At the end of March, the ICC held its 15th Congress. This was a particularly important meeting for our organisation, for two main reasons.
First, since the last Congress held in spring 2001, we have witnessed a major aggravation of the international situation, at the level of the economic crisis and above all at the level of imperialist tensions. More precisely, the Congress took place while war was raging in Iraq, and our organisation had the responsibility to make its analyses more precise in order to make the most appropriate intervention.
Secondly, this Congress took place after the ICC had been through the most dangerous crisis in its history. Even if this crisis has been overcome, it is vital for our organisation to draw the maximum number of lessons from the difficulties it has been through, to understand their origins and the way to confront them.
All the work and discussions at the Congress were animated by an awareness of the importance of these two questions, which are part of the two main responsibilities of any congress: to analyse the historic situation and to examine the activities which the organisation has to carry out within it.
The ICC analyses the current historic period as the final phase of the decadence of capitalism, the phase of the decomposition of bourgeois society. These historic conditions, as we shall see later on, determine the essential characteristics of the life of the bourgeoisie today. But in addition to this, they also weigh heavily on the proletariat and its revolutionary organisations.
It is within this framework that we examined not only the sharpening of imperialist tensions, but also the obstacles being met by the proletariat on its path towards decisive confrontations with capital, as well as by our own organisation. The analysis of the international situation
For certain organisations of the proletarian camp, notably the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party, the organisational difficulties encountered by the ICC recently, like those in 1981 and in the early '90s, derive from its incapacity to develop an appropriate analysis of the current historical period. In particular, our concept of decomposition is seen as an expression of our 'idealism'.
It is true that theoretical and political clarity is an essential arm of any organisation that claims to be revolutionary. In particular, if it is not able to understand what's really at stake in the historic period in which it carries out its struggle, it risks being cast adrift by events, falling into disarray and in the end being swept away by history. It's also true that clarity is not something that can be decreed. It is the fruit of a will, of a combat to forge such arms. It demands that the new questions posed by the evolution of historical conditions be approached with a method, the marxist method. This was the concern which inspired the reports prepared for the Congress and the debates of the Congress itself. The Congress approached this challenge on the basis of the marxist vision of the decadence of capitalism and of its present phase of decomposition. The Congress recalled that this vision of decadence was not only that of the Third International, but is indeed at the very heart of the marxist vision. It was this framework and historical clarity that enabled the ICC to measure the gravity of the present situation, in which war is becoming an increasingly permanent factor.
More precisely the Congress had to examine the degree to which the ICC's analytical framework has been capable of accounting for the current situation. Following this discussion, the Congress decided that there was no question of putting this framework into question. The evolution of the current situation is in fact a full confirmation of the analyses the ICC adopted at the end of 1989, at the time of the collapse of the eastern bloc. The present events, such as the growing antagonism between the USA and its former allies that has manifested itself so openly in the recent crisis, the multiplication of military conflicts and the direct involvement within them of the world's leading power - which has made increasingly massive displays of its military power - all this was already foreseen in the theses which the ICC produced in 1989-90 (note 1) [1]. The ICC, at its Congress, reaffirmed that the present war in Iraq cannot be reduced, as certain sectors of the bourgeoisie would like us to believe (in order to minimise their real gravity), to a 'war for oil'. In this war, the control of oil is primarily a strategic rather than an economic objective for the American bourgeoisie. It is a means for blackmailing and pressuring the USA's principal rivals, the powerful states of Europe and Japan, and thus to countering their efforts to play their own game on the global imperialist chessboard. In fact, behind the idea that the current wars have a certain 'economic rationality' is a refusal to take into account the extreme gravity of the situation facing the capitalist system today. By underlining this gravity, the ICC has placed itself within the marxist approach, which doesn't give revolutionaries the task of consoling the working class. On the contrary it calls on revolutionaries to assist the proletariat to grasp the dangers which threaten humanity, and thus to understand the scale of its own responsibility.
And in the ICC's view, the necessity for revolutionaries to explain to the working class the profound seriousness of what's at stake today is all the more important when you take into account the difficulties the class is experiencing in finding the path of massive and conscious struggles against capitalism. This was thus another essential point in the discussion on the international situation: what is the basis today for affirming the confidence that marxism has always had in the capacity of the working class to overthrow capitalism and liberate humanity from the calamities into which it is now leading it? What confidence can we have in the working class facing up to its historic responsibilities?
