The massacre of innocent lives at Sandy Hook elementary school is a horrific reminder that short of a thorough revolutionary transformation of society the spread and depth of decomposing capitalism can only find expression in ever more barbaric, senseless, and violent acts. There is absolutely nothing in the capitalist system that is capable of offering a meaningful understanding of why such an act could even be conceived, let alone a viable proposal for change: not in the media, not among the politicians, whether left, right, or center, and not among the academic talking heads. It is impossible, under the yoke of capitalism, to truly address the problem, and even truly understand how to. In the aftermath of the Connecticut school butchery, as has been the case in all such violent sprees in recent memory, all the different parts of the ruling class have offered an ‘explanation’. How is it possible that in Newtown, Connecticut, dubbed “the safest town in America” a deranged individual could find a way to unleash such horror and terror? Whatever ‘explanations’ are offered, their primary purpose is to create a fig-leaf for the ruling class and cover up its own murderous mode of life.
The Right lays the blame on individual agency, effectively suggesting that Adam Lanza’s action can be explained by his choice to allow the ‘evil’ side of ‘human nature’ to take over. They claim that there is nothing psychological or behavioral in the shooter’s action. In the words of Nancy J. Herman, associate professor of sociology at Central Michigan University, “Today, the medicalization of deviant behavior has made it difficult for us to accept notions of ‘evil’. The diminution of religious imagery of sin, the rise of determinist theories of human behavior, and the doctrine of cultural relativity have led further to the exclusion of ‘evil’ from our discourse.” Accordingly, the ‘solution’ the Right offers to this problem is the revival of religious faith and collective prayer. This is how the Right dismisses the advances made in many decades of studies of human behavior which can actually offer a window into the understanding of the complex interconnections between individual and society proposed in particular by evolutionary studies of human social and anti-social behaviors. It is also how the Right justifies its proposal to just lock up those who express a deviant behavior, because they criminalize it by attributing to it a moral nature.
From various reports we learn that the 20-year old gunman had Asperger’s syndrome, a condition that can lead to social awkwardness and isolation, but there is no connection between the disorder and violence. It is also the case that only 5% of all gun-related violence in America is linked to any mental illness. This fact alone should be enough to dispel the widely-held belief that mental illness and violence are mechanically and deterministically linked. However, this does not mean that Lanza’s behavior was determined by a rational choice, or the choice of doing ‘evil’, as the Right claim. Also, it does not mean that his action can be understood simply as the act of an individual isolated from the social context in which he grew up. Much attention is given to “profiling” potential shooters when what needs to be done is develop a profile of the society that produces people driven to such drastic measures. Whatever surveys are used to measure the extent or increase of mental illnesses among the population, they have all gone up dramatically in recent years. These surveys also show a general decline in empathy in society. It is a painful irony, and proof of their hypocrisy, that while the bourgeoisie talks about gun control, they are also deploying in Turkey, thinking about keeping China in check, and also continue to encircle Iran. The nature of violence cannot be understood divorced from the social and historical context in which it is expressed. Mental illnesses have existed before, but it seems their expression has reached levels of paroxysm in a society under siege by an 'every man for himself' mentality, the loss of social solidarity and empathy, and even the weakening of the most basic human interaction. People feel they have to 'protect' themselves against...against who? Everybody is a potential enemy, and this is an image, a belief reinforced by the nationalism, militarism, and imperialism of the bourgeoisie. Yet, the ruling class poses as the guarantor of ‘rationality’ and carefully skirts the issue of its own responsibility in the spread of anti-social behavior. This is perhaps clearest in cases when the United States Army court-martials soldiers who engaged in acts which are considered ‘atrocious’—and which certainly are—as with Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who went on a rampage and killed 16 civilians in Afghanistan, at least nine of whom were children. Never mind Bales’ use of alcohol, steroids and sleeping aids to soothe his physical and emotional pains, and the fact that he was deployed in one of the most intense battlegrounds in Afghanistan for the fourth time.
If media and games violence teach or reinforce the value that fighting - even killing - is an acceptable way to resolve a conflict, they are not the source of anti-social behavior, as many on the left like to point out. It is both the competition embedded in capitalist mode of functioning and its militaristic expressions which inform the content of the media and video games. When children grow up in a culture that celebrates fighting and violence as an acceptable way to win, and when society teaches that one must win at all costs, they are highly likely to acquire those ‘values’. These ‘values’ exist pervasively under capitalism all over the world, and what we see in the media and video games is just a reflection of this. Violence is not an American prerogative, even if it can be argued that gun violence is particularly pernicious in this country. It is true that with less than 5% of the world's population, the United States is home to roughly 35–50 per cent of the world's civilian-owned guns, heavily skewing the global geography of firearms and any relative comparison. It is true that the ratio of gun to people in America is roughly 88 to 100, which is higher than in Yemen, which comes in second. Yet the prizes for gun-related murders go to countries like Jamaica and Puerto Rico. 42% of the homicides that occur on the planet happen in a part of the world where only 8% of the world population lives: Latin America. This is not to trivialize the pervasiveness of violence in the United States, but rather to highlight that the context in the present period is one of a society dangerously developing a ‘culture’ of suspicion and fear in other fellow creatures, and a disposition toward ‘every man for himself’ in which murder, rather than human solidarity, becomes the ‘solution’ to differences, conflicts, and personal problems.
This is what lies at the root of Adam Lanza’s mother’s obsession with guns and her practice of taking her two children, including Adam himself, to the shooting ranges. Nancy Adams was a survivalist. The ideology underpinning survivalism is that of the ‘each for themselves’ in a pre and post-apocalyptic world. It preaches self-reliance, or, rather, individual survival, and relies on weapons as the instruments for individual protection and appropriation of vital and scarce resources. In preparation for the collapse of the American economy, as survivalists believe is about to happen, they stockpile weapons, ammunition, food, and teach themselves ways to survive in the wild. This type of social psychosis may have been heightened by the recent esoteric predictions about the end of the world supposed to have happened on December 21, with the end of the Mayan calendar, and which many survivalists followed. Is it so strange that Adam Lanza may have felt overwhelmed by this sense of no future? Or that he may have perceived children as future competitors over scarce resources that need to be eliminated? Whatever the actual mental landscape Adam Lanza experienced, it is certain it was not a rational, clear-minded, happy state of mind.
