BMW’s decision to break up the Rover Group is a massive blow to the working class, with some 9,000 job losses expected at the Longbridge plant and up to 50,000 jobs to be lost throughout the region. Since BMW bought Rover in 1994 it has pumped in £3bn into the group, but the losses have only mounted, totalling £647m in 1998. In response the bosses announced more investment, measures to improve productivity and 2,500 redundancies. BMW also managed to squeeze a £1.5m pledge of support from the government, while the unions bent over backwards to successfully push through the deal. Sir Ken Jackson, of the AEEU, said at the time, "This excellent result puts Rover on course for success and the workforce on course for stability" and Roger Lyons, of the MSF, said "This is a vote of confidence in the future of the car industry and shows that partnership is now the central focus of British industrial relations." (BBC Online, 11/12/98). Far from defending the interests of the workers, the unions again revealed their real role as the servants of the bosses and the interests of capitalism.

Last year, Rover’s losses continued Rover’s losses continued to mount, up to a staggering £1m a day, and another 9,000 jobs were axed as further improvements in productivity were made. The European Union has blocked the government’s support package and sales have dropped 7%, hit by the high value of the pound. The owners of BMW began to get concerned as the ‘English Patient’ dragged down the group’s profits. They held secret talks to off-load Rover onto the Alchemy group. The Labour government must have been aware of these plans. Its anger and shock at the sale are a complete bluff. It knew the writing was on the wall for Rover and has stood aside, saying that it can’t stand in the way of ‘global forces’.

The problems at Rover are common to the whole of the manufacturing industry, symptoms of the broader world economic crisis and increased competition on the world market. Ford have announced 1,500 losses at Dagenham, which itself is earmarked for closure, as is the Halewood plant in Merseyside. Honda plan to halve car production at its Swindon plant. In the steel sector, Corus (the former British Steel) is considering further plant closures and massive job losses. Up to 6,000 jobs are under threat at Port Talbot and Llanwern. At Belfast’s Harland and Wolff yard almost 1,800 workers are working on redundan workers are working on redundancy notices due to expire in June. All this comes on top of the programme of pit closures in the ‘90s that saw 160,000 jobs destroyed and entire communities devastated.

Neither nationalism nor nationalisation

On hearing of the sale of Rover, the unions changed their tune with regards to BMW. The same union leaders, who during the last two years have eagerly organised over 11,500 redundancies, are now saying, "We are not going to keel over and accept 50,000 job losses that this sale could lead to" (Tony Woodley of MSF, BBC Online, 20/3/00). Union leaders and MPs have called for a nationalistic consumer boycott of BMW cars. This hides the fact that BMW workers in Germany are also under constant attack and have exactly the same interests as workers everywhere. The German engineering unions have just accepted a meagre two year pay deal of 3% for 2000 and 2.1% for 2001, leading one German economist to say that, "the employers were the clear winners" (Financial Times, 29/3/00). A boycott of BMW is not the way workers can resist the attacks upon them.

The leftists and the union shop stewards are more sophisticated. They reject the idea of a ated. They reject the idea of a boycott, and have taken a more ‘radical’ stance, calling for state intervention to rescue Rover, "We want Rover back in public ownership. We want re-nationalisation. BMW has still got massive assets in this country...The government should seize them now, without compensation" (Socialist Worker, 25/3/00). Although the SWP admit that re-nationalisation is no answer to over-production, they say that, "it could begin to challenge the power of the corporations which wreck workers’ lives everywhere" (ibid.). While it is true that the capitalist state intervenes in the economy every day, to think that state ownership could guarantee jobs and improve working conditions is mistaken. Workers in the NHS and education face increasing exploitation and are leaving in their thousands. When British Leyland was nationalised in 1975 54,000 workers were sacked. So much for job security!

Class struggle is the only way to defend ourselves

The union organised demonstration on 1st April attracted 80,000 people from all over the country, who are quite rightly angry and worried for the future of the region. But these demonstrations, like the one against the pit-closures in 1992, won’t push back then 1992, won’t push back the attacks on the working class. They are tightly controlled by the unions whose role is to keep discontent within the union prison. The leftist demands for the union leaders to call mass strikes will fall on deaf ears. They know this. When the anger of the workers reaches a certain point then strikes may well take place. But the unions will make sure the workers remain isolated in their own sector in demoralising, drawn out, dispersed actions as has happened on the London Underground and Connex. The role of the unions is to sabotage the class struggle, not to lead it!

