The deployment of British and American bombers to attack targets around Baghdad in mid-February was a fitting celebration of the tenth anniversary of the ‘end’ of the war against Iraq in February 1991. Ten years ago, Desert Storm, the military operation of the UN coalition of 29 countries led by the US, was unleashed against Iraq following its invasion of Kuwait. It was supposed to be in defence of ‘international law’ and ‘world peace’.

By the end of the Gulf War there were more than 550,000 US troops in the area. The British and French troops together amounted to about 45,000. The US forces were equipped with 2200 tanks, 500 combat helicopters and 1500 war planes. NATO deployed 107 warships in the region. The US navy had more than 700 nuclear weapons on its ships and submarines. The war removed the Iraqi forces that had invaded Kuwait. But Saddam Hussein, built up as one of the great tyrants of modern times, was not toppled. As we know, he has remained the leader of Iraq up to the present day. And the fact is that he was not the real target of the US-led offensive.

Following the post-89 break-up of the Russian bloc there was no way that the US could maintain the discipline of the western bloc, which fell apart as each country pursued its own interests. By launching the Gulf War, the US ensured that every country in the world knew the extent of its ability to mobilise at the military level. It was first and foremost a demonstration of its status as the only remaining superpower.

The military enforcement of the ‘no-fly’ zones with almost daily actions has continued ever since, but the bombings of mid-February were the biggest in more than two years. They were a reminder that while Bush has replaced Clinton (who in turn replaced Bush senior) the might of US imperialism continues. To a certain extent this reminder was well taken. A Russian general, Leonid Ivashov, called the recent air strikes "a challenge to the international community ... Today no state on earth can feel secure" (Financial Times 24/2/1).

Despite this, the support of the "allies" for the US has been dwindling, while opposing voices have multiplied. The recent bombings were condemned by a whole host of countries, from France, Russia and China to Saudi Arabia and Egypt. It is also clear from the conflict in Israel/Palestine that the US is not successful in imposing its will in every situation regardless. As for the involvement of the devious British, it should not be seen as that of a "partner" to the US, but as the action of an imperialism with a long-established presence in the region, trying to advance its own particular interests.

Hypocrisy of the ‘humanitarian’ warmongers

Ten years ago, there were hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian and military deaths. Today once more, through the miracles of technology (in particular depleted uranium), the arsenal employed by the allied forces is the cause of malformations of new-born babies in the area, of leukaemias and cancers for the military personnel of the big powers and anyone else caught in the theatre of operations. And for ten years the almost daily bombardment by US and British forces has continued to spread terror and death across Iraq. In the last four years British and American aircraft have flown more than 16,000 sorties. In 2000 they dropped 500 bombs on Iraq, in 1999, 1500. The cost to Britain of patrolling the "no-fly" zones has been more than £900m so far, and continues to rise.

This is not the only consequence of the bourgeoisie's "crusade for peace". It is estimated that between 5000 and 6000 Iraqis die every month as a consequence of the economic sanctions imposed by the US and still supported by Britain. The suffering is worse for children, the sick and the old, deprived of food and medicine by the effects of the embargo. The US and Britain blame Saddam's regime for these deaths, claiming that the regime does gain adequate funds for food and medicine from the trade that it is allowed to engage in, but chooses to use this income to build weapons or line the pockets of the elite. But even if the shortages were not really as bad as many reports have indicated, why would you expect such a corrupt and repressive regime not to "misuse" scant economic resources in such a way? As always, the allies' real victims are not Saddam and his cronies, but the Iraqi population they are supposedly so concerned about.