At the time of this writing, it is less than a week after the Newton killings. The initial vow by President Obama that “This time the words need to lead to action” and that he “…will use all the powers of this office to help advance efforts aimed at preventing more tragedies like this” is already showing up for what it really always had boiled down to be: a political arm-wrestling exercise between two factions of the ruling class that have been at each other’s throats on virtually every social issue for the last decade. Their divisions are so insurmountable that not even a massacre of these proportions can instill at least a minimum of decency in their diatribe over gun control and the care of the mentally ill. For its part, the National Rifle Association expresses a paroxysm of paranoia and total irrationality when it proposes that there should be an armed officer in every school in America because “a bad guy can be stopped only by a good guy”. Schools are already half-way from becoming full-fledged jails and have been so for a number of years. This insanity does not only show the bankruptcy of the Right’s ideology, but also its total infection of decomposition: in a society that cannot offer viable answers and solutions to its problems, the only possibility is for each individual to be against everybody else. Leading House Republicans, fearing the loss of the NRA’s support, have already openly restated their firm opposition to new limits on guns or ammunition, setting the stage for yet another legislative battle and drawn out sessions over the Second Amendment. It is so obvious that whatever ‘concern’ and urge for ‘action’ the ruling class feels is not for the well being and safety of the population, but rather for their own political purposes. The Left offers the narrative that if only the Right were more reasonable and flexible, it would be possible to pass meaningful and effective health care legislation to better address the needs of the mentally ill. It would also be possible to reduce the daily bloodshed from gun violence if only the Right could be persuaded. In this narrative, the inaction over the issue of gun violence in America is the result of the Right’s hardened stance. It is a sorry fact, however, that there are so many guns privately owned by Americans that any new restriction would do virtually nothing to control any violence. This was already the case for the eight years between 1996 and 2004 when a ban on assault weapons was enforced in the wake of the Columbine High School shootings. Even though the National Rifle Association has recently lost some of its clout and its opposition may be slightly easier to resist, Republicans are posed to carry out a long and vicious battle. And even if there was less animosity between the two factions of the American ruling class, the changes proposed by the Administration amount to mopping up a flood with a Kleenex. In their disgusting political self-interest, the faction of the ruling class now in power is manipulating the natural horror that the Connecticut school slaughter raised in order to weaken their opposing faction and pass for the defenders of the social safety net and being intent on making preventative service accessible to everyone. For their part, the Right’s proposes to strengthen the repressive apparatus so that anyone who is potentially dangerous can be locked up. In their vision they see schools as prisons in which teachers become wards and policemen in a public place that needs to be on lockdown.
It is natural to feel horror and deep confusion at the assault on innocent victims. It is natural to look for possible explanations of what is obviously a completely irrational behavior. This expresses a deeply felt need to reassure ourselves that we can have at least a degree of control over our own destiny, that humanity can get out of what appears to have become an endless and ever more extreme spiral of violence. But the ruling class can only capitalize on the present emotions of the population and manipulate its need to trust in order to channel it into the mythology according to which the state is willing and capable to resolve society’s problems. Revolutionaries must affirm clearly that it is rather the continued existence of class society and class rule, and the protraction of the relations of capitalist exploitation that are solely accountable for the exponential increase in irrational behaviors and the patent inability to reverse this trend.
Ana, 21 December 2012
As the CGT and the CCOO-UGT regrouping five different unions in Spain called for yet another 24-hour ‘general strike’ for October 31 and November 14 respectively, comrades of the Assembly movement - Indignant and Self-Organized Alicante Workers - published and distributed a declaration called "In the face of the 24-hour strikes: What strike do we want? The mass strike!".
These workers have been actively involved in a struggle for more than two years and have the merit of having denounced mobilizations which only de-mobilize and demoralize, and which only complement the attacks of the Rajoy government. But this is not all they have done. They have posed a perspective: to struggle for the mass strike. Faced with the unions’ demobilizations, this is the orientation which the workers’ struggles have tended to take since the 1905 Russian Revolution.
It is a mistake to think that there are no alternatives to the unions “mobilizations to demobilize”. Following in the steps of the Alicante workers, we think a debate has to develop to clarify the alternative which the proletariat has had since 1905. The two contributions by two workers which we are publishing here go in that direction.
We salute the declaration and the contributions, and we would like to encourage other workers and groups to give their input.
ICC November 1, 2012
Why is a 24-hour strike, a strike? Most importantly, how can it benefit the working class?
We identify with the political positions of internationalism and proletarian autonomy. We think that all action by conscious minorities should be orientated toward generating class consciousness, unity, and the self-organization of the working class. We know that there have been many mobilizations as of late and a great effort toward organization by the working class. This period of new and massive mobilizations has started, symbolically, in May 2011 and is the answer against the ever more brutal attacks against the population’s conditions of life. This development has not been linear and has gone through different phases. At first, there is a strong impulse toward self-organization and an embryonic, yet wide-spread movement toward the creation of General Assemblies. Later, the unions and the left of capital take advantage of the exhaustion and visible decrease in the masses’ participation to gain the center-stage. This leads the mobilizations toward the typical union-inflicted defeat: mobilization which are controlled by them, mobilizations which break the unity and are carried out sector by sector, demoralizing mobilization led into dead-ends and which only generate a sense of isolation and disgust in the participants. This is why the absence of a majority of the workers in these mobilizations is only logical, since they are perceived as alien to their own interests, opening the possibility of reflection.
We need to think, learn from our experiences and look for the path toward our own self-organization. This will not be given birth to by ‘specialized vanguards’ or anxious impulses, even if these may have the best of intentions.
It is the workers themselves who have to call for and extend everywhere, the kind of strike which we is needed and efficacious. It is the workers who have to occupy all the spaces and create new types of relationships and social communication. This type of strike does not detain life, it rather generates it. This type of strike is the mass strike, which during the last century has become a feature of the struggles, and which all its enemies-all bourgeois strata- have conscientiously silenced until its memory has become blurred. This is because the bourgeoisie fears its attraction and legitimacy for the proletariat.
A true strike is a massive and integral movement which does not consist solely in a work stoppage. It is the fundamental weapon of a working class in the process of taking control of its life, expressed by the fact that the working class struggles against all aspects of exploitation. In this process, the exploited class also expresses the human society to which it aspires. However, this is not a process that can be prepared ad hoc, not even with the best intentions. It is a part of the process by which the class struggles and comes to its consciousness. It is not a question of 24, or 48 hours, or of indefinite time. Its radical nature is not a matter of time. Its radical nature is based in the real movement of the working class as it organizes and leads itself.
The mass strike results from a particular phase in the development of capitalism starting in the XX century. Rosa Luxembourg developed it from the revolutionary movement of the workers in Russia in 1905. The mass strike “is a historic phenomenon at a given moment because of a historic necessity resulting from social conditions”.
