We present the International Marxist Tendency's world
perspectives for 2018: constituting our analysis of the current situation in
world politics, and predictions about where we are headed. This draft document
will be discussed and finalised at the IMT's 2018 World Congress in Turin. It
was written in the first few months of this year, and although some of the
events described have developed since, these developments only further confirm
our overarching analysis of the world situation.
Ten years after the crash
Ten years have passed since the financial crash of 2008.
This was one of those defining moments in world history that mark a fundamental
change in the situation, like 1914, 1917, 1929 and 1939-45. It is therefore an
appropriate moment to draw a balance sheet of the past decade.
This crisis was qualitatively different from any other in
the past. It was not a normal cyclical crisis, but a reflection of the organic
crisis of capitalism. A decade after the collapse of 2008, the bourgeoisie is
still struggling to extricate itself from the crisis that destroyed the
equilibrium of the capitalist system. To the very limited degree that one can
speak of a recovery, it is a very partial one. In fact, it is the weakest
economic recovery in history. Even in the 1930s there was a bigger recovery.
And certain things flow from this.
Ten years ago, we predicted that all of the attempts of the
bourgeoisie to restore the economic equilibrium would destroy the political and
social equilibrium. That has now been confirmed by events on a world scale. In
one country after another the attempts of governments to impose austerity in a
desperate effort to get the economy moving (which they have failed to do) have
prepared social explosions of an absolutely unprecedented character.
“Concentrated economics”
Lenin said politics is concentrated economics. In the last
analysis, all these crises are an expression of the impasse of capitalism which
is no longer capable of developing the productive forces as it did in the past.
This does not mean, of course, that there can no longer be any development of
the productive forces.
Neither Marx nor Lenin or Trotsky have ever said that there
was an absolute ceiling on the development of the productive forces under
capitalism. It is a relative, not an absolute phenomenon. There can always be
some development, as there has been in China in the last period. But on a world
scale there is nothing compared to the development of the productive forces in
the second half of the 20th century after the Second World War.
Marxism explains that the secret to the viability of any
economic system is the achievement of the maximum economy of labour time. One
of the most important elements in the development of capitalism was precisely
the growth in the productivity of labour. For 200 years, capitalism raised the
productivity of human labour power to a level undreamt of in the past. But this
progress is now reaching its limits.
A study on productivity by the Center for Economic and
Policy Research in September 2015 found that, between 2007 and 2012, global
productivity grew at annual rate of 0.5%; half what it had been in the period
1996-2006. However, in the more recent period of 2012-14 it had ground to a
complete halt at zero percent. In countries like Brazil and Mexico it was
actually negative. As the report states,
“This is one of the most disturbing and, no doubt, important phenomena
affecting the world economy.”
These figures are a sure indication that capitalism now
finds itself in a systemic crisis. The sluggish growth of the productivity of
labour – and in some cases its fall – is a striking symptom of the impasse of
capitalism, which is no longer able to achieve the big successes of the past.
The source of the problem lies in historically low levels
of investment: gross capital formation in the European Union and the United
States has fallen below 20% of GDP for the first time since the 1960s, while
capital consumption and depreciation is rising. In the former colonial world,
the boom in raw material prices sparked a brief increase in investment, but it
has fallen again over the past few years.
This failure to invest in production is not the result of
the lack of money. On the contrary, the giant corporations are swimming in
cash. Adam Davidson, writing in The New York Times in January 2016,
stated that, “American businesses currently have $1.9 trillion in cash, just
sitting around”… this “state of affairs [is] unparalleled in economic history…”
The author of the article considers this a “mystery” but what it shows is that
the capitalists do not have profitable fields of investment in the present
state of the world economy. (Why
Are Corporations Hoarding Trillions? New York Times, January 20, 2016)
More recent
data by the US Federal Reserve puts the amount of “non-financial
companies’ liquid assets, which include hard currency, foreign deposits,
money-market and mutual-fund shares” at a “record $2.4 trillion in the third
quarter” of 2017.
The system is literally drowning in a surfeit of wealth. It
is like the sorcerer's apprentice who has conjured up forces that he cannot
control. The productive forces have the potential to produce a mass of
commodities that cannot be absorbed by the markets.
This inability to make productive use of the colossal
amounts of surplus value extracted from the sweat and blood of the workers is
the final condemnation of capitalism. Overproduction is reflected in a general
crisis of the world economy, which is in a very fragile state. Cheap credit no
longer serves to stimulate investment. What is the point in investing to create
new productive forces when there are no markets for the existing production?
A new recovery?
Every day the press proclaims a recovery. In the best case,
there is a slight upturn in GDP within a generalised context of long term
stagnation. For Marxists there is no surprise in this; even in periods of
decline the system continues to move in cycles and after a long period of
decline or stagnation a small recovery is to be expected. However, it is of
such a weak nature that it amounts to no substantial recovery and will not
last.
The limited growth comes against a background of
ultra-loose monetary policy. The Federal Reserve kept the base rate at just above
zero from the autumn of 2008 until the beginning of 2017. The European Central
Bank also lowered their rate to just above zero.
Real estate bubbles exist in housing markets in Britain,
Canada, China and Scandinavia. The stock markets have not merely recovered but
have exceeded their 2007 valuations. The Dow Jones has managed to not only
exceed, but increase its valuation by 36%. The price over earnings ratio (that
is, the price an investor is paying for $1 of a company's earnings or profit)
has reached its third highest peak in history (the previous two being 1929 and
2000). All this is indicative, not of a healthy recovery, but of another crisis
in the making. It also has the effect of transferring huge amounts of money to
the capitalist class whose assets have increased in value with the influx of
new credit.
The limits of credit
The reason for the present impasse is that, in the decades
prior to 2008, capitalism not only reached its limits but went far beyond its
“natural” limits. The unprecedented expansion of credit and debt is partly what
enabled capitalism to overcome the constraints of the market and
overproduction. On the other hand, there was the enormous expansion of world
trade and an intensification of the international division of labour.
Marx explained that one of the ways capitalism gets around
the limits of the market and the tendency for the rate of profit to fall is
through the massive expansion of credit and of increasing world trade
(“globalisation”), which partially, and for a limited period of a few decades,
enabled it to get around the other key contradiction: the limitations of the
nation state. But both of these solutions have limited effects and have now
turned into their opposite.
Historically, the US has had a total debt (government and
private) of around 100-180% of GDP. However, in the late 1980s total debt
reached 200%, and it continued to grow until 2009, reaching a peak of around
300%. Japan, Britain, Spain, France, Italy and South Korea all have debt levels
in excess of 300%. World debt now stands at $217tn or 327% of GDP, the highest
in history.
Marx pointed out in The Communist Manifesto that
the bourgeoisie solves crises today only by paving the way for bigger crises in
the future. What have they achieved over the past decade with all the pain,
austerity and suffering? Their aim was to reduce the deficit and the huge
unprecedented mountain of debt that had been built up as a result of the
previous period.
All they have done is to convert what was a gigantic black
hole in the private banks into a huge black hole in the public finances. The
banks were standing on the brink of an abyss and they were only saved by the
intervention of the state, which saved them by giving them trillions from the
public purse. The problem is that the state does not have any money except what
it can squeeze from the taxpayers.
The question is therefore: who pays? It is well known that
the rich do not pay much in taxes. They have a thousand ways of avoiding that
painful necessity. The working class must pay, the middle class must pay, the
unemployed must pay, the sick must pay, the schools must pay. Everyone must pay
except for the rich, who have become richer and richer even in this period of
“austerity”.
Has all this solved anything? Seven out of the ten biggest
economies in the world run annual government deficits in excess of 3% of GDP,
and only Germany has less than a 2% deficit. Debt is rising everywhere. There
is no way to get out of the crisis unless and until these debts have been wiped
out one way or another. And how does one eliminate the public debt? Naturally
you place the entire burden on the shoulders of the poorest and most vulnerable
sections of society.
The scenario that we are witnessing internationally is
really unprecedented. And we are speaking here only of the advanced capitalist
countries. The situation in the so-called Third World is another matter. Here
the picture is one of unrelieved misery, unimaginable suffering, starvation and
degradation for billions of men, women and children.
The threat of protectionism
For decades, world trade grew much faster than production,
providing the motor force for the growth of the world economy. However, in the
recent period, the growth of world trade has slowed to a level lower than that
of GDP. Global trade as a percentage of GDP peaked at 61% twice, in 2008 and
2011, but now it has fallen to 58%.
The World Trade Organisation has expressed concern that
national governments may be tempted to defend their own markets with
protectionist measures and that these would in turn impact negatively on trade
growth. As if to confirm these fears, Donald Trump blunders onto the scene like
an elephant in a china shop. His policy of “America first” is itself a
reflection of the global crisis. He wishes to “make America great again” at the
expense of the rest of the world. That is to say, he wishes to use America’s muscle
to grab an increased share of world markets.
In the last few years the US capitalists have been
struggling to put together a number of trade deals with Europe, America and
Asia. The first thing Trump did was to tear up the TPP and the TTIP. He also threatens
to destroy NAFTA if he cannot get a deal whereby Mexico and Canada sacrifice
their interests for the benefit of the USA and he is threatening to paralyse
the WTO by blocking the replacements of judges to its tribunals.
China has a huge trade surplus with the USA, a record-high
$275.81 billion for 2017, and this is one of the main reasons that Trump complains
that China is harming the US economy. During the election campaign Trump
accused China of “raping America”, stealing US jobs, etc. Since then he was
obliged to moderate his language in the hope of getting China to put pressure
on North Korea. But that aim was not achieved and the contradictions between
America and China remain unresolved. Here already is the outline of a future
trade war between America and China.
He is not the only one pursuing this policy. Since the
beginning of the crisis the advanced capitalist countries have been taking
measures to increase their trade surpluses. This has partly been done by a
number of protectionist moves. The US (under Obama) became the world leader in
protectionism, but also the UK, Spain, Germany and France are more
protectionist than China.
It must be remembered that it was protectionism that turned
the crash of 1929 into the great Depression of the 1930s. If protectionism
takes hold, it can cause the whole fragile structure of world trade to come
crashing down, with the most serious consequences.
The USA – an unprecedented crisis
The relative weakening of the US since the Second
World War is shown in the fact that in 1945 more than 50% of world GDP was
produced in the United States, whereas now this figure is around 20%. When we
refer to the relative weakening of US imperialism, we should not, however,
exaggerate the process. By relative decline, we mean that it has been weakened
and cannot play the same role it did in the past, as can be seen in the Syrian
crisis. The US, nonetheless, remains by far the dominant superpower on a world
scale and no other power is in a position to replace it, as the US replaced
Britain in the past, for example.
This relative decline has had an effect on both its ability
to dominate the world economically, politically and diplomatically and on its
ability to provide the workers of America with the standard of living that was
behind the relative internal stability of the past. This reality has now seeped
into the consciousness of the US masses.
The American dream is dead. It has been replaced by the
American nightmare. The dream is finished and there is no way they can recover
it. The change in consciousness in America was revealed in a peculiar way
during the presidential elections of November 2016. For a hundred years, the
stability of American capitalism was based on two parties: the Democrats and
Republicans. These two parties alternated in office for all that time.
There is huge discontent and a burning desire for change.
We already saw that in the vote for Obama, who demagogically promised a change.
Millions of people who did not normally vote were queuing up to vote for a
Black American President. They did so twice, but in the end there was no
change. Thus a mood of anger, bitterness and frustration grew, particularly
amongst the poorest sections.
This mood was clearly expressed in the campaign of Bernie
Sanders. At first hardly anybody knew Bernie Sanders, whereas everybody knew
Hillary Clinton. Yet when he talked about a political revolution against the
billionaire class it struck a chord with many people, especially (but not only)
the youth. There were mass meetings of tens of thousands to support Bernie
Sanders. At least one study said that if Sanders had stood against Trump, he
could have won. But inevitably he was manoeuvred out by the Democratic Party
machine. Worse still, he accepted it, which caused a certain element of
demoralisation among his supporters.
The ruling class likes to have people they can control,
people like Hillary Clinton. They did not and do not want Trump because he is a
maverick who suffers from an extreme case of egomania and is therefore
difficult to control. Hillary Clinton is an agent of big business. Trump
represents the same class but he has his own ideas as to how this should be
done. During the election campaign he demagogically appealed to the workers.
For the first time in recent memory, a presidential candidate referred to the
working class (as did Bernie Sanders). That was unheard of. Even most of the
left-wing liberals and trade union leaders always referred to the “middle
class”.
The establishment was desperate to stop Trump. But they
failed. The ruling class was against this demagogic interloper; the Democrats
were against him of course, and the majority of the Republicans were also
against him. All the media were against him. He even succeeded in alienating
Fox News for a time. The media is without doubt a powerful instrument in the
hands of the ruling class. And yet he won.
