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Say NO! to all varieties of Stalinism!
 

 사회주의 조직이라는 곳에서 사회주의 조직운동의 가장 기본인 '비판의 자유'가 목졸림 당했다. 이 땅의 스탈린주의를 거부하는 모든 혁명적 사회주의자들,  사회주의 ABC를 제대로 알고 실천하는  모든 동지들,  그리고 노동자민주주의를 방어하는 모든 전투적 노동자들과 함께 반드시 제자리로 돌려놓을 것을 다짐한다.

그리고,  비판의 자유를 억압하는 것이 무엇인지도 모른채,  사회주의자들에게 얼마나 치명적이고 무서운 일인지도 깨닫지 못한채 저질러버린(조직의 일부 사업내용을 비판하는 표현에 대해 조직을 부정하는 행위였다고  자신들이 일방적으로  판단하고 제재를 가하는),   폐쇄적이고 관료적인 써클주의 운동의 피폭을 받은  폭거의 주도자들과 그들의 뒷 배경에 일단 무거운 애도를 표한다.

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Earthquakes, tsunamis and nuclear accidents in Japan: capitalism is a horror show

by ICC

"Fear the worst!" That's the message now splashed across newspaper front pages, in all the media, and on the lips of the world's leaders too. But it can't get any worse! Because from the earthquake, to the tsunami and then the nuclear accidents, and it's not finished there, it means the current predicament of the Japanese population is horrific. And because now there are millions of people on the planet living under the Sword of Damocles of the nuclear cloud released by the reactors at Fukushima. This time round, it is not a poor country like Haiti and Indonesia that is being hit hard but the heart of one of the most industrialised countries of the world, one that specialises in cutting-edge technologies.
It's a country that has first-hand experience of the devastating effects of nuclear energy, having suffered the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Capitalism makes humanity more vulnerable to natural disasters

Once again, the madness of capitalism and irresponsibility of the bourgeoisie has become front page news. Only now is the world finding out that millions of people have been crammed into wooden houses, along coastal shores, permanently threatened by the risk of earthquakes and giant waves that can consume all before them. And this in a country that's the world's third largest economic power!
As if this were not enough, they have also built nuclear power stations, which are all real time bombs, at the mercy of the earthquakes and the tsunamis. Most of Japan's nuclear power plants were built 40 years ago, not only in densely populated areas but also near the coast. They are therefore particularly vulnerable to flooding. Thus, of the 55 Japanese reactors spread over 17 sites, 11 have been affected by the disaster. As a direct consequence, the population is already exposed to radiation levels that have officially[1] risen to more than 40 times the norm as far away as in Tokyo, 250 km from Fukushima, a radiation level which the Japanese government nonetheless declared to be of “no risk”! And it’s not only nuclear power stations that have been hit but also petrochemical plants built by the coast, and some of these have set on fire, which will only make the disaster worse and add to the existing ecological catastrophe.
 

The bourgeoisie is still trying to make us believe that it is all the fault of nature, that we cannot predict the power of earthquakes and the magnitude of tsunamis. This is true. But what is most striking is how capitalism, after two hundred years in which it has produced phenomenal scientific knowledge and technical know-how that could be used to prevent this kind of disaster constantly increases the monstrous danger to humanity. The capitalist world of today has enormous technological machinery but is not able to use it to benefit humanity, as it is only concerned with the profits of capital... to the detriment of our livelihoods.
Since the Kobe earthquake disaster in 1995, the Japanese government has, for example, developed a policy of constructing earthquake resistant buildings that have withstood the quake, but which are intended to house the very rich or to serve as city office blocks.

The bourgeoisie tells big lies

Today, comparisons abound with previous major nuclear accidents, especially with the melt-down of the reactor at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979. Officially no-one died in that one. In comparison, all the political leaders are saying that the current disaster is not "for now" as serious an incident as the explosion of the Chernobyl power plant in 1986. Should we be reassured by these outrageously optimistic remarks? How do we assess the real danger to the populations of Japan, Asia, Russia, the Americas… and the world? The answer leaves us in no doubt: the consequences will be dramatic in every sense. There is already major nuclear pollution in Japan and the TEPCO officials who operate the Japanese nuclear plants can only deal with the risk of an explosion by fiddling with the problem day by day and shamelessly exposing hundreds of employees and fire-fighters to fatal levels of radiation. Here we see the fundamentaldifference between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. On the one hand there is a ruling class that has no hesitation in sending ‘its’ people to their deaths and, more generally still, endangering the lives of tens of millions of people in the name of its sacrosanct profits. On the other hand, there are workers ready to sacrifice their lives and to suffer the slow and unbearable agony of exposure to radiation on humanity's behalf.Today, the impotence of the bourgeoisie is such that after a week of desperate attempts to cool the damaged reactor, its specialists are forced to play the sorcerer's apprentice, trying to reconnect the different systems for cooling the reactor's core onto the electricity network. Nobody knows if this will work: either the pumps work properly and succeed in cooling the reactor, or the cables and equipment are damaged which could create short-circuits, fires and... explosions! The only solution then will be to cover the core of the reactor with sand and concrete, like... Chernobyl.[2] Faced with such atrocities now and in the future, our exploiters will always respond in the same way: with lies!

In 1979, Washington lied about the radioactive effects of the meltdown of the core of the reactor, while still evacuating 140,000 people; if no actual deaths were reported, the cancers still multiplied one hundredfold in the population, something which the U.S. government never wanted to acknowledge.

With regard to Chernobyl, when the problems mounted with the plant and its maintenance, the Russian government hid the urgency of the situation for weeks. Only after the reactor exploded and an immense nuclear cloud was dispersed miles up in the air and thousands of miles around did the world come to see the magnitude of the disaster. But this kind of behaviour is not just peculiar to Stalinism. The western officials behaved exactly the same. At the time, the French government excelled itself with a whopping great lie about this cloud coming to a full stop right at the western border of France! Another interesting fact, even today, is that the WHO (World Health Organisation), no doubt colluding with the IAEA (International Agency for Atomic Energy), produced a derisory and even laughable review of the Chernobyl explosion: 50 people dead, 9 children deaths from cancer, and a possible 4,000 more cancer fatalities! In fact, according to a study by the New York Science Academy, 985,000 people perished due to this nuclear accident.[3] And today these very same agencies are responsible for producing a run-down on the situation at Fukushima and informing us of the risks! How, after that, are they at all believable? For example, what is going to become of those they call "the liquidators" (those who are now dealing with the emergency) at Fukushima when we know that at Chernobyl "of the 830,000 liquidators brought onto the site after the event, between 112,000 and 125,000 are dead."[4] Even today, the bourgeoisie tries to hide the fact that this reactor is still highly dangerous as there is still an urgent necessity to continue enclosing the reactor core under more and more new layers of concrete, just as it hides the fact that there have been no less than 200 incidents at the Fukushima power stations during the past ten years!

All countries lie about the dangers from nuclear power! The French State expresses unerring confidence that the 58 nuclear reactors of L'Hexagone, the company in charge, are perfectly safe, when most of these power stations are either in seismic zones, or in coastal areas, or on rivers vulnerable to flooding. During the stormy weather of 1999, when gales inflicted serious damage across France and left 88 dead in Europe, the power station at Blaye, near Bordeaux, was flooded and this nearly caused the melt-down of a reactor. Few people knew about it. And then there's the power station at Fessenheim that was so obsolescent that it had to close-down for a few years. But by using replacement parts (many of which aren't the approved standard), it is somehow still in operation, and no doubt the maintenance staff will suffer the consequences of exposure to the radiation. That’s what they mean by "being in control" and “transparency”!
 

