Inspiration and warning from Argentina
Workers do not have their own mass party - By Bob Archer
In recent weeks bold mass action by the people of Argentina has seen off five
presidents in two weeks. They refused to back down despite nearly thirty dead
and many hundreds injured.
As this issue of Workers International Press went to the printers, the discredited
politicians of the Radical and Peronist parties had just selected the fifth
president in two weeks, Eduardo Duhalde. Only a few months ago Mr. Duhalde,
a Peronist, confessed: "The political leadership" [of Argentina] "is
shit, and of course I include myself in that".
Virtually every sector of the population rose in struggle against those in power,
who are imposing the whole burden of the economic crisis onto the working class
and the middle class.
The dramatic events in Argentina are an inspiration because they are the most
concentrated and courageous expression so far of popular opposition to imperialism
in crisis. They are bound to find an echo in many other places because the situation
in Argentina is only a specific and particularly-shaped combination of the same
conditions created by the world crisis in a whole series of countries in Asia,
Africa and Latin America.
The events are a warning because they demonstrate once again the truth of the
historical experience that such struggles can only be fully successful if the
masses can destroy the state apparatus of the capitalist class and replace it
with one representing their own needs and desires.
Anti-imperialist and anti-'globalisation' campaigners everywhere need to study
the situation in Argentina extremely carefully.
The unity and combativity of the Argetinian people is only the first pre-condition
for a successful struggle. How it is to be maintained and developed is a political
task whose solution will need to draw on the historical experience of the whole
working class.
Argentina's workers have a long history of militant trade union organization
and political class-consciousness, and this on its own has been an important
factor in the general mobilization.
But like workers everywhere the workers of Argentina do not have their own mass
political party.
Indeed the crisis and splits which the Trotskyist Movement for Socialism (MAS)
has undergone over the last decade is one of the important features of the crisis
in Argentina.
In fact the organized working class as such, the largely bureaucratic unions
and even the more radical rank-and-file assemblies of strike-pickets, were slow
to become involved in the street-fighting. The decisive demonstrations involved
above all young people and the various left-wing groups.
And yet the working class is the only force which can unite the whole social
protest, lend it organizational shape and provide it with concrete and substantial
goals.
The struggle in Argentina is also profoundly international in character. The
political rulers of the country - people who are now angrily denounced as 'thieves'
whenever they dare show themselves in public - are the servants of foreign imperialist
interests.
Behind them stand the US, European and Japanese banks and finance houses which
will insist on the repayment of every red cent which has been 'loaned' and every
penny of interest which they can screw out.
They must do so because to allow Argentina a way out would be to encourage every
victim of the crisis to resist.
And, as everyone in the world now knows, these interests are backed by B52 bombers,
US special forces and the mercenaries of imperialism.
Developments in Argentina, which grow organically out of world developments
over the last few years, throw down a challenge to the most conscious and thoughtful
workers everywhere. A political step-forward on their part is needed.
The most significant form such a step could take at the moment is the development
of an international association of active workers.
The foundation of the International Network of Active Solidarity by Brazilian
trade unionists two years ago was a vital step in that direction. Now it must
assume a wider scope and become much more active, initially in providing solidarity
with Argentinian workers, helping delegations from abroad to visit the country
and become thoroughly familiar with the situation there and publicizing the
experiences of the Argentianian people's struggles far and wide. (Top
of Page)
Five presidents in two weeks
ADOLFO Rodriguez Saá was hastily picked as caretaker president after
the undignified departure of Fernando De la Rua.
After a week in office he resigned, claiming that regional leaders of his party
would not support the package of emergency measures he had proposed.
Saá is a member of the Judicialist Party (PJ), which claims to continue
the populist tradition of Juan and Evita Peron. He has been a regional governor
for 12 years.
He had announced an immediate moratorium on repayment of all interest and principal
on the foreign debt, dramatically billed as the biggest default in history.
However, imperialist governments, led by George W. Bush, rushed to congratulate
him on assumption of the presidency, so the world's bankers were evidently hopeful
he could safeguard their investments.
Saá announced a number of dramatic measures to flatter public opposition
to bureaucracy and corruption. He reduced the number of ministries from 12 to
3 and abolished all the official cars and aircraft provided for leading politicians.
However, he did not plan to sack any civil servants, so it was not clear how
much money these steps would save.
He pegged the presidential salary at $3,000.
He promised a number of measures to help relieve the effects of poverty, including
work creation for more than 100,000 people, food aid for the starving, and an
increase in the minimum wage.
He retained the currency board which ties the peso to the dollar, so no devaluation
of the peso was planned. However, many commentators wondered how he would lay
hands on enough hard currency to make good on what amounts to a promise to hand
over valuable dollars to any purchaser who turns up with intrinsically worthless
pesos. The alternative of abandoning the dollar-peso peg is attractive because
it would allow the peso to fall in value and encourage Argentina's exports.
However, it would mean handing the problem on to industry and the middle-class
who have taken out dollar-denominated bank loans for businesses and homes.
Saá kept the previous government's strict controls on foreign currency
deals and bank transactions. This led to renewed rioting when the banks re-opened
and even wealthy Argentinians found they could still only withdraw 1,000 pesos
a month. Because the law courts rejected moves to lift banking controls, many
Argentinians accused the legal system of continuing a corrupt relationship with
government.
A 'third currency', the 'argentino', was to be introduced to replace the 17
sub-currencies or coupons already circulating (variously called patacones, lecop,
etc.).
Adolfo Rodriguez Saá could not solve a single major issue facing the
masses in Argentina. Nor could any of the measures he took satisfy the bankers
or the imperialist governments who are their political representatives.
His forced departure deepens the crisis of capitalist rule in Argentina.
The fifth president in the space of two weeks, Eduardo Duhalde, has confirmed
that Argentina has defaulted on her foreign loans and has broken the dollar
peg. A Peso devluation of about 30 per cent is expected which would some relief
to the country's exporters and industries, but will intensify pressures on small
businesses and the middle class. The crisis in Argentina is a long way from
being solved. (Top of Page)
How does the country that has everything end up broke?
The economic and social explosion in Argentina is a very clear expression of
the contradictions within imperialism.
Rich in natural resources and with a considerable manufacturing industry, Argentina
has been robbed successively over many centuries by Spanish, British and US
imperialists.
This country sees 2,000 people a day, some of them well-paid and well-qualified
professionals, fall under the poverty line. Fourteen million Argentinians are
living on less than $4 a day and they are confronted with hypermarkets stuffed
full of food and consumer goods.
While consumers in the US and the UK are more or less instructed to get their
credit cards out and go on a spending spree to 'save' their national economies,
Argentinians were told they had to do without food, accept deep cuts in government
services, up to 20 per cent unemployment, public sector wage cuts of 13 per
cent and under-payment or in some cases non-payment of pensions so that the
De la Rua government could pay its foreign debts.
Argentina's subordination to imperialism is expressed in chronic currency instability
and a huge debt owed to foreign investors and bankers.
In the late 1980s, when prices were doubling every month, the government very
strictly 'pegged' the peso to the dollar. This meant that one peso would be
exchangeable for one dollar and that Argentina's interest rates would be the
same as those prevailing in the USA.
This step stabilized the currency and ushered in several years of economic expansion.
The cost, however, was a continued growth in the foreign debt.
In 1997, the real weakness underlying the Pacific 'tiger' economies in South-East
Asia became evident. Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines
and others saw currency collapses, factory closures and growing poverty and
social and political unrest.
These developments sparked off crises in other 'emerging markets', like Russia
and Brazil. World trade faltered and finally went into reverse during the year
2000, when the hoped-for boom in 'new technology' turned out to be an expensive
sham.
The problems have been concentrated in the finance and share-trading sector
which is the huge pump sucking wealth out of the former colonies and semi-colonies
and into bank vaults in the US, Japan and western Europe.
During 1998, a collapse in the Brazilian stock market led to a sharp fall in
the value of the Brazilian currency, the real. This cheapened exports from Brazil,
which is one of Argentina's main competitors. Argentina could not devalue the
peso in retaliation because of the currency board peg. The Argentinian economy
went into recession.
This not only threw Argentinians out of work, but also led to a loss in export
earnings, which meant the country could not meet her dollar-denominated debts.
The government had to offer higher interest rates abroad in order to borrow
more dollars to pay the loans already outstanding.