This was a political earthquake. But how does one explain
it? Trump is a reactionary, but he is also a skilful demagogue who directed his
appeals to the poor, alienated unemployed and workers in the rustbelt: offering
them jobs, denouncing the existing state of affairs and the privileged
Washington establishment. In this way he connected with the general mood of
anger and discontent.
Bernie Sanders connected with the same mood. But he was
predictably sabotaged by the Democratic Party machine. And when Sanders finally
capitulated and called for support for Hillary Clinton, many saw Trump as the
“lesser evil,” and he went on to win the election. Many people who would have
voted for Sanders sat out the election or thought, “If we can’t vote for
Sanders, we’ll vote for Trump”.
Trump’s campaign was marked by the galvanisation and
mobilisation of a section of the electorate which was previously inert and
achieved more absolute votes than any Republican candidate in history, though
he won a lower overall percentage than Republican candidate Mitt Romney in
2012. However, his victory also exposed the opacity and undemocratic nature of
the US Electoral College system, which worked to his advantage in spite of
Trump winning almost three million votes fewer than Hillary Clinton.
The vast majority of the bourgeoisie was not happy about
this unexpected turn in events. But neither, at first, were they unduly
concerned. They have a thousand ways of controlling a difficult politician.
Initially they tried to comfort themselves with the idea that what Trump said
during the election campaign was just propaganda, and that he would behave
rationally once he entered the White House (that is to say, he would take his
orders from the ruling class). But they were mistaken. The man in the White
House proved difficult to control.
The Democrats had a very simple explanation for Trump’s
victory: they blamed the Russians, while Hillary Clinton also blamed Sanders.
All that proves is that to this day the Democratic Party has not understood why
Trump won the elections. They whipped up a campaign claiming that the Russians
were responsible for hacking, which, they claim, decided the result of the
election.
The allegation of Russian involvement in the hacking of
documents may or may not be true. But many countries, and not least the USA,
are constantly hacking, phone tapping and meddling in the internal affairs of
other nations – including their “allies”, as Angela Merkel found out. But to
argue that the Kremlin determined the votes of millions of US citizens is
childish in the extreme.
What is unprecedented is that an American president should
find himself in an open public confrontation with the FBI and the whole of the
American intelligence agencies. The secret services are precisely supposed to
be secret, and they are at the heart of the bourgeois state. For those agencies
to be clashing publicly with the president, openly trying to undermine him and
drive him from office – such a thing is absolutely unheard of. And amidst all
the thunder and lightning, everyone has now forgotten what was in the hacked
emails. And nobody bothers to ask if their contents were in fact true.
In reality, the damning accusations contained in the
material published by WikiLeaks were perfectly true. Among other things it
proved that the Democratic apparatus used dirty tricks to block Bernie Sanders
and hand victory to Hillary Clinton. That was certainly the most blatant
interference in the US elections. But amidst all the hullabaloo about “Russian
interference”, all this has been conveniently forgotten.
Revolutions do not start at the bottom; they start at the
top with a split in the ruling class. Here we have an open split in the state.
This is not a normal political crisis. It is a crisis of the regime. The
intelligence services – the praetorian guard of the ruling class – do not like
to be seen to intervene in politics, although they do so secretly all the time.
It is an incredible state of affairs when the machinations and intrigues of the
FBI are paraded publicly before the eyes of ordinary Americans.
The present political situation in America has no precedent
in history. An elected President is in direct confrontation with the majority
of the state, with the media, the FBI, the CIA and all the other secret
services, which the ruling class is using to try to get rid of Trump or force
him to obey them.
Changing consciousness
Many on the left in Europe had swallowed the idea that the
American people were reactionary, right-wing and would never support socialism.
That is completely untrue. There was a poll taken even before the Sanders
campaign had got going asking young people under 30 years of age, “Would you
vote for a socialist President?” 69% said yes (see this Gallup
Poll).
The same poll asked Americans above 65 years of age the
same question and “only” 34% said yes. That result is even more incredible.
After 100 years of vicious propaganda against socialism and communism, it
represents a striking change in consciousness.
The change in consciousness is not confined to the lower
reaches of society. In a peculiar, reactionary and distorted way Donald Trump
reflected the anger of millions of working class people and others against the
existing conditions and system, against what he calls the Establishment. Of
course, the masses can only learn through experience. And experience will show
– indeed is already showing – that this is nonsense. The scene will be prepared
for big movements in the next period.
In fact these have already begun. Immediately after the
election of Trump there were mass demonstrations in every city. The Women’s
March was the largest single-day protest in American history. That was on the
weekend he was inaugurated. And that was only the beginning of what is yet to
come.
The reason why the ruling class hates Trump is because he
has delivered a crippling blow to the already worn-out consensus that existed
between Democrats and Republicans. Undermining that consensus could lead to
very dangerous consequences, as seen in the recent government shutdown. The
collapse of the so-called political centre reflects the widening abyss and
sharp polarisation between the classes in US society. That has the most serious
implications for the future.
Obama and the Democrats are responsible for the victory of
Donald Trump. But Trump is himself deepening the process of social and
political radicalization, preparing an even bigger swing to the left. In a
serious condemnation of the two-party system, the latest polls show that a
record 61% of Americans are opposed to both the Democrats and Republicans and
believe a new major party is needed. Among the youth, the figure is 71%. This
polarisation in the US – to both the left and the right – has produced the
phenomenon of the sudden growth of the DSA, Democratic Socialists of America, a
left group historically on the fringes of the Democratic Party.
Before the Sanders campaign this group had about 6,000
members: mainly old timers, imbued with a thoroughly reformist outlook. But
since the election of Trump, DSA has ballooned to over 30,000 members, mostly
youth looking for a socialist organisation. They have broken into many new
areas where previously they had nothing and are developing a base on many
campuses across the United States. There is now an internal debate on whether
to break entirely with the Democrats. Some layers are developing very radical
ideas and are wide open to the ideas of revolutionary Marxism. The future of
this organisation has yet to be determined, but if it breaks with the Democrats
and adopts a class-independent position, it has the potential to play an
important role in the eventual creation of a mass socialist party in the US.
Canada and Quebec
Canada was not as hard hit by the 2008 crisis, as it had
less of a housing bubble and the economy was propped up by resource exports to
a booming China. Consequently, Canada has not felt the same degree of austerity
as other OECD countries. However, the factors leading to stability are turning
into their opposite. Cheap credit has fuelled debt and an explosion in the cost
of housing. Household debt is at an unprecedented 171% of annual income and
climbing. China is no longer pushing up oil and mineral prices to the same
degree, while Trump’s protectionist threat to pull out of NAFTA threatens
Canadian exports. A new global economic downturn would precipitate all these
contradictions.
Quebec, however, has seen a period of intense class
struggle, starting with the 2012 Quebec student strike. Unfortunately, due to a
combination of ultra-leftism from a section of the student leadership, and
opportunist capitulation by the union bureaucracy, the movement has subsided,
but the active layers are searching for answers.
Quebec nationalism is in crisis. The Parti Quebecois has
moved to the right and adopted a racist nationalism. The PQ has been in
government and enacted austerity many times in the last 40 years, which
explains why the youth see it as part of the establishment. The left
nationalist Quebec Solidaire could act as a conduit for the discontent, but its
petit bourgeois leadership is confused and makes many mistakes. Typically, when
they focus on class issues they gain support, but when they focus on
independence they become identified with the PQ.
There is no enthusiasm for new independence referenda
amongst class conscious workers and youth. While we should not discount the
possibility of the class anger of the masses expressing itself through a
national independence movement, this seems to be an unlikely perspective for
Quebec in the near-term.
China
The Chinese economy has experienced a huge development of
the productive forces in the last 40 years. That was one of the main things
that kept the world economy from falling into a deep slump, keeping it afloat
for 20 to 30 years. But now that has reached its limits. Growth in China has
sharply decreased and is now less than 7%. That is very low by Chinese
standards.
There are many unsolved contradictions in the Chinese
economy. China’s manufacturing is heavily dependent on exports. In order to maintain
the rate of growth China must export. If Europe and America are not consuming
as they have in the past, China cannot produce as it did in the past because
they need foreign markets to absorb their surplus product. And if China is not
producing, then other countries like Brazil, Argentina and Australia cannot
export their raw materials. Thus globalisation manifests itself as a global
crisis of the capitalist system.
In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, China’s
rulers were alarmed. They estimated they needed to sustain a minimum annual
growth rate of 8% to prevent an accumulation of unrest that could threaten
their rule. They resorted to Keynesian policies and launched an unprecedented
plan of new public investment in infrastructure. They used the state-owned
banking system to launch the greatest example of monetary easing in history,
offering easy loans. But this creates new contradictions that threaten the
future stability of China and the entire world.
As a result, Chinese government debt to GDP has doubled
since 2008, at 46.2%, although it is still relatively low compared to that of
the USA. However, total debt (the combined state, bank, business and household
debt) has grown exponentially and threatens to spiral out of control. In
absolute terms, China’s total debt ballooned from about $6 trillion at the time
of the 2008 financial crisis to nearly $28 trillion by the end of 2016. As a
percentage of GDP, total debt has risen from 140% to almost 260% over the same
period. And the official figures undoubtedly understate the real situation.
It is likely that China’s total debt is nearer to 300% of
GDP – and this estimate does not include the unregulated sector of shadow
banking (estimated to be worth between 30 and 80% of GDP), which the World Bank
in its October 2017 report on the East Asian and Pacific economies specifically
warns is one of the greatest threats to regional prosperity.
The Chinese economy was undoubtedly saved in the short term
by the government’s decision to open the credit floodgates, but that has
resulted in an economy dependent on borrowing and afflicted with huge asset
bubbles. The real test will come when Beijing eventually attempts to reduce
this debt dependence. This can trigger a financial collapse, which the serious
bourgeois economists fear would have a devastating effect on the world economy.
Last year, the International Monetary Fund issued a warning about Beijing’s
reluctance to rein in dangerous levels of debt.
At this moment in time a collapse of the Chinese finance
system does not appear imminent. But neither did the crash of 2008 appear
imminent…before it happened. It is true that because of the specific weight of
the state sector, the Chinese government can exercise more control over both
borrowers and lenders than would be possible in a normal market economy. It can
order state-owned banks to keep lending to loss making companies or to smaller
lenders that rely on short-term credit to stay liquid. As of the end of December
2017, China holds $3.14 trillion in foreign currency reserves, which can be
used for “emergencies” – but even this will not save them forever.
This has allowed Beijing to delay problems much longer. But
to delay a problem does not mean that it is solved. On the contrary, the longer
the present unsound position is allowed to continue, the more violent and
convulsive the crisis will be when it comes – and sooner or later, come it
must. The slowing of the economy has led to a big increase in unemployment which
is concealed by official figures, which do not include the millions of migrants
who come from the countryside because they cannot find work. This will affect
the political and social situation.
It is hard to know with precision what is happening in China.
In a totalitarian state the news is strictly controlled. But there have been
widespread strikes and demonstrations: the number of such “incidents” doubled
every year between 2011 and 2015, and this was only the tip of the iceberg. The
regime managed to halt the wave of strikes by putting pressure on companies not
paying wages on time and by prosecuting enough cases of corruption to appear to
some to be “on the side of the workers.”.
Under the apparent calm on the surface there is huge anger
building up. The indignation of the masses is being stoked by injustice:
the arbitrary actions of the bureaucracy with peasants having their lands
stolen by corrupt officials, the destruction of the environment, with Beijing
and other cities shrouded in toxic clouds, and above all the scandalous
inequality that openly mocks the claim that China is a socialist country.
The Chinese workers could put up with these things as long
as they felt that somehow things were advancing and the situation was getting
better. But they are finding that this is no longer the case. The destiny of
China depends on the future of the world market. China benefited from its
participation in the world market, but now all the contradictions are coming
back to hit them. An explosive situation is building up that can burst onto the
surface without any warning.
World relations
The conflict with North Korea glaringly exposed the limits
of the power of American imperialism. Trump threatened it with total
destruction, but all his threats had no effect in Pyongyang, other than to
increase the bellicose noises and add to the growing number of nuclear tests
and rockets flying over Japan, which Kim Jong-un claims can now reach any part
of the United States.
The US was considering installing a missile base in South
Korea, which the Chinese adamantly oppose. Trump was compelled to eat his words
and seek the support of Beijing to put pressure on Pyongyang. China has, in
fact, been applying gentle pressure of its own on the North Korean regime to
push it in the direction it desires, to rein it in in order to avoid a more
open and dangerous conflict with the US. This is far from what Trump wants. But
China’s bottom line on North Korea is that it is not going to allow a chaotic
collapse of the regime.
All this has also exposed the inability of the US to do
anything to protect its allies. Duterte, the Philippine “strongman” said that
the US talks a lot but won’t do anything. He has drawn the necessary conclusion
and dragged the Philippines towards China’s orbit. South Korea is now closer to
China diplomatically, especially because of its historic tensions with Japan.