Calls for factory occupations from the leftists are a trap as well. They are raised in order to attract workers who are losing faith in the unions and looking for an alternative to the Labour Party. The role of the leftists today is to divert discontent back into campaigns to put pressure on the union leaders and the government. The SWP also uses these campaigns to bolster the defence of capitalist democracy (see article on the LSA p.2). The SWP, and the other leftist outfits, are not socialists and represent the left-wing of capitalism and are, like the unions, the enemies of the working class.

Behind the leftist calls for nationalisation is the idea that it’s a stthe idea that it’s a step towards socialism. This is a lie. Socialism is the only perspective for the working class and humanity. But calls for nationalisation only tie the working class into the framework of capitalism and the nation.

The working class must begin to discuss amongst itself the best ways to take control of its struggles, to recognise its ‘false friends’ for what they are and reject them. Through the daily defence of basic living and working conditions, even if these struggles do not escape union control, workers can begin to regain their confidence, forge their identity as a social force, and gain political experience. Then the balance of class forces can begin to swing in their favour. This will take some time and there are no simple solutions. The working class is not defeated, and levels of class combativity are slowly but surely recovering internationally. The capitalist economic crisis will continue to worsen and the future holds many more attacks like those seen at Rover, but also the perspective of wider class conflicts.

WR (1/4/00)

In WR 231 and IR 100 we published a sticker distributed in Moscow by a group of internationalists opposing the war in Chechnya. In this issue we are publishing an article written by other proletarian elements elsewhere in Russia. Although we don’t agree with all its formulations, we warmly welcome this text as further proof that, despite the Russian bourgeoisie’s efforts to flatten all criticism of its bloody imperialist adventure in the Caucasus under a steamroller of nationalist hysteria, the voices of working class internationalism continue to make themselves heard. The comrades in Russia have asked us to ‘re-translate’ their own hand-written English translation and we apologise in advance for any misreadings and mistakes, especially where Russian names are concerned.

New imperialist war and proletarian class politics

The war in Chechnya is a war of aggression by Russian imperialism. Its goals are to re-establish Russian control over the Northern Caucasus with its links to oil reserves, and, by creating nationalist hysteria, to draw the Russian proletariat into the trap of national unity and so strengthen the bourgeois state in Russia. ourgeois state in Russia.

The terroristic, bandit-like actions of the Russian army and airforce have destroyed Chechen villages, murdered tens of thousands and forced hundreds of thousands of men and women to flee their homes. All attempts to portray these actions as being a response to terrorism and the Moscow explosions are false. They can only increase contempt for these cowardly gangsters and especially for the rapacious, patriotic Russian government which doesn’t even have the courage to rob openly without concocting some provocation. It’s enough to ask who profits from the explosions in Moscow, Buinaksk and Volgodonsk to know who their author was. How can nationalist terrorists profit from blowing up the houses of poor people in Russia? For the Russian bourgeoisie, on the other hand, huge profit can be made because they provide an ideal pretext for the new war in Chechnya. The atmosphere of nationalist panic removed all obstacles to unleashing the war in Chechnya.

It is a mistake to think the war was unleashed only by the Yeltsin regime, by the clique in the Kremlin, an idea common not only in the bourgeois opposition but also among people who see themselves as marxists (see the article by A Lokh, ‘Small victorious war’ in Workers’ous war’ in Workers’ Democracy no. 11, the paper of the Trotskyist Revolutionary Workers’ Party, linked to the Militant tendency in Britain). The main motivation for the war comes not just from the Yeltsin regime, although this clique does make large dividends from the war; it corresponds to the interests of the whole Russian bourgeoisie. This is illustrated by the fact that in contrast to the 1994-6 war, today all serious factions of the Russian bourgeoisie support the war – from the liberals to the fascists, and including the ‘Communists’ who are ever-faithful to the bourgeois fatherland. Even those like the bloc around Moscow’s mayor Lushkov are just annoyed by the fact that the ruling clique has outdone them in patriotic phrasemongering. They merely criticise this or that detail of the war, and they propose as an alternative a more ‘civilised’ version of the war, while calling for new repression against immigrants from Chechnya and the North Caucasus, against workers and small traders from elsewhere in the CIS.