The mass strike is not an accident of history. It is neither the result of propaganda nor of preparations taking place ahead of time. It cannot be created artificially. It is the product of a specific stage in the development of capitalist contradictions. The economic conditions which produced the mass strike were not inscribed in one country only. Rather, they had an international dimension. Such conditions generated a type of struggle which has historic impact, a struggle which was a fundamental aspect of the birth of proletarian revolutions. In short, the mass strike “is nothing more than the universal form of the working class struggle, resulting from the present stage of capitalism’s development and its relations of production.” This "present stage" was capitalism’s final years of prosperity. The new historic circumstances accompanying the birth of the mass strike were: the development of imperialist conflicts and the threat of world war; the end of the period of gradual improvements in the conditions of life of the working class; the growing threat against the very existence of the class under capitalism. The mass strike is the product of a change in the economic conditions at a historic level. Today we know those conditions marked the end of capitalism’s period of ascendance and heralded capitalism’s decadence.
The great concentrations of proletarians in the advanced capitalist countries had acquired great experience with collective struggles, and their conditions of life and work were similar everywhere. In addition, as a result of economic development, the bourgeoisie was growing into a more concentrated class who more and more became identified with the state apparatus. Like the proletariat, the capitalists too had learned how to confront their class enemy. The new economic conditions made it more and more difficult for the working class to gain durable reforms at the level of production. In a similar way, the decomposition of bourgeois democracy made it more and more difficult for the proletariat to consolidate gains at the level of parliamentary activity. Therefore, the political and economic contexts of the mass strike were not the product of Russian absolutism, but rather of the growing decadence of bourgeois rule in every country. In the economic, social, and political spheres, capitalism had laid the foundations for the great class confrontations at a world level.
The goal of the union form of organization was to obtain reforms and betterments within the framework of capitalist life. Under decadent capitalism, this was more and more difficult to accomplish. In this period the proletariat does not engage in struggles with a perspective of gaining real improvements. The great demonstrations of today, the strikes of today gain nothing. As a result, the role of the unions to obtain economic improvement within capitalism has disappeared. But there are other revolutionary implications deriving from the dislocation of the unions by the mass strike:
The struggle needs to be joined to the reality in which it happens. It cannot be posed as a separate entity. Since the beginning of the last century the decadence of the system has dried up the extracapitalist markets. In this way capitalism’s insatiable need for growth has been severely blockaged. In turn, this has caused a constant crisis and constant social cataclysms -wars and unprecedented misery for humanity.
The period since 1968 expresses the permanent nature of capitalism’s crisis. It express the impossibility for the system to expand and the acceleration of imperialist antagonism, the consequences of which threaten the entire human civilization. Everywhere the State takes charge of the interests of the bourgeoisie and extends it repressive apparatus. It is confronted with a working class who, admittedly numerically weakened in relation to the rest of society since the 1900’s, is ever more concentrated, and whose conditions of existence are becoming shared in all countries at an unprecedented level. At the political level, the decomposition of bourgeois democracy is so evident that it can barely mystify its true function as a smokescreen for the terror of the capitalist state.
In which way do the objective conditions of the present class struggle correspond to the conditions of the mass strike? Its nature rests in the fact that the characteristics of the present period express the highest point reached by the contradictions of capitalism, starting in the 1900’s. The mass strikes of that period were the answer to the end of capitalist ascendance and the dawn of decadence. Taking into account the fact that these conditions today are chronic, we can conclude that what pushed toward the mass strike is today much stronger and much more wide-spread. The general consequences of the development of international capital which were at the root of the historic birth of the mass strike have continued to ripen since the beginning of the century.
What can we do to foster the development of the mass strike, the international self-organization of the proletariat, and its indispensible unity? Our contributions cannot be more than that: contributions of a conscious part of our class. We cannot do more, nor less.
One such contribution is the very critique of the mistakes which fetter self-organization and the deepening of consciousness. Even with the best intentions activism, base-unionism, leftism…all are part and parcel of the barriers that workers have to overcome to accomplish class autonomy. Another contribution is to encourage reflection and the clarification of the experience of the struggle. We can also aid in the re-appropriation of the memory of our struggles and their fundamental weapon: the mass strike
ALACANT 2010
Assembly
Indignant and Self-organized Workers “for a pro-worker, anti-capitalist 15M”
At the end of 2011 comrades of the Indignant and Self-organized Workers (“Take the Square” commission) proposed the idea to collaborate with various groups in favor of the workers’ assemblies. We made the proposal to TLP and addressed ourselves mainly to organization such as the CNT, CGT, and SO which had taken part in joint actions and theorized in favor of the workers’ assemblies. This is what we call “the extension of the assemblies movement”, a project which sponsored what its name suggests from the point of view of the exploited and going beyond party divisions. We put it in writing and made a first attempt at contact. At the time of the 29M strike a Critical Bloc (1) is formed, reflecting our idea about unifying initiatives in order to extend the movement of workers in the assemblies in a wide sense, and question the present situation globally. In the assemblies that were generated that day, a rough outline of how to continue to work was drafted. From this outline followed different orientations. Several supported self-management, others centered on the organization and the struggles by the workers. I took part in the second, which gave birth to several interesting proposals: a solidarity commission with the workers to take care of the work-places, a solidarity fund - which TIA (2) still keeps - protocols for the realization of assemblies after massive mobilizations - and many assemblies took place - protocols for how to respond to repression.
In the summer of 2012 TIA makes an attempt to re-start the Bloc through summer meetings centered on the debates taking place in the Carolinas Community Garden. The initial idea was to meet workers and militants to share experiences and see if activities would surge. This is how the first meeting took place, in which it did not matter at all which group any one participant belonged to. This dynamicchanges once a group who had not attended any meeting makes the proposal to take part in the day of struggle of September 26 within the framework of the national day of struggle organized by several organizations. This was the last act by this bloc-transformed into 'Space': the September 26 day of struggle. This day of struggle changed for me the meaning of what I understood to be the aim of the bloc: "the extension of the movement of the workers’ assemblies".
What happened in this day of struggle? We can analyze it in two parts, according to how the events were posed. On the one hand, there was the assembly. It was participatory, sometimes dispersed, as it often happens. We talked about many subjects but not of the fundamental issue: the workers’ means of struggle, without labels or party identification. It was respectful and at times emotional. It provided a sense of unity and posed the question of a collective reflection.
On the other hand, there was the demonstration. There were many slogans, many blocs separated from each other, a superficial ‘radicalism’ and the absence of common perspectives that go beyond the slogans, totally isolated from the few people in the street who looked on with strange gazes. The feeling was of a disconnect with reality and a lack of unity. In my opinion, the wide-ranging debates that took place before the two events were joined in a kind of consensus which only peddled a false unity. On the one hand there were people who posed the question of a contribution to the generation of consciousness, unity, and workers’ self-organization and who thought that the best place for this is the general assembly. For us, the movement is the autonomous movement of the proletariat, and nothing can change it or direct it other than itself. Obviously, this movement only comes to the forefront in small and short explosions, but this only reinforces the idea that the emancipation of the workers is either the workers’ own action, or it won’t happen. This is why we give priority to ‘horizontal’ spaces that have no labels and where we look for all that we can have in common and what we can pose in common, even though we are open to collaborate with comrades who belong to organizations with their own slogans and ideology.