The situation faced by the Kurds is a perfect illustration of the cynicism of the ‘democratic’ ruling class. During the Gulf war the airforces of Britain, the US and France distributed leaflets to the population of North and South Iraq, encouraging them to desert and revolt - letting them think that all the military potential of Saddam Hussein had been destroyed by the military operation. In fact, the allies deliberately left Saddam's best trained force - the Republican Guard - untouched. This gave the butcher of Baghdad a free hand to brutally massacre the Kurds of Iraq, and this was the allies' intention. By allowing Saddam to crush forces that were traditionally hostile to the current regime, the big powers were able to limit the risks of Iraq being totally dislocated by the formation of a Kurdish state, which would have severely destabilised the whole region. Furthermore, once the bloodletting had been accomplished it served as a new pretext to maintain the British and American airborne military presence over Iraqi territory, the "no-fly" zones to "protect" the Kurdish population, which has shared the appalling deprivations inflicted on the Iraqi population.

And when some Kurds recently tried to escape this hell and the rusty boat they were in ran aground on French beaches on the Cote d’Azur, it was not the end of their nightmare. Despite expressions of humanitarian concern, the French media focussed on the fight against illegal immigration, outlining the subtle distinction between political refugee and economic migrant. For the refugees there is only desperation in the face of ruling class hostility. The British government claims to be against the oppression of the Kurds, but British Home Secretary Jack Straw made it plain that he was determined that none of the Kurdish refugees would set foot on British soil. If they did he would invoke EU rules and send them back where they came from.

It should also be added that the British air force uses Turkish airbases to patrol northern Iraq. These are the same airfields as the Turkish air force uses as bases to bomb the Kurds in South East Turkey and in Iraq. Over the last 15 years Turkey has destroyed 3000 villages, killed 30,000 people and created three million refugees in its war on the Kurds. All the major imperialisms value Turkey as a significant power in the region.

Ten years after the Gulf war it can be seen that the "new world order", so dear to the great democracies, has led to a worsening of chaos and barbarity all over the world, with its refugee camps, its mass graves and increasing resort to military action to advance imperialist interests.

Late last year, the 520 workers at the Chef Cookers (domestic stoves) factory in Brunswick, in Melbourne, Australia, were told that the factory would be closed soon. Only one month before, the union covering these workers had "negotiated" a limitation in provisions for redundancy packages. This right wing union, the Australian Workers' Union, is notorious for its reactionary role. It has long been militantly pro-capitalist and, for at least a century, been a major source of racism and virulent Australian nationalism in the "labour movement". The State Government, currently run by the Australian Labor Party, parades as a sort of Aussie version of Tony Blair's "Third Way". In November last year, in fact, this government invoked draconian Essential Services legislation that the previous Liberal/National Party Coalition Government had not dared use, to help bludgeon power workers to end their wildcat strike (see World Revolution 240). Neither of these forces - neither the AWU nor the State ALP - was therefore able to pose as a militant opponent of the planned factory closure, when it was announced.

This created a potential problem for a ruling class which is all too aware that it is essential to deflect workers' anger at the worsening epidemic of factory closures down harmless dead ends. All was not lost, however: enter the Trotskyists. Public meetings, demonstrations, rallies and petitions condemning the ‘ruthlessness’ of the company have been organised, principally by the International Socialist Organisation (ISO). The ISO has spearheaded a campaign, which it describes as "a broad united front with the Australian Workers Union, local councillors, ALP politicians and concerned residents" (ISO web site). This has made it much easier for the union to wear down workers' resistance to the planned closure.

Anti-working class campaign

This anti-working class campaign has enabled the union and even the Labor State Government to appear as if they are prepared to stand behind the workers who are under the gun. Thus, when AWU State Secretary, Bill Shorten, claims that the workers themselves were responsible for the savaging of their redundancy provisions, the ISO dutifully repeats his arguments on their web site. When the workers need to develop links with other groups of workers, and begin talking to them of a common plan of action, the ISO proposes protest stunts and petitions. When ALP MPs ‘denounce’ the planned closure in the name of Australian nationalism and Victorian parochialism, the ISO reprints the MPs’ sickening appeals word-for-word on its web site. When the AWU proposes that the workers ‘blockade’ the plant if ‘negotiations fail’, the ISO concurs enthusiastically, and proposes that the workers use an even more ‘militant’ means to cut themselves off from other workers in struggle, by extending any blockade to an occupation.

