At the end of April Tony Blair was looking very haggard. It had been a difficult political month with the generalisation of armed conflict in Iraq, his pained support for Bush's backing of Sharon's plans in Palestine, the letter by 52 former diplomats criticising his support for Bush's policy towards Sharon and his lessening influence on the US; and all of this topped off with his U-turn on the referendum over the European Constitution. No matter where he turns Blair appears to be confronted with serious political problems. But while it may be Blair who is most publicly suffering under the weight of the problems, his political torment is that of the whole British ruling class, faced as it is with an increasingly contradictory world situation that is making it more and more difficult to defend the imperialist interests of British capital.
At the ICC's 15th Congress, which took place soon after the start of the war last year, we made an overall analysis of the predicament of British imperialism. Central to this analysis is the notion of the crisis of US leadership. Faced with increasingly open opposition from its main imperialist rivals over its military, economic, environmental and cultural policies, the US has had to make a massive display of its overwhelming military power. At the time we showed that this could only lead to chaos and that this would deepen the tensions within the British ruling class over how to best defend its interests.
"The crisis of US leadership has placed British imperialism in an increasingly contradictory position. With the end of the "special relationship", the defence of Britain's interests requires it to play a 'mediating' role between America and the main European powers, and between the latter powers themselves. Although presented as the poodle of the US, the Blair government has itself played a significant role in bringing about the current crisis, by insisting that America could not go it alone over Iraq, but needed to take the UN route. Britain too has been the scene of some of the biggest 'peace' marches, with large fractions of the ruling class -not only its leftist appendage -organising the demonstrations. The strong 'anti-war' sentiments of parts of the British bourgeoisie express a real dilemma for the British ruling class, as the growing schism between America and the other great powers is making its 'centrist' role increasingly uncomfortable. In particular, Britain's arguments that the UN should play a central role in the post Saddam settlement, and this must be accompanied by significant concessions to the Palestinians, are being politely ignored by the US. Although as yet there is no clear alternative, within the British bourgeoisie, to the Blair line in international relations, there is a growing unease with being too closely associated with US adventurism. The quagmire now developing in Iraq can only strengthen this unease" (Resolution on the International Situation, point 10, International Review 113).
This unease has gathered pace over the last year as Blair's ability to maintain this 'centrist' policy has further weakened under the increasingly blatant disregard for Blair's efforts to influence US policy. The US may now be talking about the UN having more of a role in Iraq, but this is more to do with the worsening situation in Iraq than British influence. The idea that Britain has a restraining hand in Iraq was completely rubbished in April with the US's brutal assault on Falluja and threats against Najaf. As for the question of Palestine, Bush's declaration of support for Sharon's proposals to withdraw from the Gaza strip whilst maintaining settlements in the West Bank, basically tears up the 'road map' for peace in the Middle East, which Blair used as one of the main arguments for Britain's involvement in the war. To add to his humiliation Blair had to stand next to Bush during his last visit to Washington and openly support the policy.
This was too much for 52 former diplomats who issued a public letter to Blair stating the unease of a majority of the British ruling class "We share your view that the British government has an interest in working as closely as possible with the US on both these related issues (Iraq and Palestine), and exerting real influence as a loyal ally. We believe that the need for such influence is now a matter of the highest urgency. If that is unacceptable or unwelcome there is no case for supporting policies which are doomed to failure" (The Guardian, 27.4.04). This letter received widespread support from those members of the bourgeoisie who think that Blair has gone too far in his support for the US. The Blair team tried to counter the letter by calling the diplomats 'Arabists', but this was a very weak response.
There has also been increasingly open criticism from British military commanders about the idea of sending more troops to replace the Spanish forces withdrawn by the new Zapatero government, and of the "heavy-handed" tactics used by the US military in Falluja and elsewhere.
It is this growing difficulty of the British bourgeoisie on the international arena that is probably behind Blair's sudden U-turn about holding a referendum on the European constitution. In the period leading up to the war and in the months after, British imperialism was able to form a temporary alliance of countries such as Spain, Italy, and many of the Eastern European countries who were integrated into the EU on May 1, particularly Poland. This alliance was based on a common desire to stop Britain's main European imperialist rivals, Germany and France, from using the constitution to dominate the EU. This alliance used every opportunity to block or undermine French and German efforts to manipulate discussions about the constitution to their own ends. They also opposed themselves to 'old' Europe by their support for the US in Iraq. But now the alliance has effectively been destroyed by the bombs in Madrid and the deepening quagmire in Iraq. The majority of the Spanish bourgeoisie chose very publicly to pull the rug out from the USA's and Britain's feet over Iraq by announcing the withdrawal of its troops; at the same time it delivered a powerful blow against British ambitions in Europe, publicly stating that from now on it would work side by side with Germany and France in the EU. Spain's actions have also had an impact on the other members of the alliance. Poland has wavered over its involvement in Iraq and has been less hostile towards Germany. Thus, by April, the British bourgeoisie were faced with their main imperialist rivals in Europe strengthening their hand and leaving the British bourgeoisie looking isolated, at the same time as getting sucked further and further into the political and military black hole that is Iraq.
The final straw that broke the camel's back was that British diplomats discovered in April that the Irish bourgeoisie, which has Presidency of the EU until the end of June, "intended to have a draft constitution drawn up before the end of June" (The Independent on Sunday 25.4.04). This could only mean its European rivals taking full advantage of its weakened position to formalise their domination of an expanded EU. The calling of the referendum would thus appear to be a desperate bid to try and throw a spanner in the works and open up a whole new period of discussions between the EU's member states.
Britain is not the only country to hold a referendum. The Czech Republic, Denmark, Ireland, Luxemburg, Netherlands, and Portugal are also to hold one. However, these are 3rd or 4th rate imperialist powers desperate not to be totally dominated by Germany and France. Hence the once 'mighty' British imperialism has been reduced to the blunt tactics of some of the weakest powers in Europe.
It is also a great gamble by Blair and his supporters. It has an electoral function inside Britain, in that it immediately deprives the Tories of a major campaign issue for the next election. But if the referendum is lost the clamour for Blair to go will be louder than ever. Nevertheless, the faction around Blair also knows that there is no real alternative to its policies being put forward, so it is possibly laying down a challenge to those elements of the bourgeoisie who are more critical of Blair's current stance: back us over the referendum or see the even more pro-US Tories back in power. This point was certainly made by three top Blair advisors (Alun Milburn, Stephen Byers and Peter Mandelson) in a recent article. The "neocon Tories believe that politics is powerless in face of anonymous forces of globalisation, and that it is largely up to individuals to fend for themselves. They see Europe as a waste of time and are quite happy with a vision of British foreign policy whose only leg is the US alliance"(The Guardian 27.4.04).
It has also been reported that this change of policy was spearheaded by heavyweight members of the government such as the Chancellor Gordon Brown and the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, both of whom have been more circumspect about being too openly pro-US. They are said to see it as a means of removing a weapon from the Tories and placing a difficult question further into the future, i.e., after the next election.
