Since the collapse of the eastern bloc in 1989, the anti-communist propaganda of the bourgeoisie - based on the 'greatest lie of the 20th century' that claims Stalinism was the inevitable outcome of Marxism - has obtained heights never before imaginable. But moreover, the influence of the classical theses of anarchism - this 'radical' petty bourgeois critique of Marxism-has itself widened, touching even those political circles that seek to link themselves up with Marxism once again. The bourgeois critique, like the anarchist criticism of Marxism, affirms - even in the case where Marx is not relegated to the same ranks as Stalin - that certain fundamental theses of Marxism, supposedly false, prefigured the rise of Stalinism. Notably, the Marxist conception according to which the proletariat has an historic task, a mission to complete, is considered a residue of idealism and even as a religious deformation of the scientific spirit. One finds such anarchist influences even among the declared partisans of historical materialism, for example the review Soziale Befreiung (SB), written by the Unabh�ngige R�tekommunisten (independent council communists) in Germany. This influence does not surprise us since SB declares itself partisan of a "post-Marxist communism" in its new brochure The Terror of Capital (vol. 1).

In SB's last brochure, one finds a critique of a quotation from the Parti Communiste International's (PCI) celebrated article, Auschwitz, ou le grand alibi (Auschwitz, or the great alibi). This reads: "It happens at times that the workers themselves fall into racism. This happens when threatened with massive unemployment, they tend to concentrate their anger on certain groups: Italians, Poles, or other 'wops,' 'blacks' etc. But within the proletariat these drives only occur at the worst moments of demoralization; they do not last. Once it enters into the struggle, the proletariat sees clearly and concretely where its real enemy lies: it becomes a homogenous class with a perspective and an historic mission."

After having clarified this conception as a "form of the idealist cult of the proletariat," SB continues its critique further: "Bordiga's conceptions are the idealist and deformed reflection of proletarian life, which is strictly bourgeois as well. The working class is not strictly a unitary class. It is possible in crisis situations for it to act collectively, but this is a completely different matter. But this story of 'a historic perspective and an historic mission' is a revival of the idealist residues of Marxism: the faith the petty bourgeoisie has in another class. (Almost all the Marxist theoreticians of the 19th and 20th centuries - beginning with Marx and Engels themselves - were renegades from the bourgeoisie). Who then assigns these 'historic missions'? The God of History? All of this is terribly religious! Its purpose is to directly link the theory of the party impartially and inflexibly to the service of said mission." (Ibid, pg. 5)

The bourgeois, or more precisely petty-bourgeois, assertion according to which the Marxist conception of the proletariat's historic mission is supposedly religious and thus already contains the seeds of a Stalinist and bourgeois party-state regime of terror is echoed in SB's brochure.

But if the marxist conception of the working class is the equivalent of an idealist and religious "cult of the proletarians", what materialist conception - perhaps "post-Marxist" - does SB offer us as an alternative? We read: "The interests of the majority of the working class is determined simply by the quest to live a little bit better than it currently does. To the extent that this is possible in one way or another, the relations of exploitation are supported because in the normal course of capitalism the more conservative forces within the proletariat determine its behaviour. But as long as its combat is carried out in the interior of capitalism, it will lead to an approval of the rules of the capitalist game, of which the nationalist 'solution' to the social question is an integral part. The social partnership always posses a nationalist orientation." Nationalism and the social partnership can thus fully constitute expressions of the working class, as long as it develops its combat "in the interior of capitalism." Because, according to SB, the proletariat "as a class dominated by capital, can not be anything else but bourgeois." As an example of this 'bourgeois-worker' struggle, SB takes "white male workers who seek to preserve their standard of living to the detriment of women, people of colour and foreigners. In order to obtain work and social benefits, they thus lead a concurrent struggle produced by capitalist relations against other wage-earners. Sexism and racism constitute the ideologies of this class struggle."

How could a class that fights in such a bourgeois manner come to revolutionary consciousness? According to SB "Revolutionary class consciousness cannot ignite in large sections of the working class until capitalism, shaken by crisis, can no longer satisfactorily satisfy basic needs. It is not until this moment that the adhesion of the proletariat to nationalist ideology can be broken." The revolutionary nature of the working class

SB affirms that the working class's struggle, as along as it is conducted within capitalism, reverts to an approval of the rules of the capitalist game and poses a nationalist orientation in the context of the "social partnership." However, experience shows absolutely that the working class's struggle cannot hold to the rules of the capitalist game because it is a struggle against exploitation. Autonomous workers' struggle and self-organization remains fundamentally outside bourgeois legality and, once it is launched, it sees itself immediately confronted with the entire arsenal of the exploiters' state. This includes not only the police and the courts but also the unions and the leftists.

