THE
PUBLICATION of cartoons depicting Mohamed in various European newspapers
has provoked worldwide Muslim protests. BLAIR WANTED Iraq to be his legacy. It's that all right. But not the legacy of liberation, democracy and prosperity that he promised. No! 99, 100, 101 ...that's the ever-rising number of British soldiers killed. How many more young working-class recruits must die fighting for Blair's legacy?
And over 2,000 US soldiers have been killed for Bush. Thousands more maimed and disabled. But at least they're counted. No-one knows how many Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion and occupation. Even Bush recently surmised "30,000, more or less"!
He doesn't know - the US military don't count dead Iraqis! However, studies comparing death rates before and after the 2003 invasion give at least 100,000 "excess deaths" which by now could be as high as 180,000.
For those left, life is worse than even under Saddam and sanctions! "The situation is much worse than it used to be," a retired soldier told a news agency. "Can you walk free in the streets? Did you receive your food ration last month? When you go to the hospital, do you find medicines? The answer is no ..."
And following the military occupation comes the IMF occupation! The International Monetary Fund insisted as a condition for its $685 million loan to the Iraqi government that it control the wage and pensions bill, reduce subsidies, and expand the private sector.
This has resulted in a five-fold increase in fuel prices so that in a country with the second largest oil reserves in the world, most people can't get petrol or heating and cooking fuel without queuing for hours or on the black market.
And things are likely to get worse. The US administration has admitted that half its reconstruction budget has gone on security, and they're not going to spend any more on rebuilding the country they've destroyed!
This is the human cost of a war based on spin and lies. The first casualty was truth. No WMD. No 45 minutes. No legal case. And now a new book Lawless World by Philippe Sands, a QC and professor of international law, confirms - using White House memos - what we already thought: that Bush was going to war whatever and Blair would support him with or without a second United Nations resolution.
Well three years on, Bush and Blair are both on their way out, politically maimed by their imperialist adventure. But for the British soldiers and their families and the Iraqi people who have to live and die with the consequences of their war, we must re-mobilise the anti-war movement to get the troops out and say 'no' to any attacks on Iran.
What we think
THE
PUBLICATION of cartoons depicting Mohamed in various European newspapers
has provoked worldwide Muslim protests.
Muslim's protest. Photos by Marc Vallée
The disparaging images have added to the enormous anger amongst Muslims against Bush's 'war on terror' and the occupation of Iraq.
However, the issue that has sparked off these protests and their character has renewed discussion about a 'war of civilisations' or of 'cultures'. These developments are a sharp warning of the divisive tensions that can develop in the absence of a strong workers' movement offering a socialist alternative.
Millions of Muslims, embittered by the policies of Western imperialism, have seen these cartoons - which suggests Muslims are terrorists - as the latest in a long series of provocations and aggressive acts, not least the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the toleration of Israel's settling of more and more Palestinian land in the West Bank.
In a number of Arab countries the protests have taken on at least a partial anti-imperialist character, although it appears that the Syrian regime has, for its own interests, used the protests to give a warning to the west and at the same time reassert its interests in the Lebanon.
In European countries, including Britain, there is also a groundswell of resentment amongst Muslims against a perceived increase in anti-Islamic feelings, greater police surveillance and harassment.
In Denmark, where the cartoons were first provocatively published in a right wing paper, many Muslims feel threatened by a series of special tough anti-immigrant laws that have been passed since 2001 by the Rasmussen government.
This government, which depends upon support from the far-right Danish People's Party, has banned immigrants under the age of 24 from marrying and is also excluding from Denmark the husbands or wives of Danes who are not citizens of an EU country.
Faced with what they see as a continuous campaign of vilification in the media and increasing harassment many Muslims have protested against the publication of these cartoons.
The fact that it has been mainly right-wing journals which have republished them is seen as confirmation that there is a deeper right-wing political agenda.
However the character of some of these protests, coming after a series of terrorist attacks on Western civilian targets, has reinforced the tendency of deepening divisions between Muslims and non-Muslims in a number of countries.
In Britain, the extremely sectarian religious placards threatening "death" to non-Muslims carried on the small 3 February protest in London can deepen racial and religious divisions, as well as providing the government with arguments to justify its authoritarian and anti-terror laws.
This is in a situation where already there are European-wide pressures and tensions produced by the transfer of jobs and forced migration resulting from the effects of capitalist globalisation and the bosses' ongoing neo-liberal offensive.
From all sides opportunists, religious sectarians and racists have jumped in to exploit the situation. In Arab countries, right wing Islamic religious leaders are taking the opportunity to reinforce their claim to be leading the opposition to imperialism and also strengthen their grip on society.
The official attempts to calm down the situation may have an effect in the days ahead but the underlying tensions will not be removed by soothing words and appeals to reason.
What has been absent in the last few days has been a powerful socialist voice that can independently intervene in this situation and prevent its exploitation by religious sectarians or racists. Unfortunately this is not surprising given today's political weakness of the workers' movement in many countries.
But, unless the workers' movement internationally can offer a way out, the next period of social crisis could see societies being torn by a myriad of divisions involving religious, ethnic and national conflicts.
What then should be the socialist response to the current wave of protests and the attempt of conservative and some right-wing Christian political leaders to claim that they are defending free speech?