In the third quarter of 2001 Argentina's Gross Domestic Product (GDP)was down
by nearly five per cent compared with the previous year. In manufacturing and
construction the figures were -7.1 per cent and -12.3 percent. Some bankers
feel the peso is over-valued by 50 per cent.
Soon the country owed foreign banks £132 billion. In order to scrape together
the money to pay the debt, the Radical government of president Fernando De la
Rua adopted a policy of 'zero deficit'. Austerity measures were imposed and
public service wages cut by up to 13 per cent with more cuts threatened. Pensions
were also cut, and in some cases were not paid at all.
Many Argentinians realized that the currency peg was under intense pressure
and took steps to convert their pesos into dollars or put their peso bank balances
into dollar-denominated accounts abroad while the going was good. During the
year 2001, $18 billion dollars were exported from the country.
The government therefore introduced strict banking controls, including a cap
on withdrawals. Meanwhile the currency board meant that domestic interests rates
had to shadow those in the US. As a result the government could not lower interest
rates to support businesses in difficulty inside Argentina.
The Radical government of Fernando De la Rua had successfully united almost
every layer of society in opposition to it.
Impoverished professional people, bankrupt small-businessmen and retailers,
cash-strapped public servants, starving pensioners and masses of unemployed
workers and youth all united in demanding the repudiation of the foreign debt
and immediate devaluation of the peso.
The cause of the crisis lies neither in the incompetence nor in the corruption
of successive governments of Argentina, although both factors are undoubtedly
present in full measure. Right at the root of capitalism and imperialism lies
the exploitation of human labour by capital.
Profits are derived from the unpaid labour time workers devote to creating commodities
over and above their wages.
The class struggle over who gets the surplus value added to goods by workers
in the labour process is the mighty driving force in the development of capitalist
society, which almost every commentator has been at pains to conceal over recent
decades.
But the gathering world crisis has brought this factor to the world's attention
in the most urgent way. It's strongest expression is the fate which imperialism
assigned to the people of Argentina and the powerful spirit of their resistance.
(Top of Page)
From 'Revolutionary Days', an article published by
the Partido de Trabajadores por el Socialismo on December 22, 2001
'...It was a process which involved all the oppressed and exploited sectors
of society who were using different methods but had a common aim: the overthrow
of the government of De la Rúa and Cavallo.
With the introduction of the limit on the amount of money that savers can withdraw
from their bank accounts and further attacks on pensions and wages, a series
of protests started: the banging of pans and the blockading of roads by small
shopkeepers, the well-supported 24-hour general strike on December 13, and the
demonstrations outside supermarkets in Mendoza, Entre Rios and Quilmes. This
discontent then took a leap forward and transformed December 19 and 20 into
revolutionary days - an historic independent action of the Argentinian masses
which will put its mark on the next period.
On the morning of December 19 the most oppressed sectors of the working class
and the masses entered the political arena. In the most populated areas of Buenos
Aires province and in 11 other provinces, contingents of unemployed people and
their families marched to supermarkets in a desperate search for food. The closeness
of Christmas and the New Year was one of the factors that precipitated the revolts
- a symptom of a situation in which five million unemployed and underemployed
people have been left behind in this economic depression .
...This time the most impoverished and desperate sectors of society took to
the political stage together with the middle classes and the workers ... 'No
more hunger! Bread and work!' is the simple demand ...
The second great event took place after De la Rúa declared a state of
emergency with the aim of 'safeguarding the peace', i.e of frightening the middle
classes and repressing the looters. By that time there had already been several
deaths. After the announcement, a massive, spontaneous mainly middle-class demonstration
took to the streets of the capital, the center of political power. Challenging
the state of emergency, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marched to the
Plaza de Mayo. Bonfires were lit on street corners and pans were banged together
by people on the march and people on their balconies. Drivers sounded their
horns. A real flood of people marched to the Plaza de Mayo, Congress Square
and even Cavallo's residence ... The most frequently-heard slogans were 'Stick
the state of emergency up your arse!' and 'Get out, we don't want any of you!'.
...
On Thursday December 20 the government was overthrown following the Battle of
Plaza de Mayo. Early in the morning, thousands of young workers, unemployed
people, clerical workers and students confronted the police. The youth played
a crucial role. The battle for control of the square started just after 9am
and lasted til midnight. Over and over again the demonstrators stood their ground
as the police, using tear gas, horses, rubber bullets and sometimes live rounds,
viciously attacked them with the aim of clearing the square. ... Shamefully,
the trades unions, the general confederations - CGT and CTA - and even the Pickets'
Assembly of the FTV-CTA and the CCC (Militant Class-Struggle Current) were not
present. By boycotting the demonstration they prevented contingents of organized
workers from participating in the struggle.
... At nearly 7pm the resignation of De la Rúa and his escape in a helicopter
from the terrace of the government palace ended the days with a political victory
for the masses. The situation is as revolutionary as it could be given the current
leadership.'
The rest of this fascinating report, together some serious programmatic proposals
to meet the situation, can be viewed on the website of the League for A Revolutionary
Communist International WWW.workerspower.org. Thanks to the LRCI for permission
to reproduce this material. (Top of Page)
Extracts from 'This was a revolution of sorts' by K.C.Rolazo,
a supporter of the International Workers League - Fourth International (LIT-CI)
in Argentina
'There was no money in the streets. People's gas and electricity were cut off
when tenants failed to pay for these commodities in due time.
Then the looting of the big supermarkets began. First it was timid groups of
organised beggars. In one case they were promised "a little something for
Christmas" by the manager of a large supermarket. When they returned to
fetch their presents, they found the gates closed and armed policemen trying
to shove them away. They insisted that they had been promised help.
Finally a small delegation was allowed in to "negotiate" with the
management. Once inside they were told that they could take 70 parcels containing
some flour, oil and dry pasta. After a short meeting at the gates of the supermarket,
the decision was: "let's take what they give and come back for more tomorrow".
The following day all hell broke loose: not only dozens of supermarkets were
"looted" or "expropriated", but important sectors of the
middle class found this highly plausible. Municipal workers of the city of Cordoba
destroyed the Town Hall in repudiation of the economic measured taken by the
city government and their example was followed by Entre Rios...
The result (of declaring a state of emergency) was not long in coming... The
Plaza de Mayo, which up to that moment had been silent, dark and surrounded
by police patrols began to take a different life... Thousand of spontaneous
demonstrators thronged from different neighbourhoods beating pots and pans,
blowing whistles and clapping their hands. These were not political or trade
union militants or activists. They were not the desperate hungry crowds looting
the supermarkets. They were the urban middle class, the "new poor",
the ones who had voted for de la Rua just two years ago when he had promised
to put an end to the corruption ...
They came in family groups, the mama, the papa and the perambulator, the daughter
and her boyfriend holding hands, the grandma holding up her pension cheque to
show that she had still been unable to collect her meagre pension. They looked
straight into the TV cameras and said that they were proud that the Argentine
people have at long last recovered their dignity and would no longer be lied
to in such a blatant way. They carried national flags and sang the national
anthem several times. They seemed most surprised and outraged when the police
actually charged at them with high-pressure water hoses, tear gases, and rubber
bullets. But they showed a surprising amount of persistence and courage.
Dispersed and chased away from the Plaza de Mayo, the re-grouped and returned,
only to be chased away once more and then once more find a way back. In those
countless to and fro movements, the festive atmosphere and the perambulators
disappeared, people grabbed the fizzing tear gas bombs and threw them back at
the police, they put up barricades, they threw stones...
As the night turned into morning, the morning into afternoon, the battle
continued, but the main characters of the drama changed. Left wing militants
replaced the politically undefined...
The whole of this eye-witness account can be viewed on www.socialistvoice.org.uk
(Top of Page)
WIRFI statement on recent developments in the Socialist
Alliance in Britain:
Towards a genuinely working-class party
Members of the Workers International (British Section) joined the Socialist
Alliance when it was established in London in 2000. It had already existed for
three years before that, mainly in the Midlands and Manchester and we had sent
representatives to its conferences.
When, in 1996, the Labour Party finally ditched all reference to socialist policies
by deleting Clause Four of its constitution (the common ownership of the means
of production, distribution and exchange) miners' leader Arthur Scargill announced
that he would found a new party. The Socialist Party (SP - previously Militant
Labour) proposed to him that before launching a party there should be an alliance
of socialist groups, trade union bodies and campaigns conducting a discussion
throughout the working class about the need for such a party.