The idea that there would be two proletarian struggles, one within the capitalist system, the other outside of it, is entirely false. In reality, there does not exist such a line of separation between the proletariat's economic struggles and the revolutionary assault. Since the aspirations of the immediate everyday struggles of the class - the maintenance of a certain standard of living, the diminution of exploitation, the opposition to the pursuit and intensification of the dehumanization of work - in the historic sense are no longer possible to obtain within the capitalist system, the revolutionary assault becomes nothing other than the defensive struggles taken to their ultimate consequence. Therefore, it is true (as Rosa Luxemburg demonstrated at the beginning of the 20th century against the opportunist 'revisionists', like Bernstein), that the development of a revolutionary voice and the communist perspective within the proletarian masses is a necessity - in order that the defensive struggles, if only temporarily, prevent the aggravation of the working class's situation. This is the reason why, since capitalism as a system attained its apogee, that the proletarian struggle, conforming to its nature, takes the form of the mass strike: the generalized struggle of class against class.

Naturally, the working class, like all the members of this society of commodity production is continually exposed to the pressure of the bourgeois competition of each one for himself. Naturally, the worker, taken as an individual, like all the members of this society, is exposed to the influence of racism and nationalism. However, as this competition derives from the economic nature of the bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeoisie, the nature of the proletariat's combat consists of association and the struggle against this competition. Because without the struggle against competition, without unification, workers' struggle is not even possible. Even if every worker taken individually may be racist or sexist, for the workers as a class to respond, they must confront this capitalist division and learn to tighten their ranks.

This is why the PCI's text on Auschwitz is perfectly correct to affirm that the class, with the exception of the deepest moments of demoralization, constantly fights these divisions in the course of its struggle.

Already in 1845, in The Condition of the Working Class in England, Engels recognized the importance of workers' association, as "the first attempt of the workers to abolish competition. They assume this idea to be very true, that the domination of the bourgeoisie is secured only by the competition between the workers themselves, that is to say on the infinite division of the proletariat, on the possibility of imposing on them various categories of worker. And it is precisely because they challenge, even if in a unilateral and always limited fashion, this competition, this vital nerve of today's social order, that they constitute such a danger for this social order." (1) Engels affirms moreover that it is only in combating capitalist competition that the workers "affirm themselves as human beings, that in addition to their labour power also have a will".

Marxists recognize here that the revolutionary nature of the proletariat is already present in its daily struggles. Even the most intelligent representatives of the dominant class have for a long time recognized this fact as for example the Interior Minster of Imperial Prussia Puttkamer, author of the famous phrase: "Already in every strike lies the hydra of the revolution". Or moreover as Lenin himself also stated: "Each strike is a little crisis of capitalist society." The workers' struggle is also a theoretical and political struggle

In fact, if the workers' defensive struggles normally hold themselves to the rules of the capitalist game, as SB affirms, how does one then explain how the suffering, which the aggravation of the capitalist crisis causes, would lead to the development of a revolutionary consciousness within the entire class. SB sees the incapacity of capitalism to satisfy "the most basic needs" of the workers as a precondition to this. However, capitalism has already known many such situations (the Great Depression after 1929, the end of the Second World War in Europe, or even today in numerous parts of the world) without that necessarily opening the way to a revolutionary consciousness among the proletarian masses. In reality, there are more than simply economic preconditions for this. Marxism has repeatedly demonstrated that the proletarian struggle is never simply economic. On the contrary, it possesses a theoretical and political dimension that is just as important. It is a characteristic of councilism to negate this other dimension and to await this consciousness as the unilateral, and more or less automatic, consequence of capitalism's desperation. However, capitalism will never face a situation of such utter desperation as long as the proletariat does not understand the necessity for its overthrow.