No matter what political calculations lay behind the sudden calling of the referendum, it still expresses the chronic weakness of British imperialism. The UK's European rivals have wasted no time in denouncing London for throwing a spanner in the works at the very moment the EU is 'celebrating' its eastward and southern expansion. But British capitalism is caught between the rock of total submission to the US, and the hard place of falling in behind its traditional German adversary. This isn't a problem that can be conjured away by clever electioneering or a change of personnel at the top.
Phil, 01/05/04.
The working class needs to remember. Just over a year ago, in March 2003, the USA and Britain launched the war on Iraq. In Europe huge pacifist demonstrations raised the slogan 'No to the war in Iraq'. Pacifist campaigns: instrument of French imperialism
The French state, under the leadership of Jacques Chirac, and with the unanimous support of the left and leftists, was at the forefront of the anti-American ideological campaign. French imperialism thus took on the mantle of pacifism. But this lying propaganda, which continues to be dropped on the working class from a great height, must not be allowed to mask the real face of French imperialism. When it comes to war and barbarism, no imperialism on the planet is an exception to the rule. The French media gave maximum publicity to these pacifist demonstrations � while at the same time doing everything possible to obscure the military policy of France in the Ivory Coast. It was at the very same moment, February 2003, that French imperialism went onto the offensive on the Ivory Coast, with more than 4000 troops. In March of the same year the French army went back into Bangui in Central Africa, pushing these countries a step further into total chaos. This is what the pacifist discourse of the French state is really worth.
We are currently �celebrating� a sad anniversary: ten years ago, French imperialism, under the banner of humanitarianism, re-entered Rwanda in force, armed to the teeth with assault cars at the front. It was to preside over one of the worst cases of genocide in history. According to the official figures between 500,000 and a million people were killed in 100 days, almost unnoticed by the world at large. The French army had waited cynically at the frontiers of Rwanda for the ethnic slaughter to reach its climax before intervening. Meanwhile inside Rwanda �our country�s troops, under orders, had trained the killers who carried out the genocide against the Tutsi. We armed them, encouraged them and, when the day came, provided cover for them. I discovered this story in the Rwandan hills. It was hot, it was summer time. It was wonderful weather, it was magnificent. It was the time of the genocide� (Patrick de Saint Exupery, journalist from Figaro and author of the book L�inavouable: la France au Rwanda; see Le Monde Diplomatique March 2004). It was indeed France which, for a number of years, had been training and arming the local gendarmerie, the Hutu militia, and the Rwandan Armed Forces. It was France which had fully supported the regime of president Habyarimana. From the early 90s Rwanda had become a prize in the geo-strategic game between French imperialism and American imperialism. Rwanda had an obvious importance in this inter-imperialist conflict because it is at the frontier of the zone under French control and the one under US control.
In 1994 American imperialism was trying to weaken French imperialism�s African presence in an irreversible manner. This is why the US had been training the Rwandan Patriotic Front (formed by the Tutsi opposition) in the territory of Uganda since 1993. The military advance of the RPF was imminent. It was at this point that plane carrying Rwandan president Habyarimana and Burundi�s president Ntaryamira was shot down; this was the pretext for unleashing the massacre, which began on 6 April 1994. Eventually the RPF advanced on Kigali and a new regime was installed. France then �had to content itself with creating a �secure humanitarian zone� in the west, towards which all the extremist groups and representatives of the Hutu governing apparatus converged� (Le Monde Diplomatique, March 2004).
This zone was a theatre of terrible slaughter and, as Le Monde Diplomatique points out, France refused to militarily disarm the Hutu death-squads. It also kept well away from arresting those responsible for the genocide, because these were the same people it had controlled from a distance and later sheltered in the Congo.
Meanwhile 300,000 orphans were wandering the country. Cholera and famine were on the rise and rapidly carried off more than 40,000 Hutu refugees, while combat helicopters, Mirages and Jaguars belonging to the French army waited for another opportunity to intervene. The power mainly responsible for this vast death-toll was without doubt French imperialism, which used the ethnic conflict to strike at its US rival. It�s the same French imperialism which today hides behind the ideology of pacifism. The humanitarian alibi: a weapon of war
The humanitarian alibi was used to cover the barbaric policy of France ten years ago. It was used again in 1999 to justify the bombing of Serbia and the military occupation of Kosovo. Today in Kosovo there is a renewal of ethnic conflict, and the French army, as it did in Rwanda, is using the opportunity to increase its presence on the ground. Meanwhile, Tony Blair points to the lack of humanitarian intervention in Rwanda to argue in favour of the Iraq war, telling us that the only hope for countries subjected to ethnic slaughter or mass murder by undemocratic states is the benign intervention of the �civilised� powers. Rwanda, like the Balkans, like Iraq, provides us with proof that there can be nothing benign in the intervention of an imperialist state. On the country, its only result can be to take the �local� barbarism onto a higher level. Unless the world capitalist system is overthrown, the Rwandan genocide is a foretaste of humanity�s future.
T.
Last October the Melbourne discussion circle held a meeting on 'Reforms, refugees and a revolutionary perspective'. This circle is part of the effort of a minority within the working class to understand the reality of the world situation today, characterised by economic crisis, attacks on the working class and wars endlessly breaking out around the globe. This is an international effort with the development of similar discussion circles in many parts of the world.
The discussion was also important for the intervention of the ICC in the meeting. The orientation towards a critical examination of the history of the workers' movement and the marxist method is essential for a positive outcome for the efforts of such circles, and the intervention of revolutionaries is always important for this. This particular intervention also had a specific importance is showing our commitment to the work in the Australia, and the work of the circle, despite the fact that the ICC no longer has a direct presence in the country. Our former comrade played an important role in building up the organisation's presence in Australia, but has now left and no longer has any involvement in proletarian politics, which we see as an expression of the discouragement that can overcome communist militants particularly in this period of the decomposition of capitalism.
The more wars or economic devastation create increasing numbers of refugees, the fewer are allowed into countries like Australia, the stricter the border controls, the worse the conditions faced by refugees, often locked up or reduced to destitution. Can we do anything for their immediate needs? In particular, what about attacking detention centres, an area of state power, and freeing the refugees?
In taking up this question the discussion went back to the framework implied in the title of the discussion, 'Reforms, refugees and the revolutionary perspective' to see that in this period of the decadence of the capitalist system it is not possible for the working class to win reforms from the capitalist state, which carries out the policy necessary for the ruling class. Immigration has been allowed when there was a shortage of labour as in the 1920s, but restricted during periods of unemployment such as the depression in the 1930s. The development of the world crisis since 1968 has affected the situation in two ways. The whole working class has been attacked, with unemployment, with casualisation of jobs and increased insecurity. Imperialist tensions have been heightened, the number of wars has risen and the number of refugees increased, just when the ruling class has less need of immigrant labour. Nevertheless the bourgeoisie can use the refugees in its ideological campaigns. By introducing attacks on the refugees first, for instance reducing their right to benefits, it aims to get the working class as a whole used to the idea of further attacks on living conditions. Also it can stir up nationalism and divide the working class along national and racial lines.
