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Home > World Revolution 2000s - 231 to 330 > World Revolution - 2009 > World Revolution no.326, July/August 2009
World Revolution no.326, July/August 2009
We can resist the attacks if we fight together
Every time someone says the recession is 'bottoming out' and economic recovery is on the horizon there's a report or set of figures to contradict them.
Even those with the most rose-tinted spectacles admit that the British economy in particular is in bad and still declining health.
For example, the Office for National Statistics had to revise downwards its figures for the drop in output in January to March this year, which showed the biggest quarterly drop since 1958. The rate for the year at 4.9% is the biggest since comparable records began in 1948. The ONS also now admits that the recession started in at least the second quarter of 2008, months earlier than previously claimed.
Meanwhile the OECD has also revised its forecasts for the decline in British output in 2009 which at 4.7% will be the biggest year on year fall since 1945. The OECD predicts a deficit of 14% of GDP, which means that Britain will be further in the red than any other major developed country. Because of the size of the deficit the OECD thinks that any further stimulus to the economy would only make things worse. No wonder the Daily Telegraph (25/6/9) headlined "OECD pours cold water on Britain's green shoots."
More cuts to come
The number of unemployed in Britain is officially already at the highest level since July 1997 and continues to get worse, with no interruption to the flow of redundancies being announced. Corus are getting rid of 2000 jobs. Lloyds are getting rid of another 2100, making 7000 from the banking group since January. As the list gets longer the Labour and Tory parties only argue about how extensive cuts in public expenditure should be.
Economist John Philpott of the CIPD (BBC 16/6/9) has sketched out what future cuts will mean: "The public sector has yet to feel the full impact of the recession, and the resultant bloodbath in the public finances." The impact of this is clear to him. "As a result the coming era of public sector austerity might not only witness large scale job cuts, but also an ongoing 'workplace guerrilla war' marked by waves of major public sector strikes and regular bouts of unrest"
Workers fight and spread the struggle
There's no need to wait for future austerity in Britain to see the working class struggle. Following the wave of wildcat strikes earlier in the year focussed on the Lindsey oil refinery there was further struggle during June after 51 workers were sacked. During the following days there was a wave of solidarity actions. Then, a week later, after Total dismissed 647 workers the struggle spread still further. There were unofficial strikes at oil refineries, power stations, nuclear power stations and various other plants. These strikes involved thousands of workers at more than 30 sites across the country from Wales to Scotland, from Somerset, Oxfordshire, Kent and Essex to Yorkshire and Cumbria.
These strikes were not sanctioned by the unions. Indeed the GMB tried to get those on strike at Longannet power station in Scotland back to work, but the workers ignored the union. Ultimately, it was by taking their own initiatives and through the solidarity actions of thousands of workers that those dismissed were all reinstated, and those who had taken illegal solidarity actions were not victimised.
The BBC's employment correspondent Martin Shankelman (29/6/9) made a neat summary of the situation.
"The wider significance of the strike cannot be ignored.
This was a dispute which ran outside the law and still succeeded. The strikers did not wait for a ballot to walk out, nor did they observe the legal obligation to notify the employers of their withdrawal of labour.
Instead they just downed tools and left, to be rapidly followed by colleagues at other sites around the UK who also went on strike in sympathy, taking secondary action, which may well have been outside the law as well.
Union leaders could not even get involved with the organisation of the strikes, for fear of legal reprisals. ... Wildcat strikes are back on the agenda."
Workers' solidarity opposed by the ruling class
It will surprise no one to hear that Downing Street condemned the strikes. So did a not so independent-minded editorial-writer in the Independent (20/6/9). Under a heading "The wrong way to strike" you could read that "the manner in which these workers are venting their frustrations is doing them no favours at all. By walking out without holding a strike ballot, they instantly broke the law and ceded Total the moral high ground." While praising Total's 'morality' the writer maintained that "the monster of arrogant and bullying labour militancy is just as unpopular in the broader country as it was when the state moved to suppress it three decades ago".
The Independent's welcome for state repression against expressions of workers' solidarity is fairly mainstream for bourgeois thought. More insidious is the threat from the Left which poses as the friend of the workers.
The main leftist groups all saluted the victory of the strikers, and yet when you examine their perspectives for the future you see them setting traps for the working class. The Socialist Workers Party in an online article (26/6/9) titled "Victory at Lindsey shows how to fight" showed that their ideas on how to fight go against the recent experience of thousands of militant workers. For the SWP "An important step in the fightback is to win the construction national ballot for action in the GMB and Unite unions. Everyone should join a union and get involved in the ballot."
Groups like the SWP want to get workers back in the union way of thinking, even though workers have been discovering that if they want to express their class solidarity it is necessary to fight outside the union and legal framework.
If workers are beginning to understand that they can't trust the unions and that they have to take struggles into their own hands, then that will be one of the greatest gains from the recent strikes, not just for the workers involved, but for all workers who are beginning to see that self-organisation is the only way for the class struggle.
Car 3/7/9
Geographical:
Britain [2]
General and theoretical questions:
Economic crisis [3]
Recent and ongoing:
Class struggle [4]
SWP open letter to the left: Reviving the electoral corpse
Following the recent elections in which the Labour vote plumbed new depths and the British National Party sensationally won two seats in the European parliament the Socialist Workers Party (9/6/9) addressed an "open letter to the left."
The SWP is worried about the Nazis, concerned about a possible Conservative government, and anxious that the revelations of MPs' corruption have put people off voting Labour. It thinks that there should be a "single, united left alternative" and that the left should "urgently start a debate" in advance of the next general election. Accordingly it is "prepared to help initiate" a conference "of all those committed to presenting candidates representing working class interests at the next election."
The 'open letter' has proved very popular among leftists. The Weekly Worker (11/6/9) welcomed the initiative, although it thought the SWP would have to "publicly account for the disastrous mistakes of the past." Workers Power (10/6/9) also welcomed the proposal: "The dangerous reality is that the fascists have formed a party while the socialists have not. All the socialist groups in Britain are propaganda societies, not parties." The Alliance for Workers Liberty (10/6/9) welcomed the letter and said it was in line with their "call for a new Socialist Alliance". The Socialist Party of England and Wales (24/6/9) (that used to be Militant) took a dim view of the SWP's idea in the light of its previous experience. But they were still able to say to their comrades that "if you have reassessed and changed your methods, and are now willing to work together with others towards the creation of 'a socialist alternative' for the general election, we will of course welcome this."
Leftist unity ... against the working class
Apart from all the various quibbles and nitpicking the one thing that already unites the leftist groups is their commitment to basically the same approach, the same politics. For example, in its letter the SWP ask how it would be possible to ask workers to vote for people like Pat McFadden the man who is "pushing through the privatisation of the post office." All the leftists oppose privatisation, that is to say they defend nationalisation, defend the Royal Mail - the very body that militant postal workers have been fighting for years.
The SWP say that "If Cameron is elected he will attempt to drive through policies of austerity at the expense of the vast majority of the British people". This is quite clearly the case, except it ignores the most obvious reality that a Conservative government will be in complete continuity with the current Labour government. Yet the leftists warn about the Right being worse than the Left and of course the BNP is the worst of all. From the point of view of the working class it is necessary to remember that the massacre of jobs and all the other attacks on our living standards during the last 12 years have been under a Labour government, not under Tories or Nazis.
The leftists also agree that capitalist elections can be used to present a 'left wing alternative.' The past experience of the Socialist Alliance and Respect show that they always try to give capitalist democracy some credibility, while putting forward their idea on how best to run British capitalism.