Class consciousness is not only a product of the immediate economic situation or the immediate struggle; rather it is an historical process, the accumulation, not only of the advance of the struggle, but also the clarification of the political lessons of these struggles drawn from the development of society and the class struggle. A fundamental element of this maturation of consciousness is to "see clearly and concretely where their enemy lies", as the PCI validly formulates the question. Here we see the dangerous consequences of SB's non-marxist conception of the working-class. The historic mission of the working class

As SB does not understand why the working class is revolutionary, it is not possible for it to understand the proletariat's historic mission. Let us see how Marxism has responded to this question. Engels writes in Anti-D�hring that "the historic role of the capitalist mode of production and its ruling class the bourgeoisie consists of concentrating, enlarging the dispersed and narrow means of production, to become the commanding levers of modern production. � But � the bourgeoisie cannot transform these limited means of production without transforming individual means of production into social means of production, useful only by an assembly of men." (2) But even if production is socialized, the appropriation of the fruits of production remains private, dispersed and anarchic. "In this contradiction, which gives this new mode of production its capitalist character, is already contained in embryo all the great collisions of the present. When the new mode of production comes to dominate in all the decisive sectors of production and in all the economically important countries, and vanquishes individual production until it has been reduced to insignificant residues, one will clearly and at the same time brutally witness the incompatibility of social production and capitalist appropriation" (3). This concentration of the means of production through the socialization of production is at the same time the decisive factor that leads to the separation "between the concentration of the means of production in the hands of the capitalists on the one hand, and on the other the reduction of the producers to a state of owning nothing other than their labour power. The contradiction between social production and capitalist appropriation manifests itself as the antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie." (4)

Communism, that is to say the satisfaction of human needs, motor of the development of socialized production, constitutes the only positive solution possible to the fundamental contradiction of capitalism. Only the proletariat can establish communism, because it is the only class that produces in a socialized fashion under capitalism. This collective nature of the proletariat, grounded in production, makes it, and it alone, the bearer of a future society without classes. There is no trace of "religion" in any of this or of a "cult of the proletarians." It is capitalism itself that confers this historic mission on the proletariat. Or as the Communist Manifesto formulates the matter: "The progress of industry, of which the bourgeoisie is the passive and unconscious agent, replaces the isolation of the workers in competition by their revolutionary union through association. The development of large-scale industry undermines, from under the feet of the bourgeoisie, the very ground upon which it established its system of production and appropriation. The bourgeoisie produces above all its own gravediggers."

More broadly speaking, within the question that SB raises in a rhetorical fashion -"Who assigns historic missions? The God of History?" - is posed the fundamental question of the Marxist method, of the historical materialist conception.

"A social formation never disappears until it has developed all the productive forces which it can contain, new and superior relations of production never substitute themselves for old ones, before the material conditions for the existence of these relations are born within the womb of the old society. This is why humanity never poses itself tasks except those that it can resolve, because, as shall be shown, it will always find that the task itself only arises where the material conditions for its resolution are already present, or at least are in the process of becoming." (5) From Weltrevolution no 119 (August-September 2003) organ of the ICC in Germany.

Footnotes

(1) Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (2) Engels, Anti-D�hring (3) Ibid (4) Ibid (5) Marx, Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

Despite all the talk about the 'end of the class struggle' over the past decade or so, the spectre of the class war just won't go away.

In May and June in France, government attempts to make drastic attacks on the pension system led to a huge number of strikes and demonstrations by public sector workers. Austria and Greece saw large-scale mobilisations by state employees against similar attacks. There have also been a growing number of smaller spontaneous walkouts, like the one at Heathrow last summer. Perhaps even more important is the mounting evidence that workers everywhere are beginning to ask questions about what future capitalist society - with its plunge into poverty, war and environmental destruction - holds in store for us all.

The current unofficial strike of around 25,000 workers in the post office in the UK is the latest expression of this world-wide revival of struggles. And there is ample evidence that the ruling class has deliberately provoked the postal workers, with the aim of crushing them and so 'setting an example' to other sectors of the working class - just like they did to the miners in the 80s. Government and bosses on the offensive

As with the miners in the 80s, there are of course issues specific to the postal sector.

After years of poor industrial relations, mounting financial losses and the impending pressure of competition from the private sector, the Royal Mail's newly installed senior bosses, backed in different ways by the government and the Communication Workers' Union (CWU), have sought to attack the pay and working conditions of its employees. An estimated 17,000 of the required 30,000 job losses have already been achieved and the 'Way Forward' national agreement provides the basis for brutal increases in productivity (i.e. exploitation).

The post office bosses thus have every interest in having a showdown with their workers - in provoking a strike that will give them the pretext to dismiss militants and impose an even more ruthless regime in the workplace. Their behaviour in the past couple of weeks has been provocative in the extreme.