The Russian bourgeoisie has economic and political interests in the war:

- to control the oil pipelines that pass through the North Caucasus, transporting oil from the world’s biggest oil reserves in the 6;s biggest oil reserves in the Caspian Sea and the South Caucasus; to preserve these pipelines from the encroachments of foreign competition;

- to create an orgy of nationalist hysteria, to lure workers away from the path of the class struggle and onto the path of national, inter-class unity, under the patronage of a state which pretends to be above classes; to use the war to sharpen repression against the workers’ movement and strengthen the bourgeois state, its army and police.

The class interests of the Russian bourgeoisie, dressed up as national interests, are at the origins of the war. And as long as the bourgeoisie stays in power, as long as the proletarians, united by the world party of proletarian revolution, have not overthrown capitalism, destroyed the bourgeois state, and established the international dictatorship of the proletariat, wars will be inevitable, and millions will continue to die for oil profits and the fat salaries of secret police generals.

Unlike the war of 1994-96, when there was in Chechnya a partisan movement of the petty bourgeois and proletarian masses, to a large extent uncontrolled by the Chechen bourgeoisie, in this new war only professional soldiers are taking paional soldiers are taking part. The lower classes of Chechen society are not participating in the war. The main reason for this is that bourgeois national liberation movements have lost their progressive character. At the end of the 20th century they are unable to provide any kind of sustainable improvement in the conditions of the masses; they are also incapable of creating independent, progressive bourgeois states. In the 1994-6 war, the lower classes of Chechnya attained an apparent victory – de facto independence for Chechnya. But all the real fruits of this victory went to the upper classes of Chechnya; independence turned out to be in their interests alone. The disillusionment of the lower classes with Chechen independence, at a time when there is no proletarian class movement in the world able to point the way out of this nationalist dead-end and towards the path of proletarian revolution, has led to demoralisation and apathy.

The position proletarian revolutionaries should take towards the Chechen war is the only possible one for revolutionaries towards inter-imperialist conflicts since 1914: revolutionary defeatism on both sides, the call to turn the imperialist war into a civil war, for Russian and Chechen soldiers to tuian and Chechen soldiers to turn their guns on their oppressors. Since the main enemy of the proletariat is the bourgeoisie of its own country, and since in imperialist conflicts the defeat of the strongest imperialism is more beneficial for the struggle of the proletariat, Russian proletarian revolutionaries must view the defeat of the Russian army as a lesser evil compared to its victory.

An appeal to turn the imperialist war into a civil war does not mean aiming at immediate success. The beginning of an imperialist war is always accompanied by a nationalist frenzy. But the longer the war lasts, the stronger will be the feeling of sobering up to all the tricks about the ‘national idea’; the greater will be the abyss between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The guns that replace butter won’t feed the hungry. The bourgeois state, whether it has Yeltsin, Zuganov, Putin or Primakov at its head is and will remain a servant of the masters and enemies of the oppressed. The current change from liberal policies to national-patriotic policies does not and cannot possibly give the proletariat anything but more bloodshed, tears and deprivation. With every new day of war all this will only get worse, provoking hatred, indignation and determination in the proletariat. 1914 was followed by 1917. The agwas followed by 1917. The aggressive war of predatory bourgeois gangs will be replaced by the only just and holy war – the war of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie.

Capitalism brings war just like clouds bring thunderstorms. War is the final means for settling scores between the different bourgeois gangs that call themselves states, and for controlling the class on whose labour and deprivation the capitalist system is based – the proletariat. Only by organising itself into an independent class power, hostile towards all factions of the bourgeoisie, only by dethroning the power of capital and establishing its own worldwide dictatorship can the proletariat finally put an end to wars and their cause – capitalism. Capitalism is a criminal system that has destroyed tens of millions of people in the world wars and local wars of the 20th century, a system that hides its unstoppable, monstrous greed behind the sugar coated facade of ‘democracy’ and ‘humanism’.

The Labour government’s decision to intervene in Sierra Leone marks the largest mobilisation of British forces since the Gulf war in 1991. Under the cover of its ‘ethical foreign policy’, and in the name of ‘morality’, New Labour promise to rescue the innocent population from the terror of the marauding gangs high on drugs. The truth is that British imperialism’s role is not that of peace maker, but of actively fuelling the war in Sierra Leone. It is also flexing its muscles to show its imperialist rivals that it’s a force to be reckoned with on the international stage and in future conflicts.