Firstly, socialists stand completely opposed to the oppression based on religion, race, nationality, gender or sexual orientation and socialists support the right of the oppressed to defend themselves. We work to build a united movement of working people to fight oppression, capitalism and start to create a socialist future.
This means we oppose the production of any material that is used to create or deepen religious, ethnic, national or sexual divisions. This includes countering the continuous anti-immigrant racist propaganda or sub-text that can be seen in parts of the mass media in almost every European country.
At the same time, it has always been the workers' movement that has been in the forefront of the struggle to win and defend democratic rights, including free expression and the right to vote.
While opposing the production of racist or fascist material, socialists defend the right to make criticism, even sarcastic criticism. The same cannot be said for the main established religions that have all, at various times, stamped upon the free expression of ideas.
The attempt to say in Europe and the USA that what is developing is a 'clash of civilisations' between Christianity and Islam, with Christianity representing freedom, is completely false.
For the majority of their existence the tops of all the established Christian churches were quite happy to be part of the elites running dictatorial societies. As even the Financial Times commented: "The 'Christian' west won through to modernity in the teeth of clerical reaction."
The millions killed in warfare between different Christian denominations, the Inquisition, slavery, the slaughter of native Americans and the original witch-hunts are just a few of the historical crimes of the leaders of the Christian churches.
But this is not just the case with the Christian churches, leaders of the other main established religions have played similar roles, whether it be Jewish religious leaders justifying the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland on the grounds that God gave the land of Israel to the Jews or prominent Buddhists being in the forefront of the attacks on Tamil Hindus in Sri Lanka.
While the Western media make frequent references to Islamic fundamentalists, Islam is not by any means alone in having extreme fundamentalists within its following.
Pat Robertson, one of Bush's favourite evangelists, said last month that Ariel Sharon's stroke was God's punishment for withdrawing Israeli settlers from Gaza! Last year, Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuela's radical president Hugo Chavez.
In India, Hindu fundamentalists have repeatedly led attacks on the Muslim minority, like the 1992 destruction of the mosque in Ayodhya or the 2002 Gujarat clashes.
Socialists
oppose all racist, religious or sexist attempts to sow divisions.
Socialists advocate workers' action against such attempts and strive to
achieve a united struggle of working people against oppression and
capitalism.
Socialists defend the rights of both non-believers and believers, regarding faith as a personal issue and see no problem in believers and non-believers struggling alongside each other in the workers' movement. On the contrary, socialists strive to unite all working people in common, collective struggle.
But, by the same token, seeing faith as a personal issue means that socialists support the complete separation of church from state, the right to polemicise against religion and oppose the attempts of any religion to dictate to other religions or non-believers.
We defend the democratic rights of all, non-believers and believers, to express their views. This includes the right to produce anti-religious material, whether it is philosophical or satirical.
This is why socialists opposed the attempts of Christian fundamentalists to ban the Jerry Springer musical and the 2004 attacks by some Sikhs on the performance of the play Behzti in Birmingham.
Socialists resist all attempts to stigmatise Muslims but at the same time combat the attacks of vicious Islamic reactionaries against gays and the rights of women.
Equally, we oppose the anti-Semitic material produced under the guise of opposing Israeli policy in many Arab countries.
Most of the Islamic states that have protested against the Danish cartoons are dictatorial regimes with brutal histories of oppressing their own populations.
Today, a critical task before the workers' movement is to prevent divisions amongst working people blocking united struggles.
This means defending democratic rights and opposing repression, while striving to build a unified movement that can challenge capitalism and fight for a socialist future.
HAS US president George Bush, the die-hard neo-conservative former Texan oil man, gone green? His state of the union speech attacked his country's "addiction" to imported oil. Instead, he proposed all manner of alternative clean fuels and technologies that his administration was funding research into.
But Bush's 2005 energy bill, approved by the Republican-dominated House, gave 93% of $8 billion in tax breaks to companies involved in fossil fuels and nuclear energy and only 7% to renewable energy research. He gave billions to oil companies to 'incentivise' oil exploration while companies such as ExxonMobil are making billions in profits because of current record highs in oil prices.
The energy bill also opened the door for such companies to get leases to drill for oil in the Alaskan wilderness, thereby threatening pristine natural habitats.
Moreover, there is little incentive for capitalists to switch producing petrol-driven automobiles to electric or fuel cell-powered vehicles. Clearly oil will account for nearly 100% of fuel for transport in the foreseeable future. Only a workers' government with a socialist energy/transport policy can end capitalism's addiction to the 'black gold'.
UNISON's ballot of its one million members is due to start on 20 February. UNISON will be joined by 11 other unions in defence of the local government pension scheme. The ballot will finish on 10 March, with the first strike in the last week of March.
At the last meeting of UNISON's special local government executive (SGE), it was reported that the Tory employers were taking a hard line and daring the union to strike. The government is still harping on about affordability and the legality of the 85-year rule, where workers can retire on a full pension when they have served enough years.
But the European Commissioner responsible for pensions has disagreed with the government and said it would not be unlawful to keep the 85-year rule under the new EU legalisation. As for affordability, the union has also demonstrated that the introduction of the new Finance Act in April, where workers can commute up to 25% of their pension in a lump sum, will save the government and employers £3.7 billion and an ongoing saving of 1% on the pension bill. This measure alone is enough to cover any shortfall, leave our pension alone and pay for improvements to the scheme.
