The surprise retreat of the Israeli army from southern Lebanon, which it had been occupying since March 1978, has modified the balance of imperialist forces in the Middle East.

The evolution of the balance of forces

For Israel, this retreat was unavoidable, even though it had actually been planned for 7 July. The occupation of southern Lebanon, which is strategically much less significant than the Golan Heights, had become a thorn in the side for the Israeli state. For months now the Israeli army had been under constant pressure from the pro-Iranian Shi’ite Hizbollah forces. This situation was aggravated by the increasing disintegration of the Christian-dominated Southern Lebanese Army, which was Israel’s only ally in the region. But at the same time the Israeli government has had to deal with the growing unpopularity of this war, which had more and more been seen as a dirty war and a total dead-end (1). This feeling is now quite widespread in the Israeli population, which has become more and more fed up with the useless sacrifice of its youth in almost daily ambushes (the situation is not unlike the involvement of the US in Vietnam 2ent of the US in Vietnam 25 years ago).

On the other hand, Israel’s retreat offers it a number of advantages. It will undoubtedly weaken the position of the Syrian bourgeoisie, which, a couple of weeks before losing its Supreme Leader Hafez-el-Assad to a heart attack, had already lost one of its principal cards in the Lebanon. This is because it had been Syria’s intention to use the Hizbollah guerrilla struggle against the Israeli army in southern Lebanon as a means of putting pressure on the forthcoming Israel-Syria talks about the Golan Heights.

Today, it’s Hizbollah which has the image of the great victor and ‘liberator’ of the populations of southern Lebanon, which it will now rule over in competition with the pro-Syrian Amal party. Freed from its confrontation with Israel and strengthened by its ‘victory’, Hizbollah may well start posing problems for its Syrian protector. In the longer term, Syria’s occupation of Lebanon could be put in question.

Thus, Israel’s retreat from the Lebanon is not the expression of any ‘new desire for peace’ on the part of this state. In capitalism, ‘acts of peace’ are simply a means by which the bourgeoisie defans by which the bourgeoisie defends its imperialist interests and prepares itself for new wars. Thus at the same moment that the Israeli army was withdrawing from Lebanon, the Hebrew state was hardening its stance towards the Palestinians. Israel’s refusal to free Palestinian prisoners has led to riots and disorders on the West Bank and the Gaza strip, reminiscent of the Intifada. This has given Israel the opportunity to suspend negotiations with Arafat’s ‘Palestinian Authority’ at a time when the talks were already getting bogged down over the status of Jerusalem and the question of Palestinian refugees, since Israel had refused to make any more concessions.

But Israel doesn’t have a monopoly on imperialist ambition and duplicity in this region. The French bourgeoisie is also up to its neck in it. Thus even before the decision to withdraw Israeli troops from Lebanon, the deterioration of the situation had obliged the UN Security Council to almost double the numbers of its FINUL force on the Israel-Syria border from 4500 to 8000. The redeployment of this force, which up to now has been made up of 9 contingents from countries of minor importance (except for France and Italy) expresses France’s aim to regain a real foothold in the Middle East. Not only will France now provide the biggwill France now provide the biggest portion of the new troops (increasing its contribution from 250 to 2000 men), it will also take most of FINUL’s positions of command. This strategy is fully in line with France’s efforts to return in force to the Middle East after being virtually ejected from the region ten years ago, when its ally Aoun was booted out of the Lebanon. Chirac also confirmed France’s desire to reassert its traditional influence over Lebanon and Syria (which were part of the French protectorate in the inter-war period) when he was the only leader of an important western state to attend Assad’s funeral. France is thus affirming itself as the direct imperialist rival to Uncle Sam in the Middle East.

British imperialism has long had an interest in this part of the world: Palestine after all was a British ‘protectorate’ and both in 1948, in Israel’s war of independence, and 1956, in the Suez crisis, Britain clashed with the US in attempting to defend its traditional role in the area. But it is also in competition with France in this region, which is one of the reasons why it generally aligns itself with the US over Middle East policy. For the moment Britain is maintaining a very quiet presence in the ‘peace process’, generally acting as Washington’s go-g as Washington’s go-between. But this does not mean it has renounced all efforts to have an independent influence in the current negotiations, as witness Robin Cook’s controversial tour of the area soon after the Blair government was elected.

