During the past months tensions between North and South Korea and the USA have once again been on the rise. Repeated missile tests, threats of missiles, artillery and even nuclear attacks against South Korea as well as targets in Japan, Hawaii or Guam have been in the centre of the North Korean war rhetoric. South Korea, the USA and Japan have in turn declared their determination to strike back militarily against North Korea. Once again the ruling class of these countries is ready to threaten the life of millions of people in order to defend their sordid national interests.
Faced with the threat of war it is the fundamental responsibility of those who fight for the interests of the exploited and the working class:
In October 2006, following a nuclear test by North Korea, a meeting of internationalists from South Korea and other countries adopted the following statement:
Following the news of the nuclear tests in North Korea, we, the communist internationalists meeting in Seoul and Ulsan:
Denounce the development of a new nuclear weapons capability in the hands of another capitalist state: the nuclear bomb is the ultimate weapon of inter-imperialist warfare, its only function being the mass extermination of the civilian population in general and the working class in particular.
Denounce unreservedly this new step towards war taken by the capitalist North Korean state which has thereby demonstrated once again (if that were necessary) that it has absolutely nothing to do with the working class or communism, and is nothing but a most extreme and grotesque version of decadent capitalism's general tendency towards militaristic barbarism.
Denounce unreservedly the hypocritical campaign by the United States and its allies against its North Korean enemy which is nothing but an ideological preparation for unleashing – when they have the capacity to do so – their own pre-emptive strikes of which the working population would be the principal victim, as it is today in Iraq. We have not forgotten that the United States is the only power to have used nuclear weapons in war, when it annihilated the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Denounce unreservedly the so-called "peace initiatives" which are bound to appear under the aegis of other imperialist gangsters such as China. These will be concerned not with peace, but with the protection of their own capitalist interests in the region. The workers can have no confidence whatever in the "peaceful intentions" of any capitalist state.
Denounce unreservedly any attempt by the South Korean bourgeoisie to take repressive measures against the working class or against activists in their defence of internationalist principles under the pretext of protecting national freedom or democracy.
Declare our complete solidarity with the workers of North and South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia who will be the first to suffer in the event of military action breaking out.
Declare that only the world wide workers' struggle can put an end for ever to the constant threat of barbarism, imperialist war, and nuclear destruction that hangs over humanity under capitalism.
The workers have no country to defend!
Workers of all lands, unite!
https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2006-north-korea-nuclear-bomb [1]
In the face of the present situation the declaration of October 2006 remains totally valid.
In order to analyse the recent escalation between North Korea and its rivals, and the perspectives which flow from this, we must place this conflict into the broader historical and international context.
The sharpening of tensions between North Korea and its rivals is part of a more general sharpening of tensions in the Far East. During the past months the two major rivals of the region, China and Japan, have repeatedly claimed control over the Senkaku/Diayo islands and whipped up patriotic campaigns (URLlink to statement). During the past years China and several states surrounding the South Chinese Sea have been colliding over territorial claims in the South China Sea. South Korea and Japan regularly quarrel over Takeshima/Dokdo island. The recent escalation crystallises a global trend of sharpening imperialist tensions in the region. At the same time, the conflict between North and South Korea is also one of the longest standing conflicts in East Asia[1]
In World War 1 East Asia was basically spared from the atrocities of the war. However, in World War 2 East Asia became one of the major battlefields between all imperialist powers (more than 20 million people lost their lives). As soon as the Nazi regime in Germany was defeated and Europe divided up amongst the winners of the war in May 1945, the Soviet Union and the USA clashed with each other over the control of Asia in several zones. Fiercely determined to prevent Russia from grabbing parts of Japan, the USA dropped the first nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after having flattened Tokyo with fire-bombs in the winter of 1944/1945. In China, Russia supported Mao’s Red Army and the USA Chiang Kai-shek. China was the first country to be divided between a pro-Russian (People’s Republic of China) and a pro-American part (Taiwan), leaving behind a deadly division which still exists today, with the two sides pointing a heavy arsenal of weapons at each other. And in 1945, after the defeat of the Japanese occupiers, while Russian troops prepared to take over the entire Korean peninsula, the USA forced Russia to accept a joint occupation of Korea, which led to the division of Korea along the 38th parallel in 1945. Thus since 1945 East Asia has constantly been marked by a confrontation between the USA and its allies on the one hand, and China and Russia and other allies on the other. It is no coincidence that the Korean war 1950-1953 was the first and one of the bloodiest phases in the Cold War between the two blocs, pitting a coalition of US-led forces against North-Korean forces supported by Chinese and Russian troops. During the Korean war, more than 3 million people died. Many got killed in massacres perpetrated by both sides. The war itself left behind a destroyed country, with Seoul and Pyongyang heavily bombed on a number of occasions. The country remained divided, with a very high level of militarization: it was one of the “best defended” military zones in the world and the armies have been pointing their weapons at each other for more than 60 years.
The present escalation is thus an expression of this continuity and an intensification of the series of conflicts which have gripped East Asia since the end of WW2. Its roots lie in the imperialist carve-up, the fragmentation of the world into nations, which are engaged in deadly struggles for survival, threatening each other with annihilation. Korea is no exception. The whole of Europe was divided after 1945 between two blocs, Germany remained divided until 1989, the entire Indian subcontinent was carved up between Pakistan/Bangladesh and India, Vietnam was divided, in the 1990s, former Yugoslavia torn apart by a number of secessionist wars. The territories of the former Ottoman Empire in the Middle East were broken up into a number of small and constantly warring nations, with the additional factor of the foundation of Israel in the midst of this landscape, leaving behind another permanent war zone. All this shows that the formation of new nations no longer offers any progress for humanity. They are a deadly trap, a cemetery for the working class.
In the same way as the Korean war in the early 1950s was already a direct confrontation between the USA and China, the present escalation also opposes the same “staunch defenders” of their allies.
The North Korean regime has been supported to the hilt by China from its first day of existence. The geographic-strategic position of Korea means that the country is both a target for all neighbouring rivals, as well into a precious buffer. In particular China sees North Korea as a buffer between itself and Japan and the USA.
Thus almost exactly 60 years after the end of the Korean war in 1953, not only are the same forces opposing each other, but now we are seeing nuclear, conventional missile or artillery threats from North Korea and vice versa against some of the biggest metropoles of the world (Seoul, Tokyo, Pyongyang). With the growing polarisation between China and the USA, the two biggest economic nations, East Asia has become another permanent zone of conflict, with consequences for the whole world.
The North Korean regime, which claims to be socialist, came to power not through a workers’ uprising, but thanks to the military help of Russia and China. Entirely dependent on its Stalinist patrons, the regime has been focussing its resources on maintaining and expanding the military apparatus. As a result of the gigantic militarisation, out of a population of 24.5 million, the country claims to have a standing army of 1.1 million plus a reserve of up to 4.7 million men and women. Similar to all the former Stalinist ruled countries of Eastern Europe, the North Korean economy has no competitive civilian products to offer on the world market. The hypertrophy of the military has meant that during the past 6 decades there has been frequent if not permanent rationing of food and other consumer goods. Since the collapse of the Russian bloc in 1989 industrial production has fallen by more than 50%. The population was decimated by a famine in the mid 1990s, which apparently was only halted after delivery of food supplies from China. Even today North Korea imports 90% of its energy, 80% of its consumer goods and some 45% of its food from China.
If a ruling class has nothing to offer its population but scarcity, hunger, repression, and permanent militarisation, and if its companies cannot compete on the world market with any product, the regime can only try to gain “recognition” through its military capacity to threaten and blackmail. Such behaviour is a typical expression of a ruined class, which has nothing to offer humanity but violence, extortion and terror. The posture of threatening its rivals with all kind of military attacks shows how unpredictable and lunatic the situation has become. Faced with a growing economic impasse, the regime for some years has been trying to introduce limited economic measures of “liberalisation”, hoping to improve the supply situation. Some believe that the present sabre rattling is a mere diversion from economic problems and a manoeuvre of the young successor Kim Jong-un to impress the army. While we cannot speculate about the political stability of the regime, we think it would be mistaken to underestimate the real dangers of escalation of the situation. The rise of imperialist tensions is never just “bluff” or “bluster” or a mere diversion and political theatre. All governments in the world are forced to intensify the spiral of militarism – even if this may appear to be working against their own interests. The ruling class has no real control over the cancer of militarism. Even though it is obvious that in the case of a North Korean attack against South Korea or the USA, this would lead to a considerable weakening if not even collapse of a whole regime and state, we must know that the ruling class knows no limits to the policy of scorched earth. In many places of the world, people commit suicide attacks, killing and wounding an endless number of people and sacrificing their own life. The case of North Korea shows that an entire state is threatening to commit massacres and is ready for “suicide”. And even though North Korea is extremely dependent on China, China cannot be sure of being able to “rein” in the regime in Pyongyang, which has shown a new dimension of insanity. During the Korean war both China as well as North Korea were ready to sacrifice millions of soldiers as cannon-fodder. The present North Korean regime is no less ready to sacrifice its “own” cannon-fodder and annihilate as many lives on the enemy side as possible. The North Korean regime thus illustrates the what fighting for your own national interests really implies. As a result this leads to more chaos on the imperialist chess-board. The policy of threats and blackmails by the North Korean regime is no exception but a caricature of the perspectives of the capitalism system as a whole, which is pushing humanity into an ever growing barbarism.
With a regime in the North so openly threatening South Korea, Japan and the USA, South Korea can present itself as “victim” and “innocent”. But the South Korean ruling class is no better and not less ferocious than its counter-part in North-Korea.
In May 1948 in the South the US-supported Rhee government organised a massacre of some 60.000 people in Cheju (a fifth of the island’s residents). During the war the South Korean government massacred with the same intensity as Northern troops. During the reconstruction period, the country was run by governments which exercised dictatorial rights either indirectly as under Rhee or directly under Park Chung-Hee for more than 4 decades. Whenever workers’ or students’ protests flared up, the regime used repression. In 1980 a popular rising with a strong working class participation in Kwangju was crushed in blood. However, in the reconstruction period after the Korean war, above all since the 1960s thanks to a harsh exploitation of its workforce, South Korean capital managed to get access to the world market through the low price of its goods. South Korea boasts one of the world’s highest percentages of precarious, temporary contract labour[2]. However, with or without a “dictator” as president, all the governments have maintained their policy of repression. The National Security Law gives the government the authority to hunt down any voices critical of the South Korean regime, accusing anybody of being an agent for North Korea. And in so many strikes and protests by workers or students or even “ordinary citizens” (see for example Sangyong or the “candle light protests”), the South Korean State constantly uses repression against the working class in particular. While the media ridicule the way the different generations of the Kim dynasty in North Korea pass on power, the recent election of Park Geun-hye, the daughter of the former dictator Park Chung-Hee shows a remarkable continuity of power transmission under “democracy”. Moreover, the common exploitation of the North Korean work force in the industrial zone of Kaesong shows that the South Korean capitalists are perfectly able to cooperate with any North Korean clique. And the South Korean ruling clique is as determined to use any military means against its Northern rival. Recently Seoul has been aiming at developing nuclear weapons itself.
History has shown: the two types of regime are basically the same: arch enemies of the workers. The workers cannot take sides with either of them. The recent sharpening of tensions in East Asia crystallises the destructive tendency of capitalism. But the recent conflict is not just a repetition: the dangers have become much bigger for humanity. This time the most powerful rivals are clashing with each other, the USA and China, China and Japan, all heavily armed and committed to speeding up the arms race. During the time of the Korean and Cold War the working class was defeated and unable to raise its head. Only a very small number of revolutionaries of the communist left defended an internationalist position at the time of the Korean war. Today, the proletariat in East Asia is not willing to sacrifice its life in the deadly spiral of capitalism. Only the working class can save humanity from sinking into an ever deeper barbarism. In order to do so the working class must reject patriotism and the spiral of militarism.