Sierra Leone gained independence from Britain in 1961 and was relatively stable until the present civil war broke out in 1991. The African ‘peace-keeping’ force Ecomog, largely made up of Nigerian troops, failed to stop the war and in 1997 the Kabbah government was overthrown by the army general Koroma with the support of the RUF. The UN imposed an arms embargo but with the help of British mercenaries working for Sandline, who broke the arms embargo, the Nigerian forces drove the RUF from Freetown in 1998, committing many atrocities themselves. The Britishrocities themselves. The British government was ‘cleared’ of any involvement in the Sandline affair and forced Sandline to end their contracts with Kabbah.

But the facts show that British imperialism itself took up the baton and pumped military aid into the country to back its local pawn Kabbah, in order to maintain a firm foothold in this strategically important region of West Africa.

"More money, more aid per head of population and more political action has been directed at the former British colony than any other African country. The Labour Government has committed more than £65m since March 1998" (BBC Online, 11/5/00).

After the UN dropped its embargo on arms supplies to Kabbah’s forces, "Britain shipped £10m worth of weapons to Freetown last year. They included machine-guns with 2 million rounds of ammunition, more than 2,000 mortars, and 7,500 rifles" (Guardian, 25/5/00).

There have also been reports that the Marines and SAS have been training the Sierra Leone Army since 1998. This military aid strengthened the Kabbah regime to the point where its former enemies in the army rejoined its ranks and in July 1999its ranks and in July 1999, faced with the scaling down of the Nigerian forces, Kabbah signed a peace agreement with the RUF which brought them into the government. The Nigerian forces were decreased and the UN took control of the disarmament of the RUF.

Faced with the humiliating collapse of the UN mission, the British government decided once again to directly intervene and take advantage of this great opportunity. Tony Blair said that, "Whilst the days of being a global policeman are long gone, it does not mean you can’t show leadership and do what you can to help" (Guardian, 16/5/00).

The rapid deployment of the British troops and naval back-up has been seen as a great success for British imperialism. While certain parts of the British media have warned of the threat of ‘mission creep’, and that the politicians are being pushed around by the military commanders on the ground in Sierra Leone, the government was not surprised by the turn of events. Its ability to rapidly send advance troops by air and a naval task force of 4 ships, including an aircraft carrier, is an example of how Britain is trying to ‘punch above its weight’ and show its rivals that it is still a force to be reckoned with.

The government also intend this intervention to be a long term commitment with the aim being nothing short of the complete reconstruction of the state in Sierra Leone. Robin Cook has made it clear that, "Britain will not abandon its commitment to Sierra Leone" (Telegraph, 9/5/00).

In effect this means that as well as the military aid, "administratively, Britons have been seconded to most major government ministries in an attempt to establish a functioning state...Key positions are held by the British under a bureaucratic form of re-colonisation" (Telegraph, 21/5/00).

The poor need food, Britain gives them guns

British imperialism has once again made use of the ideology of ‘humanitarianism’ to justify its latest intervention. The scenes of mutilated children are indeed shocking but it is rarely explained in the media that many of the pro-government forces that Britain is backing have carried out and continue to carry out such atrocities. There has also been much use made of the ‘child soldiers’ which Britain says must be taken out of the conflict. This hypocrisy was fully exposed when it was revealed that ted when it was revealed that the British government had decided to give 10,000 rifles to the Sierra Leone Army at the end of May. The fact that these weapons have already fallen into the hands of child soldiers was brushed aside by British officials. Sierra Leone is one of the poorest countries on the planet with an adult life expectancy rate of just 36 years. This explains why there are an estimated 15,000 child soldiers in Sierra Leone – a large percentage of the adult population is already dead by the age of 40!

A French film director who went to Sierra Leone to make a film about the link between charity and politics was so sickened by the UN’s and Britain’s complicity in the atrocities carried out in the civil war that he documented this instead! The reviewer of this film said, "What passes for the UN in this part of the world...doesn’t just allow cold blooded murder, but actively takes part" (‘New World Order (Somewhere in Africa)’, Guardian, 25/5/00).