From the beginning of the earthquake in Japan, on Friday, March 11^th, the media advisedly reassured us that the Japanese nuclear power stations were among the "safest" in the world. Two days later it contradicted itself and recalled that the company, TEPCO, which manages the power stations in Japan, had already hidden incidents of nuclear radiation leaks. How can it be that the power stations in France, where "in the space of ten years, the number of minor incidents and faults at nuclear sites has doubled"[5], like they have elsewhere in the world, "are any "safer"? In no way at all. "Around 20% of the 440 commercial reactors in operation worldwide are located in areas of ‘significant seismic activity’, according to the WNA, World Nuclear Association, a grouping of industrialists. Some of the 62 reactors under construction are also in areas of seismic risk, just like many of the 500 other projects especially in countries with emerging economies. Several nuclear power stations - including the four reactors at Fukushima damaged by the tsunami on March 11^th - are on or near the ‘Ring of Fire’, a 40,000 km arc of tectonic faults around the Pacific."[6]
 

Thus, reliable information "suggests that radioactive elements are more and more around us. For example, while plutonium did not exist naturally before 1945, we are now finding it in the milk teeth of British children."[7], and this despite the fact that Britain has ended its commercial nuclear programme.

Capitalism is pushing mankind towards more and more disasters
 

And Japan is not just suffering from the nuclear catastrophe but from another humanitarian disaster too. Thus, the world's third largest economic power has been plunged into crisis, unprecedented since the Second World War, in the space of a few hours. The same terrifying ingredients are present: massive destruction, tens of thousands dead and to top it off, radiation, like that from the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Millions of people in north-eastern Japan are having to live without electricity, without drinking water, with diminishing supplies of food, supplies which may already be contaminated. 600,000 people have been uprooted by the tsunami that has devastated entire towns close to the Pacific Ocean, and have been left destitute, out in the cold and the snow. Contrary to what the Japanese government says – it has continued to downplay the seriousness of the situation, and the numbers affected, providing small details of the increase in people dead, day after day - we can already, without hesitation, begin to count the deaths in the tens of thousands for the country as a whole. The sea is continually depositing dead bodies along the shores. This against a backdrop of massive destruction of homes, buildings, infrastructure, hospitals, schools, etc.
 

Villages, buildings, trains and even entire towns were swept away by the power of the tsunami that struck the north-eastern coast of Japan. For some towns, located in what are usually narrow valleys like at Minamisanriku, at least half the 17,000 people were swept away and perished. With the warning given by the government of only 30 minutes, the roads were quickly congested, putting the "laggards" at the mercy of the waves.

The population has been saluted by all the Western media for its "exemplary courage" and "discipline", and has been called on by the Japanese Prime Minister to "rebuild the country from scratch", i.e. in plain language, the working class of this country must now expect fresh hardship, increased exploitation and worsening poverty. Admittedly, all this fits in nicely with the propaganda abouta servile population that exercises with the company boss in the mornings, who are silent and submissive, and who remain quite stoical and carry on as normal while the buildings are crashing down on top of them. For sure, the Japanese population is extraordinarily courageous, but the reality is completely at odds with the "stoicism" described in the papers. Apart from the hundreds of thousands who packed into gyms and other communal areas, and whose anger rose to a fever pitch and rightly so, hundreds of thousands of others tried to flee, including a growing number of the around 38 million people in Tokyo and its suburbs. And those who remained, did not do it to brave the dangers but because they had no choice. With no money, where can you go? And who's going to take you in? In every sense, being an ‘environmental refugee’ isn't acceptable in the eyes of the bourgeoisie. About 50 million people are forced to migrate every year for reasons connected to the environment but they have no status under the UN Convention, even if they are victims of a disaster, be it "nuclear" or whatever. Clearly, the Japanese with no money who wants to try to escape the nuclear disaster, or simply to relocate elsewhere in the world, is going to be denied the ‘right of asylum’ all round the world.

This insane system of exploitation is moribund and shows itself to be more barbaric with every passing day. Although immense knowledge and enormous technological power has been acquired by mankind, the bourgeoisie is incapable of putting it to work for the good of humanity, to protect us all against natural disasters. Instead of this, capitalism is a destructive force, not just here and there, but all over the world.
 

"We have no other choice, faced with this capitalist hell: it's Socialism or Barbarism. We must fight it or die"[8].

Mulan 19/3/11

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리비아의 위기 : 제국주의자들이 '민주주의'를 가장한 새로운 폭격을 준비하다!

*제국주의가 말하는  민주주의는 노동자민주주의와는 상관없는 서구 부르주아 민주주의의 강요일 뿐이다.
*또한, 반제국주의 투쟁을 위해 독재자를 옹호.방어하는 것이야말로 노동자국제주의를 민족주의 수준으로 타락시키는 반노동자계급적 사상들이다.

*제국주의 전쟁으로 고통받고 죽음당하는 프롤레타리아계급을  제국주의와  독재자로부터 방어하라!!!

*제국주의자들의 탐욕에 찬 폭탄세례가 아닌, 프롤레타리아계급의 국제적 연대와  무장투쟁으로 독재자와 제국주의를  타도하고  프롤레타리아권력 쟁취하자!!!

The Libyan Crisis: Imperialism Prepares New “Democratic” Bombs

The world capitalist crisis is hitting the peripheral economies of the Middle East and those strategies linked to oil and gas production. It has moved masses of the dispossessed to action and unleashed competition between the various international imperialist line ups. France and Britain are already ready to intervene whilst the small Italian imperialism prepares to take on a major role in the operation making military bases available and mobilising all necessary air and naval forces.

 

 

Even if it is still early to take a definite position of the Libyan events because the situation is still moving and thus nothing definite has been decided except Western imperialism’s escalation towards military intervention camouflaged as a humanitarian mission. The Colonel’s days may be numbered but his strenuous defence characterised by the need to reconquer lost territory, above all oil areas continues, notwithstanding the fact that the international capitalist community has put in the field all its weapons, from the legal (International Criminal Court) to the economic: embargoes, economic sanctions and freezing of assets held abroad and finally UN Resolution 1973 which imposes a “no-fly zone” over all Libya. This is the premises for a possible future full-scale military intervention whether by air or sea or on the ground depending on the tactical demands of military coordination.

Nonetheless we can make three immediate observations.

 

The first is that the revolt in Benghazi and other cities of Cyrenaica, as in some places south of Tripoli has broken Gaddafi’s enforced balance between his own tribe and the other Libyan tribes who for 40 years have been forced to submit to the political and economic dictatorship of the Colonel.
At the bottom of this are the never satisfied demands for autonomy of the tribal bourgeoisie of Cyrenaica and the Fezzan and, not least, the chance to autonomously control the oil revenues which until a few weeks ago were the prerogative of the “Green” dictator. It is no accident that the first protest moves took place in the East of the country where a provisional government has already arisen. It has the task of controlling the oilfields and guaranteeing the use and exploitation of them for Western clients.
The previous balance of power in the country was based on force. Gaddafi and his sons had absolute control of the army, the police, and the air force. They did not just control, but owned, the oil wells through the private management of national companies for gas and oil. This gave to the chief tribes, allied or submissive some crumbs from the already mentioned revenues according to their political value or their potential danger in the terms of (non) alignment in any struggle over the power of the “rais” himself. With this mould now broken, the bigger tribes like the Warfalla, who control a vast territory to the south of Tripoli, have mobilised against the regime. In 1993,in the middle of the international embargo against the Tripoli Government imposed after the Lockerbie bombing, the Warfalla had already attempted a coup d’état. Gaddafi brutally repressed it with dozens publically hanged and more than 2000 arrested. The Zuwayya who live in the central region between Tripoli and Benghazi, the Misurata and the Abu Llail, who control the area of pipelines in the eastern part of Cyrenaica have taken the initiative to ride the tiger of popular protest in an attempt to end a game that has been going on for 40 years. All the major tribes have small armies and a limited number of light weapons. In the initial period of the revolt they attacked barracks and weapons dumps. In the present state of things the Libyan revolt appears to be a tribal civil war, in other words between bourgeois factions for the political and economic domination of the country, the second oil exporting nation in Africa after Nigeria, and the twelfth in global terms.

