The "Manifesto of the International Marxist Tendency" explains the
unfolding global crises of capitalism, as well as a socialist
perspective and programme for workers to achieve socialism. This
should be read in conjunction with recent economic and perspective
articles on the Socialist Appeal NZ website.
Manifesto
of the International Marxist Tendency
The
Crisis: Make the bosses pay!
A
global crisis of capitalism
The
world crisis of capitalism is a fact that nobody can ignore. The
economists only yesterday were assuring us that another 1929 was
impossible. Now they are talking of the threat of another Great
Depression. The IMF is warning of an increased risk of a severe and
protracted economic downturn on a world scale. What began as a
financial collapse in the USA has now spread to the real economy,
threatening the jobs, homes and livelihoods of millions.
Panic
has gripped the markets. Richard Fuld, the former chief executive of
Lehman Brothers, told the US Congress his bank had been blown away by
a “storm of fear”. That storm shows no sign of subsiding. Not
only banks but countries are threatened with bankruptcy, as the case
of Iceland shows. Asia was supposed to save the world from recession,
but the Asian markets were dragged into the general maelstrom. Steep
falls are being registered daily from Tokyo to Shanghai, from Moscow
to Hong Kong.
This
is the biggest financial collapse since 1929. And like the Great
Crash, it was preceded by massive speculation in the previous period.
The sheer scale of speculation in the last two
decades was unprecedented. Stock market capitalisation
in the USA went from 5.4 trillion dollars in 1994, to 17.7 trillion
in 1999 and 35 trillion in 2007. This is far in excess of the amount
of speculative capital that was present before 1929. The world
derivatives market is at least 500 trillion dollars, or ten times
more than the total world production of goods and services.
In the
years of boom, when the bankers succeeded in accumulating
incalculable amounts of wealth, there was no question of sharing
their profits with the rest of society. But now they are in
difficulty, they run to the government demanding money. If you are a
compulsive gambler who has borrowed
and lost a thousand
dollars, which you are unable to pay, you will be sent to
prison. But if you are a wealthy banker who has gambled and lost
billions of dollars of other
people’s money, you will not go to prison but will be rewarded with
further billions of other people’s money from the state.
Faced
with the risk of a complete collapse of the banking system,
governments are taking desperate measures. The Bush administration
has injected $700 billion into the coffers of the bankers in a
frantic attempt to breathe life into the moribund financial system.
This is the equivalent of about $2,400 for every man, woman and child
in the USA. The British government has announced a rescue package of
over £400 billion (proportionately far more than in the USA),
and the EU has added further billions. Germany’s rescue plan
amounts to about 20 percent of the gross domestic product of Europe’s
biggest economy. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s administration pledged
80 billion euros to recapitalise distressed banks, with the rest
allocated to cover loan guarantees and losses. So far around $2.5
trillion has already been spent worldwide and it has not halted the
downward spiral.
Desperate
measures
The
present crisis is far from having run its full course. It will not be
halted by the measures taken by governments and central bankers. By
throwing huge amounts of money at the banks, they will succeed at
most in achieving a temporary respite or marginally alleviating the
crisis at the cost of creating a huge burden of debt for future
generations. But every serious economist knows that the markets have
a lot further to fall.
In
some ways the present situation is even worse than it was in the
1930s. The huge wave of speculation that preceded the present
financial crisis and prepared it was several times bigger than the
one that triggered the crash of 1929. The amounts of fictitious
capital that has been pumped into the world financial system, and
which constitute a poison that threatens to destroy it altogether,
are so vast that nobody is able to quantify them. The corresponding
“correction”
(to make use of the current euphemism of the economists) will
therefore be even more painful and longer lasting.
In
the1930s the USA was the world’s biggest
creditor. Now it is the world’s biggest
debtor. At the time of the New Deal, while attempting to re-start the
US economy from the Great Depression, Roosevelt had vast sums of
money at his disposal. Today, Bush has to plead with a reluctant
Congress to hand over money that it does not possess. The approval of
the gift of $700 billion to Big Business means a further increase in
public indebtedness. This in turn means a whole period of austerity
and cuts in living standards for millions of US citizens.
These
panic measures will not prevent the crisis, which has barely begun.
In the same way, Roosevelt’s New Deal,
contrary to the common perception, did not halt the Great Depression.
The US economy remained in a depressed state until 1941, when the USA
entered the Second World War and huge military spending finally
mopped up the unemployed. We are once more facing a prolonged period
of declining living standards, factory closures, the lowering of
wages, cuts in social spending and general austerity.
The
capitalists find themselves in a blind alley and can see no way out.
All the traditional parties are in a state of perplexity bordering on
a paralysis of will. President Bush has
told the world that “it’s going to take a while” for his
financial rescue plan to work. In the meantime, more companies go
bankrupt, more people lose their employment, and more nations are
being ruined. The credit crisis is beginning to throttle otherwise
healthy companies. Unable to raise capital, companies will be forced
to cut back first on fixed investment, then on working capital and
ultimately on employment.
The
employers are begging governments and central banks to cut interest
rates. But under present circumstances this will not help. The
coordinated cut of half a percent was followed by further sharp falls
on world stock markets. The turmoil in markets will not be resolved
by the interest rate cuts made by central banks. In the face of a
global recession, no one wants to buy shares and no one wants to lend
money. Banks stop lending because they have no confidence that their
money will ever be returned. The whole system is threatened with
paralysis.
Despite
the coordinated efforts by the central banks to pump money into the
system, the credit markets remain stubbornly frozen. The British
government gave the bankers a present of over £400 billions.
The reaction was a fall on the stock exchange. The rate of
inter-bank lending actually increased after the announcement of this
donation and the Bank of England’s announcement of a half a percent
rate cut. In the main these cuts are not being passed onto borrowers
and house-buyers. These measures have not solved the crisis but only
poured money into the pockets of the same people whose speculative
activity, if it did not cause the crisis, has greatly exacerbated it
and given it a convulsive and uncontrollable character.
The
bankers never lose
In
the past the banker was a respectable man in a grey suit who was
supposed to be a model of responsibility who would subject people to
a severe interrogation before lending money. But all that changed in
the last period. With interest rates low and liquidity in plentiful
supply, the bankers threw caution to the wind, lending billions for
high margins to people who found they could not afford repayments
when rates rose. The result was the sub-prime mortgage crisis that
helped to destabilise the entire financial system.
Governments
and central banks conspired to fuel the fires of speculation in order
to avoid a recession. Under Alan Greenspan the Federal Reserve kept
interest rates very low. This was praised as a very wise policy. By
these means they postponed the evil day, only to make the crisis a
thousand times worse when it finally arrived. Cheap money enabled the
bankers to indulge in an orgy of speculation. Individuals borrowed to
invest in property or buy goods; investors used cheap debt to invest
in higher-yielding assets, or borrowed against existing investments;
bank lending outstripped customer deposits to an unprecedented degree
and dubious activities were kept off balance sheet.
Now
all this has turned into its opposite. All the factors that pushed
the economy up are now combining to create a vicious downward spiral.
As the debt is unwound, the shortage of credit threatens to bring the
economy to a grinding halt. If a worker makes a
mess of his job, he will get the sack. But when the bankers wreck the
entire financial system they expect to be rewarded. The men in smart
suits who have made fortunes out of speculating with other people’s
money are now demanding that the taxpayer bail them out. This is a
most peculiar logic, which most people find very difficult to
understand.
In
the years of boom huge profits were made by the banking and
financial sector. In 2006 alone the big banks made approximately 40
percent of all business profits in the USA. This is an industry where
top executives are rewarded 344 times more than the average employee
in the USA. Thirty years ago the average Chief Executive Officer
(CEO) made around 35 times the pay of a typical worker. Last year,
the average CEO of a top 500 listed company got $10.5 million in
“compensation”.
The
bankers wish us to forget all this and concentrate on the urgency of
saving the banks. All the pressing needs of society are to be put to
one side and the wealth of society in its entirety must be put at the
disposal of the bankers, whose services to society are assumed to be
far more important than those of nurses, doctors, teachers or
building workers. The governments of the EU and the USA spent in one
week the equivalent of what would be needed to relieve world
hunger for nearly 50 years. While millions starve, the bankers
continue to receive lavish salaries and bonuses and maintain an
extravagant lifestyle at the public expense. The fact that there is a
crisis makes no difference.
“In
everybody’s interest”?
Most
people are not convinced by the arguments of the bankers and
politicians. They bitterly resent the fact that their hard-earned
money is handed over to the bankers and the wealthy. But when they
object they are met with a deafening chorus of politicians, who tell
them: “there is no alternative”. This argument is repeated so
often and with such insistence that it silences most critics,
especially as all the parties are agreed on this.
Democrats
and Republicans, Social Democrats and Christian Democrats,
Conservatives and Labourites, all have joined forces in a veritable
conspiracy to persuade the public that it is “in everybody’s
interest” that ordinary working people must be robbed in order to
put more money into the hands of the corporate gangsters. “We need
a healthy (that is, profitable) banking system”, they shout. “We
need to restore confidence, or else we will have Apocalypse tomorrow
morning”.
This
kind of argument is intended to generate an atmosphere of fear and
panic, in order to make a rational discussion impossible. But what
does the argument really consist of? Stripped of all niceties, it
means only this: that since the banks are in the hands of the rich,
and since the rich will only “risk” their money if they get a
high rate of profit, and since they are not making profits at the
moment, but only losses, the government must intervene and give them
huge sums of money in order to restore their profits and therefore
their confidence. Then all will be well.
The
celebrated American economist John Kenneth Galbraith summed up this
argument in the following way: “The poor have too much money, and
the rich do not have enough.” The idea is that if the rich are
doing well, then in the long run some of the wealth will trickle down
and we will all benefit. But as Keynes remarked: in the long run we
are all dead. Moreover, this theory has been shown to be false in
practice.
The
argument that it is absolutely necessary to pump vast sums of public
money into the banks because if this is not done, a catastrophe would
ensue does not convince ordinary hardworking men and women. They ask
the very simple question: why should we pay for the mistakes of the
bankers? If they have got themselves into this mess in the first
place, they ought to clean it up. Apart from a considerable loss of
jobs in the financial and service sectors, the bank crisis affects
living standards in other ways. The upheaval in markets has sent the
stock market plummeting and devastated the savings of workers and the
middle class.
To
date, Americans’ retirement plans have lost as much as $2 trillion.
It has meant that people who have worked hard all their lives and
saved money in the hope of earning a relatively comfortable
retirement are now forced to cancel their plans and delay their
retirement. More than half the people surveyed in a recent
opinion poll said they worry they will have to work longer because
the value of their retirement savings has declined and nearly one in
four has increased the number of hours he or she works.
Many
people are faced with repossession and the loss of their home. If a
family loses their house, this is said to be the result of their own
greed and lack of foresight. The iron laws of the market and the
“survival of the fittest” condemn them to homelessness. It is a
private matter and no concern of the government. But if a bank is
ruined by the voracious speculation of the bankers, this is a
terrible misfortune for the whole of society and therefore the whole
of society must unite to save it. This is the twisted logic of
capitalism!
This
shameful attempt to place the burden of the crisis on the shoulders
of those who can least afford it must be resisted. In order to solve
the crisis, it is necessary to take the entire banking and financial
system out of the hands of the speculators and bring it under the
democratic control of society, so that it can serve the interests of
the majority, not the rich.
We
demand:
1)
No
more bail outs for the rich.
No reward for the fat cats! Nationalise the banks and insurance
companies under democratic workers’ control and management. Banking
decisions must be taken in the interests of the majority of society,
not a minority of wealthy drones. Compensation for nationalised banks
and other companies must be paid only in cases of proven need to
small investors. The
nationalisation of the banks is the only way to guarantee the
deposits and savings of ordinary people.