However, those who defend the idea that it is the organizations of the ‘radical left’ who must unify because they represent the workers, want a common front with a minimum common program, yet they also want to preserve their differences (which are many) and peculiarities and even their own activities. It is not difficult to see who was in favor of the assembly and who for the demonstration, who wanted labels and who didn’t, and who valued a common, general, name with each any worker could identify with, and who was more interested in the particular labels, but not in the importance of a common name.
After all this, we need to pose what we want to do. We were wise in leaving the disputes for later and to postpone the assessment of the event. An assessment will necessarily imply a confrontation of the two tendencies which appeared and which are not likely to consent with each other eternally. However, a serious assessment needs an understanding of the reality in which we move and needs to answer a number of questions: why did the bloc’s conception change? How is it possible to move from posing the question of a space for reflection to a leftist posture within a day? How can we consider a success the fact that we had a night stroll with other 500 people? Certainly, the dynamic has changed. When the bloc developed the idea to extend the assembly movement, this was then a possibility because of the number of massive struggles taking place, and a certain tendency toward self-organization-i.e., the first assemblies of the 15 M, the first moments of the mobilization of the teachers…). But the situation has changed and the mobilizations have been first controlled by the unions and others, and then de-mobilized or taken into a dead-end. The extreme left sees this movement as its property, where they have to denounce the role of the ‘bad managers’ in order to create a pole of attraction toward their positions. From this perspective, the present mobilizations have a meaning. For us, THEY DON’T.
If the workers are not mobilized right now, it is because they know that they can’t get anything with these ‘leaders’ and these ‘struggles’, even though they know things have to change…but they do not know how. For us, this is a moment of collective reflection. We have to contribute toward helping the workers develop a sense of confidence and find the path toward their autonomous organization and their own direction of the future struggles. It is now the time to learn the lessons, be loyal to our class, and not abandon our class.
About one year ago something like the day of struggle of September 26 was inconceivable because the masses would have gone beyond it, since they would have not allowed any organization to take center stage. If today these organizations try to substitute themselves for the participation of the masses, it is precisely because the masses are not ready to mobilize at all. Without understanding this we cannot understand anything else, and we can only end up following the dynamic of activism, which has nothing to do with the real rhythm of the working class struggles. It is possible that some of us felt less lonely in these actions than if we were in our small groups, but the need for ‘company’ is not a political imperative, at least for a working class politics. What is indeed needed are coherence and honesty. Revolutionaries are not ‘lonely’. We are a part of a class that needs and can change the world. Outside of this we lack meaning and we become something else.
What are the conditions for the formation of a permanent collaboration amongst comrades of different groups? We need to understand two things:
I mean permanent collaboration, not an occasional one based on tactical questions.
I mean honest comrades with whom we have serious differences, but of whom we don’t doubt their commitment to the cause of the exploited.
Here, I will explain how, in my opinion, we can have a permanent space for meetings and discussion. Assuming the following premises:
That it be a space of debate, struggle, and meeting with comrades who may or may not be in other organizations, but who give priority to creating common organizational spaces for the working class.
That it be a space for assemblies, both in form and content. Not only is it organized as an assembly, but it also tries to transmit this model to the working class as the embryonic form of the future society.
That is be radically critical of the capitalist system and that it search for the way to transform reality to create a society capable of satisfying all human needs.
That it be a unitary space which searches for a workers’ unity that goes beyond borders, categories, sectors, and organizations. It is a space without labels.
That it be an internationalist space because workers unite as a world community who defends human interests. We belong to the same class, not a fatherland, flag, ideology, or organization.
I am aware that these premises do not exist today, and I have no pretensions of coming to an agreement on questions which each one of us considers fundamental. That is the false unity I referred to before. If I think that these positions are necessary and basic for the struggle of our class, it is obvious I cannot renounce them in favor of a ‘consensus’. When do I think will these conditions exist? When the very autonomous dynamic of the proletariat imposes them. Therefore, debating over them would be absurd. Until then, until the moment that history decided, we can only keep discussing all of the above and much more. I think that we cannot aspire to anything more or less than this in the present period.
V
I am adding some incomplete reflections in the context of the present situation, taking account of the recent texts, “The organization of the proletariat outside periods of open struggle” and “Analysis and reflection about the Alicante’s bloc”.
Draba
Notes
It is often said that the history of the class struggle in America for the last four decades, that is, since the late 1960’s, is the history of an almost uninterrupted wave of defeats and rollback. Indeed, looking across the Atlantic toward Europe, and south, and east, we would have to make the same conclusion. This is perhaps more spectacularly so in the case of Greece, where in the last year alone six general strikes have been called by the unions, yet not even this has stopped the onslaught of brutal austerity measures in that country. To come back to America, over the course of the last four decades the decline in the standard of living of the American worker has been relentless, quite brutal, and undeniable. In the course of the last four decades, the ruling class has imposed a series of very deep cuts and changes to the entire apparatus of exploitation needed to secure the reiteration of the process of capitalist production: from cuts to education and its increasing costs, to cuts to real wages, to the increase in the work week and the intensification of exploitation, to the erosion of employer-sponsored health care benefits, all the way down to the more recent practice of creating new tiers for new hires in which traditional defined benefit pensions are shifted to 401k-type schemes. The working class has often put up very intense struggles and it has also gone through somewhat lengthy periods of relative quiet, all of which we have written about in this press. However, its attempts at defending its living and working conditions, attempts at times very bold and courageous and carried out notwithstanding the threat of losing one’s job, have not succeeded, for the most part, in deterring the ruling class from proceeding with what have become ever more brutal, more frequent, and more frontal attacks. The frontal nature of the more recent attacks, and those to come, are without a doubt a reflection of the economic impasse in which the bourgeoisie finds itself.
Is it then correct to conclude that the working class has lost its battle against capitalism? Should we accept that we are at the point where the reversal of the balance of forces in favor of the working class is no longer possible? Are the struggles that the working class still engages in a sign of its waning, a reflection of a slow, but irreversible process toward all-out defeat? Does all of this mean that the working class is no longer the social force in society that has the potential and historic mission to destroy capitalist relations of exploitation and give birth to a communist world? Yet, as quiet as it's kept, the working class in the United States continues to wage struggles and there are some signs of reflection and strategizing in the willingness to fight for a younger generation of workers as this has become a subject of capital’s particularly vicious attacks. Despite the weakness and lack of confidence workers feel - which gives the unions a relatively free hand to run the struggles - workers don't exactly trust the unions either.