Nor can we rely on liberal or left wing parties to defend refugees. They also argue from the point of view of the needs of the national capital and encourage divisions within the working class, aiming to give the illusion that it is possible to make capitalism fair for the refugees. So the ruling class does not only openly scapegoat refugees to undermine the unity and solidarity of the working class - anti-racism is an equally effective way of playing the race card. The bourgeoisie never wants to say that there is a shortage or jobs, housing or whatever, only that it should be equably distributed to all the different groups - in other words the racists and anti-racists agree that it is people from other racial groups who are stopping you from getting what you need and not the crisis of capitalism. What they disagree on is how a diminishing cake should be divided up.
Attacking a detention centre leaves the bourgeois state intact - the same state that makes the refugee illegal, whether in detention or on the run. The refugee question cannot be solved without the overthrow of the capitalist system.
Another aspect to the question was the responsibility of revolutionary organisations. What solidarity can we give to refugees, or any members of the working class, who face destitution right now? Revolutionary organisations have neither the capacity nor the responsibility to solve these problems. On an immediate practical level it is clear that it would be impossible. The real responsibility of communists is to explain clearly that these problems are not soluble within the capitalist system, and to point to the general perspective and line of march of the class struggle.
The best solidarity that workers can give is to develop their own struggle to resist the attacks of capital.
The meeting also discussed the question of the different treatment refugees get in different countries. The person who raised this thought that, in general, developed countries in the West kept refugees out, whereas third world countries were more tolerant, giving the example of refugees from Tibet and Bangladesh tolerated in India. In part this is because the less powerful third world states do not have such totalitarian 'reach' into rural areas. More important is the use of welfarism to encourage workers to identify with the state and nationalism against immigrants taking 'our benefits' or 'using our hospitals' when they haven't contributed. The impossibility of raising this question in a trade union was given as evidence of the success of this campaign.
The way refugees are treated depends on the needs of national capital. In this sense we can see that third world countries can also send refugees back or keep them in camps. In fact refugees are often kept in camps to be used as cannon fodder in imperialist wars, as the Palestinians have been in the Middle East or Afghans in Pakistan.
The other participants in the circle also rejected the notion that the unions represent the working class, or that they resist attacks on Australian workers. What they do is make a show of opposition, negotiate the terms of the attacks and in this way contribute to their introduction.
But the most important point to answer was the idea that workers are somehow bought off by the 'welfare state' and that we should perhaps look to workers in the third world, or even other classes, instead. If we just look at a snapshot of the situation today we can see that the workers do not have a strong sense of their identity as part of an international class with the same interests to defend. This is largely a result of the propaganda campaign since the collapse of the Eastern bloc according to which marxism and working class revolutionary struggle lead inevitably to the brutal form of state capitalism that existed in Russia. Workers must therefore keep their struggles within safe trade union limits. However, if we look back to the development of struggles from 1968 to 1989 we can see that workers really did have a sense of being part of a class, and struggles in one country definitely influenced those in another. The struggles in France in 1868, in Poland in 1980 and the miners' strike in Britain in 1984 were all discussed by workers all over the world. The bourgeoisie were particularly careful to black out news of very important struggles in Belgium in 1983 and 1986 because they gave the example of going beyond the unions or of unity between public and private sector workers.
In order to support the development of a sense of class identity we need to emphasise what unites the working class, and the importance of the development of large scale struggles in this process. The best solidarity remains the development of the struggle of the working class in its own defence.
In this meeting the circle took up the question of immigration and refugees, and was immediately confronted with the need to answer the propaganda of the ruling class. To do so it needed to step back and place these issues in the framework of the historical experience of the working class, and particularly in relation to the question of capitalist decadence and the impossibility of reforms in this period.
Subjects suggested for future discussion included 'Islam in the modern world', 'Multiculturalism and pluralistic democracy' and the 'welfare state'. All these are important issues, and all were posed in reaction to aspects of bourgeois propaganda. It is better to approach such questions by starting from the way they have been posed in the workers' movement in the past, and then examine the media campaigns from that point of view. With this in mind the ICC proposed that the circle look first at some of the important positions taken by the workers' movement, for instance the Theses on Parliamentary Democracy from the Third International, before going on to look at the ideological campaign on pluralistic democracy. Similarly, in looking at Islam in the modern world it makes sense to start with an overview of the marxist critique of religion.
Diana, 1/4/04.
The British press has not been shy about revealing the responsibility of French imperialism for the massacre in Rwanda in 1994; a number of articles appeared in the aftermath of the killing, pointing out that France armed and trained the government death-squads. But it has taken rather longer for Britain's complicity in the genocide to rise to the surface. Two recent books provide a good deal of information about what really happened ten years ago: Conspiracy to Murder: the Rwandan Genocide by Linda Malvern, a journalist who specialises in this story and is undoubtedly knowledgeable about the details; and, as part of a wider expose of Britain's "real role in the world", Web of Deceit by Mark Curtis.
According to Malvern's presentation, "What we do know now it that a corrupt, vicious and violent oligarchy in Rwanda planned and perpetrated the crime of genocide, testing the UN each step of the way."
It is curious that she maintains that the Hutu bourgeoisie which perpetrated the massacre were 'testing' the UN, since she shows quite effectively that the US, Britain and France in particular did not want to stop the massacre. As Malvern puts it herself: "However, the continuing human rights abuses in Rwanda were of little concern in the Security Council, where the French, playing their own secret game, gave confidential assurances to Council members that the parties in Rwanda were committed to peace. Representatives from the UK and the US were reluctant about the creation of a mission to Rwanda. There were simply too many UN operations - with 17 missions and 80,000 peacekeepers worldwide."
It is hardly likely that the US and British position was really based on the idea that UN forces were overstretched. They always find the resources when they want to intervene militarily, whether or not it is under UN auspices - as in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. It is interesting that Malvern takes the explanations for their actions at face value, while the French are reported as playing a "secret game" (not so secret if it is reported in the Guardian, one might think). Malvern's views on the other foreigners involved are equally caustic: "The Belgians were the only European nation to provide peacekeepers for the [UN] mission but they were ill-disciplined and racist."
The fact that the UN did send a very small peacekeeping mission at all in 1994 Malvern explains as a compromise between the reservations of the British and US about over-commitment of UN resources and "ethical considerations". She acknowledges that sending such a small force effectively gave a signal to the Hutu leadership that they could pursue their plans for the massacre with impunity.