 

The second observation regards the possible fracture of the present balance on the Middle Eastern energy fronts with all the consequences that would bring. It is not for nothing that the USA, with the support of France and Britain, proposed the UN resolution, with the aim of ensuring that events in Libya were not left to themselves with all the dangers that would entail. The imperialist preoccupation is not only about the future destiny of Libyan oil and gas, important if not decisive though they are in the international energy balance, they are also worried about the extension of the crisis to the Arabian peninsula. The winds of revolt are blowing through Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, which all surround the south-east and south-west of Saudi Arabia, or rather the biggest oil producer in the world and the main supplier of the USA. If Riyadh were also to enter the eye of the storm it would lead to new positions being taken, to new military manoeuvres no longer contained by psychological deterrence or by creating “no fly zones” which for the moment allows air attacks to disrupt Gaddafi’s militias in order to convince them to listen to more pacific counsel. There is no joking when it comes to ensuring energy supplies from the Middle East. US imperialism has already produced two wars which have not yet ended, is strenuously battling for control of the trade and transport routes for black gold from Central Asia to the Mediterranean coast. A similar critical situation in the Arabian ports is already setting the weapons of war twitching. For now the United States is watching carefully to see what will happen … China too, already present in Niger, Nigeria, Sudan and Chad, would not be certain to just look on. All of this in the face of hundreds of thousands of refugees – victims of the nasty internal bourgeois quarrels and international imperialist games – about which they sing the usual litany of lamentation whilst doing nothing in terms of mere humanitarian aid.

 

 

The third observation concerns the delay and lack of unanimity over the launch of resolution 1973. Out of the 15 members of the UN Security Council 10 voted in favour with five abstentions, comprising China, Russia, India, Brazil and Germany. This is no accident. It is not only the 1.5million barrels of oil from Libya per day that is at stake. It is also the role of France and Italy in the Mediterranean basin, the ambitions of Anglo-Saxon imperialism to play a role of control and domination, and the entire question of the Middle East and its energy supplies. In Bahrain, a small country but rich in oil, there is a civil war between the Sunnis (30% of the population who hold power and benefit from the oil income) and the Shiites (70%) who don’t get a penny from the oil payments. Sunni and Shia who in fact should go under their real name: a bourgeoisie of Sunni religious persuasion and a Shiite religious community who are fighting for political power, primarily determined by the economic situation. Behind this bourgeois line-up are the two imperialisms of the area: Shiite Iran and Wahabist-Sunni Saudi Arabia which, amidst a deafening international silence, has initiated a full-blown military invasion of Bahrain in order to guarantee a key anti-Iranian political ally. Even in Qatar the same scenario is being repeated, only this time the imperialist architects are Turkey and Iran.

All this is in the context of yet more tension. In Yemen Saleh has not hesitated to fire on the crowd with dozens killed. In Oman the situation remains edgy. In Saudi Arabia itself anti-Saud feeling is strong and insistent.

 

 

Within this framework it is natural for the respective imperialist fronts to act in defence of their own immediate and future interests. USA, Britain, France on one side. Russia, China, India, Germany and Brazil on the other. The prize is energy supplies amounting to 65% of the world’s needs. This underlines how there is another aspect to the Libyan question. For US imperialism (but not only the US) the major preoccupation is Riyadh: its capacity to resist, its oil, and world energy stability. Washington’s plan is to give NATO — fronted by the Europeans, with France and Britain in the front line — the task of controlling Gaddafi while the energy is reserved for whatever Arab front the situation eventually throws up.

 

As for the working masses of Libya, so long as they remain integrated in the tribal set-up, or take up the demands for freedom and democracy called for by the bourgeois opposition against the tyrant, there is no possibility of emancipation. Freedom and democracy at most would mean new, stronger political and ideological fetters, so that the same process of subjection and exploitation would carry on as it was before. It would not question the prime motor of this crisis: the settling of scores between the bourgeois tribes which have sprung up, or the alarming volatility of increasingly-voracious imperialism. In other words if they do not question the economic system which goes under the name of capitalism the merry-go-round of domestic and international interests will continue to turn with its macabre burden of crisis, civil war and imperialist arrogance.

 

The same thing applies to all the rest of the turmoil in the region. If the struggles limit themselves to the ‘conquest’ of democracy it means the end of any possibility of their developing an anti-capitalist agenda. It would signify the victory of this or that bourgeois faction in tow behind one of the fronts of international imperialism. Either a sign of a revival of class struggle will erupt on the Middle Eastern political scene in the form of a revolutionary political vanguard, or everything will go back to what it was before. Or almost, in a bloodbath, as in the usual imperialist script.

 

FD, 19 March 2011

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사노위 서울지역위원회가 발행하는 온라인 신문 <사회주의자 통신> 창간호를 발행하였습니다.

PDF파일을 열어 보실 수 있는 프로그램이 설치 되어 있다면 아래 링크를 클릭하거나

첨부된 pdf파일을 내려 받기 하시면 읽으실 수 있습니다.

동지들의 많은 관심 부탁합니다.

 http://swc.jinbo.net/seoultong/ssotong.pdf

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What is happening in the Middle East?

The current events in the Middle East and North Africa are of historic importance, the consequences of which have yet to be entirely clear. Nevertheless, it is important to develop a discussion about them that will enable revolutionaries to elaborate a coherent framework of analysis. The points that follow are neither that framework in itself, still less a detailed description of what has been taking place, but simply some basic reference points aimed at stimulating the debate.  

1. Not since 1848 or 1917-19 have we seen such a widespread, simultaneous tide of revolt. While the epicentre of the movement has been in North Africa (Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, but also Algeria and Morocco), protests against the existing regimes have broken out in Gaza, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Bahrain and Saudi, while a number of other repressive Arab states, notably Syria, have been on high alert. The same goes for the Stalinist regime in China. There are also clear echoes of the protests in the rest of Africa: Sudan, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Swaziland.... We can also see the direct impact of the revolts in the demonstrations against government corruption and the effects of the economic crisis in Croatia, in the banners and slogans of student demonstrations in the UK and workers’ struggles in Wisconsin, and no doubt in many other countries as well. This is not to say that all these movements in the Arab world are identical, either in their class content, their demands, or in the response of the ruling class, but there are evidently a number of common features which make it possible to talk about the phenomenon as a whole.