We do not think that the working class has exhausted its potential. We think that it is going through, and has for some time, a very difficult process of re-discovering its class identity and confidence, of understanding how to confront the class enemy on its own class terrain, and of transforming the lessons and defeats of the past into acquisitions that can be used as sign-posts for the struggles to come. We think that the most decisive struggles for the fate of humanity have not been waged yet, and that the working class is still at the center of history and is a fundamental actor in its development. But in order to have this conviction, we need a method of analysis and understanding. We need to place the struggles of the class in a wide historical setting and assess the balance of forces between the two major classes in society not on the basis of the number of struggles waged and not even in terms of any temporary victory, or painful defeat. A struggle can be massive and protracted without bringing to the class any fundamental theoretical, organizational gain and without helping the class to strengthen solidarity and class-identity, as in the recent examples from Greece. On the other hand, a struggle which on a strictly economic level does not bring even the least of temporary relief, can foster an important sense of self-identity and confidence, politically much more significant than a temporary economic victory - if any can still be obtained. As the economic crisis that started in 2007-2008 continues unabated, it is particularly important that the class continues to develop its struggles with a new understanding of what is at stake, and that its self-identity and confidence be restored.
From 1989 to 2003 the working class globally went through a protracted reflux in its consciousness and combativeness, the result of the campaigns about the ‘end of communism’, and ‘the end of history’ unleashed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The first signs of the return of the class struggle were seen in Austria and France starting in 2003, and in the U.S. these struggles were echoed in the New York City MTA (transport) strike of 2005. More struggles happened everywhere, with a significant increase in combativeness, and, most importantly, the emergence of intergenerational class solidarity. In particular, the MTA strike of 2005 was waged in support of the younger generation of workers, for whom the MTA bosses had proposed a new tier with a reduced benefits package. This went on until about the 2007 financial crisis, which, when it hit, created a momentary paralysis amongst workers at the point of production. In 2009 there were record lows of only 5 major work stoppages, after which there has been an uptick in the combativeness of the class, most notably with the mobilization of students and public sector workers in Madison, Wisconsin in 2011, which clearly linked itself to the movement of social protest going on in the Arab world. Soon after, the Verizon strike involved 45,000 workers and then in the same year we saw the movements of protest of Occupy Wall Street, borrowing methods of struggle of the working class through the formation of the General Assemblies, but also going beyond bread and butter demands, opening up a space for a wider questioning of capitalism, of humanity’s future under it. A big component of the context of the struggles in the US has been the election campaign, which had a dampening effect on the class struggle, and which also gave ammunition to the unions against the working class. The unions have made use of the union-busting posture of many Republicans and even some Democrats to rally the workers to their defense. This proved somewhat problematic to do, especially in the case of the Chicago teachers’ strike of last September, which saw a Democratic mayor pitted against the teachers union, a stance that threatened to abort the unions’ usual work of mobilizing public sector workers votes in favor of the Democratic candidate. Notwithstanding the deafening noise of the electoral campaign, disputes at the work place returned as early as the summer of 2012.
In New York City Con-Edison workers went on strike over changing pension plans for new hires. The union decided to call the strike, but when the company asked for one week’s notice, the unions refused, and Con-Edison locked out the workers. The whole campaign then turned to reinstating the workers who had been locked out, and the proposed changes to the contract receded in the background, until on the verge of a storm Governor Cuomo intervened by forcing Con-Ed to reinstate the workers. This tactic has been utilized in the past, particularly during the Verizon strike: the union went on strike because of stalled negotiations. Workers ultimately went back to work without a contract.
Attacks against the workers are being implemented even without contract negotiations. In some cases, step increases linked to longevity have been frozen. New budgets assume no raises for any number of years, when contracts for city workers already expired in some cases as long as four years ago. Retired workers are not being replaced. In New York State, a new tier for new hires at the Department of Education has been approved by the legislation of the state, without any contract negotiations. The issue becomes one of getting the workers back to work or re-starting the negotiations, rather than talking about the new contract per se. This is a strategy of the unions and the bourgeoisie to confront the older, more experienced workers who have shown on several occasions that the attacks against the young generation of workers only stimulate their willingness to struggle in the youngsters’ defense. It seems clear that the ruling class, at least where the workers are more greatly concentrated and experienced, consciously tries to avoid a direct confrontation with the existing workforce because it has learned that the older generation of workers is in a different mood than during the years of its reflux from 1989 to 2003.
This strategy has happened consistently enough to have become a pattern--whether it was a well thought out strategy at the beginning or whether the ruling class has learned from it. It started with General Motors about four years ago with the creation of two tiers for different pension and salary plans. After GM every company has tried to do the same thing. This situation does add the element of demoralization to workers who have struggled - the Lockheed strike, which also was going on during the summer, went on for a couple months, also over the creation of a new tier for the next generation of workers. The strike ended in a terrible defeat for the workers, with all major concessions won by the bosses, including the provision about the new tier. However, as it was apparent by the reactions of many Lockheed workers, workers are having a deeper reflection on the role of the unions. This time, the union could not brag about its outcomes.
While the Lockheed strike was going on, janitors in Houston also walked out, followed by a number of other janitors in several cities across the country. Their demands were around wages and working conditions, and their struggle was successful. But this was not at all thanks to the unions’ mobilization. Indeed, their demands, even though they were on the class terrain, were very modest: a wage increase to a little over $10 an hour is something that JPMorgan - who contracts out the janitors’ bosses - can afford, especially after four years of bad publicity! This little victory by the Houston janitors poses a larger question: what do the Lockheed workers think about seeing the janitors get a little bit while they've gotten nothing? Does it make them doubt their own strength or does it put union methods in question? It is a terrible thing to have to go back to work having lost a struggle for one's posterity; however, this has not succeeded in inflicting a sense of defeat amongst the working class and it has not destroyed the sense of solidarity people feel. In fact, while this strategy has been successful in the past, it is now resulting not as much in a sense of demoralization but in resentment about this strategy - the working class is starting to see that this is what is becoming the pattern. There's an attempt to recuperate the sense of solidarity that the bourgeoisie has tried to attack. As we wrote before, this intergenerational solidarity is something that appeared clearly already in 2005 with the MTA workers’ strike. This is an important dynamic that has the potential for an interesting development in the struggles to come.
That the workers doubt their own strength may not be all that negative after all, if they are able to turn that sense of doubt in a deeper reflection on how to struggle more effectively. The reason the unions make such a deafening noise in cases of small victories is not simply to refurbish their own image, but specifically to try and sap the incipient questioning of union tactics among the larger, more experienced sectors of the working class. The strategy is to isolate and wear down the larger workforces while showcasing small victories in less important and insecure sectors of the working class such as the janitors.