UNISON's national officers initially proposed a one-day strike of all members and then strikes of 'key groups' such as meat hygiene. Action would be at the end of March but not in April because of the school and college holidays. In reality this is an excuse to avoid action in the run-up to the local elections.
They think the best chance of winning is for political pressure to be put on until the formal consultation period ends on 28 February.
I opposed the key group strategy at the SGE, as it has not been successful anywhere since 1989. Instead of it being an auxiliary tactic to action by all members it soon becomes the only tactic, leaving the mass of the members passive in the dispute, relying on small groups on full take-home pay. The size of the strike fund can then dictate the dispute.
But this strategy can appear attractive and it was agreed by the majority of the SGE, including the United Left member. I then argued that we should not support just a one-day strike but should lay down to the members a programme of action that showed we were serious about trying to win - a programme that would send a message to the employer that they weren't just facing a token gesture. This was won with almost unanimous support.
I also proposed that we should again call on the TUC to name the day for the national demo and that it should be during the strike period. If the TUC refuses, the 11 unions balloting should call it. This was referred to UNISON's NEC.
The Socialist Party is concerned that decisions about the strategy of the strike appear to be taken behind closed doors and not by the elected leaderships of the members involved. In particular by the service group liaison committee (SGLC - which is a sub committee of the NEC, made up of all the service group chairs and vice chairs and the general secretary and national unelected officers).
The Socialist Party proposed we set up a strike committee that was made up of the five different service groups involved, proportional to the number of members in each service group.
This was not supported but instead a strike committee of the SGLC plus sector group chairs was agreed. It still means that the decisions of the SGE are in effect only recommendations to the SGLC and they can ignore them or not, despite how many or how few members they represent. It also means, for instance, that the chair of the health group is getting a say in our strike even though they have settled their dispute!
The Socialist Party believes that this risks putting the real control of the strike in the hands of a few unelected full-time officials.
FOR NEARLY 13 years, further education (FE) in England and Wales has been market-driven, given the effective privatisation of the sector.
Contrary to the views of the Tory and New Labour supporters of privatisation, this has neither enhanced the quality of post-school education nor protected the pay and conditions of those who work in the sector (who are organised mainly by NATFHE and UNISON).
Privatisation opened up a considerable pay gap between schoolteachers and FE college lecturers who do virtually the same job - hence NATFHE's long-running campaign to establish pay parity. In 2002, following strike action by NATFHE members, the union in Wales was approached by the Wales Assembly with the offer of funding to establish pay parity.
Following the acceptance of this offer by NATFHE members in branch meetings, the union established a negotiating team to attempt agreement with the Wales FE employers' body (Fforwm). All three of the NATFHE lay negotiators were committed left-wingers.
The anarchy of the free market system in FE in England and Wales has meant that national agreements on pay are reached in London with NATFHE and UNISON. Then the employers decide to spend the money on anything but staff pay!
From the outset in the Welsh negotiations, the trade union side insisted that any funding from the Assembly for the deal would be ring-fenced and only spent on staff pay.
Few, if any FE college principals in Wales are paid less than £100,000 a year. But this did not stop their negotiators trying to prevent those who do the only really important work in colleges improving their pay.
Despite this, agreement was eventually reached on pay, giving proportionately more to the lower-paid and establishing decent pay and conditions for the (overwhelmingly female) part-time teaching staff. Finally, agreement was reached on a scheme of pay parity with schoolteachers.
To some this agreement represents the triumph of devolution, or even more falsely, that New Labour in Cardiff is better than New Labour in Westminster.
But from the very start, NATFHE in Wales made the employers understand that failure to reach agreement would led to members being balloted for a three-day strike, to be escalated if necessary to indefinite action.
This was in fact the most extensive programme of strike action proposed by NATFHE anywhere in the United Kingdom and was the decisive factor in this victory for our members.
Their brothers and sisters in England will be keen to draw the vital lessons from this, as will trade unionists everywhere.
PRIVATISATION OF General Practice is Labour's latest act of destruction of the NHS. In the former North Derbyshire coalfield and inner-city Derby, two General Practices are being put out to tender. The giant US company, United Health Europe (UHE), has been named "preferred bidder."
At a meeting in the village of Whaley Thorns, over 100 residents and local health workers heard that United Health has no experience of running primary care. John Lister from 'Keep our NHS Public' told the meeting that they scored zero on seven of the 11 criteria drawn up for the tender.
So why did North Derbyshire Primary Care Trust (PCT) choose this company's European subsidiary, UHE, beating 18 tenders - some from well-respected local GPs? UHE's Chief Executive is Simon Smith, formerly Blair's health adviser, who drew up government policies at 10 Downing Street. Now he's moved out to line his own pockets from them.
John Lister said that the government was re-creating an internal market in the NHS. PCTs were being merged and would control large sums of public money. In Oxfordshire, the government tried to privatise all the PCTs with a combined budget of £600 million. Every county and city has similar sums to spend.
UHE and other corporations want to "funnel public funds into their coffers" and taking over these general practices gets UHE's foot in the door - "a sprat to catch a mackerel"
UHE promised that it would improve services but several people described the lack of service for several years since their old GPs retired. Any service in their village would be an improvement and it didn't need a US company to run it for profit.