Scargill rejected this and founded, with others, the Socialist Labour Party
(SLP). This is now a shell, with financial resources and only a handful of members.
Hundreds were expelled when they came into opposition to Scargill's politics
and bureaucratic methods.
Meanwhile the SA was founded by the SP with other groups and individuals. Its
purpose was to develop a non-sectarian organisation that could encompass and
reach out to workers and their allies, breaking from the Labour Party, to launch
a widespread discussion about the history and future of the working class and
to stand candidates in elections.
The big development in interest and membership came when the SA fielded candidates
in the general election in June 2001. Taken together with the SLP, Scottish
Socialist Party and the Welsh SA these alternative socialist candidates won
over 185,000 votes.
However, although there is a need for a new party which is fundamentally different
not only from "new" (Blairite) Labour, but from "old" social
democratic Labour, the SA fought the election largely with "safe"
generally agreed anti-capitalist, left social democratic policies. For it is
a hybrid organisation, comprised of a number of socialist groups and individuals
with fundamental differences on important questions such as internationalism,
terrorism, the nature of imperialism, rights of self-determination, the "peace
process" in Ireland, Palestine and Israel, the class character of the Labour
Party and others.
In a number of cases the SA's parliamentary candidates were not members of any
of the organised groups, but leaders in their own right - in local trade unions,
community campaigns and the civil rights movement. Their decision to be part
of the SA was a sign of the growing anger of masses of people who had thought
that the election of a Labour government in 1997 meant an end to Tory policies.
At its highest point this movement is represented by those organised in trade
unions and community campaigns. At its base there are millions of workers, many
of whom are black and the butt of racism, trying to survive on social security
and in low-paid casual jobs. These millions express their growing anger at politicians
and state bureaucracy by refusing to vote.
However, instead of the SA taking forward the developments made in the general
election campaign by having a broad and open national political conference drawing
in organised workers and publishing a verbatim report of its proceedings to
take the discussion out far and wide, it turned in on itself with a national
structure conference where politics were barred. This "no politics"
decision was even more surprising considering that the gathering took place
in the middle of the Afghan war "against terrorism"!
There are many views within the SA as to what kind of organisation it should
be. Some believe that it should be simply an electoral alliance, others, including
the WIRFI, that it should be a federation of groups and individuals opening
up a wide discussion towards founding a new socialist party, and others believe
that it should immediately become a centralised party with its own newspaper
and with rights for minorities.
What the conference agreed was a constitution which centralises the organisation
with a slate system of electing the national executive, and a national council
comprised of the national executive plus a delegate from each branch and regional
body. In practice the SA has been reduced to an electoral front for the Socialist
Workers Party (SWP). Even though they have only three members on the national
executive they control the majority of branches and regional bodies.
When the SWP joined the SA in 2000, it was like a "cuckoo in the nest".
For the SWP maintains that it is already the party of the working class. Anxious
to keep everybody on board, and to try to avoid a power struggle the other main
groups (Socialist Party -- SP, International Socialist Group - ISG, Workers
Power - WP, Communist Party of Great Britain - CPGB, Alliance for Workers Liberty
- AWL) simply turned a blind eye to this SWP view of itself. In reality all
of them share the same view- either that they are already the party or that
the main aim is to "unite the left".
In a well-publicised report presented to a recent SWP conference, the SA is
listed along with Defend Council Housing, Stop the War Coalition, Anti-Nazi
League and Globalised Resistance as the five faces of its so-called united front
tactic.
Moves of the SWP to tailor the organisation to suit their own purposes came
early on. When they could not get a decision through an SA conference for an
executive committee instead of the very open liaison body that then existed,
they got their own way by turning up to the following meeting of the liaison
body with enough of their members to push through a resolution for a small executive
committee of the liaison body, including their own proposed slate of who would
comprise this new body.
They and their supporters claimed that this was a necessary move to "centralise
and streamline" the organisation, but such bureaucratic manoeuvres avoid
the real life of a movement, coming into being breaking with the old and giving
birth to the new. Such a movement is necessarily uncontrolled, uneven, confused
and contradictory. The "left" sectarians are uncomfortable if they
cannot control things.
The SP members walked out of the national structure conference when the SWP
refused to agree an amendment limiting the number of members from any one group
on the leadership committee. Since the SA is not now the type of open federal
organisation they helped to found, the action of the SP is understandable. However
they also start from a belief that they are already the party of the working
class.
A number of campaigns, small groups and individuals are now also discussing
their response to this new situation in the SA and we are part of that discussion.
But any attempt to try to overcome the situation with organisational solutions
cannot deal with the main problem. For it is the working class as a whole that
faces the necessity to build its own new party. In the main resolution of the
third congress (June 1999) of Workers International (WI) we set out our conception
of the kind of party we should all be working to build:
"The most important attribute of a genuinely working-class party is, of
course, the fact that it is based and arises, not automatically but naturally
and mostly, from the struggles of the working class itself. The workers' party
is the party of the vanguard of the class, that is to say it assembles, unites
and centralises the best leaders and organisers of the fighting working class.
Without this vanguard there can be no workers' party. A party which comes into
existence outside of those workers who organise and lead the workers' struggles
is not a genuine workers' party. Even less so if it turns its back on these
fights and has a life somehow parallel but outside of them, bringing together
a party of those who come from or represent this or that organisation or group."
We believe that it is the existence of the SA "outside of those workers
who organise and lead workers' struggles" that is the real problem. A clear
example of this separation came when "the left" groups formed the
London Socialist Alliance (LSA) to stand candidates in the Greater London Assembly
elections in 2001 and for the first time the SWP joined in.
An initial test came when the London Regional Council of the RMT union, representing
London Underground workers decided to stand 11 of its members as Campaign Against
Tube Privatisation candidates. The leaders of the Regional Council are socialists
with long experience in the movement and their candidates were a full-time official,
the chair and secretary of the Regional Council, branch officers and health
and safety representatives.
The LSA steering committee refused to back them. Only the SP and the WI supported
them, but subsequently the SP withdrew its support (a mistaken opportunist decision
to maintain its place in the LSA.)
The election campaign was preceded by a big upheaval inside the London Labour
Party and the trade unions with reverberations throughout the country. New Labour
refused to support Ken Livingstone as the party's mayoral candidate, because
he would not support their proposed privatisation of London Underground. Finally
he stood as an independent and was expelled. Many Labour Party members tore
up their membership cards; others refused to work for the party in the election
campaign and instead supported Livingstone.
If Livingstone had intended to develop working-class struggle, he would have
supported the tube workers. If he had called for the founding of a new socialist
party there would have been a mass exodus from the Labour Party into it. Workers
campaigning for the disaffiliation of their unions from the Labour Party would
have been strengthened. But Livingstone is an individualist tied to social democracy.
He called for a vote for him as mayor and for Labour Party candidates for the
Assembly.
It was therefore particularly important that the RMT London Regional Council
did not accept Livingstone's advice. They campaigned in the election independently
against tube privatisation. They were supported by the vast majority of their
8,000 tube-worker members. This should have been seen by the SA as an important
indication of workers breaking from the Labour party. Instead of standing candidates
against the tube workers, they should have entered the campaign under the tube
workers' leadership.
Instead they scornfully pointed the finger at these workers, saying that theirs
was only a single-issue campaign. But what a single-issue! Privatisation is
at the heart of workers' struggles and their break from the Labour Party which
ditched Clause Four.
The petty bourgeois character of the LSA can be seen from this refusal to accept
that there is anything to learn from the organised working class - the most
important element to turn to and give confidence to the mass of workers in the
fight to establish their independence. How can we possibly have a new working-class
party without such worker-leaders?
In the Wyre Forest constituency Dr Richard Taylor, who, although not a socialist,
had led a mass campaign to defend Kidderminster hospital against closure and
privatisation, stood as an independent in the general election. Thousands of
people flocked to vote for him. He received 28,487 votes, defeating the former
Labour MP by 17,630. But when he asked the leadership of the striking workers
at nearby Dudley Hospital to assist his campaign, the SWP secretary of the union
branch, supported by the SA, refused saying that Taylor was standing only on
a single issue. Again, what a single issue!
Unfortunately we can only imagine the importance of the Dudley trade union picket
lines going as an organised force among working-class communities in neighbouring
Wyre Valley.
