LA VRIT

THE TRUTH
THEORETICAL REVIEW OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL

Imperialist War and Revolution

Statement by the International Secretariat of The Fourth International On the Threat of War In Syria and Iran

European Treaties: Will All of Europe Follow in Greeces Footsteps?

February 19, 2012, in Madrid: 500,000 workers and youth mobilize against the reform of the Spanish Labor Code

ISSUE N 73 (NEW SERIES) - MARCH 2012

PRICE : US$5 - 4 EUROS

The politics of Communism stands only to gain from a truthful clarification of reality. Untruth is needed for salvaging false reputations, but not for the education of the masses. The workers need the truth as an instrument of revolutionary action. Your paper bears the name Vrit (Truth). This name, like all others, has been amply abused. Nevertheless it is a good and honourable name. The truth is always revolutionary. To lay bare the truth of their position before the oppressed is to lead them to the high road of revolution. Leon Trotsky

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THEORETICAL MAGAZINE OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL

Contents LA VERITE-THE TRUTH No. 73

Imperialist war and revolution Statement by the International Secretariat of the Fourth International on the threat of war in Syria and Iran Europe, the crisis...and the decisive factor By Daniel Gluckstein Germanys role in the crisis that is shaking Europe By Marc Lacaze Problems of the revolutionary crisis in Greece By Christel Keiser and Dominique Ferr Egypt: Mubarak fell one year ago By Samir Hassan Tunisia, one year later By Lucien Gauthier The Chinese working class, the bureaucracy and Obamas American pivot to Asia (Part One) By Alain Frandor Arms economy and capitalisms crisis of disintegration By Pierre Cise, Daniel Gluckstein and Jean-Pierre Raffi United States Latin America. The class struggle today: Prepare for the worst! (IMF) By Markus Sokol Once again on the outraged By Andreu Camps A review that supports NATOs intervention in Libya: Inprecor By Dominique Ferr p. 1

p. 7

p. 11

p. 15

p. 21

p. 27

p. 31

p. 39

p. 47

p. 53

p. 57

Imperialist War and Revolution

Statement by the International Secretariat of the Fourth International on the Threat of War in Syria and Iran
At the very moment this issue of La Vrit-The Truth goes to press, the threat of war is growing. Ever-increasing calls for military intervention in Syria are being heard. Israel is reaffirming its aim of bombing Iran in the spring. A century ago, Lenin wrote that the historic period which humankind had entered was that of imperialism, the epoch of wars and revolutions. More than ever, the world political situation totally confirms the relevance of that statement. The proliferation of a series of wars since the first Gulf War in 1991, which, according to a remark by the President of the United States following the break-up of the Soviet Union, was meant to inaugurate a new world order involves imperialism directly: in 1999, NATOs military intervention in Serbia and Kosovo, the final phase of the war to break up Yugoslavia initiated in the 1990s. In 2001, we saw the launching of the bombing and then the military occupation of Afghanistan. In 2003, Iraq was invaded once again. In 2011, it was the turn of Libya. That is without even mentioning the military occupation of Haiti and the very many so-called regional conflicts, notably in Africa, fed by imperialism. Capitalism, that social system in its death-throes, has unleashed a veritable war on the workers and peoples of the whole world, a war to break up nations. In seeking to resist the barbarism into which imperialism is dragging them, the workers and peoples have no other solution than to move towards revolution and emancipation. The imperialist order As early as 21 January 2011, faced with the revolutionary developments underway in Tunisia, the Fourth International stated that it was indeed a question of a proletarian revolution, and not a so-called Arab revolution. That revolutionary process, which spread mainly into Egypt, is now knocking on the doors of Europe. It is a question of the world march towards revolution against the imperialist order. The escalating threats of a war of aggression against Syria and Iran derive from this crisis of capital. This is expressed by the crisis of US political domination, whose international order has been destabilised by the development of the proletarian revolution in Tunisia and Egypt (and its world repercussions), and by its own crisis of decay, elements which are inextricably linked. In order to protect the world imperialist order, US imperialism would need to crush the planet under the jackboot of a fascist-style dictatorship. This would be necessary both in the United States as well as internationally, but the conditions have not come together for achieving this. The dominant US class has shown itself incapable of overcoming its own crisis (of which 9/11 opened a new phase), which has continued to deepen to an unprecedented extent, and of carrying out a restructuring of the world order under its control. This is leading it to seek to transfer all the effects of its crisis onto the other imperialisms and to provoke a series of explosions on every continent, without being able to control them. The far-reaching consequences of the widespread crisis of the capitalist system of exploitation initiated in 2008 in the United States, the very heart of imperialism, by what is referred to as the subprime crisis are being expressed in the crisis of US imperialisms domination, which today is combining with the processes of world revolution underway in Tunisia and Egypt. This explosive combination acted as a detonator in 2011 for the long-contained crisis of the European Union, thus opening the way to an accelerated march towards its disintegration. On this occasion, US imperialism, took a new step in taking control over the European Union and its governments, through the introduction of the IMF into the European plans (Troika). From this point of view, the mobilisations by the workers of Europe, whatever forms of counter-revolutionary action taken by the apparatuses that lead the labour movement in order to contain it, form part of this global upsurge in the class struggle against imperialism. In the countries of Europe, governments of both left and right are trying to push for forms of national unity in order to impose on the peoples plans that are designed to carry out the demands of the markets by using austerity and deregulation; in order to achieve this, they must attack the independence of the trade union organisations, which are being called upon to become part of accompanying those plans. This is the meaning of the adoption by the countries of the European Union on 1 and 2 March of a new European treaty that destroys all the rights and guarantees won by the working classes through struggle (see the file on Europe in this issue). War: a necessary condition, but not enough on its own The march towards the proletarian revolution in Tunisia and Egypt was certainly directed against the regimes of Ben Ali and Mubarak, but also against their leaders masters: the imperialist powers. To this extent, it contributed greatly to destabilising the US order in a part of the world where the slightest questioning of the existing balance threatens the very conditions for imperialist domination at the world level. The significance of the fall of Mubarak is international. Indeed, Egypt holds a special place and role in the region. In the late 1970s, the agreement reached between the military apparatus that runs the country and US imperialism resulted in the signing of the Camp David Accords in 1978, so-called peace accords with the State of Israel. In exchange for peace between Egypt and the State of Israel, Camp David marked the beginning of an escalation of the confinement and crushing of the Palestinian people, with the complicity of most of the governments of the Arab League countries. The accords

