The US is trying to impose its 'road map' for peace on the Middle East. The population of Israel/Palestine have every reason to be cautious and suspicious. Every intervention by the great powers in the region has exacerbated the situation - Britain in the 1920s and 30s, the US since the Second World War. It will also not have escaped their notice that recent military interventions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq have not resulted in peace and stability but have seen a continuation of armed conflict, alongside a social chaos that precludes the possibility of any sort of reconstruction.

On May 1 George Bush declared that military conflict in Iraq was over. Since then 27 US soldiers have died from guerrilla attacks, with uncounted Iraqi deaths to add to the thousands who died in the 'official' war. The totals are rising as US troops are coming under an average of 13 guerrilla attacks a day. Following the recent deaths of six British military police after British troops fired on a demonstration of local residents, leading British generals are letting it be known that they are worried about being bogged down in Iraq, much as has happened the forces still in Afghanistan. There, eighteen months after the fall of the Taliban, the battles between the factions of different warlords, and against US and other forces continue. Bombs in Kabul, serious battles elsewhere in Afghanistan, and not a sign of Osama bin Laden, whose killing or capture was one of the pretexts for the war. Saddam in Iraq remains equally elusive and continues to call for sabotage and attacks on the occupying forces. US global offensive continues

Not surprising then that in a speech by President Bush on July 4, he made it clear that the US was still at war. Any re-organisation of its forces should not be mistaken for a retreat from the 'war on terrorism'. The US plans to move much greater numbers of troops closer to current conflicts, to superior strategic positions - or nearer to rivals and/or future targets. From its bases in Germany 80,000 troops will be moved east to Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Romania - closer to the Black Sea, Russia, Turkey and the Middle East. From Saudi Arabia forces are being moved to Qatar and Iraq. From Japan the US has the opportunity to move thousands of troops to Thailand in the heart of South East Asia - in a place well suited for attacks on North Korea.. Leading White House figures have already said that it's not enough for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons programme. If the US deems pre-emptive military force to be necessary then it's not going to wait for documentation from the UN, especially in the light of its experience in the run-up to the attack on Iraq.

The 'road map' for the Middle East should be seen in the light of this global offensive of the US, whose aim has now been stated openly by the clique around Bush: to impress itself on all-comers and deter the ambition of any other major imperialism to achieve the status of superpower. The Middle East, a historic crossroads between Europe and Asia, and replete with vital oil reserves, is key to the world wide strategy of the US. Hence its determination to maintain a massive military force in Iraq, despite the enormous cost. Iraq, like Afghanistan, is a central element in a line of US occupation from the southern Arabian peninsula and the Mediterranean through to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in central Asia.

To control the Middle East, it is absolutely essential for US imperialism to find some 'solution' to the Israel/Palestine conflict. The longer it goes on, the harder it is for the US to maintain its influence with the Arab states, and the more opportunities there are for the USA's larger imperialist rivals, particularly Germany, Russia and France, to carry out their own intrigues and manoeuvres behind the scenes. Hence the mounting pressure to get Sharon and Abbas to the negotiating table and distance themselves from the 'extremists' in their own ranks. Hence also the USA's current two-pronged approach towards Iran, which the US seeks to use as a player in its road map: on the one hand flattering the 'reformist' elements in the Iranian leadership and trying to get them to put pressure on the armed groups Iran supports in Lebanon and Palestine; on the other hand, naked threats about Iran's nuclear weapons programme and accusations of harbouring members of al-Qaida.

There is of course no guarantee whatever that the fanatical Islamist elements, any more than the equally fanatical 'Orthodox' groups in Israel, will fall in with the road map, despite the recent proclamation of a ceasefire by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Brigades. In all likelihood, there will only be the briefest of pauses before a new round of terrorist attacks and Israeli counter-terror gets underway. But even if the US succeeded in establishing a Palestinian state and mitigating the slaughter in Israel/Palestine, this would be a moment in an imperialist strategy that can only bring war and confrontation on an ever greater scale. Not because America has a unique desire for world domination - it is only acting to preserve a status quo that corresponds to its national interests, much as British imperialism did when it was the world's leading power. Like all the other capitalist powers, large and small, imperialism is not a choice made by this or that country, still less by this or that bourgeois clique. It is an organic product of capitalism at a certain stage of its development - a stage when its development has become decay and its very existence constitutes a growing threat to the survival of humanity. Capitalism's road map can only lead to war and destruction.

WR, 5/7/03.

The 50-year retrospectives on 1953 have included a large amount of nostalgia for that glorious day in June when a new queen was crowned and news came through that a 'Commonwealth' team had conquered Everest. A time when the monarchy was respected, 'traditional values' were still in place and society seemed to make a little more sense than it does now�

Other events in the same year, however, symbolise the darker reality of those days. It was the year of Stalin's death and of the end of the Korean War, but the shadow of a third world war still loomed large. The intensity of imperialist rivalries between east and west also reinforced an ideological terror typified by the McCarthy phenomenon in the USA. And for the majority of the population, east and west, grim austerity and heightened exploitation were the order of the day as world capitalism reconstructed itself on the ruins of the war.