No to a “united front with the government”! The only solution for the working class is to resolutely fight against their own bourgeoisies – in the North as well as in the South. For revolutionaries today this means we must continue to defend the internationalist tradition of Lenin, Luxemburg, and Liebknecht during World War 1, of the Communist Left during World War 2 and during the Korean War –a tradition that was defended again in the 2006 internationalist statement on the threat of war in 2006.
ICC, 8.4.2013
[1] see also Imperialism in the Far East, past and present [2]
[2] see also The "Asian Dragons" run out of steam [3]
It is now one week since two crudely made “improvised explosive devices” tore through the crowd near the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon killing three people and injuring dozens of others, many suffering severe and traumatic injuries including the loss of multiple limbs. What was supposed to be a day of celebration of one of the oldest sporting events in the country had become the backdrop for one of the worst terrorist attacks on US soil since 9/11. The bomb remnants investigators discovered in the aftermath of the blast appeared to have been made from pressure cookers and stuffed with nails and ball bearings so as to maximize casualties from shrapnel. Inspired by similar devices used by insurgents to wreak havoc on American and allied troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, it appeared that the chickens from US imperialism’s adventures abroad might have once again come home to roost. Trauma surgeons who treated the wounded at local hospitals described the injuries as “combat like,” just as images of the blast sight showing sidewalks stained with blood filled the airwaves and streamed across WiFi connections. America, and especially the city of Boston, appeared to be in a state of disbelief and shock.
Nevertheless, only days later the FBI was able to identify two suspects using footage from the now ubiquitous surveillance cameras that look down on pedestrians and vehicles from the rooftops and traffic signals of just about every major city in the world. And, as the FBI, Governor Patrick and President Obama all boldly promised in the aftermath of the attacks, the state was quickly able to put the pieces of the investigative puzzle together and identify the supposed culprits. By the end of the night on Friday, April 20th,, 26 year old Tamerlan Tsarneaev, a resident of a Boston suburb with a passion for boxing, was dead, killed in a violent shoot-out with police. His badly wounded 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar would be captured, weakened and incoherent from blood loss caused by a hail of police bullets. As this is written, the younger Nasaraev remains in serious condition in a Boston hospital, unable to communicate we are told. Still, the US federal state proudly proclaims, in a tone that appears designed to reassure us of something, that once he comes to they won’t even bother to read him his Miranda rights before the federal government’s “high value interrogation team”1 goes to work.
In the interim period between the attacks and the dramatic events of Friday night, the US state and its media apparatus went into full propaganda mode, exploiting the attacks for all they were worth. On Thursday, President Obama travelled to Boston to speak to an “interfaith service,” loudly stating his resolve that the perpetrators would face the “full weight of American justice.”2 Although, the scale of destruction in Boston was nowhere near as severe as what occurred on September 11th, 2001(nor as grave as that which US imperialism continues to visit upon civilian populations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere), the U.S. state wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to once again beat the drums about the need for national unity in the face of terrorism and run a massive media campaign trotting out all kinds of talking heads from “terrorism experts” to criminal profilers, various psychologists and beyond; all designed, they said, to help an anxious public understand what had happened and reassure them that in the end justice would be done American style.
In Boston itself, the city was kept on high alert for the entire period. Just as the media spouted their drivel about how the city would refuse to be terrorized, Governor Patrick pleaded with residents to stay in their homes, revealing the ease with which the bourgeoisie talks out of both sides of its mouth in the pursuit of a patriotic narrative. On Friday, with Dzhokhar still on the loose, the state put the city on “total lock down” reducing much of the Boston area to a ghost town. The media announced that police were performing door-to-door searches; the city had been divided up into “zones”; Blackhawk helicopters were flying overhead and high tech military equipment would be deployed. The language of military occupation and prison discipline was now flippantly applied to the very American city in which the struggle against British military occupation had been launched two and a half centuries before—all in the pursuit of a wounded and almost certainly terrified 19-year-old kid who appeared to have no real plan for how to elude authorities other than to conceal himself under a boat tarp.
All of this should make it abundantly clear that terrorism, in whatever form, can only ever serve the interests of the bourgeois state—whether this takes the form of giving the state the opportunity to practice the militarization of a city, allowing the media to beat the drums of patriotism, or creating the excuse for the politicians to propose legislation to “beef up security.” This was made evident in the aftermath of the arrest of Dzhokhar when local residents spontaneously assembled on neighborhood sidewalks to cheer the police as a parade of squad cars left the scene. Later that night, in the heart of the city a “celebration” broke out that witnessed ordinary working people spontaneously hugging and shaking the hands of the cops sent there to keep order. One is tempted to compare the spectacle of Friday night to Eastern European civilians cheering the arrival of the Soviet army in 1945 – but how quickly do tonight’s liberators become tomorrow’s jack booted thugs? If there is one thing terrorism generally accomplishes, it is to drive the population into the hands of the state, goading them to identify with its repressive forces as their only protection against the irrational violence of terrorism unleashed in their communities.
Of course, the sense of relief that Bostonians felt once it was clear that the alleged perpetrators had been rendered incapable of causing further damage to their city is understandable; it is a genuine tragedy when working people come to identify with the state, rather than their own struggles, as their best protection against the growing decomposition of society. It is for this reason that anyone concerned with creating a better world—a world beyond the exploitation and violence of capitalism—must categorically reject terrorism as a tactic for pursing that goal. It accomplishes nothing other than to drive the working class—the only social force capable of offering humanity a real future—into the hands of the very state that represses it.
Nevertheless, the Boston events simply do not have the same scale that the 9/11 attacks did, so it seems likely that the celebratory fervor whipped up by the media will eventually fade. However, the state did manage to take one of the alleged perpetrators into custody, so we can certainly expect quite the media circus surrounding his trial (if he survives his police perpetrated injuries). Where will he be prosecuted? Will he be treated as an “enemy combatant” or will he be given a civilian trial? Will the federal government go for the death penalty, even though there is no death penalty under Massachusetts state law? How much was the young Dzhokhar under the influence of his older brother? To what extent was he really a hardened terrorist? Will he ask for forgiveness or will he mock the victims? All of this will keep the media buzzing for quite some time.
But underneath all these surface questions lies a more fundamental one: what would drive two young men who had lived most of their lives in the United States towards such violence against their neighbors? There will, of course, be a temptation by some of the cruder elements in the media to blame it all on the brothers’ Chechen background and Muslim heritage. “Muslims simply can’t be trusted,” they will say; “We should be much more circumspect about who we let into the country.” International terrorism experts might even tell us that Putin is right to take a hard line with such ruthless and unscrupulous people.
Others will blame the Internet as an “ungoverned” space that allows foreign terrorist organizations to “radicalize” vulnerable youth across national and continental borders. Undoubtedly, the media’s hired shrinks, in violation of just about every canon of their profession, will probe deep into the psyches of these two young men they have never met and tell us all about how their inability to fully integrate into American society left them isolated and in search of a purpose beyond themselves,3 which they found in radical Islam or Chechen nationalism or some such archaic ideology. Perhaps the more farsighted elements in the US bourgeoisie will come to recognize that, like most of the Western European countries, they now have their own problem with “home grown” Islamic terrorism that cannot be solved with repression alone and which demands serious sociological and psychological research to address.
But whatever “answers” the bourgeois commissions and academic investigations will come up with, it is highly unlikely they will be able to hit on the real answer as to what fuels such violence and destruction: the decomposition of capitalist society itself, which more and more pushes some young people into a state of desperation and alienation so painful that lashing out at society in one last blaze of violence seems the only answer to their profound existential crises.
The bourgeois experts probably won’t see any connection between the violent, but calculated, actions of the Tsarnaevs and the less political, more desperate, but just as nihilistic outbursts of an Adam Lanza, James Holmes, or Jared Lee Loughner. Islamic terrorism is fundamentally different from these kinds of mass shooting they will tell us. One is fueled by a foreign political ideology that exploits vulnerable young people, the other by “mental illness” or the easy availability of guns. But is there any really tangible difference between the Tsarnaev’s case and the violent outbursts perpetrated by these young, white, “American” men? Is it not the case that the only difference is that the Tsarneaevs—perhaps as a tangential result of their Chechen heritage or Muslim background—fell under the influence of a sick ideology (itself the product of social decomposition) and thus were able to, in their own minds, rationalize their homicidal rampage as politically necessary? But this does not explain why two young men, in the supposed prime of their lives, supposedly living the American dream, would be in such a state of mind to begin with where such ideologies could even appeal to them. How can such ideologies come to speak to young men growing up in the heart of a supposed capitalist “democracy”?
What are the underlying social, economic and psychological injuries that drive such young men to identify with a suicidal ideology that grows out of political struggle thousands of miles away from them and that has no direct affect on their daily lives and which they can only experience as an abstract fantasy?4 Could it be that the political extremism of the type that appears to have subsumed at least the older Tsarnaev is only the last exit off the highway before one’s desperation arrives at the kind of nihilist insanity that engulfed Lanza, Holmes and Loughner? Maybe the Tsarnaev’s route to political extremism was not so different from these three white “American” young men’s route to violent insanity?5 If this is the case, we must look beyond simplistic explanations that would understand these attacks as a result of the young brother’s ethnicity and religion and look instead to the social decomposition of capitalist society in the United States itself and the accompanying ethos of “no future” that increases many in the younger generations (in particular young men) today.
What, then, are some of the features of the objective social and economic situation facing the younger generations today that underlie the repeated violent outbursts we have witnessed? First, it should be acknowledged that the effects of capitalism’s economic crisis that accelerated in dramatic fashion in 2008 have so far fallen disproportionately on the younger generation. To begin with, unemployment is much higher among younger workers today than their older class peers.6 Many younger workers are simply unable to find a job that would pay them enough to live an “adult lifestyle” and thus complete the psychological transition from adolescence to adulthood in a more or less healthy way. The percentage of college educated young people who continue to live with their parents has increased dramatically as a result of the crisis.7 Moreover, as the job market continues to stagnate, many younger people find that they can only survive the crisis by prolonging their post-secondary educations and thus get sucked deep into the educational debt trap. Many young people are leaving college (with or without a degree) with staggering debt loads, fueling a sense of not being to get ahead or to even establish oneself as an independent and autonomous person in this world.
It is not a long jump from understanding these objective phenomena to appreciating the psychological toll this can take on young people, many of whom are increasingly thrown into a deep identity crisis. The burden can be particularly hard on young men, who still tend to be socialized in the model of the bourgeois “bread winner.” The frustration from the inability to find a meaningful and sufficiently remunerative job, the sense of uselessness that comes from prolonged periods of unemployment, the embarrassment of having to move back home with one’s parents, the reversal of standard gender roles that often occurs when a female partner works, but the male is stuck at home, is often an “emasculating” experience that fuels a profound identity crisis, which can cause some young men to lash out at the women in their lives and the broader society that appears to send mixed messages about masculine identity.
The older Tsarneaev is reported to have been charged with domestic violence in the past—a fact that may have caused the immigration authorities to deny his application for US citizenship.8 It has also been reported that his partner worked, while he was staying home and caring for their child. While it would be extrapolating too much at this stage to say we know the precise role these factors played in his “radicalization,” it seems reasonable to consider whether Tamerlan’s strained relationship with his partner was one of the factors which made radical Islam, a philosophy in which gender roles are not so ambiguous and women are supposed to know their place, attractive to him. Can the attraction of these kinds of ideologies, in part, be the sense of male empowerment they can give to young men struggling with their inability to live up to traditional notions of masculinity?