The ICC has on numerous occasions argued that the decomposition of capitalist society exerts a negative weight on the consciousness of the proletariat (note 2) [2]. Similarly, since autumn of 1989, it has stressed that the collapse of the Stalinist regimes would provoke "new difficulties for the proletariat" (title of an article from International Review 60). Since then the evolution of the class struggle has only confirmed this prediction.
Faced with this situation, the Congress reaffirmed that the working class still retains all the potential to assume its historic responsibilities. It is true that it is still experiencing a major retreat in its consciousness, following the bourgeois campaigns that equate marxism and communism with Stalinism, and that establish a direct link between Lenin and Stalin. Similarly, the present situation is characterised by a marked loss of confidence by the workers in their strength and in their ability to wage even defensive struggles against the attacks coming from their exploiters, a situation which can lead to a serious loss of class identity. And it should be noted that this tendency to lose confidence in the class is also expressed among revolutionary organisations, particularly in the form of sudden outbursts of euphoria in response to movements like the one in Argentina at the end of 2001 (which has been presented as a formidable proletarian uprising when it was actually stuck in inter-classism). But a long term, materialist, historical vision teaches us, in Marx's words, that "it's not a question of considering what this or that proletarian, or even the proletariat as a whole, takes to be true today, but of considering what the proletariat is and what it will be led to do historically, in conformity with its being". Such an approach shows us that, faced with the blows of the capitalist crisis, which will give rise to more and more ferocious attacks on the working class, the latter will be forced to react and to develop its struggle.
This struggle, in the beginning, will be a series of skirmishes, which will announce an effort to move towards increasingly massive struggles. It is in this process that the class will once again recognise itself as an exploited class and rediscover its identity; and this in turn will act as a stimulus to its struggle. The same goes for war, which will tend to become a permanent phenomenon, each time uncovering a little more the very deep tensions between the major powers, and above all revealing the fact that capitalism is incapable of eradicating this scourge, that it is a growing menace for humanity. This will give rise to a profound reflection within the class. All these potentialities are contained in the present situation. It is vital for revolutionary organisations to be conscious of this and to develop an intervention which can bring this reflection to fruition. This intervention is particularly important with regard to the minority who are looking for political clarification in a whole number of countries.
But if they are to be up to their responsibilities, revolutionary organisations have to be able to cope not only with direct attacks from the ruling class, but also to resist the penetration into their own ranks of the ideological poison that the ruling class disseminates throughout society. In particular, they have to be able to fight the most damaging effects of decomposition, which not only affects the consciousness of the proletariat in general but also of revolutionary militants themselves, undermining their conviction and their will to carry on with revolutionary work. This is precisely what the ICC has had to face up to in the recent period and this is why the key discussion at this Congress was the necessity for the organisation to defend itself from the attacks facilitated by the decomposition of bourgeois ideology. The life and activities of the ICC
The Congress drew a positive balance-sheet of the activities of our organisation since the last Congress in 2001. Over the past two years, the ICC has shown that it is capable of defending itself against the most dangerous effects of decomposition, in particular the nihilistic tendencies which have seized hold of a certain number of militants who formed the 'Internal Fraction'. The ICC ahs been able to combat the attacks by these elements whose aim was clearly to destroy the organisation. Right from the start of its proceedings, the Congress, following on from the Extraordinary Conference of April 2002, was once again totally unanimous in ratifying the whole struggle against this camarilla, and in denouncing its provocative behaviour. It was fully convinced about the anti-proletarian nature of this regroupment. And it was no less unanimous in pronouncing the exclusion of the elements of the 'Fraction', which has crowned its activities against the ICC by publishing on its website information which can only play directly into the hands of the police - and by justifying these actions (note 3) [3]. These elements, although they refused to come to the Congress and present their defence in front of a commission specially nominated by the latter, have found nothing better to do in their bulletin no. 18 than to continue their campaigns of slander against the organisation. This has provided further proof that their concern is not at all to convince the militants of the organisation of the dangers posed to it by what they call a "liquidationist faction", but to discredit the ICC as much as possible, now that they have failed to destroy it.
How could these elements have developed, within the organisation, an activity which threatened to destroy it?