Look at the way Frederick Engels approached matters. In 1868 Engels was enthusiastic
when Henry George of the Independent Labour Party polled 68,110 votes in the
election for mayor of New York. This was one third of the total and beat the
Republican, Theodore Roosevelt by almost 8,000 votes. Engels' main consideration
was not that George was a "single taxer", believing that the evils
of capitalist production would disappear if ground rent was transformed into
a state tax! No! Engels wrote:
"The first great step of importance for every country newly entering into
the movement is always the organisation of the workers as an independent political
party, no matter how, as long as it is a distinct workers' party . . . The masses
must have time and opportunity to develop and they can only have that opportunity
when they have their own movement, no matter in what form so long as it is their
own movement, in which they are driven further by their own mistakes and learn
wisdom by hurting themselves." (emphasis in the original.)
(Letter 209, 29 November 1886 - Marx and Engels Correspondence: Lawrence and
Wishart, 1934)
What we see in the SA is the continuing battle against sectarianism, and leading
workers know this. Although many have broken with the Labour Party they will
not join the SA because they know from bitter experience that most of "the
left" will only support the campaigns they can control, and once "the
left" groups consider a workers' struggle is over they move on to other
things.
In this connection the sacked Liverpool dockers leap to mind. There can be no
doubt about the importance of their leadership and the lessons of the international
campaign - central to their 28-month dispute - which went far beyond work of
a merely trade union kind. They know how to organise, centralise and unite workers
in struggle. We cannot conceive of a new party without them.
Since the end of their dispute, they have taken important steps forward. Among
other things, building on their international work, they have played a prominent
part in establishing an international committee of dockworkers, opened an international
centre in Liverpool with facilities for educational courses and meetings and
they are central to the monthly workers' newspaper UNITE! largely based on the
newspaper of their dispute the Dockers Charter.
The "streamlining" decisions of the national structure conference
further strengthen the tendency of the SA to have "a life somehow parallel
but outside of [workers' struggles], bringing together a party of those who
come from or represent this or that organisation or group".
Nevertheless as the break with the Labour Party develops, many workers are studying
the political scene. They must find answers to their life's problems. Questions
arise: what is the relationship between the working class and "the left";
why aren't all the groups in the same party?
The answers lie in the historic struggles over principles in the Second, Third
and Fourth Internationals - struggles which arose when workers were seeking
answers as they entered into a fight in previous periods. Today is no exception.
Discussion and actions are also going on independently of the decisions of the
SA national structure conference and not under its control. Our aim is to take
developments forward, both inside and outside the SA, towards a genuinely working
class-party. (Top of Page)
The Irish Worker - by John Steele
Political Status Committee keeps up the pressure
The Irish Political Status Committee has continued its campaign for the restoration
of the rights which were won by the sacrifices of the hunger strikers of 1981
and removed by agreement with Sinn Fein when they signed the Good Friday Agreement.
An historic first public meeting on this issue was held in London on 24 November.
It also commemorated the 1981 Hunger Strikers and speakers were Francie Mackey
(32 County Sovereignty Movement), Patricia Campbell (Fourthwrite Magazine and
former anti-H Blocks/Armagh activist) and a representative of the relatives
of the current Turkish hunger strikers. Members of the IPSC also took part in
pickets of the Irish Embassy in London to protest at the treatment of political
prisoners in Portlaoise jail and marched with their banner (see photograph)
at the huge anti-war demonstration on 18 November.
In E2 wing of Portlaoise jail prisoners have recently been subjected to brutal
treatment. Some had to have hospital treatment when riot squads were sent in
to beat them up. The prisoners had refused lock-down in protest at the ongoing
campaign of discrimination against them including the refusal of an application
for temporary leave by a prisoner whose child was sick in hospital. The POWs
have taken similar action in the past without any brutal reaction but this time
the riot squad were given free rein to go in heavy-handed.
Greetings from Workers International brought to London meeting
The Workers International for the Rebuilding of the Fourth International congratulates
the Irish political Status Committee on the holding of a meeting which links
the 20th anniversary of the 1981 Hunger Strikes with the current situation of
Republican prisoners today and the demand for the restoration of political status.
The struggles and sacrifices of the nationalist uprising in the north of Ireland
- including the martyrdom of the 10 who gave their lives in 1981 - have been
betrayed by a Sinn Fein leadership happily acting as ministers of the Crown
in a 6-county parliament at the mercy of the Unionist veto.
We believe that Sinn Fein is driven to do a deal with imperialism because of
the class nature of its political programme. This is based on the belief that
there can be a liberal democracy in the north of Ireland and that the development
of capitalism through cross-border institutions will make the border irrelevant.
That is why, along with their refusal to restore democratic rights to political
prisoners, they also attack the working class in their support for such actions
as hospital closures and the privatisation of public services.
Their actions prove, yet again, that there can be no development of a united
Ireland through a gradual system of stages, starting with a democratic parliament
at Stormont. The six counties is an irreformable entity which can only be removed
by the working class fighting on a socialist programme.
Connolly's maxim that the cause of Ireland and the cause of Labour are indivisible
was never more true. As the next wave of fighters against British rule in Ireland
emerges, it is vital that the organised working class wins its place at the
head of this movement.
We salute the memory of the Hunger Strikers of 1981! We support the fight for
political status today!
Forward to the workers' republic!
Workers' International to Rebuild the Fourth International, 24 October, 2001
(Top of Page)
"Republican Voices" by Kevin Bean
and Mark Hayes, Foreword by Bernadette McAliskey (Seesyu Press £5.00)
from PO Box 31, Belfast BT12 7EE, reviewed here by John Steele
'For a realignment of forces'
Irish Republicanism is in deep crisis. The decision of Sinn Fein to join a
six-county government at Stormont, administering British rule and the openly
anti-working policies of Unionism and New Labour, has produced much disquiet
and soul-searching among its members, particularly those who were at the forefront
of the military struggle.
With the IRA leadership in full agreement with Adams and McGuinness it was only
a matter of time before the decommissioning of weapons took place. Nevertheless,
it has made the unease over the direction of Republicanism more acute. The surrender
of weapons is a blow to deep and sincerely-held Republican values. It effectively
de-legitimises and criminalises the possession of arms in pursuit of the fight
for national self-determination. It attacks the whole concept of political status
that the hunger strikers fought for.
Much of the acquiescence of the Republican movement to the decision to work
in a partionist parliament and decommission arms came from the realisation that
the military struggle could not win and the lack of a developed alternative
to the Adams line. The support for the Good Friday Agreement among Republicans
is based more on the principle of,"It's as good as can be got in the circumstances",
rather than a belief that it will eventually lead to a united Ireland, as the
Sinn Fein leadership contend. Many members of the Provisional Republican movement
openly admit that they have agreed to the process, "With gritted teeth."
However, even allowing for this disquiet, it is remarkable how small the numerical
opposition to the GFA has been. A movement which mobilised tens of thousands
of nationalists on the streets and severely rocked British imperialism has,
with very little trouble from its membership, been reduced to an electoral policy
that accepts the Unionist veto and British rule.
There is, of course, the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA with their political
supporters, but these are groups stuck in a political time-warp of outdated
nationalism with elitist military actions that are totally divorced from any
mass movement or popular support. They cannot provide a basis for victory and
are going nowhere.
This little book, 'Republican Voices', reflects a more serious discussion that
is slowly developing within Republicanism. In her Foreword Bernadette McAliskey
says, "there are important questions to be asked." She says some of
these are "Has the leadership of the movement abandoned Republicanism to
maximise the nationalist agenda Have they determined that the obstacle to Republican
ideals was the continuation of war? Are we any nearer the creation of an independent
Republic? Have Republican leaders consciously decided to abandon the socialist
Republic?"
The book which, it is claimed, "contributes to our understanding of both
the nature and purpose of Irish Republicanism" is compiled from interviews
with six male Republicans, all former activists with the Provisional movement
and ex-prisoners. Some of the views are conflicting, particularly on the issue
of the peace process and the GFA. The editors attempted to have an even wider
spectrum of Republican thinking but several contributors "felt it necessary
to decline or withdraw contributions already made ... because of external pressure
exerted by the Republican movement. Potential contributors who were very supportive
of the current 'mainstream' Republican leadership position withdrew because
they were urged not to be associated with a 'dissident' position or give credibility
to critical discussion."
