The World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg from August 26 to September 4 addressed issues that are vital for the survival of the human species, just as the previous summit held in Rio did ten years ago. And just like Rio it will not mark a turning point in the despoliation of the planet but the start of a new descent as capitalism plunges ever further into crisis, dragging humanity with it. Capitalism threatens humanity

The statistics of death, disease and poverty have been repeated so many times and are of such enormity that they threaten to lose all meaning. 3 million people die every year from the effects of air pollution. 2.2 million die from contaminated water. 1.2 billion people live on 70p a day. A child dies every 3 seconds from disease, hunger or war. 1.1 billion people rely on unsafe water. In the 1990s another 2.4% of the world's forests were destroyed, mostly in Africa and Latin America. Half of the world's rivers are polluted. 11,000 species are threatened with extinction. 60% of coral reefs and 34% of all fish species are at risk. Water shortages are predicted to increase as extraction rates go above sustainable levels in major parts of the world. Global warming has reduced the polar ice caps, so much so that in the near future the famous north-west passage will become an open water-way for part of the year. Over the next 80 years sea levels are expected to rise by 44cm. Higher temperatures lead to more evaporation and consequently increased rainfall, while the destruction of the forests makes the consequent floods far more serious. The climatic changes have increased both the number and severity of 'natural' disasters. The recent floods in Europe were the worst for hundreds of years, but are as nothing compared to those elsewhere. In 1991 139,000 people died in floods in Bangladesh. In 1996 100 million people lost their homes or livelihoods in China because of floods. In 1998 the figure was 180 million. In both thousands died. In the same year 10,000 died when Hurricane Mitch tore through Central America. As more of the oceans reach the critical surface temperature of 28�C the number of hurricanes is predicted to increase. Alongside the escalation of 'natural' disasters diseases carried by micro-organisms that thrive in the warmer conditions are escalating. By 2050 it has been estimated that 3 billion people will be at risk of malaria. The bourgeoisie has no solution

On 4 September the conference ended with the adoption of a final statement that spoke of the "deep fault lines that divide human society between rich and poor" and of the need for 'fundamental changes' in the lives of the poor and of the "adverse effects of climate changes" that "rob millions of a decent life" (Guardian 5/9/02). The summit set a target of halving the 1.2 billion without basic sanitation by 2015, providing clean water for half of those without it, of halving the 1.2 billion who live on less than $1 a day, of restoring fishstocks by 2015 and reducing the loss of biodiversity by 2010. The World Trade Organisation will be required to consider environmental issues and an action plan on sustainable consumption is to be published within the next decade. A lot of noise followed about the lack of targets, as had been contained in Agenda 21 adopted at Rio, and 30 countries including the EU pledged themselves to set more precise targets. The reality, as the ten years that followed Rio confirmed, is that targets or not the bourgeoisie is incapable of even slowing the acceleration of the destruction of the environment, let alone halting and reversing the process.

The reason for this was evident throughout the summit when every issue was reduced to the level of grubby deals, of every nation putting its economic interests first. The negotiations over energy are one example: "There were two proposals: The EU, keen to see its strong renewable energy companies expand, wanted a target of 15% renewables by 2015. The US, Japan and Opec countries, who all fear that the rise of renewables will hurt their own strong fossil fuel companies, were opposed to the targets" (Guardian 4/9/02). The negotiations went up to ministerial level and into the final days of the summit and became one element within the overall manoeuvrings, with first one country then another putting forward proposals: "Japan now played its hand. With the EU it was proposing water and sanitation targets; but with the US it was opposing energy targets� The EU, battling to save its targets, held out, but after a 10-hour session the negotiators knew that without Japan they were isolated" (ibid).