2)
Democratic control of the banks. The boards of directors should be
composed in the following way: one third to be elected by the bank
workers, one third to be elected by the trade unions to represent the
interests of the working class as a whole, and one third from the
government.
3)
An immediate end to the exorbitant bonuses, all executive pay should
be limited to the wages of a qualified worker. Why should a banker be
worth more than a doctor or a dentist? If the bankers are not
prepared to serve on reasonable terms, they must be shown the door
and replaced by qualified graduates, many of whom are looking for
work and willing to serve society.
4)
An immediate reduction of interest rates, which should be limited to
the necessary costs of banking operations. Cheap credit must be made
available for those who need it: small businesses and workers buying
homes, not the bankers and capitalists.
5)
The right to a home; an immediate end to repossessions, a general
reduction of rents and a massive building programme of affordable
social housing.
The
cause of the crisis
The
root cause of the crisis is not the bad behavior of some individuals.
If that were true, then the solution would be simple: get them to
behave better in future. That is what Gordon Brown means when he
calls for “transparency, honesty and
responsibility.” But everybody knows that
international finance is as transparent as a cesspool, and that the
banking fraternity is as honest as a Mafia Convention and as
responsible as a compulsive gambler. But even if all bankers were
saints, it would not make any fundamental difference.
It
is not correct to attribute the cause of the crisis to the greed and
corruption of the bankers (although they are exceedingly greedy and
corrupt). Rather it is an expression of the sickness of a whole
system – an expression of the organic
crisis of capitalism. The problem is not the greed of certain
individuals, nor is it the lack of liquidity or the absence of
confidence. The problem is that the capitalist system on a world
scale is in a complete blind alley. The root cause of the crisis is
that the development of the productive forces has outgrown the narrow
limits of private ownership and the nation state.
The expansion and contraction of credit is often presented as
the cause of the crisis, but in fact it is only the most visible
symptom. Crises are an integral part of the capitalist system.
Marx
and Engels explained this long ago:
“Modern
bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and
of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of
production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer
able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up
by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and
commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces
against modern conditions of production, against the property
relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois
and of its rule."
“It
is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical
return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its
trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part
not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created
productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there
breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed
an absurdity – the epidemic of
over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state
of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of
devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence;
industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is
too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much
industry, too much commerce."
“The
productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to
further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on
the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by
which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters,
they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the
existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society
are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does
the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced
destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the
conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the
old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and
more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises
are prevented.”
These
words from The Communist Manifesto,
written in 1848, are as fresh and relevant today as they were then.
They could have been written yesterday.
The
most important question, in any case, is not banking but the real
economy: the production of goods and services. In
order to make a profit, these must find a market. But demand is in
steep decline and this is exacerbated by the lack of credit. We are
faced with a classic crisis of capitalism, which is already claiming
many innocent victims. The collapse of house prices in the USA has
meant a crisis in the construction industry, which has already shed
hundreds of thousands of jobs. The car industry is in crisis, with
sales in the USA at their lowest point for 16 years. This in turn
means falling demand for steel, plastic, rubber, electricity, oil and
other products. It will have a knock-on effect throughout the
economy, signifying rising unemployment and falling living standards.
Capitalist
anarchy
For
the last thirty years or more, we have been told that the best
possible economic system was something called the free market
economy. Ever since the late 1970s the mantra of the bourgeois
was “let the markets rip” and “keep the state out of the
economy.” The market was supposed to possess magical powers that
enabled it to organise the productive forces without any intervention
by the state. This idea is as old as Adam Smith who in the 18th
century spoke of the “invisible hand of the market.” The
politicians and economists boasted they had abolished the economic
cycle. “No return to boom and bust” was repeated time and again.
There
was no question of them following any regulations. On the contrary,
they loudly demanded that all regulations be abolished as
“detrimental to the free market”. They therefore made a bonfire
of all regulations and allowed the market forces free reign. Greed
for profit did the rest, as enormous amounts of capital moved from
one continent to another without any hindrance, destroying industries
and bringing down national currencies at the click of a computer key.
It is what Marx called the anarchy of capitalism. Now we see
the results. With $700 billion from the US government and over £400
billion from the British government, the state will be involved for
many years. £400 billion is the equivalent of one half of the
British national income. Even if this is paid back (which is
supposing a lot) it means many years of tax increases, cuts in social
spending and austerity.
A
very old law, the herd instinct, governs the conduct of the markets.
The faintest scent of a lion prowling in the bush will send a herd of
wildebeest into a panic that nothing will halt. This is the kind of
mechanism that determines the destinies of millions of people. This
is the crude reality of market economics. Just as the wildebeest can
scent a lion, the markets can scent the imminence of a recession. The
prospect of a recession is the real cause of the panic. Once this
happens, nothing can stop it. All the speeches, all the interest rate
cuts, and all the handouts to the banks, will have no effect on the
financial markets. They will see that the governments and central
banks are afraid, and they will draw the necessary conclusions.
The
panic that has swept markets threatens to overwhelm all attempts by
governments to contain the crisis. None of the desperate measures
taken by the Fed and the British and European governments and central
banks have succeeded in halting the stampede. This scandal is all the
more shocking because the very people who are now screaming for state
assistance are the ones who were always shouting that government has
no place in the workings of the economy and that the free market must
be allowed to operate with no regulations or any other form of state
interference.
Now
they complain bitterly that the regulators were not doing their job.
But until recently all were agreed that the job of the regulators was
simply to leave the markets alone. The watchdogs are quite right when
they argue that it is not their job to run banks, because that was
the mantra for the last 30 years. From London to New York and
Reykjavik regulators failed to rein in the “excesses” of the
financial industry. For the last three decades the advocates of
market economics were all demanding the abolition of regulations.
Competition
between financial centres for business was supposed to guarantee that
the market would operate efficiently, thanks to the invisible hand of
the market. But the bankruptcy of these laissez-faire policies was
cruelly exposed in the summer of 2007. Now they are all beating their
chests and wailing at the consequences of their own actions. Society
is now paying the bill for the policies whereby the capitalists and
their political representatives attempted to keep the boom going by
constantly inflating the speculative bubble. All were involved in
this massive fraud. Republicans and Democrats, Labour and
Conservatives, Social Democrats and former “Communists” – all
embraced market economics and applauded this merry carnival of
moneymaking.
It
is very easy to be wise after the event, as every drunk will tell you
the morning after a drunken binge. Then they all swear that they have
learned the lesson, and will never drink again – an excellent
resolution that they sincerely mean to maintain – until the next
drunken party. Now the financial regulators are sticking their nose
in to even the smallest aspects of the banks’ affairs, but only
after the banks were on the verge of collapse. Where were they
before?
Now
everybody blames greedy bankers for the crisis. But only yesterday
these same greedy bankers were universally hailed as the saviours of
the nation, the wealth creators, the risk-takers and the job-givers.
Many in the City of London and Wall Street are now faced with losing
their jobs. But the traders will have made millions from short-term
bonuses for market speculation. Traders’ bosses in the boardroom
let the casino continue because their pay was also linked to
short-term results.
Belatedly
the authorities are attempting to impose curbs on bankers’ pay as
the price for bailouts. They do this, not out of principle or
conviction but because they fear the reaction of the public to the
scandal of huge bonuses being paid out of public funds to the very
people who have caused the chaos in the economy. The bosses are
oblivious to the mood of anger and hatred building up in society. At
any rate, they are indifferent to it. But politicians cannot afford
to be totally indifferent to the voters who can kick them out at the
next elections.
The
problem they face is that it is impossible to regulate capitalist
anarchy. They complain about greed, but greed is at the heart of
market economics and must not be stinted. All attempts to limit
“excessive” remuneration, bonuses, etc., will be met with
sabotage. The Market will express its disapproval with sudden falls
in the price of shares. This will serve to concentrate the minds of
the Lawgivers and compel them to pay attention to the real
Electorate: the owners of wealth. When a worker sacrifices a pay
increase this year, that money is lost forever. But the same rule
does not apply to the bankers and capitalists. Even if the latter,
for cosmetic reasons, agree to restrict their bonuses for this year,
they will make up for this great “sacrifice” by increasing their
bonuses next year. It is not at all difficult.
The
idea that men and women are incapable of ordering their affairs
better than this is a monstrous slander against the human race. For
the past 10,000 years humanity has shown itself able to overcome
every obstacle and advance towards the final goal of freedom. The
marvellous discoveries of science and technology place in our hands
the prospect of solving all the problems that have tormented us for
centuries and millennia. But this colossal potential can never be
developed to its full extent as long as it is subordinated to the
profit system.
For
a better life
Incredibly,
in their efforts to defend capitalism, some commentators are trying
to blame the consumers and house buyers for the crisis: “We were
all to blame,” they say, without even blushing. After all, they
argue, no one was forcing us to take 125 percent mortgages or to
chalk up debts to pay for holidays
abroad and designer shoes. But in a situation where the
economy is developing fast, and credit is cheap, even poor people are
tempted into “living beyond their means.” In fact, at a given
moment real interest rates in the USA were negative, which means that
people were punished for not taking out loans.
Capitalism
constantly creates new needs and advertising is now a vast industry,
utilizing the most sophisticated means to convince consumers that
they must have this and that. The lavish lifestyle of rich
“celebrities” is dangled before the gaze of the poor, presenting
them with a distorted view of life and brainwashing people into
aspiring to things that will never be theirs. Then the bourgeois
hypocrites point an accusing finger at the masses who, like Tantalus,
are condemned to watch a feast while suffering all the torments of
hunger and thirst.
There
is nothing immoral or illogical about aspiring to a better life. If
men and women did not constantly aspire to something better, there
would never be any progress. Society would sink into a stagnant and
inert condition. We should certainly aspire to a better life, for we
only live once. And if all that we can hope for is what exists now,
the outlook for humanity would be grim indeed. What is certainly
immoral and inhuman is the rat race that is created by capitalism,
where individual greed is held up, not merely as a virtue but as the
mainspring of all human progress.
The
capitalist class believes in the so-called survival of the fittest.
However, by this is meant survival, not of the fittest and most
intelligent people but only of the rich, however unfit, stupid, ugly
or diseased, and no matter how many perfectly fit and intelligent
people die in the process. The idea is systematically cultivated that
my personal advancement must be at the expense of everyone else, that
my personal greed must be satisfied through the loss of others, and
that in order to advance, it is necessary to trample others
underfoot. This kind of vicious bourgeois individualism is the
psychological and moral basis for many of the ills that currently
affect society, gnawing at its entrails and dragging it down to the
level of primitive barbarism. It is the morality of dog eats dog, the
concept of “each man for himself and let the devil take the
hindmost”.
This
miserable caricature of natural selection is a slander on the memory
of Charles Darwin. As a matter of fact, it was not competition but
co-operation that was the key to the survival and development of the
human race from its earliest origins. Our early ancestors on the
savannah of East Africa (for we are all descended from African
immigrants) were small and weak creatures. They lacked strong claws
and teeth. They could not run as fast as the animals they wanted to
eat or the predators that wanted to eat them. According to the
“survival of the fittest” our species should have been extinct
approximately three million years ago. The main evolutionary
advantage our ancestors possessed was co-operation and social
production. Individualism under these conditions would have spelt
death.
Changing
consciousness
One
has to ask the advocates of the theory of the so-called survival of
the fittest a simple question: why is it that the banks, which have
been shown to be completely unfit for survival, are not
allowed to die but must at all costs be saved by the generosity of
that very society that was supposed not to exist? In order to save
the weak and unfit banks, run by stupid and inefficient bankers, the
fit, intelligent and hard-working majority is supposed to sacrifice
itself gladly. But society is by no means convinced that to serve
this worthy cause, it must do without such superfluities as schools
and hospitals and accept a regime of austerity for the foreseeable
future.