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signed at Camp David in the United States under the aegis of the US administration were the first steps towards establishing the direct domination of US imperialism over that part of the globe (the worlds leading oilproducing region). The Camp David Accords made possible the signing in 1993 of the Oslo Accords, agreements which installed a Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip and West Bank that committed itself to guaranteeing Israels security and abandoning the PLO Charter, the aim of which was a single free, secular and democratic Palestine where Jews and Arabs could live as equals. Shortly after the bombing of Iraq and the second war waged against it, the line of the so-called two states covering the historic territory of Palestine was developed. But the continuing mobilisation by the Palestinian people, their refusal to give up the demand of the right of return for the millions of Palestinians living outside Palestine, demonstrates the relevance today of the Palestinian Revolution. That line was the starting-point of successive US administrations, Democrat as well as Republican, for developing what they called the GME (Greater Middle East policy). The aim was and is to use the GME to break up the whole of the Middle East and Near East, including Afghanistan and Pakistan, to remodel that region so as to guarantee direct US control over it. The Greater Middle East means putting trade barriers into question, it means deregulation, privatisation and the installation of military forces under US control: this is indeed the direction in which all of the regions governments, ordered to go further with reforms, have been pushed by the demands of the IMF. Tunisia and Egypt, the leading parties of which were members of the Socialist International, are countries which had gone furthest down that road, prompting the peoples to react. The fall of Ben Ali and then Mubarak put the organising of that plan into question. As far as US imperialism was concerned, it needed first and foremost to put an urgent stop to the revolutionary wave that was sweeping the region. That urgency demanded war in Libya. A propaganda campaign was organised in the media, denouncing Gaddafi and his regime as being bloodthirsty something that was well-known by all, since the Americans as well as the French and British had up to that point supported the regime and received Gaddafi on official visits with all due honours. But Gaddafi was no longer able to play the role assigned to him by the great powers. Imperialism then proceeded to eliminate Gaddafi, with British and French imperialisms leading the charge, but under the leadership of the US ruler. In so doing, it destroyed Libya, broke it up, turned it into another Somalia, deprived of any sovereignty, and therefore denied the Libyan people any opportunity to express its will democratically. That attack heralded what imperialism is preparing for Syria, and eventually shortly for Iran. Faced with the risk that the revolutionary wave which had put the dictatorial regimes in Tunisia and Egypt into question could spread, imperialism needed to prevent the masses from acting independently, to divert it from its aims, to place it under the control of imperialism and its agents. From this point of view, the war in Libya is a direct threat to the Tunisian and Egyptian peoples, but also to all the other peoples. But although the war of aggression to break up Libya was a necessary condition for defending the imperialist order, it was not enough on its own. Democratic transition In order to protect the regimes following imperialisms orders, they needed to be reformed so as to keep their main element, in other words their links of subordination. In the name of democracy, US imperialism introduced the line of democratic transition. Yesterdays enemy, Islamism, became todays ally. In Tunisia, Ennahda formed a government of national unity with two secular parties, one of which is a member of the Socialist International. In Morocco, the Islamists joined the government following the recent elections. Libyas new government proposes to reestablish Sharia law. And in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood reached an agreement with the army. Let us recall that immediately following the fall of Mubarak, the US administration declared itself ready to recognise any new regime provided that it recognised the international treaties signed by Egypt. Obviously, this referred to the Camp David Accords. The positive answer given by the Egyptian military apparatus was not enough for US imperialism, which kept up its pressure until the Muslim Brotherhood, which had always condemned the Camp David Accords as an act of treachery, declared that it would not put those agreements into question. The basis of national unity between the army and the Muslim Brotherhood was then achieved, much to the satisfaction of the US administration. (see the article Mubarak fell one year ago in this issue) The result of this offensive by US imperialism was the war that broke out throughout the Sahel region. Libya has disintegrated, now subject to the different mafia-style cliques and to religious, tribal and other militias. Border incidents between Tunisia and Algeria are much more frequent, involving militias coming from Libya. Thousands of weapons are in circulation in the region. Today, Mali is a country at war, with a so-called Tuareg army and mercenaries from Libya who want autonomy for North Mali on one side, and on the other side of the country a guerrilla war being waged by an AlQaeda group. In the name of aiding the Malian army, US airplanes bombed the north of Mali on 4 March. Algeria is under particular threat. A country located centrally in the Maghreb and in the Sahel, its government did not comply with several of imperialisms demands, partly regaining control of its economy and refusing to allow its military forces to come under US control. Since then, the country has been subjected to a campaign aimed at provoking a revolution, which in the imperialist vocabulary means disintegration. The Friends of Syria It is in these conditions that one must understand the holding of a Friends of Syria conference on 24 February, which brought together most of the Arab League countries and representatives of French, British and US imperialisms. A delegation from the Syrian National Council (SNC) officially participated in the conference. The SNC is a grouping of opposition figures who are mostly located abroad, and who met in Turkey to found the SNC as a government in exile or provisional government of Syria. Its main leaders are linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. The conference decided to take a first step towards recognising the