Disagreements between the ISO, on the one hand, and the AWU and the Labor Party on the other, are presented as proof that the ISO are the only force prepared to go all the way for the workers. In fact, this is a convenient - and necessary - division of labour within the left wing of capital. The ISO’s principal role in this campaign is to provide pseudo-militant credentials to the AWU and at least some of the ALP MPs. But, for those workers who see through the lies and subterfuges of the traditional left, the ISO is there to divert them into the safe terrain of the radical left wing of capital. An ISO Socialist Worker article argues: “If Email still refuse to keep the factory open, the Premier, Steve Bracks, should come in and nationalize the factory, keeping it open and returning the profits to the people” - as if state monopolies ever belonged to the working class, and have not always been just another form of capitalism, which have been shedding workers in great numbers in all countries in recent years, just like the private sector corporations. Any worker who follows this, by identifying with nationalised industry, is tying himself, not to the interests of his own class, but to those of the capitalists.

Attacking workers’ consciousness

The ISO’s main slogan in this campaign has been the old Stalinist ‘people before profits’ - a sheer impossibility for capitalism at any time (such an enterprise would not see out a month of trading!), let alone in the middle of capital’s gravest ever economic crisis! In fact, the ISO sharply denies capital’s crisis, spreading the illusion that the closure is planned simply out of pure greed, by a corporation making record profits. By so doing, the leftists are severely attacking workers’ consciousness. After all, if capital is not in a serious crisis which threatens humanity with wars and worse, what need is there for a fight to the finish?

Indeed, the leftists are doing all that they can to restrict the Chef Cookers workers to ineffectual action in one suburb. The leaflets, articles and speeches of the AWU and the leftists alike are replete with references to the need to unite with the so called ‘Brunswick community’. The ISO have a ‘community telephone tree’, you see. What more could you want?

Only the ICC has spoken out against this reactionary nonsense. As the ICC leaflet distributed at the last rally put it, the threatened closure of the factory is “not a struggle by ‘Brunswick workers’ but a part of the struggle of the entire working class against the economic crisis of capitalism”. Chef workers, like all workers facing such attacks, need to understand their struggle in this context in order to see that all those, like the unions or the Labor Party or leftists, who would have them defend ‘their’ national or regional industry are their enemies. Their strength lies only in uniting with other workers.

ICC Leaflet

The stated purpose of today’s rally is to ask Email/Electrolux why it puts ‘profits before people’ and why it ignores ‘demands of the workers, the union and the local community to keep the factory open’. The organisers of this protest campaign include Bill Shorten, State Secretary of the Australian Workers Union, Labor MPs Carlo Carli and Kelvin Thomson, and the International Socialist Organisation (Socialist Worker).

No-one can doubt the sincerity of ordinary workers involved in this and earlier protests; we do not doubt that these workers simply want to stop the closure of the Chef Cookers factory — and the 520 sackings it will cause. The authors of this leaflet are just as determined to support any workers’ action which will fight against the rising tide of mass sackings. So we also believe that it is absolutely crucial to avoid tactics which have been shown time and again to not only fail, but to lead workers to disaster. We need to all do some hard thinking about how workers can begin to be successful. As workers opposed to all the capitalists’ plans to make the working class pay for the crisis of the bosses’ economic system, we also believe that it is vital to speak frankly about the traps being set for workers in the current campaign.

Chef workers’ situation is a problem for all workers

The first trap is to think that the problem of Chef Cookers’ workers is a problem just for ‘Victorian workers’ or the ‘Brunswick community’. The reality is that capitalism is in the grip of a very serious economic crisis all over the world. Workers are being sacked in every country; this is symptomatic of very serious economic problems for the capitalists’ system — not just a problem in Brunswick! So we need to look for methods of struggle which unite the mass of workers in action, instead of limiting ourselves to protests in one suburb.