The
economic shocks that are daily reported in the newspapers and on
television screens tell a story the meaning of which is clear to all:
the existing system is not working. To use an American expression: it
is not delivering the goods. There is no money for health care,
schools or pensions, but for Wall Street there is all the money in
the world. In the words of America’s
greatest living writer, Gore Vidal, what we have is socialism for the
rich and free market economics for the poor.
Many
ordinary people are drawing the correct conclusions from this. They
are beginning to question the capitalist system and look around for
alternatives. Unfortunately, no alternatives are immediately obvious.
In the USA, they look to Obama and the Democrats. But Republicans and
Democrats are only the right and left boot of Big Business. Again,
Gore Vidal stated, “in our Republic there
is one party, the Property Party, with two right wings”. Obama and
McCain both loyally supported the $700 billion bailout of Big
Business. They represent the same interests with only slight
variations in tactics.
These
facts will have a powerful effect on consciousness. It is an
elementary proposition of Marxism that human consciousness is
profoundly conservative. People generally do not like change. Habit,
tradition and routine play a very important role in shaping the
outlook of the masses, who normally resist the idea of major
alterations in their lives and customs. But when great events shake
society to its foundations, people are compelled to reconsider their
old ideas, beliefs and prejudices.
We
have now entered just such a period. The long period of relative
prosperity that has lasted two decades or more in the advanced
capitalist countries left its mark apart from a relatively mild
recession in 2001. Despite all the manifest injustices of capitalism,
despite the long hours of work, the intensification of exploitation,
the gross inequality, the obscene luxury of the wealthy shamelessly
paraded alongside the growing numbers of the poor and marginalized –
despite all this, most people believed that the market economy worked
and that it could even work to their benefit. This was particularly
true in the United States. But for a growing number of people it is
true no longer.
How
to combat unemployment
During
the boom, when fantastic profits were being made, the majority of
working people did not see a real rise in wages. They were subjected
to increased pressure for ever-higher productivity and longer hours.
But now, as the crisis begins to bite, they are threatened not just
with drastic cuts in living standards and conditions but also with
the loss of their jobs. Factory closures and rising unemployment are
on the order of the day. This in turn signifies a deepening of the
crisis and a further deterioration in the living standards of the
people. On a world scale, millions are faced with the danger of being
cast into the pit of pauperism.
For
ten years the Spanish economy was presented as the motor of job
creation in the euro-area. Now the ranks of the jobless in Spain have
been swollen by more than 800,000 in the past year. The collapse of
the decade-long construction boom has pushed Spain’s unemployment
rate to 11.3 percent, the highest rate in the European Union. “It’s
going to get worse; this has just started,” said Daniele Antonucci,
an economist at Merrill Lynch International in London. He forecasts
Spain’s unemployment rate will rise to 13 percent next year, while
European joblessness will swell to 8.1 percent from 7.5 percent by
the end of 2008. In reality, the figures for unemployment are far
worse, but governments resort to all kinds of tricks to reduce them.
The same situation exists, to a
greater or lesser degree, in all countries.
The
workers must defend their living standards, if they cannot increase
or better it. Unemployment threatens society with disintegration. The
working class cannot permit the development of mass chronic
unemployment. The right to work is a fundamental right. What
sort of society condemns millions of able-bodied men and women to a
life of enforced inactivity, when their labour and skills are
required to satisfy the needs of the population? Do we not need more
schools and hospitals? Do we not need good roads and houses? Are the
infrastructure and transport systems not in need of repair and
improvement?
The
answer to all these questions is well known to everybody. But the
reply of the ruling class is
always the same: we cannot afford these things. Now
everybody knows that this answer is false. We now know that
governments can produce extraordinary sums of money when it suits the
interests of the wealthy minority who own and control the banks and
industries. It is only when the majority of working people request
that their needs are attended to that governments argue that the
cupboard is bare.
What
does this prove? It proves that in the system in which we live the
profits of the few are more important than the needs of the many. It
proves that the whole productive system is based on one thing and one
thing only: the profit motive, or, put plainly, greed. When workers
go on strike, the press (which is also owned and controlled by a
handful of billionaires) pillories them as “greedy”. But their
“greed” is only the struggle to make ends meet: to pay the rent
or mortgage, to pay the food and fuel bills that are increasing
steeply month by month, to provide for their children and families.
On
the other hand, the greed of the bankers and capitalist is the greed
to accumulate vast fortunes from the labour of others (for they
themselves produce nothing). With this money they spend money on
works of art, not for enjoyment but only as yet another profitable
investment, on lavish lifestyle and extravagance, or to indulge in
further speculation that always ends in economic collapse and misery
– not for themselves, but for the majority upon whose productive
labour society rests.
In
the past the employers argued that new technology would lighten the
burden of labour, but the opposite has been the case. The EU has just
passed a law that increases the maximum working week to sixty hours!
This is in the first decade of the 21st century, when the
miraculous advances of modern science and technology have produced
more labour-saving devices than in all previous history. What sense
is there in this? What sense is there in having a large number of
unemployed people being paid for doing nothing, while in the
workplaces other workers are being forced to work long hours of
compulsory overtime?
During
the boom, the employers force the workers to work long hours of
overtime, in order to squeeze the last ounce of surplus value from
their labour. But when the recession starts and they no longer have a
market for their goods, they do not hesitate to close their
factories, as if they were so many matchboxes, and throw their
workforce onto the streets, while exploiting the rest to their very
limit. The impasse of capitalism is such that unemployment will no
longer have a “conjunctural” character but will be increasingly
organic or “structural”. A man or woman who is over 40 or 50 may
never work again in their lifetime, while many qualified people who
lose their employment will be forced to take unqualified and low-paid
jobs in order to survive.
This
is the economics of the madhouse! From a capitalist point of view it
is quite logical. But we reject the crazy logic of capitalism!
Against the menace of unemployment we advance
the slogan of public works and work sharing without
loss of pay. Society needs schools, hospitals, roads and houses.
The unemployed must be put to work on a major programme of public
works!
Trade
unions must ensure that the unemployed are closely linked to the
workers, bound together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility.
It is necessary to share out the available work without loss of pay!
All the available work must be divided among the workforce in
accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The
average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old
working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum,
would follow the movement of prices. This is the only programme that
can protect the workers in a time of economic crisis.
When
they are making huge profits the property owners jealously guard
their business secrets. Now that there is a crisis, they will point
to their account ledgers as “proof” that they cannot afford the
workers’ demands. This is especially the case with the smaller
capitalists. But whether our demands are “realistic” or not from
the standpoint of the employers is not the point. We have a duty to
protect the vital interests of the working class and to protect it
from the worst effects of the crisis. The bosses will complain that
this will reduce their profits and have a negative effect on their
incentive to invest. But what incentive do the majority of people
have under a system based on private profit? If the vital interests
of the majority are incompatible with the demands of the present
system, then to hell with the system!
Is
it really logical that the lives and destinies of millions of people
are determined by the blind play of market forces? Is it fair that
the economic life of the planet is decided as if it were a gigantic
casino? Can it be justified that the greed for profit is the sole
motor force that decides whether men and women will have a job or a
roof over their heads? Those who own the means of production and
control our destinies will answer in the affirmative because it is in
their interest to do so. But the majority of society who are the
innocent victims of this cannibalistic system will have a very
different opinion.
By
fighting to defend themselves against the attempts to make them pay
for the crisis, the workers will come to understand the need for a
root-and-branch change in society. The only answer to factory
closures is factory occupations: “a factory closed is a factory
occupied!” That is the only effective slogan for combating
closures. Factory occupations must necessarily lead to workers’
control. By means of workers’ control the workers acquire
experience in bookkeeping and the administration of the enterprise
that will permit them later to run the whole of society.
This
has been the experience of the most advanced workers’ struggles in
recent years, especially in Latin America. In Brazil
(CIPLA/Interfibras, Flasko and other factories), Argentina (Brukman,
Zanon and many others) and Venezuela, where the giant oil company
PDVSA was restarted and run by the workers for months during the
bosses’ lockout in 2002-2003, and where a movement of occupied
factories developed around Inveval in 2005 and is gaining strength.
In
all these cases and in many more, workers have attempted successfully
against all the odds to run their factories under their own control
and management. But workers’ control cannot be an end in itself. It
poses the question of ownership. It raises the question: who is the
master of the house? Either workers’ control will lead to
nationalisation, or else it will merely be an ephemeral
episode. The only real solution to unemployment is a socialist
planned economy, based on the nationalisation of the banks and major
industries under democratic workers’ control and management.
We
demand:
1)
No to unemployment! Work or full maintenance for all!
2)
Down with business secrets! Open the books! Let the workers have
access to information about all the swindles, speculation, tax
dodges, shady deals and excessive profits and bonuses. Let the people
see how they have been swindled and who is responsible for the
present mess!
3)
No to factory closures! A factory that closes is a factory occupied!
4)
Nationalisation under workers’ control and management of factories
that threaten to close!
5)
For a wide-ranging programme of public works: for a crash building
programme of affordable social housing, schools, hospitals and roads
to give employment to the jobless.
6)
For the immediate introduction of a 32-hour week without loss of pay!
7)
For a socialist planned economy, in which unemployment will be
abolished and society will inscribe on its banner: THE UNIVERSAL
RIGHT TO WORK.
Fight
to defend living standards!
While
the bankers and employers made fabulous profits, in real terms the
wages of the majority either stagnated or declined. The gulf between
rich and poor has never been greater than it is today. Record profit
levels were accompanied by record inequality. The Economist
(hardly a left wing journal) pointed out: “The one truly continuous
trend over the past 25 years has been towards greater concentration
of income at the very top”. (The Economist, June 17, 2006.)
A tiny minority became obscenely rich, while the share of the workers
in the national income is constantly reduced and the poorest sections
sink into ever-deeper poverty. Hurricane Katrina revealed to the
whole world the existence of a subclass of deprived citizens living
in Third World conditions in the richest country in the world.
In
the USA millions are threatened with losing their jobs and homes,
while profiteering continues apace. At the same time that Bush
announced his $700 bailout plan, US utility companies reported a
record rise in the number of customers defaulting on their gas and
electricity bills. The largest increase in power cut-offs was in the
states of Michigan (22 percent) and New York (17 percent), although
rises were also reported in Pennsylvania, Florida and California.
The
workers of the USA produce 30 percent more now than ten years ago.
Yet wages have hardly increased. The social fabric is increasingly
strained. There is an enormous increase in tensions in society, even
in the richest country in the world. This is preparing the ground for
an even greater explosion of the class struggle. This is not only the
case in the USA. Around the world, the boom was accompanied by high
unemployment. Reforms and concessions were being taken back even at
the peak of the boom. But the crisis of capitalism does not only mean
that the ruling class cannot tolerate new reforms. They cannot even
permit the continued existence of those reforms and concessions that
the workers have won in the past.
Working
people derived no real benefit from the boom but are now being
presented with the bill for the recession. Everywhere there are
attacks on living standards. In order to defend the profits of the
bosses and bankers, wages must be reduced, the hours and intensity of
work increased and spending on schools, housing and hospitals
slashed. This means that even the semi-civilized conditions of life
that were achieved in the past are under threat. In present-day
conditions no meaningful reform can be achieved without a serious
struggle. The idea that it is possible to do this by agreement with
the bosses and bankers is false to the core.