Although he relies a great deal on Malvern for her expertise in this subject area, Curtis nonetheless gives a rather more dynamic picture of this business of giving a signal for the pogrom to take place: "After the killings began in early April, the UN Security Council, instead of beefing up its peace mission in the country and giving it a stronger mandate to intervene, decided to reduce the troop presence from 2,500 to 270. This decision sent a green light to those who had planned the genocide showing that the UN would not intervene."
Curtis has this to say about the next steps: "By May 1994, with certainly tens of thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands already dead, there was another UN proposal - to despatch 5,500 troops to help stop the massacres. This deployment was delayed by pressure, mainly from the US ambassador, but with strong support from Britain. Dallaire [the Belgian general in charge of the 270 troops already there] believes that if these troops had been speedily deployed, tens of thousands of more lives could have been saved. But the US and Britain argued that before these troops went in, there needed to be a ceasefire in Rwanda, a quite insane suggestion given that one side was massacring innocent civilians� Britain and the US also refused to provide the military airlift capability for the African states who were offering troops for this force. Eventually� Britain offered a measly fifty trucks� Britain also went out of its way to ensure that the UN did not use the word 'genocide' to describe the slaughter. Accepting that genocide was occurring would have obliged states to 'prevent and punish' those guilty under the terms of the Geneva Convention. In late April 1994, Britain, along with the US and China, secured a Security Council resolution that rejected the use of the term 'genocide'. This resolution was drafted by the British." (p359)
Clearly then, the US and Britain were not merely standing by passively in relation to the massacre, but were quite content for it to occur. And the reason?
We cannot be sure, of course, about the exact calculations and conversations that took place in the corridors of power at the time. What we do know is that Britain and the US were (and still are) both pursuing a policy of taking every opportunity to undermine French influence throughout the African continent, particularly in the central African region. We also know that to counter France's backing for the Hutu government, the US and Britain supported the Tutsi-based Rwandan Patriotic Front which did in fact fight its way to power in the wake of the bloodbath. The question is posed: why didn't the Americans and British push to intervene on behalf of the RPF earlier, to ensure its victory? We can only assume that they opposed a UN intervention because, given France's direct presence in the area, this would have been essentially a French operation, and this would have allowed the French to shore up the Hutu government or at least prevent the RPF from making a clean sweep. And in fact when the French did intervene at the end of the genocide their main activity was precisely to give shelter to the remnants of the Hutu death-squads (see this month's other web special, 'The crimes of French imperialism'). The US and Britain obviously preferred to allow the Hutu bourgeoisie to collapse in its own murderous frenzy, taking hundreds of thousands of innocents with it, than to allow their French rivals to gain the upper hand in the region.
The facts of French, American and British cynicism over Rwanda are amply demonstrated by both Malvern and Curtis. But, since neither of them are marxists and revolutionaries, what they cannot show is why these inhuman calculations are neither abnormal, nor the product of negligence, but expressions of the real morality of the imperialist ruling class in all countries.
Hardin, 1/5/04.
After investigating four controversial killings in Northern Ireland, retired Canadian judge Peter Cory concluded that agents of the security forces were allowed to set up murders, which the army (especially its Force Research Unit), MI5 and special branch were aware of, encouraged and assisted with. As he made his recommendations for full public inquiries there were press reports that the Ministry of Defence was concerned that "further light would be shed on the undercover operations of the FRU after embarrassing disclosures by an ex-soldier under the pseudonym Martin Ingram" (Guardian, 2/4/04).
Ingram, an ex-FRU intelligence officer, has, in conjunction with journalist Greg Harkin, produced a book Stakeknife Britain's secret agents in Ireland, which goes into some of the details that Cory only hinted at. It shows that the role of the security forces went much further than just providing 'assistance'. Bodies such as the FRU controlled, directed and initiated the activities of their agents within the loyalist and republican paramilitary gangs. Sometimes this was unproductive. On a number of occasions army agents in the IRA tortured and murdered agents being run by the RUC, but that doesn't mean that the security services were maverick forces, out of control. On the contrary, they were, and remain, integral to the work of the capitalist state.
One of the distinctive things about the FRU, which ran from 1980-1992 until its name was changed to the Joint Services Group after the first revelations of the activities of its agent Brian Nelson, was that, unlike other intelligence operations run by the army, it did not have an RUC officer running operations. So, when Ingram says of Nelson's activity in the three-year period from Christmas 1986 that he was not only "allowed to kill but actively encouraged to kill" (p.181) this can only be described as government policy. Rather than focus on the particular personality of Nelson it is essential to remember that he was carrying out army orders, just as much as when he served for more than four years in the Royal Highland Regiment. So the arms shipments for loyalists from South Africa, the payments for weapons to be imported into Northern Ireland, the torture, the bombings and shootings carried out with the participation of Nelson, were the policy of the British state.
Ingram says of the late 1980s that, "The thinking of the FRU at that time was not dissimilar to that of recent regimes in Colombia, where right-wing paramilitary death squads were armed and run by the State" (p.190). When he says that "The FRU was using loyalist paramilitaries as an extension of the British Army" (p.191) Ingram is describing a military policy that characterises the whole of the last 35 years.
The Stakeknife book tries to clear politicians or the higher echelons of the army of any role in this activity. But the book provides plenty of evidence to contradict this idea. For example, finance for arms was organised through bank robberies, extortion, etc. "with the tacit understanding and compliance of the FRU". Subsequently imported weapons "were tracked from source to distribution by the FRU and MI5 by electronic means" (p.192). This meant that MI5 knew what was going on, and one of their responsibilities was to keep politicians aware of every development in the situation. An MI5 liaison officer shared an office with the FRU operations officer, so there was clearly some sort of relationship between the secret services. MI5 reported to politicians. "It is certain that ministers were also kept informed by the security services of the ongoing case files on agents, although great care would have been taken to ensure that there was no paper trail, or indeed smoking gun, in the hands of the minister" (p210).
When the Stevens inquiry opened the Army denied it had any agents in Northern Ireland. It was not long before a network of more than a hundred agents was revealed, which had existed for more than 20 years. Later the Army claimed that Nelson's activity had saved 217 lives, on investigation there was evidence for only two - one being Gerry Adams. Secret services obviously want to remain as secret as possible, and it is understandable that they want to keep a lid on revelations about their activities. Ingram obviously appreciates this. He thinks that, "there is a place and a role in all decent democratic societies for an intelligence agency that is working towards acceptable goals" (p33). The 'acceptable' work of the FRU was the infiltration and monitoring of the IRA that led to the sabotage and ambush of republican operations. Ingram's reservations focus on "state-sponsored terrorism" (p94) by Britain in Northern Ireland. To this end he thinks, "there should have been safeguards in place, a series of checks and balances ... our legislators let everyone down by allowing the FRU to operate ... with no written terms of reference or guidelines" (p.210).