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SNC and to fund the activities of the Free Syrian Army. This is exactly the same scenario that played out in Paris a few weeks before the intervention in Libya, with a conference of Friends of Libya being held and moves to recognise the National Transitional Council in Libya. This is not about Syria. It is about the world order, for which Syria and its people are supposed to pay the price. For decades, Syria has played an important role in maintaining the existing order in that part of the world, especially in relation to Palestine. The regime created under the aegis of Hafez al-Assad was part of the game being played between US imperialism and the Kremlin bureaucracy. In 1976, it was the Syrian army which bloodily wiped out the bastions of the Palestinian Revolution in Lebanon. In 1991, Syria was one of the Arab states which participated in the first world crusade against Iraq, all the while presenting itself as the main source of support for the Palestinians. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Syria was forced to readjust its world policy. Hafez al-Assads government greatly increased its acts of rapprochement with imperialism. The most significant turning-point was the Syrian governments reaction to the attacks on New York on 9 September 2001. The Syrian regime, which had long been on the US administrations list of terrorist states, condemned terrorism. In 2003, the Syrian government supported and helped the US intervention in Iraq. During that same period, the military regime which had developed an Arab nationalist and socialistic demagogic discourse, based on intense political repression combined with a protectionist economic policy functioning through subsidies was obliged to carry out a turn, expressed in the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon in 2005 and the implementation of the economic reforms demanded by the IMF. The privatisation programme, price increases and the end of public subsidies plunged the vast majority of the Syrian population into poverty. The existence of a centralised Syrian state whose decisions did not depend directly on imperialism, playing an essential role in relation to Lebanon and refusing to isolate Iran, was able to appear as a stabilising factor, but it now came into contradiction with the policy of US imperialism as expressed in the latters attack on Libya. The policy of responding to the IMFs demands worsened regional inequalities that until then had been more or less tempered by the regimes subsidies. The worsening of those regional inequalities plunged some regions into increased poverty. The city of Homs illustrates this fact: the countrys third biggest city, it has seen the arrival of tens of thousands of young rural workers driven off their lands, adding to the growing ranks of unemployed in the citys outskirts and forming shanty-towns like the Baba Amr district, which recently was the scene of the most violent fighting. The turn carried out by the regime produced deep contradictions within its ranks, between those who wanted to go further in collaborating with the United States and those who were opposed, resulting in the settling of scores and executions. The tension was so high that, following the fall of Ben Ali in Tunisia, in January 2011 the Syrian government announced that it would pay 11 dollars per month to the most impoverished families. Straightaway, the IMF strongly urged Syria to stop giving food subsidies. The IMF also recommended an increase in electricity prices, which were low due to state subsidies. It was this situation that stirred up the existing specific local characteristics, helped along by various groups and foreign secret services, but also by certain factions resulting from the regime. In fact, Syria is a mosaic of populations and religions (Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Druze, Eastern Christians, Kurds, Arabs, etc.), held together for half a century by a regime whose leaders, especially the military officers, come from the Alawite community. Faced with the initial mobilisations that took place in Syria, rather like everywhere else in the Middle East, the regime reacted the way it always had, with repression. But thanks to the revolutionary processes underway in Tunisia and Egypt, which had resulted in the dictators being driven from power, the situation in the region and internationally was no longer the same. The Syrian people must pay the bill In a world and regional situation in which US imperialism could not accept the march towards revolution (against dictatorial regimes in crisis that were showing their weakness), the activities of different groups linked to foreign countries the Muslim Brotherhood organisation, long repressed by the regime, as well as the gambit by Qatar and Saudi Arabia on behalf of imperialism pushed towards an uncontrolled development of centrifugal forces. For an initial period, imperialism no longer only condemned the repression after the event. On the contrary, it called on the Syrian regime to reform itself, in other words to slavishly carry out all its demands. When forced to do so, imperialism is capable of retreating in order to save what is important. Faced with the revolutionary mobilisation of the Egyptian people which, as it unfolded, was more deeply marked by the activity of the working class, imperialism first called on Mubarak to carry out reforms, then decided to cut him loose in order to protect the military regime. The fall of Mubarak was a first victory for the Egyptian people against that military regime and against imperialism. Imperialism knows how to sacrifice leaders and regimes in order to protect what is important to it its control in the face of the revolutionary mobilisation of a people. It also knows and it has lots of experience in this area how to eliminate regimes with which it has long co-operated but which have become an obstacle to its policy. The ultimate fate of Bashar al-Assads regime is today of secondary importance for imperialism. The humanitarian mobilisation, the recourse to the UN and the European Union, and the sanctions are the prelude to a new attack, the aim of which, once again, would be to totally destroy a states sovereignty, to break up a nation and to deliver it up to an endless series of ethnic, regional and religious conflicts. This is what is underway today regarding Syria. This is what is looming shortly in the case of Iran. Until recently, therefore, US imperialism was calling on the regime to reform itself at the same time as formally condemning the repression. Then, as events developed, it began to envisage the departure of Bashar al-Assad in order to seek a solution that would ultimately maintain the military regime in Syria, or part of the military apparatus within a national unity government. But there is a difference: Syria is not Egypt. In Egypt, it was the revolutionary mobilisation of the masses