The
idea of “national unity” to combat the crisis is a cruel
deception of the people. What unity of interest can there be between
the millions of ordinary working people and the super-rich
exploiters? Only the unity of the horse and the rider who digs his
spurs into its sides. The leaders of the Socialist, Labour and left
Parties who vote for “crisis measures” involving lavish bail-outs
for the bankers and cuts and austerity for the majority of society
are betraying the interests of the people who elected them. Those
trade union leaders who argue that in a crisis “we must all pull
together” and imagine that it is possible to secure concessions by
moderating wage demands and agreeing to the conditions imposed by the
employers will achieve the opposite of what they intend. Weakness
invites aggression! For every step back we take, the bosses will
demand three more. Along the road of class collaboration and
so-called New Realism there lies only new defeats, factory closures
and cuts in living standards.
While
unemployment inexorably rises, the cost of living also increases.
Fuel, gas, electricity, food – all have increased, while wages are
frozen and the profits of the big energy companies soar. In the past
period the bourgeois economists argued that they had “tamed
inflation”. How ridiculous these
arguments sound today! Families who yesterday lived on two wages now
have to live on one – or none. The
struggle for life now assumes an ever-harsher meaning for millions.
Inflation and austerity are merely two faces of the same coin.
Neither can serve the interests of the working class. We completely
reject all attempts to place the burden of the crisis, the
disorganisation of the banking system and all other consequences of
the crisis of the profit system on the shoulders of ordinary working
people. We demand employment and decent living conditions
for all.
The
only solution to the galloping rise in prices is a sliding scale
of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an
automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of
consumer goods. The bankers and their political
representatives tell the masses: we cannot afford higher wages
because this will cause inflation. But everybody knows that it is
wages that are trying to catch up with prices, and not the contrary.
The answer is a sliding scale of wages, whereby wages are
automatically linked to increases in the cost of living. However,
even this is not sufficient. The official indexes of inflation are
rigged in order to underestimate the real amount of inflation and
then workers are ordered not to ask for increases in excess of these
false figures. It is therefore necessary for the trade unions to work
out the real rate of inflation, based on the price of basic
necessities (including rents and other housing costs) and to keep
this under constant review. All wage claims should
be based on this.
We
demand:
1)
A living wage and pension for all!
2)
A sliding scale of wages, linking all increases to the increases in
the cost of living.
3)
The trade unions, co-operatives and consumer associations must work
out the real index of the cost of living in place of the “official”
index, which does not reflect the real state of affairs.
4)
Set up committees of workers, housewives, small shopkeepers and
unemployed to control price increases.
5)
Abolition of all indirect taxation and the introduction of a heavily
progressive system of direct taxation. Abolish all taxation for the
poor and let the rich pay!
6)
An end to fuel poverty and a drastic reduction of fuel bills! This
can only be achieved through nationalisation of the energy companies,
which will enable us to impose price controls on the consumer price
of gas and electricity. No more profiteering at the public’s
expense!
The
trade unions
In
the present period, the workers more than ever before need their mass
organisations, above all trade unions. The trade union is the basic
unit of organisation. It will not be possible to fight to defend
wages and living standards without powerful trade unions. That is why
the bosses and their governments are always seeking to undermine the
unions and restrict their scope of action through anti-union
legislation.
The
long period of boom has affected the union leaders, who have embraced
the policies of class collaboration and “service unions”,
precisely when the conditions for such things have vanished. The
right wing trade union leaders are the most conservative force in
society. They tell the workers that “we are all in the same boat”
and must all make sacrifices to solve the crisis, that the bosses are
not the enemy and class struggle is “old fashioned”.
They
preach a bargain between wage labour and Capital, which they regard
as “new realism”. In reality it is the worst kind of utopianism.
It is impossible to reconcile mutually exclusive interests. In the
present conditions the only way to obtain reforms and wage increases
is through struggle. In fact, it will be necessary to struggle to
defend the gains of the past, which are everywhere under threat. This
is in direct contradiction to the class collaboration policies of the
leaders, which reflect the past, not the present or the future.
In
their efforts to neuter the unions and turn them into instruments to
control the workers, the ruling class does all in its power to
corrupt the tops of the unions and entangle them with the state. We
oppose all such attempts and stand for the strengthening and
democratisation of trade union organisation at all levels. The unions
must be independent of the state and must control their leaders and
oblige them to fight consistently for the interests of the workers.
The
reformist union leaders, who like to think of themselves as practical
and realistic, in reality are completely blind and obtuse. They have
not the slightest idea of the catastrophe that is being prepared by
the crisis of capitalism. They imagine that it is possible to muddle
through, accepting cuts and other impositions in the hope that
everything will be all right in the end. They cling to the “good
relations” with the capitalists that they imagine their conduct
will achieve. On the contrary! All history shows that weakness
invites aggression. For every step back they make, the bosses will
demand three more.
Even
when they are forced by pressure from below to call strikes and
general strikes, they do everything in their power to limit such
actions to mere gestures, limited in time and scope. When they are
obliged to call mass demonstrations, they turn them into shows and
carnivals with balloons and bands, with no militant class content.
For the leaders, this is only a means of blowing off steam. For
serious trade unionists, on the contrary, strikes and demonstrations
are a means of getting the workers to understand their power and
prepare the ground for a fundamental change in society.
Even
in the previous period there was an undercurrent of discontent as a
result of the attacks on workers’ rights and anti-trade union
legislation. This will now come to the surface and find an expression
in the mass organisations of the working class, starting with the
unions. The radicalisation of the rank and file will enter into
conflict with the conservatism of the leadership. The workers will
demand a complete transformation of the unions from top to bottom,
and will strive to turn them into real fighting organisations.
We stand for the building of
mass, democratic and militant trade unions, which will be capable of
organizing the majority of the working class, educating and preparing
them practically, not just for a radical transformation of society,
but for actually running the economy in a future democratic socialist
society.
We
demand:
1)
Complete independence of the unions from the state.
2)
An end to compulsory arbitration, no-strike deals, and other measures
to restrict the scope of action of the unions.
3)
Democratise the unions and place control firmly in the hands of the
members!
4)
Abolition of election for life! Election of all union officials with
right of recall.
5)
Against bureaucracy and careerism! No official to receive a higher
wage than a skilled worker. All expenses to be available for the
inspection of the membership.
6)
No class collaboration! For a militant programme to mobilise the
workers in defence of jobs and living standards.
7)
For trade union unity on the basis of the above demands.
8)
For rank and file control, including the strengthening of the shop
stewards committees and the creation of ad hoc strike committees
during strikes and other conflicts as a means of ensuring the fullest
participation of the widest number of workers.
9)
For the nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy and
the creation of an industrial democracy in which the unions would
play a key role in the administration and control of every workplace.
Trade unionism is not an end in itself, but only a means to an end,
which is the socialist transformation of society.
The
youth
The
crisis of capitalism has particularly negative effects in the case of
the young generation, which represents the key to the future of the
human race. The senile decay of capitalism threatens to undermine
culture and demoralize the youth. Whole layers of young people,
seeing no way out of the impasse, become prey to alcoholism, drug
addiction, petty crime and violence. When young people are murdered
for a pair of trainers we must ask ourselves what kind of society we
are living in. Society encourages young people to aspire to consume
products that they cannot afford, and then throws up its hands in
horror at the results.
Margaret
Thatcher, that high priestess of market economics, once said there is
no such thing as society. This noxious
philosophy has had the most devastating results since it was put into
practice thirty years ago. This crude individualism has contributed
powerfully to creating a spirit of egotism, greed and indifference to
the sufferings of others that has seeped like a poison into the body
of society. It is the real essence of market economics.
The
true measure of the level of civilization in society is how we take
care of the old and the young. By this measure, we do not qualify as
a civilized society, but rather a society that is teetering on the
edge of barbarism. Even in the period of boom there were already
symptoms of barbarism in society, with a wave of crime and violence,
and the spread of anti-social and nihilistic moods among a layer of
young people. But these moods are a faithful reflection of the
morality of capitalism.
The
reactionaries protest loudly about this but, since they cannot admit
that such things are the consequences of the social system that they
defend, they are powerless to propose any solution. Their only
response is to fill the prison cells with young people, who learn how
to be real criminals instead of mere amateurs. And so we enter into a
vicious circle of social alienation, drug addiction, degradation and
crime.
The
“answer” of
the Establishment is
to criminalise
young people, to blame them for the problems generated by society
itself, to increase repressive policing, to build more prisons and
hand out heavier sentences. Instead of solving the problem, such
measures only serve to aggravate it and to create a vicious circle of
crime and alienation. This is the logical result of capitalism and
market economics, which treats people as mere “factors
of production” and subjects everything to
the profit motive. Our answer is for the youth to organise
and join the working class in the struggle against capitalism and for
socialism!
The
crisis of capitalism means more unemployment and a further
deterioration of the infrastructure, education, health and housing.
This decay of civilized standards brings with it the risk of further
social disintegration. It will mean an increase in crime, vandalism,
anti-social behaviour
and violence.
It
is necessary to take urgent measures to prevent new layers of youth
sinking into the morass of demoralization. The fight for socialism
means the fight for culture in its broadest sense, to raise the
aspirations of young people, to give them an aim in life that is more
than the struggle to survive on a level hardly higher than that of
animals. If you treat people like animals, they will behave as
animals. If you treat people like human beings, they will react
accordingly.
Cuts
in education at all levels, the abolition of student grants and the
imposition of fees and student loans mean that working class youth
are excluded from higher education. Instead of being properly trained
to serve the needs of society, and given access to culture, the
majority of young people are condemned to a life of drudgery in
low-paid unskilled jobs. At the same time private companies are
allowed to interfere in education, which is increasingly being
treated as a yet another market for making profit.
We
demand:
1)
A decent education for all young people. A massive programme of
school building and a genuinely free system of education at all
levels.
2)
The immediate abolition of student fees and the introduction of a
living grant to all students who qualify for higher education.
3)
A guaranteed job for every school-leaver with a living wage.
4)
An end to the domination and exploitation of education by big
business. Drive private enterprise out of education!
5)
The provision of well-equipped youth clubs, libraries, sports
centres, cinemas, swimming pools and other recreational centres for
young people.
6)
A programme of affordable public housing for students and young
couples.
“Practicability”
The
crisis of capitalism means that everywhere the bankers and
capitalists wish to place the entire burden of the crisis onto the
shoulders of the people who can least afford to pay: the workers, the
middle class, the unemployed, the old and sick. The argument is
constantly repeated that, because there is a crisis, we cannot afford
to improve or even maintain living standards.
The
argument that there is no money to pay for reforms is a blatant
falsehood. There is plenty of money for arms and to pay for the
criminal wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan. But there is no
money for schools and hospitals. There is plenty of money to
subsidize the rich, as we saw with Bush’s
little gift of $700 billion to the bankers. But there is no money for
pensions, hospitals or schools.
The
argument about “practicability”
therefore falls to the ground. A given reform is “practical”
or not, depending on whether it is in the interests of a given class
or not. In the last analysis, whether it is practical (that is to
say, whether it will be carried into practice) depends on the class
struggle and the real balance of forces. When the ruling class is
threatened with losing everything, it will always be prepared to make
concessions that it “cannot afford”.
That was shown in May 1968 in France, when the French ruling class
conceded huge increases in wages and important improvements in
conditions and hours in order to bring the general strike to an end
and get the workers to leave the factories they had occupied.
The
onset of crisis may at first produce a shock, but this will soon turn
to anger when people realise that they are being asked to pay the
price of the crisis. There will be sudden changes in consciousness,
which can be transformed in the space of 24 hours. A big movement in
just one major country can provoke a rapid change in the whole
situation, as happened in 1968. The only reason that this has not yet
happened is because the leadership of the mass workers’
organisations is lagging behind events and failing to present a real
alternative. However, there are already signs of a change.