Dr. Phil Greville, secretary to the Derbyshire Local Medical Committee representing GPs, was applauded when he said he hadn't voted at the last election as "there was no party standing socialist enough for him."
Most people saw that this giant corporation were only out for themselves and their shareholders. An ex-miner said: "An American, Ian MacGregor, took our jobs away [closing the pits]. Now another American company is taking us to our graves."
As a Socialist Party member said, what we need now is a campaign to be set up and linked with the many other local campaigns fighting to save the NHS.
ANTI-FASCIST protesters chanted "You're going down" and "where's your Fuehrer gone " outside far-right British National Party's (BNP) leader Griffin's trial in Leeds. Unfortunately, the Fuehrer walked free as did his associate Mark Collet. Calling asylum seekers 'cockroaches' is neither racist nor incitement to racial hatred, according to an overwhelmingly white, middle-class jury.
The BNP used the trial as a publicity event. They mounted a constant picket of between 50-100 supporters, filmed it all and used a web blog as a propaganda tool.
Cambridge graduate and rural landlord Nick Griffin wanted to show the BNP as the voice for Britain's white working class but their travelling support was neither urban nor working class - it was posh, foxhunting Britain on the march.
He said that British workers had always fought against 'the gaffers'. Today, he claimed, this struggle is against the Muslims. In classic far-right fashion, Griffin takes the vocabulary of class struggle and turns it into its opposite.
When thousands of civil servants recently took strike action against job cuts, the strikers came from all backgrounds, including Muslims. The BNP has nothing to say about how to defend these workers' rights. When firefighters took strike action, the BNP opposed it. If the BNP were to come to power, there would be no right to strike.
Nick Griffin told Newsnight that Muslim protests on the Danish newspaper cartoons 'will swell the ranks of the BNP'. The BNP is a parasitic organisation that would support a conflict between Muslim and non-Muslim workers. Such conflict would not be in the working class' interests; the BNP is a right-wing anti-worker organisation.
In office on local councils, BNP councillors have failed abysmally to oppose cuts for example in Burnley. Workers cannot rely on these people to fight for their interests.
But it would also be foolish to rely on courts to get rid of the BNP. Ultimately, workers of all backgrounds and religions need their own party to fight not only against their reactionary, racist ideas but against cuts and privatisation and for genuine system change.
International Socialist Resistance (ISR) and Socialist Students are holding their annual conference on 4 March 2006. We are aiming to get hundreds of young people and activists to it, to discuss and debate the way forward for our campaigns, to share experiences and to discuss the international situation.
There will be a line-up of speakers giving reports of the roles that young people are playing in the trade unions, including Eleisha Mullane, the youth forum convenor of the PCS (speaking in a personal capacity). There will also be a speaker from the Bolivia Solidarity Campaign and an eyewitness from Venezuela and the revolutionary events that are taking place there.
It will be an excellent event, inspiring everyone there, particularly if we manage to pack the hall out. We are planning a week of activity from 15-22 February to make sure that we do. Local branches should discuss going out to the schools, colleges, universities and workplaces and selling tickets to young people and students. We can hold public meetings and leaflet areas, including lunchtime and Saturday stalls, as well as planning stunts and other attention-grabbing events.
In Leicester we have already had meetings where young people have joined ISR and bought tickets to the conference. In Reading they are planning to campaign in the town centre during half-term, as well as having a discussion on how to take the work forwards in that area.
In Cardiff, Swansea, Tunbridge Wells, and across England and Wales we are building in the local trade union branches, talking to young activists about the importance of getting politically organised and joining ISR.
In Manchester we have very well organised plans of how to get people to the conference, including emails, meetings, college and university stalls, and the picture is similar in many places across the country.
There is the potential for this conference to be an event that will be a big step forwards for ISR and Socialist Students and a step forward to getting young people organised and active in the struggle for socialism.
Following the RMT conference on working-class representation supporters of the campaign for a new workers' party are now looking towards the conference on 19 March.
This conference will be an opportunity to discuss how to take forward the campaign and plan the next steps. Updates on the agenda and speakers will be on the CNWP website www.cnwp.org.uk
New signatories this week include (all in a personal capacity):
23 February 7.30pm
320 Brixton Road, Brixton, London SW9
Speakers include: Ian Page, Lewisham Socialist
Party councillor, Rob MacDonald, President
Lambeth College students' union.
23 February 7:30pm
William Morris Centre, Walthamstow.
25 February 2pm
Goldsmiths College, Room MB2106, Lewisham Way.
1 March 7.30pm
Charterhouse-in-Southwark, 40 Tabard Street (near Borough tube).
4 February 1pm
SADACCA Club, The Wicker, Sheffield.
16 February 7:30pm
Unitarian Church, High Street, Swansea.
Speakers include: Gloria Tanner (PCS), Rob Williams (TGWU convenor, Visteon), Sarah Mayo (PCS) - all speakers in personal capacity.
For more information on the Campaign for a New Workers' Party, go to www.cnwp.org.uk
email [email protected] or write to CNWP, PO Box 858, London E11 1YG.