In approaching this question, the Congress highlighted a certain number of weaknesses, linked to the revival of the circle spirit and facilitated by the negative weight of social decomposition. An aspect of this negative weight is doubt in, and loss of confidence in, the working class: a tendency to see only its immediate weaknesses. Far from facilitating the party spirit, this attitude can only allow friendship links or confidence in particular individuals to substitute themselves for confidence in our principles of functioning. The elements who were to form the 'Internal Fraction' were a caricature of these deviations and this loss of confidence in the class. Their dynamic towards degeneration made use of these weaknesses, which weigh on all proletarian organisations today, and weigh all the more heavily in that the majority of these organisations have no awareness of them at all. These elements carried out their destructive activities with a level of violence never before seen in the ICC. The loss of confidence in the class, the weakening of their militant conviction, were accompanied by a loss of confidence in the organisation, in its principles, and by a total disdain for its statutes. This gangrene could have contaminated the whole organisation and sapped all confidence and solidarity in its ranks - and thus undermined its very foundations.
Without any fear, the Congress examined the opportunist weaknesses which enabled the clan that called itself the 'Internal Fraction' to become such a danger to the very life of the organisation. It was able to do so because the ICC will be strengthened by the combat that it has just waged.
Furthermore, it is because the ICC does struggle against any penetration of opportunism that it seems to have such a troubled life, that it has gone through so many crises. It is because it defended its statutes and the proletarian spirit that animates them without any concessions, that it was met with such anger by a minority which had fallen deep into opportunism on the organisation question. At this level, the ICC was carrying on the combat of the workers' movement which was waged by Lenin and the Bolsheviks in particular, who had many detractors who pointed to the many organisational struggles and crises they went through. In the same period, the German Social Democratic Party was much less agitated but the opportunist calm which reigned within it (challenged only by 'trouble-makers' on the left like Rosa Luxemburg) actually prefigure its treason in 1914. By contrast, the crises of the Bolshevik party helped it to develop the strength to lead the revolution in 1917.
But the discussion on activities didn't limit itself to dealing with the direct defence of the organisation against the attacks it has been subjected to. It insisted strongly on the necessity to develop its theoretical capacities, while recognising that the combat against these attacks had already stimulated its efforts in this direction. The balance-sheet of the last two years shows that there has been a process of theoretical enrichment, on such questions as the historical dimension of solidarity and confidence in the proletariat; on the danger of opportunism which menaces organisations who are unable to analyse a change of period; on the danger of democratism. And this concern for the struggle on the theoretical terrain, as Marx, Luxemburg, Lenin, or the militants of the Italian left and many other revolutionaries have taught us, is an integral part of the struggle against opportunism, which remains a deadly danger to communist organisations.
Finally, the Congress made an initial balance sheet of our intervention in the working class regarding the war in Iraq. It noted that the ICC had mobilised itself very well on this occasion: before the start of military operations, our sections sold a lot of publications at a number of demonstrations (when necessary producing supplements to the regular press) and engaging in political discussions with many elements who had not known our organisation previously. As soon as the war broke out, the ICC published an international leaflet translated into 13 languages (note 4) [4] which was distributed in 14 countries and more than 50 towns, particularly at factories and workplaces, and also posted on our internet site.
Thus this Congress was a moment that expressed the strengthening of our organisation. The ICC affirms with conviction the combat it has been waging and which it will continue to wage - the combat for its own defence, for the construction of the basis of the future party, and for the development of its capacity to intervene in the historical movement of the class. It has no doubt that it is a link in the chain of organisations that connect the workers' movement of the past to that of the future.
ICC, April 2003.
(1) See in particular 'Theses on the economic and political crisis in the USSR and the countries of the East' (International Review 60), written two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and 'Militarism and Decomposition', dated 4 October 1990 and published in IR 64. Back [5]
(2) See in particular 'Decomposition, final phase of capitalist decadence', points 13 and 14, IR 62.Back [6]
(3) See on this point The police-like methods of the IFICC [7] in WR 262. Back [8]
(4) The languages of our regular territorial publications plus Portuguese, Russian, Hindi, Bengali, Farsi and Korean. Back [9]
The euphoria of victory didn't last very long. The images of happy crowds lining the streets to greet their British and American 'liberators' are already a distant memory. Since the fall of Baghdad we have seen enormous Shiite demonstrations chanting slogans like 'No to Saddam, No to Bush - Yes to Islam' and calling for an Islamic state. In Mosul, within the space of two days in late April, American troops fired on two marches of Iraqi civilians demanding that the Americans pull out. Nearly 20 people were killed and many more injured. This will add to a death toll from the war which will certainly run into thousands, especially when we include the as yet unknown numbers of conscripts obliterated by the carpet bombing of Iraqi military positions. The collapse of the Saddam regime resulted in widespread looting in which much of Iraq's priceless archaeological heritage was stolen or destroyed. To restore order, the occupying armies have had to recall Saddam's old police force, or allow local clerics and their newly formed militia to come to the fore. The USA's attempts to fabricate some kind of 'interim government' are coming against all the political, ethnic and religious divisions which have always existed in Iraqi society and which were only kept underground by Saddam's reign of terror. Meanwhile the hospitals are still completely incapable of coping with the masses of horrific injuries caused by the coalition's bombardments, and large parts of the population have been without decent drinking water for weeks, exposing them to the risk of epidemics which would only further reveal the breakdown of health services throughout the country.