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that drove out Mubarak; in Syria, as soon as the first demonstrations took place, imperialism and its agents intervened to push for civil war. In so doing they prevented any mobilisation by the masses immediately following the first demonstrations, setting up military groups fighting against the regimes army. The unleashing of a civil war means that the people, caught in a crossfire, have gone to ground and are being subjected to violence and barbarism on all sides. This is an exact repeat of what happened in Libya. The agencies and secret services are deliberately acting to push towards civil war, and are using media images of fighting to justify military intervention by imperialism. The contradictions and divisions within the dominant US class, the disagreements that are emerging on the question of the Middle East, are pushing it to take risks. Certain sectors of the dominant class are calling for direct intervention in Syria and support for the war that Israel wants to launch against Iran; others are hesitating, opposing this call or stalling for time. As far as imperialism is concerned, it is not about human rights, nor about democracy, nor a peoples rights; rather, faced with revolution, it is about the need to maintain its control, and this is the yardstick against which the current Syrian regime is being measured. No to foreign interference, no to war This imperialist interference already underway and an open military intervention would lead to the breaking up of Syria. In fact, ten years after the intervention in Iraq, that country has been broken up, divided between Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish zones, the latter being almost autonomous. Intervention in Syria would have the same consequences as in Libya, another country that has been broken up. But Syria is not Libya. Bordering on Iraq, the State of Israel, Turkey and Lebanon, Syria occupies a special place, thanks to its history. If this country, a mosaic of different cultures languages and peoples were to blow apart, this would have immediate repercussions for the neighbouring countries. What would become of the Syrian territory currently inhabited mostly by Kurds, bordering on the Kurdish territory of Iraq, which is quasi-autonomous? And both of these areas border on territory in the south of Turkey that is mainly inhabited by Kurds. The offensive against Syria is linked to the offensive on Iran. The blockade of Iran, carried out by the great powers for some months, is in turn preparing the breaking-up of Iran. The State of Israels threat to bomb Iran is speeding up the process. Even though the Obama administration is trying to rein back the State of Israel, it still intends to break up Iran, as it does Syria. Its policy leads to the breaking up of nations and states. No zone of the region is meant to escape being controlled and pillaged by imperialism. This is the reason behind its offensive against Syria and Iran. It would open the way to new acts of violence, to new wars, imperialist adventures and barbarism. This new offensive aimed at breaking up nations also represents an additional attack on the Palestinian people, whose unremitting struggle for the right to a nation and therefore to the land of Palestine has for more than 60 years forbidden any stabilisation of the situation under imperialist control. From this point of view, it is significant that in Gaza, Hamas the Gaza branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has differentiated itself from the Syrian regime, thus aligning itself with the demands of imperialism, after accepting the roadmap put forward by the Quartet (United States, China, European Union and Russia) for resolving the Palestinian question. But this region is not the only one under threat. The whole planet could suffer the consequences of this unrest. In November 2011, an Emergency Conference against war, military occupation and the breaking up of nations was held in Algiers, at the initiative of the Workers party of Algeria and the General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA). The International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples supported that conference. Delegations of labour and democratic activists from over 40 countries passed a resolution that declared: We condemn imperialisms aims, to pillage the peoples wealth and dominate them, which motivate that intervention [in Libya Editor]. We condemn the intervention, one objective of which is to threaten the peoples who are fighting for their rights and their sovereignty, another to impose a foreign protectorate on them, confiscating their right to determine their own present and their future. We condemn the plans of the great powers, including the US plan for a Greater Middle East, aiming to break up nations along tribal, ethnic and religious lines with pillage and oppression as their goal. () There is an emergency when the great powers prepare the conditions for widespread war in the Mashreq region, at the same time continuing to deny the Palestinian people their inalienable historic rights, the right of all refugees to return to their homes, subjecting that people to confinement in Gaza and the West Bank, to repression and repeated attacks. We declare our full support for the aspirations of the Syrian people for democracy, for equality, but we strongly condemn the manoeuvring and conspiracies embodied in the exploitation of those aspirations by the imperialist powers and their sub-contractors to turn them into a pretext for foreign military intervention in Syria. We oppose any foreign military intervention anywhere in the world, and therefore in Syria and Iran, with or without the UNs backing. () There is an emergency when those same imperialist powers and the international institutions unleash a social war in Europe and the United States through murderous austerity plans, in order to save the speculators, the banks and insurance companies. There is an emergency when the great powers raise interference in a countrys affairs into a world system, taking it upon themselves to decide the fate of nations and peoples. This declaration sounds the alarm for the whole of the worlds labour movement on the eve of a possible intervention in Syria and Iran. Conversely, the leaders of the Socialist International are hoping and praying for military intervention. Parties that emerged from the CPs, especially in Europe (in Latin America, conversely, the parties that emerged from Castroism or the CPs are supporting Bashar al-Assads regime), or members of the United Secretariat (USec) (1) are declaring their support for the Syrian people against the regime. They are half-heartedly saying they do not want a military intervention by imperialism. But they are calling for the arming of the opposition militias, something that some