The contributors try to evaluate, through their experiences of the past thirty-two
years, where Republicanism is now and while these are obviously genuine attempts
at analysing the movement they were such an integral part of, their comments
display both the crisis and confusion of Republican thought at this time. The
questions which Bernadette McAliskey posed are certainly addressed but cannot
be fully answered inside the parameters of Republicanism.
The essential problem with the philosophy of Republicanism is that it was developed
at a time of capitalist expansion and in the colonial countries it became the
ideology of a native bourgeoisie fighting for political and economic independence
in order to develops an indigenous industrial base. But the economic development
s in imperialism produced very explicit limitations on national movements and
more and more ensured that the bourgeois (and petty bourgeois) leaderships had
no independent role to play outside the dictates of imperialism.
McAliskey puts her finger on the problem. "Here lies the unspoken truth
of the tension within Republicanism - it is not a working class ideology based
on socio-economic analysis. It is essentially a bourgeois democratic and liberal
philosophy arguing for a particular political framework through which society
functions." This is obviously correct but McAliskey runs up against a brick
wall in her thinking as she continues, "From a socialist perspective recognising
it for what it is doesn't make it a bad idea."
This displays the woolly thinking and confusion of Republicanism. Bourgeois
democratic philosophy is precisely a "bad idea" when posed as the
answer to the problems of the working class. I'm sure that Bernadette McAliskey
doesn't actually believe that the ideology of the ruling class should not be
challenged. What her comments reflect is the belief that the partition of Ireland
can be achieved separate from the fight for socialism.
The book is particularly rich in its accounts of how the contributors were drawn
into membership of the IRA. The little snapshots of family history and events
give a flavour of the turmoil that existed in nationalists areas where they
were convinced they were taking part in an insurrection. But there is a consistent
tendency to play down the battle for ideas. They are adamant that "the
Republican movement drew its initial legitimacy from the streets" and that,"Contemporary
Republicanism was/is far more a product of the repression and sectarianism perpetrated
by the Stormont regime and Unionism's inability to reform itself.'
Undoubtedly these were the factors that brought the youth in the working-class
areas of the north into the conflict but the manner in which the war was conducted
was connected to the dominant political ideology of the leadership which had
been won over a long period of struggles and splits. It is this absence of an
examination of the ideological struggles inside (and outside) Republicanism
that is the biggest weakness of the book. One of the contributors, Brendan Hughes,
calls for a realignment of forces "if the Orange state is ever going to
be smashed" and suggests the "help of ordinary people, progressive
socialists, working class politicians, progressive Protestant working class
politicians, communist working class politicians, any sort of people with a
genuine interest in the working class."
But this necessary realignment cannot succeed without an attempt to understand
and draw lessons from all previous attempts to take the main political demands
of Republicanism and forge them with a working-class programme and movement.
In particular, of course, there was the struggle of the group around James Connolly's
son, Roddy, to give independent working-class leadership and the experiences
of the Republican Congress and the fight for the demand of the Workers Republic.
But there is also a need to look at the more recent, if limited, attempts to
critically examine the political orientation of the Republican leadership which
some of the contributors to this book were involved with, especially the issues
which were raised in the book, 'Questions of History', written by Republican
prisoners in Long Kesh in 1987. 'Republican Voices' refers to this book, which
Sinn Fein was forced to publish after initially attempting to suppress it, but
there is no mention of the political points raised in it.
The Sinn Fein leadership was particularly upset that there was a criticism of
the 'stages' theory in the book by the Long Kesh prisoners, This important theoretical
issue needs to be revisited as it is precisely on this point that the GFA agreement
is being sold - socialism has to be put on the back burner while all sorts of
anti-working class forces are united in a pan-nationalist front.
The debate within Republicanism is still relatively muted but, despite all its
limitations, 'Republican Voices' is a necessary and welcome contribution to
the fight for a realignment of working-class forces. (Top
of Page)
A missed opportunity
I have read the WIP statement on the war against Afghanistan, which from a
worker's point of view does not clarify matters at all, and I feel it is another
missed opportunity in differentiating the Workers International from the rest
of the left.
My reason for saying so is that it leaves unanswered many of the questions that
people are asking in conversations throughout communities, factories and pubs.
1. The visual impact of 7,000 people being destroyed at the World Trade Centre,
the feelings of horror and grief for those who died, and the sufferings of their
families, relatives and friends is not mentioned. Only 'the attacks on the World
Trade Centre'. The omission is a callous disregard for the impact this has had
on people's consciousness, and the resulting support for pro-Imperialist leaders
throughout the world.
Nothing is said about the traumatic deaths of the hostages on the planes deliberately
crashed into the buildings, or the 'terrorists' who gave their lives in the
suicide attack, or reasons why they did so.
2. No mention is made of Osama Bin Laden whose terrorist organisation is based
on religious fanaticism, or the Taliban who terrorise the Afghan people with
their draconian interpretation of the Koran.
There is no condemnation or explanation of these terrorist acts. Are we for
Bin Laden and the Taliban or against them?
Nothing is said about the reactionary and bankrupt nature of terrorism, nor
do we differentiate between the terrorist acts of imperialism and those of the
oppressed fighting against their own ruling class.
3. We say nothing about the attacks of imperialism on Afghanistan, our position
on the Taliban or the Northern Alliance. Do we support them or call for their
downfall?
4. We say nothing about the relationship between imperialism, the training of
Bin Laden's fanatical terrorists, and the Taliban, who suppress the basic and
democratic rights of the Afghan people. Should Bin Laden be brought to justice
for this atrocity, and if so, by whom?
5. What do we say to the Afghan people about starvation, poverty and the denial
of basic human rights? How can they resolve their problems, i.e. overthrow the
Taliban and install another religious regime?
6. What do we say to the thousands who have lost their jobs and livelihoods
because of the bombing of the World Trade Centre? What do we say to the thousands
of workers and their families who have cancelled their holidays (their one break
in the grind of exploitation) because they are afraid to fly.
These are only some of the issues raised as I watch the developments since 11
September (my 36th wedding anniversary) which I will never forget.
It seems to me that when writing our statement, we have not started from the
premise of the need to raise workers' consciousness by clarifying and explaining
the issues raised by the bombing of the World Trade Centre and the resulting
bombing of Afghanistan.
How can we 'turn to the working class in each country and internationally to
evoke an anti-war movement with real muscle' without addressing the issues from
the standpoint of how the working class perceive them?
I feel the last six paragraphs are weak in explanation and substance, written
in 'Trotskyist'! style, which most working people would not understand.
In conclusion, our statement does nothing to encourage people in Britain, Europe,
America and elsewhere to stop supporting their capitalist and imperialist leaders
from continuing the war against Afghanistan.
We must use our propaganda to intervene now, to clarify issues and raise awareness
of who are the real enemies (and friends) of workers, oppressed and dispossessed.
To break them from their leaders - capitalist, reformist, trade unionist and
religious - who keep them down-trodden and exploited.
I hope my contribution is not merely seen as a criticism of a small group of
dedicated, overworked comrades, who I admire, but a different approach on how
to reach those activists that will be thrown up in the coming months.
Yours most comradely, Jim Bevan (Top of Page)
Hewat Beukes of the Workers Revolutionary Party
comments on the statement by the Workers International League-Fourth International
'Now we must stop Bush's war against the peoples' in Workers International Press
no33.
Bloated self-assurance quickly deflated
I agree with the principles espoused in the document. However, my problem is
one of the assessment of the imperialist response to 11 September. For one,
Afghanistan is only a smoke-screen.
USA imperialism reflected in its larger-than-life heroism has been dealt a massive
blow. This is not the first one against its arrogance and sponsored assassinations.
After the Gulf War, in the wake of the collapse of Stalinism, its bloated self-assurance
as the now undisputed king of the west and the policeman of the world was quickly
deflated when it invaded Somalia.
The accompanying racism also received a serious blow when this supposedly primitive
black nation made rubbish of its video-game military technology by interfering
with their electronics and redirecting their bombs to US and UN camps.
The US people - the working class in particular - is being awakened out of a
drugged existence.
They are forced to contemplate the causes of the terrible events of 11 September.
They are forced by the dual response of the imperialists by job-loss and the
raining of bombs on Afghanistan.
The imperialists cannot and do not feel at ease, because the inevitable mass
upsurge weakens their collaborationist bourgeois regimes in the middle east
and the mass response in western Europe and the USA coincide with the inevitable
attacks on jobs.