Socialist
Party pamphlet now online: Join the campaign for a new workers' Party
£1 or £2.50 for 5. Cheques made payable to Socialist Publications at PO Box 24697, London, E11 1YD. Buy the pamphlet (no bulk discount online)
FOR THE past six weeks, a group of around 40 women have led a struggle for jobs and pay at the Selfex factory in the south east of Caracas.
The company, which makes women's underwear under the brand name LONY, ceased production in August 2005 when the owners claimed they could no longer afford to produce. They attempted to send home the 250 strong workforce, telling them they were on enforced annual leave.
The workers, 80% of whom are women, refused to accept this and insisted on their right to pay, meal tickets (a type of luncheon voucher) and national insurance contributions.
The workers were paid their wages up until mid-December but then the owners claimed bankruptcy. In response, on 12 December, the workers occupied the factory, placing a large padlock on the outer entrance door and controlling all access to the building.
The women have worked out a rota of shifts to ensure that the factory is occupied 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They have seen nothing of the owners since December.
Many of the women have strong doubts as to whether the owners are really as broke as they claim. They recall the time of the bosses' lockout in 2003 and remember how the owners shut down the factory but the workforce insisted on coming to work. This time, the workers are just as determined. They believe the owners are waiting for them to tire and go home.
As worker Maria Teresa Bravo said: "This company has been going for 70 years. There are sewing machines here, vans to distribute the merchandise and above all there is a skilled workforce who want to work. All we need to start up production is cloth and cotton. We are all in our 30s, and 40s. We have families to feed. We are determined to fight for our jobs."
The women, all members of the UNT union, are low paid and have now had no income since December. Rosa Sojo explained: "We can't afford to buy the swimsuits and underwear we make. We are only paid the minimum wage."
The women feel that the existence of the Chavez government has created an environment in which they feel more confident of raising their demands. However, despite their faith in the Chavez project, it still important that the workers are organised independently and formulate concrete demands, such as a demand that the company open its books so that the workers can see where the profits have gone. Workers could also explore ways of restarting production and call for nationalisation under democratic workers' control.
Messages of support to: [email protected] and copies to: [email protected]
'SOMOS UN rio crecido' ['we are a mighty river'] read one of the banners on the massive pro-Chávez (the country's radical, populist president) march on 4 February in Venezuela.
One-and-a-half million poured out onto the streets of Caracas in a show of strength which turned from a river into a sea of red banners and flags that brought parts of the capital city to a halt.
Chávez supporters were packed like sardines on the metro trains trying to get to the march. They also came from miles around on motorbikes, buses, cars, on foot and even on crutches! Wave after wave joined in on the way. More than 100 buses came from the Vargas region alone, despite the recent collapse of the main viaduct link road.
Unlike the previous week's march, during the World Social Forum, this march was predominantly made up of the working class and other exploited layers of Venezuela. Workers marched behind their trade union banners and from their barrios. Campesinos (rural workers) came packed in open top trailers.
The opposition, represented by the capitalist bosses, latifundistas (large landowners) and the top layers of the church, all supported by US imperialism, thought that the tide was beginning to turn in their direction.
The widespread abstention of Chávez supporters in the recent National Assembly elections and opinion polls which showed a fall in support for Chávez added to the opposition's optimism. But the turnout on this march compared to the few thousands mobilised by the right wing opposition's counter-march confirmed again the real balance of forces.
Chávez used the march (originally called to commemorate the 14th anniversary of the failed military rebellion led by him as a paratrooper in 1992), as a launch pad for the presidential elections later in the year by calling for ten million votes to ensure his re-election. The previous day he had gone onto the offensive by expelling a US naval officer for spying and announcing a series of new reforms, including a 15% increase in the minimum wage which will benefit thousands of working class people.
However, winning another term as president will not be enough to solve the huge problems faced by the Venezuelan working class, campesinos and poor. Despite the significant reforms funded by the high price of oil, 70% of the population still live in poverty whilst big business continue to make massive profits.
The Chavez reforms and partial nationalisations and 'co-gestion' (worker's participation) have enraged the opposition without breaking, fundamentally, their ownership of the main industries, banks, finance companies and land.
The process of revolution and counter-revolution will continue to unfold in Venezuela but at some stage will reach a decisive conclusion. Either the forces of the counter-revolution will win through a bloody military coup, as in Chile in 1973, or a 'democratic' counter-revolution, as in Nicaragua in the 1990s.
Alternatively, the Venezuelan working class - supported by the other exploited layers - will build the forces necessary to break decisively with capitalism i.e. by taking into public ownership major industry, banks, finance houses and land under democratic workers' control.
This would allow production to be democratically planned based on the needs of the masses and not a privileged few. But such a successful conclusion will not be automatic. The need for the working class and exploited layers to build their own independent organisations, armed with a socialist programme, is now becoming increasingly urgent.
JUST A week or so ago, the four-year long ceasefire in Sri Lanka's civil war was on the verge of collapse.
In seven weeks more than 100 people had been killed, most of them members of Sri Lanka's armed forces. But on 23 January, two key figures involved in efforts to renew peace talks arrived in the capital, Colombo.
A resumption of the war has been inherent in the situation. Tensions and hostilities have escalated since the election as president, last November, of Mahinda Rajapakse. He was backed by Sinhala chauvinist forces - the JVP (People's Liberation Front) and the JHU (Buddhist Monks' organisation). They do not want any talks to take place with the separatist Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam (LTTE), especially if there is any hint of granting some kind of autonomy to the North and East of the island, let alone self-determination.