Imperialist rivalries in West Africa

For the moment those major powers with vested interests in West Africa - the US and France - have kept a certain distance from the chaos in Sierra Leone. But thiaos in Sierra Leone. But this doesn’t mean they aren’t watching the situation carefully. The US has sent its envoy Jesse Jackson to the region; in contrast to Britain’s vilification of the rebels, he compared the RUF leader Foday Sankoh to Nelson Mandela. The RUF has close links with Liberia which it uses as a conduit for the sale of diamonds in exchange for weapons. The president of Liberia, Charles Taylor, is supported by the US and the French, so they presumably aren’t too happy that Sankoh is being held by the British.

The US does have one other card to play. The BBC have reported that, "Because of the successful experience of the Nigerian-led Ecomog forces the US is discussing the possibility of financing the return of Nigerian battalions to the country to take on the RUF again." (BBC Online, 10/5/00). This would cause problems for the British who have muscled in on the terrain once held by the Nigerians.

The bourgeois media have always portrayed the civil war in Sierra Leone as a conflict about who controls the fabulous prize of the country’s diamond mines. The diamond trade is indeed a lucrative trade for whoever controls it, but it is not the basic cause of the war. When we covered the civil war in Liberia, Sierd the civil war in Liberia, Sierra Leone’s neighbour, in 1996 we pointed out that, "The war in Liberia, like the wars and civil conflicts ravaging Somalia, Sudan, Algeria, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola, Mozambique and elsewhere is a striking expression of the decomposition of capitalist society…The economic disaster then accelerates the social collapse, as different factions battle over diminishing spoils, and the whole of society right down to its children is sucked into a vortex of looting and gang massacres" (WR 195, June ’96).

The British bourgeoisie want us to believe that by propping up the ‘democratic’ government in Sierra Leone it can hold out against this tide, the historical collapse of the capitalist system. In reality Britain and the other major imperialist powers are doing the opposite, exacerbating the social collapse in Africa by arming its local clients and literally giving them ammunition to fight more wars.

Trevor 3/6/00.

In the USA, the country always cited as an example of unstoppable growth and of an economy which has almost ‘wiped out unemployment’, 18% of the population, around 36 million people, live below the poverty line. Insecure, part-time and underpaid jobs have become the norm and there has been a continuous fall in workers’ living standards for ten years. In Britain, the industrial heart of the economy is more and more diseased, as can be seen with the crises at Rover, Ford and Harland and Wolff. All the official blather about how the ‘Internet economy’ will create loads of alternative jobs can’t change this.

Obviously, our rulers don’t forget to supplement their claims about the ‘end of the crisis’ with a mention of the ‘inequalities’ that still unfortunately weigh on society, stemming perhaps from the excesses of ‘liberalism’ or ‘globalisation’, or from the wars and dictatorships that seem to be so hard to get rid of, especially in the world’s poorest regions, like Sierra Leone. But not to wor like Sierra Leone. But not to worry: we are regularly told that the solution to all this lies in the citizens of the world calling for more democracy, more ethical foreign policies, more restrictions on the World Trade Organisation, the cancellation of third world debt, etc etc. Amid all these noble causes the workers’ struggle against lay-offs, wage cuts or speed-ups is mentioned – if it is mentioned – as just one protest among many.

In this way, the ruling class, its state, its media, its humanitarian ideologues, do all they can to hide the central contradiction in this society, i.e. the fundamental conflict between capital and labour, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The struggle of the working class is replaced by a ‘citizens’ movement’ in which all different classes and interests are mixed up. The struggle against capitalism and its state is replaced by a form of protest that supports the state, that politely asks it to be more democratic in the face of the world’s injustices.

But there is a reason why the bourgeoisie spends so much time telling us that the class war is over, insisting that the working class has disappeared, or calling on it to dilute itself in the inter-classist mass of the ‘citizens’. The reason is that the ruling class is well aware that the greatest threat to the capt the greatest threat to the capitalist order is still posed by the working class when it struggles for its own interests.

Despite all the drivel about the ‘new economy’, ‘post-industrial society’, and the rest, not only does the working class still exist, but it remains the class which produces the essential of all social wealth. It’s the exploitation of workers’ labour power that generates capital. And since capitalism is in a state of advanced decay, it can only keep itself going by constantly driving down the living and working conditions of the working class. The absolutely inescapable contradiction between the survival of capitalism and the interests of the working class can only get deeper.