2. The historical context in which these events are unfolding are the following:

• a profound economic crisis, the most severe in the history of capitalism, which has hit the weaker economies of the Arab world with particular force, and which is already plunging millions into abject poverty, with the prospect of even worse conditions ahead. The youth, which, in contrast to many of the ‘ageing’ central countries, makes up a very large percentage of the total population, has been hit especially hard, with unemployment and the lack of any visible future the lot of educated and uneducated young people alike. In every case, it has been the young people who have been in the forefront of these movements;
• the unbearably corrupt and repressive nature of all the regimes in the region. While for a long time the ruthless activity of the secret police or the armed forces has kept the population in a state of atomisation and fear, these very weapons of the state have now served to generalise the will to gather together and resist. This was very clear in Egypt, for example, when Mubarak dispatched his army of thugs and policemen in civilian clothes to terrorise the masses holding Tahrir Square: these provocations merely strengthened the latter’s resolve to defend themselves and drew thousands more into the protests. Similarly, the outrageous corruption and greed of the ruling cliques, who have amassed huge private fortunes while the vast majority struggled to survive from day to day, further fuelled the flames of rebellion once people had begun to overcome their fears;
• this sudden loss of fear, commented on by many of the participants, is a product not only of changes at the local and regional level, but also of a climate of growing discontent and overt class struggle at the international level. Everywhere, faced with the economic crisis, the exploited and the oppressed have been increasingly unwilling to make the sacrifices demanded of them. Here again, the role played by the new generation has been essential, and in this sense the youth rebellion in Greece two years ago, the student struggles in the UK and Italy, the fight against pension reforms in France have also had their impact in the ‘Arab’ world, especially in the age of Facebook and Twitter when it is much harder for the bourgeoisie to maintain a consistent black-out of struggles against the status quo. 
•  

3. The class nature of these movements is not uniform and varies from country to country and according to different phases. On the whole, however, we can characterise them as movements of the non-exploiting classes, social revolts against the state. The working class has, in general, not been in the leadership of these rebellions but it has certainly had a significant presence and influence which can be discerned both in the methods and forms of organisation thrown up by the movement and, in certain cases, by the specific development of workers’ struggles, such as the strikes in Algeria and above all the major wave of strikes in Egypt which were a key factor in the decision to dump Mubarak (and which we have written about in these pages). In the majority of these countries, the proletariat is not the only oppressed class. The peasantry, and other strata deriving from even older modes of production, although largely fragmented and ruined by decades of capitalist decline, still have a weight in the rural areas, while in the cities, where the revolts have always been centred, the working class exists alongside a large middle class which is on the road towards proletarianisation but still has its specific features, and a mass of slum dwellers who are made up partly of proletarians and partly of small traders and more lumpenised elements. Even in Egypt, which has the most concentrated and experienced working class, eyewitnesses in Tahrir Square emphasised that the protests had mobilised ‘all classes’, with the exception of the upper echelons of the regime. In other countries the weight of the non-proletarian strata has been much stronger than it has been in the majority of struggles in the central countries. 

4. In trying to understand the class nature of these rebellions, we therefore have to avoid two symmetrical errors: on the one hand, a blanket identification of all the masses in movement with the proletariat (a position most characteristic of the Groupe Communiste Internationaliste), and on the other hand a rejection of anything positive in revolts which are not explicitly working class. The question posed here takes us back to previous events, such as those in Iran at the end of the 1970s, where again we saw a popular revolt in which, for a while, the working class was able to assume a leading role, though this in the end was not sufficient to prevent the recuperation of the movement by the Islamists. At a more historical level, the problem of the relationship between the working class and more general social revolts is also the problem of the state in the period of transition, which emerges from the movement of all the non-exploiting classes but in the face of which the working class needs to maintain its class autonomy.   

5. In the Russian revolution, the soviet form was engendered by the working class but it also provided a model of organisation for all the oppressed. Without losing a sense of proportion – because we are still a long way from a revolutionary situation in which the working class is able to provide clear political leadership to the other strata – we can see that working class methods of struggle have had an impact on the social revolts in the Arab world:

• in tendencies towards self-organisation, which appeared most clearly in the neighbourhood protection committees that emerged as a response to the Egyptian regime’s tactic of unleashing criminal gangs against the population, in the ‘delegate’ structure of some of the massive meetings in Tahrir Square, in the whole process of collective discussion and decision making;
• in the seizing of spaces normally controlled by the state to provide a central focus for assembling and organising on a massive scale; 
• in a conscious assumption of the necessity for massive self-defence against the thugs and police dispatched by the regimes, but at the same time a rejection of violence, destruction and looting for their own sake; 
• in deliberate efforts to overcome sectarian and other divisions which have been cynically manipulated by the regimes: divisions between Christian and Muslim, Shia and Sunni, religious and secular, men and women;           
• in the numerous attempts to fraternise with the rank and file soldiers.

It is no accident that these tendencies developed most strongly in Egypt where the working class has a long tradition of struggle and which, at a crucial stage in the movement, emerged as a distinct force, engaging in a wave of struggles which, like those in 2006-7, can be seen as ‘germs’ of the future mass strike, containing many of its most important characteristics: the spontaneous extension of strikes and demands from one sector to another, the intransigent rejection of state trade unions and certain tendencies towards self-organisation, the raising of both economic and political demands. Here we see, in outline, the capacity of the working class to come forward as the tribune of all the oppressed and exploited and offer the perspective of a new society.

6. All these experiences are important stepping stones towards the development of a genuinely revolutionary consciousness. But the road in that direction is still a long one, and is obstructed by many and obvious illusions and ideological weaknesses:

• illusions, above all, in democracy, which are extremely strong in countries which have been governed by a combination of military tyrants and corrupt monarchies, where the secret police is omnipresent and the arrest, torture and execution of dissidents is commonplace. These illusions provide an opening for the democratic ‘opposition’ to come forward as an alternative team for managing the state: El Baradei and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Transition Government in Tunisia, the National Council in Libya... In Egypt, illusions in the army as being ‘with the people’ are particularly strong, although recent repressive actions by the army against demonstrators in Tahrir Square will certainly lead to reflection on the part of a minority.   An important aspect of the democratic myth in Egypt is the demand for independent trade unions, which no doubt involves many of the most militant workers who have quite rightly called for the dissolution of the discredited official unions;
• illusions in nationalism and patriotism, exhibited in the very widespread adoption of the national flag as the symbol of the ‘revolutions’ in Egypt and Tunisia, or, as in Libya, of the old monarchist flag as an emblem of all those opposed to Gaddafi’s rule. Again, the branding of Mubarak as an agent of Zionism on a number of banners in Egypt shows that the question of Israel/Palestine remains as a potential lever for diverting class conflict towards imperialist conflict. That said, there was little interest in raising the Palestinian question, given the fact that the ruling class has so long used the sufferings of the Palestinians as a way of diverting attention from the sufferings they imposed on their own populations; and there was surely an element of internationalism in the waving of the flags of other countries as an expression of solidarity with their rebellions. The sheer extent of the revolts across the ‘Arab’ world and beyond is a  demonstration of the material reality of internationalism, but patriotic ideology is very adaptable and in these events we are seeing how it can morph into more popular and democratic forms;
• illusions in religion, with the frequent use of public prayers and the use of the Mosque as an organising centre for rebellion. In Libya, there is evidence that more specifically Islamist groups (home-grown rather than linked to al Qaida as Gaddafi claims) played a significant role in the revolt from the beginning.  This, together with the role of tribal loyalties, is a reflection of the relative weakness of the Libyan working class and the backwardness of the country and its state structures. However, given the extent to which radical Islamism of the Bin Laden variety  has posed itself as the answer to the misery of the masses in the ‘Muslim lands’, the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt, and even in Libya and the Gulf states like Yemen and Bahrain have shown that the Jihadi groups, with their practice of small terrorist cells and their noxious sectarian ideologies, have been almost entirely marginalised by the massive character of the movements and their genuine efforts to overcome sectarian divisions. 