Every worker can see that conditions are getting tougher — that is, that the capitalists are trying to make workers pay for this crisis of the bosses’ system. In every country right now, prices are rising, as the real value of our pay drops, social security is cut to the bone, and mass sackings occur. Even under the Federal Government’s dodgy figures, at least 44,000 full-time jobs were lost in December 2000 alone throughout Australia.

The Australian Workers Union and the MPs involved in the Chef Cookers campaign admit that employers are carrying out massive sackings. But the unions and the ALP MPs still claim that a solution can be found within capitalism. While AWU State Secretary Bill Shorten and even the ALP MPs talked vaguely about ‘action’ at the start of their campaign in order to give themselves credibility, they have shown their real intentions more recently. The ALP State Government and the AWU have written to Electrolux, proposing that it allow workers to buy the factory. This would entail workers handing over their pitiful redundancy payments to Electrolux. (Don’t forget that the AWU negotiated a reduction in such payments only one month before the announcement was made to close the factory!) According to the Herald Sun of 7 February, workers would make the factory viable then resell it to Electrolux: “My advisers believe it’s possible to structure a deal that would give Electrolux a healthy injection of cash with no risk”, says Shorten.

In other words, the ‘solution’ is to make Chef workers capitalists. But this could only be viable if the workers acted like capitalists everywhere who are faced with profitability problems. That is, the directors appointed to direct the factory must run it ruthlessly — like any other business— cutting the workforce, and speeding up production. This is the only way it could compete on the international market — as it must, or find itself being outsold by more ruthless international competitors. And there is no guarantee that this strategy would work even for the small group of former Chef employees not sacked by the new ‘worker directors’. This ‘solution’ has been tried in many countries and the end result is always failure as far as jobs preservation is concerned. And, by turning workers into two bob capitalists, it is also guaranteed to divide those facing sacking off from the rest of the working class.

The ‘solution’ being proposed by the union and the Labor Party is really a deadly trap: workers would hand back their redundancy payments, be compelled to act like capitalist bloodsuckers and still probably end up on the street! In the process, they would destroy any possibility of a united fight by themselves against the capitalists’ attacks, in conjunction with other workers.

Workers have only themselves to rely upon

Some others in this campaign say they agree that a buyout is not the solution and that the alternative is action. However, they propose signing petitions and occupying the factory. Petitions (saying ‘please’ to the boss) have never changed anything, but what about occupations? According to the leftists around the paper Socialist Worker, (Bulletin No. 3, in December 2000) an occupation would stop the transfer of machinery “and would be a beacon of resistance for workers across Australia”, allowing “other Email workers” to “build solidarity action”.

Once again, the history of workers’ struggles tells a different story. It is true that some very militant workers have occupied their factories throughout history, but the result is never that these factories become ‘beacons of resistance’ to other workers. The real outcome is that the workers lock-up their struggle inside their individual factories or corporations, cutting themselves off from other workers who could support them if asked to join them in united strike action.

This is not a struggle by ‘Brunswick workers’ as the organisers of this campaign claim. It is a part of the struggle of the entire working class against the economic crisis of capitalism. So it is time that Chef workers took the ‘campaign’ out of the hands of the community committee organised by their false friends the AWU, the Labor Party and Socialist Worker — who have all shown that they work for the capitalists’ interests — so that they can take real united action with other workers who want to fight back against the capitalists’ attacks. The unions, the ALP and the bogus socialists all serve the class enemy. All workers have only themselves to rely upon.

Instead of a so-called people’s campaign by the ‘community of Brunswick’, this means taking the fight out of the back streets of Brunswick, to other workers willing to consider taking fighting action. Instead of protests pleading with the boss to ‘put people before profits’, and to let the workers buy the factory, it is time for Chef workers to take their fight to other workers. Massive delegations can be sent to other workplaces, beginning in the northern suburbs.

A real workers’ campaign can be built on the basis of this bold action. Regular, frequent, general assemblies of all workers involved can decide on appropriate action to draw other workers into the fight. Action can include workers’ demonstrations and industrial action, including strike action. A working class action campaign is the only way that our class can muster its strength as a class, and potentially force the capitalists to retreat.