In short: the inevitable military victory of the US over Saddam's crumbling regime has not brought liberation but chaos and misery to the population of Iraq. But then liberating the Iraqis from Saddam's tyranny was never the aim.
Let's remember that the overthrow of Saddam was not even the official aim of this war. The principal argument was that Saddam was a threat to world peace because he possessed weapons of mass destruction. This was always a ridiculous piece of hypocrisy, not just because the US and Britain had been among those who had supplied his armies in the first place, but also because no one in the world has made wider or more devastating use of weapons of mass destruction than the US and Britain. The war confirmed this once again: no one can match the US for firepower. And this was without doubt one of the real motivations of the war. Like Saddam in Iraq, US imperialism can only respond to the powerful centrifugal forces that threaten its 'world leadership' by making ever greater shows of force. After the international diplomatic crisis that preceded this war, it has now become evident that these centrifugal forces are made up first and foremost of the USA's main imperialist rivals: Germany, France, Russia and China.
Saddam's weapons of mass destruction were only a pretext. In fact one of the reasons he was attacked was precisely because he was a paper tiger and could offer no serious resistance to a US invasion. Even if the occupying armies do finally discover a few canisters of chemical or biological weapons, the outcome of the war showed that Saddam had no capacity to use them. As in 1991, Saddam was the whipping boy: the real targets were the USA's main challengers to global domination.
And this is why Bush's claim that the world would be a more peaceful place once Saddam had gone is the biggest lie of all. Having conquered Iraq, US imperialism has tightened its military control over the strategically vital Middle east, enabling it to turn off oil supplies to its rivals should they present a more serious challenge to its rule. It is already making threatening noises to other states in the region, such as Syria and Iran, and to those further afield, such as Cuba and North Korea. In other words, it has every intention of continuing the 'war against terrorism' which is the euphemism for a permanent military offensive on the scale of the entire planet. This is not at all contradicted by Bush's talk of a 'road map to peace' between Israel and Palestine. Any US-brokered peace will ensure Israel's complete military superiority in the region, and - like the 'victory' in Iraq - only serve to fuel new resentments and hostility. The latest round of suicide bombings and Israeli counter-raids indicate where the road map is really leading.
As for the 'anti-war' states, who kept a pragmatic silence while the war was raging, they are quite well aware that the US is gunning for them and will be doing all they can to put their spokes in the wheel of the USA's military juggernaut. This is why Putin has been arguing, somewhat ironically, that UN sanctions against Iraq can't be lifted until the WMD issue has been settled, and why Chirac has been insisting that the UN play a much bigger role in the reconstruction of Iraq. America, for its part, has argued that Iraq should be forgiven its debts overwhelmingly owed, by spectacular coincidence, to France, Russia and Germany. Unable to challenge the US openly at the military level, its rivals are reduced to diplomatic games to advance their imperialist interests. But as their actions in Africa, Palestine, and the Balkans demonstrate, they are no less capable of playing a covert role in military conflicts, arming and inciting factions and states which are opposing the USA's own pawns. The seeds are being sown for new wars and the continuation of existing wars.
The twentieth century was a century of ceaseless war and barbarism. The twentieth century has already begun in the same vein. This is not because governments have the wrong leaders or the wrong policies, but because capitalism as a social system has reached a historic dead-end and compels all states to join in an imperialist dance of death. Calls for peace and respect for international law, even when raised by millions in the streets, cannot make capitalism go in another direction. On the contrary, they serve only to divert a real struggle against the war drive. Capitalist war can only be eliminated by eliminating capitalism; and that can only come about through the development of class struggle in all countries.
WR, 3/5/03.