Thailand used to be one of the closest allies of the US,
but it announced that it would buy submarines from China, which also implies
cooperation with China. The plan was put on hold because of American pressure,
but it seems it will go ahead. The 2014 coup in Thailand was condemned by the
US, but praised by China. Vietnam and Malaysia have also forged closer economic
ties to China, although relations between China and Vietnam are complicated by
territorial conflicts, especially over China’s claims in the South China Sea.
China and America are engaged in a struggle for markets and
influence. Many countries have China as their number one trading partner. It
has stakes in two thirds of the 50 most important ports in the world. Its One
Belt One Road project is the biggest diplomatic and financial project
since the Marshall Plan.
The tensions between the two powers are at their sharpest
in the region of the South China Sea, where the Chinese ruling class has
developed its own version of the Monroe doctrine, meaning that it must have
control over its own backyard. China’s provocative “island-building” projects
are opposed by Washington, which has sent warships to assert what it calls the
“freedom of the seas”.
Before the Second World War the tensions between the US and
China would have already led to war. But nuclear-armed China is no longer the
weak semi-colonial country of the past and there can be absolutely no question
of America invading and enslaving China today.
The Middle East
In the Middle East the contradictions of world capitalism
are exposed in concentrated form. The crisis of world capitalism is also the
crisis of US imperialism. When the ignorant and incompetent American
imperialists stormed into Iraq and wrecked the whole country, they not only
destroyed the lives of millions, but by destroying the Iraqi army they also
disrupted the fragile equilibrium between the powers in the Middle East. All
the subsequent crimes and monstrosities are ultimately due to this monstrous
crime of imperialism.
With the elimination of the Iraqi army, Iran’s influence
grew rapidly to the detriment of the US and its traditional allies, in
particular Saudi Arabia. The bloody conflict in Syria, which was really a proxy
war between several foreign powers, was an attempt to claw back lost ground. It
aimed at isolating Lebanon and taking Syria out of the Iranian sphere of
influence. But today, Iran’s influence is stronger than ever in Syria or
Lebanon.
In Syria the limits of the power of US imperialism are
glaringly clear. The most powerful nation on earth is unable to intervene
militarily in a decisive manner. This left a vacuum into which stepped Iran and
Russia. The Russian intervention decisively tipped the balance in Assad’s
favour. The fall of Aleppo marked a decisive turning point and a devastating
and humiliating defeat – not just for the USA, but also for its allies,
especially Saudi Arabia.
Now ISIS has been defeated in both Syria and Iraq. But the
root problem has not been solved. What will happen now? The Turks are watching
Raqqa, Mosul and even Kirkuk like hawks, waiting to grab what they can. The
Iranians have increased their influence throughout the whole area, to the alarm
of the Americans, Saudis and Israel. Meanwhile Iraq and Syria have fragmented
and will remain unstable through the next period.
One section of the US ruling class wanted to continue the
war, but this attempt was doomed to failure. Putin outmanoeuvred them at every
step. When the Russians called a peace conference in Astana, Kazakhstan (a
client state of Russia) the Americans and Europeans were not even invited. In
the end, despite all the public rhetoric, the Americans were reluctantly
obliged to accept the fait accompli dictated by Moscow.
The plain fact is that the US has been defeated in Syria.
It reflects a shift in the balance of forces in the region. This will have far
reaching consequences, in particular amongst Washington’s allies who have lost
confidence in the US and have increasingly been following their own paths and
interests. Turkey is supposed to be an ally of the United States and is a key
member of NATO but increasingly, the Turks and the US have found themselves
backing opposing forces in Syria.
Initially, the US placed its bets on the Turkish and Saudi
backed Jihadi rebels, but these proved inefficient and – as became clear with
the rise of ISIS – unreliable defenders of US interests. The Pentagon was
therefore obliged to throw its weight behind the Kurdish YPG forces in the
fight against ISIS in Northern Syria.
But there is a problem. Erdogan has big ambitions in the
region. He wants an Ottoman-style empire and the Kurds form a physical and
political obstacle for him. His main interest now is to crush the Kurds, both
in Turkey and Syria. Defeated in Syria, Erdogan decided to change course,
leaning on Iran and Russia in order to gain leverage to manoeuvre with the
West.
In effect, by ditching the rebels in Aleppo and elsewhere,
who are backed by the US, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States, Russia and Iran
allowed Turkey to take a slice of Northern Syria to stop the Kurdish forces
from expanding their territory there. This cooperation of Turkey, Russia and
Iran has dealt a shattering blow to the Americans and Saudis, whose Jihadi
stooges have been crushed or forced to conform to the Astana deal.
Trump’s plan to undermine the Iran nuclear deal is a
desperate attempt to turn the clock back. But whereas the US is under constant
pressure to pull its forces out of the Middle East, Iran commands hundreds of
thousands of battle hardened militiamen entrenched in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
In the final analysis, that will be the decisive factor. The Europeans have
disassociated themselves from Trump’s policy over Iran, which turns out to be
more to the detriment of Washington than Teheran, which is enjoying the
spectacle of disarray in the West.
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia threw billions of dollars into the most
reactionary groups in Syria. But it has lost. The Saudi war on Yemen is also
failing. After almost three years of brutal fighting, which has wrecked the
whole country and left millions facing starvation, the Iranian backed Houthis
have a strong position in their areas. Meanwhile the Saudi coalition has all
but fallen apart. The Jihadi, South-Yemen nationalist and Emirati troops
composing the Saudi backed forces are all following their own agenda. This is
yet another defeat which will further undermine foundations of the rotten Saudi
regime.
The Saudis tried to assert themselves in Qatar, by
demanding that it cut its ties with Iran and Turkey and fall in line with Saudi
foreign policy. But Qatar merely strengthened its trade and military ties with
Iran and Turkey. Turkey has expanded its military base on the peninsula – a
serious warning to the Al-Sauds not to go too far. Trump originally threw his
weight behind the Saudis until he was quietly informed by his advisors that the
US has a very important military base in Qatar.
The old king Abdullah was a hardened reactionary, but he
was cunning and cautious. The new regime, led by upstart crown prince Muhammad
Bin Salman, is anything but cautious. Like a losing gambler he is frantically
indulging in risky bets to counter Iran’s expanding power and influence. But
these efforts, far from halting the process of Saudi decline, are accelerating
it and giving it an even more convulsive character.
For decades the life of this reactionary regime was artificially
extended by imperialism due to the particular role it played as a main supplier
of oil for the US and as the main base of counter-revolution in the Muslim
world. Coupled with the high oil prices, the regime could maintain itself by
buying off the reactionary tribal and religious layers that form its base.
But today these factors are disappearing. The US has become
close to self-sufficient in oil and the world economic crisis has led to low
oil prices. The role of the Kingdom in world relations has declined and thus
the interests of Saudi Arabia and the US ruling class have begun to diverge.
The crisis is also eating into Saudi reserves, forcing them to implement
austerity for the first time ever. They can no longer buy social stability by
bribing the local population with lavish subsidies and guaranteed jobs in the
public sector.
In the medium term all these factors will combine to
undermine the stability of the regime, which can fall like a rotten apple when
least expected. Whatever replaces it will not be to the liking of Washington.
Under the impact of the crisis of US imperialism, the old order in the region
that was set up by British and US imperialism is unravelling.
As if all this were not more than sufficient, the brazen
stupidity of Trump in recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and
approving the moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv was aimed at a US audience,
but it has added a new element of explosive instability for the Middle East. It
has also caused further divisions between the European and American
imperialists. The former fear the consequences for the so-called peace talks,
which in any case nobody took seriously, if they ever did. The latter, as
usual, understood nothing and foresaw nothing.
However, it seems unthinkable that Trump could have taken
that decision without the knowledge and tacit consent of the Saudi leaders.
They are now firmly aligned with Trump and the Israelis and are mainly
concerned with confronting Iran. They will have agreed to stab the Palestinians
in the back while making a few obligatory noises in order to play to the Arab
gallery. That will eventually prove to be one more nail in the coffin of the
corrupt and despicable Saudi regime.
Revolution in the Middle East and North Africa
The revolution, which swept through the region in
2011-2013, failed because it lacked a revolutionary leadership. Today the
general movement, tired and confused, has retreated and left room for reaction
to manoeuvre. The rise of reaction and Islamist counter-revolution throughout
the region is connected to the ebb in the revolutionary movement.
However, the events of 2017 in Morocco show that the
revolution is not dead. The uprising in the Rif was the most spectacular
movement in Morocco since the 2011 Revolution in the Middle East and North
Africa. The immediate incident that launched the uprising was the killing by
the police of a young fishmonger in a rubbish truck. Once it began, this
movement unfolded with incredible speed and intensity. A nationwide solidarity
movement of the working class and the oppressed layers sprang into life with
its own demands, which were neither nationalist nor sectarian.
This movement anticipates developments in the rest of the
region, where not a single stable regime exists. All of the regimes in the
region are weak and fighting for their survival. They cannot solve any of the
problems of the masses who in turn are under enormous pressure. Sooner or later
the movement will revive on an even higher level.
World war?
The crisis over North Korea’s nuclear programme caused a
lot of talk of a world war. But this is premature to say the least. Under
modern conditions world war is practically ruled out by the class balance of
forces on a world scale. The imperialists do not make war for arbitrary reasons.
The bourgeoisie resorts to war in order to conquer markets and spheres of
influence. But war is a very costly and risky business. And with nuclear
weapons the risks are multiplied a thousand fold. That is why the USA, the most
formidable military power that has ever existed, has been unable to declare war
on tiny North Korea.
Russia is not militarily as strong as America, but it is a
very powerful military state. And it is far stronger militarily than British,
French or German imperialism, both in conventional and nuclear terms. The West
could do nothing to prevent it taking over Crimea (where the majority are
Russians anyway). Nor could it do anything to prevent Russia from intervening
to save the Assad regime in Syria. These two cases reveal the limitations of US
imperialism’s power.
Last year NATO sent a few thousand troops to Poland as a
warning to Russia. That was just a joke. The Russians replied by holding the
biggest ever military manoeuvres together with Belarus on the very border of
Poland. That was a little warning to NATO. From a military point of view,
compared with Russia, Britain nowadays is almost insignificant, France is not
much more, Germany is nothing at all.
Above all, the international class balance of forces is a
serious barrier to the launching of a major war. It should be remembered that
before the Second World War could take place, the working class had to first
suffer a whole series of crushing defeats in Hungary, Italy, Germany, Spain…
But now the forces of the working class are intact. The working class has not
suffered any serious defeats in the advanced capitalist countries.
In the USA the people are tired of military adventures. US
imperialism burned its fingers badly in Iraq and Afghanistan. It cost them an
enormous amount of blood and treasure without achieving anything. As a result,
Obama was not even able to order a military intervention in Syria. He tried but
he saw that it would have provoked a massive popular revolt. He had to back
down. The same was true of Cameron's Conservative government in Britain.
There cannot be a world war at least for the foreseeable
future, unless a totalitarian regime came to power in the US on the basis of a
crushing defeat of the American working class. That would be a qualitatively
different balance of forces. But that is not the position in the immediate
future. On the contrary, for a whole period the pendulum will swing to the
left.
Trump is a reactionary bourgeois politician, but contrary
to the demagogic assertions of some on the Left, he is not a fascist and does
not stand at the head of a totalitarian state like that of Hitler. On the
contrary, he does not control the state at all: it is at war with him. He does
not even have total control of Congress, although it is dominated by the
Republican Party. In fact, his hold on power is extremely tenuous. The Strong
Man in the White House has feet of clay.
Although a war on the lines of 1914-18 and 1939-45 is ruled
out under present conditions, there will be constant small wars all the time
which under modern conditions are frightful enough. Iraq was a small war. Syria
was a small war. The civil war in the Congo cost the lives of at least five
million people and did not even make the front pages of the newspapers. This
kind of thing will occur again an again. Meanwhile, the spread of terrorism
means that this barbarism is beginning to affect “civilised” Europe. This is
what Lenin meant when he said that capitalism is horror without end.
America and Europe
The people who really control the EU are the bankers,
bureaucrats and capitalists, and particularly German capitalism. Originally the
EU was dominated by France and Germany. The French bourgeoisie had big ideas
that they could dominate it politically and militarily and Germany could
dominate it economically. That didn’t last very long. Nobody now doubts that it
is the German ruling class that dominates it completely.
As a result it has immediately come into conflict with the
new man in the White House. Donald Trump and Angela Merkel are not on good
terms. The reason is not to be found in their personal attributes – although
these are very different. It is rather to be found in Mr. Trump’s electoral
slogan “Make America Great Again.”
For the moment the German capitalists are doing rather
well, with a huge trade surplus. In 2016, it was in the region of $270bn: an
all-time record high. It is not necessary to be a Nobel Prize winner in
economics to know that one country’s surplus is another’s deficit. Trump can at
least add up and is not at all happy with this figure. And since diplomacy is
not really his strong point, he has said so publicly to Merkel.