In
the recent period there have been general strikes and mass
demonstrations all over Europe. In Greece there have been nine
general strikes since the right wing New Democracy party took office
in 2004. In the first six months of 2008 Belgium witnessed a wave of
wildcat strikes reminiscent of the 1970s. The movement spread
spontaneously from one sector to another. In March 2008 the Berlin
Transport Company (BVG) was paralysed by a long and militant strike
of the drivers and the maintenance and administration workers. After
years of concessions and backsliding by the unions the workers have
said they have had enough. Thousands of students took to the streets
in Spain on Wednesday 22nd October to protest against
plans to privatise university education and also opposing any plans
to make workers pay for the capitalist crisis through cuts in
education, health and other public services.
In
Italy the students are mobilising. Hundreds of thousands of school
and university students, together with teachers, professors and
parents are mobilising all over Italy against Berlusconi’s attempt
to further privatise education. This has led to occupations of
schools and universities. The response of the government has been to
threaten the use of armed police against the students. On Saturday,
October 11, 300,000 workers and youth demonstrated in Rome in a
demonstration called by Rifondazione Comunista.
All
this shows that the workers will not remain with arms folded while
their living standards are destroyed. The stage is set for a big
upswing in the class struggle. The workers
are not interested in the logic of the profit system. Our duty is to
defend the interests of our class, preserve living standards and
raise the conditions of the workers to levels that approximate a
civilized standard of living. If there is money for the bankers,
then there is money to finance the kind of reforms we need to make
society a fit place to live in!
Defend
democratic rights!
For
more than half a century, the workers of Western Europe and North
America believed that democracy was fixed for all time. But this is
an illusion. Democracy is a very fragile construction, and one that
is only possible in rich countries where the ruling class can make
certain concessions to the masses in order to mitigate the class
struggle. But when conditions change the ruling class in the
“democratic” countries can pass over to dictatorship with the
same ease as a man passing from one compartment of a train to
another.
In
conditions of heightened class struggle, the ruling class will begin
to move in the direction of reaction. They will complain that there
are too many strikes and demonstrations and demand “Order”.
Recently, Cossiga, who was Christian Democrat Minister of the
Interior in Italy in the 1970s, later President of the Republic, and
now life Senator, was asked what should be done about students’
demonstrations. He answered:
“Let
them get on with it for a while. Withdraw the police from the streets
and campuses, infiltrate the movement with agents provocateurs who
are ready for anything, and leave the demonstrators for about ten
days as they devastate shops, burn cars and turn the cities upside
down. After that, having gained the support of the population –
making sure that the noise of the ambulance sirens is louder than
those of the police and carabinieri – the forces of order should
ruthlessly attack the students and send them to hospital. Don’t
arrest them, as the judges will only release them immediately; just
beat them up and also the professors who foment the movement.”
This
is a warning of what we can expect in the coming period of heightened
class struggle in Italy and other countries. In the future, because
of the weakness of the reformist leaders it is possible that they may
succeed in establishing some kind of Bonapartist (military-police)
dictatorship in one European country or another. But under modern
conditions such a regime would be very unstable and probably not long
lasting.
In
the past in Italy, Germany and Spain there was a large peasantry and
petty-bourgeoisie, which formed a mass base for reaction. This has
disappeared. In the past most students were from rich families and
supported the fascists. Now most students are left wing. The social
reserves of reaction are quite limited. The fascist organisations are
small, although they can be extremely violent, which reflects
weakness, not strength. Moreover, after the experience of Hitler, the
bourgeoisie has no intention of handing power to the mad dogs. They
prefer to base themselves on the “respectable” army officers,
using the fascist thugs as auxiliaries.
Already
in the recent period democratic rights have come under attack
everywhere. Using the excuse of anti-terrorist legislation, the
ruling class is introducing new laws to restrict democratic rights.
After the 11the September terrorist attacks, Bush rushed through the
Homeland Security Act (HSA). The Bush administration is attempting to
destroy the basis of democratic regime established by the American
Revolution and move towards a form of rule freed from the constraints
of law. Similar laws have been passed in Britain and other countries.
We
will fight to defend all the democratic rights that have been
conquered by the working class in the past. Above all we will defend
the right to strike and demonstrate and oppose all legal restrictions
on trade unions. Everyone must have the right to join a trade union
and combine with other workers to defend his or her rights. Very
often the defenders of capitalism contrast socialism with democracy.
But the same people who dare to accuse socialists of being
anti-democratic and put themselves forward as the defenders of
democracy have always been the most ferocious enemies of democracy.
They conveniently forget that such democratic rights that we possess
today were conquered by the working class in long and bitter struggle
against the rich and powerful who consistently opposed every
democratic demand.
The
working class is interested in democracy because it provides us with
the most favourable conditions for developing the struggle for
socialism. But we understand that under capitalism democracy must
necessarily have a restricted, one-sided and fictitious character.
What use is freedom of the press when all the big newspapers,
journals and television companies, meeting halls and theatres are in
the hands of the rich? As long as the land, the banks and the big
monopolies remain in the hands of a few, all the really important
decisions affecting our lives will be taken, not by parliaments and
elected governments but behind locked doors in the boards of
directors of the banks and big companies. The present crisis has
exposed this fact for all to see.
Socialism
is democratic or it is nothing. We stand for a genuine democracy in
which the people would take the running of industry, society and the
state into their own hands. That would be a genuine democracy, as
opposed to the caricature we now have, in which anyone can say (more
or less) what they want, as long as the most important decisions
affecting our lives are taken behind locked doors by small, unelected
groups on the boards of directors of the banks and big monopolies.
We
demand:
1)
The immediate abolition of all anti-trade union laws.
2)
The right of all workers to join a union, strike, picket and
demonstrate.
3)
The right to free speech and assembly.
4)
No to restrictions of democratic rights under the pretext of
so-called anti-terrorist laws!
5)
The workers’ organisations must reject the false idea of “national
unity” with capitalist governments and parties under the pretext of
the crisis. The latter are responsible for the crisis and want to
present the bill to the working class.
Another
world is possible – socialism
Some
misguided people say that it is the very advances of science that are
the problem. They believe we would be happier squatting in mud huts
and working from dawn to dusk in backbreaking labour the fields. This
is foolishness. The way to attain true freedom to develop the
potential of men and women to the full lies precisely in the fullest
development of industry, agriculture, science and technology. The
problem is that these powerful weapons for human progress are in the
hands of individuals who subordinate them to the profit motive,
distorting their purpose, limiting their application and holding back
their development. It is clear that science would long ago have
discovered a cure for cancer or found cheap and clean alternatives to
fossil fuels if it had not been chained to the chariot of profit.
Science
and technology can only realize their tremendous potential when they
are freed from the suffocating embrace of market economics and placed
at the service of humanity in a democratic and rational system of
production, based on need not profit. This would enable us to reduce
the hours of work to a minimum, thus freeing men and women from the
slavery of long hours of toil, and enabling them to develop whatever
physical, intellectual or spiritual potential they possess. This is
humanity’s leap “from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of
freedom.”
After
the fall of the Soviet Union, the defenders of the old order were
jubilant. They spoke of the end of socialism, and even the end of
history. They promised us a new era of peace, prosperity and
democracy, thanks to the miracles of the free market economy. Now,
only fifteen years later, these dreams are reduced to a heap of
smoking rubble. Not one stone upon another remains of these
illusions. Serious problems require serious
measures. It is not possible to cure cancer with an aspirin! What is
needed is a real change in society. The fundamental problem
is the system itself. The economic pundits who argued that Marx
was wrong and capitalist crises were things of the past (the “new
economic paradigm”) have themselves been proved wrong.
The
past boom had all the features of the economic cycle Marx described
long ago. The process of the concentration of capital has reached
staggering proportions. There was an orgy of takeovers and ever
increasing monopolization, which has reached unheard of proportions.
This did not lead to the development of the productive forces as in
the past. Factories were closed as if they were matchboxes and
thousands of people were thrown out of work. Now this process will be
speeded up, as the number of bankruptcies and closures increases by
the day.
What
is the meaning of all of this? We are witnessing the painful death
agonies of a social system that does not deserve to live, but which
refuses to die. That is not surprising. All history shows us that no
ruling class ever surrenders its power and privileges without a
fight. That is the real explanation of the wars, terrorism, violence
and death that are the main features of the epoch in which we live.
But we are also witnessing the birth pangs of a new society – a new
and just society, a world fit for men and women to live in. Out of
these bloody events, in one country after another, a new force is
being born – the revolutionary force of the workers, peasants, and
youth.
George
Bush is drunk with power and imagines that this power is limitless.
Unfortunately, there are some on the Left who believe the same thing.
But they are wrong. A revolutionary wave is sweeping Latin America.
The Venezuelan Revolution was an earthquake that has caused
aftershocks throughout the continent: The movement of the masses in
Latin America is the final answer to all those who argued that
revolution was no longer possible. It is not only possible, it is
absolutely necessary, if the world is to be saved from impending
disaster.
Millions
of people are beginning to react. The massive demonstrations against
the Iraq war brought millions onto the streets. That was an
indication of the beginnings of an awakening. But the movement lacked
a coherent programme to change society. The cynics and sceptics have
had their day. It is time to push them out of our way and carry the
fight forward. The new generation is willing to fight for its
emancipation. They are looking for a banner, an idea and a programme
that can inspire them and lead them to victory. That can only be the
struggle for socialism on a world scale. The choice before the
human race is socialism or barbarism.
For
the Socialist United States of Europe!
The
productive potential of Europe is tremendous. With a population of
497 millions and a per capita income of $32,300, it is a formidable
power, which potentially could challenge the might of the USA. But
this potential can never be realised under capitalism. All the
attempts to push forward with the unification of Europe have
foundered on the rock of conflicting national interests. The onset of
recession will serve to deepen these divisions and place a question
mark over the future of the EU itself.
The
formation of the European Union was a tacit admission of the fact
that it is impossible to solve the problems of the economy within the
narrow limits of the national market. But on a capitalist basis,
European unity can never be achieved. In a crisis, the contradictions
between the capitalists of the different national states come to the
fore. The present crisis has exposed the hidden fault lines and
revealed the hollowness of all the demagogy about European unity.
Despite M. Sarkozy’s assurances, relations between European leaders
are severely strained, not least between the leaders of France and
Germany, the two key countries of the EU.
The
German government’s unilateral declaration that the country’s €1
trillion of private bank deposits would be “guaranteed” caught
other EU governments unaware and appeared to trample on the pledge of
European co-operation previously given at a Paris mini-summit of the
French, British, German and Italian leaders. The German move
threatened to draw savings from banks in other countries. The other
countries were furious. But what was the difference between this and
the declaration of the Irish government that it would guarantee all
the liabilities of its six main banks for two years, or the British
government’s frequent promise that it would take “all possible
measures” to protect savers or M. Sarkozy’s pledge that French
private savers would not lose “a single euro”?
This
move showed the hypocrisy of the European Commission, which is
challenging the Irish move, but said later that it saw nothing wrong
in Berlin’s “promise”. What is the difference between Ireland
and Germany? It is only that Ireland is small and Germany is big, and
moreover controls the purse strings of the EU. Similar guarantees
were issued by a succession of other EU governments – including
Sweden, Austria, Denmark and Portugal – to prevent savers from
fleeing to German (or Irish) banks.
In
reality, each national government is trying to put its interests
first. The mutual suspicions of EU governments come to the surface as
soon as they are confronted with a crisis. Each government must
struggle to deal with the panic spreading across the Atlantic through
European financial institutions. Washington, with one government and
one political system, found it difficult enough to cope with the
global credit crisis. The EU has a single currency and single market
but 27 governments and no overall system of banking supervision or
economic governance.