This is not some aberration, but a manifestation of the logic, the very essence, of capitalism, as each nation uses the negotiations to defend its interests on the world market. Imperialist confrontation

The presentation - in the European media at least - of the US as the main obstacle to the summit was a constant theme throughout the summit: "If we all lived the way that George Bush jealously protects for the US we would need the resources of three additional planets" (Observer leader, 25/8/02). President Bush's refusal to attend was reported as a "snub" (Guardian 17/8/02), despite the best efforts of Tony Blair, wher energy are one example: "There were two proposals: The EU, keen to see its strong renewable energy companies expand, wanted a target of 15% renewables by 2015. The US, Japan and Opec countries, who all fear that the rise of renewables will hurt their own strong fossil fuel court. This is because its imperialist rivals - which include all of its supposed allies in the democratic west, including Britain -have spent the last decade and more using these as traps to snare American ambitions. The Earth Summit was no exception and in fact went hand in hand with the efforts to use the UN to try and rein back the planned assault on Iraq. The reception given to Bush's representative Colin Powell - a reception that must have had at least the tacit support of the organisers and main participants for it to happen in the conference centre - expressed most publicly the hostile anti-Americanism that had been built up in the months and weeks before the summit as well as during the summit itself.

Britain played an active part in this, although its approach was more discreet. Rather than criticise Bush directly, the press tended to report other people's criticisms. The Guardian, for example, in its report on Bush's decision not to attend, quoted the Greenpeace spokesman in Washington as saying "The fact that President Bush will be on vacation in Crawford speaks volumes for how little he cares for the environment�He's turning his back on the world" (17/8/02). The truth is that all of the heads of state who made such a fuss about going most just showed their faces for a few hours and spoke for a few minutes (the full text of Blair's speech is less than 700 words long). Blair for his part played the role of candid friend to Bush. While his speech in Mozambique, in which he criticised the US for not signing the Kyoto Agreement on climate change, was described as "a calculated rebuff to the American president" (Guardian 2/9/02) it was followed by a declaration of support for a war against Iraq. This two-faced approach is the strategy Britain has pursued with the US for a number of years. The loyal opposition

The Summit wasn't only attended by the world's governments and business leaders; there was also a noisy 'left wing' made up of Non-Government Organisations and environmentalist groups of various degrees of radicality, whose mouthpieces are figures such as Jonathan Porritt, George Monbiot and Naomi Klein. Such elements may attack the summit, they may denounce the politicians and the multinationals with varying degrees of vigour but they share the logic. For Porritt "you'd have to be an insane optimist to have any expectations at all of the World Summit" (Observer 25/8/02). The solution lies in government and industry changing and "some multi-nationals have genuinely become a 'force for good'" (ibid). Monbiot goes further: the last summit was partly responsible for the "environmental catastrophe" of the 1990s (Guardian 22/8/02) and the solution lies in "a global peoples' movement led by the poor world" resulting in "a world parliament" that will "hold government's to account for their actions" (Guardian 22/8/02). For Klein "the entire process was booby-trapped from that start" because it is now in the hands of the big corporations and the solution lies outside: "unlike a decade ago, the economic model of laissez-faire development is being rejected by popular movements around the world" (Guardian 4/9/02). What unites these critics, not only one with another but also with those they are criticising, is the call to ameliorate the worst excesses of capitalism.

The fact is that it is not the excesses of capitalism that cause the problem, but capitalist accumulation itself: "Accumulation for accumulation's sake, production for production's sake: by this formula classical economy expressed the historical mission of the bourgeoisie�" (Marx, Capital vol. 1, chapter XXIV). Even in its early days capitalism was capable of causing tremendous local destruction of the environment, but this was largely outweighed by the historic potential that capitalist industrialisation was creating for mankind. However, with the decadence of capitalism the process of destruction became qualitatively worse as competition for the world market became more murderous - quite literally more murderous as it overflowed into the orgy of destruction represented by the two world wars and many more local imperialist wars that went on during the twentieth century. Today, when declining capitalism has begun to rot on its feet, its debt-fuelled and increasingly irrational 'growth' has become completely destructive, not only endangering the basis for our future on this planet but causing increasing misery right now. Any apology for capitalism, with the multinationals becoming 'a force for good', as Porritt would have it, or in the hands of corporations that are smaller, as Klein wants, or with Monbiot's 'world parliament', is nothing but a prop for the very system which is pulling the human species towards the abyss.