Trump says: “If the Germans don’t do something, I will cut
the import of German cars into the U.S.” Now, this is very dangerous talk. If
he continues down that road, that is a recipe for a trade war. The Germans
would immediately retaliate, blocking certain American goods. Protectionism is
the export of unemployment. Trump says he wants more jobs in America for
Americans, which means fewer jobs for Germans, Chinese and others. That is the
root cause of the antagonism between Washington and Berlin.
Trump went to Poland, where he met with an enthusiastic
response. The choice of this visit was not at all accidental. Relations between
Poland and Germany have been strained for a number of reasons, particularly
over the question of imposing quotas for refugees. In fact, the fault lines in
Europe are deepening all the time. The problem with Europe is that that the
European countries don’t agree on anything very much these days. That is why
Mr. Trump went to Poland: to deepen the cracks between Germany and its eastern
neighbour.
His next stop was Paris, and that was also not accidental.
Trump wants to drive a wedge between France and Germany. For his part, Macron
was pleased to receive him to encourage the Americans to put pressure on the
Germans, who already have enough on their plate with the negotiations over
Brexit. That explains why Trump is so keen to express his solidarity with London,
holding out the tempting prospect of a trade deal, sometime in the future –
which may, or (very likely) may not, materialise.
Europe
The bourgeois economists are empirical and impressionistic.
They detect a very slight growth in Europe – just over one percent (rather more
in Germany) and they joyfully proclaim that the euro crisis is resolved. But
the euro crisis is not resolved. In reality the crisis of European capitalism
continues to deepen. In spite of the small upturn, the underlying fundamental
problems remain. Nothing has been solved.
The economic experts of the IMF are publishing alarming
reports about the state of the banks in Europe. The ECB has ploughed in
billions, but as a result, when the next crisis comes, as it will as night
follows day, it may lead to the collapse of the euro and possibly even threaten
the unity of the EU itself. On 3 June 2017 The Economist stated: “The
currency changed from an instrument for convergence between countries to a
wedge driving them apart.” These few words show how the intelligent bourgeois
are grasping what the Marxists said long ago.
Added to the already unstable situation within the EU is
the refugee crisis. The imperialist meddling in the Middle East and North
Africa has opened the gates to a flood of humanity desperate to escape the
living hell it has been plunged into. This is putting enormous pressure on the
EU member states, especially those most exposed to the daily arrival of new
refugees and migrants.
Europe is thoroughly divided on this issue. Poland,
Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic are refusing to take any refugees. The
problem is further exacerbated by the internal migration from the poorer EU
countries to the richer ones, which in turn is provoking tensions even in a
country like Germany, where the right wing is riding on the refugee question to
win a section of the electorate.
This is in complete contrast to the situation after 1945,
when Germany absorbed a far bigger influx of refugees from Eastern Europe. That
was in a situation of world capitalist upswing. But in a situation of deep
economic crisis and the stagnation of the productive forces, the influx of
refugees only serves to create new contradictions that cannot be solved on the
basis of capitalism. This is yet another factor of instability, increasing the
centrifugal tendencies within the EU.
Brexit
The tendencies towards the breakup of the EU also expressed
themselves dramatically in Brexit. The vote in the referendum was yet another
example of the mood of anger and bitterness that exists everywhere beneath the
surface. The result was a political earthquake.
The bourgeois commentators were stunned when the “Leave”
vote won. And those who were most shocked were the advocates of Brexit
themselves. They never imagined they could win, and therefore had no plan and
no strategy. Even now they do not appear to have the slightest idea what they
are doing. The decisive sections of the British bourgeoisie did not want to
leave the EU, but were forced to accept the result of the referendum, which
will be disastrous for British capitalism and will also cause serious problems
for the EU itself.
Brexit has created very serious problems in Ireland. The
border between the independent south and the north, which is part of the UK,
was made practically irrelevant in recent years. If the border is reintroduced
when Britain leaves the EU it would have a devastating economic impact on both
the south and the north. As a result the whole Irish national question could be
revived with the most serious implications. The politicians are struggling to
reach some kind of a deal over this complicated question. Whether the end
result will be sufficient to square the circle remains to be seen.
The British imagined they would have an easy ride. But that
was never going to be the case. Even if Merkel wanted to be nice to the Brits
(which is not at all clear), she cannot do London any favours because that
would encourage others to follow its example and leave. To complicate things
further, Merkel suffered a defeat in the elections and has the nationalist and
anti-EU Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) breathing down her neck. All the fine
talk about “European solidarity” is instantly forgotten, as the national
antagonisms come to the surface. The outcome will create big problems both for
Britain and the EU.
Greece
In Capital Marx explains that during a boom,
credit is easy but when there is a crisis all that changes into its opposite.
The modern day Shylocks are demanding their pound of flesh from the Greeks. But
there is no way that Greece can ever pay what Berlin and Brussels are
demanding. All this has consequences. They are whipping up immense class hatred
and polarisation in Greece and in all countries of Southern Europe.
After a decade of indescribable suffering, austerity,
poverty and misery, what has been solved in Greece? The nation has been plunged
into a desperate crisis. The young people have no work and are driven to
emigrate, while the old are deprived of their pensions and driven to commit
suicide.
Revolution is not a straight line, there will inevitably be
ups and downs that we must be prepared for. After so many years of strikes,
protests and demonstrations the Greek workers are exhausted and disappointed.
They will say: “Everyone betrays us. We trusted Pasok, but Pasok betrayed us.
We trusted Tsipras, and he also betrayed us – What more can we do?” In the next
general election SYRIZA will do badly according to opinion polls, falling to
around 20% or even less. The Communist Party may make some small gains, but
will not be able to fill the vacuum left by SYRIZA due to its sectarian stance.
By default the New Democracy stands to gain, not in terms of any significant
swing towards it, but simply in percentage terms. This would mean a right-wing
coalition centred on ND would come to power. This would be a weak unstable
government, but it would be forced to continue and deepen the attacks on the
working class without having any authority with the working class. In these
conditions there would be a renewed radicalisation to the left.
The present moods will not last forever; they are of a
transitory character. The depth of the crisis is such that the workers and the
youth have no alternative but to return to the struggle. New and even more
violent explosions are being prepared for the future.
France, the bankruptcy of Macron’s “Centre”
French capitalism was in crisis long before 2008. But last
year’s elections in France provided the European bourgeois with an apparent respite.
They were terrified that Marine Le Pen would come to power, as Trump had done
in the USA. Like Trump, Le Pen is a reactionary chauvinist. She is also hostile
to the European Union, and that, especially following the Brexit debacle,
provoked serious concern in Brussels and Berlin. What really terrified
the French bourgeois was the sudden surge of Mélenchon in the polls, at the
very end of the campaign, because he would have certainly won against Le Pen or
even Fillon in the second round – and had some chances to win against Macron.
The rise of Mélenchon shows that there is a growing
polarisation between left and right. Jean-Luc Mélenchon came close to beating
Le Pen, and he could have done so except for the criminal stupidity of the
so-called Trotskyists in France. If you add up the votes of these two small
parties, they made the difference between Mélenchon or Le Pen standing in the
second round.
A direct clash between Mélenchon versus Macron in the
second round would have changed everything. But that was prevented by the
splitting antics of the sects. It would have been entirely possible for them to
begin a campaign with a revolutionary programme, and then withdraw in favour of
a vote for Mélenchon. They didn’t do that because they are typical sectarians
who place the interests of their own petty sects before the general interests
of the French working class.
In the end Macron won, and the bourgeois breathed a sigh of
relief. The extremes were defeated and Moderation had triumphed at last! The
good news sped from Paris to Berlin, to Rome, even in London they were opening
bottles of champagne in the City. The Centre had won, but what do these people
mean by Centre? They mean the Right that disguises its true nature by posing as
something that it is not.
Macron has risen to power on the basis of the
disintegration of the two parties that traditionally had the majority of voters
(the Socialists and Republicans). In these elections the Socialists were
crushed and the Republicans also lost heavily and did not reach the second
round of the Presidential election. The PS may end up like the Pasok in Greece.
The right-wing Republicans are also in very bad shape: prominent leaders have
left the party to join Macron's government (or party); the others are split in
different fractions.
The Communist Party has been compromised by its links to
the discredited Socialists and is now a marginal element in French politics. On
the other hand, the Front National, despite its electoral defeat, won 1.3
million more votes than in 2012. But La France Insoumise, the party of
Mélenchon, won 3 million votes and is now, together with the unions, the main
opposition to Macron’s policies. In an opinion poll in October, 35% put La France
Insoumise as the main opposition party, 13% pointed to the Front
National and only 2% to the PS and the CP! Mélenchon’s party is now the
main opposition both in parliament and on the streets.
It is not true that Macron won by an absolute majority. The
absolute majority – including those who cast blank votes or abstained – did not
vote for Macron! And this “silent majority” will not be silent for long. In
fact, it did not take long for Macron to expose himself, since he immediately
confirmed his intention to change the labour law to make it easier to sack
workers.
Marx said that France was the country where the class
struggle is always fought to the finish. The truth of that statement will soon
be clear to everybody. We will see big demonstrations, strikes and general
strikes. A repetition of 1968 is not at all ruled out: in fact, it is implicit
in the situation.
Italy
Greece was the weakest link of European capitalism. Spain
is only one step behind Greece. Italy is only one step behind Spain. And France
is one step behind Italy. The Italian economy has been stagnating since the
hard economic blow of 2008. Consequently scores of small and medium businesses
have gone insolvent leaving them unable to pay back their debts.
The European banking system is in a disastrous state. It is
weighed down with debt, and is only being propped up by the European Central
Bank (ECB). That cannot continue indefinitely, since the ECB is being
underwritten by the Germans. And they are not prepared to finance the deficits
of the countries of southern Europe through their contributions to the ECB.
In Italy, there has been a major banking crisis. The fact
is that the Italian banks are mainly bankrupt. According to EU rules
governments are not allowed to bail out banks, but Italy was an exception. If
the Italian banking system collapses it could bring down the whole European
financial system. But the illegal bailouts solved nothing fundamental. Italy is
in a deep crisis – not just economically and financially but politically.
There is a collapse of confidence in political parties.
This was revealed clearly in the December 2016 referendum on constitutional
reform where Renzi was massively defeated. The problem of the Italian bourgeois
is that they do not have a strong government. But how can they get a strong
government when they don’t even have a strong party? They used to have the
Christian Democracy, but that is finished. Berlusconi’s Forza Italia is also
weakened. And the Democratic Party, a bourgeois party formed from fusing a
section of the old Communist Party with what was left of the Christian
Democracy and other small bourgeois organisations, is in decline.
There is a process of complete fragmentation of the
so-called Left which, put together don’t even reach seven percent in the
opinion polls. In the past the Italian ruling class could rely on the PCI
leaders to hold back the working class. But as a result of decades of Stalinist
degeneration and numerous betrayals of the working class, the once all-powerful
Communist Party has been totally liquidated.
In this vacuum we have seen the rise of Beppe Grillo and
his Five Stars Movement. This is a protest movement, mainly petit-bourgeois in
composition, with a confused mishmash of policies – some of them reactionary in
character. In fact, it is not a party at all, and doesn’t have a structure. And
its main programme is rejection of the euro. But given the absence of any alternative
on the Left, it is attracting working class votes on the basis of their
anti-establishment line, which can be summed up in the slogan: “Kick them
all out!”
Grillo’s movement is an unstable and contradictory
phenomenon, which is not likely to last. Its internal contradictions will soon
come to the surface and it will rapidly enter into crisis. It is impossible to
say at present how precisely the situation will unfold, but it is not a
favourable situation for the Italian bourgeoisie.
The Italian working class, on the other hand, has
extraordinary revolutionary traditions. The crisis of Italian capitalism will
inevitably produce new and unprecedented explosions on the lines of May 1968 in
France or the Hot Autumn in Italy in 1969. Once the big battalions begin to
move, the entire situation will be rapidly transformed, with the emergence of
new political formations of a very left-wing and radical character, as occurred
in the years before and after 1969.
Spain
Despite a partial economic recovery, the crisis of the
regime that started in 2008 is by no means resolved. The years of economic
crisis, mass unemployment and attacks on living standards, combined with
corruption scandals, have created a severe crisis of legitimacy of the whole of
the Spanish bourgeois democratic regime. The long cycle of mass mobilisations
in 2011-2015 eventually found a political expression with the emergence and
rise of Podemos, which in the 2016 general elections won 21% of the vote.
The right-wing PP government is extremely fragile and must
rely on the Basque nationalists for a majority in Congress. It has been
undermined by corruption scandals. If the Left had united to overthrow it, it
would have been finished. But the leaders of both Podemos and the United Left
(Izquierda Unida) have revealed a complete inability to offer a serious
alternative, while Pedro Sánchez the “left” leader of the PSOE has openly gone
over to the side of reactionary Spanish nationalism. Now, after the result of
the 21 December Catalan elections, where Ciudadanos emerged as the first party,
the Spanish ruling class is increasingly promoting and supporting this new
right wing party, which is as reactionary as the PP, but which appears with new
leaders and without the dead weight of corruption and the anti social programs
which the PP has accumulated.