Almost immediately after the strikes around the issue of London weighting, postal workers in the capital, and increasingly across the country, have been faced with a wave of intimidation, bullying and enforced changes to working practices by local managers. Those who have refused to accept the changes have been suspended. Their fellow workers have walked out on unofficial strike in solidarity. Managers have sent unsorted mail (so-called 'blacked mail') to other centres, where workers have refused to touch it. They themselves get suspended resulting in more walkouts. Thus the strikes, initially involving relatively small, petty incidents, escalated into a veritable national crisis. And once the strike had reached this level, there were further revelations about how Royal Mail managers were being told by their superiors to demand entry to mass meetings, take photos of picket lines, and engage in other forms of witch-hunting.

So either the Royal Mail has suddenly gone barmy, or this is part of a conscious strategy of provocation. And if it is, it is impossible to imagine that the higher-up bosses aren't acting in concert with the government.

What's at stake in the post office isn't just the question of making it more competitive economically at the workers' expense. The postal workers have in the last two decades established themselves as the most militant sector of the entire working class in Britain. Time and time again they have shown their contempt for the official union rule book and have responded to bosses' attacks by walking out on the spot, and deciding in mass meetings whether or not to go on strike, instead of allowing their anger and unity to be dispersed by official ballots.

This is why the government - the executive arm of the capitalist state - has every interest in smashing the postal workers and their 'bad example'. Faced with a rising tide of working class anger, and a slow but real development of class consciousness, they hope that by taking on and defeating the postal workers they will be able to nip this renewal of class struggle in the bud.

The postal workers have shown a tremendous determination to defend themselves and an inspiring ability to spread the struggle within their own sector. But, as with the miners in the 80s, one sector alone cannot push back an attack that is being coordinated from the heart of the capitalist state. The postal workers have shown what solidarity among postal workers means. To fight off this and future attacks they need to call on the solidarity of all the other sectors who are becoming increasingly discontented - local government workers, firefighters, airport workers and all the rest�and these other sectors will need to link their demands to those of the postal workers. Is this an attack on the union?

On picket lines up and down the country, postal workers have expressed the belief that the bosses are out to smash the CWU. This idea is reinforced by union officials and by papers like Socialist Worker: "�the union's future, indeed its whole existence as an effective organisation, is now on the line" (Socialist Worker, 1/11/03). Their national leaflet dated 28/10/03 is entitled 'One Union, One Fight'. They want the workers to see the defence of the union and the defence of their pay and working conditions as one and the same.

On the surface it appears that the attack on the postal workers is an attack on the union: one of the conditions for a return to work at Dartford, for example, has been an end to time granted for union activities during the working day; in many sorting offices, union representatives were the first to be suspended for rejecting additional management demands.

But the ruling class is well aware that it needs the unions to maintain order in the workplace. The response of the official unions to this dispute has once again shown that the union machinery is on the side of the bosses, not the workers. The national leaders are distancing themselves from the strike movement: "The CWU has repudiated this action and has made it clear to our branches and members that we do not support unofficial action." (CWU press release, 28/10/03). Furthermore, the union would dearly like to gain some control over the situation. When Allan Leighton, the Chief Executive of Royal Mail, failed to convince a mass meeting of strikers at the Greenford centre in West London to return to work, the leader of the CWU, Dave Ward, said "I hope this experience has impressed on Allan Leighton that he needs to instruct his managers at every level a need to discuss, consult and negotiate with the CWU. The only alternative is industrial anarchy" (CWU, 27/10/03). Clearly the last thing the unions want is 'industrial anarchy'! The role of unions everywhere, since 1914, has been to keep workers' struggles in a prison of legality, to sabotage efforts by workers on strike to extend their struggles outside their immediate locality and the particular sector involved.

However, a militant sector like the postal workers can't be kept under control merely by the well-paid bureaucrats at the head of the CWU. Thus, although it doesn't officially support the strike, the union is giving free reign to its rank and file network of shop stewards and local branch officers, leaving them to keep control of the mass meetings and the picket lines. While these people may well believe they are acting to defend their fellow employees, workers must never forget that their role is to serve the interests of the unions and thus of the employers and the state.

What the ruling class wants is not to liquidate the CWU, but to increase its control over the workforce - to make postal workers give up their bad habits and keep to the union rule book. What it wants is for the CWU to ensure that there are no more wildcats - only symbolic, ineffective official strikes. No more direct and immediate appeals for solidarity, only paralysing union ballots and cooling-off periods.