These conditions form the background to the event which we have chosen to commemorate in this issue of WR: the massive strikes of the East German workers in June 1953. Although they took place at a time when the counter-revolution - Stalinist and democratic - still reigned supreme, and were thus doomed to isolation and defeat, these struggles also pointed a finger towards the future: not only the more widespread class movements in the eastern bloc in 1956, but also the outbreaks in western Europe at the end of the 60s, which signalled the end of the counter-revolution and the return of the working class to the stage of history. But it is above all because the movement of the East German workers has left us with important political lessons - 'positive' lessons about how to organise massively against state terror, to spread a struggle as widely possible, as well as 'negative' lessons concerning the workers' illusions in 'democracy' - that the East German uprising is the real proletarian heritage of 1953. The extract that follows is taken from our International Review no.18, written for the 25th anniversary of the movement.

The so-called 'socialist' countries of Eastern Europe arose as a result of the imperialist re-division of the world brought about by World War II. The slogan of the holy war against fascism was nothing but the lie which the western and Russian bourgeoisies ended up using to mobilise their workers in the fight for more profits, markets and raw materials for their capitalist masters. The Allies' love of democracy did not prevent Stalin, for example, from doing a deal with Hitler at the beginning of the war, through which Russia was able to seize large areas of Eastern Europe.

As it became increasingly clear that the Allies were going to win the war, the conflict of interests within the 'democratic camp' itself, and especially between Russia on the one hand and Britain and America on the other, became greater. The Russians received only the minimum of military supplies from the west, and Britain even wanted to open up the Second Front against Germany in the Balkans instead of in France to prevent the Russians occupying Eastern Europe.

What kept this united front of gangsters together was the fear that the war, particularly in the defeated countries, might, as in World War I, be ended by an outbreak of class struggle. The brutal bombing raids by the Allies on German cities were aimed at crushing the resistance of the working class. In most cities the workers' areas were obliterated, whereas only 10% of the industrial equipment was destroyed.

The growing resistance of the workers, which in some cases led to uprisings in concentration camps and factories, and the dissatisfaction of the soldiers (such as the desertions on the eastern front, which were countered by mass hangings), were swiftly crushed by the occupying powers. This pattern was followed everywhere. In the east, the Russian army stood by while the German forces put down the 63-day long Warsaw Rising, leaving 240,000 dead. Similarly, the Russian army was responsible for restoring order and social peace in Bulgaria and elsewhere in the Balkans. In the west, the CPs joined the post-war governments in France and Italy, in order to break the flickering strike movements and social unrest there. The Italian CP in power was supporting the same democratic allies who mercilessly bombed the Italian workers who were occupying the factories towards the end of the war.

The 'Soviet' occupiers began to exercise an organised plunder of the east European territory under their control. In the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ) of East Germany, the dismantling of industrial equipment for transportation back to the Soviet Union amounted to 40% of the industrial capacity of the SBZ. The Sowjetinen en Aktiengesellschaften (SAGs, Soviet stockholding companies) were founded in 1946 and two hundred firms in key industries, including for example the massive Leuna works, were taken over by the Russians. In some areas, at the end of the war, the workers themselves began operating the factories and such factories were especially eagerly taken over. In 1950 the SAGs constituted the following proportion of the East German economy: "more than half of chemicals, a third of metallurgical products, and about a quarter of machine production" (Staritz, Sozialismus In Einer Halben Land).

A large proportion of these profits went to the Russians directly as reparation payments. The GDR was committed to reparation payments to the USSR up until 1953-4, until it became clear that the reparations were damaging the Russian economy itself. The decimated East German economy paid the bill through a brutally rising exploitation of the working class. The proletariat was forced in this way to help finance the reconstruction and expansion of the Soviet war economy. Stalin never explained why the working class and the 'Workers' State' in Germany should have to pay for the crimes of its exploiters.

This consolidation of Russian imperialism's economic power in East Germany and Eastern Europe was accompanied by the coming to power of pro-Russian factions of the bourgeoisie. In the SBZ, the Stalinists of the KPD came together with the Social Democratic murderers of the German revolution, to form the Sozialistische Einheits Partei (SED). Its immediate post-war goals had already been expressed clearly shortly before the war began: "The new democratic Republic will deprive Fascism of its material basis through the expropriation of fascist trust capital, and will place reliable defenders of democratic freedoms and the rights of the people in the army, the police forces, and the bureaucracy" (Staritz, op. cit.).

Strengthening and 'democratisation' of the army, the police, the bureaucracy�such were the lessons which these good bourgeois 'Marxists' had drawn from Marx, from Lenin, from the Paris Commune.

Then, three years after the war had ended, came the announcement that the building of 'socialism' had now begun. A miraculous 'socialism' this, which could be constructed upon the corpses of a totally crushed and defeated proletariat. It is interesting to note that between 1945-8 not even the SED pretended that the state capitalist measures they were putting through had anything to do with socialism. And today, leftists of all descriptions who propagate the idea that nationalisation equals socialism, prefer to 'forget' the high degree of statification present in the east European economies even before the war, and especially in those countries most renowned for their 'reactionary' governments, such as Poland and Yugoslavia. This centralisation of the economy under the state had proceeded during the German occupation.