This is the democratic myth that capitalism never tires of telling. It says that each revelation, every public inquiry, the investigations of a 'free press', these all show that truth will out, that 'excesses' can be curbed, that justice will be done. Talks are under way to establish a 'truth and reconciliation' commission, as happened in South Africa. In Tony Blair's words, people must be allowed to express their "grief, pain and anger" as part of an organised process. However, the conflicts that cause such feelings will continue, as will the state's role in terrorism and repression, for as long as capitalism continues.
Car, 6/4/04.
14 years ago, just after the collapse of the eastern bloc, George Bush senior, followed by most of the western bourgeoisie, promised us a 'new world order' of peace and prosperity. The least we can say now - and the situation in Iraq is certainly the most crying example of this - is that what we have seen since then is growing chaos all over the planet.
Since the beginning of April, war has spread across Iraq. The murder in Falluja on March 31st of four American employees of the private security firm Blackwater, and the mutilation of their bodies, symbolised the opening of a new phase in the Iraq conflict. The armies of the Coalition, and above all of the US, are now facing not only an armed revolt by the Sunnis, but - and this is an new element - by the Shiites as well, since more and more of the latter have ranged themselves behind the young radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The Wall Street Journal asks, "Is this the key component of a national Islamic front uniting the Sunni and Shiite Arabs against foreign intrusion?" The policies of US imperialism in Iraq are thus threatening to provoke an alliance of convenience, heavy with consequences for the whole region, and which would have been totally unthinkable a few months ago. The American strategy of counting on the Shiite majority in Iraq in order to keep the lid on chaos and maintain control of the Iraqi Governing Council has really come to nought. This increasingly unrealistic plan now depends on the capacity of Ayatollah al-Sistani to control the Shiite population. The generalisation of war across the country shows that the situation is more and more escaping the control of US imperialism.
Despite the necessity to carry on with the ideological campaign justifying their armed presence in Iraq, the US administration is obliged to go some way towards recognising the mess that their troops are in. Thus Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence minister, had of course to declare that "this is a hard test of our determination but we will be equal to it". But he also had to admit, "the Shiite rebellion poses a serious problem".
Equally damaging for US authority since Rumsfeld made this admission has been the decision to withdraw its troops from the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah after pounding the city relentlessly for days, and to try to 'restore order' by bringing in an Iraqi army force under the command of a former Baathist general. In the same week the Americans' credibility as 'liberators' took a further blow when it was revealed that US soldiers had been torturing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners in one of Saddam's most notorious prisons (and before the British army could repeat its usual claims about having a more softly-softly approach than the crude Yanks, news of torture by British troops also got out).
The weakening of US leadership is now more and more being displayed on the world's TV networks. The imperialist policy of the Bush administration is a resounding failure.
Despite its crushing military superiority over all other countries, the USA does not have the ability to impose its will in Iraq. And this is all the more true in that the weakening of US leadership on the world scale sharpens the appetites of all the other imperialist powers. Amid the confusion reigning in Iraq today, armed terrorist groups are springing up everywhere. These more or less autonomous armed groups are united by one aim - to kick the American ogre out of Iraq. The radicalisation of these groups has been expressed by the growing practise of taking foreign civilians hostage, threatening to kill them if the occupying states don't withdraw their troops from Iraq. One Italian hostage has already been brutally murdered. But more characteristic of the state of imperialist tensions today is the role being played by Moqtada al-Sadr. His close links with Iran are well known. It seems very probable that the current insurrectionary stance of the Iraqi Shiites today has been actively supported by Iran. Iran is thus responding directly to American pressure against it. And despite this, Uncle Sam's current state of weakness is such that the US has had to ask officially for help from Iran in trying to resolve the current conflict. To get a real measure of the problems facing the US, we only have to recall the arrogant declarations thrown in the face of the world at the start of the war in Iraq a year ago. On 9 April 2003, at the annual convention of the American Society of News Editors, the US Vice President Dick Cheney asserted that in no circumstances would the US transfer control of the occupation of Iraq to the UN: "The president has clearly made it known that we won't do it�Our objective is to create and set in motion as quickly as possible an intermediary authority composed of Iraqis, and to transfer authority to them and not to the UN or any other external group". At that point Iraq had been included in the 'Axis of Evil' made up of 'rogue' states such as North Korea, Syria and Iran. These countries were publicly accused of possessing weapons of mass destruction and of being organisers of terrorism. They were clearly identified as potential military targets after Iraq had been dealt with. We can see where things stand today. Kamal Kharazi (the chief Iranian diplomat) said on April 6th that, "The USA has asked for Tehran's help to try to resolve the crisis and reduce the growing violence in Iraq". The head of the Iranian delegation currently in Baghdad declared: "we are here to get a clear idea of the situation and a better understanding of what's happening. There is no mediation". Things are clear for all these imperialist bandits. Everything has its price. And today, because it's in a situation of weakness, it's the US that has to pay its dues.
The development of war and chaos in Iraq does not at all bode well for the future. The priority of the US army is to neutralise Shiite support for Moqtada al-Sadr. With this aim they have begun an assault on Najaf and the neighbouring town of Kufa. Intervening in the holy city of Najaf can only be a factor of further destabilisation, not only in Iraq but also well beyond its borders. It will be an important step in the process of decomposition engulfing the whole region. The US attack on Najaf has already been opposed by the Iraqi Governing Council: "All the Shiite members of the IGC, included the laymen, will oppose such an attack and refuse to cooperate with the provisional authority of the coalition" (Courrier International, 15 April). This will also be the case with the religious leader Ayatollah al-Sistani, who up till now has been one of the few points of support for the US in the country.
There seems to be no port in the Iraqi storm for US imperialism. A majority of the American bourgeoisie has come round to this position. This is why they are pushing the candidature of the Democrat John Kerry so strongly for the next presidential elections. The American bourgeoisie has no choice but to try to limit the damage in Iraq and to find some kind of political solution - contrary to its whole approach at the start of the war. It is now being forced to appeal to its main imperialist rivals - France, Germany and Russia. The days when the USA declared that it didn't need anybody's help in the struggle against the 'Axis of Evil' are long gone. But even if Kerry came to power in place of the Bush administration, nothing would really be resolved. The New York Times pointed out that "John Kerry, was very much present in Washington, but he tried to avoid the Iraq question by focusing his interventions on the American economy. When the journalists insisted on him giving his opinion, he moved away from his prepared speech and launched into one of his most virulent attacks on Bush's policy in Iraq. But he was incapable of saying precisely what he would do if he himself was in command" (Courrier International, 8 April). Certainly the situation in Iraq obliges Kerry to envisage keeping US troops there. This inability of the American bourgeoisie to see a way of halting the erosion of US leadership on a world scale was also demonstrated in George Bush's press conference on 13 April. The Los Angeles Times found it highly significant that "faced with a situation in Iraq which is more and more escaping him, Bush insisted on his determination to make this country a stable democracy, without saying how that might come about". But an even more eloquent sign of the disarray of the American bourgeoisie occurred at this conference when a journalist asked Bush what lessons he drew from events since 11 September 2001. This is how the Washington Post describes it: "Bush stopped speaking, shook his head, apparently unable to come up with an answer to a question which he must have worked on a great deal with his advisers in preparation for the press conference. In the end, the only thing he was able to say was 'I am sure that an answer will come to mind in the very particular conditions of this press conference where you always have to have an answer for everything. But for the moment, it's not coming'" (Courrier International, 15 April).
