On April 14, what's being called the biggest strike in recent memory in China began at one of the Yue Yuen factories in Dongguan, southern China. Depending on what reports one reads, the numbers on strike went from thirty to forty thousand, with  the South China Morning Post of April 18 reporting the number as 50,000[1]. The strike started at one of the 7 factories of the Taiwan-based Yue Yuen Industrial Holding Company, the world's largest branded shoemaker, which makes footwear for Nike, Adidas, Converse, Reebok, Timberland and dozens more. A woman just retired from one of the factories worked out her pension payments and discovered that they were well short of what she expected. A strike broke out at the factory and a couple of hundred workers walked out, only to be followed by tens of thousands more from the other 6 plants in the following days. A few days later, anything from two thousand to six thousand workers (depending on reports) walked out from the Yue Yuen plant in the neighbouring province of Jiangxi over the same issue of the underfunding of the social wage.

The underfunding of workers' benefits -  pensions, injury compensation, redundancy pay, sickness and unemployment pay - is becoming a big issue for the working class in China, particularly as factories close, relocate to cheaper locations abroad like Vietnam for example, or internally within China, as with from militant Shenzhen to more peaceful (for the moment) Huizhou Province for instance. This chronic underfunding is by no means a phenomenon linked to foreign-owned companies as some elements of the Chinese bourgeoisie have suggested - and have done so in the past in relation to Japanese-owned businesses - but is the general practice of Chinese capitalism along with all the capitalist states of the west as workers’ pensions, unemployment pay and social benefits are cut further and further back. It's also significant that the working class in China is raising the issue of pension provisions and other longer term benefits. It shows, just like the workers of the west, the great concern and unease that exists for the future and future generations of workers. Their actions are in a line with the struggle against pension cuts in France 2010 which mobilised workers of all ages onto the streets in a massive show of anger and protest. It's the same issue that mobilised the New York subway strike in December 2005 when the bosses attempted to cut future pensions payments and curtail medical benefits leading some 35000 workers to walk out. A similar concern for the future has contributed to mobilising workers and youth in mass demonstrations in Spain and Greece bringing tens of thousands onto the streets. And it took all the deviousness of the British trade unions to smother the concern and anger of workers in Britain against a brutal assault on pensions in both the private and public sector with the unions helping the bosses to facilitate cuts in pensions, while cutting the pensions and increasing the contributions of workers directly employed by them.

Another issue coming to the fore for the proletariat in China, raised by cuts in social benefits and the growing number of factory closures is that many jobs are now classified by the state as "temporary". This means great difficulty in obtaining education for children, health care and all the benefits listed above because one doesn't have a permanent residence permit. Workers here are not only fighting for a better cut of the "social wage" but in this strike are also demanding a 30% pay rise[2]. The company has made some sort of offer to the workers but, such as it is, this has clearly been rejected by them and what's lacking in the "People's Republic" is any effective trade union machinery trapping the workers in the negotiating fraud. As Yue Yuen spokesman and executive director George Lui, put it on April 22: "We are not quite sure who to deal with"[3]. This is a real problem for the Chinese ruling class and leads them to rely more on the short term and ultimately counter-productive solution of brute force against the subtlety of trade union sabotage carried out by those organisations in the west for example.

Despite the fighting spirit and the solidarity expressed by the working class in China, indeed because of it, there are also problems and obstacles that the workers need to confront, just like their class brothers in the west. Strikes in China are this year a third up on the same period last year which also saw significant increases in incidents of labour unrest; and we should remember that 99% of strikes in China are unofficial and illegal. Researchers this year have spoken of "a notable surge in the number of strikes and workers' protest since the Lunar New Year Holiday in February... the workers movement (i.e., strikes and protests) continues to be broad-based in a whole range of industries across the country"[4]. Underlining the repressive response from the Chinese state the research goes on to say that there is "a noticeable increase in both police involvement and arrests arising from workers' protests". With a weak and despised union apparatus there's no wonder that riot police have been liberally deployed here in Dongguan as they increasingly have been against workers' struggle in China. Clear information about the conduct and organisation of the strike by workers is not readily available for obvious reasons but there is some evidence that  the workers feel the need to organise assemblies and elect their own delegates (there was a call from workers at one Dongguan factory for the election of their own delegates and there is certainly a "leadership" to this strike). Still, we can't know the details here. What is clear is that shortly after the strike began around a thousand workers from one Yue Yuen plant started to march (possibly to another factory), the march was confronted by riot police and dogs and its leaders were arrested with some hospitalised[5]. There were also forays by riot police arresting some workers in and around the factory. It's quite possible that they were militants fingered by the ubiquitous All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) goons, 900,000 of whom, mostly Party members, exist across the country.