It
is impossible to unite economies that are pulling in different
directions and European governments are paying the price for creating
a single currency without the institutions or regulatory system to
manage a single economy. In the coming period protectionist
tendencies will inevitably come to the fore. The attempts of
individual governments to attract billions of euros in savings away
from other countries are an anticipation of the “beggar-my-neighbour”
policies that we can expect as the crisis deepens.
Sylvester
Eijffinger, of Tilburg University, a monetary adviser to the European
Parliament, said: “This is a wake-up call. First we had economic
integration, then we had monetary integration. But we never developed
the parallel political and regulatory integration that would allow us
to face a crisis like the one we are facing today.” Such are the
strains between the nation states that the very existence of the euro
might be called into question in the coming period. It is not
inconceivable that the EU may break up, or at least emerge with its
structures radically altered and the EU reduced to little more than a
loose customs union.
The
EU is really a capitalist club dominated by the banks and big
monopolies of the member states. The new member states of Eastern
Europe are used as a pool of cheap labour, with “European” prices
and “Eastern” wages. On the other hand, the EU is an imperialist
bloc that exploits the former colonies of European countries in
Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Caribbean. There is nothing
progressive about it. The only way to achieve the true potential of
Europe is by establishing a Socialist Federation, which would
integrate the productive forces of Europe in a common plan. This
would be combined with the maximum autonomy for all the peoples of
Europe, including the Basques, the Catalans, the Scots, the Welsh and
all other nationalities and national and linguistic minorities. It
would lay the basis for a peaceful and democratic settlement of the
national problem in countries such as Ireland and Cyprus. A
socialist federation would be formed on a strictly voluntary basis
with complete equality for all citizens.
We
demand:
1)
No to the Europe of the bureaucrats, banks and monopolies!
2)
For the expropriation of the banks and monopolies and the creation of
an integrated and democratic socialist plan of production.
3)
End all discrimination against immigrants, women and youth. Equal pay
for work of equal value!
4)
For the development of links between trade union activists on a
European and global scale. For a militant workers’ united front
against the big transnationals!
5)
For the Socialist United States of Europe!
Eastern
Europe, Russia and China
The onset
of recession in Western Europe is exacerbating the problems of the
so-called emerging economies of Eastern Europe, where investors are
dumping riskier assets in a flight to safer destinations. The
relatively weak economies of Eastern Europe will pay a heavy price
for their entanglement in the world capitalist economy. Sharp
declines in growth and increases in poverty are anticipated in
Russia, the Ukraine and Romania. Despite growth in some areas of
Eastern Europe, the growth in per capita GDP for the region as a
whole is expected to be zero.
Hungary is
preparing for a “recession reality” and expects gross domestic
product will shrink next year, according to Prime Minister Ferenc
Gyurcsany. The government was expecting GDP growth of 3 percent in
2009 when it first drew up next year’s budget. Now it faces deep
cuts and rising unemployment. The financial crisis comes only two
years after Gyurcsany pushed through tax increases and cuts in public
sector jobs and household energy price subsidies to narrow the widest
budget deficit in the European Union.
The
Hungarian government was compelled to seek an emergency loan facility
of 5 billion euros from the European Central Bank. Squeezed by the
embrace of the international bankers, Hungary will be forced to cut
public spending in order to cut the budget deficit. As always, it
will be the workers and farmers who pay the price. The government is
proposing freezing salaries and cancelling bonuses for public workers
and reducing pensions to cut the budget deficit to 2.6 percent of
gross domestic product And Poland and the other countries of Eastern
Europe are only one step behind Hungary.
The
peoples of Eastern Europe joined the EU with the idea that they would
enjoy the kind of living standards they saw in Germany and France.
But these illusions were soon exposed as false. A small minority of
people got rich by plundering the people’s property through crooked
privatisation deals. But the majority of Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and
Hungarians derived no benefit from the return to capitalism. During
the boom they were exploited as cheap labour in richer countries. Now
Eastern Europe is staring bankruptcy in the face. And economic
collapse in Eastern Europe will drag down the economies of Austria
and other exposed EU states.
Nowhere
in Europe have the consequences of capitalist restoration been so
serious as in the Balkans. The break-up of Yugoslavia was a criminal
act, which has led to a series of fratricidal wars, terrorism, mass
murder and genocide. This monstrous situation has had catastrophic
consequences for millions of people who previously enjoyed a good
standard of life, peace and full employment. Now many people look
back to the old Yugoslavia with longing. Capitalism has brought them
nothing but war, misery and suffering.
The
situation facing Russia is not much better. The contradiction here is
even more glaring than in Eastern Europe. The restoration of
capitalism has not benefited the overwhelming majority of citizens of
the former Soviet Union. It has created an obscenely rich oligarchy,
which is closely linked to criminal elements. But this is a tiny
minority. For millions of Russians, the past two decades have meant
only misery, hunger, suffering and humiliation. It has meant the
collapse of the health and education services, which were free for
all citizens in Soviet times, as well as a collapse of culture,
general impoverishment and inequality.
For
a while, people thought that the worst was over and that the economy
was recovering from the deep slump that followed the collapse of the
USSR. But now Russia faces the worst financial crisis since the
collapse of 1998. The falling price of oil, reflecting the worldwide
slump in demand, has pushed the economy into crisis. The previous
mood of optimism in Moscow has evaporated after steep falls on the
stock exchange, which had to be closed because of the extreme
turbulence. Like the fairy tale about the witch Baba Yaga, Russian
capitalism is a hut built upon chicken’s legs. The crisis reveals
itself in reduced construction volume, redundancies and restrictions
on opening new credit lines for private companies.
The
crisis has forced the government to follow the same path as
Washington and London, spending billions of dollars of public money
to bail out private companies. More than $200 billion have been
allocated in loans, tax cuts and other measures. But ordinary Russian
citizens will be asking why public money should be used to bail out
the oligarchs who have got rich by looting the state in the past
period. If private enterprise and the market was supposed to be
superior to the nationalised planned economy, why does the private
sector now need to be propped up by the state?
The
situation is even worse in other former Soviet Republics, such as the
Ukraine, where poverty is accompanied by political instability,
corruption and chaos. For the peoples of the Caucasus and Central
Asia it has been an unmitigated calamity. Georgia, Armenia and
Azerbaijan are in a state of constant war, and the masses have to
support the heavy burden of military spending. Terrorism is spreading
from occupied Chechnya to other Republics. The war in Afghanistan
threatens to destabilise not just Pakistan but all Central Asia.
There
is an old proverb: “Life teaches”. Many people in Russia, the
Ukraine and Eastern Europe are saying: we had problems before, but at
least we had full employment, a home and free health and education.
Now these countries are facing ruin and mass unemployment. The
peoples of the Caucasus long for the return of peace and stability.
Nobody wants a return to bureaucracy and totalitarian dictatorship.
But a genuinely socialist regime, like the regime of workers’
democracy established by Lenin and Trotsky after the October
Revolution, has nothing in common with the grotesque Stalinist
caricature that emerged after Lenin’s death.
This
was the result of the isolation of the Revolution in conditions of
extreme backwardness. But now, on the basis of the advanced industry,
science and technology built up over the last 90 years, the objective
conditions have been created for a rapid advance towards socialism.
What is required is the establishment of a voluntary Socialist
Federation in which the economy would be in the hands of the state,
and the state would be under the democratic control of the workers
and peasants. But the prior condition for this is the expropriation
of the oligarchs, bankers and capitalists.
The
world slowdown is having a major impact on the Chinese economy.
Chinese economic growth is heavily dependent on exports and at the
height of the recent boom the annual rate of growth of exports
reached the figure of 38 percent (in the third quarter of 2003). Now
the latest quarterly figure has dropped to around 2 percent and with
it we have seen also a sharp slowdown in manufacturing orders in the
last few months. Serious bourgeois commentators are now discussing
whether there will be a “gradual slowdown” or an “abrupt drop”
in Chinese production.
Stephen
Green, an expert on the Chinese economy at Standard Chartered, has
forecast that exports could even fall to “zero or even negative
growth” by next year. How tightly linked to the world economy China
has become is shown by a recent estimate of JP Morgan Chase that sees
Chinese exports falling by 5.7 percent for every one percent fall in
global economic growth. This is leading to massive factory closures
across China with millions of workers facing unemployment
In
2007 growth stood at 12 percent and in 2008 it has already slowed to
9 percent and could fall further. In the area around Hong Kong more
than two million workers could lose their jobs in the next few
months. With this comes a bursting of the housing bubble as house
prices have come down sharply, leaving many Chinese families with
negative equity, i.e. a mortgage that is worth more than the homes
they have bought. This is having an impact on the domestic market.
The response of the Chinese government has been to come up with an
economic package to stimulate growth.
They
need to keep growth above eight percent to maintain some degree of
social stability. It is true that China has accumulated huge
reserves. But these will not compensate for the loss of foreign
markets as the world economy slides further into recession.
As a result labour unrest is spreading and there has already
been a wave of protests demanding unpaid wages, with roadblocks and
pickets of factories. As in Russia and Eastern Europe, so in China,
there will be a violent backlash against capitalism. The ideas of
Marxism will gain ground, preparing the way for a new and
irresistible movement towards socialism.
We
demand:
1)
An end to privatisation and the abandonment of market economics
2)
Down with the oligarchs and the new rich! For the renationalisation
of privatised companies without compensation.
3)
For a workers’ democracy!
4)
Down with bureaucracy and corruption! The trade unions must defend
workers’ interests!
5)
The Communist Parties must stand for Communist policies! For a return
to the programme of Marx and Lenin!
6)
For the reintroduction of the state monopoly of foreign trade!
The
crisis of the “Third World”
The
present crisis will undoubtedly hit the poor countries of Africa, the
Middle East, Asia and Latin America hardest. Even in the boom the
overwhelming majority derived little or no benefit. There has been an
extreme polarization between rich and poor in all countries. Two
percent of the population of the globe now has more than half the
world’s wealth. 1.2 billion men, women and children live in
conditions of absolute poverty. Eight million die of poverty every
year. This was the best that capitalism had to offer. What will
happen now?
In
addition to the collapse of exports, which will hit all commodities
(except gold and silver), including oil, they face the rising cost of
food, which is largely a result of speculation. A recent report of
the Banco Interamericano warned that the rising cost of food will
push 26 million people in Latin America into absolute poverty. The
President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick has warned that the
world’s poorest face the “triple jeopardy” of food, fuel and
finance: “The poorest cannot be asked to pay the highest price. We
estimate that 44 million additional people will suffer from
malnutrition this year as a result of high food prices. We cannot let
a financial crisis become a human crisis.” These are fine words,
but as the old English proverb goes, fine words butter no parsnips.
World
poverty and hunger will increase as a result of the global financial
crisis and the free market “structural adjustment” measures
dictated by the International Monetary Fund. This is the inescapable
conclusion of the latest report on global poverty issued by the World
Bank. The Bank found that the number of
people forced to live on less than $1 a day was increasing and could
reach 1.5 billion by the end of this year. About 200 million people
have fallen into abject poverty since the last estimate in 1993. In
the Middle East and North Africa, per capita GDP growth was expected
to be negative. Summing up the situation, World Bank Director of
Poverty Reduction and Economic Management, Michael Walton said: “The
global picture that emerges at the end of the 1990s is one of stalled
progress as a result of the East Asian crisis, rising numbers of poor
people in India, continued rises in Sub-Saharan Africa, and a sharp
worsening in Europe and Central Asia.”
In
Indonesia alone, the proportion of people forced to live on less than
$1 per day increased from 11 percent in 1997 to 19.9 percent in 1998,
implying an increase of 20 million in the ranks of the “newly poor”
– equivalent to a medium-sized nation such as Australia. In South
Korea, the incidence of urban poverty went from 8.6 percent in 1997
to 19.2 percent in 2007. The number of people below the $1 per day
level in India had increased to 340 million, from an estimated 300
million in the late 1980s. Recent data on the stagnation in rural
wages suggested a further increase in poverty rates in that country.