Now that the butchery and destruction of the US military intervention in Iraq has been declared officially over, it is time to make a brief balance sheet of the various claims made in Britain to provide a political alternative to imperialist war. We won't bother here with the huge marches against the war in Iraq, organised by the Stop the War Coalition that was supported by leftists of all descriptions as well by the Labour Left, the Muslim Association of Britain, the Daily Mirror and others. They not only did not prevent the war taking place but also gave it a green light. By mobilising millions behind the illusion that a peaceful imperialism was possible they proved to the executive organs of the state that there was no effective counter force to the imperialist juggernaut.
Instead, we will make a short report of those meagre forces that tried to base themselves on a working class perspective, realising that the only alternative to imperialist war is not an illusory peaceful capitalism but the violent overthrow of capitalism itself. No War but the Class War - London
The story of the group with this radical sounding name is essentially a tale of two cities, London and Sheffield.
The NW group in London was formed in the wake of the war in Afghanistan. In a leaflet given out toward the end of 2001 [1], it declared that the official pacifist or leftist opposition to war was a fraud, that capitalism as a whole was responsible for war, and that therefore a class alternative was required, and called for meetings to gather like-minded individuals. But beyond this apparently promising beginning, this group had no other reference points, and admitted that "it didn't have all the answers". In particular its response to the following questions would remain unclear: what is a class movement against war, what form should it take? Was such a movement possible at the present time with the present balance of class forces? What role should NW play: was it itself the class movement, was it a discussion forum for all the contradictory forces that were not taken in by official pacifism, or a political group with a definite programme? What relationship should it have to the existing internationalist groups of the communist left?
Unable to make the clarification of these issues the group's central concern, the conflicting tendencies within the group were destined to go in different directions. Within the group there were all kinds of approaches: activist tendencies who thought that the role of its meetings were to organise stunts of direct action, and others who were more in favour of discussion but in the form of 'workshops' rather than plenary debates, parasitic elements who were motivated by hostility to the presence of groups of the communist left, etc. The ICC, which regularly attended its meetings, far from trying to 'take the group over' as some have implied, argued for an open confrontation of political differences.
Towards the end of 2002, while the new Gulf War was still brewing, the group, or perhaps just the activist part of it, evolved, without explanation, into another one called 'Disobedience'. At the same time the clique-like tendencies of the rest of the group became predominant and the communist left as well as the Sheffield NW group were effectively excluded when the details of the London group meetings became a secret! So much for the NW claims that: "we reject hierarchy, and we strive to reach decisions by consensus" [2]. From now on the 'class war' in London was to be waged behind closed doors.
The London NW thought they could be a political group without a programme or statutes, a discussion circle without being open to discussion, and a mass movement without any class support. After initially presenting itself as a reference point for those searching for class positions, NW ended up as a black hole of confusion and dispersal, at worst a radical appendage of the Stop the War coalition. What is a class opposition to the war?
Although the London NW adopted the word 'class', it used this word rather like the erstwhile anarchist group 'Class War' and other so-called class struggle anarchists. For them the working class is not defined by objective historical economic and political interests, but subjectively, as a collection of individual rebels who become a 'class' movement essentially by an effort of will. In a leaflet handed out to a Disobedience 'Anti-War Day School' [3] NW presented its vision of 'class opposition to the war':
"War is part of the capitalist social relation. We 'make' war, just as we reproduce the rest of society through our work and the reproduction of our social relations through our daily compliance in all spheres of life. Going to work. Giving over money for the goods we buy. Turning up for detention at school. We make the munitions. We make the bomber planes, etc.
What is really needed is not so much an 'anti-war' movement against this or that particular show massacre the telly happens to be flaunting at us to terrorise us but a subjective revolt against the social conditions in which we are living. This undermines the warmongering economy."
Isn't this a variation on the old anarchist idea that the working class is responsible for capitalism and war because in normal circumstances it conforms to the daily requirements of the 'social relation'? According to this 'theory' all the working class has to do is to refuse the demands of capitalism and the war machine and hey presto, a class opposition is born.
However capitalist relations of production exist independently of the will of individuals, and have shown themselves resilient to many of the mightiest class movements in history, let alone the episodic nuisances of individual acts of rebellion and sabotage. Only the seizure of political power by the working class on a world scale can begin to destroy capitalist relations of production and the imperialist war they engender. Only the very real threat of the extension of the Russian Revolution to Germany in 1918 obliged the two imperialist camps to sign the armistice that ended the First World War. This only temporarily delayed the imperialist appetites of the great powers. With the defeat of the revolutionary wave, the counter-revolution in Russia left the way clear for the build up to a new world slaughter.