7. The current situation in North Africa and the Middle East is still in a state of constant flux. At the time of writing there are expectations of protests in Riyadh, even though the Saudi regime has already decreed that all demonstrations are contrary to sharia law. In Egypt and Tunisia, where the ‘revolution’ has supposedly triumphed already, there are continuous clashes between protestors and the now ‘democratic’ state, which is administered by more or less the same forces who ran the show before the ‘dictators’ departed. The strike wave in Egypt, which quickly won many of its demands, seems to have abated. But neither the workers’ struggle nor the wider social movement have suffered any set-back in those countries, and there are signs of a widespread discussion and reflection going on, certainly in Egypt. However, events in Libya have taken a very different turn. What appears to have begun as a genuine revolt from below, with unarmed civilians courageously storming military barracks and torching the HQ of the so-called Peoples’ Committees, especially in the east of the country, has been rapidly transformed into a full-scale and very bloody ‘civil war’ between bourgeois fractions, with the imperialist powers hovering over the carnage. In marxist terms, in fact, this is an instance of the transformation of an incipient civil war – in its real sense of a direct and violent confrontation between the classes – into an imperialist war. The historical example of Spain – despite considerable differences in the global balance of class forces, and in the fact that the initial revolt against Franco’s coup was unmistakeably proletarian in nature – shows how the national and international bourgeoisie can indeed intervene in such situations to both pursue its factional, national and imperialist rivalries and to crush all possibility of social revolt. 

8. The background to this turn of events in Libya is the extreme backwardness of Libyan capitalism, which has been ruled for over 40 years by the Gaddafi clique predominantly through the terror apparatus directly under his command. This structure mitigated against the development of the army as a force capable of putting the national interest above the interest of a particular leader or faction, as we saw in Tunisia and Egypt. At the same time, the country is torn by regional and tribal divisions and these have played a key role in determining support or opposition to Gaddafi. A ‘national’ form of Islamism also seems to have been a factor in the revolt from the beginning, although the rebellion was originally more general and social rather than being merely tribal or Islamic. The principal industry in Libya is oil and the turmoil there has had a very severe effect on world oil prices. But a large part of the workforce employed in the oil industry are immigrants from Europe, the rest of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa; and although there were early reports of strikes in this sector, the massive exodus of ‘foreign’ workers is a clear sign that they see little to identify with in a ‘revolution’ bearing aloft the national flag. In fact there have been reports of persecution of black workers at the hands of ‘rebel’ forces, since there were widespread rumours that some of the mercenaries hired by the regime to crush the protests were recruited in black African states, thereby casting suspicion on all black immigrants. The weakness of the working class in Libya is thus a crucial element in the negative development of the situation there.

9. Clear evidence that the ‘rebellion’ has become a war between bourgeois camps is provided by the very hasty desertion of the Gaddafi regime by numerous high-ranking officials, including foreign ambassadors, army and police officers and civil servants. The military commanders in particular have come to the fore in the ‘regularisation’ of the anti-Gaddafi armed forces. But perhaps the most striking sign of this change is the decision of most of the ‘international community’ to rally to the side of the ‘rebels’. The Transitional National Council, based in Benghazi, has already been recognised by France as the voice of the new Libya., and a small scale military intervention has already taken shape in the sending of ‘advisers’ to aid the anti-Gaddafi forces. Having already intervened diplomatically to accelerate the departure of Ben Ali and Mubarak, the US, Britain and others were emboldened by the wobbling of the Gaddafi regime at the beginning: William Hague, for example, prematurely announced that Gaddafi was on his way to Venezuela. As Gaddafi’s forces started to regain the upper hand, talk grew louder of imposing a No Fly zone or using other forms of direct military intervention. At the time of writing, however, there seem to be deep divisions within the EU and NATO, with Britain and France most strongly in favour of military action and the US and Germany most reluctant. The Obama administration is not opposed to military intervention on principle, of course, but it will not relish exposing itself to the danger of being drawn into yet another intractable mess in the Arab world. It may also be the case that some parts of the world bourgeoisie are wondering whether Gaddafi’s ‘cure’ of mass terror may be a way of discouraging further unrest throughout the region. One thing is certain however: the Libyan events, and indeed the whole development of the situation in the region, have revealed the grotesque hypocrisy of the world bourgeoisie. Having for years vilified Gaddafi’s Libya as a hotbed of international terrorism (which it was, of course), Gaddafi’s recent change of heart and decision to jettison his weapons of mass destruction in 2006 warmed the hearts of the leaders of countries like the US and Britain which were struggling to justify their stance over Saddam Hussein’s alleged WMDs. Tony Blair in particular showed indecent haste in embracing yesterday’s ‘mad terrorist leader’. Only a few years later, Gaddafi is again a mad terrorist leader and those who supported him have to scramble no less hastily to distance themselves from him. And this is only one version of the same story: nearly all the recent or current ‘Arab dictators’ have enjoyed the loyal backing of the US and other powers, who have up till now shown very little interest in the ‘democratic aspirations’ of the people of Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain or Saudi. The outbreak of street protests, provoked by price rises and shortages of basic necessities and in some cases violently repressed, against the US-imposed government of Iraq, including the current rulers of Iraqi Kurdistan, further exposes the empty promises manufactured by the ‘democratic west’.      

10. Certain internationalist anarchists in Croatia (at least before they began to take part in the protests going on in Zagreb and elsewhere) intervened on libcom.org to argue that the events in the Arab world looked to them like a rerun of the events in eastern Europe in 1989, in which all aspirations for change were sidetracked into the terminus of ‘democracy’, and which brought absolutely nothing for the working class. A very legitimate concern, given the evident strength of democratic mystifications within this new movement, but missing the essential difference between the two historic moments, above all at the level of the configuration of class forces on a world scale. At the time of the collapse of the eastern bloc, the working class in the west was reaching the limits of a period of struggles which had not been able to develop at the political level; the collapse of the bloc, with its attendant campaigns about the death of communism and the end of class struggle, and the inability of the working class of the east to respond on its own class terrain, thus helped to plunge the working class internationally into a long retreat. At the same time, although the Stalinist regimes were in reality victims of the world economic crisis, this was far from obvious at the time, and there was still enough room for manoeuvre in the western economies to fuel the impression that a bright new dawn for global capitalism was opening up. The situation today is very different. The truly global nature of the capitalist crisis has never been more apparent, making it much easier for proletarians everywhere to understand that, in essence, they are all faced with same problems: unemployment, rising prices, a lack of any future under the system. And over the past seven or eight years we have been seeing a slow but genuine revival of workers’ struggles across the world, struggles usually led by a new generation of proletarians which is less scarred by the set-backs of the 80s and 90s, and which is giving rise to a growing minority of politicised elements, again on a global scale. Given these profound differences, there is a real possibility that the events in the Arab world, far from having a negative impact on the class struggle in the central countries, will feed into its future development

- by reaffirming the power of massive and illegal action on the streets, its capacity to shake the composure of the rulers of the earth;

- by destroying bourgeois propaganda about ‘the Arabs’ as a uniform mass of unthinking fanatics and showing the capacity of the masses in these regions to discuss, reflect, and organise themselves;   

- by further undermining the credibility of the leaders of the central countries whose venality and lack of scruple has been highlighted by their twists and turns towards the Arab world.    These and other elements will initially be much more evident to the politicised minority than the majority of workers in the central countries, but in the long run they will contribute to the real unification of the class struggle across national and continental boundaries. None of this, however, lessens the responsibility of the working class in the advanced countries, who have had years of experience of the delights of ‘democracy’ and ‘independent trade unionism’, whose historic political traditions are deeply if not yet widely entrenched, and who are concentrated at the heart of the world imperialist system. The capacity of the working class in North Africa and the Middle East to break with democratic illusions and provide a distinct way forward for the disinherited mass of the population is still fundamentally conditioned by the ability of workers in the central countries to provide them with a clear example of self-organised and politicised proletarian struggle.     