The Catalan question has served as a catalyst that has
revealed deep fault lines in Spanish politics. All the parties of the Left are
now divided and in crisis. The right wing is stoking the fires of reactionary
anti-Catalan feelings and Spanish nationalism to mobilise the most backward
layers of the population and the Left has no answer. As a result, despite
everything, it cannot be ruled out that Ciudadanos and the PP may win the next
elections.
This is the price the Spanish Left has to pay for the
betrayals of the leaders of the PCE and PSOE four decades ago when they agreed
to the reactionary 1978 Constitution that signified the retention of the old
Franco state, together with the Monarchy, the domination of the Roman Catholic
Church and the maintenance of the old repressive state apparatus, which they
varnished with a thin layer of “democracy”.
The brutal nature of the Spanish state was revealed by the
vicious repression of people in Catalonia whose only “crime” was their desire
to vote for their own future. Now all the old demons are reappearing. Spanish
society is as deeply divided as it was 40 years ago. The youth and the most
advanced layers of the working class understand the reactionary nature of the
1978 Constitution and are prepared to fight against it.
Today the masses have shown their combative spirit on the streets
of Barcelona. Tomorrow it will be the turn of the workers and youth of Euskadi,
Asturias, Seville and Madrid. There will inevitably be defeats and setbacks as
a consequence of the short-sightedness, stupidity and cowardice of the
leadership. But the workers and youth of Spain, who have repeatedly displayed
their willingness to fight in recent years, will learn new lessons.
There were many defeats in the past also, like the two
black years that followed the defeat of the 1934 Asturian Commune. But the
defeats we are talking about today are not at all comparable to that defeat.
Today the forces of the working class remain intact, while the mass basis of
reaction is infinitely weaker than it was then: there is no Moorish Legion, no
reactionary Carlist peasantry, and the students who joined the Falange in
droves then are now solidly behind the working class and the Left.
Finally, in a revolutionary period, such defeats can only
be the prelude to new upheavals. In action, on the streets, in the factories and
on the campuses, they will rediscover the revolutionary traditions of 1931-37
and of the marvellous struggle against the Franco dictatorship. Spain in the
next period will once again find itself in the forefront of the revolutionary
struggles in Europe.
Catalonia
The attempt of Catalonia to exercise the right of
self-determination has been the most serious challenge ever to the 1978 regime.
There are different elements to the equation. First of all, the backward and
reactionary Spanish ruling class and its state, inherited wholesale from the
Franco era. They consider any attempt to question the unity of Spain as a
challenge to their whole regime which would then pose other questions (the
Monarchy, austerity, etc). Therefore they were prepared to use all means at
their disposal to smash the attempt to hold a referendum: police repression,
seizing of ballot boxes, sealing off of polling stations, the sacking of the
Catalan government and the arrest of its members, etc.
On the other hand, the Catalan government, made up by
bourgeois and petty bourgeois nationalists, had lost the support of the Catalan
bourgeoisie (the bankers and capitalists), which is opposed to independence.
These nationalist politicians considered the independence referendum at worst
as a way to exert pressure and extract concessions from the government in
Madrid or at best, as a way to exert pressure on and force the EU to intervene
and push the Spanish government to organise a mutually agreed referendum. In
the case of the bourgeois nationalist PDeCAT (formerly CDC), which was
completely discredited by its right-wing austerity policies, repression and
corruption scandals, there was also a cynical calculation of using independence
as a way to reinvent itself and stay in power. These parties were not prepared
to use the revolutionary means that are required in Spain to exercise the right
of self-determination.
They were forced to go further than they intended by the
irruption of the masses in the movement, a third factor that they had not taken
into account. On September 20 (when 40,000 rallied against Civil Guard searches
in Catalan government buildings), October 1 (when hundreds of thousands
organised to ensure the referendum took place and 2 million voted) and October
3 (when millions participated in a protest general strike against brutal police
repression) the masses entered the scene in a forceful way and started to
become aware of their own power. That put the Catalan government in an
impossible situation: they were forced to declare the Republic, but they were
not prepared to use the necessary methods to defend it: mass mobilisations in
the streets, the occupation of official buildings, a general strike, resistance
against the Spanish police. In other words, what was needed was a revolutionary
uprising. That is what explains their vacillations, wavering and indecisiveness
after the referendum, the "suspended" proclamation of the republic on
October 10, the constant appeals for negotiation, the near betrayal of the
movement on October 25 and the meek proclamation of the Catalan Republic on
October 27, after which they fled the scene.
Meanwhile, the masses which participated in the movement (a
section of the working class, the youth above all, and the middle-class and
petty-bourgeois layers which are the backbone of this democratic movement) have
become increasingly critical of their own leaders. The emergence of the
Committees for the Defence of the Republic and the role they played in the
November 8 general strike show the way forward. A Catalan Republic is a basic
democratic demand that challenges the whole edifice of the Spanish regime. Marxists
support the struggle for a Catalan Republic but we have the duty to explain
that it can only be achieved by revolutionary means. That requires the current
leadership to be replaced by one which is firmly based on the working class.
Furthermore, the Spanish-speaking workers in Catalonia need to be won over,
which can only happen if the struggle for a Republic is linked to the struggle
for jobs, housing, against austerity, and is also seen as part of a wider
struggle across Spain against the 1978 regime. The slogan which sums these
ideas up is "For a Catalan Socialist Republic as a spark of the Iberian
revolution".
The December 21 Catalan elections did not solve anything.
In fact, they represent a defeat for the Spanish monarchist regime, as
supporters of independence have renewed their majority in the regional
parliament and are likely will take control of the Catalan government. In
parliamentary terms we are back to a situation similar to that which existed on
the eve of the 1 October referendum. With ebbs and flows, the democratic
national movement will continue. The task of the Marxists is to intervene energetically
and reach the most advanced layers of the youth already drawing revolutionary
conclusions.
Britain: the Corbyn phenomenon
Not long ago Britain was one of the most stable countries
in Europe. Now it is one of the most unstable countries, experiencing one shock
after another. In Scotland the national question has receded somewhat as a
result of Corbyn’s surge, but it has not been resolved and can resurface with
renewed force in the event of a new economic crisis. Beneath the surface of
apparent tranquillity there was a seething anger, indignation and above all
frustration, a burning desire to change the situation that lacked a clear point
of reference.
The change in consciousness was eventually expressed in the
extraordinary rise of Jeremy Corbyn. In 2015 Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader
of the Labour Party by an accident, but was immediately met with massive
opposition from the Blairite wing of the party.
Theresa May saw this and drew the logical conclusion. She
called a snap election in June 2017, firmly convinced that she would get a big
majority and crush the Labour Party. Labour’s Blairite right wing were secretly
hoping that Labour would suffer a humiliating defeat, which they saw as the
only way to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn, and they attempted to sabotage the
campaign.
Everyone was predicting a conservative landslide. But
instead it was a crushing defeat for the Conservatives, the media and Labour’s
treacherous right wing.
Once the campaign started, Jeremy Corbyn held enthusiastic
mass meetings, mainly of the youth. Corbyn came out with the most left-wing
programme Labour has had for decades and he immediately connected with the mood
of discontent in society. No one expected this political earthquake.
Hundreds of thousands of people, mainly youth, joined the
Labour Party. The membership was 180,000 before Corbyn became leader. Now it is
570,000, making Labour the biggest party in Europe. Everybody could see that
the real victor in those elections was Jeremy Corbyn. He enjoys colossal
support at grassroots level.
The right wing was decisively defeated at the September
2017 Labour Party conference, which showed that the left has won the majority
in the party branches. Despite this, the MPs, the councillors and in particular
the full-time apparatus remain under the control of the right wing. The ruling
class and its agents will not easily surrender control of the Labour Party, but
for the present they are compelled to abandon the attempt to get rid of Corbyn
and adopt a waiting tactic.
This subterranean mood of revolt is looking for an
expression. In Britain it found one in Corbyn, and it is necessary for the
British Marxists to orient their forces to this movement. But while supporting
Corbyn against the right wing it is necessary, in a positive and friendly
manner, to patiently explain the limitations of Corbyn’s programme and the need
for a thoroughgoing revolutionary programme for the socialist transformation of
society.
It is likely that Labour will win the next election and
Corbyn will form a government. Any attempt to implement the reforms included in
his program will be met with fierce resistance from the ruling class and the
active sabotage of the Blairite fifth column, as well as attempts to tame the
more radical parts of his program. A section of the ruling class is playing
with the idea of a realignment in British politics, in which a new centre
formation or coalition would be created with the participation of the “left” of
the Conservative party and the right wing of the Labour Party. This is not an
immediate perspective, but it could be implemented as a way of bringing down a
Corbyn-led Labour government. In a period of political polarisation and
economic crisis, however, a centre party or coalition would have very little
basis. The experience in government and a possible split in the party would
prepare the grounds for a further radicalisation of the ranks of the LP.
Russia
The upheavals in Ukraine and the annexation of the Crimea
had a significant impact on the whole political spectrum in Russia. But the
nationalist euphoria in 2014, when Putin’s index of popularity exceeded 84%,
has gradually dissipated. The fall in oil prices and (to a lesser extent)
Western sanctions led to a fall in the ruble exchange rate and a 13% rate of
inflation in 2015.
The high refinancing rate of the Central Bank (the interest
rate paid by banks when borrowing money from the Central Bank), together with
the economic sanctions imposed by the West has had its most serious impact in
the financial sector, which led to the bankruptcy of dozens of banks. Faced
with this situation the government used financial reserves to support the
biggest financial and industrial groups with close links to the state, leading
to a further concentration of capital.
On the other hand, the government used administrative
measures to combat unemployment, in fact, forbidding mass layoffs. To reduce
the budget deficit, a number of very effective measures were introduced, aimed
at reducing corruption and tax evasion. This blow was aimed mainly at the
middle and petty bourgeoisie, in particular small family businesses such as the
owners of lorries and delivery vans.
In addition to purely economic reasons, Putin reacted in
this way to moods of protest in the middle strata in the big cities where he is
least popular. Here, Putin acts on the principle “to my friends everything is
permitted – to my enemies, the full force of the law.”
At the same time, a reform of the higher education system
was implemented, which worsened the position of the mass of teachers and
lecturers, whom Putin deemed disloyal. In this way, Putin was able to maintain
a high level of support both in his own layer and among pensioners and low-paid
workers at the expense of the middle layers of the big cities. The discontent
of the latter found its political expression through a bourgeois demagogue,
Alexei Navalny.
After 2014, all parliamentary parties, including the
Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), adopted a position of
complete support for Putin and his government, voting in the Duma for every
bill proposed by the government. Of course this does nothing to increase their
popularity. For almost ten years, the CPRF has been in constant crisis. There
has been a permanent witch hunt in which people were expelled from the party on
trumped-up charges of "Trotskyism" – although all of them were loyal
supporters of Zyuganov.
The membership of the Communist Party in Moscow, St.
Petersburg and other large cities fell by two-thirds. This left a vacuum in the
opposition to Putin which was successfully occupied by Navalny. He is a typical
demagogue, presenting himself as “a man of the people”, slavishly copying the
American tradition. But he stands out sharply in contrast to other
oppositionists. The basis of his campaigning is the use of social networks and
especially YouTube, where he puts out his videos about corruption in the higher
echelons of power.
Navalny himself has been deprived of the right to take part
in the presidential election because of two convictions on charges of
corruption. Periodically Navalny calls his supporters onto the streets. The
scale of these mobilisations across the country is approximately 100,000 people
dispersed across major cities. Most of them are young people, who are attracted
by Navalny’s apparent determination and his skillful use of social media.
Over the past year, Putin has managed to curb inflation
and, in general, overcome the crisis – at least temporarily. However, with the
current level of oil prices, Russia's budget deficit remains high and in 2-5
years the reserve funds will inevitably run out, while Russia’s opportunities
for external borrowing are now minimal. If the price of oil stays low for three
or four more years, the whole situation will change into its opposite.
When that moment comes, Putin (who will obviously be
re-elected president) will face a serious problem. The government will no
longer be able to solve the budget deficit without making deep cuts in public
spending. At that point his popularity will evaporate completely. That is why
Putin is using every opportunity to tighten his control over the internet, and
impose restrictions on freedom of speech and other democratic rights.
But for the time being Putin still has room for manoeuvre.
He can avoid slashing public spending or making drastic attacks on living
standards. That is the main reason why the opposition has not met with any
great success in mobilizing proletarian elements.
At this stage, those who participate openly on the streets
are mainly middle class and petty bourgeois. Although Navalny has advocated an
increase in the minimum wage, he has not had any success in establishing a link
with social problems. There is a limit to how far the opposition to Putin can
succeed on the basis of democratic demands and denunciation of corruption.