Also in the summer we saw the Palermo pizza workers strike over wages, benefits, and condition s of work. The company fired more than 80 workers on pretense of a presumed immigration check by ICE at the same time as the unions were running a unionization campaign. The company was ultimately forced by ICE to reinstate the fired workers. This strike showed the mood of defiance the working class is getting in. Even immigrant workers without papers showed they did not fear to struggle. However, we should be cautious and not conclude from this that the working class is prepared to defend itself against the attacks of the repressive apparatus of the ruling class. ICE - and Palermo - took a step back in the face of the angry complaints by the union, who pointed out that federal intrusion into illegal immigration - a vital source of cheap labor for small and medium-size companies like Palermo - risked sabotaging the drive to unionize immigrant workers, an important sector of the working class which the unions across the country have been courting in an attempt to shore up the dwindling numbers of their membership. Again, this instance was showcased as a union victory.
Another component of the ruling class’ strategy is, in struggles where there are no gains to be won, long battles of attrition lock the workers in desperation and demoralization. This has been the case of the Crystal Sugar workers strike, run by the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union, which is part of the AFL-CIO and which also represents the Hostess workers, 15,000 of whom have just recently been fired by the company after being locked out. 1,300 Crystal Sugar workers were locked out after a majority of its workers rejected a contract proposal three consecutive times. The company hired replacement workers for the sugar beet season, and shows no intention of wanting to re-hire the fired workers, while the AFL-CIO is launching a boycott campaign to 'force Crystal Sugar to rehire its workers'. In both instances, Crystal Sugar and Hostess, the lockout followed stalled negotiations and workers were drawn into a protracted battle of attrition. This is an example of how the unions mystify the workers on several accounts:
Unions may talk about unity. During the Con-Ed strike in New York City, all the major unions came out. Yet, at the Con-Ed pickets the union had posted a banner clearly reading: “At this time we are not addressing any other union’s grievances”, while workers belonging to a different union stood across the streets with signs that expressed their solidarity with the Con-Ed workers. In a similar way, in the case of the janitors’ strike where the unions really conducted a national campaign of support, demonstrating with other workers, engaging in rolling strikes city by city, the Lockheed workers were totally isolated and not a word was said about them. At the end, concessions are made behind the backs of the workers, not enshrined in the contracts.
It is clear that the working class has not given up its fight. Its combative mood under the most difficult historical conditions since the counterrevolution - a ferocious economic crisis, the threat of an environmental catastrophe, ever bloodier and more dangerous wars, the decomposition of the social fabric - can lay the foundations for even more combative struggles tomorrow. The most fundamental dynamic that surfaces in all the struggles the working class in America has undertaken since 2005 with the MTA workers strike is an incipient development of class identity and solidarity which is apparent in the working class’ open willingness to fight on behalf of the next generation of workers. Its potential to develop further is linked to a series of factors: the bourgeoisie’s ability to manipulate and mystify the workers, the dynamic of the class struggle world -wide, the aggravation of the crisis. The stakes are very high, but the decisive battles are yet to be fought.
The bourgeoisie is always very keen on spreading the idea among the working class that the class struggle does not pay, even that it is over. Indeed, if we were to base ourselves on the statistics, trends, academic studies and the propaganda of the ruling class, we would be very hard placed in making an adequate and dispassionate assessment of where the class struggle is now, and worse placed yet in tracing its perspective. This is because the bourgeoisie has an obvious interest in trying to destroy the working class sense of self-confidence and discredit the class’ own theory of history and its revolutionary project. Our rulers dream of a proletariat without a vision. For the class itself and its revolutionary minorities, though, the whole question about how to assess the class struggle, its history, its weaknesses, strengths, and perspectives is a very serious business that cannot be understood through statistics alone, by ignoring the historic context or though academic studies the aim of which is not to understand reality, but rather to mystify it. The class and its revolutionary minorities must study and understand as carefully and objectively as possible the development of the class struggles in order to be able to see the underlying dynamics and tendencies, because their task is to help to orientate, to give a general line of march to their movement, to foster reflection and generate an understanding of how to move forward in the struggles to come.
The importance for the working class to develop and strengthen its own class identity, its confidence, and its solidarity cannot be overstated. As the first exploited class in history that also has the potential to take humanity to the next level of historical development, the working class is in a unique and contradictory historical situation. On one hand, capitalism itself has developed the productivity of labor necessary to make abundance - the freedom from necessity and the realm of communism - possible. On the other hand, the unleashing of society’s productive potential at all levels, including, but not limited to, the economic level, cannot be concretized until capitalist relations of production are destroyed. As an exploited class, the proletariat is constantly subjected to the pressure of bourgeois ideology and propaganda about the superiority of the capitalist system. This includes the mystification of how wealth and value are created through the separation of the laborer from the means of production, the specialization of production, the piecemeal fashion in which production takes place, and also, very importantly, the expropriation of the producer’s ability to make decisions about how to produce, for which goals, and how to distribute production to the full benefit of all of society’s members. In the chaos generated by the anarchic way capitalism produces - each capitalist entity blindly setting in motion tremendous human resources as it furiously seeks profit in an ever-shrinking market- the worker experiences the entire process of production as an incomprehensible, alien and alienating activity. However, because it is only the proletariat that can produce value which capital transforms into profit, the worker inevitably becomes the target and victim of ferocious attacks against his own conditions of life and work. The relations of capitalist production inevitably force the capitalist to attack, and the worker to defend himself. It is during this struggle that the worker can become aware of being part of a social class, not just an alienated member of society. Historically, it is this confrontation against the exploitation by capital that has helped the class forge its own identity, understand the need for solidarity, and become attracted to the theory of communism.
Ana
November 22 2012
On the face of it, if it was at all possible to weigh up the phenomena of current wars, the recent Israeli-Hamas conflict around the Gaza Strip wouldn't be the worst slaughter taking place. British-backed Rwandan 'rebels' have killed, raped and brutalised their way deep into the so-called Democratic Republic of Congo, itself a wider field for massacres, rape, child-soldiers and terror which, when not directly orchestrated by them, are allowed to happen by the big powers while the United Nations watches. Further north in Africa, across the Sahel, again the widespread killings of civilians, rape, child-soldiers, big power manoeuvres and rivalries, along with the abject barbarity of religious fundamentalism. In Syria, over the same days as the recent Israeli operation "Pillar of Defence" took place, many more were killed and wounded within an ongoing general slaughterhouse. But the conflict between Israel and Palestine has a particular resonance for revolutionaries, which is also glimpsed by wider layers of the working class, because it shows the permanent expression of militarisation and war which is the hallmark of a decayed and further decaying social system. Whatever its specifics, strategies and rationales - and there are certainly plenty of those - the Israeli-Palestine conflict is first and foremost the expression of a decomposing capitalism that holds an enormous threat for the working class and the whole of humanity. This particular conflict, increasingly along with the whole geopolitical situation of the Middle East, represents the tendency towards greater militarism, imperialist war, instability and chaos. Its absurdity, intractability and irrationality perfectly sums up the future that this crisis-ridden system offers to us and the generations to follow. There can be no peace here, no meaningful negotiations, and any possible Palestinian two-state solution, if it ever sees the light of day, would only be a contributing factor to deeper instability and war. The Middle East shows how, even in the face of chaos, the nations and cliques are inevitably driven to growing tensions, rivalries and military competition planet. Every major nation has become a military monster and all of the national state creations in decadence are created in their own image, where every aspiring clique or 'national liberation' force are also monstrous expressions of the universal decay. Israel and the 'Palestinian question' shows this in spades.