The American masses after all stopped the war in Vietnam in conjunction with
the Vietnam revolution.
Even fundamentalism in the long run will not benefit, because in any mass upswell
against imperialism the masses stake their claim and weaken reaction.
What I am essentially trying to say, is that the chain of events does not enforce
imperialism's strength, but in the minds of most people including the Americans,
the USA's invulnerability can be no more.
Imperialism can no longer attain the same stature as when Britannia ruled the
waves.
In the back of each one's mind is the knowledge that the root causes of 11 September
lies in Palestine where with bitter regularity a mother and father bend over
the lifeless body of an 18 month-old baby.
Hewat Beukes, 21 October 2001 (Top of Page)
Europe and America - Two speeches on imperialism by
Leon Trotsky
(£2.50 plus £1 packing and postage from Workers International,
PO Box 735, London SW8 4ZS)
THE TWO speeches reproduced in this pamphlet were delivered in 1924 and 1926.
Any reader is therefore justified in questioning their relevance is for the
world after 11 September 2001.
In fact, the two speeches present a vivid early anticipation of many features
of what today is called 'globalisation', which in reality is the extension and
deepening of the crisis of society based on class conflict and the rule of capital.
Trotsky understood, before most observers, the central fact that the United
States of America had emerged from World War I as the strongest imperialist
power because of her massive industrial capacity. But he noted (or rather anticipated)
a hugely significant feature of America's growing hegemony: that it was destined
to be exercised above all by finance capital.
Trotsky saw that the relationship of forces between the United States and Europe
was not to be one of equals. On her way to world dominion, the US would have
to deal with the outgoing dominant world power, Britain, and 'put Europe on
rations', propping up European capital and at the same time closely circumscribing
its spheres of activity.
He pointed out early examples of the fact that 'Europe's "defending herself"
... comes down in action to this, that two American octopuses fight each other
in order to unite at a given moment for the more planned exploitation of Europe'.
(Page 29).
Trotsky knew how the United States , as the late-comer to world dominion, could
cloak every act of banditry with phrases about liberation and excuse every war
with a pacifist slogan.
And he analysed unforgettably how Europe's social democrats become the 'missionaries'
for Americanisation, laying bare the basic trends underlying this process over
70 years before Tony Blair became the chief apologist for George W. Bush's 'war
on terrorism'.
In discussing America's treatment of French, German and Italian capitalism in
the 1920s, Trotsky could almost be describing the activities of the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund today.
Trotsky clearly anticipated World War II, but at that early date expected the
war would set the United States against Britain, whereas in the event US capital
was able to achieve what it wanted in an alliance with Britain against Germany
and Japan.
Trotsky understood the United States' drive to expand in China, interrupted
for forty years by the Chinese revolution, but resumed with the connivance of
the Chinese leaders in recent decades.
But above all Trotsky posed the question: does a capitalist world order based
on American hegemony offer the possibility of 'developing the productive forces
on a world scale and of leading mankind forward?' (page 39).
He conceded that America's economic strength allied to the virgin territories
of Africa and Asia seemed to offer a 'field for activity for many decades if
not centuries'.
'But', he points out, 'we live under conditions of world economy' (ibid.). Europe
is dependent on America, but that implies that America is vulnerable to problems
arising in Europe and the rest of the world.
America accumulates masses of capital, but this in turn demands fruitful investment
opportunities. America is compelled either to sit on her great wealth and let
it go to waste or to invest abroad, creating industries whose products will
compete with America's own. And the very fact of such investments in Asia, South
America and Africa call forth great social upheavals which in turn have a direct
impact on Wall Street.
Thus American capital itself is the source of the greatest drive to war. As
Trotsky says: 'The American "pacifist" programme of putting the whole
world under her control is not at all a programme of peace. On the contrary
it is pregnant with wars and the greatest revolutionary paroxysms'. (P.19)
In another speech delivered in 1924, Trotsky developed this idea more fully:
'Capitalism encroaches there' (in the East) 'in the form of foreign finance
capital. There it tosses in ready-made machines shaking and undermining the
old economic base and erects upon its splinters the Tower of Babel of capitalist
economy. The action of capitalism in the countries of the East is neither slow
nor 'evolutionary' but abrupt, catastrophic ...' ('Perspectives and Tasks in
the East', New Park Publications, 1973, page 5).
'... all this will prepare the mobilisation of the countless proletarian masses
who will at once burst out of a prehistoric, semi-barbarous state and cast themselves
into industry's melting-pot, the factory'. (Ibid. p 6).
And he goes on to predict: 'and so there must appear on the scene in some countries
and broadly and boldly develop in others the Marxist-Leninist parties of the
East'. (Ibid. p 7).
And Trotsky concludes: 'You must know how to couple together the uprising of
the Indus peasants, the strike of coolies in the port of China, the political
propaganda of Kuomintant bourgeois democracy, the struggle of Koreans for independence,
the bourgeois-democratic rebirth of Turkey and the economic and cultural and
educational work in the Soviet Republic of Transcaucasia; you must know how
... to link all this with the work and struggle of Communists in Britain where
the mole of British communism is slowly - more slowly than many of us would
like -- burrowing.' (Ibid. p. 14).
The power of Trotsky's Marxism was rooted in his understanding of the antagonisms
working away within capitalism itself, antagonisms which have engendered many
episodes in the crisis of imperialism in the years since 1926, and which exploded
once more ferociously on 11 September and in the subsequent events.
Following Lenin, Trotsky viewed this world situation as being one of the objective
prerequisites for a socialist society because:
'A socioeconomic organisation resting solely on the technology of large scale
and biggest enterprises, an organisation correctly constructed along the lines
of trusts and syndicates but on principles of solidarity; an organisation that
embraces the whole nation, the state and then the whole world would offer collosal
material advantages.' (P. 2).
Here is a major point often obscured in discussions on 'globalisation' by those
who hope to reform away the worst features of imperialism or who even hanker
for a return to previous social forms.
Trotsky, however clearly he anticipated the main trends of development, was
far from being a fatalist. He had no conception at all of a spontaneous evolution
from imperialism to socialism. He insisted that for the socialist overturn to
take place there had to exist in the form of the industrial proletariat a class
numerous and influential enough to bring about the socialist overturn.
And then that class had:
'to possess a clear understanding of the situation and to consciously desire
the overturn. It is necessary that there stands at its head a party able to
lead the class during the overturn, and capable of assuring victory.' (P. 2)
When Trotsky delivered these speeches, a process of degeneration in that party
(the Communist International) was already underway. A bureaucratic caste was
usurping state power in the USSR, corrupting the Communist Party as it did so.
Already Trotsky was increasingly isolated within the Communist Party, able to
speak in public only at add locations. It is clear from a section of the second
speech that a process of deliberate lying and falsification was already underway,
here at the hands of Jay Lovestone, an American follower of Stalin's then ally,
Bukharin.
The lies were followed by outright terror, culminating in the complete corrosion
of the Communist International from within.
It is a measure of Trotsky's Marxism that he refused to anticipate the outcome
of the struggle for the revolutionary character of the Communist International
until it had been established in practice. But in these speeches he lays down
a very clear warning, drawn from the experience of the German working class
in 1923:
'Lacking' (in the latter part of 1923) 'was the degree of tempering, the degree
of vision, resolution and fighting ability of the Communist Party to assure
timely action and victory. And this example shall again and again teach all
of us - all the more so the youth - to understand the role and significance
of the correct leadership of the Communist Party, which by historical count
is the last factor of the proletarian revolution, but not the last in point
of importance.' (P. 5)
The victory of the Nazi dictatorship in Germany in1933 was the political fruit
of the corruption of the Communist International. Since that point the struggle
has been for the working class to build a new international revolutionary leadership.
The Fourth International, established in 1938, has stood for the construction
of such a leadership, and the various vicissitudes that its supporters have
fought through have been at the heart of the work for that new international.
The degeneration of the Soviet Union at the hands of the Stalinist bureaucracy
culminated in the collapse of even the caricature of communist rule at the beginning
of the last decade. Since then there has been an orchestrated attack on Marxist
conceptions tied up with an enormous attempt, aided by reformist and ex-Stalinist
leaders, to in fact break up and disorganise the working class, blunt its self-confidence
and enhance individual opportunism and strike-breaking behaviour of every kind.