And this was with a booming economy with rates of growth near 10
percent on a yearly basis. Official figures estimate that the
economic growth is already coming to a halt. In August 2008
industrial growth was 1.3 percent on a yearly basis, a miserable
output compared to the previous year’s growth of over 10 percent.
The
IMF demands that poor countries open their markets for the
penetration of international capital. It demands cuts in government
spending, the elimination of subsidies on food and other items of
popular consumption and the privatisation of government-owned
enterprises. The stated objective is fostering “sustainable
economic growth.” In reality it means the destruction of their
national industries and agriculture and a sharp increase in
unemployment and poverty.
A
recent study found there was a net transfer of payments of more than
$1 billion from African governments to the IMF in 1997 and 1998.
However, despite these increased repayments, total African debt
continued to increase, rising by 3 per cent. While African countries
urgently need to increase spending on health care, education, and
sanitation, IMF structural adjustment measures have forced them to
cut such spending with per capita spending on education actually
declining between 1986 and 1996.
The
catastrophe of the “Third World” is man-made. There is nothing
automatic about it. In fact, there is no need for anybody to starve
in the first decade of the 21st century. The money that
has been given to the banks could have solved the problem of world
hunger, saving millions of lives. In June 2008 the World Food
Organisation asked for $30 billion to stimulate agriculture and
prevent future food shortages. It only received seven and a half
billion, payable in four years, which works out at about $1.8 billion
a year. This is the equivalent of two dollars a day for every
starving person.
It
is customary in the West to pose the “solution” of the problems
of these countries in terms of aid. The “rich” countries are
urged to give more money to the “poor” countries. But in the
first place, the niggardly amounts of so-called aid represent only a
minuscule part of the wealth that is being plundered from Asia,
Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. Secondly, this aid is
frequently linked to the trading, military or diplomatic interests of
the donor countries, and therefore represents a means of increasing
the subordination of the former colonial nations to their former
masters.
In
any case, it is unacceptable that countries with vast resources are
reduced to seeking charity like beggars scrambling for crumbs from
the rich man’s table. The prior condition is to break the
domination of imperialism and overthrow the rule of the corrupt local
rulers who are no more than the local office boys of imperialism and
the big transnational companies. Neither aid nor charity but only a
fundamental change in society is the answer to global poverty.
In many
countries the working class, after years of despondency and
exhaustion, is taking the road of struggle. The struggle of the
Palestinian people against Israeli oppression continues. But it is
the powerful working class in countries like South Africa, Nigeria
and Egypt that holds the key to the future. In Egypt we have
witnessed a wave of strikes and factory occupations against
privatisation and in defence of jobs, including the victorious strike
with factory occupation of more than 20,000 workers at the Mahalla
textile complex. The Iranian workers are also on the move. There has
been a major strike wave, involving many sections of the working
class: bus workers, shipyards, textiles railways, the Haft-Tapeh
sugar works, oil and other sections. These strikes may begin with
economic demands, but given the nature of the regime they will
inevitably take on an increasingly political and revolutionary
character.
In
Nigeria, the workers have staged a series of general strikes (8 in
the last 8 years!), paralysing the country and posing the question of
power, only to be let down by the trade union leaders once and again.
In South Africa too, the powerful workers’ movement has organised
general strike after general strike, more recently in June 2007 and
August 2008. We have seen impressive movements of the workers in
Morocco, Jordan, and Lebanon and also in Israel, that bastion of
reaction in the Middle East. There have also been mass movements of
the workers and peasants in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nepal,
where they led to the overthrow of the monarchy.
Latin
America is in the throes of a revolutionary movement from Tierra del
Fuego to the Rio Grande with Venezuela in the vanguard. The appeals
of Hugo Chávez for socialism have not fallen on deaf ears. The
idea of socialism is back on the agenda. In Bolivia and Ecuador the
movement of the masses against capitalism and imperialism is
advancing despite the ferocious resistance of the oligarchies backed
by Washington. It is necessary to place on the agenda the fight for
working class policies, for proletarian international solidarity and
the struggle for socialism as the only lasting solution for the
problems of the masses
We
demand:
1)
An immediate cancellation of all Third World debts.
2)
Down with landlordism and capitalism!
3)
For the expropriation of the property of the big landowners and an
agrarian reform. Wherever possible, large estates should be run on
collective lines, using modern methods of agriculture to boost
production.
4)
Freedom from imperialist domination! Nationalise the property of the
big transnationals.
5)
For a crash programme to abolish illiteracy and create a skilled and
educated workforce.
6)
For a free and comprehensive health service for all.
7)
Down with the oppression of women! Full legal, social and economic
equality for women!
8)
Down with corruption and oppression! For full democratic rights and
the overthrow of the local office boys of imperialism.
Down
with imperialism!
The
most striking aspect of the present situation is the chaos and
turbulence that has gripped the entire planet. There is instability
at all levels: economic, social, political, diplomatic and military.
Everywhere there is war or the threat of war: the invasion of
Afghanistan was followed by the even bloodier and more criminal
occupation of Iraq. There have been wars everywhere: in the Balkans,
in Lebanon and Gaza, the war in Darfur, in Somalia, in Uganda. In the
Congo some 5,000,000 have been slaughtered in the past few years and
the UN and the so-called international community did not lift a
finger.
Conscious
of its enormous power, Washington replaces “normal” diplomacy
with the most shameless bullying. Its message is brutally clear: “do
as we say or we will bomb you and invade you”. The former President
of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf, revealed that soon after the
terror attacks of 11 September 2001 the United States threatened to
bomb his country “back into the Stone Age” if he did not offer
its co-operation in fighting terrorism and the Taliban. Now Musharraf
has gone and the US air force is actually bombing Pakistan territory.
US
imperialism invaded Iraq under the false pretext that it possessed
weapons of mass destruction. They argued that Saddam Hussein was a
brutal dictator who murdered and tortured his own people. Now the UN
is forced to admit that in occupied Iraq mass murder and torture are
endemic. According to a recent opinion poll, 70 percent of Iraqis
think life is worse than under Saddam.
The “war
on terrorism” has led to more terrorism on a world scale than ever
before. Everywhere they set foot, the US imperialists cause the most
terrible destruction and suffering. The appalling scenes of death and
destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan recall the words of the Roman
historian Tacitus: “And when they have created a wilderness they
call it Peace”. But compared to the might of US imperialism, the
power of the Roman Empire was child’s play. Not content with the
rape of Iraq, Washington threatens Syria and Iran. It has brought
about the destabilization of Central Asia. It constantly attempts to
overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela and
assassinate President Chavez. It is plotting to reduce Cuba once more
to the status of a semi-colony and organises terrorist acts against
it.
Most
people turn away from these barbarities in disgust. It seems that the
world has suddenly gone mad. However, such a response is useless and
counter productive. The present situation that confronts the human
race cannot be explained as an expression of madness or the inherent
wickedness of men and women. The great philosopher Spinoza once said:
“neither weep nor laugh, but understand!” That is very sound
advice, for if we are not able to understand the world we live in, we
will never be able to change it. History is not meaningless. It can
be explained and Marxism provides a scientific explanation.
It
is pointless to approach war from a sentimental point of view.
Clausewitz pointed out long ago that war is the
continuation of politics by other means.
This bloody mess reflects something.
It is a reflection of the insoluble contradictions that face
imperialism on a world scale. They are the convulsions of a
socio-economic system that finds itself in an impasse. We have seen
similar situations before in world history, as in the long decline of
the Roman Empire or the period of the waning of feudalism. The
present global instability is only a reflection of the fact that the
capitalist system has exhausted its historical potential and is no
longer able to develop the productive forces as it did in the past.
Senile
capitalism, besieged with insoluble contradictions on all sides,
finds its counterpart in the most brutal imperialism the world has
ever seen. The galloping arms race is consuming an ever-growing
portion of the wealth created by the working class. The USA, which is
now the world’s only superpower, every year spends approximately
600 billion dollars on arms. It accounts for almost 40 percent of
total world military expenditure. By contrast, Britain, France and
Germany represent about five percent each, while Russia, incredibly,
only accounts for about six percent. This situation represents a
threat to the future of humanity.
The
enormous sums spent on arms would, on their own, be enough to solve
the problem of world poverty. According to one estimate the total
cost of the war in Iraq alone will have cost the USA $3 trillion.
Everyone knows that this is madness. But disarmament can only be
achieved through a fundamental change in society. The liquidation of
imperialism can only be achieved by liquidating capitalism and the
rule of the banks and monopolies, establishing a rational world
order, based on the requirements of people, not the voracious
struggle for markets, raw materials and spheres of influence, which
is the real cause of war.
We
demand:
1)
Opposition to the reactionary wars waged by imperialism.
2)
Immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
3)
A drastic cut in wasteful arms expenditure and a massive increase in
social spending.
4)
Full civil rights for soldiers, including the right to join trade
unions and the right to strike.
5)
Defend Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia against the aggressive plans of
Washington!
6)
Against racism! Defend the rights of all oppressed and exploited
people! For the unity of all workers, irrespective of colour, race,
nationality or religion.
7)
For proletarian internationalism! Workers of the world unite!
For
a socialist world!
The
market cannot be planned or regulated. It does not respond to the
measures taken by national governments. The President of the World
Bank came close to admitting this when he said: “The G7 is not
working. We need a better group for a better time”. But better
times are not in sight. The IMF cannot possibly underwrite the whole
world. And the crisis, which is now staring us in the face, is
worldwide. No country can escape. The crisis is global and it demands
a global solution. This can only be supplied by socialism.
In
the Middle Ages production was limited to the local market. Even to
move goods from one town to another involved paying tolls, taxes and
other duties. Overthrowing these feudal restrictions and establishing
the national market and the nation state was the prior condition for
the development of modern capitalism. In the 21st century,
however, the nation states and the national market are too narrow to
contain the fabulous development of industry, agriculture, science
and technology. Out of a collection of national economies sprang the
world market. Karl Marx already foresaw this in a brilliant
prediction in The Communist Manifesto over 150 years ago. The
crushing domination of the world market is now the most important
feature of the modern epoch.
In
its early days capitalism played a progressive role in sweeping away
the old feudal barriers and restrictions and creating the national
market. Later, the expansion of capitalism created a world market,
and the domination of the world market is the most important feature
of the modern epoch. The advent of globalisation is an expression of
the fact that the growth of the productive forces has outstripped the
narrow limits of the nation state. However, globalisation does
not abolish the contradictions of capitalism. It only reproduces them
on a far vaster scale. For a time, capitalism succeeded in overcoming
its contradictions by increasing world trade (globalisation). For the
first time in history, the entire world has been drawn into the world
market. The capitalists found new markets and avenues of investment
in China and other countries. But this has now reached its limits.
The
present crisis is, in the last analysis, an expression of the revolt
of the productive forces against the straitjackets of private
property and the nation state. The present crisis is global in
character. Globalisation reveals itself as a global crisis of
capitalism. It is impossible to solve it on a national
basis. All the experts agree that the problems facing the planet
cannot be solved on a national basis. The problem of world hunger has
been greatly exacerbated by the production of eco-fuels in the USA.
This is in the interests of the big agro-businesses, but no one else.
Only a global planned economy can put a stop to this madness.
In
its insatiable greed for profit, the capitalist system placed the
whole planet in danger. An economic system that ravages the planet in
search of loot, that destroys the environment, tears down the rain
forests, poisons the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food
we eat is not fit to survive. The roads in our great cities are
clogged with private vehicles. Traffic congestion
that meant people spent 7 billion hours and wasted 5 billion gallons
of fuel in traffic jams in 2003 alone. The lack of planning is
leading to the collapse of the transportation infrastructure and the
deterioration of the environment caused by the emission of greenhouse
gases and air pollution, 60-70 percent of which is caused by
vehicles.
