Once the dry ice of the election spectacle has cleared, the new government can get on with its job: defending capitalism at the expense of the working class.

After every election it’s the same, regardless of which party gets in. The indications are that, this time round, the ruling class prefers Labour to provide the best team for looking after its interests.

Millions of people will not have voted in this election; millions more will have voted without enthusiasm or conviction, feeling in their hearts that ‘all the politicians are the same’.

These feelings are soundly based. All the politicians are fundamentally the same because all the parties that take part in capitalist elections are in favour of maintaining the capitalist system. This goes from the British National Party and the Tories on the right to Labour and the Socialist Alliance on the left. All are united in their devotion to the interests of the British national economy, the British state, British imperialism. Not one stands up for the working class, which has no country, no state, no economy to defend.

A capitalist government can never be anything but the ‘executive committee of the ruling class’. A party which holds the reins of a capitalist government can never do anything but run it in the interests of capital.

Today the prime necessity for every national capital is to keep afloat in the face of an economic crisis which has been gradually but remorselessly deepening for the last three decades. The phoney US ‘boom’ of the last ten years, fuelled by massive debts, has already reached its limits. This augurs very badly for the world economy as a whole, which has been desperately clinging to the US ‘locomotive’. Like any company facing bankruptcy, the national economy, Britain Ltd, and its board of directors, the government, has to take drastic action: cut the wage bill, lay off workers, close plants, slash benefits. This is what the Tory government under Thatcher and Major did; this is what Blair’s New Labour did after 1997, and it has every intention of doing it again, but even more so, after this election.

One of the reasons why Labour is the best team for managing British capitalism at the moment is that it’s more skilled at presenting attacks on working class living standards as ‘reforms’ in everyone’s interests. It ‘reformed’ the unemployment benefits system by calling it the New Deal and forcing hundreds of thousands of young people into low paid, insecure jobs, or simply depriving them of benefits altogether. Now it’s hinting at wide ranging ‘reforms’ of the health service which will certainly involve massive cuts wrapped up in the ideology of decentralisation and privatisation.

Workers (the vast majority of us, because the unemployed are also part of the working class) have no interest in choosing which gang of politicians is going to lord it over us for the next four or five years. But we do have an interest, a very urgent interest, in defending ourselves against all the attacks that the new government is going to unleash. Defending ourselves means opposing wage cuts, redundancies, reductions in benefits, elimination of basic services. It does not mean fighting for state ownership as against privatisation, a false demand which the unions have already put forward to derail the struggles of tube and postal workers, and which will be used even more in future struggles around the health service.

State bureaucrat or private boss; Tory or Labour these are just the forms which capitalism takes on at different moments. They are all the guardians of exploitation, and the exploited can only defend themselves by fighting against all of them. WR 2.6.01

In their election manifestos all the political parties made grand statements about Britain’s role in the world. Labour set out its “ten-year vision for British foreign policy”; the Tories talked of Britain being “one of the world’s most respected democracies, one of its most influential leaders” while the Liberal Democrats called for an “internationalist approach”. As ever, the reality behind such words is a brutal defence of national interests.

Ambitions for British imperialism

In the period since 1989, when the old bloc system fell apart, imperialist policy has become immensely complex, even apparently contradictory at times. Every imperialist power had to decide on the best way to advance its interests. For second rate powers like Britain and France the weight of the US and Germany affects all that they do, the US being militarily dominant around the globe, while Germany is economically dominant in Europe. The major part of the British ruling class sought to steer a policy between the two, tacking now one way, now another to advance their own interests. For example, in the first stages of the war in ex-Yugoslavia the Conservative government supported Serbia against Croatia and Slovenia, which were backed by Germany, whilst also co-operating with France to block attempts by the US to intervene.

The election of Labour in 1997 strengthened this policy since the party was united, unlike the Tories who had a significant faction that advocated closer links with the US at the expense of Europe. Throughout the last four years the British ruling class has been able to pursue its policy in a more consistently and determined way which, while it has not always been completely successful, has allowed British imperialism to largely maintain its place in the world.

In Yugoslavia, after the setback of the Dayton Accords in 1996, when the US stamped its authority on the region, British imperialism adopted a more cautious policy, generally seeming to go along with the US whilst still pursuing its own line. This was most evident during the conflict over Kosovo in the spring of 1999. Britain’s participation in the US-led bombing of Serbia, its traditional ally in the region, was a blow to its credibility but, through the very vigour of its participation, it retained an important position within the overall imperialist struggle.

In Africa, Britain has suffered setbacks, notably by being replaced by the US as the main backer of Uganda, one of the strategically most important countries in the area. In Sierra Leone, in contrast, it asserted its military capability by mounting a spectacular ‘hostage’ rescue, through which it reinforced its influence in the region.

In the Middle East it has pursued a generally discreet strategy, continuing to back the US against Iraq, whilst opposing the US in its central stronghold of Israel through expressions of ‘concern’ about the Palestinian uprising.