The strikes of the Yue Yuen workers are ongoing - as has been the general strike wave in China for some time - but similar issues have been raised in previous strikes this year: at IBM's Shenzhen factory and Walmart stores in late March. The ACFTU  was instrumental in setting up Walmart's 400 stores in China in 2006/7 amid a government-led drive to unionise private companies. Part of the deal was that all Walmart employees would have their compulsory subs to the union deducted straight from the workers’ wages. This is now normal for Chinese industry and is a very lucrative deal for the ACFTU given its 260 million members. British unions (and unions in the west generally) have been in on this scam for decades, enriching themselves directly from the workers' payroll with the agreement of the bosses and the law.

The protest by workers against the pathetic redundancy pay offered by Walmart with the closure of their store in the Hunan province city of Changde is interesting for the attempt to "radicalise" elements of the ACFTU. Leading the protest is one Huang Xingguo, the branch secretary and chairman of the union. It turns out that Huang, like many Chinese union leaders, has come from admin management and is now apparently devoting his cause to the workers[6]. The identification of unions with management is not at all an unfamiliar story to workers in the west, although in the latter there is more ideological obfuscation. Huang has gone a step further in following western unions by involving groups of lawyers and taking the road well-trod by British unions in looking for industrial harmony through the courts. This is an increasing tendency in China as this particular faction of the bourgeoisie looks for class peace through negotiation within the law. Other militants who have been involved in the initial strike have been arrested but unlike Huang, who is free to consort with cliques of lawyers, they have not been supported by the US union, ALF-CIO. Contrast this to one Wu Guijun, a real representative of the workers during their 3 week strike at the Hong-Kong based Diweixin furniture makers in Shenzhen[7]. Wu was among some 200 workers arrested, detained and is still in jail but he's had the unfortunate experience of being backed by letter-writing western liberals, academics, trade union executives, human rights lawyers and even, for their own imperialist interests no doubt, the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China (20.12.13), all bleating about the right to strike and protest which doesn't even exist in their own countries.

The ongoing Dongguan strikes, the whole continuing strike wave in China, shows the militant courage of large masses of the proletariat. But, like their comrades in the west, the working class in China has significant challenges to confront and overcome. The strike also shows the role of the trade unions who are everywhere mandated to protect the national interest of whatever country they are working in. The function of the trade unions, and this is clearly expressed in China, is to police the workers, along with the riot police, facilitate the attacks upon them and protect the state. This is happening in China with its specifics at the moment but these anti-working class activities are fundamental aspects of the trade unions everywhere.

Baboon, 24.4.14 (This article was contributed by a sympathiser of the ICC)

The evolution of the situation in Venezuela after a month of sporadic confrontations and demonstrations in the streets has unfortunately not lived up to the potential originally contained in this uprising of young people rebelling against poverty, rising living costs (the official rate of inflation is 56%), precarious employment, insecurity, permanent terror and a future in total contradiction with the propaganda of the post-Chavez regime. While the level of repression has got a lot heavier (18 deaths and 260 wounded by 5 March) since the texts below were written, the bourgeoisie has managed to get control of this movement, mainly through the use of oppositional factions, both of the left and the right. The ruling class has got down to pushing this movement onto the ground of democratism and nationalism, as we can see from the immense national flags displayed in the demonstrations. The manipulations and manoeuvres of rival imperialist interests have overtaken the anger on the street and the Venezuelan student movement has shown that it has not overcome the weaknesses of 2007[1]. Once again it has fallen for the traps and lies of the democratic opposition, which has the function of smothering its explosive character, cutting it from its proletarian roots and handing it over to the politicians and other exploiters.

We are publishing a translation of the two statements already published on our Spanish website: a contribution by a close sympathiser of the ICC who wrote and distributed a leaflet in the days after the repression of young people on 12 February by the Maduro government and its agents. The other is a text presenting this leaflet written by our section in Venezuela. Both point to the real stakes in the situation: the necessary link between this revolt of the young and the more general resistance of the proletariat on its class terrain, even though this link has been sabotaged by all the forces of the bourgeoisie acting to derail and recuperate the movement.

