It is a historical fact that in certain phases, after long periods of apparent inertia, the economic and social dynamics produced by capitalism itself in its most aggressive and destructive phase (that of imperialism) suddenly accelerate, with violent repercussions and unexpected breaks, coming closer and closer to the time of reckoning in the world of capitalist production and involving the world proletariat. It is too soon to tell whether we are now in one of these phases and in fact our task (theoretical and practical, political and organizational) must be to follow and analyse step by step the evolution of the world economic crisis, in terms of its reflections on society and the way classes (and groups and factions within them) move, operate and start to align. The fact is, and we cannot help but dwell on this, that the world economic crisis is constantly at work deep down, wearing away certainties and conventions (and, above all, those fictitious economic reserves – savings, pensions, homes – as well as the social – pensions, healthcare, education – which constituted the real illusion of all reformism), breaking down what was supposed to be solid and provoking a situation of growing uncertainty and instability in terms of hard economic facts and daily life. Observers and opinion-makers of limited intelligence fall back on medical-psychiatric terminology to define the “human condition” today: they speak of the “onset of global anxiety”, “globalization and crises of rejection”. This is a sorry demonstration of the depths to which the caste of power ideologists has sunk! Behind this demonstration of historical, theoretical and conceptual ignorance loom deep tension and lacerations, which affect and cause harm to our proletarian class itself.
We shall attempt to give a very schematic outline of some of these scenarios, starting out from some of the most prominent events over the past few months.
The struggle of French workers against the Loi Travail
Between March and June in France a widespread and militant movement developed against the so-called ‘Loi Travail’. Very similar to the Italian ‘Jobs Act’, it provided for a series of legal measures regarding worker/employee/State relations and implying widespread precariousness, licence to lay off workers, overall deterioration of working conditions. There were large demonstrations in all France’s central squares, violent clashes between demonstrators and the “forces of law and order”, casualties and arrests and, on all sides, the usual complaints raised against the “violence of the “casseurs”. Control by the Intersindacale trade unions (the equivalent of the Italian Triplice) was cast iron, as further demonstration of the role the official unions are increasingly assuming: that of police officers in civvies. We enthusiastically welcomed the French workers’ will to fight back which, especially in some vital sectors, such as transport and the oil refining industry, was considerable: but we never concealed how complete this union control was at all times, and how the widespread anger of the proletariat was skilfully contained and channelled, diluting and weakening it over time, by patchy and occasional strikes (the last demonstration in mid-June represented the movement’s death chant and was accompanied by the union proposal to submit the law to a … people’s referendum!). Something very similar had taken place in Italy in 1992, when, during a speech in Florence, at the peak of a period of struggle, the secretary general of the CGIL, Bruno Trentin, was met by a shower of nuts and bolts hurled at him: with perfect skill the union had allowed the workers’ anger to let off steam, containing it, surveilling it and repressing it as far as necessary – since then at the most eggs have been thrown (not even bad eggs!) … meanwhile, the French executive has shown what we mean by “democratic dictatorship”: without any violation of the Constitution – indeed by applying it – it has used decrees, like any, self-respecting strong executive, to override, stone-faced, the cowardly (and imbecile) democratically-elected parliament – the same practice applied by all the executives that have followed one another in Italy since the end of the ‘80s right up to the latest Renzi. Once the anger has let off steam, silence follows: and in this silence the law … became law. In our immediate comment on the demonstrations, we emphasized that a very different sort of violence and determination are needed, even at the level of economic claims alone, to crush the ruling class and the State representing it; that the Intersindacale (led by a CGT trying to recover from loss of members) did a perfect fire-fighting job; and that no confidence of any sort should be placed in it, as, on the contrary, the so-called “extremists” did, with differing but convergent tones of voice: from the grizzling Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste to the various Trotskyite groups, from the Maoists of Voie Prolétarienne to the Marxist-Leninists of the Rassemblement Organisé des Communistes Marxistes Léninistes – all in the end with a conciliatory attitude towards the CGT and ready to acknowledge its positive guiding role in union conflicts. On the other hand, there was not even the slightest attempt to work on the hard task of giving back to our class its own independence in terms of organization and content, as opposed to relying on parties and unions with a history of compromises with the ruling class and its State.