But, even if this is the case, it should be clear that this does not so much represent the penetration of some archaic foreign way of thought into American society, as much as it expresses the breakdown of traditional bourgeois family and social roles and the resultant crisis in male socialization that is a function of capitalist decomposition. While as communists we do not lament the decline of traditional bourgeois gender values, we can still recognize the part this might play in fueling the social crisis before us and how it could contribute to the repeated outbursts of irrational violence that continue to dominate news reports on what seems like a regular basis.
Undoubtedly, some critics will not find our attempt to understand the roots of these violent outbursts convincing. The less forgiving of them will tell us these kinds of attacks can only be condemned, not “understood.” We won’t spend much time responding to this line of argument, as it is not very serious. However, a more sophisticated challenge might say that not all unemployed or debt ridden young people resort to this kind of violence—so we cannot use such objective social conditions to explain these attacks. While it is indeed true that the vast majority of young people will never even consider engaging in this kind of violence, this kind of criticism rather misses the point. Pushed to the edge inevitably some people are bound to go over it and lash out at society in a violent way; and as recent events have shown, it only takes a handful to cause carnage and heartache on a massive scale.
Nevertheless, the critics may have a point in that there are alternatives to such a violent response to alienation and economic stress. Pointless violence is not the only option. Just within the last several years, we have seen several examples of young people coming together in solidarity to discuss an alternative to this society. For all their warts, movements like Occupy and the Indignados in Spain are powerful evidence that there is another way to express frustration and anger at this society that is far more powerful than any individualized violence. It is the collective solidarity forged in struggle that shows us the way forward and demonstrates to us how a world beyond the pain and suffering of the damaged individual ego is possible. Still, these movements cannot be willed into existence. They are themselves products of deep social and historical forces that are thus beyond the power of isolated individuals, or small groups, to create ex nihilio. The burning question thus becomes: how to we channel our frustrations in the meantime?
As far as US internal politics go, it is likely that, whatever their initial propaganda value, these bombings will not work in favor of the Obama administration. With reports surfacing that the FBI interviewed the older Tsarnaev brother two years ago at the bequest of Russian intelligence and concluded he was not a threat, it seems inevitable that this will fuel Republican-led investigations on Capitol Hill and accusations that the Obama administration simply cannot keep us safe from terror. With Senators McCain and Graham already calling on Obama to declare the younger Tsarnaev an “enemy combatant” and forego any of the legal niceties supposedly afforded by the US Constitution,9 there promises to be another round of heated disputes ahead. The only real question seems to be whether or not the Republicans will overplay their hand.
Moreover, although the Boston bombings momentarily distracted the media’s attention, away from the defeat of gun control legislation backed by President Obama, this defeat only seems to have emboldened the President’s opponents. Already, despite the apparent willingness of many Republicans to relent to comprehensive immigration reform, there is talk of strengthening right-wing resistance to any bill that would grant anything remotely resembling “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. Clearly, the rancor and furor that has characterized the internal life of the US bourgeoisie over the last several years has not subsided as much as the media would have had us believe the last three months. In line with the nature of the period, it seems likely that these bombings will only become more fodder in what seems like inexhaustible infighting among the various factions that comprise the bourgeois state. What a reversal of fortune for the US bourgeoisie from 2001, when it was able to utilize the 9/11 attacks to forge a national consensus for war.
In the end, even if we have the ability through the Marxist method to begin to understand the underlying social and economic factors that can drive some alienated youth towards acts of terrorism, or other acts of desperate violence, we have to be clear that these can never be a tactic for the emancipation of the proletariat. Terrorism and irrational violence only end up serving the interests of the state, and thus the entire capitalist system, as they are exploited to drum up propaganda and fear campaigns that push significant parts of the working class, even if only temporarily, into the arms of the state. Still, in the context of capitalist decomposition, in which the system is increasingly unable to offer the younger generation any real perspective for their future, regardless of what country they come from, what ethnicity they are or what religion, creed or ideology they are influenced by, we can likely only expect more of these outbursts of irrational violence in the future.
The only hope humanity has to avoid the twin pillars of senseless violence and state repression lies in the independent and autonomous struggle of the working class to defend its standard of living against capital’s attacks. Only this struggle can render the communist perspective visible and offer the younger generations hope for an alternative to the life of frustration, despair and seeming randomness that characterizes capitalism in decomposition.
Henk
1 Just what this means is unclear, but one wonders what tactics will be employed and what the Obama administration will admit to using?
2 Somewhat oddly, despite repeated warnings that dangerous terrorists were probably on the loose in the city, the US state seemed to have little concern about President Obama travelling to Boston and making a public address, something that is sure to fuel the grist of the conspiracy theory mills. In fact, at a Monday night press conference a “reporter” asked the Governor Patrick, before a national audience, if this was yet another “false flag” attack. Whatever success the US state had in exploiting this bombing for its own interests, it seems unable to achieve the level of national integration it did in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
3 A version of this kind of “explanation” was immediately proffered up by the Tsarneaevs’ uncle [7]—a seemingly successful Washington, DC area lawyer – who proclaimed in front of media cameras that his nephews were “losers” who could not integrate themselves into American society and who probably perpetrated these acts out of jealously against those who were able to “settle themselves.”. Of course, what the bombastic uncle completely failed to explain was why exactly the brothers had failed to “settle themselves.”
4 Of course, in recent memory it was not uncommon for many young men of Irish descent in the Boston area (many of whom had likely never been there or even knew someone from Ireland) to develop an interest in the IRA and the “Irish liberation struggle.” The irony of this never seemed to occur to the bourgeois media.
5 While we do not deny the possibility that some form of “mental illness” suffered by the various perpetrators of the recent shooting incidents may have played a role in motivating the attacks, as Marxists we don't think it is possible to stop our inquiry here. It is necessary to probe deeper and ask what is the cause of mental illness itself? Is it always an “organic brain disease” or is it possible that social, economic and political alienation can also play a role in causing some people to lose their moorings in reality and retreat into a fantasy world of violent wish fulfillment?
6 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the official unemployment rate for workers aged 20-24 was 13.3 percent for March 2013. The rate among workers aged 16-19 was even higher at 24.2 percent. This compares to a rate of 6.2 percent for those 25 and over. See https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea10.htm [8]
7 “(According to a 2011 report from the BLS), the percentage of men age 25 to 34 living in the home of their parents rose from 14 percent in 2005 to 19 percent in 2011 and from eight percent to 10 percent over the period for women.” See: https://www.parjustlisted.com/archives/10675 [9]
9 McCain and Graham’s request was loudly ridiculed by Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz who mocked the idea that a U.S. citizen could legally be declared an enemy combatant for a crime that occurred on US soil as expressing a gross ignorance of the law. Nevertheless, this hasn’t prevented the US state from publicly invoking the so-called “Public Safety Exception” to the Miranda requirement in Dzhokhar’s case. One wonders if the authorities recognize how blatantly fascistic the idea of a public safety exception to a supposedly fundamental constitutional right sounds? When asked about why the government simply wouldn’t read Dzhokhar his rights, one legal reporter from National Public Radio, in an increasingly common expression of Orwellian Kafkaism, flippantly remarked that, “They are concerned he might actually exercise them.”
Following the successful meeting we had last year, the ICC invites you to another day of discussion in London, on 22 June 2013.
The main focus of the day will be a discussion around the theme:
Capitalism is in deep trouble – why is it so hard to fight against it?
In this session, we will consider questions such as: is it accurate to say that capitalism is in terminal decline? What is really at stake in the struggle of the working class to defend itself? What are the main obstacles to the development of the struggle?
We have published a great deal about the crisis in our press but we recommend the following one to give a general overview of the situation confronting capitalism:
Regarding the problem of responding to the crisis, we think the following article, and the discussion on our internet forum that it stimulated, provide a good starting point:
/forum/5293/why-it-so-difficult-struggle-and-how-can-we-overcome-these-difficulties [20]
In the afternoon we are planning to organise a discussion around the theme:
How do we get from capitalism to communism?
What does a revolution look like? What is the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’? How can capitalist relations of production be overturned? How will the working class deal with the huge problems posed by capitalism’s destruction of the environment?
As with last year’s meeting, we hope that the presentations will be given by comrades who are not ICC members.
We think that these discussions will be of interest to comrades in or around revolutionary political organisations, to people who have been actively involved in the class struggle, and to anyone asking questions about the nature and future of present-day society – and about the feasibility of getting rid of it.
If you are interested in attending, please let us know in advance, especially if you have any accommodation, transport or other problems that might make it difficult for you to come along.
The venue is upstairs at the Lucas Arms, 245a Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8QZ. The first session will go from 11-2 and the afternoon session from 3-6. We will arrange for food at lunch time but we are also planning to go to a nearby restaurant after the meeting. The meeting is free but we will ask for contributions for the food and the room.
Contact us at [email protected] [21] or at BM Box 869, London, WC1N 3XX
Recent clashes in 2012 and 2013 over the Senkaku/Diaoyu/Tiaoyus islands (the archipelago is located roughly 200 km northeast of Taiwan, 400 km southwest of the Japanese Okinawa island, and almost 400 km east of China) have brutally brought to the fore the ambitions and tensions of the two biggest regional rivals in the Far East. Both China, the most populated country and second most important economic power in the world, and Japan, the third biggest economic power, have escalated tensions around the islands and regularly mobilise troops which have been engaged in shows of force. Taiwan has also clashed with Japan over the island. This must be of great concern not only to the population in Japan and China and the region, but the whole world.
The two big sharks as well as Taiwan claim ownership over these islands. Although the islands are mere rocks and uninhabited, their strategic position as well as possible oil and gas fields and rich fishery grounds in the area have increased the determination of these countries to claim possession of the islands.
While China claims control over these islands and clashes with Japan, this is not the only hotspot where China has run into conflict with its neighbours. During the past years, since its economic ascension, China has become increasingly vulnerable because of its high dependency on raw materials. Up to 80% of its maritime goods pass along the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Any blockage of a maritime strait in Asia would seriously disturb China. Moreover, China has increasingly tried to expand its presence beyond the coastal areas of China itself, in particular in the South-China-Sea[1]. In the face of its major rival, India, China has been trying to develop a “string of pearls”- i.e. a series of military outposts in strategically important locations. China has been supporting Iran and Syria against any possible military strike by the USA and other countries. Although the Chinese leadership wants to present the economic rise of the country as peaceful, the ruling clique has been investing heavily in its military capabilities. The USA, the only existing superpower, already perceives China as its main rival in the region and has decided to shift its military focus towards East Asia. The USA plan to position 60% of its navy in the region by 2020.
On top of this, the increasing need for raw materials, in particular energy resources, has driven China to explore and claim exploitation rights in the South China Sea. If the country has been involved in conflict over the South China Sea, and now with Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, it shows that the country is not only hungry for raw materials but claims a new position in the imperialist hierarchy of the world. It no longer wants to leave the USA and its allies the dominant role but aims to be a regional power, capable of defending its interests far away from Chinese territories. Thus the conflict between China and Japan is only the tip of the iceberg of growing imperialist tensions in the Far East.