Nevertheless, many young people have rallied to the
opposition, especially school and university students. They have taken to the
streets in significant numbers. This is an important symptomatic development.
The history of Russia shows that the awakening of the student youth is a sure
anticipation of a big future movement of the working class. “The wind always
blows through the tops of the trees first.”
Eastern Europe and the Balkans
The rise in Eastern Europe of right-wing nationalism and
anti-immigration rhetoric is an attempt on the part of the governments of the
region to divert the growing malaise caused by the low standards of living and
the toll imposed by the capitalist crisis on the mass of the population, in a
situation where the working class has not yet decisively entered the
scene.
Higher rates of GDP growth (relative to those of Western
European countries) mask the reality of extreme capitalist exploitation of a
skilled working class under a regime of low wages, imposed to maximise
capitalist profits and foreign investment. A recent study of the European Trade
Union Institute (“Why central and eastern Europe needs a pay rise”) shows that
wage differentials between Western and Eastern Europe, which up until 2008 were
slowly decreasing, have increased over the past decade.
As a consequence, there have been important signs of
radicalisation of the youth, the first symptoms of which are the mobilisations
against corruption in several countries, which reflect a growing rejection of
the whole establishment. Key sections of the working class have also begun to
go on the offensive on the industrial field – in many cases for the first time since
the collapse of the Stalinist regimes – carrying out important strikes aimed at
substantial wage increases and better working conditions.
In Slovakia, thousands of students demonstrated in April
2017 demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Robert Fico on corruption
charges. This was followed in June by a massive strike of the 12,000 workers at
the three VW plants in Bratislava, which won a 14% rise in wages. A 7% wage
rise was also granted by KIA and Peugeot to avoid strikes, inspiring worries
that the movement could spread.
Important movements have also taken place in opposition to
reactionary measures. In Poland, the attacks by the right-wing government
against what remains of abortion rights provoked the Black Protest movement of
tens of thousands of women in October 2016, which forced the government to
retreat.
In the former Yugoslavia the process of radicalisation is
more advanced. A growing mood of rejection of the corrupt, reactionary
bourgeois regimes on part of the youth and the working class was clearly
expressed in the insurrectionary movement of February 2014 in Bosnia. Over the
past year there have been significant strikes. The all-out strike of 2,400
workers of the FIAT plant in Kragujevac in July 2017 is just the most
significant of a number of radical strikes in smaller factories and workplaces.
Repeated strikes and protests were also carried out by the railway workers in
Bosnia.
The youth protests against Vucic’s victory in the Serbian
presidential election of April 2017, while broadly dominated by petty-bourgeois
illusions, have revealed a growing layer of youth open to revolutionary ideas.
The potential for the Yugoslav Marxists was shown by the fact that they had
leading roles in the protests in Novi Sad.
Latin America
The electoral debacle of Kirchner in Argentina, the defeat
of the PSUV in the National Assembly elections in Venezuela, the defeat of Evo
Morales in the referendum in Bolivia and the removal of Dilma in Brazil have
plunged the reformists and “progressive” intellectuals on the continent into
despair. They talk of a “conservative wave” and the advance of
counter-revolution, without understanding any of the real processes involved.
For a period of 10 or 15 years, most of South America
experienced a revolutionary wave, which affected different countries with
different degrees of intensity. There was the election of Chavez in Venezuela
in 1998 and the revolutionary events in the defeat of the coup in April 2002
and the struggle against the bosses’ lockout in December 2002-January 2003, the
Argentinazo in 2001, the uprising in Ecuador in 2000 which overthrew Mahuad,
then the overthrow of Lucio Gutierrez in 2005, which led to the election of
Correa in 2006. In Bolivia there was the Cochabamba “water war” in 1999-2000
and then the Gas War uprisings of October 2003 and June 2005, which led to the
election of Evo Morales. In Peru there was the Arequipazo uprising in the south
in 2002.
One might add to these the massive movement against
election fraud in Mexico in 2006 and the Oaxaca commune of the same year, the
huge and sustained movement of the Chilean students, the mass mobilisations in
Honduras against the coup in 2009, even the election of Lula in Brazil in 2002,
although of course not a revolutionary event in itself, all reflecting the
yearning of the masses for fundamental change.
As a by-product of these huge movements of the workers (and
in some countries the peasant masses) a number of governments came to power
that were generally described as “progressive” or “revolutionary”. Clearly they
were different one from the other. While for instance Chavez, in a confused
way, groped for and was pushed towards revolutionary change, Evo Morales,
Correa and the Kirchners in Argentina were striving to reestablishing order
after the entry of the masses into the scene, while Lula and Dilma were
reformists in power carrying out a programme of counter-reforms. The Left in El
Salvador has had almost no room for manoeuvre and is starting to roll back some
of its modest reforms, generating disillusionment amongst the masses towards
the FMLN. This mood is being capitalised, in the first instance, by the mayor
of San Salvador, Nayib Bukele, who has been expelled from the party and has
widespread sympathy amongst the youth.
However, all of these governments enjoyed a certain degree
of stability for a prolonged period of time. This in part was the result of the
strength of the movement of the masses, which the ruling class could not defeat
in a direct confrontation (the coups in Venezuela 2002, Bolivia 2008 and
Ecuador 2010 were defeated). Above all, they benefited from a period of high
prices of raw materials and oil which allowed them to carry out some social
programmes while avoiding a direct clash with the masses.
Driven by economic growth in China, prices of raw materials
went up steadily between 2003 and 2010. Oil prices increased from $40 a barrel
to over $100. Natural gas had been around $3/MMBtu and increased to between $8
and $18. Soybeans jumped from $4 to a peak of $17/bu. Zinc went from a low
point of under $750/mt to a record high of $4,600, copper from under $0.60 per
pound to $4.50 and tin from $3,700/mt to a peak of $33,000/mt.
This boom in the prices of commodities and sources of
energy which gave these governments certain room for manoeuvre came to an end
and brought the whole region into recession in 2014-15. This is the root
economic cause for the electoral and other defeats of these governments which
had always remained within the limits of capitalism.
With the rise of the Venezuelan Revolution, Cuba had a
certain economic respite. This has now come to an end. The Cuban economy is
still based on the planned economy, but the reforms which have been introduced
have opened a bigger space for capitalist economy, allowing small businesses as
well as attempting to attract large scale private investment. The aim is to
increase productivity by using capitalist methods without introducing any
measures of workers’ control. Even today many of the social conquests remain,
but their scope is increasingly limited and its quality worsened. There is a
growing social differentiation. This is very dangerous. This year there will be
elections in which for the first time the president will not be one of the
Castros nor anyone from the historic leadership of the revolution. We will see
clashes and pressures by the capitalist right wing, internal and foreign, but
also a reaction in the opposite direction on the part of those who have not
benefited from these reforms and those who want to defend the socialist
revolution.
Despite the pathetic moaning of the Latin American “Left”,
the removal of Kirchner in Argentina and Dilma in Brazil cannot be attributed
to a “shift to the right”. The coming to power of Temer and Macri has seen
massive protest movements of the working class against the open policy of
attacks carried out by the right wing. What is opening up in Latin America is
not a period of social peace and capitalist stabilisation, but rather one of
sharpening contradictions and increased class struggle. This has been proven
with the insurrectionary movement in Honduras, after the 2017 election. Before,
in Guatemala, in 2015, an inter-bourgeois conflict opened the way for a mass
mobilisation of the youth, the peasant organisations and the working class.
That process has not finished yet. In 2017 we saw a general strike demanding
the resignation of president Jimmy Morales and 107 members of parliament. Other
countries will follow the same road, like Mexico which will hold presidential
elections this year, an event which the masses will use to express that they
are sick and tired of capitalist barbarism.
Venezuela
The attempt of the Venezuelan oligarchy, with the backing
of imperialism, to overthrow the Maduro government seems to have been defeated
for now. The mistakes and vacillations of the opposition leadership, as well as
the reaction of the masses, who came out in force during the Constituent
Assembly elections in July 2017, put a temporary end to the opposition’s
offensive in the first half of the year. But that does not change anything
fundamental in terms of the economic crisis, or the policies of the government.
Venezuela remains mired in a deep recession, with
hyperinflation and rapidly diminishing foreign currency reserves, and this is
having a very negative impact on the living standards of the masses.
Imperialism continues to tighten the noose with financial sanctions. The
government continues a policy of making concessions to the capitalists and
negotiating with the political representatives of the opposition. Their only
aim is to remain in power. The temporary defeat of the opposition’s offensive
has opened up the window for a sharpening of the internal differentiation
within the Bolivarian movement. There have been workers’ demonstrations and the
emergence of left-wing candidates to rival the official ones in the municipal
elections.
Our position is clear: we oppose the overthrow of the
Maduro government by the opposition as that would be a disaster for the masses.
At the same time we cannot support the policies of the government, which lead
directly to disaster and defeat for the Bolivarian revolution.
There is a growing mood of criticism towards the Bolivarian
leadership, which cannot have the same authority as Hugo Chavez. The decision
of Eduardo Saman, a former minister who stood out as a champion of workers’
control and an opponent of big business and capitalist multinationals, to stand
as a candidate in the municipal elections of December 2017 was a clear
indication of this changed mood.
Although it was always clear that the bureaucracy was
determined to sabotage Saman’s campaign, it was nevertheless a turning point
that opens up new possibilities for the Marxist tendency in Venezuela.
India and Pakistan
Narendra Modi came to power in 2014 on the basis of a
widespread disillusionment with the Congress party, both by the working masses
and by a layer of the bourgeoisie itself. But he has not been able to satisfy
any of the forces that brought him to power. His demonetisation drive and the
Goods and Services Tax reform were meant to facilitate business, but instead
they have added to the weakening of the economy, which fell from above 9%
growth rates to less than 7% in 2017.
The brief period of high growth between 2014-2016 has now
given way to a sharp slowdown. Even during the period of faster growth
unemployment actually increased and Modi launched a whole series of attacks on
the workers’ movement. The result has been a rise in class struggle. Students,
peasants and workers have all taken to the streets. In September 2016 more than
180 million workers came out on strike that is around 50% more than during a
similar general strike called a year earlier.
In Kashmir too, the masses took to the streets in a
movement that shook the government, which only managed to temporarily subdue
the movement by using heavy repression. Nevertheless, the movement had a
certain influence in the rest of the country, in particular amongst the student
youth.
Modi has been trying to divert attention away from these
developments by whipping up Hindu sectarianism, but this can only work for a
limited period. At a certain point it will be cut across by the rising working
class.
The events in Pakistan and India are closely linked. The
Indian and Pakistani ruling classes have a common interest in maintaining a
state of conflict between the two countries in order to divert the attention of
the masses. But the position of the Pakistani ruling class is increasingly
weak.
As the US is withdrawing its aid to the regime, China is
stepping in. The Chinese have a special interest in Pakistan as an ally and
buffer against India, as well as a hub for Chinese naval and maritime
operations in the Indian Ocean. However, Chinese investments are not creating
jobs or solving the contradictions in society.
The national question is becoming increasingly poisonous
and in places such as Baluchistan, the Chinese presence is exacerbating
sectarianism, which is merely a cover for a bloody proxy war between
antagonistic external powers (America, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran...). Every day
the reactionary policies of the ruling class are being exposed in the eyes of
the masses, who have nothing but contempt left for the rotten elite that rules
and plunders the country.
In the past the PPP leaders played a role in channelling
the anger of the masses, leaning on the tradition of struggle in the late 1960s
under Ali Bhutto. But after long periods in government carrying out austerity,
the PPP is mired in corruption and largely discredited. This allowed Sharif’s
Muslim League to make a comeback. Now Sharif is also exposed in the eyes of the
masses as a corrupt bourgeois politician who has nothing to offer them.
There has been a growing mood of rejection of all the
politicians, who are seen as self-serving anti-working class and anti-poor
gangsters. In the past the army would have taken power by now, but the army
itself is split and demoralised. The generals are reluctant to accept
responsibility for clearing up the mess. It is in this context that we see the
beginnings of struggles of the workers and youth.
Africa
In South Africa, many years of rising class struggle have
shattered the tripartite alliance (ANC-CPSA-COSATU). The strike movements and
the movement of the youth in the universities led to the rise of the Economic
Freedom Fighters and the new trade union federation led by NUMSA. Although the
movement has temporarily subsided, the regime has been seriously affected by
all these upheavals.
Economic crisis, mass anger, the open looting of state
resources by the upstart black elite around Zuma and the Gupta family, is
destabilising the situation and undermining the authority of the ANC. The big
bourgeoisie, which collaborated with Mandela to stabilise the situation after
the revolutionary events of the 1980s and 1990s, has come into conflict with
the nouveau riche layer and the ruling clique around Zuma.