We
leave aside the tremendous human cost of this lunacy: the accidents,
the people killed and maimed on the roads, the unbearable stress, the
inhuman conditions, the noise and the chaos. The loss of productivity
is colossal. Yet all this could be solved easily by an
integrated system of good quality free or nearly free public
transport. Air, road, rail and river transport should be publicly
owned and rationally integrated to serve human needs.
The
continuation of capitalism is not only a threat to jobs and living
standards. It is a threat to the future of the planet and life on
earth.
Is
it utopian?
Through
increased participation in world markets, the bankers and capitalists
achieved fabulous super-profits in the last period. But now this
process has reached its limits. All the factors that served to push
the world economy upwards in the last period are now combining to
push it downwards. Demand, which was artificially expanded by low
rates of interest in the last period, has now sharply contracted. The
severity of the “correction” reflects the exaggerated confidence
and “irrational exuberance” of the previous period.
Just
as in the period of feudal decline the old barriers, toll roads,
local taxes and currencies became intolerable obstacles for the
development of the productive forces, so the present nation states
with their national frontiers, passports, import controls,
immigration restrictions and protective tariffs have become barriers
that impede the free movement of goods and people. The free
development of the productive forces – the only real guarantee for
the development of human civilization and culture – demands the
abolition of all frontiers and the establishment of a worldwide
commonwealth.
Such
a development will only be possible under socialism. The prior
condition is the abolition of private property of the key points of
the economy: the common ownership of the land, banks and major
industries. A common plan of production is the only way to mobilize
the colossal potential of industry, agriculture, science and
technique. This would mean an economic system based on production for
the needs of the many, not the profits of the few.
A
socialist Europe, a socialist federation of Latin America, or of the
Middle East, would open up tremendous new vistas for human
development. The ultimate goal is Socialist World Federation, in
which the resources of the entire planet would be harnessed for the
benefit of all humankind. Wars, unemployment, hunger and privation
would become only bad memories of the past, like some half-forgotten
nightmare.
Some
will say this is utopian, which is to say, something that cannot be
realised. But if we had explained to a medieval peasant the
perspective of a world economy with computers and space travel, he
would have reacted in exactly the same way. And when one thinks of
it, is it really so difficult? The potential of the productive forces
is such that all the problems that torment the human race –
poverty, homelessness, hunger, disease and illiteracy – could
easily be solved. The resources are present. What is needed is a
rational economic system that can put them to work.
The
objective conditions for socialism are already in existence. Is this
really utopian? Only the most narrow-minded sceptics, without
knowledge of history or vision of the future, would say so. The
question that must be asked is this: in the first decade of the 21st
century, is it acceptable that the lives, jobs and homes of everyone
in the world should be determined in the same manner as a gambler’s
throw in a casino? Do we really believe that humanity can devise no
better system than the blind play of market forces?
The
defenders of the so-called free market can produce no rational
argument that could justify such a preposterous supposition. Instead
of logical argument they merely assert that this is a natural and
inevitable state of affairs, and anyway there is no alternative. This
is not a coherent argument but only a blind prejudice. They hope that
by constantly repeating the same mantra, eventually people will
believe it. But life itself has exposed the lie that “the free
market economy works.” Our own experience and the evidence of our
eyes tell us that it does not work, that it is a wasteful, chaotic,
barbarous and irrational system that blasts the lives of millions for
the profit of a few.
The
capitalist system stands condemned because it is not even capable of
feeding the population of the world. Its further continuation
threatens the future of civilization and culture, and even threatens
the continuation of life itself. The capitalist system must die in
order that the human race may live. In the future socialist society,
free men and women will look back on our present world with the same
sense of disbelief as we do when we contemplate the world of the
cannibals. And to the cannibals a world in which men and women did
not eat each other also seemed utopian.
The
crisis of leadership
In
1938 Leon Trotsky wrote: “All talk to the effect that historical
conditions have not yet ripened for socialism is the product of
ignorance or conscious deception. The objective prerequisites for the
proletarian revolution have not only ‘ripened’; they have begun
to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next
historical period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture
of mankind. The turn is now to the proletariat, i.e., chiefly to its
revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced
to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership.”
The
working class long ago established parties to defend its interests
and change society. Some are called Socialist, others Labour,
Communist or Left. But none of them defend a communist or socialist
policy. The long period of capitalist upswing after the Second World
War set the final stamp on the bureaucratic and reformist
degeneration of the mass organisations of the proletariat. The
leaders of the trade unions as well as the socialist and communist
parties have come under the pressure of the bourgeoisie and most
of them have long ago abandoned all
pretence of standing for a change in society.
The
leaders of the traditional workers parties, the Social Democrats and
the Labour Party are completely enmeshed with the capitalists and
their state. Against their wishes, they were compelled to nationalise
the banks, but they have done so in a way that amounts to a huge
subsidy to the bankers and does not benefit the population at all. We
demand the nationalisation of the entire banking and financial
sector, with minimum compensation on the basis of proven need only.
The
leaders of the former Communist Parties in Russia, Eastern Europe and
many other countries have completely abandoned the revolutionary
programme of Marx and Lenin. We are faced with the
glaring contradiction that precisely at a moment when capitalism is
in crisis everywhere, and when millions of men and women are looking
for a fundamental change in society, the leaders of the mass
organisations
cling every more tenaciously to the existing order. As
Trotsky pointed out long ago: the world
political situation as a whole is chiefly characterised
by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.
It
is impermissible for leaders who speak in the name of socialism and
the working class, or even “democracy”, to preside over huge
bailouts to private banks, which signifies a big increase in the
public debt that will be paid for by years of cuts and austerity.
This is done in the name of “the general interest”, but is in
reality a measure in the interest of the rich and against the
interest of the majority. But this situation cannot last.
There
is no alternative for the working class outside the Labour and trade
union movement. Under conditions of capitalist crisis the mass
organisations will be shaken from top to bottom. Beginning with the
trade unions, the right wing leaders will come under pressure from
the rank and file. They will either bend to the pressure and begin to
reflect the pressure from below, or else they will be pushed out and
replaced with people who are more in touch with the views and
aspirations of the workers. Our task is to carry the ideas of Marxism
into the Labour Movement and win the working class to the ideas of
scientific socialism. Over 150 years ago, Marx and Engels proclaimed
in the Communist Manifesto:
“In what
relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?
“The
Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other
working-class parties."
“They
have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as
a whole."
“They
do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to
shape and mould the proletarian movement."
“The
Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by
this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the
different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common
interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all
nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the
struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass
through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the
movement as a whole."
“The
Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most
advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every
country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other
hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat
the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the
conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian
movement.”
The
Marxists understand the role of the mass organisations. We do not
confuse the leadership with the mass of workers who stand behind
them. An abysm separates the opportunists and careerists in the
leadership from the class that votes for them. The developing crisis
will expose this abysm and widen it to breaking point. However, the
working class clings to the mass organisations, despite the policies
of the leaders, because there is no alternative. The working class
does not understand small organisations. All the attempts of the
sects to create “mass revolutionary parties” outside the mass
organisations have failed miserably and are destined to fail in the
future.
We
will fight against the bankrupt policies and confront the old
leadership. We demand that they break with the bankers and
capitalists and carry out policies in the interest of the workers and
the middle class. In 1917 Lenin and the Bolsheviks told the Menshevik
and SR leaders: “Break with the bourgeoisie, take the power!” But
the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries obstinately refused to take
power. They clung to the bourgeoisie and thus prepared the victory of
the Bolsheviks. In the same way, we call upon
those parties and organisations that base themselves on the
workers and speak in their name, to break politically from the
bourgeoisie and fight for a socialist government with a socialist
programme.
We
will give critical support to the mass worker’s parties against the
parties of the bankers and capitalists. But we demand that they carry
out policies in the interests of the working class. There is no way
that the fall will be detained by palliative measures taken by
governments and central bankers. Partial measures will not provide a
way out. The problem is that the leaderships of the mass workers’
organisations in all countries have no perspective of a fundamental
change in society. But that is precisely what is necessary.
Social
being determines consciousness. The working class in general learns
from experience, and the experience of capitalist crisis means that
it is learning fast. We will help the workers to draw the necessary
conclusions, not by shrill denunciations but by patient explanation
and systematic work in the mass organisations. People are asking
questions and looking for answers. The task of the Marxists is only
to make conscious the unconscious or semi-conscious desire of the
working class to change society.
-
Against
sectarianism! -
Face
to the mass organisations of the working class -
Fight
for the transformation of the unions! -
Fight
for a Marxist programme!
Help
us build the IMT!
It
is not enough to lament the situation the world finds itself in. It
is necessary to act! Those who say: “I am not interested in
politics” should have been born at another time. Today, it is not
possible to escape from politics. Just try it! You may run to your
home, lock the door, and hide under the bed. But politics will come
to your house and knock on the door. Politics affects every aspect of
our lives. The problem is that many people identify politics with the
existing political parties and their leaders. They take one look at
the scenes in the parliament, the careerism, the empty speeches, the
broken promises and are alienated.
The
anarchists draw the conclusion that we do not need a party. This is a
mistake. If my house is falling down, I do not conclude that I must
sleep in the street but that I must begin urgently to repair the
house. If I am dissatisfied with the present leadership of the trade
unions and the worker’s parties, I must fight for an alternative
leadership, with a programme and a policy that is adequate to my
needs.
The
International Marxist Tendency is fighting for socialism in forty
countries in five continents. We stand firmly on the foundations of
Marxism. We defend the basic ideas, principles, policies and
traditions worked out by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. At present
our voice is still weak. For a long time the Marxists were compelled
to swim against the stream. The International Marxist Tendency has
proved its ability to stand firm in adverse conditions. But now we
are swimming with the tide of history. All our perspectives have been
confirmed by the march of events. This gives us an unshakable
confidence in the ideas and methods of Marxism, the working class and
the socialist future of humankind.
Starting
with the most advanced workers and youth, our voice will reach the
mass of the workers in every factory, trade union branch, shop
stewards committee, every school and college, every worker’s
district. To carry out this work we need your help. We need people to
write articles, sell papers, raise money, and carry on work in the
trade union and Labour movement. In the struggle for socialism, no
contribution is too small and everybody can play a part. We want you
to play your part too. Do not think: “I can make no difference”.
Together, once we are organised, we can make a fundamental
difference.
The
working class holds in its hands a colossal power. Without the
permission of the workers, not a light bulb shines, not a wheel
turns, not a telephone rings. The problem is that the workers do not
realise they have this power. Our task is to make them aware of it.
We will fight for every reform, every advance no matter how small,
because only through the struggle for advance under capitalism will
the workers acquire the necessary confidence in their strength to
change society.
Everywhere
the mood of the masses is changing. In Latin America there is a
revolutionary ferment, which will intensify and spread to other
continents. In Britain, the USA and other industrialized nations many
people who previously did not question the existing social order are
now asking questions. Ideas that previously were listened to by small
numbers will find an echo among a far broader public. The ground is
being prepared for an unprecedented upsurge of the class struggle on
a world scale.
When
the USSR collapsed, we were told that history had ended. On the
contrary, history has not yet begun. In the space of just 20 years
capitalism has shown itself to be utterly bankrupt. It is necessary
to fight for a socialist alternative! Our aim is to bring about a
fundamental change in society and fight for socialism nationally and
internationally. We are fighting for the most important cause: the
emancipation of the working class and the establishment of a new and
higher form of human society. That is the only really worthwhile
cause in the first decade of the 21st century.
Join
us!
London
30th October 2008.