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sectors of imperialism are already currently doing, using Qatar as an intermediary militias which themselves are calling loud and clear for foreign military intervention. The Fourth International considers that the prime enemy of nations and their sovereignty is imperialism, and that one can in no way compromise the defence of the peoples against imperialism. The Fourth International in favour of revolution The Fourth International stands squarely on the same ground on which the labour movement was constituted in the 19th century, that of the struggle against wars waged by the great powers. The Fourth International declares itself against any intervention in Syria and Iran, even on humanitarian pretexts, just as it did for Libya. War in Syria would result in even more deaths and suffering for the Syrian people. Supporting and helping the Syrian people means defending their right as a nation to stand up against any attempt to break it up, for the national framework is the one within which the peoples can drive out the regimes that act as the vassals of the great imperialist powers. Contrary to the imperialist solutions, the workers and youth of Tunisia, by mobilising and relying on their historic trade union organisation, the UGTT, prevented the country being dragged into civil war and barbarism, and that despite the many dead and wounded resulting from Ben Alis repression. In contrast with Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq, the workers in Tunisia were at the heart of the peoples mobilisation, using their organisation the UGTT through strikes and street mobilisations. They thus federated all the layers of the population. In short, they led the rising of the people against the small minority that was following the orders of the foreign powers. That revolution came up against and continues to come up against the obstacles raised by imperialism and its support troops, such as the transformation of the Constituent Assembly into legislative elections, and the formation on this basis of a government of national unity composed of an Islamist party, a party of the right and a member party of the Socialist International; a government which is subject to imperialism and is attacking the workers and the UGTT. From this point of view, it is significant that on the eve of the Friends of Syria summit in Tunis, a demonstration took place that was called in defence of the UGTT, which for several weeks had been subjected to attacks and provocations. An impressive demonstration, which brought together as many people as had attended the demonstrations at the time of Ben Alis fall, and whose most popular slogan was: Neither Qatar, nor the United States. Two days later, the UGTTs executive committee passed a resolution condemning the threat of military intervention in Syria (see the article Tunisia, one year on). This question is international: the existence of organisations of the working class, especially of trade unions, the workers elementary organising framework, expresses the fact whatever the nature of the apparatuses leading the organisations that society is divided into classes with irreconcilable interests. In the Maghreb, in Europe, in the United States and elsewhere, opposing the policy that consists of involving the trade union organisations in the implementation of the capitalists plans means maintaining and protecting the framework for the working classs struggle against capital. Opposing the actions of the labour movements leading apparatuses, which would like to accompany those plans, means helping the working class to overcome the obstacles raised on the path to its mobilisation. It is through the mobilisation of the workers on their own ground, with their demands, necessarily standing up against subordination to imperialism and its demands, that the sovereign nation can be defended, in other words that a free and independent people can be defended, by breaking all the links that subject it to the imperialist powers. The only path to peace, democracy, freedom and national independence is the path of mobilising the masses on their own demands, the economic, social and labour content of which is inseparable from their democratic demands and stands against the regimes acting as transmission-belts for imperialism. The Fourth Internationals objective is not the reform or the humanisation of the imperialist system, but its overthrow. This is the meaning of the Fourth Internationals resolute opposition to the threat of war against Syria and Iran, and of its unconditional support for the peoples struggle for social and national emancipation, which the peoples of Tunisia and Egypt, of the whole region, of Europe and the whole world are seeking to achieve. Down with war, down with exploitation! is the slogan for the future and for protecting humankind. International Secretariat of the Fourth International 6 March 2012

ENDNOTE (1) In a statement by the International Committee of the United Secretariat, which falsely claims to be the Fourth International, one can thus read, regarding Syria: Left-wing Syrian military forces are engaged in this insurrection so that the peoples self-organisation can develop! Left-wing military forces armed and funded by imperialism or Qatar! As for the self-organisation of a people subjected to violence and civil war Behind this radical language lies the cover for imperialism provided by the far left.