These statements also have the merit of breaking the relative black-out in Europe over these events. The bourgeoisie has once again tried to hide the real point of departure of this massive youth rebellion against increasingly intolerable living conditions, placing all the emphasis on the fight between ‘Chavists’ and ‘anti-Chavists’, between the ruling power and the ‘democratic opposition’.

Presentation of the leaflet by Internacialismo, ICC publication in Venezuela

The leaflet below, written and distributed by a sympathiser of the ICC, takes a position on the brutal repression unleashed by the Chavist regime (currently led by Chavez’s successor, Nicolas Maduro) against a massive mobilisation called by the students for 12 February in the centre of Caracas, calling for the release of four of their imprisoned comrades and protesting against scarcity, the rising cost of living and insecurity in the cities. The repressive actions of the ‘Bolivarian Socialist’ regime has left three dead and dozens of wounded and arrested.

The student mobilisation has detonated an immense wave of indignation which has been building up within the working masses and the population in general, who have been hit very hard by a grave economic crisis. Large sectors of the population at national level supported the determined actions of the young people, coming together in a movement of generalised protest against the regime and to show their rage and indignation against the high rate of inflation, which has not been countered by any wage increases; against the growing scarcity of basic goods (in particular food, medicine, hygiene); against the high level of public insecurity which has taken the sinister form of 200,000 murders in the lifetime of the Chavist regime; against the deterioration of health services, the casualisation of jobs and the grotesque propaganda of the Chavist regime which at both national and international level has been trying to sell the ‘benefits’ of ‘Bolivarian socialism’. In reality, this regime epitomises the barbarism and poverty which decomposing capitalism offers humanity.  

As we have seen with other social movements around the world, the Chavist bourgeoisie has resorted to its preferred methods of action: open and ruthless repression against the demonstrators, using not only the official state forces but also the civilian militias armed and paid by the state, the Bolivarian committees whose function is to intimidate, to create a climate of terror, which includes firing on unarmed demonstrators.  It is they who are directly responsible for the deaths and the injuries. But by allowing these para-police forces to act freely, the state has tried to hide its own responsibility in the repression. These actions by the ‘Bolivarian revolutionaries’ should not surprise us. Throughout its history the bourgeoisie has used declassed and lumpenised elements as its shock troops against the proletariat. We saw this with the fascist networks (Mussolini’s Blackshirts and the Nazi Brownshirts) as well as with the Stalinist regimes, like in Cuba with the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution, or under the dictatorial regimes in the Arab countries (Libya, Syria, Egypt), or again more recently with countries allied to  ‘21st Century Socialism’ such as Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia...

The bourgeoisie is aware of the gravity of the country’s economic crisis, which in turn is an expression of the crisis of world capitalism. The economic methods of the regime have merely precipitated an imminent crisis. Despite the considerable income from oil, the Chavist regime can no longer cope with the vast levels of public expenditure needed to keep up the populist policies of almost 30 years, or continue providing cheap oil to buttress a geo-political strategy which is getting weaker and weaker. Thus the conditions for the emergence of the protests have been steadily ripening. To prevent any convergence between those who were previously supporters and opponents of the regime, the government has imposed a media and internet black-out to prevent the dissemination of information about the protests, while the state media tried to mobilise the pro-Chavez part of the population against the students and the demonstrations, criminalising the protesters and presenting itself as the only guarantor of social peace.    

Despite the obstacles set up by the state, given the economic, social and political situation, the new student movement has a potential which could enable it to go beyond its initial composition and to spread onto the national level.

To get to this, it will have to avoid falling into the same traps as the movement of 2007, which was weakened and derailed by all the false friends represented by the parties in opposition to the regime, who are just the other side of the same coin, part of the same political apparatus of capital. They offer no way out of the crisis. This is why we fully agree with our comrade when he writes in the leaflet that the only way forward for this movement is to unite with the working class sectors which, despite the repression and harassment of the trade unions, have remained standing and struggling over the last few years: the workers of the steel, oil and health sectors, the state employees, etc.