The working class - a term not mentioned in any of the mountains of articles written - is the only force capable of saving humanity because it is the only force capable of replacing the capitalist mode of production with communism, of replacing competition between national states with a unified world community, production for production's sake with conscious, planned production for need. To do this it will have to take on not only the governments and multi-nationals of the world but also all of their green and radical friends.

North, 7/9/02

Since the spring, the world economy has been the victim of a series of financial tremors: whole states, and some of the developed world's biggest companies, have gone bankrupt, the stock exchanges have rarely been so unstable and fragile. The bourgeoisie's clever economists have trotted out a whole list of explanations for this avalanche of problems: they have 'denounced' the disastrous policies of the IMF, pouring oil on the fire as it came to the 'rescue' of countries in difficulty, the scandal of stock-options encouraging stock market fiddling on a grand scale, the headlong flight into financial speculation and debt by companies, etc.

Obviously, there is a tangible reality to all these elements of capitalism's functioning. But however 'critical' these economists may be of 'bad management', they remain the spokesmen of the ruling class, spreading the illusion that there are remedies to be found. But while their cures may prolong the life of a dying patient, they will never cure it of its mortal sickness.

In fact, we have entered a new phase of capitalism's open recession, which is nothing other than an expression of its historic crisis. The bourgeoisie's pessimistic forecasts for future growth are - with a large degree of understatement - an expression of this reality.

The world proletariat at the heart of the economic storm

The coming recession threatens to be both long and profound. The world working class will bear the cost, in terms of large-scale redundancies and falling wages. The attempts by shaky companies to reduce their debt can only lead to reductions in investment and in wage costs. Stronger companies - whether in the private or the state sector - will inevitably adopt the same measures in order to preserve their own financial health.

The last 18 months have seen repeated announcements of substantial redundancies in every sector of the economy and every size of company. A few figures illustrate the extent of the economic disaster: Hewlett-Packard has cut 4,770 jobs and is preparing for 15,000 lay-offs; Nortel has laid off 59,000 workers since December 2000, and is preparing to sack 7,000 more in one go; WorldCom will lay off 17,000 employees. By themselves, these are only examples: the full extent of the recession is far greater.

We can therefore expect an increase in the rise of unemployment, already revealed in this year's statistics despite the systematic fiddling that these are subjected to by the ruling class, in order to make workers believe that things are not really as bad as they can sense that they are in their own daily lives.

We are at the beginning of a period of brutal attacks on workers' living conditions, and not just in terms of unemployment. Employee shareholding in large companies, and shares-based retirement plans, will become important factors in the pauperisation of the working class. The collapse in share prices has wiped out workers' savings and pensions. The collapse in Vivendi Universal's share price (-70% since January) has affected the savings accumulated by 160,000 employees over as much as 20 years for some. For pensioners, the situation is even worse, especially (but not only) in the US: WorldCom's pension plan has lost 90% of its value.

An unprecedented plunge into economic crisis

The last months' economic tremors did not come out of a blue sky. They represent an acute episode in a 'creeping' - but nonetheless violent - stock exchange crash that has been going on for the last two years: since summer 2000, Europe's stock exchanges have halved in value, while New York's technology stock index has fallen from 5300 to 1300. The US Federal Reserve started the movement in order to put the brake on a speculative frenzy that threatened to run out of control. The crash has been accelerated this year by a series of bankruptcies and the subsequent discovery of financial fiddling on a grand scale in some of the world's most powerful companies. By July 2002, $6.7 trillion had gone up in smoke. Capitalism is balancing on a mountain of debt

In the final analysis, indebted companies can only survive to the extent that they are able to honour their commitments and pay back their debts. This they are finding more and more difficult as it becomes more and more difficult to achieve sufficient sales on the market.