On the other hand, the ruling class cannot afford to
discard the ANC because it does not have an alternative party to stabilise the
situation. Aware of this, the Zuma wing has been recklessly raising the stakes
in a dangerous game. This open split between the two camps and the potential
split within the ANC could have revolutionary consequences for Africa’s most
advanced economy.
In Nigeria, after the tremendous upsurge in class struggle
in January 2012, the main pillar of bourgeois rule, the PDP, stood discredited
in the eyes of the masses. That is why they hurriedly cobbled together a new
party, the APC – in reality a fusion of smaller parties – and put at its head
Buhari, whom they considered a good candidate to garner support among the mass
of the population and cut across the growing radicalisation.
This manoeuvre was possible because the leaders of the NLC,
the main trade union federation, instead of building on the 2012 movement,
spent all their authority in reining in that movement, while at the same time
refusing to promote an independent party of the working class. It is in this
vacuum left by the labour leaders that Buhari could step in. But in spite of
all this, none of the burning problems facing the Nigerian masses have been
solved. This was recently expressed in the agitation for a Biafran Republic in
the south east. Although crushed by the military, it reveals the underlying
tensions in Nigerian society. And once the last remnants of illusions in Buhari
finally dissipate, we will see a resurgence of the class struggle on an even
bigger scale than in 2012.
In West and Central Africa, mass movements against the corrupt
and exploitative local bourgeoisies in several countries have increased sharply
over the past period. These were enormous movements that stretched over long
periods of time and mobilised millions of peoples. The masses closely followed
the heroic uprising in Burkina Faso, while the fragile economies of these
countries are being hit particularly hard by the global economic crisis. The
attacks by the weakening regimes on democratic rights, more recently in Togo
and the DRC, served as the straw that broke the camel's back. In particular,
the mass of young people equate their general oppression with the decades old
governments. The widespread misery in the region, as well as the treacherous
role of the bourgeois opposition leaders – whose sole interest is to replace
the regime heads – confirm both the correctness of the theory of the permanent
revolution and the need to build an international revolutionary organization.
Because of lack of a fighting leadership, after a huge upsurge of mass
mobilisations, the movements receded. The only conclusion that the masses can
draw from all this is that they can have no trust in the old leadership.
Marxist theory and revolutionary organization is what is required to break the
logjam.
Pessimism of the bourgeois
The hundredth anniversary of the October Revolution
provided the strategists of Capital with an opportunity to reflect on history –
and worry about the future. On August 15th, 2017 Martin Sandbu wrote in
the Financial Times:
“Two anniversaries we mark this year – the centenary of the
Russian Revolution and the decade since the start of the global financial
crisis – have more in common than is apparent at first sight.
“The global financial crisis […] shook to its foundations
the model that had emerged victorious from the cold war.
“The stultifying communism that the Soviet bloc had evolved
to by the 1980s collapsed under the weight of its own economic and political
contradictions. The political turmoil of the last year demonstrates that we
are now watching to see whether open market economies will suffer the same fate.”
(Our emphasis)
He continues:
“Friedrich von Hayek’s insight that flexible market prices
contain more information than any planning mechanism can hope to gather
centrally; and that dispersed decision-making therefore acts more efficiently
than state authorities can do. […]
“Yet it had a rude awakening in the global financial
crisis, which undermined any claim of western financial capitalism to being the
best way to organise an economy.”
And he concludes:
“What happened 10 years ago this month was the horrifying
realisation that financial claims accumulated over the previous boom years did
not add up, that the future economic production which they were claims on was
insufficient for them all to be honoured in full.
“[…] market liberalism, in its turn, betrayed the dream it
had promised. Western economies are today far poorer than the trend before the
crash predicted. The crisis and its aftermath have left the young, in
particular, with little reason to hope for the same opportunities to prosper as
their parents and grandparents.
“[…] a social system can survive disillusion for a
long time. […] But when people can no longer count on their livelihoods,
support snaps.”
Some of the more serious capitalist experts are beginning
to understand that their recipes of the last 30 years are no longer working. In
an article that appeared in the German paper Die Zeit under the title
“Neoliberalism is dead” we are informed that even the IMF has admitted that
their policies do not have the desired effect. But of course, they never draw
all the necessary conclusions. [Source: Neoliberalism is dead, by Mark
Schieritz, Die Zeit, June 2016)
Wolfgang Streek of the Max Planck Institute listed all the
problems of capitalism in a long article published in New Left
Review entitled, “How will capitalism end?” (May/June 2014), which in 2016
he expanded into a book. He says that there is a crisis of legitimacy of the
capitalist system because it is no longer providing what it did in the past and
people are therefore beginning to question the system. This explains the
electoral volatility that can be observed in many countries. He also poses the
question as to whether a “democratic system” can provide the policies that
capitalism needs. What he means is whether they can impose on the working class
what the bourgeois need.
In his article Streek states that capitalism “will for the
foreseeable future hang in limbo, dead or about to die in an overdose of
itself, but still very much around, as nobody has the power to move its
decaying body out of the way”. This is not a bad description of the state of
present-day capitalism.
It is significant that Martin Wolf, chief economics
commentator of the Financial Times, felt the need to answer Streek in an
article with the interesting title “The case against the collapse of
capitalism.” (FT 2 November 2016). How well the strategists of capital
understand the sickness of their own system!
Lenin explained that if it is not overthrown, the
capitalist system will always recover from even the deepest crisis. Even in the
1930s there were periods of recovery. The bourgeois press has been talking
about a recovery for the last seven years. In reality this is the weakest
recovery in history and certain things flow from this.
Of course, the capitalist system still has important
reserves and if the capitalists and bankers feel themselves threatened with
losing everything, they will introduce Keynesian measures. But these reserves
are not unlimited and they have been used up at an alarming rate in the last
ten years. As a result, when the next crisis comes, as it inevitably will come,
they will be in a far weaker position to mitigate its consequences than they
were previously.
They constantly repeat that they have learned the lessons
of 2008. But they also said they had learned the lessons of 1929. And as Hegel
pointed out, anybody who studies history will have to conclude that nobody has
ever learned anything from it.
In the final analysis, no matter what the bourgeois do,
whether they adopt Keynesianism, monetarism, protections or anything else, they
will be wrong. In the Middle Ages the priests used to say: all roads lead to
Rome. Now we can use a slightly different variant: under capitalism, all roads
lead to ruin.
Conclusion
Not so long ago it seemed that nothing much was happening
in the world. A discussion of world perspectives would have to concentrate on
one or two countries. But now the same revolutionary process is taking place to
a greater or lesser intensity in every single country of the world without
exception. What we are therefore discussing is a general process of worldwide
revolution.
For Marxists, a discussion of economic perspectives is not
an academic or abstract intellectual exercise. What is important is its effect
for the class struggle and consciousness. But since consciousness always lags
behind events, there was an inevitable delay between the beginning of the
crisis and the intensification of the class struggle.
The bourgeoisie, always blindly empirical, were unable to
see the explosive accumulation of subterranean discontent that was quietly
gathering force. They were congratulating themselves that no revolution had
taken place. Once they had recovered from the initial shock, for the bankers
and capitalists it was “business as usual” Like a drunken man dancing on the
edge of a precipice, they carried on with the merry carnival of money-making,
which acquired an even more feverish pace while the conditions of the masses
went from bad to worse.
Trotsky explained what he called the molecular process of
revolution. In the History of the Russian Revolution he points out
that, what determines the consciousness of the masses is not just the economic
crisis, but rather the accumulation of discontent built up over the whole
previous period. The discontent of the masses accumulates unnoticed until it
finally reaches that critical point when quantity is transformed into quality.
Now, suddenly, the sense of relief of the ruling class has
been replaced with pessimism and foreboding. There are social and political
convulsions everywhere, accompanied by extreme instability on a world scale and
violent alterations in world relations.
Even if the economy improves, it does not automatically
register in the consciousness of the masses, which has been shaped by the
memories of decades of stagnant or falling living standards. The very weak
recovery in the USA signifies only a very relative improvement, confined to
certain sectors. It does not affect the unemployed workers in the rustbelt. And
everywhere else, it does not feel like a real recovery, and it has not restored
any sense of confidence in the system or optimism in the future, but quite the
opposite.
We see the same story reflected in the British referendum
on EU membership. There are many reasons why the vote went in favour of Brexit.
But a very important reason was revealed in the sharp regional differences
between north and south. The bankers and speculators of the City of London did
very well out of membership of the EU, which gave them privileged access to the
lucrative financial markets of Europe. But membership has done nothing
whatsoever for the poor areas of the north-east or Wales, which have suffered
decades of deindustrialization, and the closure of the coal mines, steel plants
and shipyards.
The growth of inequality
Everywhere there is a burning anger against grotesque
levels of inequality, with obscene wealth of a tiny parasitic minority standing
in sharp contrast to the growing poverty and despair at the bottom. The serious
bourgeois are increasingly worried about this tendency because it is
endangering the stability of the entire system. Everywhere there’s a burning
hatred of the rich. Many people ask: if the economy is doing so well, why are
our living standards not improving? Why are they still cutting welfare, health
and education? Why do the rich not pay taxes? And to these questions they find
no answers.
The bourgeois are getting increasingly alarmed about the
political consequences of the crisis. Far from feeling the benefits of the so
called recovery, most working class people are worse off than they were before
the crash. The McKinsey Global Institute found that 65-70% of “income segments”
in advanced economies experienced either stagnation or a fall in their income
between 2005 and 2014. Countries like Italy saw all income segments affected. (Poorer
Than Their Parents, McKinsey Global Institute)
In the wealthiest and most powerful capitalist country that
has ever existed there has been no real increase in living standards for nearly
forty years. Indeed, for most Americans living standards have been falling. And
this is no exception. In all countries, the present young generation is the
first since 1945 that cannot expect a better standard of living than their
parents.
Polarisation of wealth in the US continues unabated. From
2000-2010 profits went up by 80% and wages by 8%, while average family
incomes actually went down by 5%. These figures show that the massive increases
in profit were achieved at the cost of the working class. (The Economist, What
about the workers? May 25th 2011)
The figures for pre-tax and disposable income understate
the case. They do not take into consideration other factors such as increasing
working hours and increasing casualization, whether due to zero hour contracts
or temporary employment, and cuts to welfare services. These all add to the
total pressure on working class families.
The crisis has its most painful and direct effects on young
people. For the first time in many decades the new generation will not have the
same living standards as their parents. This has serious political
consequences. In all countries, the intolerable pressure on the youth finds its
expression in a sharp increase in political radicalisation. On all questions
the youth stands much further to the left than the rest of society. They are
far more open to revolutionary ideas than other layers and are therefore our
natural constituency.
Lessons of the collapse of Stalinism
In 1991 the collapse of the Soviet Union changed the course
of history. At that time, the bourgeoisie and its echoes in the Labour
movement, the reformists, were euphoric. They talked about the end of
socialism, the end of communism, and even the end of history.
What Francis Fukuyama meant by his notorious aphorism was
not that history as such had ended, but that the collapse of the Soviet Union
meant that socialism was finished. It would therefore logically follow that the
only system which could possibly exist was capitalism (the free market economy)
and in that sense history had ended.
What was astonishing about the fall of Stalinism was the
speed with which the apparently powerful and monolithic regimes collapsed once
they were challenged by mass movements in Eastern Europe. That was a reflection
of the internal rottenness and decay of the regime. But the decay of senile
capitalism is increasingly becoming clear to millions of people.
When the Berlin Wall fell Ted Grant predicted that seen in
retrospect the fall of Stalinism would only be the first act of a worldwide
drama which would be followed by an even more dramatic second act – the global
crisis of capitalism. We now see the truth of this statement. Instead of
universal prosperity there is poverty, unemployment, hunger and misery. Instead
of peace there is war after war after war.
The same processes that suddenly caused the downfall of
Stalinism can occur in capitalism. In one country after another we are
witnessing sudden shocks that are testing the resilience of the system and
exposing its weaknesses.
The institutions of bourgeois democracy, which were
previously trusted blindly, are beginning to be discredited everywhere. People
do not trust the politicians, the government, the judges, the police, the
security services, even the Church: the whole system is coming under intense
scrutiny and criticism.
A representative of WikiLeaks was asked on British TV: “are
you seriously suggesting that the intelligence services of the US are telling
lies?” He replied, “why not? They always tell lies!” This is what many people
are now beginning to believe.
The mass organizations: the crisis of reformism
The crisis of capitalism is also the crisis of reformism.
Everywhere the traditional parties of both the right and the left are in
crises. Organizations that seemed to be solidly based and immutable are
entering into crises, declining and even collapsing altogether. The reformist
parties that have collaborated in governments that carried out deep cuts have
been rejected by their traditional electorate.
To one degree or another, and at one pace or another, the
same processes can be seen in practically every country in Europe. As in France,
so too in the Netherlands, where the right-wing party of Geert Wilders was
defeated in the elections. The bourgeois breathed a sigh of relief. But far
more significant than the defeat of Wilders was the crushing debacle of the
Dutch Labour Party, which was practically wiped out. The party lost 75% of its
support.