As we said in 2007, we salute the spontaneous upsurge of this new movement of student youth, whose confrontation with the state contains elements which make it part of the proletarian struggle against the capitalist system. These are the same elements which were present in the social movements which have shaken the world from the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011 to the Indignados in Spain, Occupy in the US and the recent movements in Brazil and Turkey.

Leaflet: the bloody repression of 12 February 2014

The ‘highest achievement of 21st Century Socialism’ (according to those with a nostalgia for Stalinism) has been shaken recently by a wave of riots which has spread across the whole republic and whose main actor has been the mass of young people, who have come from different social strata, and who have concentrated in themselves the oppression of a population attacked by the decomposition of a social model based on the cruellest form of capitalism (a caricatured form  of state capitalism) and which has affected national life these past 15 years. The rage provoked by an infernal spiral marked by insecurity, by the scarcity of virtually everything you need to live more or less decently, by the absence of any basis of hope for an improvement, by a feeling of frustration produced by living in a social reality which has jettisoned the values which once motivated humanity to storm the heavens.

On 12 February, rather than joining in the patriotic hoopla of the Day of Youth, the young people, outside of the rotten framework of the politicians, called for a demonstration to demand the liberation of a group of students arrested in the province of Tachira, and held in a high security prison on charges of terrorism – an expression of the repressive escalade which ‘21st Century Socialism’ has unleashed against the protests which began to grow throughout 2013 and which have included  various sectors of the working class, in particular those of essential industries (Sidor, Venalum, Alcasa, Ferrominera, Bauxilium) and more recently workers of the oil industry in the Jose refineries, who were jailed on the pretext of being traitors to the country. The accusation of being traitors, terrorists, unpatriotic, Yankee’s lick-spittles, and agents of imperialism has been used by Chavism and its hired killers in the Committees against any expression of discontent or against any struggle by the workers for immediate demands, not only against the students.

On 12 February 2014, the young people involved in the protest found themselves on a ground mined in advance by Chavism and its capitalist opposition (the MUD[2] , Leopoldo Lopez and the de-frocked left Stalinists who worked hand in hand with right). This division of labour sterilised the rebellion, derailed it from paths that could have led to a convergence with the proletarian sectors who are on the same side of the barricade as the students and who could bring the political organisation and direction capable of standing up to the repression and exploitation of the Bolivarian capitalist state.   The regime fears the explosive nature of struggles animated by young proletarians and the student movements, who through recent experiences, especially those of 2007, have gained the capacity to draw strength from the general discontent of a population bombarded by a deluge of the mystifications of official propaganda.  

In 2007, the protest movement was pushed onto the sterile terrain of defending a television network (RCTV), a scenario dominated by rival visions of capitalism; in the end the movement was reduced to a caricature in which the leading role was given to mediatised ‘stars’ of protest. And then on 12 February 2014, the official speechmakers, having criminalised the youth protesters with their usual jargon,  set upthe following scenario: a division of labour with the opposition, aimed at leading the movement into an impasse. The Minister of Justice issued a warrant for the arrest of Leonardo Lopez while also threatening to abolish the parliamentary immunity of the oppositionist Corina Machado on charges of associating with the delinquents of the organised gangs. This was followed by the creation of a commission of criminal inquiry for having called on the young people to demonstrate.

Neither Lopez nor Machado had called for the slightest mobilisation and their fleeting presence at the demonstration was reduced to making rousing speeches and surfing on the militancy of the young people. But the moment the Chavist rabble began its bloody charge against the demonstrators, in concert with the Committees of death, the Bolivarian National Guard and the Bolivarian National Police, they disappeared: they and the other MUD cronies were nowhere to be seen. The difficult job of facing up to the Bolivarian state on the barricades and of collecting the dead was left to the young people. The MUD defenders of capitalism as well the Chavist leaders gave themselves the role of pontificating to the media.    

The protest movement must not repeat the errors of 2007 and develop the struggle on a terrain which is not its own – this will lead it to the precipice of frustration and resounding defeat. The only natural environment from which the current youth protests can draw any strength is the proletarian sectors of society which, throughout 2013, have stood up against the attacks of the capitalist state, and whose resistance can only advance by drawing on the potential for extension contained in the youth protests. These sectors contain the possibility of imbuing the current protests with a revolutionary content, of constructing a solid political and organisational platform, a class fortress that can overthrow this rotten capitalist system that Chavism and its acolytes are trying to keep upright. These are the workers are the essential industries n the region of Guayana, the oil workers spread across the whole national territory, the workers of the public sector who have broken their bridges with the trade unionism that has tried to tie them to Chavism. This is the ground on which we have to prepare the battle.