In many cases they have only been able to borrow on the strength of their stock market valuation, seen as a guarantee of the banks' confidence in their health. In order to improve their share value, companies became less and less scrupulous in the dodges they used. Some sold capital just before the year's financial statement in order to show an increase in cash flow� only to buy it back again immediately afterwards. Others, more pragmatically, simply faked the accounts. Today, such 'immorality' on the part of CEO's is the target of outraged denunciation by the media, under orders from the bourgeois state. The cheating that they pretend to discover today was an open secret that served the interests of the whole bourgeois class as long as everything was going ok. It's common practice to find a few scapegoats for the fundamental failings of a system, which only survives by systematic cheating - above all by those self-same states. States are the greatest speculators, and stock market speculation is only a consequence of the crisis of over-production. The less attractive the productive sector becomes for investors, with low and uncertain returns, the more they turn to speculation, which is equally uncertain but which offers higher returns.

Debt can never be a real solution to the world crisis. This was demonstrated at the beginning of the year by the sudden bankruptcy of hyper-indebted countries like Venezuela and Argentina.

The collapse this August of the Uruguayan banking system, and worse still the financial crisis in Brazil, have once again shown that these countries still survive only thanks to massive and repeated injections of dollars, whose interruption inevitably drops them into economic chaos at the mercy of the upheavals of the stock exchange. The only 'cure' able to prevent a total rout in Brazil - an economically central country - was a $30 billion 'recovery plan', in other words a new plunge into still more debt which may put off the day of reckoning but can only make it more painful.

The most developed countries are also in debt, and so confronted by the same contradictions that have turned a country like Argentina into an industrial desert. While their greater strength means that they are not about to go the same way as the latter, these contradictions are going to become an ever more devastating social scourge.

The spectacular financial convulsions of 1987-88 and 1997-98 (the crisis in South East Asia) were comparatively brief and limited in extent, because they occurred at a time of relative (though drugged) economic growth, which the bourgeoisie was still able to maintain. Today's collapse on the world's stock markets and among its biggest companies comes at a time when the world economy is in open recession. Inevitably, this will seriously affect their ability to confront the problem.

Intervention by the state

This does not mean that the state is completely impotent, but its measures to soften the crisis can only aggravate the disease. Some members of the US administration envisage a recourse to budget deficits, which means nothing other than the state itself using debt to hold up an exhausted economy. After proclaiming the victory of 'economic liberalism' behind Reagan and Thatcher, as the only way out of the crisis in the 1980s and 90s, the bourgeoisie is now being forced to return to the 'old methods' of direct state intervention. The effects will be limited, but also damaging since the European states' budgets are already badly in deficit. It will only liberate the inflationary tendencies that they all fear.

While the present deepening of capitalism's crisis will not cause the system's complete collapse, or sudden blockage like that of 1929, the present crash demonstrates once again capitalism's utter bankruptcy as a social and economic system. It cannot be reformed or improved, contrary to what the trade unionists, leftists, and left parties of every description tell us. It cannot be reformed by better accounting methods or improved business morals, any more than by a struggle against globalisation.

The bourgeoisie has no solution to offer to the devastating consequences of its system's crisis. Witness the solution proposed by the 'humanitarians' appointed by our exploiters to handle the monstrous growth of poverty, for example in the one-time Latin American 'miracles' where 44% of the population lives below the poverty line and unemployment has doubled in ten years: a 'new' method of economic exchange, barter. In other words, a return to prehistory and resigned acceptance of generalised poverty!

The working class is confronted by economic crisis and unprecedented attacks looming all over the world. It must become aware that it cannot remain passive and that it must develop its struggles. To fail to take the path of active and resolute resistance against a disintegrating capitalism, is to leave the bourgeoisie's hands free, and to open the road to the unlimited exploitation of the workers and to the unleashing of chaos over the whole planet.

MS, 29/08/02

One year after September 11, what balance sheet can we draw of the USA's 'war against terrorism'?

It is first of all clear that the overthrow of the Taliban regime and the operations against Al Qaida in Afghanistan have resolved nothing: the broad anti-terrorist coalition set up by the White House last year no longer exists - a reality confirmed by Bush's desperate efforts to create a new coalition for the proposed assault on Iraq.