(see our article “Dalla Francia. Breve nota sulle manifestazioni contro la ‘Loi Travail’”, Il programma comunista, n. 3/2016).
Great Britain’s exit from the EU
As we all know, the result of the referendum of 23rd June was in favour of Great Britain’s exit from the EU. To the disconsolation of politicians, economists, opinion-makers, and panic on the Stock Exchange and in financial centres: what on earth happened? Is this sort of thing possible? And now? What will become of Europe? Our considerations take an entirely different direction. First of all, the outcome of the referendum shows that the world economic crisis weighs on the ruling class itself: that it creates splits within the bourgeoisie itself, lacerated by different opinions in the vain attempt to face up to the collapse of its own mode of production – isolation instead of openness, prohibition instead of liberism, and so on. On the other hand, Great Britain has always occupied a peculiar position (neither inside not outside but on the margins and looking towards the United States) in a Europe that has never existed as a political subject and which, under pressure from the crisis, is gradually unravelling, revealing itself as none other than a “common market” of quarrelsome competitors. The social situation in Britain has been critical for some years now, beneath the shiny surface of the large towns (reserved for a ‘happy few’): inside or outside the EU, little will change for the British proletariat, which has been hammered by one government or the other for decades thanks to the straitjacket of the unions and the Labour Party (with the laughable ‘left wings’ à la Jeremy Corbyn: another hero for so many petit bourgeois in search of a myth, about to topple together with Alexis Tsipras of Syriza and Pablo Iglesias of Podemos!). Their conditions can only get worse: not, however, because of Great Britain’s exit from the EU, but because of the deterioration of the world economic crisis. Another consideration is also worth making: for some days, “the emperor was naked”, i.e. the mechanism of democracy (what could be more democratic than a popular referendum, in which everyone – none excluded – gives his/ her own opinion?!) revealed its fallacies. Indeed, in the (few) days following, many people – observers and politicians – asked themselves: “what’s the sense, then, of leaving such a delicate matter up to the “opinion of the man/woman in the street”, when it isn’t even clear to us, the “professionals”, the “experts”? (Particularly if the result contradicts all expectations!). Oh dear, but isn’t that how democracy works? Doesn’t it delude us that all of us, all equal before the law, with our consciences and knowledge (as well, of course, the good God!) are capable of saying what we think about anything – as long as we inform ourselves…? That is how the beloved and blessed “democracy” works: knowing full well that consciences and knowledge are firmly in the hands of those who hold the power (schools, churches, mass communications, social customs, economic interests, etc.). This is what “armoured democracy”, or, perhaps better, “democratic dictatorship” is: the use of statistical consensus to authorize the rule of the bourgeoisie.
(see our article “C’è del marcio in Gran Bretagna. Appunti sulla situazione sociale”, Il programma comunista, no.6/2015).
Growing social tension in the USA
“Racial issue” or “social issue”? The cold-blooded murders of African Americans by the “forces of law and order”, which become increasingly numerous year by year in the United States, and the isolated episodes of individual responses that have taken place since last July (such as that of the Dallas gunman who shot five policemen dead), have held the stage for some time in the mass media, later to be pushed back into the background of other “sensational” news. But the question remains dramatically in the forefront. There is a single answer: a social issue, or – better still – a class issue. The conditions of an enormous sector of the US proletarian class, mostly consisting of African-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Mexican-Americans, Latin-Americans in general, with a considerable number of “poor whites”, is worsening from year to year, despite the constant, bombastic announcements of “recovery” which, particularly on the occasion of the revolting electoral fairground, are launched by all representatives (from the right or the “left”) of the US ruling class. Unfortunately an individual answer offers no prospects but merely amounts to suicide, as we stress in the press release printed in this issue in Italian. Very different prospects must open up once again for the US proletariat, if it wishes to retaliate against the attack of capital, overcoming all the splits that have constantly and skilfully been fuelled over the past century and a half by the ruling ideology: i.e. that the problem is in fact “racism”. “Racism” is one of the tools bourgeois power uses to rule the proletarian class (one of the most disgusting ideological and material tools brought into play) and this is true for the United States as for any other country, immersed in the disintegration that marks the world economic crisis. The prospect must once again become that of organization on class bases and certainly not on the basis of race, in order to respond to state attack and repression at all levels. And on the subject of immature and counter-productive responses, there is another issue that is gradually emerging and also belongs to the strategies of class rule: several times, in the agitated discussions and reactions following the Dallas shootings, the phantom of the “separate black nation” has returned to haunt us. Vague and absurd as the project may sound, it has a long history behind it that we shall very soon be reconstructing, partly in order to show its tragic responsibilities, dating back, once again, to the counter-revolution that has weighed on the world proletariat like a ton of bricks for over ninety years now.