The lesson that workers in the post and elsewhere must draw from this is not that they should rally to defend the union. They should instead defend everything that expresses their independence and their ability to organise themselves. Mass meetings must be real centres of discussion and decision-making, not answerable to any union apparatus. Delegations to other workers, or to negotiate with the bosses, must be directly controlled by the mass meetings.

Above all, we have to reject the 'corporatist' trade union view that each sector should stick to its own grievances and demands. We must recognise that workers everywhere face the same attacks, and unite our resistance against them.

WR, 1/11/03.

In the first ten months of 2003 there have been large scale struggles involving workers from a range of sectors struggling with a determination unknown since the 1980s. In May and June millions of workers in France demonstrated against attacks on pensions. In Austria there were a series of demonstrations, also against attacks on pensions, culminating on 3 June with the largest demonstration seen since the Second World War when a million people took to the streets (this is in a country with a population that's less than 10 million).

There have also been significant, unofficial, isolated, spontaneous struggles: the wildcat strike by BA workers at Heathrow, the unofficial strike by up to 1000 workers at Alcatel-Espace in Toulouse in June, and in August 2,000 contract workers at an oil refinery in Puertollano (Spain) went on unofficial strike after an accident that killed 7 workers. In September up to 2,000 Humberside shipyard workers, from three different firms, went on unofficial strike in support of 98 subcontract workers who had been sacked for demanding another £1.95 an hour. There is also the current strike among postal workers in Britain, currently involving at least 20,000 workers.

There have been a growing number of struggles in most European countries, along with struggles in the US. For example, in California there have been strikes on the public transport system in Los Angeles which through solidarity action closed down bus lines, the underground and light rail transport. A strike of 70,000 supermarket workers in California has affected nearly 900 stores in the first such action in 25 years.

In Greece there has been a wave of strikes in the public sector involving thousands of workers including teachers, medical staff, fire-fighters and coast guards. Other strata such as 15,000 Athenian taxi drivers have also been on strike and demonstrated.

After 14 years with no large-scale mobilisations, record low levels of strikes in the main capitalist countries and the ruling class proclaiming the end of the class struggle, these recent struggles are the expression of a change in the social situation. What these struggles mean

To fully understanding the meaning and implication of these struggles it is necessary to put them in their historic context. On the immediate level the struggles of this year are not that different from those in other periods of struggle since 1989. In 1993 there were huge demonstrations in Italy against attacks on pensions, in 1995 there was a large scale class movement in response to similar attacks in France. However, this year we have seen simultaneous movements, struggles following each other and the growth of small but significant unofficial struggles. Above all, these struggles have unfolded in a context of growing unease in the working class about the future capitalism holds for it.

At the time of the struggles in France comparisons were made with May 68. We did not see this year as being a new 68, but the comparison does highlight the importance of the factor of workers' embryonic questioning of capitalism.

"In 1968 one of the main factors in the resurgence of the working class and its struggles on the scene of history at the international level, was the brutal end of the illusions encouraged by the period of reconstruction, which for a whole generation had offered the working class full employment and clear improvements in its living conditions after the unemployment of the 1930s and the rationing and famine of the war and the immediate post-war period. With the first expressions of the open crisis, the working class felt itself under attack not only in its living conditions and working conditions, but also in terms of a blockage in the perspectives for the future, of a new period of increasing economic and social stagnation as a result of the world crisis. The size of the workers' struggles following May 1968 and the reappearance of the revolutionary perspective showed clearly that the bourgeoisie's mystifications about the 'consumer society' and the 'bourgeoisification' of the working class were wearing thing. Though we must keep things in proportion, there are analogies between the present attacks and the situation at that time. Obviously there is no question of identifying the two periods. 1968 was a major historical event which marked the emergence from more than four decades of counter-revolution. It had an impact on the international proletariat incomparably greater than the present situation.

Nonetheless today, we are witnessing a collapse of what appeared in a sense as a consolation after years in the prison of wage labour, and which has been one of the pillars that has allowed the system to hang on for 20 years: retirement at the age of 60, with the possibility at that age of enjoying life free from many material constraints. Today, workers are being forced to abandon the illusion of being able to escape for the last years of their life from what is increasingly experienced as a purgatory: a working environment where there are always too few people for the job, the amount of work is constantly increasing, and the rhythm of work is constantly speeding up. Either they will have to work for longer which means a reduction in the length of the period when they could at last hope to escape from wage labour, or else because they have not contributed for long enough they will be reduced to a wretched poverty where deprivation takes the place of overwork. For every worker, this new situation poses the question of the future." ('The massive attacks of capital demand a mass response from the working class' International Review 114).