In the end the NW equation of 'subjective revolt' with 'class opposition to war', has the same ideological basis as official pacifism even if it uses a more radical language. If you think that war can be 'undermined' within capitalism by a collection of individuals refusing the 'social relation' of war then Not in My Name would be a more accurate name than No War but the Class War.
With 'subjective revolt' as the main criterion it's only a short step to seeing a revolutionary class movement - workers' councils even - in the uprising in the South of Iraq after the first Gulf War, which was dominated by reactionary Shiite nationalism, or a proletarian insurrection in the Kurdish nationalist movement in the North. The 'Disobedience against war' broadsheet for the February 15th 2003 demonstration was not afraid to take that step. No War but the Class War - Sheffield
In Sheffield, a NW group was formed in the summer of 2002 on a decidedly clearer basis than the one in London. Not surprisingly, as the group was influenced by the Communist Workers Organisation, a group of the communist left, and agreed to 7 points [4]. In the presentation to the inaugural meeting, in contrast to the confusion mentioned above in London, the essential parameters of the working class struggle and imperialist war were outlined, and the differences with leftist and nationalist forces were delineated. The objective basis of the revolutionary struggle of the working class and its solution to the problem of war is clarified:
"There is only one class which can overthrow [the capitalist system which leads to barbarism and war] and that is the working class however much it has been written off (and it has been written off many times before even by so-called socialists from Bernstein, through Marcuse to Gorz) it is the one global class that is collectively exploited by capitalism. Its struggles alone tend toward a collectivist solution for humanity's problems."
On this basis it is shown that the proletarian movement, as in the case of the left of the Zimmerwald movement during the 1st World War, "called not for an end to war, not for a 'just peace' as the majority at these conferences did but for it to be turned into a civil war to overthrow the system that is behind the war." [5]
Nevertheless, despite this marxist clarity against the ideas of 'subjective revolt' and the idea of 'opposition' to war in itself, found in the London group, Sheffield made some serious errors. It completely overestimated the present capacity of the working class to hinder the war in Iraq, and connected to this, imagined that NW itself could ride on the crest of this proletarian wave. At the same time, as in London, the nature, role and function of the group itself was ambiguous. According to the CWO, defending the orientation of the Sheffield group:
"Operating in Britain, we are currently in a position marked by two main factors.
Firstly, there is a reactionary 'popular front' - type movement capable of mobilising hundreds of thousands of non-class conscious workers who subjectively have identified with a task of stopping 'their' government's drive to war.
Secondly we are witnessing a significant upturn in strike action, including firefighters, rail workers and actions beyond the Unions in transport and hospitals in Strathclyde.
'No War But the Class War' gives us the potential to work across the country with those forces who see a connection between the two and wish to link class struggle with resistance to imperialist war. This is no easy task with forces being geographically scattered and emerging from a range of political perspectives.
We believe that in the last months of 2001 the London NWBtCW group was positioned to stand at the organisational centre of that process. Under the influence of K the rump group has turned their backs on that task." [6]
While the Sheffield group could see that the mobilisations against the war in Iraq were on a reactionary footing, it nevertheless imagined that by linking them to the current strikes, they could be turned into a class mobilisation against imperialist war with NW, no less, at the controls.
But none of the elements of this equation added up.
Workers who have been demobilised, even in their millions, by pacifist marches, cannot in the same period be mobilised on a class basis. For all their appearance of combativity, these marches were a sign of the domination of capitalist ideology over the working class, the victory of nationalism, democracy and human rights over class consciousness. Workers' actions in the recent period, notably the firefighters' strikes, have been significant for their disorientation and dispersal, factors that permitted government and unions to use the strikes as an opportunity to further attack conditions of work and threaten redundancies.
These two elements of the situation added together, far from pointing to class combustion, or providing an obstacle to the war preparations, expressed in a complementary way the working classes' difficulty to react to the development of imperialist tensions as a whole.
While it is true that the activities of parasites in the London group - like the 'K' that the CWO refer to - certainly contributed to its debacle, and prevented it from being an open discussion group, it was not this factor, or its general political confusion, which mainly prevented London NW from being 'at the organisational centre' of a mass class movement against the war. It was because this movement couldn't exist in the present situation, and those with internationalist class positions were destined to remain in a tiny minority.
The Sheffield group was inevitably headed for disappointment. The reactionary themes of the 28 September 2002 demonstration - Palestinian nationalism for example - completely drowned out the internationalist class slogans which NW mistakenly thought should be shouted within the ranks of the march itself and could have a significant influence on it. The working class 'upturn' failed to materialise.