The US has put pressure on Britain in its own backyard through the ‘peace’ process in Ireland. Even if this pressure has been reduced recently, the potential remains for the US to cause further difficulty when it feels like it.

Common sense militarism

All of the parties are united in their defence of militarism. According to the Tories, the British army is “respected around the world”; while for Labour “Our armed forces are the best in the world at fighting if they have to, and keeping the peace where they can”. All promised to keep nuclear weapons while Labour boasted of its commitment to “investing more in real terms in our armed forces over the next three years” and the Tories of “making it a priority to achieve the armed forces full manning levels”.

In fact, one of the features of the last few years has been the increasing use of military force by British imperialism around the world, notably in the interventions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone, where the skill and strength of Britain’s military counteracts some of its other weaknesses. Its forces have been reorganised to meet the new period, with the emphasis on flexibility, rapidity of response, and “the ability to project force at distance and speed” (Labour). This goes alongside a continued effort to sell arms around the world, where Britain has a 20% share of the market.

Differences over strategy

All parts of the British ruling class want to advance its imperialist interests. Its main faction has a policy of maintaining a position of independence from the US. There is also a minority, generally described as ‘Euro-sceptics’, which continues to believe that Britain should have a closer relationship with the US in order to oppose Germany.

This difference can currently be seen over attitudes to the European Union Rapid Reaction Force and the US National Missile Defence System, ‘Son of Star Wars’. The Labour manifesto set out the position of the main faction. While declaring support for NATO, it backed the intervention of European forces “where NATO as a whole chooses not to engage,” and that, “The European defence initiative is an important part of our defence policy. Europe spends two-thirds as much as the US on defence, but gets only a fraction of its effectiveness”. The position was developed in a speech during the election campaign: “The choice between the US and Europe is a fundamentally false one. We are stronger in Washington if we are seen to be leading in Europe. And we have more influence in Europe if we are seen to be listened to in Washington”. On the Son of Star Wars project, the Liberal Democrats were blunt, stating that they “Oppose the national missile defence system”, which they describe as “a threat to international stability and arms control agreements”. Labour didn’t openly oppose the project, but hinted at it through talk of the need to control the spread of nuclear weapons. “We will encourage the US to consult closely with NATO allies on its ideas for missile defence”.

The Conservative Manifesto opposed to these positions a pro-US stance. It argued that “our primary alliance, NATO, is being weakened by a concerted drive to create an independent military structure in the EU” while declaring, in language that could have been dictated from the White House, “We believe our close ally deserves our support in countering new threats from rogue states and terrorists equipped with weapons of mass destruction”.

There is a clear difference of emphasis in the strategy required for British imperialism. A Labour government will ensure that the strategy of the main faction of the British bourgeoisie will continue to operate. North, 28/5/01.

At the time of writing, the latest atrocity in Israel/Palestine is the suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv disco, which left at least 17 young people dead and scores more injured. By the time this paper comes back from the printer, it is more than likely that the Israeli state will have exacted its revenge � perhaps another air raid on a refugee camp charged with harbouring the terrorists of Islamic Jihad who have claimed responsibility for the Tel Aviv bombing. Sharon will pretend that this is an attack on a military target, but as ever it will be defenceless civilians who will die or see their homes reduced to rubble. This in turn will provoke new acts of revenge by the Islamic groups or even by hapless, despairing individuals, like the Palestinian bus driver who drove his bus into a line of Israeli passengers.

Faced with this endless spiral of nationalist hatred, there will be lamentations and pious declarations by those who paint themselves as the apostles of peace, the representatives of the ‘international community’. The US will provide further proof that it is not retreating into isolationism by calling on both sides to carry out the recommendations of the Mitchell plan (ceasefire, freeze on new Jewish settlements, return to the framework of the Oslo accords). The European Union, for its part, has pledged 60 million euros to shore up the Palestinian Authority, which is being reduced to bankruptcy by the Israeli blockade and bombing. All will talk about the tragic nature of the events unfolding in the Middle East.

We communists, internationalists, who owe no allegiance to any state or nation, we also say that this situation is a real tragedy; but not for the same reasons as the official spokesmen of ‘peace’ and ‘reason’.

It is a tragedy because every act of indiscriminate violence, every lynching, every hate-filled demonstration behind Israeli or Palestinian flags, is a new blow against the only solution to this murderous conflict: the international unity of the workers against their exploiters. Every new suicide bombing makes it more likely that Israeli workers will turn to the Israeli state for protection; every Israeli air raid makes it more likely that the victims will see their only salvation in the Palestinian Authority or the armed Islamic gangs.