The JVP and JHU totally opposed the LTTE's request for talks to take place in Europe and also opposed the involvement of Norway's development minister, Erik Solheim, as an intermediary to get the talks re-started. But last week both Solheim and the veteran LTTE leader, Anton Balasingham, who lives in London, visited Sri Lanka to hold talks with both the Tigers' leaders and the government. Big pressure has been put on Rajapakse by US imperialism and other capitalist governments to negotiate. These parties want peace in order to continue their trade and business at the expense of the workers and poor of Sri Lanka.
Now the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government have agreed to in Geneva, Switzerland, in mid February. This brings the country back from the brink of war. Local elections are going ahead in March and the labour movement can renew its struggle against privatisation and cut-backs.
The new president, Rajapakse, promised to stop privatisation but he will come under huge pressure to continue the programme he was implementing as prime minister of the People's Alliance government. The only alternative is a socialist struggle.
Siritunga Jayasuriya, (the United Socialist Party - CWI, Sri Lanka - candidate, who came third in the 2005 presidential election), warned on live television, immediately after the new president's acceptance speech, that a movement would be organised in the streets when workers and poor people saw he had broken his promises. The communalist forces Rajapakse had unleashed would threaten the fragile peace and in particular the lives and security of the island's Tamil-speaking people.
Since the election, Tamil-speaking people in Colombo and elsewhere have been subjected to daily police round-ups and detentions. Thousands have been fleeing their homes for areas beyond the control of the Sri Lankan state. Thousands have joined a new exodus to India for safety, knowing that a renewal of the fighting will lead to very heavy loss of life and destruction in the LTTE-held areas of the North and East.
Lately in the East, around Batticaloa, there have been so many kidnappings, allegedly by state forces, that the LTTE leaders have threatened to pull out of the Geneva talks.
The USP has been supporting all demonstrations of Tamil-speaking people against harassment and have got wide publicity for their stand. A broad movement against the resumption of the war is developing and the USP is fully involved. They are calling for the trade unions and all left forces to come together to create one single voice of protest. Now the USP is preparing to put forward candidates on a fighting socialist programme in the provincial elections of 29 March.
ONE HUNDRED years ago, while in a St Petersburg jail awaiting trial for his leading role in the defeated 1905 Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky formulated the ‘Theory of Permanent Revolution’.
Trotsky’s profound ideas examined the prospects for socialist revolution in Russia at the start of the 20th century and the processes of revolution worldwide. The validity of the permanent revolution was brilliantly confirmed by the successful October 1917 socialist revolution.
But is the permanent revolution relevant today, especially since the collapse of Stalinism? Yes. It remains the key to understanding how to end the terrible problems of the so-called ‘Third World’ – pauperisation, under-development, dictatorship and imperialist domination - in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. Of course, the permanent revolution is a living theory, which must be updated in the light of new developments.
Trotsky summed up the permanent revolution in two ways. Firstly, the revolution starts in a ‘backward’ country with the capitalist democratic tasks and goes over to socialist measures. Secondly, the revolution starts in one country and spreads on an international level.
Although the 1917 Russian Revolution, and its world repercussions, magnificently proved Trotsky correct, when his ideas were first published in 1906 they caused huge controversy in the Marxist movement.
Most leaders thought a socialist revolution would take place first in the richer, capitalist West. Semi-colonial Russia had to still go through a capitalist ‘democratic revolution’. After the democratic capitalist phase was completed, the Russian working class would struggle for socialism.
THE FIRST ‘democratic revolutions’ saw the developing capitalist class (which included merchants, manufactures and middle-class professionals) rise up against age-old feudalism, which restricted capitalism.
The aim was to end the power and domination of kings, nobles, the aristocracy and the big landlords. This meant removing feudal barriers to trade and the development of the capitalist economy, unification of the country, introducing democratic rights, and establishing the basis of the modern nation-state.
The 1789 French Revolution was the most thoroughgoing capitalist revolution, which swept away the power of the Church, the landlords and the King.
Capitalism in its early, dynamic phase created the material, social and subjective conditions for the socialist transformation of society ie science, technique, and the modern working class. And it is the working class - which is forced to sell its labour power to survive and therefore has no material stake in capitalist society - that alone can lead the struggle for a new, classless society.
In the modern period, in the age of multinationals and imperialism, capitalism is a reactionary barrier to the development of society. It’s a system where the social organisation of production is constrained by the limitations of the nation state, the private ownership of the means of production, and the destructive nature of capitalist competition with its associated booms and slumps.
In Results and Prospects, [on our website - opens in new window] Trotsky wrote about processes of revolution in Russia and internationally, by looking at the lessons of the 1905 Petersburg Soviet and other revolutions.
He explained that the national capitalist class (bourgeoisie) in the ‘underdeveloped’ countries came into existence too late, when the world was already dominated by the major capitalist and imperialist powers, like Britain, France and Germany.
Trotsky explained that the national bourgeoisie in the colonial or neo-colonial world does not play a progressive role. It is dominated by imperialist powers and tied to foreign capital. It is also linked financially to, and reliant on, the big landlords and other feudal relations.