In fact, the famous declaration of the 'building of socialism', along with the economic, political and military tightening up which took place in eastern Europe after 1948, was the direct result of the hardening of the global conflict between the American and the Russian blocs:

"The Two-Year Plan (measured on the 1949 standing) foresaw a rise in production of 35% until 1950, reckoned with a rise in labour productivity of 30%, a 15% growth in the total wage mass, and a 7% sinking of the costs of public firms. The aim of the SED was thereby to raise work productivity twice as fast as wages. The means to these ends were seen by the planners above all in the improvement in the organisation of work, the introduction of 'correct norms' and in the struggle against absenteeism and carelessness at the workplaces" (Staritz, op. cit.).

The rise in wages after 1948, insofar as they took place at all, were merely the result of piece rate norms and 'productivity achievements', or in other words they were the result of higher levels of exploitation. This was the period of the Hennecke movement (the East German equivalent of Stakhanovism) and of an iron discipline in the factories imposed by the unions. But even so these small wage rises became more and more an intolerable burden for the economy and had somehow to be cut. The economically weaker eastern bloc, less and less able to compete with its American-led rivals, was forced, in order to survive, to squeeze super profits out of the proletariat and to invest in the heavy industries (or more precisely, in those industries connected to the war economy), to the detriment of the infrastructure, the consumer goods sector, etc. This situation, which required the immediate and centralised control of the economy by the state, pushed the bourgeoisie into making frontal attacks on the living standards of the working class.

The response of the proletariat came in a wave of class struggle which shook Eastern Europe between the years 1953-56. The movement began in early June 1953 with demonstrations by workers in Pilzen, Czechoslovakia, which led to clashes with the army. These were immediately followed by the rising in the GDR and by the revolt in the massive Vorkutz labour camps in Russia in July of the same year. This movement reached its climax in 1956 with the events in Poland, and then in Hungary, where workers' councils were formed.

It has been estimated that the real wages in East Germany were half the 1936 level (Chris Harman, Bureaucracy and Revolution in Eastern Europe, p.80). In July 1952 the SED announced the opening of a new period of 'the accelerated construction of socialism', by which was meant a further increase in investment in heavy industry, a greater increase in productivity and a greater increase in production norms. It was clearly intended to speed up the post-war reconstruction. In the spring of 1953, at a time when the unions in West Berlin were having difficulty controlling the combativity of the building workers, the government in East Berlin was stepping up a full-scale campaign to increase the production norms generally, and particularly on the building sites. On 28 May it was announced that 60% of the workers on the huge building sites in Stalinallee had 'voluntarily' raised their norms (this is the language of 'socialist' realism). The effects of the nationwide production campaign on the working class were already beginning to show. That same month strikes took place in Magdeburg and Karl Marx Stadt. In response the government proclaimed a general norm rise of 10% for 5 June.

Becoming frightened by the mood among the workers, an anti-Ulbricht grouping within the SED leadership, and apparently with Kremlin backing, pushed through a reform package aimed at gaining the support of the middle classes. This group even began to suggest an easing-up policy as regards the question of the production norms.

But such manoeuvres came too late to prevent a proletarian eruption. On 16 June the building workers took to the streets and marched calling out other workers. Finally the demonstration made for the government buildings. The general strike called for the following day paralysed East Berlin and followed in all other important cities. The struggle was organised by strike committees elected in open assemblies and under their control - independent of the unions and the party. Indeed the dissolution of the party cells in the factories was often the first demand of the workers. In Halle, Bitterfeld and Mersburg, the industrial heartland of East Germany, strike committees for the entire cities were elected, which together attempted to coordinate and lead the struggle. These committees assumed the task of centralising the struggle and also temporarily organising the running of the cities: "In Bitterfeld, the central strike committee demanded that the fire brigade clear the walls of all official slogans. The police continued to make arrests; whereupon the committee formed fighting units and organised the systematic occupation of the city districts. The political prisoners of the Bitterfeld jail were released in the name of the strike committee. In contrast the strike committee ordered the arrest of the town mayor" (Sarel, Arbeiter gegen den Kommunismus).

Because of the speed with which the workers took to the streets, generalising the struggle and taking it straight to the political level, above all because the need to openly confront the state was understood, the proletariat was able to paralyse the repressive apparatus of the East German bourgeoisie. However, just as the rapid spread of the strike across the country was able to prevent the effective use of the police against the workers, in the same way, the international extension of the struggle would have been necessary in order to counter the threat of the 'Red Army'. In this sense we can say that, taking place as it did in the depths of the world wide counter-revolution following the defeat of the revolutionary wave of 1917-23, the East German workers were defeated because of their isolation from their class brothers abroad, east and west. In fact, the weight of the counter-revolution placed political barriers more terrible than the bayonets of Russian imperialism against the extension of the movement from a revolt to a revolution. The links binding the class to its own past, its experiences and struggles, had long been smashed by Noske, Hitler and Stalin - the bloody heroes of reaction - by concentration camps and mass bombings, by demoralisation and by the destruction of its revolutionary parties (the murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht, the political decimation of the KAPD). Having suffered for so long under the fascist and Stalinist one-party states, the workers believed that parliamentary democracy might protect them against naked exploitation. They called for parliament and free elections. They sent delegates to West Berlin, asking for help and solidarity from the state and the unions there, but in vain. The West Berlin police and the French and British troops were posted along the borders of the city with East Berlin to prevent any movements of solidarity between workers east and west. The unions in the west turned down the suggestion to call a solidarity strike, and warned the east European workers against illegal actions and adventurism. The workers called on the Russian army to remain neutral (not to interfere in internal German affairs - according to the strike committee of Halle and Bitterfeld). They learned a hard lesson: in the class war there is no neutrality. The workers wanted to get rid of Ulbricht and Co., not realising that one Ulbricht would simply be replaced by another, and that it's not a question of overthrowing this or that government but of destroying the world capitalist system which hangs like stone around our neck. They didn't understand the need to centralise the struggle politically at the level of workers' councils which would smash the bourgeois state.