This questioning is strengthened by the experience of the proletariat over the last 14 years. With the collapse of the eastern bloc the proletariat was thrown into a profound retreat. The collapse left workers feeling helpless as the whole international situation changed, with the world engulfed in chaos. At the same time the ruling class used the collapse and the growing economic 'boom' of the 1990s to push the idea that the class struggle was dead and that workers had to see themselves as citizens who had a stake in society. These campaigns crashed into the reality of the recession from the beginning of the new century and the subsequent bursting of the internet bubble and the tidal wave of lay-offs that has been sweeping the US, Europe and the rest of the world. At the same time, across Europe, in the US and beyond, capitalist states have been attacking the welfare state; cuts in unemployment pay and entitlement, cuts in pensions, attacks on health, education etc. All of which has shown the working class what capitalism has to offer and generated a determination among workers to respond to attacks on pensions and other parts of the social wage.

The smaller, isolated, unofficial struggles express a growing discontent in the proletariat against accepting attacks imposed by the bosses and unions. The Heathrow check-in staff, not known for their militancy, simply could not stomach yet another attack or the union's complicity, so they walked out. The fact that such a small number of workers could cause such concern to the bosses, unions and media was a graphic example of the fact that the ruling class know that something is changing in the social situation The perspective

The potential contained in the present situation is of historic importance. Today is not the same as 1968, the class is not emerging from a period of historic defeat lasting decades, but from a decade or more of retreat. And before 1989 there had been 20 years of waves of struggles. Thus, the present generations of workers have potentially over 30 years experience of confronting the attacks and manoeuvres of the ruling class to draw on. This, combined with the questioning being produced by the increasingly global nature of the attacks, could provide the conditions for the taking of important steps towards the eventual decisive class confrontations between the proletariat and bourgeoisie, which will determine whether the proletariat has the ability to go onto the revolutionary offensive. Class identity, the key question for the working class.

Central to this perspective will be the ability of the proletariat to regain and strengthen its class identity. By 'class identity' we mean the understanding of being part of a class, one with common interests to defend. This sense of class will be the basis for eventually taking struggles onto another level through their extension and self-organisation.

The nature of the attacks is providing the grounds for this to happen. The dismantling of the 'social buffers' of the welfare state, along with the intensification of exploitation in the factories, offices, hospitals etc and the growth of mass unemployment (over 5 million in Germany, 10% of the working population, levels of lay offs in the US unknown for decades, 800,000 manufacturing jobs lost in the UK since 1997, etc) confront workers with the stark reality of capitalism: either work your guts out to produce surplus value or rot in poverty.

For decades the ruling class have tried to use the welfare state to soften the impact of capitalism on the working class, but now the truth of what Marx said in Capital is becoming clearer: "Capitalist commodity production is thus the first economic formation in the history of humanity in which unemployment and the destitution of one large and growing layer of the population, and the direct helpless poverty of another, also growing layer, are not merely the result, but also a necessity, a condition for the existence of this economy. Insecurity of existence of the whole of the working population and chronic want... have for the first time become a normal social phenomena" (Capital Vol. 1). Counter-attack of the bourgeoisie

The ruling class is fully aware of the threat posed by the working class. The capitalist state has a whole apparatus for dealing with workers' actions: the trade unions, democracy, leftists, courts, police etc. Nonetheless, its greatest fear is that the workers will develop their class identity and on the basis of this begin to pose political questions about the nature of capitalism, and the need for an alternative.

Thus, when the French bourgeoisie had to carry out a frontal attack on the working class it did all it could to stop this generating a sense of class identity. The unions and left presented it as a struggle against a 'hard line' right wing government, rather than capitalism being the cause. All sectors of the population were mobilised. And they also made an example of the teachers, whose struggle suffered a brutal defeat. In Austria the unions were also able to contain the anger within demonstrations and limited strikes. In Germany, the ruling class was able to use the struggles in France and Austria to stir up a struggle of engineering workers in the East, which, through the demand for equal pay with workers in West, stoked up divisions. They were able to turn workers' anger against other workers who did not join the strike.