The development in the world situation in late 2001 is the clearest warning
that Trotsky's prognoses nevertheless were in the main correct. The way out
of humanity's present impasse is not what Bush and Blair propose - the intensification
of capital's rule over every inch of the globe. That will lead only to increasingly
bitter and more profound explosions and conflicts.
Nor can the 'world' institutions created by imperialism be re-structured by
people of good-will, however determined and principled they may be, to enforce
a peaceful world free of terrorism, aggression and exploitation while the basic
social antagonisms remain from which such evils spring.
The way forward lies in the revolutionary liberation of society by the working
class.
With the re-publication of these speeches, Workers International to Rebuild
the Fourth International intends to initiate a series of pamphlets explaining
the main features of capitalist economic and social relations, the development
of imperialism and the character of world relations today, the role of trade
unions in the struggles of the working class, the fight for a working class
political party and the road to the proletarian revolution. (Top
of Page)
An American reader writes: Demonstrate the feasibility
of socialism to workers
The article by Bob Archer in the Oct. 2001 issue of Workers International Press,
"Imperialist Crisis and the Working Class" is excellent at explaining
the current degenerated state of the capitalist system. What I wish that Bob
Archer would do is explain exactly how the socialist organization of society
is the correct evolutionary solution to the current problems arising from the
hegemony of capitalist economies in the period of imperialism.
To win working people to the cause of socialism, more than just pointing out
the barbaric state of affairs of the status quo needs to be done.
It is also necessary to show what to replace capitalism with and to demonstrate
its feasibility. Given the severe reversals of the gains of the Bolshevik revolution,
the path that the Chinese revolution has travelled and the travesties that have
occurred in the name of socialism such as the policies
of Stalin and the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, it is understandable that many
working people will view the call for a socialist revolution with skepticism.
In Solidarity, Peter Lehmann
Bob Archer replies: The real world reveals its necessity more than ever
PETER LEHMANN is right when he says that Stalin, China, Pol Pot, etc have created
great problems and undermined working-class confidence in socialism. Many Marxists,
too, have lost confidence in recent years. If we do not take this into account,
we will not be able to make the progress which has been made possible by the
collapse of Stalinism, the degeneration in so-called socialist parties around
the world, and the deepening economic and social crisis.
However, socialism is not a utopia which may or may not be established depending
on how well we socialists argue for this or that blueprint. The establishment
of socialism is the necessary next step for the human race because of the productive
forces and productive relations which have developed in capitalist society itself.
Socialism is also contained in the way the working class organizes itself, what
it fights for and what it has fought for and achieved.
Capitalism has enhanced to an enormous extent the social nature of production.
This, incidentally, is the powerful and progressive side of 'globalisation'.
These production processes are nowadays organized by huge capitalist companies
(trusts, combines, concerns, multinationals) which have been much criticized
recently because their actions have been seen to be in many ways contrary to
the interests of human beings and the environment in which they have to try
to live.
The reason for this is not the size or power of the companies themselves, but
the capitalist social relations they enshrine.
On the basis of the productive forces developed within capitalism, workers in
the West and in the former USSR and in Eastern Europe were able to achieve certain
gains which were moves towards socialism and which created better conditions
of life. These were education, the health service, water supply, electric and
gas power, transport, social housing, etc. All of these social gains, which
many people came to believe existed automatically as a right, depended on multi-national
companies, automibile manufacturers, construction firms, pharmaceuticals, petroleum,
papermaking, publishing, etc
And of course workers in the West could enjoy these things because the bourgeoisie
used its military domination to exploit colonies economically.
Ultimately, the gains in the former Soviet Union could not be defended and developed
while it was part of a capitalist world. In fact, as time went on the Soviet
Union and all the countries of the so-called Eastern bloc relied on loans from
the World Bank. Nor can the working class in the West defend and develop its
gains while they exist within a production for profit system.
So although we are now faced with the problems of overcoming loss of confidence
in socialism, the real world reveals its necessity more than ever. The social
gains are now being destroyed - privatized - as the multi-national companies
on which these services depend for their day-to-day esiatence are now taking
them over.
The question for all the anti-privatisation campaigns is: do we extend the social
services by taking over the capitalist companies, or do the capitalist companies
take over our services!
The necessity for socialism therefore is revealed both in the way capitalist
production is 'globalised' and in the way the working class is forced to fight
back.
So socialism must be created in advance of its actuality in the way the working
class organizes itself -- in its internationalism
This was an is the first and most important question. The establishment of the
First International was born out of practical necessity: workers were being
pitted against each other. That International was also established in opposition
to utopians who saw socialism as an ideal outside and above the class struggle.
But to remove 'socialism' from the way way workers organize themselves for struggle
against the enemy is to make it into a religion.
The anarchy, destruction, inhumanity, repression, wars, disease and starvation
which capitalist states and capitalist enterprises unleash upon the world are
an expression of the drive for private profit on the part of capital, which
itself becomes a mighty social forces driving and directing the activities of
human beings.
This was why Marx concluded (very early on in his life) that the social nature
of production could only be fully expressed if private property was expropriated.
In a passage in 'The German Ideology' which still deserves careful study, he
said:
'(1) In the development of productive forces there comes a stage when productive
forces and means of intercourse are brought into being, which, under the existing
relationships, only cause mischief and are no longer productive but destructive
forces (machinery and money); and connected with this a class is called forth,
which has to bear all the burdens of society without enjoying its advantages,
which, ousted from society, is forced into the most decided antagonism to all
other classes, a class which forms the majority of all members of society, and
from which emanates the consciousness of the necessity of a fundamental revolution,
the communist consciousness, which may, of course, arise among the other classes
too through the contemplation of the situation of this class. (2) the conditions
under which definite productive forces can be applied, are the conditions of
the rule of a definite class of society, whose social power, deriving from its
property, has its practical-idealistic expression in each case in the form of
the State; and, therefore, every revolutionary struggle is directed against
a class, which till then has been in power'.
(Karl Marx, 'The German Ideology', Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1965, p.85.)
The phrase 'a class ... from which emanates the consciousness of the necessity
of a fundamental revolution' deserves a great deal of consideration. Pondering
this point (and correctly pointing out that such consciousness did not arise
merely from workers generalizing their experience at the point of production),
Lenin added that while the working class gravitated towards socialism, the ruling
class worked might and main to counteract that natural tendency.
In order to achieve the necessary clarity and strength to carry out the revolution,
the working class has to endow itself with its own political party.
However, this is the point which is most often misunderstood by Marxists and
would-be Leninists.
They think that the job is to find a way of explaining the process to workers
in a didactic way. The besetting error of the 'Marxists' today is to try to
organize the Marxist movement separately from workers in struggle and then proseyletise
in the working class.
It is quite true that Stalinism in all its different forms, including Maoism
and Pol Pot, committed dreadful crimes and did enormous damage to the working
class and the socialist movement. Certainly it corrupted Marxism, lied about
theoretical matters and pushed forward political view opposed to the interests
of the working class.
But the worst crime of Stalinism was to bring socialism into disrepute as a
viable future, and that was tied up with a concerted attempt to liquidate the
movement of the working class.
That is what is involved in the turn everywhere by formerly nominally socialist
parties to the most right-wing, pro-capitalist outlook. And it is the same development
which informs the ever-closer collaboration of most trade-union leaders with
the bourgeois state.
To create conditions for a rebirth of Marxism in the working class, Marxists
today must devote every possible resource to re-building the class organizations
of workers.
This is not a question of leaving your Marxism in your pocket when you go into
a discussion with workers, a trade union meeting, a group struggling for civil
rights, or an anti-war rally.
On the contrary, Marxism will prove itself and gain respect to the extent that
it provides people and organizations with a correct way forward and concrete
actions which develop them, with always the need expressed to evoke practical
organization and action by the oppressed and exploited as much as possible.
And Marxists will not be able to do this unless they study in the closest possible
detail the forces that bear on people's political development in this situation,
understanding what Trotsky called 'molecular developments', apparently tiny
changes in the way people think and their ability to act.
And socialism become a truly living question today when the same companies employ
workers all over the world at vastly different rates of wages and of exploitation,
where such a thing as the so-called 'Third World' can exist in which millions
live under vastly different conditions from the so-called 'First World'.