Japan in turn has been claiming ownership of the islands, renewing its pride in its imperialist history. Already at the end of the 19th century Japanese capital was directing its ambitions towards Taiwan, the islands of the East China Sea and Korea. Today the regime in Tokyo puts forward its occupation of the islands in 1894 as a justification for its claims of historic ownership. When Japan was defeated by US imperialism in 1945, the USA took control over the islands, but handed them back to Japanese control in 1972. Of course Japan does not want to leave possible energy resources to its Chinese rival. But Japan also wants to defend its position on the imperialist pecking order. The country must try to leave behind the chains of the past. After its defeat in WW2 Japan was pulled under the wing of the USA. After intensive bombing raids (nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and fire bombings of Tokyo and other cities) the US took control of the country. Japan was forced to write in its constitution that its armed forces were not allowed to intervene in conflicts abroad. But already in the Korean war of the early 1950s, in the context of the cold war, the USA had to rearm its former enemy to draw on Japanese support to fight against Russia and China. With North Korea regularly threatening to use its arsenal of weapons against Japan, the USA or South Korea, and with the increasing might of China, Japan finds itself in a contradictory situation. On the one hand it wants to loosen its dependence on the USA; on the other hand, given the many military threats from North Korea and China, the country has to remain under the US weapons shield. Since 1989 the country has made small steps towards expanding its presence. The Japanese army gained first experience of “out-of-area-operations” in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, providing logistic support to the US-led war coalitions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Japan has participated in military manoeuvres with India and Vietnam in the Strait of Malacca and the South China Sea. Recently Japan succeeded in establishing its first military basis in Djiibuti. Its military can count on the most modern weapons. And the modernisation and expansion of the Chinese army has made Tokyo more determined to invest more money into its armed forces. However, Japan is not only at odds with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands: Japan is also quarrelling with South-Korea over the small Dokdo/Takeshima island, which Japan snatched from South Korea in 1905. Japan fears military provocations by North Korea and would perceive a possible unification of the divided Korea as a further threat to its position. However, the ascent of Chinese imperialism is perceived by Japan as the biggest danger. Historically Japan and China have been the two main imperialist rivals in the region. With Japan having occupied large parts of China for years and waging a terrible war with many massacres of the Chinese population, the Chinese ruling class constantly uses chauvinist feelings of revenge against Nippon. In turn, the new Japanese Abe government has announced a more aggressive stance against China.
Any escalation of tensions between Japan and China will pour oil on the conflict between the USA and China and contribute to sharpening tensions in other zones of conflict where the USA and China and their allies clash. The rivalries between the two biggest Asian competitors are full of consequences for the entire planet!
On several occasions, in particular in autumn 2012, there were protests in several Chinese cities against Japanese military presence around the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands with demonstrators burning Japanese shops or attacking Japanese owned factories. These protests are obviously welcomed by the Chinese State and probably directly organised by it. Like any other regime, the government in Beijing is most eager to sidetrack from burning social issues – growing economic problems, pollution, anger about the corrupt ruling clique etc. As even official Chinese institutions have to admit the number of “mass incidents” has been growing steadily over the past few years. The Chinese government wants these protests to be pulled onto a nationalist, patriotic terrain. The clashes with Japan can easily be used as a tool to try to rally the population behind the Chinese state. And the Chinese state has been hammering a sophisticated chauvinist propaganda into the heads of the young generation for years. Likewise, the Japanese government, which has been struggling against the ongoing descent into economic depression for years and is also faced with the disaster of Fukushima and the effects of the Tsunami, also wants the population to run into the nationalist trap and gang up behind the state. But while the ruling cliques certainly manipulate these protests as best they can, it would be dangerous to reduce these clashes to a mere nationalist trick to divert from economic, social or ecological issues. If the two most powerful countries of the Asia-Pacific region clash over these islands, and the USA as well as the other countries of the region are pulled into a process of alignments for or against the contenders, this reveals a sharpening of imperialist tensions in the entire Asia-Pacific region.
Because the two countries are heavily dependent on each other for their exports, and trade between the two countries has fallen considerably because of the recent clashes, one might ask: could the rulers not become “reasonable” and keep a lid on their nationalistic tendencies? But are our rulers “reasonable”? In reality, militarism is an incurable disease of the capitalist system; it is stronger than any single government. The capitalist system does not allow for a peaceful development of economic rivalries. For more than one century the whole system has been pulling humanity deeper and deeper into barbaric wars. In WW1 the main carnage took place in Europe, and Asia was still relatively spared from the battles. But in WW2 large areas of Asia became a major theatre of war where dozens of millions lost their lives. And the Korean war was one of the deadliest confrontations in the 1950s, before years of imperialist war ravaged Vietnam. Following the collapse of the Russian bloc and the weakening of US imperialism, Chinese imperialism has been able to gain weight and is determined to challenge the imperialist constellation in Asia. All its regional rivals (Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, India etc.) want to prevent a further strengthening of China and look for US military support. The recent confrontation between China and Japan is just one in a series of increased tensions in the entire region.
Should we follow the nationalist orientation of our governments and be ready to massacre each other? No, nationalism, chauvinism, patriotism have been the gravediggers of the proletariat. The problems humanity is facing – an insurmountable economic crisis, permanent war drive, xenophobia, pauperisation of the working class, ecological destruction of the planet – cannot be solved by nationalism. If we run into the nationalist trap, the whole of humanity will be annihilated. In the 20th century alone, some 200 million people have been killed in endless wars. We can only overcome this barbarism and the dead-end that this society drives us into by overcoming this mode of production.
This is the message which the working class, the young generations in particular, have to send to the social movements in other countries. In Japan there have been a number of protests against the effects of Fukushima, and there is growing anger about the effects of the economic crisis.[2] In China there have been a series of workers strikes against their incredible exploitation, and against the horrible ecological pollution[3]. And in so many other countries – we can just mention the Arab Spring, Spain, the USA, Greece, Bangladesh etc. – where the working class population has been suffering from the effects of mass unemployment, pauperisation and the increased pressure at work, the solution is not nationalism, ganging up behind the state, but class confrontation. We cannot overcome the crisis and barbarism if we burn shops and production sites which belong to a “foreign competitor”, call for the boycott of the commodities of the foreign rival or sanctions against them. We need to unite on a working class terrain, the terrain of class against class, and not nation against nation. Our slogan remains: workers have no fatherland!
It was this standpoint which allowed the working class to bring the carnage of the First World War to an end. Revolutionaries around Lenin, Liebknecht, Luxemburg and others defended an internationalist position – calling for the unification of all the workers across national boundaries. It was this firm internationalist stance which served as an inspiration to the workers in the factories and fronts, finally encouraging them to end WW1 through revolutionary uprisings. In the war between Japan and China in 1937 the internationalists of the small Left Communist group Bilan defended the same position: “On both sides of the fronts there is a rapacious, dominant bourgeoisie, which only aims at massacring workers. On both sides of the fronts there are workers led to the slaughter. It is wrong, absolutely wrong to believe that there is a bourgeoisie which the Chinese workers could – even temporarily – side with to 'struggle together even for only a short time', with the idea that first Japanese imperialism must be defeated in order to allow the Chinese workers to struggle victoriously for the revolution. Everywhere imperialism sets the pace, and China is only the puppet of the other imperialisms. To find their way to revolutionary battles, the Chinese and Japanese workers must return to the class struggle which will lead to their unification. Their fraternisation should cement their simultaneous assault against their own exploiters (…).” (journal of the Italian Left, Bilan, n°44, October 1937, p1415)
We must take up this internationalist tradition and break out of the nationalist prison. Today, conditions exist for workers to take up contact, to establish links amongst internationalists, to defend a common internationalist position everywhere. Even if our rulers use all means – censorship, control of the internet, repression, closing off borders etc., - we must work towards the unification of the working class.
While the rulers in China and Japan want the young generation in particular to swallow the nationalist pill, we must firmly put forward our alternative – the class struggle. Such an attitude would be an important message to the workers in North and South Korea, where the rulers threaten each other every day and whip up the same war propaganda, and to the working class of the whole world.
The ICC (February, 2013)
See our pamphlet Imperialism in the Far East, past and present [2]
[3]For example in January/February 2013, when record levels of pollution in Beijing posed a threat to the health of millions of people in the Chinese capital, and a short time later the smog was driven to Japan where similar record levels of pollution were measured, the governments of the two countries were engaged in military adventures over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands instead of protecting the health of their population.
In early August 2012, an international anarchist meeting was held in the commune of St Imier (Swiss Jura). One of the speakers was the spokesperson of Fekar[1]. The initiative to let this person speak at the meeting was taken by the Swiss group of the Forum of German-speaking Anarchists, which aims to bring together Turkish/Kurdish anarchists in a single federation.
According to the speaker, the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party, a party with Stalinist origins, in Kurdish: Partiya Karkarên Kurdistan) “concluded, in the late ‘eighties, that even if the Kurds did not yet have their own state, they already presented problems with authority in their own movement that correspond to those within a state. The PKK has therefore moved far from a ‘proletarian orientation’ and from a model of an independent national state with its own government, and therefore from an authoritarian state form. It is now a model for forms of ‘communal’ social life iin which the freedom of women, but also of ‘transsexuals’ and basically every individual is paramount, in which there is respect for differences and where the aim is to achieve a good ecological balance in nature.” It is this which is reproduced synthetically in the report of one of the participants[2]. Jan Bervoets, a member of the editorial board of the Netherlands anarchist journal Buiten de Orde (Out of Order), expressed his reservations about the Fekar spokesperson’s statement. He questioned whether "Őcalan has been illuminated, or if it is rather the adage 'when the fox preaches passion, farmer, watch the geese' that applies here”. But at the same time, he suggested that it is not entirely impossible that the PKK is actually developing in the direction of an organisation with anti-authoritarian and communitarian principles, in which the individual is paramount: “Have we all witnessed a historic moment, or an illusionist trick? History itself will tell.” Despite the reservations expressed here, this is once again the height of political naivety which so often characterises anarchism. The desire among anarchists to see in some way expressions of anarchist principles is so great, that a mere ghostly outline of anarchist principles (anti-authoritarian, communitarian, federalist, the primacy of the individual) is sufficient to create an atmosphere of jubilation among many (ibid.). On the occasion of this discussion in the anarchist milieu, a participant in the 'summer day' of the ICC in Belgium asked us: what is the position of the ICC in relation to recent developments in the PKK? It is clear from the contribution below that the PKK, whatever the positive image drawn by the conference speaker, still has nothing to do with the struggle for the emancipation of humanity and its liberation from the yoke of class society.[3]
The PKK was founded on 27 November 1978 in the village of Fis (Diyarbakir) by Abdullah Öcalan, Mazlum Dogan and 21 disciples. His goal was to put an end to Turkish 'colonialism' in Turkish Kurdistan and the realisation of an independent and united Kurdish state.[4] Since its inception, Öcalan (Apo) has been the undisputed leader of the PKK.
At the ideological level, the PKK was inspired by Stalinism (what the guest speaker at St Imier calls “a proletarian orientation”). Arguing for reconciliation between the so-called socialist countries, mainly Russia and China, while being materially much more tied to Russian interests, they were closer to the position of the North Korean and Cuban Stalinist than any of the others. On the one hand, power could be conquered through a popular guerrilla army; on the other, allies should be sought on the imperialist chessboard of the Eastern bloc against the Western bloc as well as among the Kurdish landowners against their Kurdish rivals. To achieve this goal, the PKK declared itself willing to use any means, however terrible certain acts may be. It launched an armed struggle with numerous attacks, including against other Kurdish political fractions. Some insist, however, that the PKK has given Turkish Kurds their self-esteem and made them aware of their Kurdish identity. For its part, Turkey, where most Kurds in the region live, has always been opposed to any form of autonomy and has practiced the policy of assimilation as well as more open forms of repression such as police violence, torture, forced immigration and open massacres. The strategic importance of the region, much more than its economic importance, has been crucial here. The Kurds were officially called 'mountain Turks' and their language was considered a Turkish dialect. They were kept in poverty and had to stay in line.
On 15 August 1984, the PKK attacked police stations in the villages of Eruh (Siirt) and Şemdinli (Hakkari), actions in which two Turkish officers were killed. This was the beginning of a whole series of paramilitary actions. As a counter-measure, the Turkish authorities decided to recruit thousands of Kurds who, in exchange for money and weapons, were stationed as village guards against the PKK.