ICC, 11th

March 2011

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Our alternative : resist the capitalist regime!

As the government rains attack after attack on our living standards – whether through cuts in health, education, benefits and local services, through redundancies in both the private and public sector, through tuition fee increases or the abolition of EMA, or through the steadily rising price of basic necessities – the TUC has for months now been telling us to fix our gaze on the Big Demo on the 26^th March. The bosses of the trade unions have argued that a very large turn-out on the day will send a clear message to the Lib-Con government, which will start carrying out its spending review at the beginning of April, involving even more savage cuts than the ones we have seen already. It will show that more and more working and unemployed people, students and pensioners, in short, a growing part of the working class, are opposed to the government’s programme of cuts and are looking for an “alternative”.

And there’s no doubt that people are increasingly fed up with the argument that we have no choice but to submit to the blind laws of a crisis-torn economic system. No choice but to accept the tough medicine that the politicians assure us will, at some point in the future, make everything all right again. There’s also no doubt that a growing number of people are not content to sit at home and moan about it, but want to go out on the street, encounter others who feel the same way, and form themselves into a force that can make the powerful of the world take notice. This is what was so inspiring about the unruly student demonstrations and occupations in the UK at the end of last year; this is why the enormous revolts that are spreading throughout North Africa and the Middle East are such a hopeful sign.

But if these movements tell us anything, it’s that effective action, action that can actually force the ruling powers to back down and make concessions, doesn’t come about when people tamely follow the orders of professional ‘opposition’ leaders, whether people like El Baradei and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or the TUC and the Labour Party in the UK. It comes about when people begin to act and think for themselves, on a massive scale – like the huge crowds who began to organise themselves in Tahrir Square, like the tens of thousands of Egyptian workers who spontaneously came out on strike to raise their own demands, like the students here who found new and inventive ways of countering police repression, like the school kids who joined the student movement without waiting for an endless round of union ballots…..

The TUC and the Labour Party, as well as the numerous ‘left wing’ groups who act as their scouts, are there to keep protest and rebellion inside limits that are acceptable to the status quo. The TUC didn’t say very much in the period from 1997 to 2010 while its Labour friends launched a vast array attacks on workers’ living standards, attacks that the present government is just continuing and accelerating. That’s because the social situation was different – there was less danger that people would resist. Now that this danger is growing, the ‘official’ opposition is stepping in with its expertise in controlling mass movements and keeping them respectable. The trade unions do this on a daily basis by handcuffing workers to the legal rigmarole of balloting and the avoidance of ‘secondary’ action. And now, with March 26, they are doing it on a national scale: one big march from A to B, and we can all go home. And during the march itself the TUC will be working directly with Scotland Yard to ensure that the day goes entirely to their jointly agreed plans.

True, some of the more radical trade unions and political groups call for more than a one-off march: they want the TUC to ‘coordinate strike action’, even call a ‘general strike’. But these approaches just reinforce the idea that the best we can hope for is to get the official opposition to act more effectively on our behalf, rather than organising and spreading the struggle ourselves.      

If there is to be a real opposition to the ruling class and its assault on our lives, it’s not going to be content with one big demo: it has to be part of a much wider movement of strikes, occupations, demonstrations and other actions, controlled directly through mass meetings and willing to defy laws aimed at rendering resistance passive and divided.

And when we are taking part in demonstrations, whether local rallies or big national marches, let’s use them to make links between different centres of resistance, different sectors of the working class. Let’s organise our own street meetings where instead of listening to celebrity speakers we can freely exchange experiences from our own struggles and prepare for the battles of the future. Let all those who stand for independent, self-organised workers’ struggles use them as an opportunity to meet up and decide on how to connect to wider numbers of their class.

And let’s also use such occasions to challenge not only the deadening methods advocated by the official opposition, but also the false perspective they offer us for the future. The TUC ‘alternative’ of ‘jobs, growth, justice’, for example, is completely misleading: this system is in an irreversible crisis and can’t guarantee anyone’s job; even if was possible without vast increases in state debt, capitalist growth can only be based on increasing workers’ exploitation and further despoiling the environment; and a society based on the exploitation of one class by another can never achieve justice. In sum: inside of capitalism, there is no ‘alternative’ except increasing austerity and barbarism. The only real alternative is to fight against this regime of capitalism and in doing so prepare the ground for a total transformation of society. 

WR 5/3/11

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Appeal for Korean Internationalists

사노련 재판에 앞서 열린 기자회견

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"나의 적(敵)의 적은  나의 친구이고, 나를 절실히 필요로 하는 친구가 정말 친구다" 라는 따위의 외교정책은 사회주의 외교정책이 할짓이 아니다. 사회주의를 참칭하는 차베스여!

a friend in need is a friend indeed…

David Broder’s thoughts on the cosy ruling-class ties being pulled apart by the Middle East uprising

Like many of the great revolutions in history, the current wave of democratic uprisings surprised all the intelligence experts and media pundits. Not only has the hated NUS chief Aaron Porter been displaced in a palace coup, but so too have dictators such as Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak.

This element of surprise in the Arab revolt has left many of the great and good caught with their pants down. If dictators are falling, it’s not the right ones, and the changed situation has left some cosy friendships rather exposed.

Neocons versus democracy

An article in today’s Times argued that the current democratic movement is a vindication of the ‘domino effect’ strategy for the war on Iraq (topple Saddam and other populations will struggle for democracy too): a view recently trailed in the Washington Post by Project For A New American Century ideologue Elliott Abrams.

Sadly this analysis has been rather undermined by the public statements on current events by the architects of the war, for example Tony Blair’s description of Hosni Mubarak (“Immensely courageous and a force for good”) or the views of Paul Wolfowitz (“It is wrong to say that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were fought to promote democracy… but once those regimes were removed we could not reimpose dictators”.)

Indeed, the currently-most-high-profile target of protest, Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi, was until recently held up as the model of a ‘convert’ rogue state, a pariah brought in from the cold. His 2003 decision to scrap Libyan WMD was itself used as a justification for the war in Iraq, showing that Western pressure works. He became respectable again, meeting with leaders such as Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy. The now ‘anti-terrorist’ Gaddafi won further plaudits by building a string of detention centres along the country’s northern coast, the ‘front line’ of Fortress Europe’s battle to exclude ‘illegals’ migrating north across Africa. Last year’s release of Lockerbie bomber al-Megrahi was no doubt in part a reward for Libya’s ‘good behaviour’.

The régime also sank roots in the UK establishment. My own university, London School of Economics, today announced the end of a programme in collaboration with the ‘Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation’, until now defended as “an NGO committed to the promotion of civil society and the development of democracy”. The university retracted this vile cant “in view of the highly distressing news from Libya over the weekend of 19-20 February”, as if this repression marked some sudden change of heart. Did these experts of political analysis not know of the 1996 prisoner massacre, which saw 1,000 deaths, or of Gaddafi’s personal attendance at his opponents’ executions? LSE went so far as to give the bloodsoaked dictator a platform: this lecture, by video link, took place just three months ago.