Kr, June 2003.

When the working class in France responded to the unprecedented attack represented by the pension 'reforms', it was vital for revolutionaries to be present both in the demonstrations and amongst the various sectors in struggle, in particular the workers in national education. The ICC's intervention in the demonstrations

Unlike the leftists, and the over-excitable elements of the petty bourgeoisie who see the spectre of the social revolution behind everything that moves, revolutionaries aim to carry out a lucid intervention and have to be equipped with a compass, with the Marxist method which is based on nearly two hundred years of working class experience. It is this method alone which can assist them to avoid the traps of immediatism, of petty bourgeois impatience, which can only lead them into becoming water-carriers for rank and file unionism and the extreme left wing of capital.

Thus, as soon as the movement began to become widespread, with the demonstration of 13 May, the ICC's section in France took the decision to bring out a supplement to its main tool of intervention, the newspaper Revolution Internationale. This supplement was oriented around the task of denouncing the scale of the attack on the entire working class, of analysing the manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie aimed at getting this attack through, and of denouncing the role of the unions in response to the revival of class militancy. The main thrust of our intervention was to encourage the working class to reflect about the depth of the capitalist crisis and on the necessity of this experience of struggle, which could enable it to regain confidence in itself and rediscover its class identity. It was precisely because our emphasis was on the need to put forward a general framework of analysis in order to facilitate this reflection that we decided to distribute a supplement and not an agitational leaflet. In all the demonstrations, in Paris as well as in the provinces, the ICC mobilised all its forces and regrouped its sympathisers around it in order to distribute the press as widely as possible

The balance sheet of this mobilisation was very positive: our sales figures broke all records. In the entire history of the ICC, our organisation has never sold so many publications at a demonstration. In particular, in all the demonstrations where the ICC was present, our supplement sold like hot cakes.

We are not saying this to give ourselves medals or because we think we are on the verge of the revolution. These sales figures, as well as the numerous discussions we had in the demonstrations, simply confirm that, despite the difficulties it still faces in developing its struggle and creating a balance of forces that can make the bourgeoisie retreat, the working class is still looking for a perspective. The fact that so many strikers could make the political gesture of buying a paper headed Revolution Internationale or a supplement headed 'The future belongs to the class struggle' is a significant sign of a change in the situation of the class struggle. It means that today within the working class there is the beginning of a real questioning about the future that capitalism has in store for us. This questioning, this search for a perspective, even if it is still very confused and embryonic, is a clear refutation of all the bourgeois campaigns that followed the collapse of the Stalinist regimes, the focus of which was the argument that communism had failed and the class struggle was over.

Thus, this massive attack on the entire working class confirms the validity of what our organisation has been saying since 1968: despite the suffering it brings, the economic crisis remains the best ally of the proletariat. The ICC's intervention in the national education strike

The ICC's intervention was not limited to distributing its press in the street demonstrations.

In the struggles themselves, in the general assemblies, especially those of the teachers, our comrades and sympathisers intervened whenever they could to try to counter the manoeuvres of the unions and their 'radical' base animated by the leftists. All our interventions put forward:

• the vital need for geographical extension from the beginning of the movement against the manoeuvres of the unions and leftists which seek to imprison workers inside their own sector;
• the necessity to preserve the sovereignty of the general assemblies which have to serve as centres of discussion and of decision about the way to develop the struggle, and not become rubber stamps for union decisions taken in advance;
• the clear and concrete denunciation of the orientations of the union machinery, of the real practise of the unions which, under cover of calls for unity, only serves to obstruct the real needs of the struggle.

Thus for example, on the 13 May, at a departmental (regional) general assembly regrouping around 500 strikers in Lyon and led by the an 'Intersyndicale' made up of the FSU, FO, CGT, SUD and the CNT, our comrades were able to intervene twice despite the aggressive attitude of the Intersyndicale which chaired the assembly (and in particular a local boss of the Trotskyist LCR, an official of the FSU union, who tried to stop them speaking with interruptions like "Cut it short", "Start by getting your school out on strike"). Despite the union barrage aimed at shutting us up, another comrade who works in the hospital sector had come to this assembly and insisted on the necessity to cross the street and meet up with other sectors suffering the same attack on pensions. His intervention was followed very closely and this forced the praesidium to switch off the microphone. But despite this manoeuvre, our comrade continued his intervention by raising his voice. He was warmly applauded. It was at this moment that the praesidium was obliged to take notice of the orientation our comrades were putting forward: the necessity for geographical extension, but only as a vague perspective - which the leftists did in many places, once the movement began to run out of steam. This parody of extension would be concretised by sending delegations of trade union officials to trade union officials in other sectors.