(see our article “USA: Bolle sociali (e non solo finanziarie) in vista”, Il programma comunista, no.1/2015)
“Coup and “counter-coup” in Turkey
Here is yet another demonstration of how the world economic crisis provokes splits in the ruling class itself, setting bourgeois factions against one another in more or less open conflict. The theme will have to be taken up and studied more: but the serious danger is that, certainly not too far in the future, the proletariat will be caught up in this conflict that is not its own and that in this way the tremendous virus of nationalism will be revived. As happened in Egypt, for example (with the skilfully manipulated split between the pro- Al Sisi factions and pro- Morsi factions), this “partisan side-taking” has profound effects on our class: it has tragic consequences, mutilates the ability to fight and prepares even darker, future “alignments”. History teaches us this and contemporary reality provides tragic evidence of it, with the inter-imperial wars that are causing bloodshed in large areas of the world (from Libya to Afghanistan, including Syria) and that are already encouraging, in the same variegated world of “left-wing” counter-revolutionary opportunism, the spread of nationalism.
In the meantime, the repeated acts of, more or less “isolated”, terrorism have almost made us forget the daily massacre of thousands upon thousands of civilians in Libya, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the desperate flight of as many thousands of civilians from the theatres of war across lands and seas that all too often turn into coffins. This is the highest expression of the civilization of capital! From every pore, it exudes violence, which swells, more alarmingly day by day, in the world of capitalist production. The wars being fought between imperialisms for the control of energy sources, market competition and the geo-political redrafting of entire areas, are assuming catastrophic dimensions and laying the bases for a new, generalized world war in this very European “jungle of nationalisms”. The very function of Isis (a band of mercenaries in the pay of one power or another, operating to destabilize both the already destabilized Middle East and a Europe shaken by considerable nationalistic and chauvinistic tremors) is becoming clearer and clearer: in particular when, in the latest episodes of bloodshed, its attraction is felt by the individual, fragile, blackmailable worker, sensitive to slogans that have been purposely created to influence and mobilize. Quite another thing from the still open “national issue”, quite a different thing from “anti-imperialism” as some naive souls would have it! The deadly fever of the world economic crisis is making itself felt here, too! Just add a Far East in the process of re-arming and a sinking Latin America, and the picture is all too eloquent.
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Faced with this picture, we cannot help but insist on the need for the only tool capable of preparing our class to fight back, rebel and pose the question of power: the revolutionary party. It may seem a mere refrain, a hypnotic mantra. It is not. Either we grasp the urgency, starting right now, of reinforcing and establishing international roots for our party, with all its now century-old experience of battle against the opportunism, revisionism and counter-revolution that, in all their manifestations, have massacred the world proletariat. Or else, tomorrow it really will be too late: the capitalist mode of production will celebrate its bloody feasts by setting proletarians one against another, in national alignments (with their relative ideological and religious guises) and, in the umpteenth attempt to get rid of excess of production and start operating at full speed once again, they will lead these proletarians to slaughter, to the extent of threatening the very existence of humanity itself.
This is the need and urgency that the younger generations of proletarians must become aware of (and it is the task of the revolutionary party to work towards this), vulnerable and inert as they are at present, fascinated by false myths and drugged by thousands of virtual incitements, paralyzed by a thousand fears and a thousand illusions, the victims of a dominant ideology that is increasingly crude, rotten and unsuccessful. They must understand that the only way is to work, with dedication and passion, clarity and continuity, for and within the party – our party.
August-September 2016
International Communist Party