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Europe, the Crisis and the Decisive Factor

By Daniel Gluckstein
The signing of two new European treaties within a few weeks of each other in early 2012 expresses both the extent of the European Union institutions disintegration and, conversely, the farreaching movement towards proletarian revolution. The first treaty (signed on 2 February 2012) created the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), a European international monetary fund. Like the IMF, it extends loans to countries in difficulty accompanied by conditionality provisions. Like the IMF, it has every power to impose structural adjustment plans and check on their implementation on the ground by sending in its own experts. Like the IMF, it is funded through contributions that are proportional to each states economic strength. It has one particular aspect: the IMF has official representation within the ESM, written into its statutes. The ESM lives up to the name given to it by the US authorities: a firebreak. Its primary function is to protect US finance capital from the convulsions of the crisis of disintegration that brought about the collapse of the Greek economy and threatens other countries of Europe with similar developments. The function of acting as a firebreak is, moreover, the root cause of the crisis that has marked the birth of the ESM from the very beginning. Supported by a dozen European heads of state and government, the US administration in effect demanded that the ESM should be funded at a much higher level than initially envisaged (700 billion euros), with the avowed aim of protecting US financial interests from European contagion. German imperialism, which alone is providing more than a quarter of the ESMs funds, is finding the pill hard to swallow (see the article on Germany in this issue). What is this money for? Following the example of billions upon billions of dollars swallowed up since the start of the crisis, it is for bailing out the bankers, speculators and other capitalists. The enormous amounts made available in the name of helping Greece are only helpingthe banks and are driving the people into poverty. On 2 March, the heads of state and government met once more in Brussels, this time to sign the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union (TSCG). The ESM treaty formulates respect for the rules of the TSCG as a condition for obtaining loans. The text of the TSCG devotes a long section to reiterating everything that already figures in the Maastricht Treaty, signed and ratified twenty years ago. What does this mean? Let us remember that the Maastricht Treaty created the European Union. Its major decision was to introduce the euro, administered by a European Central Bank given responsibility for making sure that the famous Maastricht criteria (public debt not to exceed 60 percent of GDP, budget deficit at or below 3 percent of GDP, the obligation to implement free and undistorted competition, the blanket imposition of privatisation-destruction, etc.) are respected. At the time, Hans Tietmeyer, one of the German central banks officials, had said: We can no longer exploit exchange rates. () The burden of adjustment () will henceforward rest exclusively on national labour costs. For the last twenty years, governments of every political colour have used and abused this variable, attacking social welfare systems and labour rights and trying at every stage to associate the trade union organisations with this dirty work. Extremely violent blows have been delivered. The very existence of nation-states and the framework of political democracy built within them are under threat. But it is also a fact that, in every country concerned, those attacks have given rise to the greatest of class struggles against them. To be sure, these mobilisations have come up against the refusal by the leaderships of the labour organisations to organise united action against the counter-reforms: without the policy of accompaniment applied by the Confederation of German Trade Unions (DBG), the Social-democrat Chancellor Schroder would never have been able to impose his destructive deregulation measures; in France, during the big movement against the pensions reform in 2010, it was the obstinate refusal by the leaderships (especially of the main trade union confederation) to formulate the demand to withdraw the counter-reform which allowed it to be passed by parliament, despite the mobilisation of millions of workers; in Spain and Italy, shameful pacts signed by the leaders of the trade union organisations allowed destructive counter-reforms to be passed. Major blows were delivered against the working class. But that proved not to be enough. Because in every country, the workers once again took the path of the class struggle, whatever difficulties they faced, seeking to make use of their organisations despite the policy of their leaderships, in order to use them as weapons in the fight to resist and to win back their gains. Also, from 2007-8 onwards, the crisis beginning in the United States and very quickly spreading to the Old World in the superficial form of the subprime crisis, then the debt crisis revealed itself to be a crisis of disintegration for the whole capitalist economy, and the Maastricht criteria were shattered. Every European state today has debt levels in the region of 100 percent. Public deficits have reached twice the level authorised by the Maastricht Treaty, and beyond. This has resulted in the inability of the capitalist class to deal with its own crisis, and at the same time, for reasons that refer back to the very nature of the capitalist system in its stage of decay (1), the resistance of the working class. In a way, the provisions of the TSCG are an inverted expression of the crystallised class struggle. It is the resistance of the working class that has made it impossible for capital to go as far