Whatever the result of the next US presidential election, and however much it modifies its imperialist policy, the weakening of American leadership can only serve to deepen the chaos in Iraq and accelerate the global process of decomposition. The profound disarray and impotence of the world's leading power is a clear expression of this.
In the months ahead, Iraq is doomed to increasing bloodshed. The entrance of the Shiites into the conflict can only have deeply destabilising effects throughout the region, especially in Iran where they represent a major part of the population. Furthermore, while in Afghanistan the Karzai government and the American troops only control the capital and its immediate surroundings, the US administration has simply rubber stamped Sharon's expansionist policy on the West Bank of the Jordan. The embarrassed silence of a good part of the US bourgeoisie at the UN when Germany, France and Russia were denouncing Sharon's policy tells us a lot about the objectives of the USA's main imperialist rivals. To let the US get sucked into the mess in Iraq, to take advantage of its difficulties elsewhere in the world - this is the only real concern of these 'peace-loving' powers.
The impotence of the US bourgeoisie faced with the military chaos in Iraq is a concrete expression of the general impasse facing capitalist society as a whole. The whole world bourgeoisie faces the same situation, and this can only lead to increasingly warlike policies from all of them. The working class has to understand that decaying capitalism can only create more Iraqs across the planet - including in the heartlands of the system. The development of the situation in Iraq is a new confirmation that the future facing humanity is communism or the total destruction of civilisation.
Tino, 1/5/04.
The second part of this article in last month's World Revolution concluded that the failure of the SPGB to rise to the challenge of the First World War and the revolutionary wave meant that it "could not be part of the proletariat's forces". However, nor did it pass into the camp of the bourgeoisie. As a result "it came to occupy a position between the two great classes". What this meant became clear in the following decades and above all during the war in Spain and in the Second World War. Spain
The impact of the war in Spain in the late 1930s was such that "for one of the few occasions in its political lifetime the SPGB was split on a fundamental issue" (Perrin, The Socialist Party of Great Britain, p.111). One part of the party called for the defence of democracy, basing itself on the SPGB's own position that the revolution would be won through the democratic process: "Democracy opens up a new vista to the working class. Socialist parties can precede democracy, but they cannot have the character demanded by working class interests when the workers have attained political power...It is only because all necessary reforms have been won by reformers, and democracy has in consequence become a perfect political instrument for working-class political ends, that it is possible to organise the workers in a political party on non-reform, independent, hostile, class lines" (leaflet by Jacomb of the minority, quoted in Barltrop, The Monument, p.98). The majority, although proclaiming support for "the main body of the workers" against "those headed by Franco, who threaten to deprive the workers of the power to organise politically and industrially in their own interests" (Socialist Standard, March 1937, quoted ibid) took the position that "Democracy cannot be defended by fighting for it" (ibid, p99) and refused to support the republican side in the war. While Perrin describes this position as "circumspect" (p.111) and refers to "a marked attempt to steer a steady course between two incompatible positions" (ibid), Barltrop is more critical: "No stand was made or decision taken that would have rendered anyone's position untenable in the party; the Party had said it was on the side of the Spanish government and it had also said it would not support the Spanish government" (p.99). What this contradictory position really expressed was the contradictory position of the SPGB itself. On the one hand, its support for democracy was a fundamental concession to bourgeois ideology, while the call to defend democracy, which, as the minority pointed out, was consistent with the stated position of the party, opened the door to the betrayal of the working class. On the other hand, the refusal of the majority to follow this logic expressed a recognition, all confusions notwithstanding, that the war was really a capitalist one and so prevented the SPGB from supporting the war and betraying the working class.
One of the founding principles of the SPGB was that the democratic process provided the most effective means for the struggle for socialism. Basing itself on the correct position that the emancipation of the working class "must be the work of the working class itself" (Point 5 of the SPGB's Declaration of Principles) and that the struggle is a political one, the SPGB concluded that this meant that it was necessary for there to be an absolute majority of socialists before the revolution, and that this majority could be measured through the bourgeois electoral system. This view, for all the SPGB's vigorous criticism of reformism, showed the continuing weight of the one of the main reformist weaknesses of the Second International: its concessions to bourgeois democracy. It failed to recognise the nature of bourgeois democracy or to take account of how consciousness actually develops. The SPGB has recognised that the democratic bourgeoisie does not practice what it preaches but this has led it to a defence of the principle of democracy rather than a critique of it, such as was developed by the Italian Communist Left.
In 'The democratic principle [9]' (1) written in 1922, the Italian communist Bordiga showed the class nature of democracy: "Communism demonstrates that the formal juridical and political application of the democratic and majority principle to all citizens while society is divided into opposed classes in relation to the economy is incapable of making the state an organisational unit of the whole society or the whole nation. Officially that is what political democracy claims to be, whereas in reality it is the form suited to the power of the capitalist class, to the dictatorship of this particular class, for the purpose of preserving its privileges". The very form of democracy, in that it reduces the proletariat to a mass of isolated individuals, is an expression of bourgeois ideology since it denies the existence and primacy of classes - a denial that is necessarily in the interests of the dominant class.
The class nature of democracy was exposed in practice by the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left in its journal Bilan when it dealt with the events in Spain in the 1930s. Far from being a step forward for the working class in Spain, the Republican government was introduced as the most effective means of combating it: "the Republic has appeared as the specific form for anti-working class repression, the form which best corresponds to the interests of capitalism, because as well as being able to resort to bloody repression it can count on the support of the UGT and the Socialist Party" (Bilan no.33, 1936, republished in International Review no.4, 1976). Time and again the governments of the republic, whether 'left' or 'right', did not hesitate to massacre the workers, as for example, after the Asturian insurrection of 1934. Following the putsch by Franco in 1936 and the start of the war in Spain the majority of the Fraction recognised that it was an imperialist war in which the ideology of democracy was used to enrol the working class.