The rise of the Workers' Party of Belgium is also a
significant development. This ex-Maoist sect is now a left-reformist party,
although it claims to be Marxist and Communist. In Wallonia, the French-speaking
region, they are only just behind the Socialists. The same is true in Brussels.
In the red belts they can get around 25% of the votes. But they are also
beginning to grow in Flanders.
The masses are looking for and demanding a change. They need
to find an organized political expression for this anger. Over the last period,
the Greek masses have done everything in their power to fight to change
society. There have been many mass strikes, general strikes and mass
demonstrations. But here we come to the most important question: the subjective
factor.
In their attempt to find a way out of the crisis, the
masses turn first to one political option, they put it to the test, and then
discard it and look for another. This explains the violent swings of public
opinion to the left and the right. But they do not find what they are looking
for. The people who ought to lead – the labour politicians, the social
democrats, the so-called ex-communists, above all the trade union leaders –
don’t want to fight against austerity and for a serious change in society.
Trotsky explained that betrayal is implicit in reformism.
By this he did not mean that all reformists betray the working class
deliberately. There can be honest reformists as well as the corrupt careerists
and bureaucrats who are the agents of the bourgeoisie within the workers’
organizations. However, even honest left reformists have no perspective for a
socialist transformation of society. They believe that it is possible to carry
out the reforms that the workers require within the limits of capitalism. They
regard themselves as supreme realists, but under conditions of capitalist
crisis this “realism” stands exposed as the worst kind of utopianism.
The Pasok, which for decades was the mass party of the
Greek working class, collapsed because of its betrayals and participation in
governments of cuts. The workers turned to Syriza, which was previously a very
small party. Alexis Tsipras became the most popular political leader in Greece.
He held a referendum, asking “Should we accept the cuts of Frau Merkel?”, and
there was a massive response.
The people of Greece voted overwhelmingly to reject
austerity: not just the workers but also the middle classes, the taxi drivers
and small businessmen. At that moment Tsipras could have said, “We are not
going to pay one euro to these gangsters! Enough! We’ll take the power into our
own hands and appeal to the workers of Spain, Italy, Germany and Britain to
follow our example. We must fight against the dictatorship of the bankers and
capitalists: for a genuinely democratic socialist Europe.”
Had he done that, he would have received overwhelming
support. People would have been dancing in the streets. And the Greek people
would have been prepared to make sacrifices, big sacrifices if necessary, to
back their leaders – on one condition: that they were convinced that they were
fighting for a just cause and the sacrifices would be the same for all. Tsipras
could lifted his finger and it would have been the end of capitalism in Greece.
He could have expropriated the bankers, the shipping magnates and
industrialists.
But Tsipras is not a Marxist. He is a reformist and
therefore it did not enter into his head to base himself on the power of the
masses. He surrendered to the blackmail of Berlin and Brussels and he signed a
far worse deal than the one originally proposed, leading to a colossal
demoralization and big drop in support for Syriza, although he is still there
because there is no alternative.
The process also affected Spain, which is passing through a
profound political crisis. Like the rise of Syriza in Greece, the rapid rise of
PODEMOS was a clear reflection of massive discontent with the old parties and a
burning desire for change. But the confused and vacillating policies of the
leadership caused disappointment among its followers even before they had come
to power. Pablo Iglesias’ flirtation with Social Democracy led to a slump in
the votes for Podemos and a sharp division among its leaders.
Now the leaders of Podemos are looking to their right –
towards the PSOE, in the hope that some sort of deal can be struck to remove
the hated Rajoy government. This has led them to a moderation of their language
and they are under enormous pressure to appear more respectable and
“statesman-like”. This will further confuse and disorient their supporters.
The new leader of the Socialists, Pedro Sanchez, is the
palest of pale reflections of Jeremy Corbyn and Mélenchon. Nevertheless, for
having dared to pose the question of a coalition government with Podemos and
the Catalan nationalists, the Spanish ruling class attempted to remove him.
This was rejected by the ranks in the internal elections, which returned Pedro
Sanchez as general secretary.
The above-mentioned cases are different variants of the
same process. Everywhere the reformist and ex-Stalinist parties are in crisis.
Some have experienced splits, while others have disappeared altogether (Italy
is an extreme example of this, where both the old socialist and communist
parties have vanished). We have also seen the emergence of new political
formations, such as Syriza and Podemos.
Like the foam on the waves of the sea, these new formations
are a reflection of deep and powerful currents beneath the surface. However,
these new formations lack a stable base in the working class and the trade
unions. As a result of this, and also their mainly petty bourgeois composition,
they are inherently unstable and may collapse as quickly as they arose.
The example of Corbyn in Britain is so far an exception to
the rule. As we have explained, this development was the result of an accident,
but as Hegel explained, an accident that revealed a necessity. The strong side
of the Corbyn movement is that it has provided the necessary focal point for the
accumulated discontent of the masses, especially the youth. Its weak side will
be revealed when the limited nature of the left reformist programme is put to
the test in a Left Labour government.
This means that our tactics have to be flexible at all
times, attuned to the concrete conditions and the level of consciousness of the
working class and above all its most active and advanced layers. In all of
these cases our approach must always be the same: critical support.
We will support the left reformists in the fight against
the right wing, always pushing them to go further. But at the same time we must
patiently explain to the advanced workers and youth the limitations of a
programme that does not aim to overthrow capitalism but seeks only to reform it
from within – a utopian policy which, irrespective of the good intentions of
its advocates, under the conditions of capitalist crisis, can only lead to
defeat and prepare the way for a swing to the right.
Radicalization of the youth
Political and social instability are sweeping like a hot
wind from one European country to another. The changing consciousness was
reflected in an opinion poll for the youth published in Quartz, April
28, 2017. It was part of a European Union-sponsored survey, titled
"Generation what?" Around 580,000 respondents in 35 countries were
asked the question: “Would you actively participate in large-scale uprising
against the generation in power if it happened in the next days or months?”
More than half of 18- to 34-year-olds said yes. The article concludes: “Young
Europeans are sick of the status quo in Europe. And they’re ready to take to
the streets to bring about change.”
The report went on to focus on respondents from 13
countries to better understand what young people are optimistic and frustrated
about in Europe. Among these countries, young people in Greece were
“particularly interested in joining a large-scale uprising against their
government, with 67% answering yes to the question.” Respondents in Greece were
also more likely to believe politicians were corrupt and to have negative
perceptions of the country’s financial sector.
Young people in Italy and Spain were next, with 65% and 63%
willing to join a large-scale uprising, respectively. In France, a country that
has revolution written into its DNA, 61% of the youth answered yes. But even in
in the Netherlands, which has so far escaped the worst of the crisis, a third
of young people agreed with the statement, rising to 37% in Germany and almost
40% in Austria.
During the election campaign, French teenagers held rallies
in Rennes and other cities to protest against both presidential candidates.
Some protesters blockaded schools, while others marched towards the city centre
with placards that read “Expel Marine Le Pen, not immigrants” and “We don’t
want Macron or Le Pen.” The report notes that respondents from France
complained of a number of negative developments—too much corruption, too many
taxes, too many rich people—compared to the rest in the EU.
These figures indicate that a profound change is taking
place. The report concludes: “Voter apathy among the young has long been
described as a worrying trend. In the UK, for example, youth turnout rates at
general elections fell by 28 percentage points, from 66% in 1992 to 38% in 2005.
But this declining electoral participation is not necessarily evidence of
political apathy.”
The problem of leadership
Some superficial people have asked: “if things are so bad,
why has there not been a revolution?” The ruling class was congratulating itself
that this has not happened, since they initially feared the worst. And since
the worst did not immediately materialise they breathed a sigh of relief and
returned to the merry carnival of money-making, while everybody else has seen
their living standards and future prospects crushed. In other words they behave
like a man who is sawing off the branch he is sitting on.
In reality there is nothing surprising about the delay in
the process of revolution. Over many decades the bankers and capitalists have
built powerful defences for their system. They control the press, radio and
television. They enjoy virtually limitless financial resources, which they use
to buy the services of political parties – not only of the right but of the
“Left”, and also of many “responsible” trade union leaders. They can count on
the support of university professors, lawyers, economists, bishops and the most
privileged upper layers of the intelligentsia. And if all this fails, they can
always resort to the policeman’s truncheon, the judges and the prison system.
But there is another, far more powerful barrier to
revolution. Human consciousness, contrary to what the idealists think, is not
progressive and certainly not revolutionary. It is innately and profoundly
conservative. Most people are scared of change. Under normal conditions they
will cling to the familiar, to what they know: familiar ideas, parties,
leaders, religions. This is quite natural and reflects an instinct for
self-preservation. It goes back into the days when we lived in caves and feared
the dark recesses where dangerous animals lurked.
There is something comforting in routine, habit and
tradition, in treading the old, well-known paths. As a rule, people will only
accept the idea of change on the basis of great events that shake society to
its foundations, transforming consciousness and forcing people to see things as
they really are. This does not occur gradually, but in an explosive way. And
that is precisely what we see now taking place everywhere. Consciousness is
beginning to catch up with a bang.
The most important question is the question of leadership.
In 1914 the German army officers described the British army in France with the
following phrase: “Lions led by donkeys.” And that’s a very good description of
the working class everywhere. The reformist leaders play a most pernicious
role, clinging to the “free market” even when it is collapsing all around them.
The right-wing reformist leaders are completely corrupt.
They abandoned all pretence to stand for socialism decades ago and become the
most faithful servants of the bankers and capitalists. They willingly take upon
their shoulders the responsibility for cuts in welfare spending and attacks on
living standards in order to defend capitalism. But in so doing they discredit
themselves in the eyes of the masses who earlier supported them.
There was a clear logic in this. In a period of capitalist
upswing it was possible to make concessions to the working class, especially in
the advanced capitalist countries of North America, Europe and Japan. But in a
period of deep crisis the bourgeois say they can no longer afford reforms. On
the contrary, they demand the liquidation of those reforms that were won since
1945. For the masses, reformism with reforms makes sense. But reformism without
reforms, or rather, reformism with counter-reforms, makes no sense at all.
The long period of capitalist upswing that followed the end
of the Second World War set the final seal on the degeneration of the Social
Democracy. This degeneration has penetrated deep into its ranks. Most of the
older activists in the Social Democratic parties and the trade unions have been
demoralised by the previous period. They are disillusioned, disoriented and
profoundly sceptical. They are completely out of touch with the real mood and
they do not reflect the class.
This layer of activists never understood anything. They do
not represent the present or the future but are only a reflection of the
demoralization of past defeats. The situation is even worse with the
ex-Stalinists, who have completely abandoned any socialist perspective or
revolutionary class instinct they may once have possessed. Some of them may
come back into activity when the class struggle rises. But mostly these and
left-reformists and ex-Stalinists are so deeply impregnated with the spirit of
scepticism that they are an obstacle in the path of the militant workers and
the youth who are seeking the road of socialist revolution.
Our position as a revolutionary organization cannot be
determined or influenced in any way by the prejudices of this layer. Our
tactics are based on the real situation: the organic crisis of capitalism,
which in turn is producing a new generation of class fighters, which will be
far more revolutionary than the older generation ever was. We must base
ourselves on the youth: both the students and school students and above all the
working class youth who are cruelly exploited and are wide open to
revolutionary ideas.
This is a period of sudden shocks and changes in the situation,
which affect all countries without exception. The political centre is
collapsing everywhere and this is a reflection of growing class polarization.
Where there was previously political stability, there is growing instability.
Elections lead to one shock after another: sharp swings to the right and left.
Things that were not supposed to happen are now happening. Therefore, we must
be prepared for big changes, which can happen quicker than we think. If the
left disappoints the aspirations of the masses, there can be a move to the
right, which in turn prepares bigger swings to the left.
We must follow the process as it unfolds. We must arm
ourselves with revolutionary patience, since it is impossible to impose our own
timetable upon events that must follow their own course according to their own
speed. But we must also be prepared for sharp and sudden changes, which are
implicit in the whole situation. Colossal events can come upon us far sooner
than what we think. There is no room for complacency. We must build the forces
of the IMT as quickly as possible. We must have a sense of urgency. We are on
the right road. We must prove ourselves in action and in practice to be the
true and worthy inheritors of the traditions of 1917, of Lenin and Trotsky, and
the Bolshevik revolution.
We must have absolute confidence in our class, the working
class, the only creative class, the class that creates all the wealth in
society, and the only truly revolutionary class that holds the fate of humanity
in its hands. We must have total confidence in the ideas of Marxism and, last
but not least, we must have confidence in ourselves: absolute confidence that,
armed with the ideas of Marxism, we will build the forces that are necessary to
lead the struggle to change society, to put an end to this regime of cruelty,
injustice, exploitation and slavery, and bring about the victory of socialism
throughout the world.