This contradiction is being expressed today through a gradual development of workers’ struggles. Even if these movements are still dispersed, even if they are normally controlled and defeated by the unions and the political forces of the left, they correspond to a growing discontent. In Germany, in Britain, in France, we have seen a number of such struggles. In the USA, the demonstrations by the New York transit workers in November-December 1999 (see Internationalism no. 111, the ICC’s paper in the USA) was a typical expression of the strengths and weaknesses of the working class today: on the one hand, a r today: on the one hand, a real militancy, a refusal to accept sacrifices without any reaction, a will to gather together and discuss the needs and methods of the struggle, and a certain distrust towards union manoeuvres; on the other hand, a lack of self-confidence, a lack of determination in overcoming the union obstacle, in coming out in open struggle and trying to organise its extension to other sectors.

The mobilisations in Norway at the beginning of May saw 88,000 workers in transport, building, food, hotels and ports come out on strike to defend wage levels as the left-wing government attacked social budgets. In this case, the bourgeoisie was well able to control the rising discontent, particularly through a division between a union hierarchy which signed an agreement with the government and a union base which, at first, challenged it, only to sign a new version slightly less unfavourable to the workers, but still a real attack. Nevertheless, what was significant about this movement is that, despite its much-vaunted oil reserves, the Norwegian bourgeoisie is still forced to attack the working class head on, provoking a real militancy in the class and the biggest strike movement since 1986.

The workers’ struggles we are seeing today are still a long way from forming a significant barrier to the attacks of the bourgeoisie. The failurs of the bourgeoisie. The failure of the Rover and Ford workers to react on their own class terrain to the threat of devastating factory closures underlines the current difficulties confronting the working class. But workers’ struggles are like the old mole; they prepare the ground for the outbreak of much more massive movements in the future. What’s at stake in the development of the class struggle is the capacity of the working class not only to defend itself, but also to become conscious of the force it represents in society, of its historic responsibility to overthrow capitalism and begin society anew.

The death in April of Tony Cliff, leading figure in the Socialist Workers Party, and, before that, the International Socialists (1962-76) and the Socialist Review Group (1950-62), was greeted with expressions of solidarity and criticism from his fellow Trotskyists. For the SWP it was an opportunity to declare that "his unique intellectual contribution was to describe, in the late 1940s, the Soviet Union as state capitalist, and therefore imperialist" (Paul Foot in the Guardian 11/4/00). In his autobiography Cliff says that he thought about the question for two months and then "One early morning I jumped out of bed" and told his wife "‘Russia is not a workers’ state but state capitalist’".

The class nature of the Russian state

Revolutionaries (a category which does not include Cliff) have developed an understanding of the nature of the state in Russia as an integral part of their defence of working class interests. As early as 1918 the Russian communist left were warning of the dangers of state capitalism. In the 1930s, while the degenerating Trotskyists used the idea of a ‘proletarian’ sof a ‘proletarian’ state as grounds for the unconditional defence of the USSR, other revolutionaries wrestled seriously with this fundamental issue. For the German and Dutch Left there was state capitalism, but a tendency to put into question the proletarian nature of the 1917 revolution. For the Treint group in France there was state capitalism, but they were going toward the idea that it was a new form of system, neither proletarian nor bourgeois. The comrades of the Italian Left were more cautious. They saw the state in Russia as proletarian, because of its origins in the revolution of 1917, but increasingly becoming part of international capitalism - as it was recognised by the US, and "Russia’s entry into the League of Nations immediately poses the question of Russia’s participation in one of the imperialist blocs for the next war" (Bilan no 2, December 1933). While the Italian Left grappled with the Russian question they were quite clear on the rejection of any defence of the USSR.

Russia’s participation in the Second World War settled the question. The ex-Trotskyists of the Revolutionare Kommunisten Deutschlands (RKD), for example, dropped their defence of the USSR and, influenced by Ciliga’s book The Russian Enigma, defined Russia as state capital defined Russia as state capitalist. G Munis broke from Trotskyism over the defence of any imperialist camp and denounced Russia as state capitalist. The majority of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left broke from "the great lie of the ‘proletarian nature’ of the Russian state and to show it for what it is, to reveal its counter-revolutionary, capitalist and imperialist nature and function. It is enough to note that the goal of production remains the extraction of surplus value, to affirm the capitalist character of the economy" (Bulletin International de Discussion no 6, June 1944).