As for the USA, its ‘peace policy’ is no less based on its own imperialist interests. What it is trying to enforce is a ‘Pax Americana’ which will allow it to pull all the regional protagonists under its umbrella, at a time when its hegemony over the Middle East is being questioned more and more openly, as has its overall world leadership since the disappearance of the imperialist blocs at the beginning of the 90s. This is why the US has been trying to re-launch the ‘peace process’ between Israel and the Palestinians and to take the initiative in the negotiations. This is a step towards restoring its control over Israeli policy, a process which began with the election of Barak instead of the less docile Netanyahu last year, despite the fragility of the new governing team and all the squabbling in the Knesset.

The USA has also been trying to renew its dialogue with Iran, via its support for the most ‘reformist’ factions of the Iranian bourgeoisie. The Americans know thatgeoisie. The Americans know that they have to move fast because they dispose of a reduced margin of manoeuvre in the region. This is why the White House is trying to profit from Syria’s current situation of fragility and weakness and increase the pressure on it, in the first place by re-launching the ‘peace process’ between Israel and the Palestinian micro-state. For Washington, the urgency is all the greater in that the victory of Hizbollah’s ‘fighting forces’ could cast discredit on the ‘moderate’ faction led by Arafat, and increase the popularity, in all the Arab countries, of cliques who are in favour of armed struggle against Israel. Madeleine Albright’s trip to the Middle East has been followed by an ‘official invitation’ to Arafat to come to Washington along with emissaries of Israel. At the same time, in the wake of the failure of Clinton’s talks with representatives of Hafez-el-Hassad in March last year, the US is getting ready to renew negotiations on the Golan with the heir to the Syrian leadership, Bachar-el-Hassad, as soon as he is invested.

The situation is as explosive as ever

In this context, future negotiations and promises of peace are just a snare. Today Israel and its most intransigay Israel and its most intransigent enemy, Hizbollah, which represents the most fanatical wing of pro-Iranian Muslim fundamentalism, are now facing each other directly. The only buffer is provided by the UN forces, and UN General Secretary Kofi Annan has expressed loud and clear his very justified concern that they will serve as a "punch ball" to be struck from all sides. The situation is guaranteed to sharpen the rivalries between all the local imperialist powers (Israel, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Egypt), with the bigger imperialist powers lurking in the background. Despite all the hypocritical speeches, this explosive region of the globe is not heading towards peace but towards further and more dangerous imperialist conflicts.

CBF´

(1) We should remember some of the massacres that resulted from previous ‘punitive expeditions’ by Israel in the Lebanon: Operation ‘Justice Done’ in July 1993, 132 deaths; Operation ‘Grapes of Wrath’ in April 1996, 175 deaths and 350 wounded.

The 58 young Chinese found dead in the back of a lorry at Dover are among 300 illegal immigrants found dead in similar circumstances world wide in the last two years. Fourteen others are known, by the forged documents they carried, to have been heading for Britain. These horrific deaths have stimulated politicians to decry the evil gangs who traffic in human beings, with scant regard for human life. What hypocrisy! For most of this year, both Labour government and Tory opposition, particularly Jack Straw, William Hague and Ann Widdecombe, have been competing to be toughest on ‘bogus asylum seekers’. So virulent has this campaign been that Nick Griffin of the openly racist British National Party, noted "government ministers play the race card in far cruder terms than we would ever use".

Suddenly Blair and co have noticed that people fleeing war, repression or poverty are victims and not just ‘bogus’ or ‘beggars’. However, they do not want anyone to recognise that they are victims of capitalism in decomposition, but put all the blame on the gangs who transport them. But most of all their hypocrisy is shown by the fact that they are still toughening up the measures to keep them out of the country.