A weak, cowardly class, the national bourgeoisie is not prepared to decisively struggle against feudal relations and the imperialists.
Instead, Trotsky argued, only the proletariat (working class), bringing behind it the peasants, urban poor and other middle layers in society, can lead a successful revolution and solve the problems of society. 1905 showed: "The revolutionary leadership of the proletariat revealed itself as an incontrovertible fact". When it takes power, the working class will have to carry out the historic tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution.
When in power, the working class will not stop at democratic tasks. It will take measures that reflect its class interests; socialist measures, including nationalisations and overthrowing the local capitalist class.
The working class in power in a poor country will be compelled to spread the socialist revolution. At the same time, the revolution will be a hugely inspiring example for the international working class to follow.
Trotsky argued the socialist revolution could break out in Russia first, given the weakness of the Tsarist regime, the development of a young, militant working class, and the acute, unresolved social and economic problems and land question.
There were also differences amongst Marxists over the relationship between the different classes in the revolution. Prior to 1917, Tsarist Russia was a vast empire but also feudal or semi-feudal, where the majority of people were poor peasants and the urban working class was ruthlessly exploited and had no democratic rights.
The Mensheviks (the ‘Minority’ wing of the Russian Social Democratic Party) argued that the national bourgeoisie must lead the coming revolution, as the main tasks were the completion of the bourgeois democratic revolution. Socialism was for the distant future.
This crude, ‘stages’ position, reflected the reformist, class collaborationist approach of the Mensheviks - the right wing of the Russian workers’ movement.
In contrast, Lenin, the leader of the Bolsheviks (‘Majority’ of the Russian Social Democrats), agreed with Trotsky that the pro-capitalist ‘Liberals’ would not carry out the bourgeois democratic revolution. Only the proletariat would carry out the revolution, in alliance with the peasants. Lenin called for a "democratic dictatorship of the working class and peasantry", leaving open the exact relationship between the classes.
Trotsky said the working class would play the key, leading role. The peasantry never played an independent role in history. It would be led by either the capitalist class or the working class.
The arguments were finally settled by the year 1917, when Trotsky’s permanent revolution was borne out.
The February Revolution overthrew the Tsarist regime but the Provisional Government, dominated by capitalist ‘Liberals’, failed to end Russia’s disastrous participation in the First World War or carry out bourgeois democratic tasks.
Lenin accepted his old slogan of "a democratic dictatorship of the working class and peasantry" was overtaken by events. In his famous April Theses, Lenin called for the working class to fight to take power.
The October 1917 socialist revolution, led by Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks, saw the working class come to power, leading the peasantry and middle layers. The Bolsheviks carried out bourgeois democratic tasks (e.g. land reform, democratic rights) and went over to socialist tasks (e.g. nationalisation of major industries).
The example of October 1917 sparked a revolutionary wave throughout Europe (e.g. Germany 1918, 1923, Austria 1918, Bavaria 1919, and Italy 1919-1920).
In the face of imperialist armed intervention, the Bolsheviks appealed to the world working class. The Communist International (Comintern) was set up. Lenin, Trotsky and all the leading Bolsheviks understood that without the spread of the socialist revolution, economically under-developed Russia could not build socialism alone.
But the international revolutions failed, largely due to the betrayal of social democrat leaders in the West. This compounded the isolation and economic backwardness of Russia. A conservative bureaucracy – based around the figure of Stalin - increased its hold in these conditions and wanted to expand and to protect its power and privileges.
This bureaucratic reaction found ideological expression in Stalin and Bukharin’s ‘Socialism in one country’ theory, in 1924. Socialism, they argued, could be built in Russia and it was not necessary to wait for international revolution.
This marked a complete refutation of the historic position of the Marxist movement and it had disastrous consequences.
Under Stalin, the Communist International rejected Lenin’s independent, class policy and the communist parties internationally sought "alliances" with the "national progressive bourgeoisie" in various countries.
This approach led to defeats for the working class internationally (e.g. British General Strike 1926, China 1925-1927, Germany 1933, Spain 1936-39), which, in turn, deepened the bureaucratic counter-revolution in Russia.
The Stalinists argued that capitalist democratic revolutions would take place first in the neo-colonial world, and after a period of capitalist development there would be a struggle for socialism. In other words, Stalinists argued a return to the discredited Mensheviks’ ‘stages theory’.
The Stalinists covered their betrayals by a vociferous attack on the permanent revolution, digging up old pre-1917 arguments between Lenin and Trotsky on the issue. "The revolution on the international scale was suffering one defeat after another… strengthening the Stalin bureaucracy against me and my political friends," Trotsky wrote.
AFTER THE Second World War, the permanent revolution developed in a way that could not have been foreseen even by Trotsky. The victory of the Red Army over the Nazis strengthened Stalinism. Capitalism was overthrown in Eastern Europe, albeit in a distorted, bureaucratic way. At the same time, the reformists and Stalinists saved capitalism in Western Europe.
In countries like China, Vietnam and Cuba, society was at an impasse due to capitalism and landlordism. But the working class was weak or misled, usually by Stalinists.