ICC, 14/2/2001

In last year’s US presidential elections Ralph Nader, standing in favour of a more ‘green’, less corporate, capitalism, persuaded more than 2.5 million people to vote for him, including many who would not otherwise have bothered turning up at the polling station. In Britain, the ruling class is also concerned about the growing lack of interest in capitalist politics. Learned professors from Essex and Sheffield Universities are concerned at the results of their research which “if this is confirmed by actual turnout in a few months’ time, electoral participation will look like it is in long term decline” (Guardian 1/3/01). They suggest that “the 2001 general election is set to have the lowest turnout of any since Lloyd George went to the country in 1918” (ibid). In this context the Socialist Alliance has just launched its general election campaign. Supported by celebrities such as Harold Pinter, Ken Loach, Linda Smith, Jeremy Hardy, Rob Newman, Mark Steel, Mark Thomas, Ricky Tomlinson and John Pilger, the SA exists because today, with discontent and suspicion in the working class, there is the possibility that beyond apathy with elections there lies the potential for a struggle against the whole capitalist system. Following on from the Nader example, a report from its opening press conference says that “the SA campaign claims that it will attract disenfranchised voters who would otherwise not vote at all - at least 100,000 overall” (Guardian 2/3/01).

The SA was originally a loose alliance established in 1997. Increasing numbers of groups became interested in participating in it. Candidates stood in the 1998 Euro elections, in the May 2000 elections for the Greater London Assembly, and in various local elections. The groups now involved include the Socialist Workers Party, the Socialist Party of England and Wales (ex-Militant), the Alliance for Workers Liberty (Workers Liberty/Action for Solidarity), Workers Power, the Communist Party of Great Britain (Weekly Worker), the International Socialist Group (Socialist Outlook) as well as other groups and individuals. While all these groups are proud of their particular identities, one thing they’ve always had in common has been support for the Labour Party at election time. Indeed, while their current plans are for at least a 100 candidates, (and supporting the 72 (ex-Militant) Scottish Socialist Party candidates in Scotland) elsewhere they will be recommending staying in the Labour fold. One of the SWP’s election slogans, for example, is “Keep the Tories Out” (“we still prefer a Labour victory to a Tory” - Socialist Worker 3/3/01). So why are they standing, if they don’t even want a change in government?

Mopping up discontent

At an SWP conference last November leading member John Rees said that “People’s disillusion with the electoral system - shown by low turnouts - and New Labour should not be left to others to exploit. We want socialists to gain from the anger in society” (SW 18/11/00). John Nicholson, a former deputy leader of Manchester Council and a leading member of the SA was reported as saying that “millions of working class people felt betrayed by New Labour and were looking for an alternative” (SW 7/10/00). Because of this “we have to make sure that alternative is a socialist alternative - otherwise the right wing, the Tories and the Nazis can gain from disillusion with New Labour” (ibid).

In fact the elements who constitute the SA know perfectly well that workers’ disillusionment can go in a very different direction from “the Tories and the Nazis”. The real alternative is to struggle as a collective class against the attacks of the Labour government, rather than the atomisation of the passive isolated individual in a polling booth. The SWP, for instance, published an article in Socialist Worker (28/10/00) on the question of elections and made a point of attacking the “‘left’ communists in Germany who were opposed to socialists contesting elections”. The article was headlined “Part of shaping anger with Blair” - that is, giving workers’ anger a shape which will be no threat to capitalism, and no benefit to the working class. The SWP say that: “Now you can hit back at Tory Blair” (SW 3/3/01) by voting Labour and surrendering to the charade of bourgeois democracy.

Propaganda for state capitalism

While the main reason for the SA’s existence is as part of the democratic charade, the detail of the points they’re standing on can’t be ignored. When Lenin mistakenly put forward the idea of (that contradiction in terms) ‘revolutionary parliamentarianism’, against the German Left Communists, he at least had the merit of wanting to make propaganda against the capitalist system. The various items agreed by the groups of the SA are all policies for the capitalist state to follow: changing the way hospitals, schools and council services are financed; ensuring state control of council housing, the London Underground, air traffic control and the Post Office; boosting local government; renationalising the buses, railways and water industry; changing the tax and welfare system.