Workers Power said of the groups of the left "in a sense we are factions of a party that is yet to be built." They all have their factional differences, but at one level they are in agreement, on the need to strengthen state capitalism, on the need to defend the unions that help keep the working class divided. In an article in the same issue of Socialist Worker as its 'open letter' the SWP says that the Labour Party has "abandoned ordinary people and gone on the offensive against them". This is true to the extent that from the time of the First World War the parties of social democracy lined up with the capitalist class, recruited for the war effort, imposed labour discipline throughout the conflict and have been serving their national capitals ever since. The impression given by the leftists is that the Labour Party was somehow acceptable until quite recently. That is to say, the Labour Party was OK when its rhetoric was left of centre.
Filling a gap in the political spectrum
What the leftists in Britain are doing when they respond positively to the SWP's appeal is similar to a process that's already underway elsewhere in Europe. In Germany with the Linkspartei and in France with the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste we have seen new parties created to fill a gap on the left. With the world wide imposition of austerity measures there is a great potential for a response from the working class. The bourgeoisie internationally knows that it has to have political forces that can present a false alternative in the face of workers' struggle, and that its current line-ups are not all up to the job.
A party like the Labour Party could once pose as 'socialist' or at least parade a set of left-wingers. Now they don't even pretend to be a party of the working class. As for the leftists, in many countries they are mere shadows of what they were in the 1970s and 80s. Whatever comes of the SWP's latest project it shows that at least some on the left are aware of the function they need to fulfil for capitalism. The working class should not be taken in by this latest attempt at a makeover.
Car 24/6/9
Historic events:
Anti-fascism [5]
SWP's open letter [6]
The Commune:Still trapped in its leftist past?
One of the groups to welcome the SWP's 'open letter' was The Commune, a group that split from the AWL last year. On its website you will find, among other things, material from the Dutch and German Communist Left. At their meetings there is an openness of approach which is very different from what you're likely to come across in a typical leftist meeting.
However, their response to the SWP's latest idea shows what tradition they are still attached to. They say "We welcome the spirit of the Open Letter, and would be interested to participate in discussions concerning left unity in general, or a conference in particular." While they do have their criticisms these are thoroughly constructive. They think the way the Socialist Alliance came together is a good example to follow. They say it is similar to the NPA in France, a group the character of which "is all to play for."
An article on the European elections looks at the number of votes cast for left-wing parties and says "we get the surprisingly high tally of 340,000, which makes you think about what might have been achieved had the left got its act together over the last ten years". Basically they want the Left to get its act together and they see themselves as part of that process, with, incidentally, getting votes in elections as a target worth aiming at.
They often talk of "communism from below" and "emancipatory communism", but as long as they think that they are part of the 'left' these words will have little real meaning.
The Commune [7]
Correspondence on the left's electoralism and reformism
We're publishing a letter from a sympathiser about the current efforts of leftist groups like the Socialist Workers Party to form a new electoral alliance, above all to combat the rise of the BNP.
We agree entirely with the essential point made in the letter. Elections and parliament have long ceased to be an arena in which the working class can express its interests, and the groups of the 'extreme left', by trying to inject new life into these institutions, provide further proof that they are actually the extreme left of capitalism's political machinery. In this sense, while these organisations certainly recruit many naïve and well-intentioned people, the organisations as such are not being "naïve" in pursuing such policies: they are simply carrying out their function for capital.
Dear ICC Comrades
After reading in June's issue of World Revolution 'Euro elections: nationalism of left and right [8]' there is one point I thought I would make regarding the response from some of Britain's leftist parties. Following on from the poor showing in both the Euro elections as well as the local elections not only in Britain but across Europe of Social Democratic and leftist parties, combined with the resurgence of far right and fascist parties it appears that leftist parties in Britain have been thrown into some sort of panic. For instance in Britain on the respective websites of Socialist Workers Party, Communist Party of Great Britain and Workers Power there has been a call for a campaign to establish a new workers' party to replace the British Labour Party. The thinking behind the call appears to be that there is a vacuum on the left which allows the right especially the fascists to grow both electorally as well as in membership. These organisations seem to believe that the reason for such growth of far right and fascist parties such as the BNP is that they are able to appeal to the anger and discontent felt by workers especially in the present economic crisis. To neutralise such a threat leftists argue that the creation of a new independent mass working class party will act as some sort of antidote to the fascist menace.
What surprises me about such a call is that as workers are beginning to turn away from voting Marxists should be encouraging such abstention while at the same time appealing to the independent political activity of workers as workers rather than be flailing around on a doomed project of trying to resurrect parliamentary politics. Not only is such a project doomed to fail as the trade unions are not suicidal minded to cut their links with Labour.
The leftists are also unable to see that the bourgeoisie, of any country, is unable to fund the social wage that they were able to do during the post war period leading up to the late 1970's. This refusal to fund a social wage to the same extent as the 1970's has little to do with their lack of compassion rather that in today's period of capitalist decomposition they are simply unable to fund a social wage due to the depth of the capitalist crisis.
This situation of capitalist crisis on a global scale means that the task of Marxist revolutionaries is to both clarify the consciousness of workers to go beyond a reformist perspective and to participate with workers in their struggles while arguing for forms of organisation such as workers' councils, general workers' assemblies etc. This form of participation combines and demands from Marxist revolutionaries both theoretical as well as practical clarity. This means that to demand a new mass workers party that is committed to participating in parliamentary struggles is naive in the extreme and highlights the inability of these organisations to give political leadership to the working class.
Comradely Yours
D 4/7/9
Life of the ICC:
Readers' letters [9]
Lindsey: Workers demonstrate the power of solidarity
The June strike movement by construction and maintenance workers on 30 energy industry construction sites across Britain, demanding the reinstatement of their 640 sacked comrades at Lindsey oil refinery, Lincolnshire, demonstrated the collective strength of workers' solidarity.
These unofficial strikes, called in many cases by workers' mass meetings, forced the Total oil company to withdraw the sackings. They also won the jobs back for the 51 construction workers whose redundancies sparked a walkout by 1200 other workers on the site, in turn leading to Total's provocative sacking of hundreds of strikers. At a time when workers are being told they can do nothing about the rising tide of unemployment, this solidarity movement will remind the class of its potential strength.
This struggle's foundation in solidarity gave it a much firmer foundation than the smaller strike movement around Lindsey at the beginning of the year, when it seemed to many that the issue behind the strike was the reactionary slogan 'British Jobs for British Workers', an idea that can only sow divisions within the working class. The evident display of class solidarity with the sacked workers gave the June strike a clearer echo throughout the whole working class.
As it happens, despite the undoubted weight of nationalism, the January struggle already contained important positive aspects: solidarity strikes, mass meetings, the emergence of a move towards breaking divisions between 'British' and 'foreign' workers. These characteristics enabled the struggle to force the bosses to back down, and their expression in a wider, more dynamic manner this time have done so again.
Solidarity: the collective power of the working class
"No matter what happens in the coming days this struggle has demonstrated that workers do not have to accept attacks; that they can resist. More than that, they have seen that the only way we can defend ourselves is by defending each other." ('Construction workers at the centre of the class struggle', ICC online) [11]We wrote this during the first weekend of the movement; by the end of the next week all the workers had been reinstated.
The ruling class were faced with a strike wave spreading out across some of the most vital energy construction sites in the UK. Construction work at oil and gas refineries, power stations including the Sellafield nuclear power complex, oil terminals, petrochemical construction sites, was brought to a halt as workers held mass meetings and walked out. 900 workers struck at Sellafield nuclear power complex, 1,100 at the Ensus biofuels site at Wilton, Teesside. Four hundred staff walked out at two LNG plants in West Wales, including the vital terminal facility at South Hook. There were walk outs by construction and maintenance workers at Longannet power station, Fife in Scotland, Aberthaw power station, South Wales, by 200 contractors at Aberthaw power station in West Wales, maintenance workers at the Shell Stanlow Refinery in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, contractors at Drax and Eggborough power stations near Selby, North Yorkshire, Hinkley Point nuclear power station in Somerset, the Coryton oil refinery in Essex and the Isle of Grain in Kent. Some of these strikes only lasted a day or two; others stayed out as long as their Lindsey comrades were still sacked.