It becomes a vital question when people fleeing war, poverty and repression
set sail across the Timor Sea in cockle-shell open boats, storm the entrance
to the rail-tunnel into the UK or try to break through the US border. Under
these conditions an international organization of militant workers has become
an absolute necessity. (Top of Page)
A reply to Charlie Pottins by Bronwen Handyside: "The
War Crimes Tribunal IS a travesty of justice"
IN HIS criticism of Radoslav Pavlovic's article on Milosevic's appearance before
the Hague War Crimes Tribunal (Workers International Press July/August 2001)
Charlie asks us, (Workers International Press October 2001):
"Surely, instead of denouncing the tribunal as a 'travesty ' before the
star enters the dock, we must demand it does a thorough job?"
But surely the first duty of a Marxist is to identify the class enemy loudly,
continuously and uncompromisingly, especially when that class enemy has a long
and putrid heritage of whitewashes and cover-ups in its efforts to deceive the
working class over its responsibilities for world carnage.
Surely we must not collude in yet another attempt at a cover-up of imperialism's
crimes by saying to the world: "let's wait and see how it turns out. It
may not be so bad after all".
Bill Hunter's article on the Nuremburg trials, originally published in the Trotskyist
paper Socialist Appeal (April 1946) shows how to write about the role of imperialism.
It begins:
"At Nuremburg the Nazi gangsters are in the dock as a sacrificial offering
for the crimes of world capitalism. The trial is being staged to pretend that
only the German imperialists were responsible for the war. Yet in spite of all
precautions, the truth is leaking out that all the major capitalist powers bear
equal responsibility for the devastation of the world."
Half a century later, the imperialists throw their former protégée,
Milosevic, to the wolves to ensure that he and a few others around him will
now carry the can for the policies pursued by the imperialist nations throughout
the course of the Balkans war.
Key to the ongoing struggle of the working class is an understanding of the
class nature of the forces they confront. Whatever the intentions of individuals
working in the War Crimes Tribunal, the fundamental premise on which it is based
is a filthy travesty of justice. How can those who colluded with the war criminals
at every stage of the war have the right to judge the agents with whom they
colluded?
As Charlie knows, the imperialist nations who set up the Tribunal started with
silent complicity in Milosevic's ethnic cleansing and moved on to active collusion
with the imposition of the arms embargo at the beginning of the Bosnian war.
The jackals of European politics proceeded over three years, as Radoslav Pavlovic
points out in detail, to divide and re-divide Bosnia in line with Serb army
victories on the ground.
They imposed the Dayton Agreement, which handed half of Bosnia to the war criminals,
and continues day by day and actively to reinforce those divisions. Incidentally
the one part of Bosnia where the conditions of the Dayton agreement relating
to the return of refugees, and the handing over of war criminals is not enforced
is Republika Srpska.
The divisions are imposed in the interests of the world bourgeoisie (led by
the US) to weaken the working class and make it easier to impose the capitalist
restoration which is providing rich pickings for foreign exploiters.
As Radoslav Pavlovic points out, Bosnia-Herzegovina is under the control of
imperialist-imposed rulers.
Just one small example of this is that last year the Office of the High Representative
of the United Nations in Bosnia approved the process whereby a major state owned
company, Aluminij Mostar, located on territory controlled by the Croatian army,
was privatised by blatant fraud into the hands of Croatian nationalists, making
it an easy target for foreign buyers.
The factory management during and after the war dismissed almost all Serb and
Bosniak workers (the majority), while rewarding Croat employees with shares.
The firm then changed its capital structure to reduce the value of the state-owned
part, handing effective control to a dramatically increased private component
dominated by Croatian nationalist political structures in West Mostar.
The very existence of the War Crimes Tribunal usurps yet another fundamental
sovereign right of peoples of the Balkans, the right to try criminals who have
committed crimes in their own territory in their own properly constituted and
legally recognised courts. It is yet another declaration that their state does
not belong to them, that they have been deprived of the right to decide their
own destiny. Why are they being insulted in this way? Because they came under
attack by genocidal war criminals implicitly and explicitly supported by the
imperialist nations.
Charlie is right to say there can't be anything other than "victor's justice".
But there are victors and victors, as he well knows, and as Bill Hunter's explains
in his piece on Nuremburg:
"The working class, when it comes to power, will put all the criminals
in the dock when they examine the archives. The secret negotiations and schemes,
the plots and counter plots whereby world diplomacy is carried on will all be
revealed pitilessly, as were the secret negotiations which were made public
by the Bolsheviks under Lenin in 1917."
This is the justice demanded by the Women of Srebrenica when they say they want
to know the truth about Srebrenica - and that ALL those involved must be put
in the dock. Is Charlie saying that we accept bourgeois "victor's justice"
and do not point out how it is inadequate?
Hunter shows in his article on the Nuremburg trials how evidence of collaboration
between the European ruling class, the Soviet Bureaucracy and the Nazis was
vigorously suppressed.
In the same way publicity around the few figures dragged in front of the War
Crimes Tribunal is pushed to the forefront while other more significant inquiries
are taking place. Charlie points out that one of the Serb generals responsible
for the Srebrenica massacre has been jailed by the Hague Tribunal. But at the
very same time that General Krstic's (and Dragan Obrenovic's) trial was taking
place, and publicised in the world's media, little attention was paid (I saw
no reports in the UK press) to the French parliamentary inquiry, set up to investigate
the role played by Benrard Janvier, the French general in command of United
Nations forces in Bosnia at the time of the fall of Srebrenica.
A few weeks before Serb nationalist forces under General Ratko Mladic seized
the town, Janvier and Mladic held three meetings during which it is widely thought
the French general guaranteed there would be no UN intervention at Srebrenica
as long as hostage UnProFor troops (many of them French) were released.
When Mladic's troops attacked the town, Janvier refused a number of increasingly
frantic pleas from the Dutch UN soldiers on the ground for air strikes. He refused
one request because, he said, it had been faxed on the wrong form.
The French set up the inquiry under pressure from several groups, including
Medecins Sans Frontieres, which suspected that Janvier was acting on instructions
from the highest echelons of the French government, probably former Prime Minister
Alain Juppe. Juppe has appeared in front of the inquiry, and denied all involvement.
But when Janvier gave evidence, the court went into closed session.
The lack of air strikes told Mladic that he was free to slaughter as many Muslims
at Srebrenica as he liked. If Janvier agreed with him that there would be no
air strikes then he should be in the dock, and perhaps this is why NATO forces
in Bosnia show no signs of arresting him, or his fellow indicted war criminal,
Karadzic.
A few points in conclusion: the headline given to Rade's article: "War
Crimes Tribunal a travesty of justice" was not a mistake. Or is Charlie
suggesting that the Tribunal will fully administer justice? From the points
he makes in his letter about the Nuremburg trials, it would appear that he is
not.
Radoslav and Workers International Press are not "complaining" (as
Charlie implies) because Serb leaders are being prosecuted. But we are not fooled
into thinking that those prosecutions mean that real justice will be done. We
are not even fooled into thinking that we should wait and see if justice will
be done.
I don't understand why Charlie says (when Radoslav points out that Milosevic
is as guilty of the Srebrenica massacre as Sharon is of those at Sabra and Chatila)
"spare us the irony". There is no irony in that statement, it is simply
a matter of fact.
No one in the Workers International has ever suggested that we don't make use
of the bourgeois courts.
Finally: we cannot join in concealing the role of the imperialist nations from
their victims. It is an essential part of the struggle to ensure they cease
to be victims. We can be completely open about our politics when we work with
those who still have illusions about the nature of imperialism (as all of us
do on a daily basis), but we must never tell them that we are not quite sure
ourselves and that we must wait and see how it pans out.
When Charlie says: "We must demand that it [the War Crimes Tribunal] does
a thorough job" he implies that perhaps it can - and thereby he is doing
a thorough disservice to the working class.
Unless our understanding and identification of the class forces at work in the
world is as clear as we can make it, how can we engage in revolutionary activity?
Workers Aid for Bosnia, for which Charlie salutes Radoslav's instrumental role,
was set up on the basis that the European working class had to come to the aid
of the Bosnian people. We fought for the development of Workers Aid, even though
we could see that many of the charitable aid organisations, including the United
Nations, had far more resources than we, because we knew that the construction
of that organisation would strengthen the working class.
We did not wait around to see whether bourgeois aid organisations or politicians
might act in a way to strengthen the unity of the European working class. We
were crystal clear from the outset that there is no way that they would, because
of their class nature. (Top of Page)