The Department of Political Science at Oslo University, in collaboration with the Peace Research Institute, has concluded in 2009, through the person of its Professor Havard Hegre that, in relation to war "the number of conflicts is falling" and "we expect this fall to continue"[1]. It's the imperialist version of economic crisis denial and the putting forward of an everlasting more or less peaceful capitalism. It's pure fiction! We've already mentioned the wars in Africa and the wider Middle East above, wars that show every sign of extending and deepening. To these we can add the war in Libya, which the good professor above categorises, along with the war in Syria, as "democratisation processes", as if that was some sort of excuse and in whose view, like many bourgeois academics, capitalism can maintain equilibrium, become more humane and even progress towards eternal life. To the wars above we can add the continuing war and bombings in Iraq which are more and more threatening to link up and slot in with the wider Syrian war, or the 'Kurdish Question' which is a war in itself and a potential war across several countries, again threatening to link in with the Syrian war. Then there's the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the de facto declaration of war by the western powers against a Russian and Chinese backed Iran (in a line-up similar to Syria); and in this vein we mustn't forget the myriad tensions and rivalries around and emanating from an aggressive and voracious Chinese imperialism. And we must add, for future reference, the fragile and militarised imperialist fault-lines of the Balkans, the Caucasus and the ex-Russian republics, Africa (Somalia, the Sahel, Congo). Everywhere we look we see greater tendencies not towards peace, rationality and coherence, but to incoherence, fragmentation, separatist centrifugal tendencies that, in the relatively economically weaker areas of the world - a growing, expanding area of the globe - show a slide into permanent militarisation and war. This is the direct consequence of an economic system that, for all its former glories, is now staggering about on its last legs.
The Middle East is made up of economically incoherent territories where ethnic and religious divisions are manipulated and manoeuvred by all the major imperialisms. In the early 1900s, as the capitalist system had covered the globe and there was no room for any real, new expanding nations, countries like Iraq, Yemen, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories were all creations, or rather abortions, of imperialism in general and specifically Britain and France[2] which used the arbitrarily imposed borders of these newly created countries to divide-and-rule and defend their own imperialist interests. Later, the US used the terrorist factions of Zionism in order to help dislodge the British, and later on, during the Cold War, Russia used the whole region as its one of its stamping grounds in order to confront the USA. The Israeli state, like all the Arab states mentioned above, which, incidentally, have killed more Palestinians than the Israelis, is a permanent expression of militarism and war which, as the economic crisis deepens, will become more and more unstable. Within this process, not just the Palestinians but the Israelis and the masses of the Arab populations become hostages and pawns in the unfolding chaos and contradictions of imperialism, which has been expressed more widely in a situation of more or less permanent war from around 1914.
When capitalism was a vibrant, progressive and expanding system wars and divisions were still part of it, but overall the system tended towards a certain coherence at the level of the construction and unification of the nation state, as all elements, religious, ethnic, etc., tended to merge for the greater good of a more effective process of capitalist accumulation. This wasn't because of the 'moral superiority' of capitalism but emanated from its fundamental need for successful exploitation and expansion. In decadence however we see that the formation of new states does not lead to the integration of different groups in society into a higher capitalist unit but more often results in ethnic cleansing, the reinforcement of racial, religious and ethnic divisions, the expulsion of different groups or their ghettoisation. We've already mentioned above the Balkans, the Caucasus, the ex-Russian republics - and we could add the Indian sub-continent - regions where many of these 'nations' were created for and by imperialist interests and whose very existence is founded on ethnic and religious tensions, centrifugal forces and the defence of every man for himself. Exactly the same is true for the 'nations' of the Middle East: Jordan, Syria, etc., and particularly Israel whose specificities and existence as a fortress state very precisely reflects the general decay of capitalism. Many of these nations are not viable economic units and mostly rely on a bigger imperialist shark or sharks and become a focus for greater tensions. They express not a positive move forward but rather a real fetter on the productive forces.
But does this mean that around the Middle East there are no rationales in this equation, no strategic and economic motives at work; oil production and distribution for example, electoral motives, tactical considerations and so on? No, there are bundles of them. They come thick and fast in the Middle East but the point is that they are all entirely secondary to the overwhelming tendency towards breakdown. In fact they can only contribute to the latter within the absurdity of the defence of borders, arbitrary divisions and of the framework of a profound, insurmountable impasse only worsened by the deepening economic crisis. This infernal spiral towards destruction won't stop and cannot be attenuated or negotiated away. Whatever the bourgeoisie does to try to 'regulate' the situation only rends the situation still more fragile, and this is exemplified in the Middle East where we first saw the clearest signs of the weakening of the world cop, the USA, as its reach is stretched and compromised, opening the door to still more centrifugal tendencies. This phenomenon of a society being torn apart in a series of wars with different ethnic, religious and racial groups fighting each other with hidden imperialist interests behind is a typical expression of a decadent society - a repetition of what both the Roman Empire and feudal Europe saw in their epochs of decline.
If it was President Netanyahu's intention to strengthen his political position by launching operation "Pillar of Defence" in mid-November once the US elections were out of the way and before the Israeli elections next January then, like much manoeuvring in the Middle East, it's gone badly wrong. Hamas, which had been losing credibility within the Gaza Strip for several years now, has been enormously strengthened by the outcome of the 8-day war. The brutality of the Israeli response comprising of tank fire, huge naval guns, attack helicopters and fighter jets into the narrow, densely populated strip has backfired politically. Hamas, which along with its more fundamentalist 'allies' has been firing rockets into Israel for months from the same densely populated areas, has been strengthened by signing a truce with Israel and through further talks aimed at 'facilitating' the movement of goods and people in and out of the Strip. In return Hamas has said that it will stop the rocket attacks on Israel and to this end has also strengthened itself against more militant groups like Islamic Jihad. Hamas has also strengthened itself against the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas on the West Bank where the stock of Hamas has risen to the detriment of the former. This accounts from the warning this week from Abbas to Europe and the US (The Guardian, 28.11.12) that some crumb of statehood (i.e. giving the Palestinians some sort of Vatican-like status within the UN) has to be given to the PA or Hamas will be further strengthened. To the disappointment of the US and the rest of the Middle East Quartet (special envoy Tony Blair), Hamas has become more included in the whole process and its isolation is broken with support coming not just from Iran but also from Qatar, Tunisia, Egypt (officials from all three countries have visited Gaza recently) and others. British Foreign Secretary Hague welcomed the Egyptian-brokered truce as "an important step to a lasting peace" . No such thing of course but it shows how Hamas and the smaller groups have to be taken into account now by all those that were trying to isolate it. The US administration knew that an Israeli invasion of Gaza would be a disaster given the geopolitical issues, held its nose and rapidly gave the Egyptian/Hamas ceasefire deal its full seal of approval.