As in January the struggle also gained support from 'foreign' workers. Polish workers joined the strike at Drax power station.
The courage of such actions should not be underestimated. The construction sector is being very badly hit by the recession. These workers work for contracting companies and are faced with moving around the country looking for work, and these companies are known to keep blacklists of militant workers. Such solidarity actions are illegal and thus they could not only be arrested but also lose their jobs for breaking the law. These workers risked a great deal in order to defend their comrades.
The spreading of the struggle
This movement was spread not only by word of mouth but also by the Lindsey strikers sending flying pickets to call other workers out. Again, completely illegal, but the workers understood the vital necessity to spread this struggle. Such pickets mean that discussions can take place between the strikers and other workers, breaking down barriers that the media and unions try to erect. We can only speculate, but it is feasible that the experience of the media's gross distortion of their previous struggle led the Lindsey workers to want to explain their struggle directly. Whatever the reason these flying pickets expressed a determination to spread the struggle
Mass meetings
In contrast to the beginning of the year the media did not show much of the mass meetings at Lindsey. Then they showed the meetings because of the presence of Union Jacks and the 'British Jobs for British Workers' banners, and they could always find a striker to defend this reactionary slogan. This time they had no interest in showing workers discussing how to spread their struggle, welcoming the solidarity of their comrades. There were one or two nationalist banners and Union Jacks, but the question of solidarity pushed these into the background.
It was not only at Lindsey that there were mass meetings. Other sites held them before coming out. A very interesting example is Sellafield. At the beginning of the second week, 22 June, the unions at the complex called a mass meeting and after it the workers walked out. The next day the union called off the strike, without a mass meeting. On the Wednesday some workers held their own meeting. "I thought it was only right to have a meeting that involved people - so we held a meeting and voted to stay out. Over 100 walked out that day, then we were joined by another 100. There was a mass meeting set for Friday morning and I think the site would have been all out again but by that point Lindsey had won." (a striker quoted on socialistworker.co.uk 30/6/9).
Mass meetings are vital to the struggle because they enable workers to collectively discuss the action they need to decide on. In this way there is a conscious solidarity about the course of action agreed upon. It is thus no wonder that it is illegal for such meetings to decide to strike. According to the law there has to be a secret ballot before any strike, that is to say, no collective discussions about the actions to be taken.
The unions try to contain the struggle
The active solidarity shown by this movement challenged the unions' ability to maintain its control of the workers. The Lindsey workers did not wait for the unions and their secret ballots to walk out in support of the 51 laid-off workers. Nor did their comrades at Drax and Eggborough, Ratcliffe and West Burton in Nottinghamshire, Fiddlers Ferry, Aberthaw and the contractors at a BP refinery near Hull who walked out when they heard about the 51 lay-offs and the strike in their support. The defence of their comrades was their prime concern. The unions were left running to catch up with a movement that was bursting out of its prison of rules, laws and divisions between unions. We are not saying that these workers clearly saw the unions as a prison or wanted to organise outside of its bars,. However, their desire to express solidarity meant they had to act illegally and outside of the union rules.
How did the unions respond? Rapidly.
Firstly, the Lindsey shop stewards played their role. Shop stewards are the militant face of the unions. The shop stewards committee seemed to transform itself into a strike committee and co-opt additional members. The workers were prepared to place their trust in the strike committee. Thus, while not being willing to put trust in the union leaders, the workers were willing to give the stewards control of the strike. These stewards certainly helped to spread the struggle, but always within the union framework. The idea was that spreading the struggle would put pressure on the union leaders to stand up to the bosses, strengthen their negotiating hand, give them some 'back bone'. As for the mass meetings, they were also seen as a means of putting pressure on the union hierarchy while they negotiated, since they could reject any deal they might come up with.
At the same time, the union leadership, after initially calling on the workers to go back, 'backed' the strike as soon as Total sacked the 640 strikers. They understood that this action would lead to a much wider extension of the struggle. To take the head of this movement the leaders of the GMB and UNITE immediately sought negotiations with Total, thus focusing the movement on the success of their talks.
Between them then the stewards and the leadership managed to contain the movement within the union confines. That said, if Total had not backed down, the unions would have had difficulty in continuing to keep a lid on the struggle. As the Sellafield striker said, if the settlement had not been reached the whole construction site would have met and joined the 200 workers already defying the unions' call to stay at work. The unions and the rest of the ruling class knew they were riding a tiger and the only way to tame it was by caving in.
The potential for the struggle to come
This dramatic and victorious solidarity movement has demonstrated to the working class in Britain and internationally that active solidarity through spreading the struggle is the only way to push back the attacks. Although it only involved a few thousand workers, its extension across the country, the involvement of Polish workers, the use of mass meetings, the tendency to defy union orders, the reappearance of flying pickets after 25 years, and above all the determination to defend your comrades are indications of the potential for the future struggles. This struggle also demonstrates that far from being passive compared to workers in France or Italy, the proletariat in Britain is fully part of the international upsurge in struggles. Workers around the world will take great strength from this movement. No matter where you live, it is not often that you see the bosses cave in so completely to working class resistance.
The solidarity of this struggle has also severely dented the image of construction workers as backward nationalists propagated by the media after the January strike. This will open up the potential for other sectors to follow their example.
Phil 4/7/7
Lindsey oil refinery strike [12]
wildcat strikes [13]
Anarchism and imperialist war (part 2): Anarchist participation in the Second World War
In the build up to the Second World War, following the defeat of the revolutionary wave of the 1920s, the Russian revolution had been strangled by isolation and was then finished off by the world bourgeoisie and Stalinism. The counter-revolution, the crushing of the world proletariat, had triumphed. In this context, anarchism underwent a fateful step in its evolution.
In every country, pushed inexorably on to the road to militarism by the blind laws of capitalism, the bourgeoisie prepared for war, whether in the fascist or democratic states, or in the Stalinist USSR. The impasse of the economic crisis left them no other option than this forward lunge into a second world holocaust. It was this forward march to war, the real mode of life in decadent capitalism, which gave rise to fascism. It imposed itself in the countries where the working class had suffered a profound defeat in order to subdue it and batter it, where it was no longer necessary to maintain democratic institutions whose function was to mystify the proletariat. Fascism was the most apt form of capitalism to accomplish the preparations needed for the accelerated march towards war.
The ideological dragooning for imperialist war behind fascism or Nazism, or behind the Stalinist myth of the 'socialist fatherland', was obtained through the most open and dreadful terror. But in the 'democratic' countries, in order to mobilise workers who hadn't suffered from the crushing of revolutionary movements, it was necessary for the bourgeoisie to use a particular mystification: anti-fascism. Claiming to offer workers a way of protecting themselves from the horrors of fascism was the means used to enrol them as cannon fodder in the war, in the service of one imperialist camp against another. In order to achieve this aim, the bourgeoisie, notably in France and Spain, provided itself with 'popular fronts' led by the left parties.
Anarchism gripped by anti-fascism
Unlike the cry of proletarian internationalism that rallied the working class to put an end to the barbarity of the First World War through the proletarian revolution, anti-fascism has never been a means for the proletariat to defend its class interests. On the contrary, it's a vehicle for delivering it up to the democratic bourgeoisie bound hand and foot. The situation of counter-revolution, the defeat of the proletariat which meant that there was no possibility of a revolutionary upsurge at that time, did not mean calling into question the fundamental principles of proletarian internationalism faced with the Second World War. There was no camp to choose. It was a fight against the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie both of the fascist camp and the democratic camp.