Government attacks on refugees

The government has tightened up border controls since it came into power 3 years ago. Resources are put into detecting illegals at Kent ports, and X-ray detectors are proposed; lorry drivers are fined £2,000 for every one detected on board; increased policing of the Eurostar has been announced. Those who do get in and claim asylum are getting worse and worse treatment. No longer can they get income support, but a sum worth only 70% of this, some of which is in vouchers. They are being dispersed around the country, deprived of the necessary translation and community support, in appalling conditions in buildings identified as housing refugees, making them a sitting target for racist attacks. Applications are being processed more quickly; only one appeal is now allowed instead of two; and detention is being used to ensure that those denied asylum really do get kicked out of the country as quickly as possible. Both Tory and Labour are agreed that these ‘bogus’ asylum seekers should be put in detention centres to hold men, women and children - in other words, concentration camps.

It is no accident that immigration controls are being tightened up at this time as all the miser at this time as all the misery that drives people to flee their homes is worsening across the globe. The economic crisis leaves millions with no adequate means to support themselves - from Eastern Europe, following the collapse of the Russian bloc, to the Asian ‘tigers’ so badly hit in 1997 and 1998, to Africa where huge areas are simply left to rot. War and genocide is destroying the Balkans (ex-Yugoslavia) and large parts of Africa. These are the circumstances that led to an exponential increase in illegal immigrants being discovered at British ports from 61 in 1991, to 661 in 1996, to 16,000 last year (The Sunday Times, 25.6.00). Since the beginning of the twentieth century Britain, like all other great powers, has always responded to an increase in refugees by increasing border controls. The first immigration law was brought in 1905 to keep out ‘aliens’ fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe. In 1938 new controls were brought in to keep out Jews and anyone else fleeing Nazi Germany. Jack Straw’s 1999 Asylum and Immigration Act simply follows this great British tradition. Clearly the state and the members of the government do not care one jot for the lives of refugees and others whose lives are being destroyed by capitalism, whatever outcry it makes when refugees die trying to get into the country.

Governments have not always been keen to keep immigrants out. In the 1950s they were encouraged to come here from the Commonwealth, particularly the Caribbean, to provide cheap labour for the post-war reconstruction. The difference between government policy then and now is not a question of left or right, racism or anti-racism, but quite simply the needs of national capital. When it needs labour, immigrants are allowed in; when it is in crisis, when there are huge numbers of refugees abroad and growing unemployment at home, they are a ‘menace’ to be controlled if not kept out at all costs.

Fairness and humanitarianism simply do not come into the government’s calculations. Any appeal to the government on these grounds or according to the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees simply covers this brutal reality of capitalism.

Labour and Tories use ‘asylum seekers’

Before the 58 people were found dead ‘asylum seekers’ had provided both government and opposition with a scapegoat for the problems faced by British capital. In a campaign vigorously supported by the tabloid press, immigrants have all become ‘bogus asylum seekers’, w45;bogus asylum seekers’, who have been blamed for inner city lawlessness because some are forced into begging; and for the soaring cost of supporting them which has risen ... to £900million, a tiny sum compared to that spent by Britain on imperialist adventures abroad. Finding a scapegoat is extremely important at the present time as the crisis is leading to greatly increased attacks on the working class, with massive redundancies as in the steel and car industries, and increased pressure on those at work (see ‘The reality of economic attacks’ on page 2).

The inevitable result of this campaign has been the doubling of serious and often murderous racist attacks, randomly targetting anyone who looks ‘foreign’. It is difficult to believe that our ruling class, with its spin doctors and focus groups to predict and manage the response to every change in propaganda and policy, did not expect and count on this increase in attacks. It is certainly something the government will gain from.

The increase in racist attacks, the increased activity of the far right, openly racist organisations, like the BNP, which are legitimised by government attacks on asylum seekers, also provides a cover for the government. For those not convinced by the scapegoating t convinced by the scapegoating of refugees and immigrants, another scapegoat is provided, the far right and racism. In the end, while the Labour government has played a decisive part in whipping up the racism, it gains from the involvement of left Labour MPs and its more leftist supporters in anti-racist campaigns. This was true in the 1970s with the growth of the National Front and the Anti-Nazi League. Similarly, Mitterand gained from the success of Le Pen in France in the 1980s.