Another 'winner' in this whole shaky process has been the Muslim Brotherhood leader and Egyptian president, Mohamed Mursi, who, with his spy chief Mohamed Shehata (echoes of ex-president Murabak and his spy chief Omar Suleiman) met with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and the leader of Islamic Jihad, Ramadam Shalah (Christian Science Monitor, November 22) to do the deal which Hillary Clinton had to personally welcome on behalf of the administration. Only a few months ago, the US was trying to undermine Mursi and, just to underline the volatility and fragility of the whole region, the US is again denouncing Mursi and his Muslim Brotherhood for taking on Murabak-type dictatorial powers just days after his ceasefire 'victory'[3].
Further factors from this imperialist cesspit are that Israel would like Egypt to take more responsibility for Hamas, and according to that view the West Bank and Gaza - at either ends of Israel - could be further isolated one from the other if Egypt's scrutiny over Gaza could be reinforced. Mursi has rebuffed such moves and doesn't want Israel to dump the problem of Gaza onto Egypt. While there have been tensions and a certain distancing between Hamas and their previous backers Iran (a vacuum that Qatar stepped into) over the war in Syria, there appears to be something of a re-warming given the perceived role that Iranian weapons (particularly anti-tank weapons) provided to Hamas had in dissuading an Israeli ground assault on Gaza. Not surprisingly there are splits in Hamas regarding its relations with Iran which is a further complicating factor. There's suspicion at least from Saudi Arabia towards the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt as there is in the United Arab Emirates, a major investor in Egypt. Then there is the ambiguous attitude of the Brotherhood towards Iran, typical of the ever-more tangled relationships in the Middle East. The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood is a further unpredictable factor expressed in the elements above and its increasing activity in Jordan is contributing to making this country more and more unstable. All this, along with major questions over Iran and Syria, makes for further problems for US imperialism and its "Light Footprint" strategy for the Middle East (as it 'rebalances' or 'pivots' towards its greater priority of the Asia/Pacific and the increasing threat that China poses to its dominance in this region).
Whereas in 2008/9, at the time of the last Israeli incursion into Gaza, there was a relative 'calm' on the borders with Syria and Lebanon, while Turkey was still friendly with Israel, Mubarak could be relied upon in Egypt and US/Iranian tensions weren't as sharp. Now the situation is much more unpredictable with many of the nations playing their own game and deepening the tendencies toward each for themselves.
The leaders of the stateless Palestinian bourgeoisie, Fatah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas, have nothing to offer their population except increasing misery and martyrdom. They are nothing but an expression of the despair and hatred whose aim is to kill as many Israeli civilians as possible. They can offer no constructive alternative but, similar to the war lords of Africa whose child armies kill, rape and plunder - another phenomenon of decomposing capitalism - they can only push desperate young Palestinians into revenge and rages of destruction for their empty nationalist projects. The Israeli state feeds the spiral of terror and violence with daily indignities, collective punishments, land-grabs, random shootings and blowing up civilians who happen to be near the Palestinian gangsters.
Despite repression and the permanent atmosphere of war, the Middle East has seen many signs of the social protest against the crisis of capitalism and leaders on all sides: over the last couple of years we've seen social protest in Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and more recently Jordan; and these movements have mainly been directed against fundamental questions such a price rises in food, energy, etc., as well as all the regimes that impose and police these measures. Such movements, while not revolutionary in themselves, have to be welcomed by the working class because they show that, even in these more militarised and brutal regimes, even with the hatreds and enmities that emanate from the ruling cliques, there is still the will and ability to fight back. While many workers of these regions have taken part in the protests they have largely done so as individuals and not as a distinct, independent force. The nearest expression of this is that of the working class in Egypt, where the organised working class was, and remains, a real factor in the class struggle. But the reality of the working class in the areas around Israel is that it is too weak and will find a way forward out of the ambient barbarism very difficult without the moves of their brothers in the more central capitalist nations.
These social movements in the region around Israel involving the working class are important but, while they can destabilise the bourgeoisie or cause it problems, they are not strong enough to continue to push the ruling class back - nor could they be due to their own limitations. As a cry of the oppressed and exploited the social movements throughout the Middle East were part of an international wave of protests that continues to reverberate. But here the contradiction is that the weakness of that positive movement has left something of a vacuum that imperialism has poured into, leading, in part, to the wars in Libya and Syria. It has also contributed to reinforcing the wider destabilisation of the regimes which in turn have tended to further weaken the USA's control over the region and promote more centrifugal, independent tendencies among the local bourgeoisies. We don't expect an upward, linear movement of force against capitalism even with the stronger development of class struggle. The region of the Middle East will be particularly difficult for the exploited and oppressed that live there and there will be very hard times for the class struggle overall with imperialism being an ever-present threat and danger. Only significant developments of the class struggle in the capitalist centres can push imperialism back and begin to question the fragmentation and war that it imposes.
Baboon (this article was contributed by a sympathiser of the ICC)
29.11.12
[2]See the three parts of "Notes on the History of Conflict in the Middle East" in International Reviews nos. 115, 117 and 118.
[3]The British bourgeoisie and its intelligence agencies have been more supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood. They have supported it historically in the 1940s and 50s and there have been reports of its direct support to the MB as a fighting force in Syria over the last year. Like Murabak and his spy chief Suleiman, whom Britain backed to the hilt, we can imagine similar support to Mursi and his vicious crew. A press release dated March 2012, for the updated version of Mark Curtis' book: Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam, states: "Foreign Office officials have recently held various meetings with the MB, which have been unreported in the British media. The policy is one of "insuring" Britain in the event of the Brotherhood playing a key role in Egypt's transition and protecting an £11 billion investment by BP. Freedom of Information requests by the author for more details on these meetings have been refused by the F.O. on the grounds of 'public interest'".
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/50/united-states
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/32/decomposition
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1358/sandy-hook-massacre
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/spain
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-struggle
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/128/historic-course
[7] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/the-future-of-war-is-looking-bleak-8344462.html
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/57/israel
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/58/palestine
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/gaza-bombardment-israel