A prisoner of its tendency to defend 'liberty' against 'authoritarianism', anarchism capitulated in the face of anti-fascism. Before the war, the different currents of anarchism were among the principal animators of anti-fascism. These led the great majority of anarchists to firmly take the side of the Allies in the Second World War. Deprived of any class criteria based upon the real social relationship that reigns in capitalist society, anarchism was led to completely submit itself to the defence of democracy, a particularly pernicious form of the dictatorship of capital. Some who had been internationalists in 1914, such as Rudolf Rocker, defended participating in imperialist war in 1940, arguing that contrary to 1914, there now existed two radically different systems and that the struggle against fascism justified support for the democratic states. This approach induced a great number of anarchists to physically participate in the war, in the first place in the un-uniformed imperialist armies of the resistance.[1]
In France, "from the beginning of the war (the CNT group of the Vidal network in the Pyrenees) put itself at the disposal of the Resistance and worked actively with the Intelligence Service and the Central Bureau of Information and Action (BCRA) of de Gaulle, but also with the Sabot network and the group Combat (...) Lacking a national resistance organisation, anarchists seemed few in number though they were very much present. All the same, let's quote the maquis of the Barrage de l'Aigle (...) in the high circles of the reconstruction of the CNT in exile and one of the most active maquis of the resistance. This maquis is practically 100% confederal, like the maquis of Bort-les-Orgues. Generally, the maquis of the Massive Centrale has large numbers of Spanish anarchists (...)"[2] "Present in the maquis in the south of France, in the groups FFI, FTP, MUR or in the autonomous groups (the Libertad battalion in le Cantal, the maquis Bidon 5 in Ariege, in the Languedoc-Roussillon) (...) [the anarchists], continued in their hundreds the fight that they had undertaken against Spanish fascism."[3] The 'Libertad' battalion "liberated the Lot and Cahors (...) At Foix, it was the anarcho-syndicalist CNT-FAI maquis that liberated the town on August 19."[4]
It was the same picture in Italy. When they surrendered to the Allies on September 8 1943, the centre and northern regions remained in the hands of the Germans and the fascist republic of Salo. "The anarchists immediately threw themselves into the armed struggle, establishing autonomous formations when it was possible (Carrara, Genoa, Milan), or in the majority of cases joining up with other formations such the 'Matteotti' Socialist brigade, the Communist 'Garibaldi' Brigade or the 'Giustizia e Liberta units of the Party of Action."[5] In numerous places, the libertarians joined with the National Liberation Committee that brought together a large spectrum of anti-fascist parties or organised Groups of Patriotic Action [sic]. There were numerous anarchists in the 28th Garibaldi Brigade which liberated Ravenna.
"In Genoa, anarchist combat groups operated under the names of the 'Pisacane' Brigade, the 'Malatesta' formation, the SAP-FCL, the Sestri Ponente SAP-FCL and the Arenzano Anarchist Action Squads. The attempt to set up a 'United Front' with all anti-fascist forces failed due to the Communists' attempts to impose their own hegemony. Furthermore, anarchists had their own representation only in the outlying CLN 's and this obliged them to engage in the armed struggle while relying on their own devices. Activities were promoted by the Libertarian Communist Federation (FCL) and by the underground anarcho-syndicalist union the USI which had just resurfaced in the factories....
Anarchists founded the 'Malatesta' and 'Bruzzi' brigades, amounting to 1300 partisans: these operated under the aegis of the 'Matteotti' formation and played a primary role in the liberation of Milan".[6]
The example of Bulgaria, where after the invasion by the USSR in 1941, the Bulgarian CP organised "some maquis in which numerous anarchists participated"[7] or again, the anarchist anti-Japanese guerrillas in Korea 1920-30, attest to the general character of the participation of the anarchists in imperialist war.
And many of them wouldn't be put off by wearing the uniforms of the imperialist democratic armies: "The Spanish libertarians (...) participated in their thousands in the resistance to Nazism and some of them went into the Free French battalions, fighting into Germany".[8] "Some comrades enrolled into the fighting regiments of the Foreign Legion and found themselves in the front lines of combat."[9] "They were sometimes assigned to north Africa, sometimes to black Africa (Chad, Cameroon). Others rallied to the French Liberation Forces of 1940. They joined up with columns of General Leclerc." (...) More than 60% Spanish, the famous 2nd D.B. included a good number of anarcho-syndicalists, so much so that one of their companies "is entirely composed of Spanish anarchists." The armoured vehicles 'Ascaso', 'Durruti', 'Casas Viejas', "were the first to enter the capital on August 24 1944" at the time of the liberation of Paris[10] and to raise the tricolour on the Hotel de Ville!
A war-mongering position in continuity with that taken in Spain, 1936
The attitude of the anarchists during the Second World War came directly from their position in the 'rehearsal' of the war in Spain. The latter crudely showed the real role played by anarchism in what was neither "a class war", nor a "revolution" but a war between two factions of the Spanish bourgeoisie which unfolded into a world imperialist conflict.
In July 1936, the CNT, by virtue of an anti-fascist pact sealed with the parties of the Popular Front, gave its support to the Republican government in order to turn the reaction of the Spanish proletariat to the coup d'etat of Franco towards anti-fascism.[11] The CNT diverted a social, economic and political struggle of the proletariat against all of the forces of the bourgeoisie towards a military confrontation solely against Franco, sending the workers to be massacred in the anti-fascist militias for interests that were not their own.
The participation of the libertarians in the bourgeois Republican government in Catalonia and Madrid illustrates the evolution of the CNT towards support of the bourgeois state. "After the first victory and seeing a long and enormously important war looming up, we understood that the time had not yet come to consider the functions of government, of the government apparatus, as terminated. Similarly, the war necessitates an adequate apparatus to lead it to a good end - the army, it's also necessary to have an organ of coordination, of centralisation of all the resources and energies of the country, that's to say the mechanisms of a state (...) So much that during the war, we must act in the bloody struggle and we must intervene in government. In effect, the latter must be a government of war. (...) We think that the war is the priority, that it's necessary to win this war as a preliminary condition to any new condition..."[12] When the workers of Barcelona rose up in May 1937, the CNT were complicit in the repression by the Popular Front and the government of Catalonia (in which they participated), while the Francoists momentarily suspended their hostilities in order to allow the parties of the left to wipe out the uprising.
Through its support for total war, through the militarisation of the proletariat with the help of the anarchist collectives and the anti-fascist militias, through the proclamation of the Union Sacrée with bourgeois republicanism and the banning of strikes, the CNT participated in dragooning the proletariat into a war that took on a clear imperialist character with the engagement of the democracies and the USSR on the republican side and Germany and Italy on the side of the fascists. "At present, this isn't a civil war that we are undertaking, but a war against the invaders: Moors, Germans, Italians. It is not a party, an organisation, a theory that's in danger. It's the existence of Spain itself, of a country that wants to be master of its own destiny and which is running the risk of disappearing."[13] The nationalism of the CNT led it to explicitly appeal for world war in order to save the 'Spanish nation': "Free Spain will do its duty. Faced with this heroic attitude, what will the democracies do? There are grounds for hoping that the inevitable will not be long in happening. The provocative and crass attitude of Germany is already becoming insupportable. (...) Everyone knows that, in the end, the democracies will have to intervene with their squadrons and their armies to bar the way to these insane hordes..."[14]
The abandonment of the interests of the proletariat and the attitude of the CNT towards imperialist war produced animated oppositions in the anarchist camp (Berneri, Durruti). But their inability to break with the position that war went hand in hand with revolution made them victims of the policy of the defeat and dragooning of the proletariat. Thus, those who tried to struggle against the war and for the revolution were incapable of finding a point of departure for really revolutionary struggle, which would have meant calling for workers and peasants (dragooned into the two camps, Republican and Francoist) to desert, to turn their guns on their officers, to return to the rear and fight through strikes, through demonstrations on a class terrain against capitalism as a whole.