The latter attack was an expression of the wider problem of decomposition that the proletariat will face in its struggles. The growing decay of the social fabric works against the development of class identity because it breeds the idea of each against all. Each individual or sector of workers is encouraged to just be concerned with their every day survival, even if that means doing down your fellow workers. During the teachers struggle in France, the radical trade unions encouraged the idea of the most militant workers trying to impose the struggle on other workers by blocking schools, roads etc, leading to hostility between workers and profound demoralisation. In Spain (Puertollano) the unions kept the subcontracted workers' struggle separated from the permanent workers, again leading to hostility and demoralisation.

The ruling class is very sophisticated and has much experience to draw on in its struggle against the proletariat. It is essential to understand this, because to underestimate the capacity of the class enemy is to disarm the working class. Today's struggles are only the first unsteady steps in the opening up of a period of the potential development of the class struggle. The bourgeoisie is going to do all it can to undermine, divert and corrupt working class combativity and its deepening consciousness.

The working class is faced with an enormous challenge. There is going to be a long and torturous development of struggles marked by defeats and set-backs. Workers will need to confront the devastating effects of the deepening crisis: mass unemployment and poverty. Entering into struggle is a very difficult process, but the serious reflection that has to accompany the development of struggles gives them more political significance. The development of the struggle will also enable the proletariat to begin to draw out the lessons it had already started to grasp in the 1980s, in particular on the role of the unions and the need to spread struggles beyond one sector. This whole process will be fed by and stimulate the wider questioning of the capitalist system. The changing social situation is a great historical challenge, but there is not any guarantee that the class and its revolutionary minorities will be able to meet it. This will depend on the determination and will of the class and its minorities.

Phil, 1/11/03.

Since the collapse of the Russian bloc at the end of the 80s, and the resulting disappearance of the western alliance, the US, the world's only remaining superpower has been permanently forced to take the initiative on the military level, where it enjoys a crushing superiority over all its rivals, with the aim of defending its global leadership from the growing challenge from France, Germany, Russia and China. Since the first Gulf war, all the major conflicts have been the result of a pre-emptive policy by the USA, aimed at forestalling the emergence of a new imperialist bloc. But the US is in the grip of an insoluble contradiction: each new offensive, while it momentarily puts a brake on the challenge to American leadership, at the same time creates the conditions for further challenges, by increasing feelings of frustration and anti-Americanism. The whole escalation since September 2001, which has seen the USA, under the pretext of the struggle against terrorism and 'evil dictators', carrying out the military occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq without the least concern for the role of NATO and the UN, is bound up in this logic. Nevertheless, none of the conflicts which preceded Afghanistan, and above all Iraq, have engendered such a difficult situation as the US is now in.

Emboldened by the ease of its victory over Saddam Hussein, the American bourgeoisie gave little thought to the huge problems posed by the necessity to maintain a military occupation of Iraq. The US is going to be bogged down there for the foreseeable future despite the promises made by the Bush administration about the reconstruction and democratisation of Iraq. Continuous attacks on American troops (and, increasingly, on Iraqi civilians) by the so-called 'resistance' made up of ex-Baathists, and both home-grown and imported Islamists are having a demoralising effect. The number of American troops killed 'after' the war has already surpassed the number killed during open hostilities.

In order to try to maintain order and keep the situation under control, the US is obliged to increase its troop numbers there. A sign of the unpopularity of this mission is the fact that professional volunteers are becoming harder and harder to find and the troops in Iraq are more and more openly expressing their unease about the situation. This has expressed itself in a panicky tendency for US soldiers to shoot up everything that moves; but it is also beginning to take the form of vocal criticisms of the whole Iraq adventure by soldiers and their families at home. 'Road map' in shreds

Before launching the US onto this new military offensive, Bush announced that the liberation of Iraq would overturn the geopolitical landscape of the region. In substance this meant that the US domination of Iraq would strengthen its influence throughout the region, and allow it to press on with the strategic aim of encircling Europe. Such a scenario obviously involved the US being able to impose a 'Pax Americana' in all the most unstable areas, above all in the most explosive of them all, Israel/Palestine. Bush even announced that this conflict would soon be over. Bush was quite right to think that the situation in Iraq would have a strong influence on what happened in the territories occupied by Israel. This is being demonstrated today, but not in the way Bush hoped, since the conflict there is getting worse by the day. The present failure of the American bourgeoisie in Iraq is a real handicap to its policy of pressurising its turbulent Israeli ally to accept the 'road map to peace'. This has been totally sabotaged by Jerusalem. Such difficulties in imposing its will on Israel are not new and partly explain the failure of the various peace plans over the last 10 years. Nevertheless these problems have never been as heavy with consequences as they are today. This is illustrated by the short-term policies which someone like Sharon is able to impose in the Middle East, based exclusively on trying to escalate the confrontation with the Palestinians in order to chase them away from the occupied territories. As in the rest of the world, there's no possibility of peace in this region. The card played by Sharon, the butcher of Sabra and Chatila, can only lead to further bloodbaths, which will in no way resolve the Palestinian problem. On the contrary, this keeps coming back like a boomerang, above all in the form of an increasingly uncontrolled terrorism. Such an outcome can only have negative consequences for the US, which obviously cannot simply abandon its main ally in the region. USA's rivals take advantage of its difficulties