Disillusionment could only increase as the war approached and the isolation of internationalist forces from the 'anti-war movement' became clearer. Intervention of the ICC
For all its supposed idealism, the ICC kept its feet on the ground when it judged the potential of the working class struggle in the context of the build up to war in Iraq. Our belief in a historically favourable balance of class forces - the working class is still a barrier to the generalisation of imperialist war amongst the major powers - doesn't mean that the working class has the immediate potential to physically stop each conflict, or hold back the tendencies to increasing militarism. It is still a latent threat that prevents the bourgeoisie from taking their mutual antagonisms to the ultimate stage, with all the draconian measures that this implies. Confidence in the historic capacities of the working class is vital in order to maintain a sober view of the immediate, day-to-day possibilities of the class struggle, which the bourgeoisie exaggerates or obscures according to its own agenda. At present the working class is going through a long period of disorientation that began at the beginning of the nineties with the collapse of the eastern bloc.
Nevertheless the historic possibilities of the proletarian movement, coupled with the growing seriousness of the world situation, are presently giving rise to small numbers of people looking seriously for revolutionary answers.
This is why we never thought that the NW was a harbinger of a resurgence of class struggle or a definite class political movement that we had 'joined'. It could at most be a reference point for a very small minority that were asking questions about capitalist militarism and the elitist and pacifist frauds that accompany it. And this was why we defended its -albeit limited - class positions against the reactionary attacks of leftists like 'Workers Power' [7] and insisted from the beginning on the importance of the group as a forum for discussion and warned against both the tendencies to 'direct action' and to closing the group to revolutionary organisations.
"the ICC has more than once emphasised the need to discuss the most basic question posed by the war: what is meant by a class response to war in this period. To us it appears that this is almost taken for granted, but it would be extremely dangerous to do so.
There are times when decisive action is required and further discussion becomes a hindrance. But there are also times when the priority of the moment is to reflect, to understand, to analyse, to clarify." [8]
And at the same time we argued that the Midlands Discussion Group should not abandon its role of theoretical research and debate in order to follow the confused NW 'model'.
Its true that we ourselves overestimated the capacity of NW to intervene in the situation when we suggested that NW hold a counter-meeting at the end of the big pacifist marches in order to attract a wider audience; this expressed a certain underestimation of the hold of pacifist and democratic ideology on the demonstrators.
Our general prudence toward the possibility of a class movement against the war did not however mean that the ICC became 'monastic'. On the contrary the ICC has been the most prominent communist left organisation defending internationalist class positions against the stream of the huge anti-war protests not just in Britain, but across Europe, in Australia and the United States, both through public meetings, its territorial newspapers and the International Review and through an international leaflet that was distributed immediately the war on Iraq began.
There is nothing triumphalist in this still modest class intervention. On the contrary the whole communist left - what we call the proletarian political milieu - is doing less than it could and should be doing. It should have carried out a joint intervention toward the class on the basis of its commonly held internationalist positions. Once again the other internationalist groups rejected the appeal of the ICC for such a common stand [9]. Yet such an affirmation of basic unity today would be profoundly important for the long term development of proletarian consciousness and struggle.
In the shorter term, given the confusion and waste of energies represented by the No War but the Class War experience over the recent period, a more cohesive presence of the communist left is all the more vital as a reference point for those questioning imperialist war.
Como, 3/5/03.
1. Reproduced in Revolutionary Perspectives 27, Quarterly magazine of the Communist Workers Organisation, page 10.
2. Idem. Although the London NW had gone through a similar fiasco in 1999 after the Kosovo War when its predecessor voted to exclude the ICC, we considered that the rebirth of the group in 2001 could still provide a forum for revolutionary debate. See WR 228, Political parasitism sabotages the discussion, October 1999.
3. WR 261, Revolutionaries and the struggle against war [15], February 2003.
4. "1) The creation of other groups in other cities. 2) Ultimately we would like to see this coordination become International and internationalist by reaching other countries. 3) these groups to be active locally in opposing STW and the Socialist Alliance and any other left manifestation that sporadically claims the title of revolutionary. 4) These groups also to take on the anti-globalisation movement and draw those in it toward class politics. 5) These groups also engage in discussion and debate to deepen our understanding of where we stand in the process of change and how we can then help to create the conditions to bring it about. 6) These groups would organise discussions between different tendencies as a part of our ongoing activity. 7) NWBTCW doesn't limit its activity to theoretical discussion or mobilising for demonstrations but actively works to take its message into every area where workers collectively congregate." Revolutionary Perspectives 26.