LA VERITE/THE TRUTH
as it needed to in its destructive offensive. The pressure brought to bear by US finance capital, expressed in particular through the credit rating agencies, is focused on this question. When Standard & Poors downgraded France in early 2012, it accused the country of having excessive labour market rigidities. US finance capital ordered the European governments, who could do nothing about it: You must hit your own working class much harder, and smash those labour market rigidities let us translate: Labour Code, collective bargaining agreements, social welfare systems, all the guarantees won through the class struggle and, on that condition, maybe we the owners of finance capital will once again have confidence in you. A ratings downgrade is not an economic assessment, but above all a social and political assessment on the grounds of the class struggle delivered by the capitalist class, which sets its conditions. That is the whole of the new TSCG treaty in a nutshell not only the treaty, but also the context in which it was put on the agenda. The treaty is of an unprecedented brutality. Its full implementation would imply the inflicting of a major defeat on the working class and the taking of a decisive step towards transforming the European Union into a supranational dictatorship, dismembering all that is left of the segments of political democracy and sovereignty of the nations of Europe. (2) Passing such a plan would imply wiping out all forms of labour movement independence. For, despite the capitulations and the pacts to accompany the plans for dismantlement, the working class is still standing. Thus, in Spain, just a few weeks after trade union leaders Toxo and Mendez agreed to sign a shameful pact with the Zapataro government, faced with the first batch of measures by the new Rajoy government, they were forced to call for demonstrations. They mustered one and a half million workers and youth, who called on them openly to prepare a general strike. The result: after signing the TSCG, Rajoy announced that he will not be able to implement it! This expresses a fundamental law of the class struggle: in the first phase of their mobilisation, the masses inevitably turn to their old organisations and, sometimes despite the orientation of the leaderships, seek to take hold of them to use as tools in their class struggle. This, in a certain form, is what happened in Tunisia, when the workers used the old UGTT trade union federation as a tool in their class struggle, the very expression of the existence of the class as a working class in itself, conscious of its interests and fighting to defend them. Here we have the whole paradox of the European situation, which is not likely to become any calmer in the next period. Obviously, this situation has been made possible by the fact that at the political level, the leaders of the parties historically born of the labour movement have ages ago accepted the very framework of the European Unions institutions. Papandreou in Greece, Zapatero in Spain and Socrates in Portugal have faithfully and loyally agreed to implement every one of the murderous plans dictated by the capitalist class. But, let us repeat, despite this constant pressure towards a sacred union of subordinating the labour organisations to capital, the working class is still standing. It is seeking the path of struggle. In Greece itself, after more than a year of crisis, one destructive plan after another and one-day general strikes which most often were led into a dead-end by leaderships that want to protect the precarious existence of governments that are bowing the knee to the Troika, the situation is leading to an open revolutionary crisis. The Greek people cannot accept being reduced to nothing solely because of the declared need to bail out the banks and bankrupt speculators. The orientation of the masses is determined first by the objective conditions of decaying capitalism, and second, by the treacherous politics of the old workers organizations. Of these factors, the first, of course, is the decisive one: the laws of history are stronger than the bureaucratic apparatus. This statement in the founding programme of the Fourth International is essential for whoever wants to understand the combination of contradictory aspects that mark the situation today in Europe and to derive from this a leverage-point for action. The political fight against ratification of the TSCG concentrates, at the time of writing, the fight for class independence. If one takes into consideration the whole architecture of the ESM and TSCG treaties, this can be summarised in one function: to be a bludgeon in the hands of US finance capital for protecting its interests and forcing the European governments to crush the working class and impose a corporatist framework. (3) This why the sections and militant activists of the Fourth International are acting to help achieve unity between the workers and their organisations, in order to put a stop to the ratification of the TSCG. They are doing so throughout the continent, within the framework opened by the internationalist rally held on 1 October 2011 in Paris with workers and activists of all tendencies, coming together from all over Europe in a single struggle against the plans of the EU-IMFECB troika. They are doing so in each country, in forms that correspond to the national situation and their own forces. This is a question of defending the working class as a class, but also of defending political democracy (which is inseparable from it) and national sovereignty. Within this movement, the greatest differentiations are emerging. Even when the senior levels of the labour organisations seem ready to set out along the path of accompanying capitals plans, the same does not apply to all levels of the labour organisations, where cadres and activists certainly with illusions, confusion and contradictions still set great store by the independence of their organisations and do not accept seeing them transformed overnight into reserve troops for the USs plans. It is starting from an understanding of this contradictory movement that the sections of the Fourth International, carrying out a bold united front policy, are playing their own role. Namely: to help the masses mobilise around a system of transitional demands, the first of which, today, is the non-ratification of the treaties, a concentrated form of the demand to break with the European Union, the political condition for emancipating the labour movement from the corporatist shackles in which their leaders would like to lock them. It is thus a question of helping the working class to prepare itself for the big clashes of the class struggle due in the next period, in a context where, as we have emphasised, the proletarian revolution is knocking on the doors of Europe. The militant activists of the Fourth International do not underestimate the complexity of the situation and the threats that weigh on the working class and, beyond them, on the whole of human civilisation. They understand the extent to which we are now facing the absolute