Small internationalist glimmers
However, when world war broke out, against the outbreak of anti-fascist war-mongering, some voices from anarchism were raised that rejected the terrain of anti-fascism and affirmed the only really revolutionary position, that of internationalism. Thus in 1939, in Britain, the Glasgow Anarchist-Communist Federation declared that: "The present struggle opposes rival imperialisms for the protection of secular interests. The workers of every country belong to the oppressed class and have nothing in common with the interests and aspirations of the dominant class. Their front line isn't the Maginot Line; there they would be demoralised and killed, while their masters amassed their fraudulent gains."[15] In the south of France, the miniscule group around Voline[16] developed an intervention against the war on a clear internationalist basis: "The present conflict is the work of the powers of money of each nation, powers who live exclusively and internationally on the exploitation of man by man (...) The state leaders, the military chiefs of all colours and shades, go from one camp to the other, tear up treaties, sign others, serve the Republic here, the Dictatorship there, collaborate with those military adversaries of yesterday, and vice-versa and back again (...) the people, they pay the piper: they're mobilised for democracies, against democracies, for the fascists, against the fascists. But whether in Africa, Asia or Europe, it's the masses who pay the cost of these 'contradictory experiences' and who get their bodies smashed in (...) It's not a question of only fighting against Hitlerien fascism, but against all fascisms, against all tyrannies, whether of the right, left or centre, whether royal, democratic or social, because no tyranny will emancipate labour, neither liberate the world, nor organise humanity on a really new basis."[17] This position clearly makes these anarchists an expression of the working class. Here again, when such a clarity is reached, it's by taking up the class positions of the proletariat.
But the hard test of isolation from other remaining internationalist groups and from the class in the conditions of the triumph of the counter-revolution, including the enormous pressure of anti-fascism ("we had daily confrontations with other anti-fascists. Should we associate with them or remain against the current? The question was often agonising on the ground.")[18] soon extinguished this spark. The death of Voline (September 1945), the incapacity of the anarchists to draw the lessons from their experiences, led the elements of his group to return to the fold of the CNT, to momentary adhesion to its anti-fascist committees and, finally, to participating in the reconstruction of the FAI on a completely bourgeois political basis.
What is the political result for militant anarchist workers?
From an examination of the history of anarchism faced with two world wars, we can underline a series of conclusions:
- Not only did anarchism demonstrate its inability to offer a viable alternative and revolutionary perspective to the working class but it constituted a direct means of mobilising the working class for imperialist war. In 1936-37, the capitulation of anarchism faced with the anti-fascist mystification and with bourgeois democracy, seen as a 'lesser evil' in relation to fascism, was a way for capitalism to enlarge the front of political forces agitating for war, including the anarchists. After the First World War, the war in Spain constituted the second decisive act for anarchism, sealing its evolution towards supporting a capitalist state. This submission to bourgeois democracy was shown in the integration of the official currents of anarchism into the political forces of the capitalist state. Thus, following this process, from 1914 to the war in Spain 1936-37, official anarchism became an ideology for the defence of order and state capitalism.
- In the second place, it's important to say that the anarchist movement can't be reduced to its official currents and remains a very heterogeneous milieu. Throughout its time, a part of this milieu has sincerely aspired to the revolution and socialism, expressing a real will to finish with capitalism and exploitation. These militants have effectively placed themselves on the terrain of the working class when they affirmed their internationalism and dedicated themselves to joining its revolutionary combat. But doing this fundamentally depends on a process of decantation whose sense and breadth depends on the rapport de forces between the fundamental classes, the bourgeoisie and proletariat.
This decantation could well come to nothing or even go towards the bourgeoisie as in the black years of the counter-revolution of the 1940s. There, deprived of the compass of the class struggle of the proletariat and of the oxygen of discussion and debate with the revolutionary minorities it produces, elements trying to defend class principles were often trapped in the intrinsic contradictions of anarchism.
Anarchism could be orientated towards the working class when the latter affirmed itself as a revolutionary force. Thus, it's really the revolutionary movement of the working class, the rise of the world revolution and the proletarian insurrection in Russia (with the destruction of the state apparatus of the bourgeoisie by the Soviets and the unilateral halt to the engagement in imperialist war by the Russian proletariat and the Bolsheviks), which allowed those remaining internationalist anarchists to adopt a consistently internationalist attitude in 1914-18. They then joined up with the historic movement of the working class by approaching the communist movement coming out of the left of Social Democracy and opposed to the war: the Bolsheviks and the Spartacists. It was these marxist currents who were the most capable of putting forward the sole viable, realistic alternative: the transformation of imperialist war into civil war and the world proletarian revolution.
Scott 27/5/9
Anarchism and imperialist war (part 1): Anarchists faced with the First World War [14]
Anarchism and imperialist war (part 3): From the end of the Second World War to the end of the counter-revolution [15]
Anarchism and imperialist war (part 4): Internationalism, a crucial question in today's debates [16]
[1] The allegiances of anarchism went towards different fractions of the dominant class: some militants, seduced by the Charter of Labour, or pacifists restored by the armistice, collaborated in the National Revolution programme of Petain and his Vichy government, as in the case of Louis Loreal, or ended up in the official structures of the French state, such as P. Besnard.
[2] The Spanish Anarchists and the Resistance, in L'Affranchi no.14, Spring/summer 1997, on CNT-AIT.info.
[3] E. Sarboni, 1944: The black dossiers of resistance, Perpignan, Ed. Du CES, 1984.
[4] The Spanish Anarchists and the Resistance, in L'Affranchi no. 14, Spring/summer 1997, on CNT-AIT.info.
[5] 1943-45: Anarchist Partisans in the Italian Resistance, on libcom.org
[6] 1943-45: Anarchist Partisans in the Italian Resistance, on libcom.org.
[7] Postface to Max Nettlau, History of Anarchism, p. 281.
[8] E. Sarbone, 1944: The black dossiers of resistance, Perpignan, Ed. Du CES, 1984
[9] Pepito Rossell, In the resistance, the support of the libertarian movement.
[10] Le Monde diplomatique, August 2004.
[11] On the trajectory of the CNT, read our series in the International Review, notably the articles: 'The failure of anarchism to prevent the integration of the CNT into the bourgeois state (1931-34)';' Anti-fascism, the road to betrayal by the CNT (1934-36)'.
[12] D.A. de Santillan, in Solidaridad Obrera, April 16 1937.
[13] D.A. de Santillan, in Solidaridad Obrera April 21 1937.
[14] Solidaridad Obrera, January 6 1937, quoted by La Révolution Prolétarienne no. 238, January 1937.
[15] Quoted b P. Hempel, A bas la guerre, p. 210.
[16] Vsevolod Mikahilovitch Eichenbaum - Voline (1882-1945), was a member of the Revolutionary Socialist Party during the revolution of 1905 and participated in the foundation of the St. Petersburg Soviet. Imprisoned, he escaped and got to France in 1907 where he became an anarchist. In 1915, threatened with imprisonment by the French government for his opposition to the war, he fled to the United States. In 1917, he returned to Russia where he militated among the anarcho-syndicalists. Consequently, Voline made contact with the Makhnovist movement and became head of the culture and education section of the insurrectional army and then became president of its military, insurrectional Council in 1919. Arrested several times, he left Russia after 1920 and sought refuge in Germany. Returning to France, he edited, on the Spanish CNT's request, its paper in the French language. In 1940, in Marseille, he finished The Unknown Revolution. Hardship and the terrible material conditions of clandestinity affected his health and he died of tuberculosis in Paris, 1945.
[17] Extract from the leaflet: To all workers..., 1943.
[18] Anarchists and the resistance, CIRA, p. 33.
World War II [17]
Anarchism [18]
Global warming: Capitalism kills
At the beginning of June, the General Secretary of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon, published the report 'Reducing the risks of catastrophe; world balance sheet 2009'. This document highlights the growing risk to the environment posed by global warming and by anarchic urbanisation in certain regions of the world.