The SPGB has never made any such critique of democracy and, in fact, through its defence of the democratic principle it actually reinforces one of the greatest obstacles facing the working class. Reflecting and in turn strengthening this is the SPGB's conception of the development of consciousness as an accumulation of individual socialists rather than a class process. As an accumulation it becomes a matter of sufficient number, hence the fixation on getting a majority of the working class "to muster under its banner" (Declaration of Principles, point 8). As a process it is above all a question of a class dynamic, hence there is a qualitative as well as a quantitative aspect. The development of consciousness as a class process has two aspects - its breadth and also its depth. The communist organisation forms the vanguard the SPGB so objects to because of the depth of its consciousness and its will to struggle. The communist vanguard is not outside the working class but merely at the head of the movement of the whole class. The revolution certainly requires the spread of socialist or communist consciousness within the working class and it has to reach a certain maturity before the revolution is possible. The overthrow of capitalism requires a political force greater than that of the bourgeoisie and the strength of this force depends above all on its consciousness; but it is the consciousness of a class, not a mass of individuals and, as such, the class may achieve this decisive force before the mathematical majority of proletarians have each fully developed their individual consciousness. The communist revolution is about the transformation of human relations and this is not something that can be decreed when, in parliamentary fashion, the winning majority is assembled.
The outcome of the SPGB's individualist approach was to leave the Spanish proletariat to its own devices: "It must be assumed that the Spanish workers weighed up the situation and counted the cost before deciding their course of action. This is a matter upon which their judgement should be better than that of people outside the country" (Socialist Standard, March 1937, quoted Barltrop, p98-9).
In 1936 the SPGB produced a pamphlet War and the Working Class, in which it declared war to be an inevitable product of capitalism and opposed any participation by the working class: "There is only one safe rule for the working class to follow when urged by the capitalists to support capitalist wars. No matter what form the appeal may take, they should examine the question in the light of working class interests. Ask yourself the question: 'have the working class of one nation any interest in slaughtering (and being slaughtered by) the workers of another?'...'Have they any interest in supporting one national section of the capitalist world against another'"; "War...solves no problem of the working class. Victory and defeat alike leave them in the same position...They have no interest at stake which justifies giving support to war" (quoted in War and Capitalism, SPGB (2), 1996). In the issue of Socialist Standard following the declaration of war the Executive Committee printed a statement which reiterated the position that the war was a product of capitalism and denounced both sides in the war. It expressed its concern at the "sufferings of the German workers under Nazi rule", declared its wholehearted support for "the efforts of workers everywhere to secure democratic rights" but repeated its position on "the futility of war as a means of safeguarding democracy". It called on workers to refuse to accept the prospect of war and "to recognise that only Socialism will end war". It concluded by repeating the expression of "goodwill and socialist fraternity" to all workers that it had made in 1914.
However, as a result of its failure to understand the issues of democracy and consciousness, that is, to understand the real historical context of the class struggle, the SPGB's opposition to the war remained trapped in the individualist and essentially pacifist refusal to participate in the war and, hence, within the framework of bourgeois ideology.
In June 1940, faced with the threat of prosecution under the Defence Regulations the party voluntarily censored itself, the Executive deciding not to publish anti-war material in the Socialist Standard, while plans to republish War and Socialism were dropped. As a consequence the Socialist Standard continued to appear throughout the war, filled with 'historical' and 'theoretical' articles. The government allowed a number of other papers to continue, including Peace News, the ILP's paper New Leader, and the anarchist War Commentary. Further, unlike during the previous war, the party was also able to continue holding public meetings, often attracting large audiences. Both Barltrop and Perrin, in their histories of the SPGB, underline the difference between the response of the working class in 1914 and 1939 towards those expressing anti-war views.
As in the First World War the party's main form of opposition was the individual conscientious objection of its militants. But here again the situation was different: the government created a legal process for conscientious objectors, including the grounds that would be accepted. The party saw an influx of members, reaching 800 at its peak; and it is clear that many saw membership as a way to increase their chances of being accepted as a conscientious objector since numbers declined rapidly after the war. The status of conscientious objector was not presented with such hostility as in the last war and Barltrop comments that "The treatment of conscientious objectors by the government in wartime was surprisingly reasonable" (p.113).
What this suggests is that the state understood what it was doing: it was using various organisations, including the SPGB, as a way of containing the opposition to the war that it knew would develop in the working class. Its method was to channel any such opposition into an individual and pacifist form that neither threatened the state practically, by encouraging workers to organise on a class basis, nor theoretically, by deepening class consciousness.
This contrasts sharply with elements of the left communist milieu who, despite their dispersal and the exceptionally difficult conditions in which they worked in Europe, maintained an intervention against the war, risking their lives for example to produce and distribute leaflets denouncing the war. Even more importantly, as we show in our book The Italian Communist Left, they were able to make important theoretical advances on such issues as the nature of the USSR and the role of war in capitalism. Thus while the left communists had no significance at a quantitative level they made a vital contribution at the qualitative level through the deepening of class consciousness. Their personal sacrifices were not aimed at setting an individual example but at the collective defence of the class. As a result, even in the midst of the most terrible imperialist war in history, at the time of the physical and ideological defeat of the working class, they struck a real blow against the rule of the bourgeoisie.
North, 1/5/04.
Notes
From Revolution Internationale no. 64
In the previous articles in this series, we have seen:
For a long time revolutionaries, along with the proletariat as a whole, have groped for an answer to the question: how will the workers organise themselves to make the revolution? In earlier times (from Babeuf to Blanqui) small conspiratorial sects were in favour. Subsequently, different workers' societies, such as trade unions or co-operatives, like those gathered inside the International Workers' Association (First International founded in 1864) seemed to represent this self-organisation of the working class with a view to its emancipation. Then the great mass parties assembled in the Second International (1889-1914), and the unions attached to them, presented themselves as the lever for transforming society. But history shows that if these forms of organisation corresponded to stages of development in the capacity of the working class to struggle against exploitation, and to become conscious of the goals of this struggle, none of them were appropriate for the actual accomplishment of its historic task: the destruction of capitalism and the establishment of communism. It is when the historic conditions of capitalism itself put the proletarian revolution on the agenda that the working class found a suitable form of organisation to carry it out: the workers' councils. Their appearance in Russia in 1905 signified a turning point in the history of capitalist society: the end of its progressive epoch, its entry into decadence, into "the era of imperialist wars and proletarian revolutions" as revolutionaries subsequently understood it. Similarly, if since Blanqui revolutionaries understood the necessity for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a lever for the transformation of society, the concrete form that this dictatorship would take only became clear with the experience of the class itself, and even then with some delay. Falling into step with the old conceptions of Marx and Engels, Trotsky, who nevertheless played a decisive role at the head of the Soviet (workers' council) of Petrograd, could still write in 1906, twenty-five years after 1871: "International socialism considers that the republic is the only form possible for the socialist emancipation, on the condition that the proletariat tears it from the hands of the bourgeoisie and transforms it, 'from a machine for the oppression of one class by another' into an arm for the socialist emancipation of humanity".
Thus, for a long time, a 'real democratic republic' in which the proletarian party would play the leading role was seen as the shape and form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It's only with the revolution of 1917 in Russia that revolutionaries, and in particular Lenin, understood clearly that the "finally found form" of the dictatorship of the proletariat is nothing other than the power of the workers' councils, these organs which appeared spontaneously from 1905 during the course of the revolutionary struggle and which were characterised by:
This specific form of organisation of the working class is directly adapted to the tasks which await the proletariat in the revolution.