When the peasant Red Army of Mao Zedong entered China’s cities, they balanced between different sections of society – peasants, workers, sections of the capitalists – and gradually ended capitalism and landlordism. Land and most of industry was nationalised but workers’ democracy was not introduced. Instead, what Marxists called a ‘deformed workers’ state’ was established.
The main thrust of Trotsky’s permanent revolution was borne out in these events, but in a caricatured form. Although a key part of Trotsky’s theory - the conscious role of the working class as the leading class in the revolution - was absent in China, Cuba and Vietnam, for example, a social revolution was still carried out. Landlordism and capitalism were abolished. But the working class did not directly play the leading role in these revolutionary upheavals.
The Cuban Revolution, lead by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, enjoyed mass support, but without workers’ democracy - a bureaucratic layer formed, concentrating power in its hands.
Trotsky’s permanent revolution was vital to understanding events in the post-1945, neo-colonial world. Take China, for example. Does its ‘spectacular’ growth disprove the permanent revolution?
The 1949 revolution, despite its bureaucratic character, led to the development of industry and living standards, under a planned economy. But in the absence of democratic workers’ rule, the economy stagnated under the ruling bureaucracy.
In the 1970s, the ruling elite began looking towards the market as a way to boost growth, although the state run sector was still dominant. Today, capitalist relations increasingly take hold. Growth rates are high but at a huge social cost: barbaric exploitation, uprooting millions from the countryside, enormous poles of wealth and poverty, dismantling of social gains, growing problems of nationalities, etc.
Many of the worst features of pre-1949, capitalist China have re-appeared. And whatever the future role of China in the world economy, capitalist restoration will be incapable of fundamentally raising living standards and conditions of the mass of its people (as we have clearly seen in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe).
India is also held up as an ‘emerging power’, based on its huge supply of cheap labour. But while India has a growing middle class, pockets of ‘modernisation’ and is a nuclear power, the majority of its desperately poor people eke a living on the land and caste, religious and national differences remain.
As a whole, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America have suffered social and economic regression over decades of neo-liberalism, imperialist plunder and endemic corruption and waste.
A quarter of the world’s population lives in "severe poverty", and half the world lives on less than $2 a day. Almost 800 million people are malnourished and the same figure lack basic healthcare. Every day, 30,500 children die from preventable diseases.
African is littered with "failed states" and the continent is beset with endless problems, like wars, poverty famine, preventable diseases, corruption, and dictatorships. In Latin America, once ‘promising’ countries, like Argentina, are still recovering from economic collapse. Brazil is now trumpeted by pro-capitalist commentators as the new economic ‘success story’.
Like Tsarist Russia, Brazil plays a regional imperialist role but many of the fundamental problems of the neo-colonial world remain in that huge country (including, huge city and rural disparities, underinvestment, slums, land problems, oppression of minorities and state repression).
In Venezuela and Bolivia, the masses have mobilised for fundamental change. Hugo Chávez, the President of Venezuela, has been pushed into taking radical measures. How far he goes depends on various factors, including the world economic situation, the actions of US imperialism, and the consciousness of working people.
Unlike the first years of the Cuban Revolution, Stalinist Russia no longer exists to act as a ‘model’ and practical support to neo-colonial deformed workers’ states. Ultimately, the only way to defend and to extend the revolution in Venezuela is by carrying through and spreading the socialist revolution; fulfilling the tasks of the permanent revolution.
Today, the ‘classical’ ideas of the permanent revolution - with the working class playing the main role - can re-develop. This year, marks the first time in history when over 50% of the world’s population lives in urban areas.
The collapse of Stalinism, and the social democratic parties openly going over to capitalism, provides an opportunity for independent, class politics and revolutionary socialism to win a mass audience. However, reformist ideas, and versions of the ‘stages theory’, will not just disappear.
This was seen in recent years in Indonesia, a former ‘Asian Tiger’. The young membership of the influential, People’s Democratic Party (PRD), played a heroic role in the mass movement against the former Indonesian dictator, General Suharto, in the late 1990s. This was triggered by the collapse of the economy after the Asian financial meltdown.
Unfortunately, PRD leaders echoed the false ideas of the old Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and advocated support for opposition ‘progressive’, ‘democratic’ capitalist leaders, like Megawati Sukarnopoutri and Abdurrahman Wahid. When in power, Wahid and Megawati attacked workers’ conditions and rights, increased repression against national minorities, opened the economy to further imperialist exploitation and failed to tackle the powerful armed forces.
Ironically, an ex-Trotskyist party, the Australian Democratic Socialist Party, which has attacked the adherence of the Committee for a Workers’ International (to which the Socialist Party is affiliated) to the permanent revolution, advised and influenced the PRD during these crucial years for the Indonesian working class.
Under the misleading term, ‘uninterrupted revolution’, the DSP puts forward a version of the old ‘two stages’ theory, ignoring that fact that all sections of the ruling class in the ex-colonial world are completely incapable of carrying out consistent democratic reforms or transforming the living conditions of the mass of people. How can they, when the system they are based on (capitalism and landlordism), is responsible for the barbaric conditions facing working people?
In the next period, the working class in the neo-colonial world will be poised to lead the social transformation of society. Trotsky’s permanent revolution may be 100 years old but his brilliant theory remains the most modern, indispensable guide for the working class in its struggle to overthrow capitalism, landlordism, and to end all the barbarities of life in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
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http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/5001