Between 1975 and 2008, 8,866 natural catastrophes killed 2,284,000 people around the world. The number of victims of floods or storms has in the past 30 years gone from 740 million to 2.5. billion people. In 2008, more than 300 natural catastrophes led to 236,000 deaths and directly affected more than 200 million people. All this according to the figures published by the UN, which in a big display of international solidarity is calling on all governments to struggle more effectively against the "underlying" risks of these events. "We all know that the poor and the developing countries are the ones who suffer the most from catastrophes and three quarters of those who die as a result of floods lived in three Asian countries: Bangladesh, China and India" writes Ban Ki-moon.
Moreover, while the Arab countries are presently suffering less from the effects of these disasters, the rise in sea levels poses a direct and short-term threat to Bahrain, Egypt and Djibouti. And the other Arab countries which aren't threatened by the sea are threatened by drought.
The ecological and economic impact of climate change is already killing people in large numbers. A report made public by the 'World Humanitarian Forum', a foundation whose president is the former UN General Secretary Kofi Annan, re-evaluates the effects of climate change. Because it's not only a very serious threat for the future, with 250 million 'climate refugees' predicted by 2050, but also a major contemporary crisis which is already killing 300,000 people a year around the world.
More than half of the 300,000 deaths are the result of malnutrition. Then come the health problems, because global warming serves to propagate numerous diseases. Thus, 10 million new cases of malaria, resulting in 55,000 deaths, have been identified. These victims join the 3 million people who die each year from this disease. Here again the populations of the poorer countries are the most affected because they are the last to have access to the necessary medicines.
The rise in temperatures attested by all serious scientists has a direct impact on agricultural yields and access to water, and this again hits the poor first and foremost. The severe degradation of the environment and the resulting turmoil for the climate (floods, storms, cyclones, etc) directly affect at least 325 million people, or a 20th of the world's population.
The experts who consider that these figures are going to double over the next 20 years are anticipating the most grave humanitarian crisis in human history.
In the face of this expected catastrophe, what is the bourgeoisie really doing? The OECD (Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development), an organism which is habituated to facile optimism and a 'things will be better tomorrow' approach, has had to admit that at least a third of development aid programmes are not working, while the World Humanitarian Forum estimates that to cancel out the most sombre predictions, you would have to spend 100 times more than the money actually allotted to dealing with the problems.
Result: the new projections contained in the Journal of Climate of the American Meteorological Society now predict a 5.25% rise in temperature by the year 2100, with a probability rating of 90%. This would raise sea levels by nearly a metre!
In 2003, the same study, but based on less developed techniques, only predicted an average rise of 2.4%. The difference between the two calculations shows the extent to which the ruling class, while trying to draw up models for the future voyages of its ship, is actually sailing blind. However much it calls on states to put plans of action into place, the irrational logic of its system can only push it towards destruction.
Thus, although new post-Kyoto negotiations have been opened up by the UN, a report by Christian Aid estimates that 182 million human beings in Africa will die between now and 2100 as a direct result of climate change.
Faced with this perspective, and faced with its inability to deal with the problem, the bourgeoisie is resorting to making the population and the workers in particular feel guilty about it. We are told over and over again that global warming is the result of our life-styles in the developed countries. Calculations made by scientists appointed by capitalism show us that a Westerner consumes 11 times more energy than an inhabitant of the South, and that half of the world's emissions of CO2 derive from the countries of the North (24% of the world total by the US, 10% for the eurozone). Thus, the workers of the developed countries should stay poor or become poor in order to conserve the planet; and instead of thinking about fighting against their exploiters, should brush their teeth in the same water they use for washing up or use the same bathwater ten times over. We know that the situation many of us live in is a luxurious one compared to what billions of people have to put up with around the world. But this is precisely what is so disgusting about the propaganda of the bourgeoisie: they want the misery and horror faced by the majority of the world's population to be inflicted on everyone.
The exploited class has no choice but to fight for its interests, because it is this struggle alone which can save the planet by putting an end to a system which has become a veritable social disaster for the human race!
Damien 27/6/9
Ban Ki-Moon [19]
Climate change [20]
Meeting about ESOL cuts in Tower Hamlets
An advanced warning of possible future cuts in education has been provided by the decision to get rid of 1600 learner places in English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) at Tower Hamlets College, resulting in 60 teachers losing their jobs. Similar cuts are proposed at St Paul's Way Community School in the same borough. Staff have protested against these attacks at a demonstration on 27 June and at a public meeting on 1 July, with strike action planned a week later. We are publishing a critical account of the public meeting, written by a comrade who works in this sector.
I attended the meeting on Wednesday evening. It started at about 5.15pm and at 6.45 they finally asked if anyone else (i.e. anyone who hadn't already been approved to speak) wanted to say something in the meeting.
It was bad enough having to listen to NUT officials (and one member of the NUT executive) spouting on about the need for solidarity and collective action, given the anti-worker history of the NUT, it was something else to have to listen to the political advisor to George Galloway spouting on about how George would have been there but for being in Gaza to help organise humanitarian aid for the Palestinians...
It was clear that there is a real sense of anger amongst the workers about what is happening in their respective places of work and so the unions, in a spirit of solidarity have organised 2 one day strikes... on separate days! Two sets of teachers in the same borough striking over job cuts on different days - this is the real face of the union 'solidarity' - division and pathetic one day actions.
I said that there was a need to discuss with colleagues at the workplace, not to get narrowed down into just the ESOL department, but to see these as the first of many cuts that are to come. It is important also to have meetings with colleagues which are not separated by union membership, as this is one of the main ways of dividing up the workers.
Also, in response to the idea a few others put forward, I stated that returning to local authority control (as opposed to Trust School status) was no different - in fact the government is in the process of abolishing the Learning and Skills Council (the current body which controls funding for schools) and returning Schools back to Local Education Authority control - and it is these local organs of the state that are going to institute the next rounds of cuts in the public sector.
It says something about this kind of meeting that there was no real discussion of any kind. That's the normal mode of operating for leftists - they don't see collective meetings as a place where workers can discuss and make actual decisions on actions, just a place for workers to come and be told what the 'official' (i.e. union) line is.
Miles 4/7/9
Education cuts [21]
Massive struggles in Bangladesh and China
All over the planet, the working class is being subjected to increasingly unbearable levels of exploitation and poverty. And in the countries which the bourgeoisie hypocritically calls 'developing economies' the workers are treated as no more than cattle.
But for several years, these wage slaves have been resisting more and more. In Egypt, in Dubai or in Vietnam, revolts have been brewing and sporadically exploding, each time involving tens of thousands of workers.
The existence of these struggles is hardly known about in the rest of the world, or totally ignored. The bourgeois media operate a complete black-out: hardly anything gets through about these immense strikes or the terrible repression meted out to militant workers.
The press has been no less silent about the recent massive struggles in Bangladesh and China.
In Bangladesh: textile workers in struggle
The textile workers of Bangladesh have a grim record: the lowest wages in the world: $0.22 an hour. In India, where most of the population lives in the most utter deprivation, wages are twice as high ($0.44 an hour). And yet the situation in Bangladesh has been getting worse: in certain factories, even these miserable wages are not being paid out!
So after months of suffering and sacrifice, the massive and violent reaction of the workers was in proportion to this inhuman treatment. On 10 May, in the Rupashi pullover-making factory in Narayanganj (a port city at the centre of the country's textile industry) the workers' anger exploded and they physically assaulted their boss. "The next day, the workers of Rupashi went to work and found the factory closed and bolted. The workers then decided to go in procession to the other factories in the town shouting slogans against exploitation. Thousands of other workers left their workplaces to join them. There were clashes with the factory security guards. The violence spread like wildfire: 20,000 workers trashed and burned dozens of textile factories and bales of cotton" ('Des Nouvelles du Front', dndf.org).