The PKK was initially ruthless towards the village guards, and towards all Kurds who showed any sympathy with the Turkish central authority, in addition to their attacks against certain landowners. So the PKK lost the sympathy of a part of the Kurdish population. Relations were generally quite intense with other Kurdish fractions as well, such as that of Massoud Barzani in northern Iraq. The population of Kurdistan was thus squeezed by PKK guerrillas on the one hand and the Turkish army on the other. The nationalist party, organised on a Stalinist basis, was also supported strategically in this conflict by other imperialist forces in the region, who used it as leverage against Turkey.
Just like other bourgeois parties of the left, the PKK presented itself as the defender of 'socialism'. Through the armed struggle against the cruel Turkish government at the time, the PKK could attract some of the workers and poor masses who were desperate or had illusions, to drag them into a nationalist and imperialist struggle. In March 1990, at Kurdish New Year, funerals of PKK members killed in the struggle resulted in massive demonstrations. But after the collapse of the Russian bloc in 1989 and the disintegration of its Western bloc rival, the pieces on the imperialist chessboard were shaken up and the PKK lost some of its former allies. The Gulf War in 1991 in Iraq opened the door to a 'new world (dis)order’, in which Kurdish nationalism was used for the umpteenth time as bait to recruit cannon fodder. In the growing chaos, with the development of 'every man for himself', where all the imperialist powers, large and small, want to increase their influence in the Middle East, whose importance is strategic as much as economic, the PKK continues to play on the imperialist contradictions in the region, having received support from governments such as those of Syria, Iran, Iraq, Armenia, Greece and other imperialist countries, including Russia.
To survive, the PKK had to change its tune; it could no longer present itself as a purely Stalinist formation. And while, in the early 90s, some three thousand PKK guerrillas had captured de facto power in parts of Turkish Kurdistan, at the same time Öcalan sought other political opportunities to be able to maintain it. From then, military confrontations have alternated with periods of cease-fire and negotiations. A first round occurred in the early 90s, when the Turkish President Turgut Ozal agreed to negotiations. Apart from Özal, himself half-Kurdish, few Turkish politicians were interested, nor was more than a part of the PKK itself, and after the president’s death on 17 April 1993, in suspicious circumstances, the hope of reconciliation evaporated. In June 1993, Öcalan called again for 'total war'. Other episodes followed in 1995 and 1998 ending each time in failure. When the armed struggle took a more and more intense form, Turkey forced Syria to expel Öcalan. He ran away, but was eventually arrested by Turkish agents on 15 February 1999. He was sentenced to death for treason but this was commuted to life imprisonment under pressure from the European Union. Turkey had in fact applied for accession to the EU and had to promise to improve the situation of Kurds at the level of humanitarian rights. Since then, Öcalan has tried to lead his party from prison, through his lawyers. From August 1999, PKK guerrillas withdrew from the region and a series of initiatives was taken to develop the so-called ‘process of peace and democracy'.
The strategy to conquer their place within the dominant bourgeoisie had to be changed, and after much (bloody) struggle between fractions within the movement, the card of autonomy and federalism was played to get out of the political impasse. The eighth party congress of the PKK approved on 16 April 2002 the so-called 'democratic' transformation. Hence, the party would seek 'liberation' through political rights for Kurds in Turkey and renounce violence, even though the current leader of the PKK, Murat Karayilan, still declared in 2007 that an independent state remains the principal objective of the organisation. At this congress, the PKK transformed itself and a new political branch was created, even if this was a purely tactical act: it was baptised the Congress for Freedom and Democracy in Kurdistan (KADEK). The PKK reported at the time that it would continue the fight with democratic means alone. A spokesman for the PKK/KADEK said, however, that it would not dissolve its armed wing, the People's Defence Forces (HPG) or surrender its weapons, for reasons of 'self-defence'. The organisation wanted to maintain its ability to conduct military operations in order to establish itself as a full partner in the negotiations. In April, KADEK elected a governing council, but the members were almost identical to those of the presidential council of the PKK. On November 15 2003, KADEK was in turn transformed into a more 'moderate' fraction, the People's Congress of Kurdistan (KONGRA-GEL), in an attempt to make it more acceptable at the negotiating table and for a parliamentary mandate. Eventually, the name PKK reappeared as the 'ideological guiding light' of the general movement, which took the form of KCK, the Confederation of Kurdish Communities (Koma Civakên Kurdistan). Being the proto-state of the Kurdish nationalist movement, technically speaking, this formation serves as the umbrella body for every organ of the movement, such as the politico-parliamentary formation Kongra-Gel (Congress of the People), the PKK as its ruling party, the military wing HPG (People's Defence Forces, Hezen Parastina Gel); The Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) in Iranian Kurdistan, the Party for a Democratic Solution to Kurdistan (PÇDK) in Iraqi Kurdistan and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syrian Kurdistan, in addition to all sorts of other bodies and organisations which perform various functions of a state.
Negotiations with the Turkish government did not have the expected results, and in June 2004 Öcalan made a call through his lawyers to take up arms again; but to maintain the democratic image he hastened to add that this was not a declaration of war but of 'self-defence'. Between 2004 and 2009, the PKK carried out regular attacks and the Turkish army repeatedly attacked PKK fighters in northern Iraq. Thus, both sides kept up the pressure.
Since 1990, the Kurdish nationalists had been trying legal means to participate in Turkish parliamentary politics, a process in which six Kurdish legal political parties, nominally independent while maintaining ties with the PKK, were formed and banned one after another. A highlight of this process was the electoral alliance of the first of these parties, the Popular Labor Party (HEP) with the left-Kemalist Social Democratic People's Party (SHP) and the arrest of the deputies from the former Popular Labor Party (they had to join a back-up Kurdish nationalist party called the Democratic Party – DEP – by then, since the original party had been banned). In 1999, the Kurdish nationalists participated for the first time in the municipal elections with their own party and won a large majority in Turkish Kurdistan and they've been maintaining this status in the region ever since. In 2005, the Kurdish nationalists re-launched their efforts to obtain a place in the Turkish parliament by legal means. To this end, a large and nominally renewed pro-Kurdish party called the Democratic Society Party (DTP) was founded to replace the recently banned party of the same affiliation, the Democratic Popular Party (DEHAP). This party, affiliated to the PKK like all the others before it, managed to send several deputies to parliament, elected as independents due to the unusually high election threshold of 10% in Turkey, installed by the junta following the 1980 coup d'etat to prevent the entry of any undesirable elements into the parliament. This party too was in turn banned by the Turkish authorities because of its close links with the PKK and was replaced in 2009 by the Party for Peace and Democracy (BDP) (in Turkish: Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi, in Kurdish: Partiya Aştî û Demokrasiyê), itself created somewhat before the DTP was banned, just in case. This is now officially recognised as a social democratic party by the Socialist International as DTP was before. 36 delegates supported by them have sat since the last election, elected as independents again in the Turkish parliament. Many prisoners arrested due to the KCK operations are members of this party as well.
To cut the feet from under the PKK, in July 2009 the Turkish government began a new counter-offensive, this time presented as 'democratic': the Kurdish Reform Plan. The Kurds would get their own public broadcasting, new rights such as the right to take Kurdish lessons, Kurdish political parties would participate in trips abroad. As a recent example, we can mention the attempt to win the sympathy of the Kurdish masses by charitable distributions of food, fridges, ovens etc.
The PKK leader, Öcalan, responded from his prison cell with a new version of his 'Road Map to Peace' in 2003 (the publication of which is not authorised by the Turkish authorities)[5]. The PKK announced that it would abandon the armed struggle and send ‘peace brigades’ across the border to support the 'democratic' solution of the conflict that the Turkish government had begun. The first brigade, composed of 8 PKK fighters and 26 Turkish Kurdish citizens who had fled to Iraq in the 90s, crossed the border from Iraq on 19 October and were met with Kurdish flags by thousands of Turkish Kurds.
Now, both sides hide their true intentions. Their capitalist, nationalist and imperialist interests are disguised by a pacifist and democratic discourse that fits better in the new world view. Both sides also seek to introduce religious motives and thus respond to emerging political Islamism.
But it is in the context of the many tensions in the Middle East and the ravages of the global economic crisis that we need to understand the efforts of the Turkish and Kurdish bourgeoisie, who use the 'freedom' of the Kurds as a negotiating card.
While the strategy of the AKP (Party of Justice and Development) government remained basically the same as that of previous governments, its tactics were markedly different. Representatives of the Kurdish movement in Turkish politics were full of intrigues and false gestures, while in the background lay the three years of negotiations with representatives of the PKK in Europe in the Norwegian capital Oslo, while the government continued its repression. Thousands were arrested during this process in the action against the KCK, hundreds of Kurdish guerrillas were killed as they retreated during the 'cease-fire', demonstrations were severely repressed with many injured and dead, social repression was encouraged in Turkish cities against the Kurds who lived there, with attempted lynching as a result.
The nationalists of the PKK responded to the tactics of the AKP government with their plan for democratic autonomy for the region. At the fourth DTK congress[6] in August 2010 in Diyarbakir, the unofficial capital of Kurdistan, the co-president Ahmet Turk presented a project for a free and autonomous Kurdistan through the creation and definition of autonomy at the juridical level within the Turkish Constitution. No separatism therefore. With regard to the historical question of the use of the Kurdish language, it would be taught to all age groups, from primary school to university locally and in all Kurdish cities. In a free and autonomous Kurdistan, Kurdish would be the official language, alongside Turkish and local dialects. The economic exploitation of resources in the Kurdish regions would be in the hands of the Kurdish leaders of free and autonomous Kurdistan. There would also be representatives of free and autonomous Kurdistan in the Turkish parliament to discuss issues of equal rights and related discussions. Finally, the free and autonomous Kurdistan would have a flag that differed from the flag of the Turkish Republic, namely a Kurdish flag with its own logos and symbols based on the history of the Kurds and Kurdistan. The debate evolved in the direction of a confederation of the different Kurdish regions in the area. According to the convention, the people and the Kurdish regions in countries such as Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran undoubtedly belonged to the fabric of Kurdistan.
“The model of democratic self-government is the most reasonable solution, because it corresponds to the history and political circumstances in which Turkey finds itself. In fact, the Kurds enjoyed an autonomous status within the borders of the Ottoman Empire. Hence this proposal is not based on separatism. Instead, our people will determine their reciprocal relationship based on free will and voluntary union in a common homeland. The model does not envisage the abolition of the state, nor a change of borders. Democratic Turkey and democratic autonomous Kurdistan are a concrete formula for our peoples to govern themselves with their own culture and identity and their right to live freely." (PKK Press Statement 13-08-2010)[7]
But faced with continuing repression, it was trumped again, and on 14 July 2011 the 5th Kurdish DTK congress approved a declaration in which it audaciously and unilaterally declared ‘democratic autonomy’ for the Kurds in Turkey, and called for this to be recognised internationally. Pressure from Ankara was intensified and on July 24 the DTK unilaterally announced elections in 43 provinces. The mayor of Diyarbakir saw these elections as an important step towards autonomy. Bengi Yildiz, parliamentary deputy and delegate of the BDP in the DTK, declared that the autonomous region would no longer pay taxes to Ankara.