Above all, we have seen a steep rise in military tensions and conflicts - not only the threats against Iraq but also a worsening of the bloody mess in the Middle East and the renewed menace of nuclear war between India and Pakistan.

At the same time the USA has installed its military forces at the heart of central Asia - in Afghanistan, in Tadjikstan and Uzbekistan, and more recently in Georgia, which as a result is under a lot of pressure from Russia which has had to respond to this US advance into its backyard.

All this is part of a much vaster strategic aim - not only to win control of this region but also of the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. And by placing North Korea within the 'Axis of Evil', it is clear that the USA is also issuing a challenge to China and Japan. Above all it is pursuing a strategy of encircling the western European powers, and of blocking the advance of its most serious rival, German imperialism, towards the Slav and eastern regions.

And yet despite this gigantic offensive, we are more and more seeing the decline of American world leadership. The 1991 Gulf war already demonstrated that "faced with the tendency towards generalised chaos that characterises the phase of decomposition, and which the collapse of the eastern bloc has considerably accelerated, capitalism has no option, in its efforts to hold together the different parts of a body which is tending to disintegrate, to resort to the iron corset of armed force. In this sense, the very means it uses to try to contain an increasingly bloody chaos are themselves a major factor in the aggravation of the military barbarism into which capitalism has sunk" ('Militarism and decomposition', International Review 64, winter 1991).

The present situation is more and more confirming the growth of this permanent barbarism in a capitalist world dominated by the war of each against all among imperialist powers large and small.

Military force is the only means the US has to impose its authority. If it renounced the use of its military superiority, this would only encourage other countries to challenge its authority more and more. But at the same time, whenever America does resort to brute force, even if it does momentarily succeed in compelling the other powers to rein in their ambitions, in the long run the latter are only led to seek their revenge at the first opportunity, and to try to further weaken the USA's grip. The first consequence of this situation is that the US bourgeoisie is increasingly obliged to go it alone.

The juggernaut of US imperialism rolls on

The 1991 Gulf war was conducted 'legally' in the framework of UN resolutions; the Kosovo war was carried out 'illegally' but in the framework of NATO; the campaign in Afghanistan was waged under the banner of 'unilateral action' by the USA. All this has served to sharpen the hostility of the other states towards Uncle Sam. It's this contradiction which is reflected in the debates and disagreements that have arisen within the American bourgeoisie.

At the beginning of the second world war we saw disagreements between the 'isolationists' and the 'interventionists' about whether the USA should enter the war. Generally speaking the Republicans were in the isolationist camp whereas the interventionists mainly came from the Democratic Party. In 1941, the attack on Pearl Harbour, which had been deliberately provoked by Roosevelt (see 'The machiavellianism of the bourgeoisie' in International Review 108), enabled the interventionists to carry the day. Today this old split has disappeared. But the contradictions of American policy have given rise to a new internal cleavage that cuts across the traditional parties. Within the American bourgeoisie there is no disagreement about the fact that the US must be able to preserve its world imperialist supremacy. The difference of appreciation bears on whether the USA should accept the dynamic which is pushing it to act alone, or should it try to keep a certain number of allies on its side, even if such alliances can have no real stability? These two positions can be seen clearly with regard to the two main areas of concern: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the plan to intervene against Iraq. In the first case we have seen the USA oscillating between on the one hand total support for Sharon and attempts to get rid of Arafat, to declarations about the inevitability of a Palestinian state on the other. In the aftermath of September 11the USA pursued a policy of almost unconditional support for Israel but it soon became clear that Sharon's ruthless policy of military invasion irritates them. Large sectors of the Arab bourgeoisie - Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria in particular - are drawn towards an alliance with the European powers. The latter in turn have stated their opposition to the elimination of Arafat; and although they have proved themselves incapable of acting as 'peacemakers', they can certainly create all sorts of problems by wielding the weapon of diplomacy.