This departmental assembly clearly showed that the 'radical' unions, to avoid being outflanked by the impact of our interventions, were forced to adopt these kinds of manoeuvres.

When we were able to intervene in the assemblies, we tried to put forward concrete proposals. On several occasions, at Lyon for example, our comrades proposed the following motion: "The departmental general assembly calls on the general assemblies of other sectors to put into action the appeals for extension of the struggle through the strongest possible delegations to public and private enterprises like Alstom, Ateliers, SNCF, Oullins, RVI, TCL, hospitals, town hall, etc�the departmental general assembly considers that the belated union appeals for other sectors to join the fight, some for 27 May, others for 2 June, still others for 3 June, as well as their silence in other sectors, are concrete acts of division and dispersal and go against the need for unity�" This motion got 24 votes for, 137 against and 53 abstentions. The vote on this motion showed that there is the beginning of a questioning of union control over the struggle and of their sabotaging manoeuvres. Although this questioning is only taking place in a minority, the intervention of our militants was not a bolt out of the blue. On several occasions our comrades were called on to develop their interventions, sometimes with invitations to come and speak at other assemblies in the sector where the same kinds of question were being posed. Numerous discussions took place and are still continuing. In other departmental assemblies, like the one on 21 May in Nantes, our comrades directly confronted the unions by proclaiming loudly that "the unity of the struggle doesn't mean trade union unity!" They were copiously hissed throughout their intervention. At the end of the assembly, only four strikers expressed agreement with our position. What we have seen through the echo of our interventions in various regions is that there is a great heterogeneity in the movement, both at the level of mobilisation as well as regards distrust towards the unions.

In a second period, which arrived rather quickly, it became clear that any possibility for a massive development of the struggle had been undermined by the unions, and our comrades were obliged to reorient their interventions:

• showing that the slogan of a 'rolling strike' was a trap that threatened to bring exhaustion and demoralisation;
• denouncing the union and leftist attitude of 'fighting to the bitter end' by using sterile and minority-based commando actions (such as the blocking of exams) which only reinforced the division between strikers and non-strikers;
• showing the necessity to regroup in order to avoid confusion, to discuss as collectively as possible whether or not to carry on with the strike, in order to avoid demoralisation and to prepare to take up the struggle later while keeping our strength intact;
• arguing for the need for the most combative and conscious minorities to regroup in order to develop their reflection on the questions raised by the movement. Already there have been a number of meetings of such elements from different sectors in Lyon, Nantes and Marseille for example.

In addition to the above, the ICC was also present, as always, at the fete of Lutte Ouvriere where it intervened at the forums organised by the leftists, denouncing their sabotaging manoeuvres and insisting on the necessity to draw the lessons from the defeat of the teachers. The ICC was in fact the only revolutionary organisation to intervene against the Trotskyists, despite the whistles of the base unionists aligned to LO and the LCR (1).

In the days that followed, the ICC also held a number of animated public meetings about the struggles in a number of cities.

It is clear today that the movement was not strong enough to push back the bourgeoisie. The working class has thus suffered a defeat. Once again the ruling class is seeking to make workers draw the wrong lessons from this, especially the idea that struggle is waste of time. It is thus the responsibility of revolutionaries to resist these mystifications.

This is why the ICC decided to distribute a leaflet drawing the balance sheet of this experience in order to permit the whole class to draw the maximum of lessons from this defeat, to push workers to deepen their reflection and thus arm them for when they have to return to the struggle against the acceleration of the attacks, already prefigured in the dossier on social security.

SM, June 2003.

(1) Also despite the sarcasm of the elements which we describe as parasites because, while they claim to belong to the proletarian political camp, have no reason for existing other than destroying the reputation of genuine revolutionary organisations, and the ICC in particular. Furthermore, at the LO fete these elements were only present as spectators and didn't open their mouths to combat the forces of capitalism's extreme left wing.

For more than 6 weeks the working class in France has been engaged in struggles of a breadth unknown for quite some years. Hundreds of thousands, even millions of workers from a whole number of sectors have been out on strike and demonstrating in the streets. However, despite this massive militancy, the movement has not succeeded: the government is about to push through the law on pensions, which has been the main focus of workers' anger. What's more, to make it clear who's the toughest, the government has announced that there will be no 'presents' for the strike days lost: they will be fully deducted from the workers' pay, in contrast to what it has done before after movements of this kind. Its aim is clear: it wants the whole working class to know that 'there is no point in struggling', that we have to draw in our belts without complaining, otherwise things will be even worse. Faced with the capitalist attacks, struggle is necessary

'There's no point in struggling': this is the refrain which the exploiters have always sung to the exploited. Nothing could be further from the truth: if today, in the main capitalist countries, workers don't work a 16 hour day like they did at the beginning of the 19th century, if they still get basic social benefits and a pension (even if it's getting increasingly thin), it's because previous generations of workers have fought for these things. The bourgeoisie, the class which rules the world today, does not give presents. It doesn't produce wealth by itself: it is the workers which it exploits who do that. Its reason for existing is not to allow the latter to live decently, but to extract as much profit from them as it can. There are no 'good bosses', whether private or state. A 'good boss', who really wanted the best for his workers, who willingly increased their wages and reduced their time at work would not be 'competitive'. He would soon go bust as a result of competition from other enterprises.