The recent Sixth DTK Congress, on 15 and 16 September 2012 in Diyarbakir, was held under the slogan “democratic autonomy towards national unity". The main task was to strengthen the bases of the PKK against the Turkish authorities' attempts to isolate and weaken it. The DTK was to become the parliament of all those who live in Kurdistan, Kurds or not Kurds. The situation in Syria was also an important point on the agenda. It should indeed not be forgotten that the PKK is part of the Confederation of Kurdish Communities (KCK) with four major military sister organisations in the region: the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) in Iranian Kurdistan, the Party for a Democratic Solution in Iraqi Kurdistan (PÇDK) and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syrian Kurdistan, which had taken control of this region with the tacit approval of Assad.[8]
Neither the ten principles of the PKK roadmap in 2003 or 2009, nor the declaration of the PKK in 2010, nor the practice of 'free and autonomous' Kurdistan up to the present, prove that “the PKK is actually developing in the direction of an organisation with anti-authoritarian and communitarian principles where the individual is paramount.” No illusions, comrades, the strategy of the Kurdish bourgeoisie, of the PKK which is a major representative, consists of integrating into the Turkish state to govern Turkish Kurdistan as a local apparatus of the Turkish state. This strategy has forced it to follow blow by blow the many dirty manoeuvres of its rival, as the only way to be able to stay at the negotiating table. The peace negotiations that the AKP government will begin directly with Öcalan in January 2013 are only a logical step in this process, which does not prevent military clashes between the two parties continuing.
In fact, “The PKK, although it hasn't succeeded in becoming an actual state, is acting as the main apparatus of the nationalist Kurdish bourgeoisie in Turkey; it attempts to realise its interests in its area of activity as if it is an actual state and it is bound to rely on the direct or indirect support of this or that imperialist state, the interests of which rival those of Turkish imperialism at this or that point. As such, although its forces are weaker compared to those of the imperialist Turkish state and its interests narrower, the PKK is as much a part of world imperialism as the Turkish state.” (Paragraph 1 of the resolution adopted by our section in Turkey about developments in Kurdistan, in February 2012, cf. Footnote 3)
The Kurdish bourgeoisie wants to survive and increase its power and influence, and to do this capital must be attracted to the region. On this basis, the Kurdish bourgeoisie and the Turkish bourgeoisie have mutual interests. This also includes the transformation of Turkey into a paradise for cheap labour. Needless to say a good part of this will consist of Kurdish workers. They are already working for very low wages in many sectors. The implementation of this policy is already in full preparation in Kurdistan with the new regional policy of minimal wages. The two bourgeoisies have an interest in the normalisation of the situation to ensure stability, in particular not to endanger the important strategic-economic Nabucco project[9]. But the game to advance their interests between them is played very hard, in the image of ruthless capitalism.
The PKK says that within the organization men and women are treated equally and that women adhere to the PKK on a voluntary basis. The question is to know whether this is a desirable principle, inherited from its ‘proletarian orientation', or a deceptive illusion.
Numerous accounts mention that many women members of the PKK were fleeing oppression by the family, especially the risk of forced marriage and honor killings in the traditional Kurdish territories and in Turkish society. But contrary to what our speaker from Fekar stated, these women were also victims of male violence in PKK camps and by none other than the great leader himself.
The source of such information is not the propagandists of the Turkish state but several founding members of the PKK itself who left the organization in disgust over the years. Mehmet Cahit Sener, one of the founders of the PKK who led an early and short-lived split called PKK – Vejin[10] wrote in 1991, a year before being killed on a joint operation of the Syrian intelligence and the PKK[11]: “Apo has forced dozens of our female comrades to immoral relations with him, defiled most and declared the ones who insisted on refusing to be people 'who haven't understood the party, who haven't understood us' and has heavily repressed them, and even order the murder of some claiming they are agents. Some of our female comrades who are in this situation are still under arrest and under torture, being forced to make confessions appropriate to the scenarios that they are agents (…) The relations between men and women within the party have turned into a harem in Apo's palace and many female comrades were treated as concubines by this individual.”[12]
Another founding leader of the PKK, Selim Curukkaya, who did actually manage to escape from Apo's grasp to Europe a few years later, wrote in his memoirs of countless incidents supporting Sener's general statements, further elaborating the repressive measures towards women in particular and in regards to the relations between men and women in general. According to Curukkaya's memoirs sexual relations were banned for the entire membership, and those caught were severely punished – tortured, imprisoned and even declared traitors in some cases which led to their executions – male and female alike. One striking example in Curukkaya's memoirs was the imprisonment of a couple of young guerrillas for no reason other than practicing ‘adultery of the eye’, in other words looking at each other. In contrast, the great leader of the PKK had the right to any women in the organization, and the rest of the leadership were rewarded if they proved obedient and useful[13]. Other founding leaders who have left since have admitted that these testimonies were indeed correct.
Not that Ocalan himself hasn't been as open as he could've been in his own speeches, texts, books, declarations and so on and so forth over the years. In a book written by him in 1992 titled Cozumleme, Talimat ve Perspektifler (Analyses, Orders and Perspectives), he stated: “These girls mentioned. I don't know, I have relations with thousands of them. I don't care how anyone understands it. If I've gotten close with some of them, how should this have been? (…) On these subjects, they leave aside all the real measurements and find someone and gossip, say 'this was attempted to be done to me here' or 'this was done to me there'! These shameless women both want to give too much and then develop such things. Some of the people mentioned. Good grace! They say 'we need it so, it would be very good' and then this gossip is developed (…) I'm saying it openly again. This is the sort of warrior I am. I love girls a lot, I value them a lot. I love all of them. I try to turn every girl into a lover, in an unbelievable level, to the point of passion. I try to shape them from their physique to their soul, to their thoughts. I see it in myself to fulfill this task. I define myself openly. If you find me dangerous, don't get close!” [14]
In a pamphlet he wrote more recently, Ocalan called Toplumsal Cinsiyetciligin Ozgurlestirilmesi (The Liberation of Social Sexism), he says: “In the ranks of the PKK, a true love is possible by a heroism proving itself with success. And what can we call the many female-male runaways? Frankly, we can call them the lapsed Kurdish identity proving itself (…) Besides myself and our martyred comrades have heroically been workers for the road to love. If those who supposedly fell like experiencing love haven't understood the value of such efforts, they are either blind, or evil, or scum or traitors. What else can be expected of us for love? You won't run to any successes in your revolutionary duties, and then you'll say you feel like having a relationship! It is clear that this is a shameless approach (…) Even birds make their nests in places untouched by foreigners. Can love build homes in lands and hearts occupied till the throat? Any force you'll take shelter in will do who knows what to the lovers. My experience has showed this: Living with a woman of the order isn't possible without betraying revolutionary duties.”[15]
The talk of freedom of women advocated by the PKK today is rather a cruel irony.
This text aims to expose the hypocrisy and bourgeois practice of the nationalist PKK. And it is illusory to think that such an organization, which since its foundation has simply posed strategic and tactical questions in order to conquer its place among other nation-states, and which to gain this place has used a ruthless terror towards everyone (including against the Kurds themselves in their own country and in neighboring countries), could be transformed into an internationalist organization.
In the current era of capitalism, all ethnic movements fighting for self-determination or national liberation, are reactionary movements. Participation in or support for such movements amounts to approving the actions and goals of capitalism, sometimes in open collaboration with different imperialist forces, if not in a disguised way. As Rosa Luxemburg said clearly in the early 20th century, the idea of an abstract 'right' to national self-determination has nothing to do with marxism, because it obscures the fact that each nation is divided into antagonistic social classes. If the formation of some independent nation states could be supported by the labor movement at a time when capitalism still had a progressive role to play, this period ended definitively - as Luxemburg also showed - with the First World War. The working class today has no more 'democratic' or 'national' tasks to complete. Its only future lies in the international class struggle, not only against existing national states, but for their revolutionary destruction.
“In a world divided up by the imperialist blocs every ‘national liberation’ struggle, far from representing something progressive, can only be a moment in the continuous conflict between rival imperialist blocs in which the workers and peasants, whether voluntarily or forcibly enlisted, only participate as cannon fodder.”(Platform of the ICC, ‘The counter-revolutionary myth of national liberation’)
“This point reached as a result of all these reforms and negotiations has demonstrated once again that only war can come of the bourgeoisie's peace, that the solution of the Kurdish question can't be the result of any compromise with the Turkish imperialist state, and that the PKK is in no way a structure even remotely capable of offering any sort of solution whatsoever. The Kurdish question can't be solved in Turkey alone. The Kurdish question can't be solved with a war between nations. The Kurdish question can't be solved with democracy. The only solution of this question lies in the united struggle of the Kurdish and Turkish workers with the workers of the Middle East and the whole world. The only solution of the Kurdish question is the internationalist solution. Only the working class can raise the banner of internationalism against the barbarism of nationalist war by refusing to die for the bourgeoisie."(Paragraph 8 of the resolution adopted by our section in Turkey about developments in Kurdistan in February 2012 - see note 3)
Rosa / Felix / Lake - 03-01-2013
[2] https://www.solidariteit.nl/extra/2012/een_blik_in_de_toekomst.html [33] in https://www.vrijebond.nl/internationale-anarchistische-bijeenkomst-st-imier-2012-enkele-verslagen/ [34]
[3]See also the resolution of the ICC section in Turkey adopted at its last conference about developments in Kurdistan: “Internationalism is the only solution to the Kurdish question!”. FFor other sources for this article see also:
- Le Monde Diplomatique, November 1, 2007
- https://www.lenziran.com/2011/08/pkk-leader-murat-karayilan-exclusive-interview-with-bbc-persian-tv/ [35]
- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10707935 [36]
- www.hurriyetdailynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438&n=dtk-declares-democra... [37]
www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action;jsessionid=79FFF831021... [38]
- https://www.urmiyenews.com/2011/01/blog-post_03.html [39]
- https://nos.nl/artikel/447331-pkk-rekruteert-ook-in-nederland.html [40]
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgMkrtDV9Kg [41]
- and the site of HPG https://nos.nl/artikel/447331-pkk-rekruteert-ook-in-nederland.html [40]
[4] In recent centuries, the historical descendants of the Kurdish people were scattered in various states in the region: Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Many of them have migrated to dozens of countries around the world.
[5] The Road Map to Peace is a document which makes detailed proposals on the different aspects of the new state to be created:
www.fekar.ch/index.php/en/english/88-abdullah-ocalans-three-phases-road-map [42]
[6] To complete the tangle of organisations, clandestine, semi-legal, legal and umbrella, related to or under the direct control of the nationalist ideologues of the PKK, it must also be noted that the DTK (Democratic People's Congress, Turkish DemokratikToplumKongresi), a pro-Kurdish umbrella organisation with about 850 delegates from political, religious, cultural, social and NGOs, plays an important role in the activities of the PKK.
[8] The Syrian wing of the party, through an unofficial agreement with the government of Bashar Assad, recently gained control of four cities in northern Syria (pictures of Öcalan and Bashar Assad have been hung in various locations), while other fractions of Kurds in Syria are well-intentioned towards the opposition. The 'independent' Iraqi Kurds of Barzani have also tried to break the power of the PKK-PYD. “At the beginning of the conflict in Syria, the PKK advised its Syrian ally, the Kurdish PYD Party, to ensure that the rights of Kurds were extended if possible under a new government. Now, however, it seems that the Assad government, which finds itself stuck, has withdrawn its troops from Kurdish areas. ‘Since then the PYD controls the region and guarantees a minimum public order'. Simultaneously, the PKK sent 1500 fighters from northern Iraq into the Kurdish region in Syria.”(https://ejbron.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/koerden-starten-groot-offensief-in-syrie-en-turkije/ [44])
“The PYD however uses a double language. The party owes its current authority to Bashar al-Assad, who ceded military positions to PYD fighters. It is generally accepted that Assad decided to cooperate because of the common enemy, Turkey. He could be sure that the PYD would defend the Turkish border, and thus also send a signal to Ankara not to venture into an intervention in Syria. The most important thing was that cooperation gave him the opportunity to focus militarily on the most important cities. (...) The rise to power of the sister of the PKK in Syria, the PYD, is followed with suspicion, both in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan. Ankara fears that Syrian Kurdistan could become the springboard for the PKK, which currently operates mainly from Iraqi Kurdistan, and has threatened a military intervention. The Iraqi-Kurdish president Barzani has ensured that the PYD was forced to cooperate with other Kurdish parties, including the military training of young Syrian Kurds in Iraq. To keep up the pressure, some six hundred of them were then confined to the border river between the two Kurdish regions, and Iraqi-Kurdish MPs have already suggested that the peshmergas, the Iraqi-Kurdish army, could intervene in Syria if necessary. To counter the power of the PYD, Barzani held a meeting between the Kurdish blocs and the Syrian opposition organised by Turkey. The meeting aimed to unify the Syrian opposition into a single front for the future of Syria.” www.trouw.nl/nieuws/vrijheid-verdeelt-syrische-koerden~bf288791 [45]
Concerning Syria see also: blogs.mediapart.fr/maxime-azadi/blog/190712/syrie-les-kurdes-ont-pris-le-controle-d-une-ville [46]
This shows once again how such nationalist movements are not only the victim of imperialist powers, as the left would often have us believe, but also play an active part in this game.