David Cameron has had to defend the UK’s record collaboration with the Libyan régime, to the point of selling it weapons. He advocates ‘peaceful reform’ only once the Arab crowd have already made a radical rupture a reality in the streets;  and elsewhere in the region blissful ignorance and arms trading can continue apace. They fear change more than they do the ‘calm’ of populations held in silence by terror. Still today the Saudi monarchy, the US’s most important Arab ally, goes unquestioned. Indeed, any other stance might somewhat torpedo Cameron’s current ‘trade mission’ around the Middle East, a whistle-stop tour of the region with former PM John Major in order to… sell weapons.

Formula 1

This morning at work I noticed a publication Computer Weekly, whose front page bore an image of protesting Egyptians and the headline ‘Will Egypt turmoil spark IT outsourcing crisis?’. Perhaps this glaring lack of perspective was connected with the fact that the magazine’s cellophane wrapper had as yet not been troubled by man or beast.

Recent debates over the fate of the planned Bahrain Grand Prix showed similar disregard for the gravity of events. Readers commenting on Formula 1 websites such as crash.net were split roughly half-and-half between those who advocated that the race be boycotted, and those who said it should be cancelled anyway because the track is “boring”.

Formula 1 ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone pointed to the hypocrisy of those who called for the motor racing circus to repudiate Bahrain only now that protests have broken out: “It seems as if people thought it was democratic a few weeks ago”. The implication was that at least he was standing by the dictator he had long supported, which hardly did him much credit.

The sport has strong commercial links with Gulf dictatorships, such as the Bahrain royal family’s part-ownership of the McLaren team (drivers Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button were thus barred from commenting on the matter). Moreover, recent races in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi offered the spectacle of BBC journalists bowing and scraping before the desert kingdoms’ rulers – “thanks for putting on this lovely event”… never mind the brutal conditions of the pan-Asian migrant workforce who labour to build the tracks.

Many F1 personalities insisted on the need to “stay out of politics”, even though the desire to suppress protest before the race, a monument to the régime’s vanity, certainly did weigh on the Crown Prince’s mind. In fact, far from being apolitical, the sport has a long track record of association with far-right régimes: in the 1930s it was heavily based on Italy and Germany. Moreover, not only was the previous head of the motor racing governing body Max Mosley – son of blackshirt leader Oswald – but his predecessor Jean-Marie Balestre was a member of the Waffen SS.

Hugo Chávez

The Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA is a rather odd addition to the ranks of Formula 1 sponsors, although Hugo Chávez has been keen to champion a new driver from the country, Pastor Maldonado. This move is somewhat surprising given that in 2009 on live TV Chávez ordered troops to occupy two golf courses, on the basis that the gentle pastime is “a bourgeois sport”.

But unlike the Grand Prix set, who have now abandoned the Bahrain race, Chávez is no mere fair-weather friend of Arab tyrants. The International of authoritarians sitting on lakes of oil is closer-knit than that.

Of course, as yet we do not know if William Hague’s claim that Colonel Gaddafi has fled to Venezuela is true. But what do we know? First and foremost, that Chávez has repeatedly and unequivocally voiced support for authoritarian and far-right régimes, and that Gaddafi stands prominently among these.

In September 2009 Gaddafi visited Chávez in Caracas (at the same time as Robert Mugabe) and signed a series of bilateral military and trade accords. Chávez presented Gaddafi with a sword supposedly used by Latin American independence leader Simon Bolivar, and sealed a pact establishing Libya as his primary ally in the Middle East. The Venezuelan ambassador in Tripoli justified this alliance: “Libya is the gateway to Africa for us because it is a country well-known for its socialist policies that plays an important and strategic role for us.”

Perhaps all this was just an opportunist show of defiance: a finger in the eye of the United States. Maybe it was a gaffe. But if he offers refuge to the Libyan dictator as he is chased out by the just wrath of the people, then Chávez will show himself to be worse even than just a confused anti-imperialist, but as providing sanctuary for one of the world’s most reviled tyrants. ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend’ plus ‘a friend in need is a friend indeed’ does not a socialist foreign policy make.

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On Egypt (3)

Three comments / excerpts from internet discussion lists.

…I would add …that the other “battle” within the ruling class in Egypt, within the army, that is now playing out, over the fate of Mubarak (and whether he should be removed immediately or not) also needs to become the subject of Marxist analysis of the events. Even if the army decided to support the “people” and remove Mubarak now, so long as it retains control as an institution, so long as it constitutes a “caretaker” government until elections can be “organized” (which seems to be the choice of the Obama administration), the mass movement will be neutralized by capital, and the time gained will be used to negate it. Only a movement that explicitly raises class demands can begin to avert that fate.

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…Yes, revolutionaries in Egypt must be on the street … but what’s really needed is analysis, not just “pride” — the kind of analysis that Marx made of the class struggles in France in 1848, an analysis of the actual political and class forces in motion, but one relevant to Egypt in 2011. When several days ago the Egyptian army rolled into the streets around Tahrir Square, most of the protester there, including the representatives of organized political groups, greeted them as allies. As a conscript army, its ranks filled with the sons of workers and the poor, the prospects for appealing to them is real. But the army is also the officer corps, the very socio-political force from which Mubarak (like Nasser and Sadat before him came), the veritable lynchpin of the capitalist class in Egypt since 1953. Marxist analysis can make clear that as a political force the army (not the rank and file soldiers) is the enemy of the mass movement, of the working class, and the behavior of the army today, permitting the government thugs to attack Tahrir Square, standing down as hundreds of protesters were assaulted, and several killed, is the outcome. The only question was whether the army would deliver the coup de grace to Mubarak in the interests of preserving its own power or choose to crack down on the protesters: we may be seeing the answer to that question now. As to the political organizations which seek a democratic Egypt, the immediate removal of Mubarak, the suppport of the Obama administration, and elections, none of them, not ElBaradei, not the “New Wafd,” are in a position to mobilize the mass of the population in a free election. Indeed, at the risk of historical analogies they seem to be latter day Miliukov’s and Kerensky’s. Far more likely to emerge in a powerful, perhaps leading position, as a result of free elections is the Muslim Brotherhood, which does have a real powerful base. Perhaps Washington can live with such a regime (after all the Brotherhood is now “moderate”), but can women, Copts, Marxists, workers? That’s not the concern of Obama, but it is the concern of socialists, which is why analysis and not just being in Tahrir Square is what’s needed.

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Though old formulas may no longer work, worker’s councils, soviets (neighborhood and work place), elected and revocable, are still the place to begin. By contrast, the democratic regimes that replaced the Stalinist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989 legitimated capitalist social relations, preserved the value form (wage labor, commodity production, etc.) and reduced the working class (and the mass of the population) to passive spectators of political processess managed by professionals in the service of capital accumulation and power politics. Is Poland, Hungary, or Romania, post-1989 the model for Tunisia or Egypt? That is where the call for democracy and free elections will lead even if successfful, and not simply a prelude to military rule or religio-ethnic xenophobia. Revolutionaries have something other to propose in an historical epoch where democracy in the best of cases is the political framework to manage austerity and the planet of slums that is all capitalism can produce today.