HS, 18.2.14

It's difficult to know where to begin in the face of the growing devastation throughout the world that is posed by the increased militarism and barbarism of the capitalist system. The confrontation between Ukraine and Russia has grabbed the headlines recently but it can only be understood in a more global context in which we are seeing a constant sharpening of military tensions and open conflicts across a very considerable portion of the planet.

In chapter one, "Bourgeoisie and Proletariat", of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx wrote about the need of capitalism to look for "a constantly expanding market for its products (which) chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere". If this was characteristic of capitalism's global expansion of commodity production accompanied by "blood and iron", then the characteristics of capitalism's fights over saturated markets and a world now carved up by the major powers are all the more intense, destructive and irrational. Even bourgeois commentators have noticed the similarities with the period prior to World War One to that of today: the arms races, the fights for resources, tensions within and between states, the growth of all sorts of nationalisms and xenophobia, etc. There are though many differences at many levels between the early 1900's and today but, fundamentally, we are confronting the same capitalism and the same question: socialism or barbarism. Nothing has really changed in the sense that capitalism still means war. What has changed in relation to war is the development of state capitalism over a century, the extension of militarism and the accumulation of the means of destruction, stored powers of massive destruction which, along with their ever-more sophisticated delivery systems, are nothing but sterilized, useless capital. Apart from being a threat to humanity, this is an absolute drain on the accumulation of capital overall, further exacerbating economic crisis. War and militarism today, in a word imperialism, take on a deadly life-force of their own that goes well beyond the rational and itself spawns further irrationality.

New scramble for Africa

We could start with Africa. In 1884, at the high point of capitalism’s imperialist expansion, the Berlin Conference divided up the African continent between the main European powers. But it was not long before this “scramble for Africa” turned into a source of direct conflict between those same powers. Throughout decadence the continent has been a theatre of war – in both world wars, in the ‘Cold War’, and above all as part of the slide into military chaos that succeeded the collapse of the old bloc system. The longest and bloodiest of these wars has probably been waged in the sickly-named Democratic Republic of Congo. Here war has raged since the early 90's, at the dawn of George Bush Senior's promised era of "peace and prosperity". Though largely ignored by the media, the war in the Congo shows many characteristics of the decomposition of capitalist society. Seven local countries and a number of the major powers are directly involved in a war that, according to the website War Child, Conflict in the Congo,1 has killed more than five-and-a-half million people, including 2.7 million children, many of whom have been recruited as child soldiers. Typical attributes of imperialism are expressed here in civilian massacres, mass rapes, a huge flight of internal refugees and the reign of warlords, clans and irrationality. This renewed scramble for Africa could be added to the list of pre-WWI similarities, with this time the additional presence of the imperialist appetites of the People's Republic of China.

In Libya, following David Cameron's and Sarkozy's "victory tour", the effects of this "just war" have caused devastation and spread vast swathes of instability across the whole of northern Africa. The reverberations have been felt in the heart of Africa's most populous nation and a so-called "emerging economy", Nigeria - a country whose bourgeoisie has recently played the China card against British and American influence. But this new “economic giant”, an accredited member of the so-called MINT club of the nouveau riche2, has not been spared from the region's underlying dysfunction: this has been expressed in religious pogroms between Muslim and Christian and the murderous activities of the fundamentalist faction Boko Haram. Meanwhile the Nigerian government has joined the new international trend to use gay people as a scapegoat for the world’s ills, passing laws that not only increase penalties for gay sex but require all citizens to rat on their gay neighbours.

Elsewhere in the region, Mali and Somalia are all unstable entities who affect the countries close to them, and throughout this region we see French, British and American militarism, sometimes working together, sometimes against one another . China, Russia, Israel and Germany are also becoming involved. The outbreak of war and of inter-religious slaughter between Christians and Muslims in the Central African Republic has geographically extended and further deepened the war in the DRC3. Just to confirm this pall of capitalist decay over much of Africa, South Sudan, the world's newest nation, born a couple of years ago under pressure from US and British imperialism, has fractured and collapsed into a war that has initially involved over ten thousand deaths and a further million refugees in a region of so many refugees that the aid agencies are unable to cope (Independent, 20.1.13, for just one example). The war is now spreading to the already decimated Darfur region. As always, the media present this as war of ethnicities, an irrational war of savages or religion. It's irrational all right but this is an imperialist war with one South Sudanese gang backed by Washington and Britain and the other by Beijing. In other words, whatever the relative actions of countries or warlords on the ground, the weight of imperialist stresses is overwhelming. And the news coming from "the world's newest nation" (RTE, 25.2.14) is that South Sudan is among the world's most dangerous nations to give birth!

Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria

From one capitalist hell-hole to another in Afghanistan where the AfPak war continues to rage, drawing in India in an attempt to stymie Pakistani interests. Both are involved in their own nuclear arms race and China is backing Pakistan for its own imperialist ends. The proposed withdrawal of ISAF troops under US control and the strengthening of the Taliban show both the weakening of the world's superpower and the continuation of misery for this long-suffering population. Tens of thousands of lives have been lost; billions, if not trillions of dollars have been spent by the west here - and Prime Minister Cameron has declared the Afghan war "Mission Accomplished!" (Daily Telegraph, 16.12.13). If the mission was to pave the way for the flourishing of warlords, produce record levels of opium and further hammer the condition of the population, particularly women and children, then indeed it’s mission accomplished. The AfPak war is yet another expression of the chaos and instability generated by decomposing capitalism.

Another "mission accomplished" was written on the banner behind George Bush as he made his victory speech about the 2003 war on Iraq on the USS Abraham Lincoln. Since then, like Libya, Iraq has gone from bad to worse with daily atrocities and bombings - with Fallujah, once devastated by America, now under bombardment by jihadists. The daily death toll in Iraq, on top of the hundreds of thousands killed already by American and British imperialism, has now reached Syrian proportions.

The rise of fundamentalists and opposing factions has been woven into the network of the war in Syria which has spilled over into Iraq and Lebanon and sent ripples to the Golan Heights and the border with Israel. Thousands of foreign jihadis are fighting in Syria and many pose a threat to their states "back home" and not least within Europe. As the Assad regime push on with its bloodbath, backed by Russia and China, there's a whole nest of Middle Eastern vipers - not least Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan - all involved in the Syrian war on different sides of the divide. The US, Britain and France - with their own differences between them - have been somewhat sidelined but continue to stir up this imperialist cauldron for their own ends. US Central Command, COMCOM, says that it is active in 20 countries in the Middle East and has a military presence in 22 countries in Africa4. These do not include "special operations" that have increased under the Obama administration. We can only wonder about the actual presence of the US, Britain and others and their implantations and manoeuvres in the Middle East.

Tensions in the Far East

From the devastated regions of Africa and the Middle East we "pivot", like US imperialism, to the East. Here we find more arms races and sharpened nationalisms with a faltering Chinese economy expressing its imperialist thrust "locally". Japan is rearming at a furious pace and regional powers are being sucked into this potential maelstrom, including South Korea, Philippines, Vietnam, Australia and Indonesia, each with their own imperialist appetites within the framework of US influence. The Gulag of a nuclear-armed People's Republic of North Korea adds to the chaos and instability.

The expansive and destructive contradictions of the capitalist economy underpin the developments of imperialism both through its rise and fall. Economic considerations do play a role in the development of wars and tensions today: oil, gas, trade routes, raw materials and so on. But the economic rationale becomes more and more difficult to see and rather it's the reverse that's the case with capitalist war and militarism costing more and more for less and less or no return; and, more than that, spreading misery, atrocities, chaos and further instability. War and militarism are for capitalism today a global drain but - and this is a fundamental contradiction of capitalism - these factors are essential to the nation state on pain of death. Greater areas are devastated by imperialist war, from Africa, the birthplace of our species, to the cradles of civilisations in the Middle East and the "enlightened" empires of the East. All this amounts not just to the destruction of culture but the destruction of human beings on an unprecedented scale. There's little rationale and no post –war "reconstruction" in all this. We've seen that after recent wars: the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, all the bourgeoisie's talk of reconstruction has been nothing but cynical lies. Only the working class has the power to reconstruct, to construct a new society and to do this it must directly confront imperialism by confronting its own ruling class and its "national interest", particularly in its heartlands of darkness.

Baboon 11.3.14