[10] Short lived not due to political reasons, but because the PKK murdered almost all of their leading members
[11] Hundreds of PKK members are said to have celebrated the "traitor's" death, firing guns in the air upon learning that he was murdered
We are publishing a contribution to the discussion about the development of class consciousness by comrade mhou who regularly contributes to our internet forum. We agree with its approach but welcome further contributions, either as articles or on the forum. The comrade also has a blog where he further develops his ideas: occupythecpusa.com.
"At all times the economic and social relationships in capitalist society are unbearable for the proletarians, who consequently are driven to try to overcome them. Through complex developments the victims of these relationships are brought to realize that, in their instinctive struggle against sufferings and hardships which are common to a multitude of people, individual resources are not enough. Hence they are led to experiment with collective forms of action in order to increase, through their association, the extent of their influence on the social conditions imposed upon them. But the succession of these experiences all along the path of the development of the present capitalist social form leads to the inevitable conclusion that the workers will achieve no real influence on their own destinies until they have united their efforts beyond the limits of local, national and trade interests and until they have concentrated these efforts on a far-reaching and integral objective which is realized in the overthrow of bourgeois political power. This is so because as long as the present political apparatus remains in force, its function will be to annihilate all the efforts of the proletarian class to escape from capitalist exploitation.
The first groups of proletarians to attain this consciousness are those who take part in the movements of their class comrades and who, through a critical analysis of their efforts, of the results which follow, and of their mistakes and disillusions, bring an ever-growing number of proletarians onto the field of the common and final struggle which is a struggle for power, a political struggle, a revolutionary struggle." - Amadeo Bordiga, Party and Class Action, 1921
A number of views have been put forward in recent discussions about consciousness in the ICC’s internet discussion forum1. From the common starting point of the necessity of communism, of the proletariat's agency, it was agreed that there is such a thing as class consciousness, and that this consciousness is necessary for the transformation of existing social relations and the capitalist mode of production. One aspect of the theory of class consciousness which brought a lot of disagreement in the course of discussions on the ICC's forum was the theory of the subterranean maturation of consciousness. This theory was developed by the ICC in the wake of the mass strikes in Poland in 1980-1981. The crux of the theory is that the working class develops class consciousness in its struggles with capital, and that the collective experience and memories of these struggles inform the thoughts and actions of workers in their future struggles. With this theory, it is possible to analyze and understand the appearance of seemingly spontaneous yet advanced and militant forms of struggle containing class conscious content. The example of the time it was developed was the appearance of the mass strike in Poland, which shook the geopolitical world, the opposing imperialist blocs, and the international working class at the time. Polish workers developed a system of revocable worker-delegates, workplace committees, and inter-profession assemblies, encompassing workers from a variety of industries and geographic locations into one unified struggle. To understand this phenomenon, the history of the Polish working class in the years leading up to the outbreak of advanced forms and content of struggle were analyzed; the forms and content of struggles in 1956, 1970 and 1976 were viewed as stepping-stones or building blocks for the upheaval of 1980. French and English workers in similar industries (such as steel, on the docks, rail) had also been engaging in similarly militant and advanced struggles throughout the 1970's, informing the thoughts and actions of the workers in Poland- giving the struggles of the proletariat an international dimension (and the communist minority a reference point for being in advance of generalized international struggle). The emergence of pro-revolutionary minorities is another facet of the subterranean maturation of consciousness.
"The misery of the miners, with its eruptive soil which even in ‘normal’ times is a storm centre of the greatest violence, must immediately explode, in a violent economic socialist struggle, with every great political mass action of the working class, with every violent sudden jerk which disturbs the momentary equilibrium of everyday social life." - Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, 1906
In the accelerating centralization and globalization of capital since the late 1960's, the echoes of forms and content of struggles appears to be informing workers all over the world at a faster rate than ever before- such as the outburst of struggle in Northern Africa during the Arab Spring, where workers struck and swarmed the public squares in constant protest. This form of struggle was picked up by American workers in Wisconsin when teaching assistants occupied the capital building and inter-profession crowds of public sector workers occupied the public square around the capital building in constant protest- in short order, signs began showing up in Tahrir Square with slogans like, "Solidarity with Wisconsin Workers". In this instance, the history of struggle informed future praxis, which also informed the thoughts and actions of workers internationally, while also being recognized by the initiators of the forms and content of struggle in that period. All of which is indicative of the subterranean maturation of consciousness. Leading up to the Arab Spring, the most advanced section of the Egyptian proletariat had been the public sector textile workers in the industrial city of Mahalla. Their cycle of struggles began in 2006 during the anti-Dutch cartoon Islamist protests, with reactionary strikes based on religious dogma and sectarian rage. However, from this ideological and reactionary starting point, the textile workers of Mahalla began combining in struggle across public and private sector divisions, winning demands repeatedly as the state thought the textile workers could be appeased with mild reform and increased wages.
"Faisal Naousha, one of the leaders of the walkout at Misr Spinning and Weaving, said the factory was running again after the strikers’ main demands were met.
Around 15,000 workers from the plant which employs 24,000 people in the Nile Delta city of Al-Mahalla Al-Kubra, 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Cairo went on strike last week.
‘We ended the strike, the factory is working. Our demands were met,’ including a 25 per cent increase in wages and the dismissal of a manager involved in corruption, Naousha said.
Misr Spinning and Weaving is the largest plant in the Egyptian textile industry, which employs 48 per cent of the nation’s total workforce, according to the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services."2
Over the course of the next 6 years, both public and private sector textile workers engaged in escalating mass strike tactics, forming workplace committees, refusing the promises of concessions from the state and disregarding the advice of union leaders (when the workers weren’t physically ejecting them from the factory):
"Al-Mahalla witnessed a successful strike in September 2007, with workers demanding a greater share of the company’s annual profits and removal of company management. The strike ended in victory, with the government succumbing to the workers’ demands after six days.
The head of the local union resigned after he was hospitalized by the strikers while trying to persuade them to disband the strike. The CEO was removed a month later." (ibid)
The public sector textile workers at Misr Spinning & Weaving led the struggle against the state, realizing that as its employer they were in direct conflict with the state (which would sporadically send security forces to clash with striking workers) rather than individual managers and executives. By 2011, the Arab Spring movement which would topple authoritarian regimes all over the Middle East (including and especially in Egypt) was incubated in Mahalla, where the textile workers acted as the advanced section of the reaction against the Mubarak regime. Yet even after the de-legitimization of the Mubarak government and the spectacle of a new ‘democratic’ state, they renewed their struggles against the state for its inability to provide promised reforms and against the bourgeois apologists of the ‘official Opposition’ parties and trade union apparatchiks telling them to give the state more time to meet their demands. In the latest round of mass action, the Mahalla workers declared their forms of self-organization (encompassing the geographic area of the city) independent of the Morsi state, while at the same time chasing political representatives of the opposition and Muslim Brotherhood out of the city and taking over the offices of the city council.
". . . thousands of protestors in the industrial city of Mahalla al-Kubra were reported to have announced the city 'independent', and planned a revolutionary council. "We no longer belong to the Ikhwani [Brotherhood] state." The protestors or insurgents seized the City Council building and blocked roads into and out of the city." 3
This escalation of struggle, development of the forms and content indicative of growing class consciousness, and learning from the events during struggles, is a perfect example of the subterranean maturation of consciousness. However, there are many communists who do not consider such phenomena to be indicative of growing class consciousness. Some argue that it is simple mysticism to theorize the existence of something that cannot be empirically observed and documented; that it relies entirely on subjective interpretation of events and actions. That if we can't measure it, it cannot be considered part of the science of Marxism ('Scientific Socialism'). While demanding verifiable proof before accepting the possibility that a theory may be valid may seem reasonable, in practice it would paralyze the creative energies and capacities of the communist minority to act in the class struggle or (more importantly) when the proletariat turns the capitalist crisis into a revolutionary crisis - the time when the historic role of the communist minority becomes necessary. The methodological tools of Marxism enable us to better understand the world around us, with a conscious understanding of history and a vision for the future. When the objective situation changes in favor of proletarian offensive, our ability to interpret events becomes paramount; without such an understanding of what is happening around us, we would be unable to understand the changes in the balance of class forces and to act in accordance with the movement of the class- in short, unable to be in advance of this movement of the class. Demanding a high threshold of hard facts before accepting any changes in the objective socio-political conditions of the classes would lead to simply tail-ending the real movement of the proletariat; the history of proletarian offensives and revolutionary attempts, even in the time of Marx and the Paris Commune, shows us that events move quickly, as do changes in the trajectory of revolutions and offensives. The actions of the ‘center’ of the Bolshevik Party of 1917 (embodied in members like Kamenev) show us what happens when sections of the communist minority hesitate and doubt the advance of the proletariat; putting forward (now outdated) theories and tactics and not up to the tasks of the hour (it is the difference between ‘The Democratic Republic’ and ‘All Power To The Soviets!’).
Our analysis of class consciousness and use of theories related to it is to advance our understanding of the real movement of the proletariat in its mission to carry out the historic task of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and abolishing all classes. Either a theory can aid our understanding and allow us to be in advance of events, or it cannot. The subterranean maturation of consciousness is a useful tool, the way many psychologists believe psychoanalysis is a useful tool, for accomplishing specific ends.
"In a revolution we look first of all at the direct interference of the masses in the destinies of society. We seek to uncover behind the events changes in the collective consciousness...This can seem puzzling only to one who looks upon the insurrection of the masses as ‘spontaneous' - that is, as a herd-mutiny artificially made use of by leaders. In reality the mere existence of privations is not enough to cause an insurrection, if it were, the masses would always be in revolt...The immediate causes of the events of a revolution are changes in the state of mind of the conflicting classes... Changes in the collective consciousness have naturally a semi-concealed character. Only when they have attained a certain degree of intensity do the new moods and ideas break to the surface in the form of mass activities." Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution
Utilizing the theory of the subterranean maturation of consciousness allows the communist minority to clearly analyze and understand the state of the class struggle at a given time. Since the latest manifestation of the crisis of capital in late 2007, the working class response has taken similar forms internationally: of which the Arab Spring and the struggles in Mahalla are but one facet. The emergence of the General Assembly form has been seen in diverse regions of the world, applied in workplaces, in the streets, in occupied buildings and spaces, all in a specific time frame. The assembly, whether general or specific to a group of workers (of one workplace, one company, one industry), is one of the most basic forms of proletarian self-organization. Doubt has been brought up as to whether we are still living through the downward spiral of retreat and defeat for the working-class; despite the explosion of large strikes, extra-parliamentary activity, and the wave of struggles during the Arab Spring-Occupy-Indignados troika.