It is a tragedy because this conflict, like so many others ravaging the world today, is reinforcing nationalism precisely at a time when nationalist ideologies are historically redundant and should be more discredited than ever. Just look at Zionism, whose claim that it would create a safe haven for persecuted Jewry is more ridiculous now than it has ever been. Today there is no less safe place to be Jewish than Israel. And look at how the ‘humanitarian’, even ‘socialist’ claims of early Zionism have melted away, to be replaced more and more by religious obscurantism and open anti-Arab racism, backed up by planes, tanks and the bulldozers which routinely obliterate Palestinian farms and villages to make way for settlements of the Chosen People. And this evolution is in turn mirrored by Palestinian nationalism: 30 years ago its ideology was ‘democratic’, ‘secular’, even ‘marxist’; the enemy was not Jews but Zionism. Today that mask is off and the cult of the suicide bomber, fuelled by Muslim fanaticism and directed against all Jews, is the real face behind it. Workers in the Middle East should be rejecting these ideologies with contempt like the Iranian workers who, in the 1980s, had the strength and consciousness to drive the Islamic Guard cops out of the factories and oil fields. Instead, they are being drawn more and more into the nationalist trap, and not one internationalist, proletarian voice seems to be raising itself in opposition to the sirens of patriotism.

Of course the mouthpieces of the grand democracies, the UN and other august international bodies, also declare that the growth of these irrational dogmas is a bad thing all round. They claim to stand above these conflicts and indeed to offer the only realistic way out of them. We reject these claims as false and hypocritical. The great powers have always stoked up the conflicts in the Middle East and used them for their own ends. Zionism gained a foothold in the Middle East first because the British wanted to create a ‘little loyal Ulster’ in the region, then because the USA needed Israel as its local gendarme in this key strategic zone. Palestinian nationalism was in turn armed and supported by other powers keen to upset the status quo: first Hitler’s Germany, then the USSR, today America’s European rivals. All the ‘peace solutions’ put forward by these powers are not aimed at peace but at securing their own imperialist interests in the Middle East. Are we really to believe, for example, that the US and the British ruling class, who have subjected the Iraqi population to ten years of bombing and starvation in pursuit of these same imperialist interests in the same region, really have the welfare of the Israeli and Palestinian population in their hearts?

Does this mean that there is no hope at all? That is not our position: on the contrary, the impossibility of any solution in the Middle East within the framework of capitalism is a further argument for the necessity of revolution. But revolution is not pie in the sky: it must be prepared by a practical movement, by the class struggle of the exploited. Today there is no doubt that, in Israel/Palestine, this movement is being drowned out by the tidal wave of nationalism. But it exists nevertheless, and the material basis for it is being made stronger by the terrible economic cost of this war, not only for the impoverished Palestinians but for the Israeli workers as well. And here and there we see small signs that there is still the ability to see things from a different angle: in the growing number of young Israeli reservists who are refusing to serve in the occupied territories, in the statements by Palestinian mothers and fathers who understand that their sons are being sent to their deaths by those who prosper from their misery.

The fact remains that the workers and the oppressed of the Middle East cannot break the nationalist spiral on their own. The working class alternative will only seem real to them when the proletarians of the main industrial concentrations, who are not divided up so deeply along national or racial lines, return loudly and massively to the terrain of the class war. Amos 2.6.01

In your guidelines to your website, you say that its aim is to “link to any site or document which we feel relates, in whole or in part, to discussion about communism, or to discussion based on a ‘communist perspective’, taking communist in the sense defined in the statement on the homepage for the site. (1)

We use the word ‘communism’ as shorthand despite the likelihood that it will confuse some people who will think that we are talking about the so-called ‘communist’ countries or the communist parties associated with or supporting those countries because we don’t have a better word. The political currents we feel a degree of affinity with have called themselves many sorts of things libertarian communists, anarchist communists, left communists, autonomists what could broadly be described as the ultra left”.

We note that your list of “journals, organisations and projects” you are linked to includes the ICC. But while, as far as we can see, all other journals, organisations and projects are presented in a neutral or positive way, the ICC alone is given an extremely negative definition as an “absurd new age sect which employs a conservative form of left-communist discourse to promote itself as a political community”

We would like to know why you have chosen to single us out in this manner. We also think that if you are going to make such serious accusations, a minimum of explanation or argumentation is called for, especially considering that many people will have only heard of the ICC through your website, and could easily be put off investigating our own site by such a description.

The labelling of authentic communist organisations as “absurd sects” is not limited to your website, nor to the plethora of publications some of which are advertised in your list whose main activity consists in denigrating precisely the organisations which descend most directly from the historical communist left. These are mere offshoots of the bourgeoisie’s grandiose world-wide campaign about the ‘death of communism’, which is aimed at proving not only that communist society is an “absurd” utopia, but also that there could be nothing more ridiculous than revolutionary militancy. In such a view, participating in collectively organised communist activity is the precise equivalent of joining “absurd sects” like the Moonies or the Jehovah’s Witnesses. In this sense, it seems to us that your attack on the ICC falls directly into line with this campaign.

In any case, we await your reply.

Yours for communism,

The ICC, March 2001

(1) The homepage describes communism as “a society without money, without a state, without property and without social classes. The circulation of goods is not accomplished by means of exchange: quite the contrary, the by-word for this society is ‘from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs’” a definition which we obviously agree with.