The USA's difficulties in Iraq undermine its international credibility and authority; its rivals can only rejoice in this and try to make the most of it. France has been the most insolent of all: at the UN general assembly, Chirac expresses his differences with his "great ally", arguing that Bush made a mistake in intervening in Iraq in spite of all the reservations put forward by a number of countries, including France of course. More worrying for the US is the fact that up till now it has been unable, despite repeated appeals, to get another major power, apart from the UK, which took part in the military operation from the start, to reinforce its troop contingent in Iraq. Spain, which is not a great power, sent a purely symbolic force. Only Poland, which is a still smaller power, responded positively to American appeals to join the great powers on the parade ground. It will be equally difficult for the US to find volunteers to help it meet the costs of stabilising and reconstructing Iraq.

Even the unanimous vote for resolution 1511 which Washington put before the UN at the end of October, while representing a partial political victory for Bush as it recognises the American presence in Iraq, does not really mean that the USA's major rivals are backing the Iraq adventure. Both Germany's Joschke Fischer and France's Villepin voted along with strong criticisms, the latter saying that there was risk that the resolution would serve no purpose. Germany, France, Russia and China all made it clear that there was no question of putting a cent into the reconstruction of Iraq.

In fact, the USA's present situation of relative weakness has inspired its rivals to go back onto the offensive. Thus on 20 September, in Berlin, there was a meeting between Schroeder, Chirac and Blair, who agreed on the need for Europe to have an autonomous military force and headquarters, an idea which the British bourgeoisie has hitherto opposed. Britain's small steps taken here towards the USA's greatest rivals is not unconnected to the fact that Britain is also paying the cost of the Iraqi misadventure and it needs to change the balance in its alliances by finding a counter-weight to the US. Blair's declaration in this regard is rather eloquent: "On the question of European defence we have a more and more shared position" (Le Monde, 23.9.03). Similarly, at the UN general assembly in September, the 25 members of 'Greater Europe' (the EU 15 plus those who intend to be part of its future enlargement) all voted, apparently on the initiative of Germany and France, in favour of a text which can only accentuate the USA's embarrassment over the policies of its Israeli ally, since it condemned Sharon's decision to deport Arafat. Through a symbolic vote, the image of the US was once again under fire. And among the 25 members of Greater Europe who implicitly criticised the US in this vote, a majority had, prior to the outbreak of the Iraq war, more or less supported the US option against France, Germany and Russia.

In the same logic of sabotaging US policy, the agreement between French, German and British foreign ministers to accept Iran's promises about controlling its nuclear programme was another embarrassment for the US. One of the aims of its offensive in Iraq has been to move towards the neutralisation and even the control of this strategically vital country - this is why Washington has been trying to impose the same kind of inspections regime on Iran as it did on Iraq. By playing the role of mediators with the Iranian regime, the European states are putting a spanner in America's works.

This fact, as well as the recent evolution of Britain's position on the autonomous European force, illustrates a characteristic of the period opened by the disappearance of imperialist blocs which the ICC highlighted at the time of the first Gulf war: "In the new historical period we have now entered - and this has been confirmed by the events in the Gulf - the world appears as an immense free for all, where the tendency of 'every man for himself' will come into its own, and alliances between states will have nothing like the stability they had in the period of the blocs, but will be dictated according to the needs of the moment" ('Militarism and Decomposition', IR 64).

The fact that this situation is unfavourable to the formation of new blocs and thus to the movement towards a third world war between major powers will not spare humanity from a plunge into barbarism: the wars and chaos of decomposing capitalism could, in the long run, equally result in runaway destruction and undermine any possibility of founding social life on a rational and harmonious basis. Capitalism has nothing to offer humanity; the only future is the worldwide communist revolution.

LC, 1/11/03.