. It is there that, at the moment, they break out most spectacularly, taking the form of collapses of entire parts of the economy. This cannot, however, prevent the crisis from coming back regularly to hit at the heart of the system with greater violence and more damage each time.
The only response is the class struggle and the perspective of communism
In presenting the collapse of stalinism as the collapse of communism, the ruling class is obviously trying first of all to hide the fact that this was only one of the manifestations of the bankruptcy of capitalism itself. But above all, it has been striving to the utmost to cry at the top of its voice that it is a question of the bankruptcy of any perspective for the revolutionary overturning of its system, as with the ‘end of the class struggle’.
In appearance, the immediate reality, above all at the beginning of the 1990s, seemed to prove it right. As we predicted at the time, the events of 1989 would be paid for by a great reflux of workers struggle, above all at the level of consciousness within the working class. While stalinism was one of the worst enemies of the working class, this didn’t mean that its disappearance would automatically create the conditions for an advance in the proletariat’s struggles.
On the contrary, because it collapsed, not under the pressure of workers’ struggles, and without the proletariat being able to develop the concrete denunciation of the lie of stalinist barbarity on its own terrain, it died without being condemned, without having undergone the judgement of the class struggle. Its death has, on the contrary, served to maintain and make even more powerful the lie that it was an incarnation of the proletariat’s historic struggle! Because of that, these events, added to the bourgeoisie’s media barrage, have effectively precipitated a profound disorientation in the working class internationally, a retreat in consciousness, a loss of confidence in its own strength and in the fact that its combats represent the only response to capitalist misery. This retreat is still affery. This retreat is still affecting the working class today.
But communism is not an abstract ideal. Because the contradictions of the capitalist system have condemned it historically and reveal a little more each day its inability to contain the productive forces it has engendered, communism has become a material necessity. This affirmation of marxism has never been so topical. And this very capitalist society can no longer escape it whatever the immediate balance of forces between the classes: it produces within itself its own gravedigger, the proletariat. Capitalism cannot exist without the proletariat and the proletariat’s struggle against capitalist exploitation contains within it, whether consciously or not, the overcoming of this system through its revolutionary overthrow.
Each time the working class suffers such a retreat, the ruling class, taking its desires for reality, shouts in triumph that it has resolved the contradictions of society and eliminated the class struggle. Until the proletariat, once again, reminds it with renewed class militancy.
The retreat suffered by the working class in 1989 is nothing compared to other defeats experienced in the past. After the terrible defeat of the revolutionary weat of the revolutionary wave of 1917-23, counter-revolution weighed on society for fifty years and the ruling class made the same triumphant cries in the 1950s and 1960s as today. Until the international awakening of the proletariat in 1968 disillusioned it and there were new massive waves of workers’ struggles on every continent in the 1970s and 1980s.
Today the working class has not suffered a defeat comparable to that in the 1920s. Its strength is intact and the proletariat of the central countries especially, is not ready to allow itself to be mobilised in a new world war, as it was in the 1930s, in the name of ideological justifications such as anti-fascism or national defence.
Not only is the general historic course still open to class confrontations, but the signs of a slow but certain recovery of class struggles have also accumulated in recent years. On the level of consciousness, the lies about peace and prosperity in capitalism haven’t long to run. The violence of the economic crisis and the attacks that the bourgeoisie cannot avoid continually dealing out to the working class, force the latter to take up the path of struggle again. And the bourgeoisie also knows this (even if it is careful what it says!). It is no accident that it is deploying accident that it is deploying a whole arsenal in order to try and pre-empt the inevitable proliferation of new experiences of significant struggles (see ‘The left in government’ in International Review 98), at the same time it is leading incessant campaigns to try and convince workers that they are powerless and must rely on the capitalist state to defend them (see also page 2 on Paddington rail crash).
The spectre of communism has come back to haunt the bourgeoisie today. The economic bankruptcy and the ever increasing barbarity of this system reveals this necessity in ways that can less and less be hidden. But above all, the violence of the blows against the working class, the necessity for it to fight in response, creates the conditions for it to rediscover its consciousness and its confidence in itself. These are forces at work which will make the proletarian revolution and communism not only a necessity, but also a possibility.
SB
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/50/united-states
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/chechnya
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/186/imperialism
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/61/india
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/144/pakistan
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-struggle
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/collapse-eastern-bloc
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/15/decadence-capitalism
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/32/decomposition