The first thing we have to underline about the recent struggles is that they are a clear rebuttal of all the campaigns which have been inflicted on us since the collapse of the eastern bloc and of the so-called 'socialist' regimes. No, the working class has not disappeared! No, its struggles do not belong to the past! Because the struggle that has just been carried out by the public sector workers is not a struggle of 'functionaries' or 'privileged groups'. It is a struggle of a large part of the working class whose boss is the state, a struggle against an attack which affects the entire working class, both in the public and the private sectors.

The second thing is this: faced with the aggravation of the economic crisis and the attacks of the bourgeoisie, the working class is going to be more and more compelled to fight for the defence of its living conditions. This perspective is clearly contained in the attacks that have already been programmed, particularly the attacks on social security planned for the coming months. It is clear today that the working class has no choice but to struggle. Because if it doesn't, the bourgeoisie will continue to hit it harder and harder.

Thirdly, it is only through the most massive and united struggle possible that the working class can gain the strength to limit the attacks of capitalism and push back the bourgeoisie.

Finally, it is only by returning to the path of struggle that the working class can rediscover its identity as a class, regain confidence in itself, develop its unity and solidarity. This is the only way it can become aware of its own strength and understand that is able to offer an alternative to the impasse of capitalism.

This is why, despite the fact that this recent struggle has not succeeded in pushing back the government (in particular on the question of pensions), the working class must not become demoralised. It must resist the idea that bourgeoisie is trying to feed it - that there's no point in struggling. Why didn't the government give way?

The attack on pensions had been planned by the bourgeoisie for several years - from the time the left was in government. The right has hastened to point this out, as have certain socialist leaders like Delors and Rocard. With the brutal acceleration of the economic crisis over the last year, the bourgeoisie could not hold back from making this attack. But it chose the moment to launch it because it knew that the working class could not fail to respond to such savage blows. This is why it set in place a whole series of measures to make sure that the explosion of discontent would be stopped by the truce of the summer holiday period.

Part of this strategy involved provoking one sector in particular: the education sector, via several supplementary attacks: the suppression of jobs for younger teachers and supervisors whose work brought some relief from increasingly harsh working conditions; the attack around the issue of 'decentralisation', which placed around 110,000 education workers in an extremely precarious job situation.

Why this 'unfairness' towards the education workers? Why were they singled out special attention? With the announcement of decentralisation the government has focused the teachers' anger on this specific attack, thus pushing the main attack (on pensions) into second place. This provocation had the aim of ensuring that the entire working class was unable to recognise its own interests in the teachers' struggle to the extent that the attack on decentralisation does not directly concern the other sectors, unlike the attack on pensions. It is clear that this provocation was aimed at dividing the working class and preventing a massive and unified response by all the public sector workers.

The government knew that the period of exams would act as a barrier to the struggle, and that it could count on a three month truce during the school holidays.

To lead the working class to defeat, the government was, as ever, able to rely on the loyal services of all the trade unions (CGT, CFDT, UNSA, SUD, etc) and the leftists (LO, LCR, CNT, PT). At first, when the government had just announced the attack on pensions, the unions appeared to be divided and to be obstructing any immediate, massive response from the working class. For example, the CGT called off the strike in the buses and railway on 14 and 15 May with the argument that it would be better to wait for the national demonstration in Paris on 25 May and prepare for this 'ideal moment' by not moving. On the other hand, in the education sector, we saw the unions acting very militantly and pushing the teachers to enter the struggle, not around the pension issue, but on the question of decentralisation (the call for Luc Ferry to resign, etc.). This fixation by the unions on the specific attack on the teachers, which was given a lot of media attention, created a certain disorientation in other sectors and blocked the possibility of a massive and unified struggle on the issue of pensions. This is why Raffarin was able to get away with saying that "it's not the street which governs", precisely because the government had quietly been working hand in hand with the unions and knew that it could count on their dirty work to divide and undermine the workers' response.

This divisive manoeuvre was consummated in the exam period which crowned the defeat of the education workers. The 'radical' unions and the leftists raised the threat of blocking the exams with several objectives. First, rousing other sectors against the teachers, in that it would be the children of workers who would pay the price of missing their exams. Second, making the strike unpopular by presenting the teachers as irresponsible and selfish people with no 'professional conscience'. Finally, dividing the teachers between those who wanted to halt the strike and those who wanted to carry on to the bitter end.

This whole agitation by the unions in the education sector had the overall aim of not only sowing the illusion that the teachers, on their own, could push back the government if they were determined enough, but also exhausting the strikers in a long strike that would demoralise them and make them hesitate to take part in the next round of struggles (for the large majority of strikers, they have lost several weeks' pay).