Trotskyism’s defence of imperialist war

While revolutionaries in the Second World War took an internationalist position against both ‘democratic’ and ‘fascist’ camps, the Trotskyist movement defended Allied imperialism. In defending the imperialisms of the democracies and Stalinist Russia (and some Trotskyists in France and Belgium sided with German imperialism) they became part of capitalism’s political apparatus. Just as Social Democracy went over to capitalism during the First World War, so it was with the Trotskyists and the Second. Their activity ever since has been determined by the needs of the bourgeoisie.

This, then, is the context of Cliff’s ‘ground-breaking’ work in the late 1940s. Cliff arrived in Britain in September 1946. He joined the Revolutionary Communist Party, a Trotskyist organisation made up of the merger of a number of groups that had all shown their loyalty to British imperialism. They had all, for example, called for a Labour government during the war, a period when Labour was a major constituent of the coalition government, with a particular commitment to the repression of the struggles of the working class. Cliff and his various groups always defended Trotskyism’s participation in the war "It was not possible to simply call for the defeat of one’s ruling class ... It was necessary to defend democracy against fascism" (Socialist Review May 1995).

Cliff had come to Britain from Palestine via Paris. It was here that he had been briefed by the Trotskyist Fourth International on the latest discussions in the RCP. A majority, who had previously been ardent defenders of Russian imperialism, had come round to the idea that Russia was state capitalist. Cliff, as an orthodox defender of the ‘degenerated workers’ state’ idea apparently said "The Old Man [Trotsky] iot;The Old Man [Trotsky] is not yet cold in his grave and already they want to renege on his teachings. ... I will destroy them!" (Charlie van Gelderen in Socialist Outlook, May 2000). By some time in 1947 Cliff was saying that Russia was ‘state capitalist’ and the leadership of the RCP that it was a ‘Bonapartist workers state.’

The fact that these Trotskyists swapped positions is certainly a curiosity. It did not change the nature of their politics. Those who defended the ‘state capitalist’ line were expelled or resigned from the RCP. The RCP dissolved itself in 1949 to enter the Labour Party. The first meeting of Cliff’s Socialist Review Group was in 1950. It was also in the Labour Party. Before the 1951 General Election the membership was directed to get known "as the most energetic and anti-Tory Labour Party workers" (document quoted in a 1981 SWP ‘official’ history). Cliff’s groups remained part of the Labour Party until at least 1967. They have never subsequently deviated from their support for the Labour Party - all, of course, in the name of ‘anti-Toryism’.

The Trotskyist view of the Labour government of 1945-51 is ‘critical’ of its austerity regime, its re of its austerity regime, its repression and its constant military mobilisations in the interests of British imperialism. However, the nationalisation of several major industries is always seen as cause for celebration. In fact the intervention of the capitalist state in the face of the ravages of a economic crisis is the dominant tendency within decadent capitalism. Far from being something for workers to cheer, it is integral to the bourgeoisie’s organisation of its system. Regardless of the different Trotskyist ‘theories’ about Russia, they all defend state capitalism at home.

Danger of the SWP

The political history of Cliff’s tendency is little different from the rest of British Trotskyism. Throughout the Vietnam war it supported North Vietnamese capitalism, backed by Russian imperialism. In contrast to other leftists the IS supported Labour when it sent troops to Northern Ireland in 1969. In Afghanistan it defended the US-backed guerrillas against the Russian-backed government. In the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88, in which more than half a million people died, the SWP took the side of Iran. However, they switched to defence of Iraqi capitalism during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Last year in ex-Yugoslavia they defended Serbian repression of ded Serbian repression of Kosovo. Yet, in the recent election for London mayor they called for a vote for Ken Livingstone, the keenest supporter for NATO’s bombing of Serbia. The fact that the SWP appears to be inconsistent in bestowing its favours is not important. Its basic loyalty will always be to British capitalism, particularly as a left cover for the Labour Party.

The one thing that marks the SWP out is its size; it’s far and away the biggest Trotskyist group in Britain. A lot of the reason for this can be put down to the SWP’s ‘theory’ of ‘state capitalism.’ During the whole period of the Cold War they were the most anti-Stalinist organisation, which fitted in with the dominant anti-Russian ideology in the West. With the collapse of the Russian-dominated eastern bloc they had their alibi waiting.

One of the reasons that the SWP is such a pernicious organisation is that it talks about ‘state capitalism’ - a key understanding of the working class - while providing a cover for the capitalist state. Tony Cliff has died, but, unfortunately, the SWP’s influence lives on.

Car