Left cover for the government

The demonstration to ‘defend asylum seekers’ on 24th June was a clear example of the way the left and ‘anti-racist’ campaigns provide a left cover for the anti-immigration policies of the Labour government. First of all it counted the Labour MP, Tony Benn, as one of its organisers, alongside Socialist Worker and ‘civil rights’ and immigrant organisations. Similarly, the Asylum Rights Campaign meeting on 29th June announced Diane Abbott, another Labour MP, as its chair. This is followed up with a range of excuses that are constantly made for government attacks: "New Labour is bowing down to the Tories and stepping up its attacks on refugees" (Socialist Worker 17.6.00); "New Labour no doubt set out to make ‘old fashioned’ racism against blacks, Asians and others a thing of the past.." (Socialist Review June 2000) or "...a New Labour team that has learned nothing from the failures of past Labour governments." (Socialist Outlook June 2000). The reality is that the class that developed Machiavellianism does not choose well-meaning bunglers to run its state, but cynical manipulators who knew exactly what they were doing when they whipped up racism with the campaign against ‘bogus asylum seekers’. Just as the Trotskyist organisations which cynically told us to vote Labour ‘with no illusions’ three years ago knew exactly what sort of government they were supporting.

The slogans on the recent demonstration made no effort to challenge the government campaign’s division between ‘asylum seekers’ and ‘economic migrants’ but, instead, focussed exclusively on the issue of ‘asylum seekers’ and the Geneva Convention.

In other words, they fostered illusions in the British ‘democratic’ state and its Labour government.

For as long as capitalism exists people will be forced to migrate, to flee the imperialist conflagrations or to leave the areas devastated by the worst ravages of the economic crisis. At the same time the ruling class will use the deaths if its victims to strengthen repression and border controls. Such is the old-fashioned hypocrisy of ‘New’ Labour.

Alex

It seems that the crisis is over. At least that’s what the bourgeoisie and its media are telling us. Economic growth is charting an unlimited upward course and unemployment is about to be completely done away with. The ruling class, in short, has overcome the contradictions of its system and put an end to 30 years of crisis.

This happy outcome, we are told, is all down to a totally new phenomenon: the "new economy". The technology of the Internet and its generalised use by enterprises and individuals are creating a "technological revolution" comparable in scope to the industrial revolution of the 18th century. The explosion of the Net and all that goes with it (in particular the extremely rapid circulation of information and money around the world) is playing a similar role to that played by the railways in the 19th century; it can even be compared to the invention of the steam engine. As a result, the proletariat should rejoice and have confidence in the bright future that capitalism offers us.

Of course, all this is a vast lie. The bourgeoisie can talk to itself all it likes about how the Internet is a technical breakthrough on the level of the railways, but it won’t do away with the crisis. This is for the simple reason that it can in no way remove the real cause of the crisis: the overproduction of commodities and the growing difficulty in finding adequate outlets for them. The railways were only the source of a leap forward in the expansion of capitalism to the extent that they were one of the main instruments for the conquest of new markets in a period when the capitalist mode of production had not yet invaded the entire planet. Today capital has been a world system for a very long time and the markets are glutted, ie it is harder and harder to realise the surplus value extorted from wage labour.

For the last 30 years the open crisis has been wiping out whole swathes of what the bourgeoisie calls "the real economy", notably in the manufacturing industries, and has cast millions of workers onto the streets all over the world. This crisis can’t be explained by talking about some technological deficit. On the contrary it is the result of the fact that there is too much technology, too many commodities, too many productive forces for the relationuctive forces for the relations of capitalist production which have become too narrow to contain them.