Mac Intosh

On Egypt (4)

I think the army was for a time watching, unsure and divided on what course to take, as was Washington. It probably would have preferred a restoration of fear and gave Mubarak ample chance to try to accomplish it. But when in Suez, Cairo and elsewhere workers went on strike, it became clear that intimidation had failed. Mubarak had to go. The hope was that this would defuse the situation. I expected that it would indeed do so, at least for a while, but that was a mistake, reflecting an underestimation of the combativity of the workers in Egypt. I could have known though, given the intensity of class struggles in Egypt in recent years. It is a very hopeful sign that those strikes continue and even spread, it shows the workers realize the limits of the symbolic victory that the departure of Mubarak means. That they want ‘independent unions’ as means to give their solidarity an organized expression beyond the present struggle, is to be expected. That these ‘independent’ unions will become a voice of capital like their colleagues in the more developed countries is also inevitable. The intervention of pro-revolutionaries should perhabs focus less on the form –they should always advocate forms that express the collective ‘ownership’ of the struggle but they can do so only when there really is a collective struggle- and more on the content: the refutation of protectionism, nationalization, anti-imperialism and other ‘solutions’ which the unions and others advocate on the base of the illusion that these will improve the lives of the working population. Promoting these goals serves to obscure the sense of the struggle, which is pointing towards global solidarity, towards producing for needs instead of for profit, towards ending the dictatorship of the value-form over human life.

The Egyptian proletariat has advanced us all in this direction. As Raoul V observes in a recent text on the francophone side of this discussion-list, the international reverberation of its struggle is so great that the (“communist”) authorities of the People’s Republic of China deemed it necessary to censure all internet searches containing the word “Egypt”. As Raoul writes, the working class in Egypt has to wage a struggle on three levels: maintaining the freedom of speech and action conquered in the streets, snatching some improvements in their living and working conditions, and not letting themselves being hoodwinked and marshalled by ‘democratic’, ‘patriottic’, religious, syndicalist forces undertaking the task of massaging society back to normality. That is our fight too.

Sander

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Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt: The best solidarity is class struggle

The thunder in Tunisia and Egypt is being echoed in Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Gaza, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain and Yemen. Whatever flags the demonstrators carry, all these protests have their root in the world wide crisis of capitalism and its direct consequences: unemployment, rising prices, austerity, and the repression and corruption of the governments who preside over these brutal attacks on living standards. In short, they have the same origins as the revolt of Greek youth against police repression in 2008, the struggle against pension ‘reforms’ in France, the student rebellions in Italy and Britain, and workers’ strikes from Bangladesh to China and from Spain to the USA.

The determination, courage and sense of solidarity being displayed in the streets of Tunis, Cairo, Alexandria and many other cities are a true inspiration. The masses occupying Tahrir Square in Cairo or similar public places have fed themselves, fought off attacks by pro-regime thugs and the police, called the soldiers to fraternise with them, nursed their wounded, openly rejected sectarian divisions between Muslim and Christian, between the religious and the secular. In the neighbourhoods they have formed committees to protect their homes from looters manipulated by the police. Tens of thousands have effectively been on strike for days and even weeks in order to swell the ranks of the demonstrations.

Faced with this spectre of massive revolt, with the nightmare prospect of its extension across the ‘Arab world’ and even beyond, the ruling class all over the world has been responding with its two trustiest weapons: repression and mystification. In Tunisia, scores were gunned down in the streets, but now the ruling class proclaims the beginning of a transition to democracy; in Egypt, the Mubarak regime alternates between beating, shooting, gassing and running down protestors and issuing similar vague promises. In Gaza, Hamas arrests demonstrators trying to show solidarity with the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt; on the West Bank the PLO has banned “unlicensed gatherings” called to support the uprisings; and in Iraq protests against unemployment and shortages are fired on by the regime installed by the US and British ‘liberators’. In Algeria, after stifling the first signs of revolt, concessions are made legalising timid forms of protest; in Jordan the King sacks his government.

Internationally, the capitalist class also alternates its language: some – especially those on the right, and of course the rulers of Israel – openly support Mubarak’s regime as the only bulwark against an Islamist takeover. But the key note is given by Obama: after some initial hesitations, the message is that Mubarak must go and go quickly. The ‘transition to democracy’ is put forward as the only way forward for the downtrodden masses of North Africa and the Middle East.

The dangers facing the movement

The mass movement centred in Egypt thus faces two dangers. One is that the spirit of revolt will be drowned in blood. It seems that the initial attempts by the Mubarak regime to save itself with the iron fist have been stymied: first the police had to withdraw from the streets in the face of the massive demonstrations, and the unleashing of the pro-Mubarak thugs last week has also failed to sap the demonstrators’ will to continue. In both rounds of confrontation, the army has presented itself as a ‘neutral’ force, even as being on the side of the anti-Mubarak gatherings and protecting them from assaults by the regime’s defenders. There is no doubt that many of the soldiers sympathise with the protests and would not be willing to fire on the masses in the streets; some have already deserted. Higher up in the army, there are certainly factions that want Mubarak to go now. But the army of the capitalist state is not a neutral force. Its ‘protection’ of Tahrir Square is a also a form of containment, a huge kettle; and when push comes to shove, the army will indeed be used against the exploited population, unless the latter succeeds in winning over the rank and file soldiers and effectively dissolving the army as an organised part of the state power.  

But here we come to the second great danger facing the movement: the danger that resides in its widespread illusions in democracy. The belief that the state can, perhaps after a few reforms, be made to serve the people; the belief that ‘all Egyptians’, perhaps with the exception of a few corrupt individuals, have the same basic interests. The belief in the neutrality of the army. The belief that the terrible poverty facing the majority of the population can be overcome if there is a functioning parliament and an end to the arbitrary rule of a Ben Ali or a Mubarak.  

These illusions, expressed everyday by the demonstrators’ own words and banners, disarm the real movement for emancipation, which can only advance as a movement of the working class fighting for its own interests, which are distinct from those of other social strata, and which are above all diametrically opposed to the interest of the bourgeoisie and all its parties and factions. The innumerable expressions of solidarity and self-organisation that we have seen so far already reflect the genuinely proletarian element in the current social revolts; and, as many of the protestors have already said, they presage a new and more human society. But this new and better society cannot be brought about through parliamentary elections, through putting el Baradei or the Muslim Brotherhood or any other bourgeois faction at the head of the state. These factions, who may be carried to power by the strength of the masses’ illusions, will not hesitate to use repression against these same masses later on.

There is much talk about ‘revolution’ in Tunisia and Egypt, both from the mainstream media and the extreme left. But the only revolution that makes sense today is the proletarian revolution, because we are living in an era in which capitalism, democratic or dictatorial, quite plainly can offer nothing to humanity. Such a revolution can only succeed on an international scale, breaking through all national borders and overthrowing all nation states. Today’s class struggles and mass revolts are certainly stepping stones on the way to such a revolution, but they face all kinds of obstacles on the road; and to reach the goal of revolution, profound changes in the political organisation and consciousness of millions of people have yet to take place.

In a way, the situation in Egypt today is a summation of the historic situation facing humanity as a whole. Capitalism is in terminal decline. The ruling class can offer no perspective for the future of the planet; but the exploited class is not yet aware of its own power, its own perspectives, its own programme for the transformation of society. The ultimate danger is that this temporary stalemate will end in “the mutual ruin of the contending classes”, as the Communist Manifesto put it – in a plunge into chaos and destruction. But the working class, the proletariat, will only discover its real power through engaging in real struggles, and this is why what is now taking place in North Africa and the Middle East is, for all the weaknesses and illusions that hamper it, a real beacon for workers everywhere.

And above all it is a call to the proletarians of the more developed countries, who are also beginning to return to the road of resistance, to take the next step, to express their practical solidarity with the masses of the ‘third world’ by escalating their own combat against austerity and impoverishment, and in doing so exposing all the lies about capitalist freedom and democracy, of which they have a long and bitter experience. 

WR, 5/2/11         

on egypt, and revolution