In the first place, this is a general organisation of the class, regrouping all of the workers. Previously, all forms of organisation , including the unions, only regrouped a part of the class. While that was enough for the working class to exert pressure on capitalism in order to defend its interests within the system, it is only through self-organisation in its totality that the class is able to carry out the destruction of the capitalist system and establish communism. For the bourgeoisie to make its revolution, it was enough for a part of this class to take power; this is because it only constituted a small part of the population, because it was an exploiting class, and because only a minority of the bourgeoisie itself could raise itself above the conflicts of interests generated by the economic rivalries between its various sectors. On the other hand, such rivalries don't exist within the working class. At the same time, because the society that it is called upon to establish abolishes all exploitation and all division into classes, the movement that it leads is " that of the immense majority for the benefit of the immense majority" (Communist Manifesto). Therefore only the self-organisation of the class as a whole is up to accomplishing its historic task.
In the second place, the election and instant revocability of different officers expresses the eminently dynamic character of the revolutionary process - the perpetual overturning of social conditions and the constant development of class consciousness. In such a process, those who have been nominated for such and such a task, or because their level of understanding corresponds to a given level of consciousness in the class, are no longer necessarily up to speed when new tasks arise or when this level of consciousness evolves.
Election and revocability of delegates equally expresses the rejection by the class of all definitive specialisation, of all division within itself between masses and 'leaders'. The essential function of the latter (the most advanced elements of the class) is in fact to do everything they can to eliminate the conditions that provoked their appearance: the heterogeneity of consciousness within the class.
If permanent officials could exist in the unions, even when they were still organs of the working class, it was due to the fact that these organs for the defence of workers' interests within capitalist society bore certain characteristics of this society. Similarly, when it used specifically bourgeois instruments such as universal suffrage and parliament, the proletariat reproduced within itself certain traits of its bourgeois enemy as it cohabited with it. The static union form of organisation expressed the method of struggle of the working class when the revolution was not yet possible. The dynamic form of workers' councils is in the image of the task that is finally on the order of the day: the communist revolution.
Similarly, the unity between taking a decision and applying it expresses this same rejection by the revolutionary class of all institutionalised specialisation. It shows that it is the whole of the class that not only takes the essential decisions that concern it, but also participates in the practical transformation of society.
In the third place, organisation on a territorial basis and no longer trade or industrial expresses the different nature of the proletariat's tasks. When it was solely a question of putting pressure on an employer's association for an increase in wages or for better working conditions, organisation by trade or by industrial branch made sense. Even an organisation as archaic as the craft-based trade union was efficiently used by the workers against exploitation; in particular, it prevented the bosses calling in other workers of the trade when there was a strike. The solidarity between printers, cigar makers or bronze gilders was the embryo of real class solidarity, a stage in the unification of the working class. Even with the weight of capitalist distinctions and divisions upon it, the union organisation was a real means of struggle within the system. On the other hand, when it was a question not of standing up to this or that sector of capitalism, but of confronting it in its totality, of destroying it and establishing another society, the specific organisation of printers or of rubber industry workers could make no sense. In order to take charge of the whole of society, it is only on the territorial basis that the working class can organise itself, even if the base assemblies are held at the level of a factory, office, hospital or industrial estate.
Such a tendency already exists at the present time in the immediate struggle against exploitation. Here again there is a profound tendency to break out of the union form and to organise in sovereign general assemblies, to form elected and revocable strike committees, to spill over professional or industrial boundaries and to extend at the territorial level.
This tendency expresses the fact that, in its period of decadence, capitalism takes on a more and more statified form. In these conditions, the old distinction between political struggles (which were the prerogative of the workers' parties in the past) and economic struggles (for which the unions had responsibility) makes less and less sense. Every serious economic struggle becomes political and confronts the state: either its police, or its representatives in the factory - the unions. This also indicates the profound significance of the present struggles as preparations for the decisive confrontations of the revolutionary period. Even if it is an economic factor (crisis, intolerable aggravation of exploitation) which hurls the workers into these confrontations, the tasks which are subsequently presented to them are eminently political: frontal and armed attack against the bourgeois state, establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The proletarian revolution: political power as a basis for social transformation
This unity between politics and economics expressed by the organisation of the proletariat into workers' councils requires some elucidation. Which aspect is primary?
Communists since Babeuf have recognised that, in the proletarian revolution, the political aspect precedes and conditions the economic. That is a schema completely opposed to the one that prevailed in the bourgeois revolution. The capitalist economy developed inside feudal society, in the chinks of the latter one could say. The new revolutionary class, the bourgeoisie, could thus conquer economic power in society while the political and administrative structures were still linked to feudalism (absolute monarchy, economic and political privileges of the nobility, etc.). It is only when the capitalist mode of production became dominant, when it was conditioning the whole of economic life (including those sectors which weren't directly capitalist, such as small scale agricultural and craft production), that the bourgeoisie launched its assault on the political power. This in turn enabled it to adapt the latter to its specific needs and lay the ground for a new economic expansion. This is what it did, notably with the English revolution of the 1640s and the French revolution of 1789. In this sense the bourgeois revolution completed a whole period of transition during the course of which it developed inside feudal society, until it came to the point of supplanting it on the basis of a new economic organisation of society. The schema of the proletarian revolution is quite another thing. In capitalist society, the working class possesses no property, no established material springboard for its future domination of society. All the attempts inspired by utopian or Proudhonist conceptions have failed: the proletariat cannot create 'islands' of communism in present-day society. All the workers' communities or cooperatives have either been destroyed or recuperated by capitalism. Babeuf, Blanqui and Marx understood this against the utopians, Proudhon and the anarchists. The taking of political power by the proletariat is the point of departure of its revolution, the lever with which it will progressively transform the economic life of society with the perspective of abolishing all economy. It is for that reason that, as Marx wrote: "Without revolution, socialism cannot be realised. It needs this political act, inasmuch as it needs destruction and dissolution. But here its organising activity begins and here its own aim emerges; its soul, socialism rejects its political envelope" (Poverty of Philosophy).
Inasmuch as capitalism had already created its economic base at the time of the bourgeois revolution, the latter was essentially political. The revolution of the proletariat, on the contrary, begins with a political act that conditions the development not only of its economic aspects, but also above all of its social aspects.
Thus, the workers' councils are in no way organs of 'self-management', organs for the management of the capitalist economy (ie., of misery). They are political organs whose primary tasks are to destroy the capitalist state and establish the proletarian dictatorship on a world scale. But they are also organs for the economic and social transformation of society, and this aspect makes itself felt from the very start of the revolutionary process (expropriation of the bourgeoisie, organisation of essential supplies for the population etc). With the political defeat of the bourgeoisie, the economic and social dimension will more and more come into its own.
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