A speculative bubble which is just one more expression of the crisis

To see through the fraud of the "new economy", you only have to look at the totally irrational flight into speculation that it has given rise to. Over the last two or three years, the explosion of new stock market shares specialising in "dot.com" projects, like those in NASDAQ in New York, has been presented as the proof that the "new economy" is about to replace the old. In fact, all this is just another addition to the huge speculative bubble which has nothing to do with real economic activity, and whose very existence is a classic expression of the crisis. The delirious stock exchange investment in dot.com enterprises of the last period is now already resulting in huge losses, which shows that all the talk about the new economy is just hot air. The fact that huge masses of finance capital are leaving the "old" economy, ie the one that actually produces means of production and consumption, and are flying towards companies that produce nothing and which exist for the sole purpose of speculation, is a striking confirmation of the impasse that capitaliion of the impasse that capitalism has reached. The billions of dollars invested in this sector represent no real social wealth and are artificially inflated; they also regularly go up in smoke, through "mini-crashes" of the kind we saw in the spring, when doubts begin to lay hold of the "new" investors.

All the different phenomena of the speculative bubble are simply expressions of the crisis, of the difficulty capitalists face in finding profitable investment opportunities in the sphere of production. The capital that is invested in all the dot.com enterprises is not really creating a "new economy" in the sense of a new process of capital accumulation with an enlarged production of commodities and with new markets to absorb them. All this investment is totally unproductive and seeks only to cream off surplus value that has already been created.

Behind the "new economy", new attacks on the working class

Certainly the Internet helps to circulate capital very quickly; certainly, for many enterprises taken in isolation, it can lead to a gain in productivity at the level of administration and distribution. But what it brings at this level is not very different from the el is not very different from the computerisation of enterprises in the 1980s, which resulted in thousands of lay-offs.

In this sense, the Internet is just a weapon in the intensification of the trade war in which each capital is caught up in a frenzied race, not to be first to grab new markets but to get its claws on its rivals’ markets. It’s as instruments of commerce, especially in the area of advertising and marketing, that the "new technologies" are making the bourgeoisie’s saliva flow. In the bitter trade war between the different capitals, he who is quickest to take control of the virtual shop-windows of the Web is he who has the best chance of eliminating his competitors.

In decadent capitalism technological progress only serves to aggravate overproduction and make the system’s contradictions even more explosive. This has been recognised by the bourgeoisie itself through the mouth of the boss of Cisco, a company that produces Internet equipment: he was boasting in the press of having suppressed 3000 jobs and said that companies that didn’t follow suit were bound to disappear.

The myth of the "new economy" is not only fuelled by the bourgeoisie’s need to by the bourgeoisie’s need to reassure itself about the good health of its system. It is also part of a discourse directed at the working class. What the bourgeoisie wants us to believe is that the price we have to pay for the "new economy" is the generalisation of flexibility, increasingly precarious conditions of employment, and lower and lower wages. In other words, in order to enter the promised land of prosperity, the working class will have to accept a profound deterioration in its living and working conditions. Above all it must give up fighting on its own class terrain, it must admit that there is no point trying to resist the logic of capitalist exploitation, because all that is just a rear-guard struggle that belongs to the obsolete world of the "old economy". And all this is accompanied by an insidious, permanent propaganda about the so-called "disappearance of the working class". With nauseating cheek the bourgeoisie even uses images of Marx and Lenin to concoct adverts extolling the glories of the "Internet revolution" - a revolution in which it’s no longer labour that produces wealth, but a stock-market casino that is accessible to all in a world without workers…

No! If anything is obsolete today, it’s certainly not labour: it’s capital, tnot labour: it’s capital, this capitalist system in utter decomposition, which is subjecting the whole of humanity to more and more poverty and barbarism. The future belongs to labour, which is the only producer of wealth and material goods. The future belongs to the class which works and whose struggle is the only force that can lead to the definitive overthrow of the domination of capital.

PE

The EU observer mission sent to watch the election in Zimbabwe were not happy about the "climate of fear" and that the "Zanu-PF leaders seemed to sanction the use of violence and intimidation". However, as the Movement for Democratic Change, lead by Morgan Tsvangirai, won 57 seats, despite being only able to safely campaign in 25 of the 120 at stake, political parties in Europe declared their satisfaction. In Britain, Labour, Tory and Liberal Democrat all appreciated the work of Tsvangirai, a leading trade unionist often called a ‘British puppet’ by Zanu-PF. Such accusations are based on the reality that he was in constant contact with the British government throughout the campaign, and all British coverage of the Zimbabwe election campaign was devoted to the denunciation of violence and the demonisation of Mugabe.