In the SA there is an “80/20” formula, where they campaign on the 80% that they agree on and avoid debating the 20% they disagree on. The 80% are state capitalist policies. The 20% includes such details as the Weekly Worker’s request that the minimum wage “be decided on the basis of what is needed to physically and culturally reproduce the worker and one child” and that in prisons “cells must be self-contained and for one person alone” (25/1/01). The 20% also includes the fact that, during the war in Kosovo, some of the SA’s constituent groups supported the Serbian war-drive and others the NATO bombing. Their only difference was on which group of capitalist gangsters workers should die for.

Deepening confusion

One final point should be made about the SA campaign. It is curious that, after literally decades of disputes between all the different tendencies in the SA, the main leftist groups should finally have come together, for the first time since 1951, at this particular historical point. The explanation to this can be found in the current state of class consciousness. Over the last ten years workers have been disorientated, without even, in some respects, a sense of basic class identity. The confusion in the working class is accentuated when a unified force like the SA (claiming to be ‘revolutionary’ etc) insists that political life can take place in the framework of bourgeois democracy, and that the alternatives are nationalisation or privatisation, Left or Right. The reality of capitalist society is of the struggle of class against class, the working class against its exploiters.

The best hip hop is eloquently intelligent; lyrical, satirical, even politically critical; a worthy offspring of blues, jazz and soul.

But the hip hop scene has long been dominated by ‘gangsta rap’. And gangsta ideology is one of the many ways through which capitalism exerts its control over the exploited and the oppressed.

The gangsterisation of society is a typical expression of decomposing capitalism. In Russia the mafia is almost indistinguishable from the ruling political elite; in Liberia or Sierra Leone the gangs are armed to the teeth and engage in ‘civil war’; in the US urban ghettos, the gang has become the refuge for the most dispossessed, a pseudo-community offering them a means of day-to-day survival. But just as in Africa the armed gangs become instruments of competing imperialisms, so in New York or LA the gangs are in no way an expression of proletarian revolt, as the self-proclaimed ‘communists’ of Aufheben once suggested. On the contrary, they function as instruments of capital’s totalitarian occupation of social life.

This is obvious at the level of commerce: gangsta culture is a conduit for the drug trade, the weapons trade, and even the fashion industry. Nike, Reebok and the other labels are inseparable from the gangsta image. But gangsta is also a political ideology, a packaging of revolt, channelling rebellion into new forms of division. The rap group Public Enemy once chanted the slogan ‘Fight the Power’. But the influence of black nationalism on such groups ensures that the real power, which exploits all colours with equal zeal, remains hidden from view. Black nationalism – together with gangsta’s infamous demeaning of women and gays – is a means of dividing the proletariat, of obliterating its class identity.

Eminem, of course, has managed to cross the racial divide; and this, alongside his undoubted talents as a rapper, is one of the reasons why he has been made into a megastar. Eminem, we are told, is the voice of ‘white trash America’: codename for the most down-trodden section of the white American working class. And how is this section of the proletariat presented through the chain-saw wielding, blue overalls-wearing, drink and drug-guzzling posture adopted by Eminem in his controversial British tour? Not just as misogynist and homophobic, but above all as self-destructive and nihilistic: “I don’t give a fuck”. And nihilism is just another way of sterilising critical thought.

But what about all the shock and outrage vented by the Daily Mail, the Beckhams, or the politically correct Student Union puritans? More grist to the campaign, boosting Slim Shady’s subversive image. Real subversion lies elsewhere – in the rigorous criticism of this social order and the proposal of a revolutionary alternative. When the working class unites across all divisions, and calls capitalism into question, it will draw behind it the best of the artists, and put an end to the bourgeoisie’s cynical theft and manipulation of all forms of cultural creativity.