In 2006 thousands of workers' revolts hit certain industrial sites. But this time, the workers were acting even more massively and violently. They didn't hesitate to sweep aside all the security fences around their factories to come together and confront the army, which resulted in some very bloody street battles. These sites are almost like labour camps, surrounded by barbed wire fences and permanently protected by armed guards. By attacking the factories and the army, these 20,000 workers were driven by the desire both to destroy the machines that are used to torture them and to risk their lives confronting their jailers.
In China too, workers fight the effects of the crisis
For the last 15 years China has been presented as a new capitalist El Dorado. To believe the highly qualified liars of political economy, the Middle Kingdom is being spared by the economic crisis. Even better, China will help to lead the world economy out of the recession! Obviously the truth is somewhere else, and here also the working class is the first victim of the crisis. For example "in Daqing alone, 88,000 employees have been laid off in the last two years" (ibid. Daqing is a town of one million inhabitants in the province of Heilongjiang). In the country as a whole, around 30 million migrant workers have lost their jobs since last year.
But bit by bit combativity is growing, Despite the pitiless repression handed out by the Chinese Communist Party, the workers are less and less prepared to be trated like animals. Since the beginning of March, "thousands of workers in the North East of China demonstrated their discontent in the street, demanding payment of their benefits and the liberation of their representatives[1]. Demonstrations took place in the towns of Daqing and Liaoyang, at the heart of the industrial basin of Manchuria, which has been hard hit by the economic crisis. Around these towns, the state industries directly or indirectly employ nine out of ten people. But the output of these heavy industrial plants is falling and unemployment is growing. When it was announced that heating allowances would be stopped and that there would no longer be any social security for workers who had been laid off, thousands of Daqing workers, up to 30,000 of them, came out onto the streets every day since the beginning of March. They gathered in the square of the 'Man of Iron', the name of a legendary hero of the proletariat in the 1960s. They camped out in front of the HQ of Petro China, the state company which employs them. 'We are the men of iron' they shouted under the windows of their bosses. In Liaoyang, similar motives pushed the workers to brave the cold and the sandstorms, tens of thousands protesting in front of local government HQ." (ibid)
This wave of struggle is typical of the general rise of militancy in the Chinese working class in the face of the economic crisis. "in the course of the first three months of the year, as job cuts and the forced return of migrants to their region of origin shot up, China saw 58,000 'mass incidents'. The government itself has talked about strikes, street demonstrations and blockades and other forms of popular struggle. These figures come from the agencies charged with surveying political stability in continental China, situated in Hong Kong. If this tendency continues throughout the year, 2009 will break all previous records with more than 230,000 of these 'mass incidents' compared to 120,000 in 2008 and 90,000 in 2006" (ibid)
From Vietnam to Dubai, from China to Bangladesh, we are seeing increasingly massive and violent struggles, The question posed here is: what is the future of these struggles? To answer this, we have to see them as part of an international process, of the gradual return of the proletariat to the terrain of the class struggle all over the world.
In the 'developing' countries, the militancy of the workers, the massive nature of the strikes, and the courage of the workers in the face of ferocious repression can and should inspire the workers of all countries.
But the despair which pushes them, as in Bangladesh, to smash up a factory or confront the forces of repression with no other perspective than to die in a bloodbath, also shows the extent to which these workers need the struggle of the workers in the central countries, in Europe and the USA, to appropriate the long experience of the oldest battalions of the world proletariat.
For these struggles to have an echo, for the fighting spirit of the workers to encourage others, it is vital to beak through the wall of silence imposed by the bourgeoisie and give maximum international publicity to every important struggle.
Map 1/7/9
[1] These 'representatives' are usually elements that the Chinese state has pointed to as the most militant workers and who have been thrown in prison as a result. Given the lack of information, we don't know to what extent these 'representatives' are actually recognised by the majority of workers in struggle.
China [22]
Bangladesh [23]
Universities take the side of state repression
In Iran, one of the Islamic regime's first responses to the massive demonstrations that followed the rigged election result was to send its Basij militia thugs into Tehran university, to beat and murder selected students as an example to the rest.
In France, during the most recent student mobilisations against the 'reform' of higher education (aimed at sharpening divisions between elite universities and the rest), more than one occupied campus was raided by police armed with dogs and intent on preventing the students from holding political debates in the lecture theatres.
In Greece, during the December revolt, university campuses, particularly the Athens Polytechnic School, were used as a basis for general assemblies open to students, workers and the unemployed. The police were again used to break up the occupations and thus strike a blow against the efforts of the revolt to become conscious of its goals and methods.
In a number of these cases, there were clear signs of complicity between the police and the university authorities.
Iran, of course, is a rigid theocracy, and the French and the Greek police have a long history of violence against social dissent. But surely things are different in liberal Britain, with its tradition of independent universities and of tolerance towards unorthodox thinkers?
Perhaps not.
In June students at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London occupied the college after heavily tooled up immigration officers carried out a raid to identify, arrest and in some cases deport immigrant cleaning workers who had not long ago been involved in strike action. Here again the police acted in tandem with the university authorities:
"Immigration officers were called in by cleaning contractor ISS, even though it has employed many of the cleaners for years. Cleaning staff were told to attend an 'emergency staff meeting' at 6.30am on Friday (June 12).
This was used as a false pretext to lure the cleaners into a closed space in which the immigration officers were hiding to arrest them.
More than 40 officers were dressed in full riot gear and aggressively undertook interrogations and then escorted them to the detention centre. Neither legal representation nor union support were present due to the secrecy surrounding the action. Many were unable to communicate let alone fully understand what was taking place due to the denial of interpreters.
SOAS management were complicit in the immigration raid by enabling the officers to hide in the meeting room beforehand and giving no warning to them" (from the press release issued by occupying students https://libcom.org/forums/announcements/support-soas-occupation-cleaners-risk-deportation-russell-square-london-430 [24]).
At the University of East London, professor of anthropology Chris Knight has been suspended from his job and faces the sack for 'gross misconduct'. This was mainly because he went ahead with an 'alternative G20 summit' at the campus (though in the grounds, not inside the building as originally planned) after the university authorities had cancelled it at the last minute. It will be recalled that, in the period leading up to the G20 summit in London, the media and the police were concocting a campaign of hysteria about the threat of violence in the capital - a threat which they themselves brought to fulfilment with a display of hysterical violence which led to the 'kettling' of hundreds of demonstrators and the death of bystander Ian Tomlinson. No doubt the university authorities were fearful that the UEL campus would operate as a head quarters for the anti-G20 demonstrations. The papers meanwhile said little about the primary cause of Knight's suspension and gave maximum publicity to Knight's jokes about bankers being hanged from lamp-posts, claiming that this was the real reason for his suspension.
We don't think that the alternative summit, largely made up of leftists like Tony Benn and Lindsay German, offered a revolutionary alternative to the G20, nor are we in agreement with Knight's focus on the 'street theatre' style of protest and other political ideas (anarchist or Trotskyist) he has espoused. But that does not stop us from denouncing UEL's complicity with the forces of repression, just as we condemn SOAS for unleashing the immigration narks on their own cleaning staff.
Visitors to our website know that we have initiated a discussion around Chris Knight's ideas about the origins of human culture (https://en.internationalism.org/2008/10/Chris-Knight [25]). He is a stimulating and original thinker who is not afraid to step outside the confines of academic orthodoxy. By suspending him, and refusing to host the 'alternative summit', UEL is setting an ominous precedent: in a time of growing economic and social crisis, unorthodox lines of thought will not be permitted.