Looked at from the point of view of the working class revolutionaries have three essential points to make.

1. Zanu-PF has always been a force for capitalism and against the working class. Back in the early 80s, when everyone from Thatcher to the SWP was praising Mugabe, the ICC showed that Mugabe and the Zanu-PF government was installed with the backing of all the major imperialisms as a force for capitalist stability. The reason that Britain, the old colonial power, has turned against Mugabe is not because of the Zimbabwean state’s massacres of the 1980s, but because of Zimbabwe’s slide into chaos and the potential dangers it poses in the region. Mugabe’s favourite slogan was "Zimbabwe will never be a colony again". In practice, in a country like Zimbabwe, the big powers, using all the means at their disposal, not least the IMF, will do their best to ensure that the local state fits in with their imperialist needs.

Zanu-PF has tried to mobilise the black population outside the cities against white farmers. But, ultimately, whether the land is controlled by the state or divided into peasant small-holdings, it will not mean any improvement in the conditions of life in rural Zimbabwe.

2. Multi-party democracy in Zimbabwe expresses the dictatorship of capital just as much as the one-party state. All commentators, from right to left, have been overjoyed at the prospect of a more democratic Zimbabwe. In the words of the ANC: "the election process has underscored the fact that democracy is taking root not only in Zimbabwe but in the sub-region and, indeed, in the whole of Africa." It is appropriate that the ANC should make such remarks, because the democratic South African state has kept the working class in the same conditions, and opposed workers’ struggles just as much as its predecessor, the apartheid regime. All that has changed are some of the faces in parliament. In Zimbabwe, as in South Africa, the needs of capital remain the sole concern of the state. Democracy is used to disarm the working class, to try and make it identify with the very state which enforces capitalist exploitation.

The democratic campaign shows no sign of ending with the counting of votes. Various issues will be taken up: the MPs appointed directly by the President; the challenge to results in seats where there was a great deal of intimidation; the question of the ‘escape route’ for white farmers.

3. The MDC is a faction of the Zimbabwean ruling class, currently favoured by British imperialism. While criticising Zanu-PF, and the state of the economy it has presided over, the MDC has some modest proposals for Zimbabwean capitalism. "The MDC would cut the budget deficit and withdraw from the Congo war, creating a new economic climate and delivering new jobs" (Guardian 12/6/00). The withdrawal from the Congo is proposed on basic economic grounds: it costs the equivalent of $1m a day. The budget deficit at £2bn is some 15% of GDP and growing, debt servicing takes up half of national income, unemployment is at 55%, inflation is expected to reach 85% by the end of the year, and fuel and electricity rationing is imminent. And the problems facing Zimbabwe are not just ‘economic’. People in the country have one of the lowest rates of life expectancy in the world. Among the many health problems is the prevalence of HIV: a quarter of the population affected, 200 die every day of AIDS, current expenditure $1m a month.

The economic policy undertaken by any future government will be dependent on IMF or British assistance, and the conditions that go with it - much as Mugabe was until recently, when IMF aid was suspended. The MDC, backed by British imperialism, wants to persuade foreign governments that Zimbabwe can be a viable proposition for capital investment.

As a footnote, it is interesting to discover that a member of Socialist Worker’s sister organisation in Zimbabwe, Munyaradzi Gwisai, has become an MP after standing as an MDC candidate. With calls for nationalisations, price controls, subsidies on basic goods etc, there is the usual leftist appeal for the intervention of the capitalist state. Also wheeled out were slogans such as "Tax the rich to fund the poor" and "Forward to socialism" to give the illusion of defending working class interests. In reality the new MP shows complete loyalty to the capitalist state and its democracy.

The working class in Zimbabwe has shown its capacity for struggle, for example in the struggles in the public sector in 1996 and in January 1998 when troops were sent into Harare to crush the discontent (see WR 234). However, its inability to resist the recent orgy of bourgeois democracy, is a setback from which it can only re-emerge through independent class struggle.

Kelly 28/06/00