When the teachers became aware that the government would not give in, the unions (and the CGT in particular) had the incredible cynicism to blame the other sectors for not showing their solidarity with the teachers. In short, it wasn't the unions who were responsible for the defeat but�the other sectors who didn't want to mobilise in support of the teachers! The working class is the only force that can change society

The attack on pensions, and the coming attack on social security, is not peculiar to France. It has nothing to do with a good or bad management of the national economy. In all the industrialised countries of Europe, whether governed by the right or the left, the workers are now seeing all the social 'gains' since the end of the second world war being put into question. We are seeing a general collapse of the 'welfare' state. With the deepening of the world economic crisis, capitalism can no longer afford to subsidise the basic needs of workers it can't exploit directly (pensioners, unemployed, the sick, etc.).

Today, the working class has to understand the real significance of the attacks on pensions and social security, which is in no way a 'temporary' phenomenon linked to an 'unfavourable economic juncture' or to an 'unfair distribution of wealth' as the leftists of LO or ATTAC claim.

The collapse of the welfare state merely reveals the historic bankruptcy of the capitalist system, a system which has nothing to offer humanity expect more poverty, massacres, famines and epidemics.

Capitalism is a system that has reached the end of its tether and it is impossible to reform it in order to improve the conditions of the proletariat. The only 'reforms' it can carry out are reforms of the same type as the changes to pensions and social security, i.e. attacks which further degrade the living conditions of the working class.

This is why there can be no other perspective except to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a new society, based not on the search for profit, on exploitation, but on the satisfaction of human needs.

And only the working class can realise this perspective. If it is to do this, it must not give in to demoralisation after each defeat. Today, it has lost a battle, but it has not lost the war. It must prepare for a return to the combat in better conditions, by collectively reflecting and discussing, in the workplace, in general assemblies, by analysing the real reasons for the defeat.

To be stronger tomorrow, to develop a massive and unified combat, it will be vital to:

• put forward demands common to the whole working class and not fixate on attacks in one sector;
• immediately extend the struggle by sending massive delegations to the nearest enterprises;
• defend the sovereignty of the general assemblies which must be places where workers can regroup en masse, places of discussion open to workers from all sectors;
• unmask the manoeuvres of the unions aimed at controlling the general assemblies and sabotaging any real attempt at extension.

It is only in and through the struggle that the working class can become conscious of its strength, rediscover its self-confidence. It is through confronting the manoeuvres of the unions and the leftists, in the struggle itself, that the workers will be able to understand that they can only count on themselves.

Faced with the attacks of the bourgeoisie, there is no choice but to fight. More than ever, the future is in the hands of the working class.

RI, May 2003.

The 12th of March last, the World Health Organisation (WHO) launched, for the first time in its history, a planetary alert in order to counter the development of the epidemic of an atypical respiratory disease, eventually called 'Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome' (SARS). The concern of the WHO was real and justified: thus, from March 27th (the day when the Chinese government began to give figures which conformed more to reality) to May 16th, the official number of infected people in the world went from 1300 to 7650, and deaths from 50 to almost 600 with the perspective of a mortality rate of 4% of persons infected.

If today, the states of the developed countries declare that the epidemic has been stemmed on their territories, it continues to wreak havoc in East Asia which accounts for 90% of cases, where victims are counted in dozens each day and where the disease threatens to become chronic.

The WHO, and with it the western bourgeoisie, have congratulated themselves on their mobilisation faced with the epidemic and, along with the rest of the 'international community', have pointed a finger at the 'unpardonable lateness' of the Chinese government and the negligence of its Stalinist health system. It has been said throughout that if China had not suppressed and minimised the breadth of the epidemic, it could have been stopped much more quickly. That's obvious. Because it was in November 2002 that it began to break out in the Guandong Province with a hundred deaths, forcing Peking to impose considerable quarantine measures. All states are responsible

However, the observers of the WHO, i.e., the governments of the developed countries, who denounced the silence and the non-cooperation of China (1), knew from the beginning of February at least of the exceptional virulence of this epidemic of influenza and of the fact that it took the form of a "strange, contagious disease" (2). But it was only once the epidemic was declared in Hong Kong, in Vietnam and Singapore, and above all faced with its extension towards the developed countries, that the WHO reacted publicly. Nevertheless, despite the alert of March 12, it still took weeks for measures to be organised over the total of the more or less twenty countries struck by SARS. In Toronto, where at least one case was already noted, the health authorities of Ontario waited until March 26, two weeks later, to declare a state of emergency. Reputed for its 'level of excellence' the health system of Ontario was overwhelmed to the point where one of its hospitals decided, "To treat all illnesses except SARS because of the threat of not being able to attend to even a minor road accident", when 50 to 60% of those attacked by the disease were doctors and nurses (3, 4). The epidemic caused 24 deaths.

In France, under the pretext that airport restrictions were sufficient to prevent the disease arriving, the state did nothing to ensure that Air France flights coming from at-risk countries were disinfected. But due to the costs of exploitation and commerce, the concern of the air transport companies in the world was to note with horror, not the planetary expansion of a mortal sickness, but a "potential loss" of 4 billion dollars ascribable to the outbreak, twice the losses after the attacks of September 11, 2001 and during the conflict with Iraq put together!. If the leaders of the 'rich' countries denounce with zeal in their media the 'marginal sanitation' of entire areas of Chinese society and the corruption of all types which exist there, it's to make us forget the risks that their irresponsibility brings to the population.