This kind of intellectual Stalinism, along with the cow-towing of universities to the demands of the police, needs to be opposed at each step of the way; but the best method for reviving the universities as true centres of learning is the one favoured by the Greek and French students who threw the campus gates open and organised their general assemblies so that everyone with an interest in resisting capitalism could take part in a genuine culture of proletarian debate.
Amos 26/6/9
University protests [26]
State repression [27]
Iran: The working class must fight for its own interests
The result of Iran's presidential election on 12 June set off a torrent of protests, with up to 2 million people on the streets.
After threats, arrests, beatings and torture, the street demonstrations have given way to night time roof-top protests, shouting "Death to the dictator" and "Allah-u-Akbar". Not since 1979, when the Shah was forced out of the country, have we seen such a level of protest, bringing to the surface the mounting popular discontent with the Islamic regime.
The level of repression tells us much. The regime held off attacking the initial and largest protests. Having come into being when protests and strikes undermined the Shah's rule, the rulers of the Islamic Republic were well aware of the danger of making martyrs of the demonstrators. But the following week the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, issued threats against the demonstrations at Friday prayers, and this has been followed by lethal attacks on protesters by the various repressive forces, the Basiji militia, the Revolutionary Guard, elite riot police and snipers (the death of Neda Agha Soltan, which was broadcast around the world, seems to have been the work of a sniper). There have been arrests of hundreds if not thousands, and the whole country has been electronically isolated - no email or texts could get in or out. Now there is a disgusting campaign calling on citizens to inform on neighbours, friends, brothers, sisters... anyone who might have taken part in the demonstrations. It takes real courage to show even the slightest opposition in Iran.
Divisions in the regime
The regime has not only turned on the ordinary demonstrators, but also threatened the rival presidential candidate Mousavi, warning him not to stir up protests, and briefly arrested the children of Rafsanjani, former president and known as Khomeini's side-kick after 1979. In short, there are deep divisions inside the Iranian ruling class. The 'reformers' are currently riding the wave of the popular protests, but they are the hardliners of the 1980s and steeped in the Islamic Republic. They clearly have nothing to offer the population in general or the working class in particular except more of the same capitalist exploitation. But they clearly think they have something to offer Iranian capitalism. Although Rafsanjani has remained silent he "supports greater opening to the West, privatising parts of the economy and granting more power to elected institutions" according to the International Herald Tribune 23/6/9, and is trying to broker a compromise within the ruling class, part of his role on the Expediency Council.
Meanwhile when Mousavi states that "Protesting against lies and fraud is your right", he is not just fighting his own corner, but doing a service for the whole Iranian bourgeoisie. While they may not have wanted to unleash such a visible expression of the discontent in the country, Mousavi is working to keep it focused on the election result and taking sides on the divisions in the ruling elite, which is a complete dead end.
Where is the working class?
The repression has not put an end to the discontent, even if the massive street demonstrations have come to an end for the moment. However, without a significant struggle of the working class it will not be possible to put up any effective resistance to the repression. The militant Iran Khodro car plant went on strike against the repression - something the workers have experienced themselves in the wake of their own struggles. A union statement from Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Vahed Bus Company, which supports none of the presidential candidates but supports the protests, may give an indication of the mood among workers - against the repression, critical of both ruling class factions, but with illusions in democracy. Despite this, and the general strike called for 26th June, workers have not generally played a part in these events as a class, although they have undoubtedly been involved individually.
We should not forget the role of the class struggle 30 years ago. Strikes, particularly in the oil industry, played a crucial role in undermining the Shah's ability to rule: "when the 'popular' movement - regrouping almost all the oppressed strata in Iran - began to exhaust itself, the entry into the struggle of the Iranian proletariat at the beginning of October 1978, most notably in the oil sector, not only refuelled the agitation, but posed a virtually insolvable problem for the national capital, in the absence of a replacement being found for the old governmental team. Repression was enough to cause the retreat of the small merchants, the students and those without work, but it proved a powerless weapon of the bourgeoisie when confronted with the economic paralysis provoked by the strikes of the workers. Thus, even in a country where it is numerically weak, the proletariat in Iran showed what an essential strength it has in society, owing to its position at the heart of capitalist production" (ICC statement, reprinted in WR 322 [28]). This strike movement was not an Iranian event so much as an important chapter in an international strike wave that also included the 'winter or discontent' in Britain, dock strikes in Holland, steel strikes in France, all of this culminating in the mass strike in Poland in 1980.
We have no doubt that the working class in Iran will participate in the present development of the international class struggle alongside its class brothers in Egypt, Dubai, Bangladesh and China as well as in Europe and the Americas. When it does so on a class basis, for its own interests, it will be able to offer a real perspective to the wider popular anger that has been so evident in recent weeks. The perspective that is required is not just that of getting rid of the current Iranian president, or the Islamic regime, but of the whole capitalist system.
Alex 4/7/9
Iranian Elections and protests [29]
Imperialist conflicts and outside interference
Britain's role in meddling in Iranian politics in the past is well documented, such as its part in overthrowing the elected government in 1953 alongside the USA. At the same time no brutal, corrupt and hated regime anywhere in the world will ever admit to the existence of any discontent that has not been stirred up by outside forces. We cannot rely on what the politicians from either Britain or Iran tell us but must look at whose interests are served by any particular event.
It is clearly in Khamenei's and Ahmadinejad's interests to use longstanding and widespread distrust of Britain's imperialist history to portray the protests as serving outside interests and so try to undermine their legitimacy and popularity. The expulsion of two diplomats, the refusal to renew a BBC reporter's visa and the arrest of Embassy staff can all help in this.
Of course, the Islamic regime came to power after the fall of the Shah whose reign had been assured by previous regime change engineered by the USA and Britain, and these powers obviously want to undermine it. Their adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken out or weakened some of Iran's most important rivals, Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, increasing its weight as a regional power to rival Israel with or without nuclear weapons, and this is clearly a problem for US strategy. They have to do something about Iran.
The sabre-rattling of the Bush administration, which defined Iran as part of the 'Axis of Evil', has been replaced by Obama's strategy of dialogue and diplomacy: "In offering negotiation and conciliation, [President Obama] has put the region's extremists on the defensive" as Senator John Kerry explained (BBC news online). In order to pursue this strategy the USA has certainly joined in all the hypocritical international condemnation of the repression, but has done so in Obama's measured tones "We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people". Britain has also remained measured in criticism despite needing to protest against the arrest and possible trial of Embassy staff. The BBC Persian service and Voice of America are undoubtedly giving voice to more protest than the Iranian regime can tolerate, particularly now with its divisions uncovered, and in the long term this is intended to undermine it; but in the short term they have nothing to gain from the present protests getting out of hand.
WR 4/7/9
Iran [30]
Imperialism [31]
Source URL: https://en.internationalism.org/wr/2009/326
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/lindesey%20meeting_0.JPG
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/britain
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/general-and-theoretical-questions/economic-crisis
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-struggle
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/anti-fascism
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/swps-open-letter
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/commune
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/200906/2920/euro-elections-nationalism-left-and-right
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/readers-letters
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/elections-0
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2009/06/construction-sector-struggle
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/lindsey-oil-refinery-strike
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/wildcat-strikes
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/2009/wr/325/anarchism-war1
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/327/anarchism-war3
[16] https://en.internationalism.org/2009/wr/328/anarchism
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/world-war-ii
[18] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/anarchism
[19] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/ban-ki-moon
[20] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/climate-change
[21] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/education-cuts
[22] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/china
[23] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/bangladesh
[24] https://libcom.org/forums/announcements/support-soas-occupation-cleaners-risk-deportation-russell-square-london-430
[25] https://en.internationalism.org/2008/10/Chris-Knight
[26] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/university-protests
[27] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/state-repression
[28] https://en.internationalism.org/2009/wr/322/iran-1979
[29] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/iranian-elections-and-protests
[30] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/260/iran
[31] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/186/imperialism