The most publicised disagreements however are over the planned intervention in Iraq to get rid of Saddam Hussein, even though they are really about the way to act and when. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfield, Vice President Dick Cheney and security adviser Condoleeza Rice defend the idea that the USA has to intervene alone and as soon as possible, while other eminent members of the Republican 'staff' such as Colin Powell, James Baker and Henry Kissinger (supported by certain business interests who are concerned about the cost of the operation which the US would have to bear alone at a time when the economy is in trouble) are much more reticent, preferring to alternate between the carrot and the stick.

What is at stake in this war? By making a new demonstration of force, the US aims to reinforce its domination of the region and of the entire planet. During the first Gulf war, there was a lot of propaganda talk about overthrowing Saddam; but in the end the USA had to accommodate him for lack of any alternative strong man to prevent the disintegration of Iraq. Today however, the USA has no further use for Saddam to police the region because it is in a position to assume a much more direct military presence there. And despite the difficulties it involves, an attack on Iraq has the merit of dividing the European powers, particularly Britain on the one hand and France and Germany on the other. Although Britain has certainly taken its distance from the USA over this affair, the leading factions of the British bourgeoisie will stand behind the US, not out of any genuine solidarity but because British imperialism has always seen the overthrow of Saddam as a means to restore its influence in what was once a British colony. By contrast, France has, ever since the Gulf war, expressed its opposition to any further military intervention against Iraq and has tried to maintain links with Saddam. Thus it has consistently called for an end to the embargo against Iraq. Germany, for its part, has always sought to affirm its interests in the Middle East through a Berlin-Baghdad land axis via Turkey.

Towards an aggravation of military barbarism

The 'hawks', partisans of a rapid US intervention in Iraq, seem to be winning out, even if Bush has declared that action is not imminent. We are already seeing a marked increase in Anglo-American air raids both in the northern and southern 'no fly zones'; military commanders in the area have openly admitted that these are rehearsals for a bigger assault. The White House is laying down the strategic foundations for an intervention (more than 50,000 US troops are stationed in Kuwait). And while some supporters of the 91war have defected, others have come on board: Turkey, its palms greased with offers of financial aid, has already agreed to serve as a rear base for US troops. The Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and especially Qatar, will still serve as bases in the immediate region. [1] Jordan will also allow its territory to be used to neutralise Iraq's western frontier, which is closest to Israel. Nevertheless, the enterprise is even more perilous than the operation in Afghanistan, because the US has nothing comparable to the Northern Alliance to do its dirty work on the ground and so spare it any loss of US troops; a bloody invasion that cost it a lot of American lives could result in a reappearance of the 'Vietnam syndrome'. The creation of a broad 'democratic opposition' on the ground, capable of taking over from Saddam Hussein, is far from assured. Another difficulty is that, even more than in Afghanistan, there is a multiplicity of conflicting influences in Iraq. The Kurdish and Shiite minorities are unreliable from the American point of view; the former are highly susceptible to European influence, the latter are too closely tied to Iran. Turkey will also have difficulties staying onside given its sensitivity on the Kurdish question: Saddam Hussein has in fact acted as the gendame of its borders. Also Turkey is increasingly drawn towards the European Union. The other major risk is that the US bourgeoisie will definitively lose its claim to being the peacemaker in the Middle East. Connected to this is the concern that an attack on Iraq will give an impetus to anti-American Islamic fundamentalism throughout the region, above all in the key state of Saudi Arabia.

Thus the prospect we face is a continuation of the warlike policy we have seen in the first Gulf war, then in ex-Yugoslavia, then in Afghanistan, but at a higher level, creating in its wake even more instability and chaos, even more uncontrollable consequences, and in a vast area from the Middle East to Central Asia, and from the Indian sub-continent to South East Asia. All this is a confirmation that the conflicts between imperialist powers in the phase of capitalist decomposition pose a deadly threat to the survival of humanity.

Wim, 7/9/02.

1. As for Saudi Arabia, it views with some concern the prospect of Shiite participation in any future Iraqi government, and has its own 'anti-American' factions to take into account. The USA has taken note of its reticence to serve as a base for American troops by starting to dismantle the Al-Kharg platform, which was used extensively during the 91 war, and transferring it to the new base being built at Al-Udeid, on the eastern coast of Qatar.