Remember the blood contaminated with HIV, deliberately and consciously used for transfusions for hundreds of haemophiliacs in the mid-80s in France, for the good and simple reason that it was necessary to move stocks, while the heat deactivation technique was perfectly well known, but American. Remember 'Mad Cow disease' whose meat was again sold quite deliberately whereas they knew that it bore the mortal illness CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease). The list is long of the heinous crimes of the dominant class.

We know what the bourgeoisies of the developed countries have done against the development of AIDS, which has killed about 25 million human beings in the world since the beginning of the 80s: a late attempt to contain it here, letting it go in the poor countries where it was seen as bad luck. For 2002 alone, 3 million people died of AIDS and 5 million new declared cases have appeared. Out of the 42 million present sufferers (whose mortality rate is 90%), 70% are Africans, which says enough in itself: this continent has simply been delivered up to misery and decomposition in all its forms, without our 'civilised' bourgeoisies turning a hair. Another quite significant fact is that 20% of new cases concern Eastern Europe (notably Russia) and Asia (India and China closely follow one another). For the latter, the number of HIV positives will go from one million now to ten million in 2010, the result of a massive plan for blood tests and transfusions without adequate hygiene. While everyone's occupied looking at SARS under the microscope, the media haven't made much noise about this reality. Not to 'panic' their populations perhaps?

In any case, the aim is to hinder people from making the link between these 'new' sicknesses that arise from the decomposition of the capitalist world and its incapacity to really eradicate them. New expressions of the mortal sickness of capitalism

Thus the media has not shown much interest on the "very worrying context of the emergence of infections" (5) at the world level: "Nile fever has established itself in the United States (254 deaths in 2002 and no treatment). New strains of Dengue Fever (20,000 deaths in 2002 and no treatment) imported from Asia - a sickness that was thought to be eradicated - are presently colonising South America and infecting 100 million people a year in the world. (...) The Cerebro-spinal Meningitus bacteria are� presently rife in Burkina and has infected 6,300 people and has killed close to 1,000" (6). The SARS virus, this 'serial killer' is a mutant virus in the same vein as HIV: a virus of animal origin whose specificity is to have jumped the species barrier. Not usually causing serious illnesses, animals such as poultry transmitting viruses through their excrement to pigs only provoke, in normal conditions, colds among humans. But it's precisely the conditions of modern stock farming, linked to chronic lack of basic hygiene that facilitates the mutation of new viruses which propagate so much more easily where there is a high population density.

Thus the region of Guandong, from where the epidemic started out, is known for numerous intensive stock farms and its pork and poultry markets. The most affected area in Hong Kong, Kowloon, has a density of 165,000 people per square kilometre. The chicken flu in Hong Kong in 1997, which 'only' killed 6 people due to human non-transmission of the virus and thanks to the massive destruction 1.5 million chickens, had its origins in similar conditions.

The famous Spanish influenza, which appeared between 1918 and 1919 and in three waves of infection caused between 25 and 50 million deaths, several times more than World War I itself, had the same characteristics: duck droppings loaded with viruses ended up in pig troughs and were then consumed by humans.

Excessive deforestation again plays an important role in the development of animal viruses among man. Thus between 1998 and 1999, the appearance of the Nipah virus in Malaysia, propagated by bats through the loss of their natural habitat and settling in intensively cultivated orchards, caused more than 100 deaths, again a limited number due to the non-transmission of the virus between humans.

These sicknesses are, they tell us, 'the ransom of progress". No! These are the products of the weakness of capitalism which, for a century, has no longer been capable of bringing any progress to the whole of humanity: only misery and destruction in all their forms. Faced with the advanced decomposition of its system, the dominant class has nothing other to offer than ideological lies and repression. Thus the Chinese state, in order to face up to the wave of SARS, found nothing better to do than threaten the population with heavy prison sentences, even the death penalty (!) for those "who voluntarily spread pathogenic agents". A sneeze in public and it's jail lofty circles indeed for microbiological overcrowding of all types!

The aberrant nature of such repressive brutality is evident. But the cynicism of the bourgeoisies of the developed countries themselves knows no limits: since the end of the spread of SARS in the west, a near silence is organised on its ravages in East Asia as well as a real cordon sanitaire erected around China through the closure of its territorial frontiers with Russia and central Asia. They can die, but among themselves! On the other hand, our 'civilised' governments deplore the fact of not gaining anything from the drop in commercial relations with China. If the Chinese "little soldiers of neo-capitalism" die of SARS, they can joke about it, providing they continue to produce for the world capitalist market. But once they start propagating their microbes over the planet with the products of their exploitation, no - a million times no.

Here is the real face of capitalism in all the horror that it reserves for humanity.

Mulan, 22/5/03.

Notes

(1) It was the US ambassador herself who reported to the Peking office of the WHO at the beginning of February, the existence of a "strange sickness and many deaths in Canton" (quoted in Le Monde, 4/5 May 2003).

(2) Ibid.

(3) Ibid.

(4) It should be noted that the Canadian authorities used the event in order to reorganise the functioning of hospitals in the eventuality of war or a bio-terrorist attack, an idea which spans all the developed countries.

(5) Science and Future no.15, May 2003.

(6) Ibid.