"If, in a single large factory, between May 16 and May 30, a general assembly had constituted itself as a council holding all powers of decision and execution, expelling the bureaucrats, organizing its self-defense and calling on the strikers of all the enterprises to link up with it, this qualitative step could have immediately brought the movement to the ultimate showdown, to the final struggle whose general outlines have all been historically traced by this movement. A very large number of enterprises would have followed the course thus discovered. This factory could immediately have taken the place of the dubious and in every sense eccentric Sorbonne of the first days and have become the real center of the occupations movement: genuine delegates from the numerous councils that already virtually existed in some of the occupied buildings, and from all the councils that could have imposed themselves in all the branches of industry, would have rallied around this base." - The Beginning of an Era, Internationale Situationniste #12, 1969
This is where the distinction between the subterranean maturation of consciousness and the spontaneism of councilism becomes most apparent. When the view of class consciousness is that it is the immediate product of escalating struggles, a linear advance (and if mass action is defeated, a linear reflux), the perspective of the trajectory of the struggle, the existing conditions, leads to tunnel-vision. If there are mass struggles of the working-class, they think there is always a chance at the movement for communism and turning the capitalist crisis into a revolutionary crisis of capitalism. In May 1968, the Situationists clearly defended the councilist position, succinctly captured in the passage quoted above. While the mass action of May 1968 was an historic series of struggles of the proletariat, the potential of the struggle was vastly overestimated. A new generation of young workers had entered the factories during the 1960's, who were critical of the Machiavellian hold the Stalinist parties and Stalinist unions held over the central working-class. Just prior to this return of the proletarian offensive, ushered into history in May 1968, the deepest depths of the counter-revolution still prevailed, where the 'official Opposition' to capitalism, recognized by the Situationists as the 'pseudo-Communist parties of the spectacle-commodity society', continued to mystify the proletariat from Moscow (and later Peking). This was a working class without a connection to the revolutionary principles and positions of the communist wing of the worker's movement; a link broken by the failure of the revolutionary wave of 1917-1923 and the victory of the counter-revolution for over 40 years. The connection between the communist minority and the working class is organic, the former developing from the class consciousness of the latter within the class. The subterranean maturation of consciousness allows us to understand the events of May 1968 (the return of the economic crisis after the post-war boom, the experience of the post-war escalation of struggles in Western Europe- such as major strikes at Renault and Fiat in the 1950's), as well as the context of the struggle- which did suggest further escalation of struggles of a young proletariat, and the creation of a new revolutionary minority in the midst and as a result of these struggles (evident in organizations born after the ferment of 1968- such as the ICC and other organizations of the communist milieu). However, for the councilists of the Situationist International, the May movement had as much a chance at the transformation of all things in the movement for communism as the revolutionary wave 50 years earlier; and afterward, saw in it only a failed revolutionary attempt, rather than an important moment in the resurgence of the working-class, a change in the balance of class forces. So for the councilists, any large struggle has the potential to 'boil over' into proletarian revolution, if only the workers form councils. The form of the soviet becomes more important than the actual content of the struggle or its context and trajectory- leading to confused intervention and an inability to absorb the lessons if struggles are defeated and consciousness goes into reflux (which happened to the Situationists in 1972 with their organizational implosion and dissolution). Such a conception of class consciousness loses perspective and obstructs the communist minority's ability to properly interpret, theorize and intervene in the struggle. Without such an understanding and ability to draw the appropriate lessons, we are less capable. The theory of the subterranean maturation of consciousness improves our capabilities, which is the necessity of any theoretical or methodological tool in the arsenal of the working class and its most advanced fraction.
M.Lida
1 See in particular the discussions on "Why is it so difficult to struggle? [19]" and " "The maturation of consciousness [55]".
2 Egypt Workers' Solidarity
3 See this article on the "Mahalla soviet" [56]
When Margaret Thatcher died we were told that, as in life, her death had polarised and divided Britain. On the one hand there were the parliamentary tributes, the claims for her greatness as a woman and principles as a politician, and a funeral with dignitaries arriving from all over the world. Against this there were the street parties celebrating her death, the singing of “Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead”, and the outpouring of vitriol against ‘Britain’s most-hated Prime Minister’. More than twenty years after she left power Thatcher was still able to play a role in the false ideological alternatives of different factions of the ruling class.
For a start, US President Obama called Thatcher “one of the great champions of freedom and liberty”. This curious description involves a revival of the language of the Cold War. Margaret Thatcher had as much to do with ‘freedom’ as the Stalinist leaders of the USSR had to do with communism. What she did do during her time in office was ensure that British imperialism sustained its role as a loyal lieutenant to the US leader of the western bloc. And when the Russian bloc fell apart, and the British bourgeoisie wanted British imperialism to pursue a more independent orientation, the ‘men in grey suits’ arranged for her replacement. There was no longer a place for the hard-line Cold War rhetoric. Thatcher was clearly dispensable.
On the level of the economy, the denigrators of Thatcher blame her for the increase in unemployment in the early 80s, the decline in the steel, car and shipbuilding industries, and the attack on coal mining. These were not the individual responsibility of one person. The decline in many major industries was felt internationally, not because of the whim or personality of individual politicans but because of the deepening economic crisis of capitalism. In that context, British capitalism was particularly burdened by outdated and uncompetitive industries. The laws of profit demanded the vicious pruning pushed through under Thatcher’s government.
In terms of the specific role of government, the attacks that characterised the 1980s did not start with the Conservative government but with the preceding Labour government of Callaghan and Healey. After all, the working class struggles, the strikes and massive demonstrations of 1978-79 that became known as the ‘winter of discontent’ were against the cuts imposed by Labour. And when John Major left office in 1997 the incoming Labour government explicitly committed itself to the Tory spending plans. And when Gordon Brown’s Labour government was replaced by the Cameron-led Coalition the same basic regime continued.
Under Thatcher and Major the Left denounced the way that the unemployment statistics were continually being manipulated. Yet, apart from a couple of tweaks, the unemployment figures have never been recalculated so that accurate comparisons over recent decades can be made. There are in the UK officially nearly 9 million people of working age that are described as ‘economically inactive.’ Whatever numbers you subtract from this figure mass unemployment in the UK didn’t go away in the thirteen years of Labour rule. It’s been with us, without interruption, for thirty years. This is not the fault of any individual, nor any government or government policy. It’s an expression of the depth of the crisis of capitalism.
Back in the 1980s there were Tories who thought that more government investment could change things, as well as the whole of the Left who proposed different degrees of state intervention. None of these amounted to an ‘alternative’. In that sense, when Thatcher said ‘There is no alternative’ she was right. The economic crisis was a crisis of state capitalism, something that no amount of resort to debt could do anything other than worsen.
But what of the class struggle of the 80s in Britain? Surely it’s clear that Thatcher and the hated Tories were the sworn enemies of the working class, and showed this blatantly during the miners’ strike of 1984-85? Yes, the state was prepared for the miners’ strike and used repression and propaganda against the year-long strike. But that’s only part of the equation. The job of ensuring that the miners remained isolated was the responsibility of the unions. The potential was there for the struggle to extend to dockers and to car workers, but the unions kept the workers divided. Throughout the 80s the Left and the unions played their role, as part of the political apparatus of capitalism, in putting forward false alternatives. This involved not only ‘alternative’ economic policies but also campaigns around issues such as the threats to local government or the presence of American weapons on British soil. Ultimately, during the 80s, workers in Britain came up against not just the material attacks backed up by the state, but the whole range of lies put out by the Left. Tony Blair has recently said that Labour must not return to being a ‘party of protest’. In fact, under Thatcher, Labour played an absolutely crucial role by being just that. You might have hated the Tories, but Labour, the Left and the unions were ready and waiting to embrace you … and undermine any developing militancy.
One of the things that Thatcher will be remembered for is the Falklands war against Argentina in 1982. To this day it remains a focus for propaganda campaigns. Some say that the Falkland Islanders’ wishes should be considered first, for others, it’s a typical episode in the history of British imperialism. Looked at in the context of the time you see something different. The Falklands were, and remain, of no strategic or material importance. In the early 1980s Argentina was an ally of the UK in the US bloc. Moves were already underway to change the status of the Falklands. The war over the Falklands can not be understood as a military matter, it can only be understood at the social level. The stimulation of such a nationalist campaign (with Labour leader Michael Foot prominent in the chorus) was a massive diversion at a time the different class interests within the British population were becoming so sharply posed.
Thatcher, because of her constant invective against the Russian bloc, became known as the Iron Lady. Her reputation as a warmonger is undisputed. Yet, if you look at the deployments of British armed forces during her period of office (Falklands, Northern Ireland etc) it’s on nothing like the scale of the operations carried out by Labour under Blair and Brown with Afghanistan, Iraq etc.
In parliament Glenda Jackson criticised the “social, economic and spiritual damage” inflicted by Thatcher. Lives that were devastated during the 1980s suffered the impact of the capitalist economic crisis. In opposition to Margaret Thatcher, marxists say that there is such a thing as society. And the capitalist society in which we live is not just economically destitute; it has developed a culture of each against all, of atomised, alienated individuals, of emotional impoverishment. Throughout her adult life Thatcher certainly played her role for the ruling class, but she was only one, admittedly important, cog in the whole capitalist state machine.
Car 12/4/13
Links
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[2] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/2012/5305/november/international-review-special-issue-imperialism-far-east-past-
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/89/dragons
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/korea
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/korea
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/armourinboston.jpg
[7] https://www.cnn.com/2013/04/19/us/marathon-suspects-uncle/index.html
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[11] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1796/tamerlan-tsarneaev
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1797/dzhokhar-tsarneaev
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1798/adam-lanza
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1799/james-holmes
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1800/jared-lee-loughner
[16] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/terrorism
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1795/boston-bombing
[18] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201203/4744/economic-crisis-not-never-ending-story
[19] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201211/5284/why-it-so-difficult-struggle-and-how-can-we-overcome-these-difficulties
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[21] mailto:[email protected]
[22] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/public-meetings
[23] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/spratley_isles.jpg
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[26] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/china
[27] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/japan
[28] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/philippines
[29] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1834/senkaku
[30] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1835/diaoyu
[31] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/pkk.jpg
[32] https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&prev=_t&sl=fr&tl=en&u=https://www.fekar.ch/
[33] https://www.solidariteit.nl/extra/2012/een_blik_in_de_toekomst.html
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[35] https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&prev=_t&sl=fr&tl=en&u=https://www.lenziran.com/2011/08/pkk-leader-murat-karayilan-exclusive-interview-with-bbc-persian-tv/
[36] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10707935
[37] http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438&n=dtk-declares-democratic-sovereignty-2011-07-15
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[41] https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&prev=_t&sl=fr&tl=en&u=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DlgMkrtDV9Kg
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[43] http://www.pkkonline.com/en/index.php?sys=article&artID=60
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[45] https://www.trouw.nl/nieuws/vrijheid-verdeelt-syrische-koerden~bf288791/
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[52] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/22/national-question
[53] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/135/internationalism
[54] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1793/kurdish-nationalism
[55] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/5239/maturation-consciousness-lets-discuss
[56] https://oreaddaily.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-mahalla-soviet.html
[57] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1406/socialism
[58] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1407/marxism
[59] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1421/karl-marx
[60] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1433/class
[61] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1446/social-class
[62] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1447/bourgeoisie
[63] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1450/proletariat
[64] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1472/working-class
[65] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1488/workers
[66] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1547/egypt
[67] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1687/struggle
[68] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1786/mahalla
[69] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1787/poland
[70] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1788/al-mahalla-al-kubra
[71] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1789/wisconsin
[72] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1790/consciousness
[73] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1791/subterranean-maturation
[74] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1792/class-consciousness
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[77] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/britain
[78] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1794/margaret-thatcher