5. Idem.
6. Revolutionary Perspectives 27.
7. WR 250, Workers Power attacks No War But The Class War [16], December/January 2001/2.
8. WR 249, NWBTCW - The priority of political discussion [17], November 2001.
9. See International Review 113, 2nd Quarter 2003.
SARS is thought to have jumped species in a poverty-stricken area of South East China where people live crowded together with their animals in conditions reminiscent of the Middle Ages. This is not unique to SARS but is at the origin of many of the most serious flu epidemics world wide.
Capitalism had brought this area, like the rest of the world, under the domination of its world market by the beginning of the 20th Century. In fact Britain, in its 19th century colonial heyday, fought a holy war for the right to trade freely in China selling opium. Yet capitalism in its decadence has been unable to develop industry or modernise farming in the area, since there are no new markets to absorb the increased produce that would result. And so the conditions for the development of new diseases such as SARS continue to exist. The success of the world market in decadence lies not in preventing the emergence of the disease, but in providing the means for its spread across the globe.
So far SARS has caused 280 deaths from about 4,500 cases worldwide, the majority of them in China (The Times 26 April). Modern air travel means that it has spread to every continent in a matter of weeks. With most of the old fever hospitals closed and demolished, whole hospitals have been quarantined and in China the May Day holiday cancelled to prevent travellers spreading the disease.
Capitalism's advanced decay has created the conditions both for the increase of old diseases, such as TB, and the emergence of new ones like AIDS. Whether through the perpetuation of avoidable poverty, through wars such as the one in Iraq which has disrupted the country's hospitals and water supply, or through increasing ecological disasters, this is a social system which has developed the scientific and technological means of eradicating epidemics, while at the same time producing and extending them faster than it can cure them. In this sense SARS is further evidence that capitalism is rotting on its feet. The campaign of panic
SARS is therefore a real danger, particularly when it hits impoverished populations who lack access to decent medical care. But the ruling class is always ready to use the symptoms of capitalist decomposition to its own advantage. And it has to be said that the bourgeois state and its media are deliberately creating a climate of panic and fear about the SARS virus.
For decades the ruling class has done all it can to eradicate all sense of working class solidarity, making everyone see himself as an atomised individual, dependent on the state. Since 1989 this has been intensified with many campaigns to encourage fear in the population, to make everyone feel that only the state can protect them from child criminals, paedophiles, 'bogus' asylum seekers - and now travellers entering the country who might be carrying SARS. Thus media has raised a 'debate' around the issue of whether or not everyone coming from certain areas of the world ought to be quarantined. This when in the whole of Western Europe there have been 29 cases, of whom 21 have recovered, and no deaths. As always our very 'anti-racist' state is quite happy to use xenophobia, in this case fear of Asian travellers.
The effect of this campaign of fear on working class consciousness cannot be assessed in isolation from the general effect of the whole series of similar campaigns. Nevertheless it has had its impact in small mean ways, such as the panic that broke out among guests at a Blackpool hotel when it was discovered that 15 children from a boarding school were being quarantined there, isolated in a separate wing. The children were subsequently moved to a secret location.
Like any new disease SARS poses the need for careful public health information and research work to bring it under control and prevent its spread. It is the ruling class of decomposing capitalism that needs the climate of fear and panic: to make us feel we rely on the state for protection, and to make us forget the much greater threats that we face today. In terms of disease, heart attacks, HIV, TB and others are likely to claim many more lives than SARS, even in China. But in any case, all these diseases are preventable because at root they are not a medical problem but a social problem. Capitalism in decay, with its train of economic crisis, war and chaos, is the real threat to human health, and the only surgery that can cure this problem is the proletarian revolution.
Alex, 3/5/03.
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/264_15cong.htm#note_01
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/264_15cong.htm#note_02
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/264_15cong.htm#note_03
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/264_15cong.htm#note_04
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/264_15cong.htm#back_01
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/264_15cong.htm#back_02
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/262_infraction.htm
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/264_15cong.htm#back_03
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/264_15cong.htm#back_04
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/congress-resolutions
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/internal-fraction-icc
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/50/united-states
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/186/imperialism
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/war-iraq
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/261_ppm_against_war.htm
[16] https://en.internationalism.org/250_nwbcw.htm
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/249_nwbcw.htm
[18] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/correspondance-other-groups
[19] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/nwbcw
[20] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/135/internationalism
[21] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/262/environment