EUROPE, THE CRISIS AND THE DECISIVE FACTOR

necessity to help resolve the crisis of leadership. In other words, to help in whichever form is appropriate to lay the foundations of independent workers parties or political groupings which, within the traditional organisations, will fight and act to protect, restore and win back the political independence of the labour movement. The forms vary from country to country. But the content is the same. It is by separating itself completely from the capitalist class that the working class is able to defend its interests. This is the way, historically, the labour movement was created and was able to win the greatest gains of the working class through struggle. It cannot act any differently today. This is a fight that can be won. The working class has all the resources it needs to change the way things are now. The decision taken by the militant activists of the Fourth International to lay the foundations of such independent political parties and groupings, in other words to work towards resolving the crisis of leadership, is the condition for helping the working class to move together as a whole class. And to win. ENDNOTES (1) See the article Debt crisis? No, a system in its death-throes in La VritThe Truth, Issue no. 71, and the article Arms economy and capitalisms crisis of disintegration in this issue. (2) The new Brussels Treaty imposes the adoption of the golden rule for balancing public budgets through binding and permanent [legal] provisions, preferably constitutional. It provides for a correction mechanism to be triggered automatically and an appearance before the European Court of Justice in cases of non-compliance. It imposes a reduction of the public debt by at least 5 percent per year when this exceeds 60 percent of GDP. For France, this would represent 90 billion euros per year, much more than the national education budget! And in cases of an excessive deficit, it obliges states to adopt a programme of structural reforms (privatisation, regulation, dismantling social welfare systems and the Labour Code, reducing wages and pensions, etc.). These structural reforms would have to be approved by the European Commission, which would directly control their execution (Statement by the Independent Workers Party (POI), France, 2 March 2012). (3) At the time of writing, in the middle of the presidential election campaign in France, Sarkozy stated that in the Republic, there is no place for the class struggle, and Franois Hollande (Socialist Party) stated that the President of the Republic cannot succeed on his own (), he will need intermediary bodies, notably the local collectivities and the trade unions to help him govern. The same corporatist idea expressed in two different forms one which puts into question the very essence of political democracy.

LA VERITE/THE TRUTH

10

Germanys Role in the Crisis That Is Shaking Europe

By Marc Lacaze
The sequence of events that immediately preceded the postponement of the European Summit due to take place on 1 and 2 March 2012 deserves to be retraced briefly, as these events illustrate the role Germany is playing in the crisis. In early February, the US administration was piling the pressure on the Europeans, ordering them to put their affairs in order so as to reassure the markets. There was an ulterior motive for that pressure. Obama, himself facing a political crisis that continues to ravage the highest levels of the most powerful imperialism, wanted to present himself to his electorate as the man who had saved the world from a global crash. Frances downgrading by credit rating agency Standard & Poors (S&P) on 14 January indicated that as far as the main representatives of finance capital were concerned, European affairs should henceforth be dealt with in Berlin. If there was any need to further dot the is, World Bank President Robert Zoellick did so in Munich on 4 February, at the 48th Conference on Security Policy. He warned his hosts: 2012 could be a year where Germany becomes a leader of Europe, or () it could be the year in which Germany stumbles and draws the ire of Europe. Arguing that Germany must propose a political course and not just austerity plans, he added: What happens if 6 or 9 or 12 or 18 months from now, Mario Monti no longer has the political support? Then what happens to Europe? The stakes are bigger than economics, this is about leadership. A few days later, on 25-26 February in Mexico, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) returned to the attack and demanded that the G20 Finance Ministers increase the IMFs reserves by US$600 billion, to cover the risks incurred in the euro zone and in fragile economies on other continents. Once again, pressure on Germany moved up a notch. Merkel made it known that she was not in favour of increasing the IMFs reserves, nor, for that matter, of strengthening the capabilities of the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF) and European Stability Mechanism (ESM). The European Summit was postponed On the eve of the Bundestag vote on the second rescue package for Greece to the tune of 130 billion euros, she was playing for high stakes, and was very conscious of this fact. Above all, she was afraid of contributing towards provoking a reaction from the population to these massive outflows of money intended to guarantee the billions loaned by the banks and speculators, at a time when the German people were and still are in the grip of 10 years of austerity and deregulation that it had recently been subjected to. Two days after that vote (29 February), she received a serious warning. Twenty members of her parliamentary majority (CDU/CSU-FDP) withdrew their support. Merkel had lost what in Germany is called the Chancellors majority (1) and now had to rely on the votes of the SPDGreens opposition. The Chancellors solid self-assurance is now nothing more than a memory. The rifts that have opened up in the government coalition even within her own party express the feeling that it is impossible for Germany to play the role in Europe allotted to it by US imperialism. Merkel knows, like everyone else including the Social-Democrats that a turn in the situation is underway. The signs that a molecular process is developing deep down in German working class, despite the dead-weight bearing down on it since the brutal offensive by Social-Democrat Schroder and the Social-Democrat leadership of the DGB (2), are clear to see. The sudden change of President of the Federal Republic has resulted in a dialogue between all the parties. The fact that an agreement could be reached between Merkel and the SPD to propose Joachim Gaucks candidacy is an indication of other discussions. The insistence in recent days within the SPD leadership on the need to strengthen links with the DGB leadership indicates that they are preparing for every eventuality including the rebuilding of a grand coalition government if maintaining the social order requires it. The reasons that are pushing US imperialism into wanting to make Germany play a role that is beyond its capabilities It is essential to understand the reasons that are pushing US imperialism into wanting to make Germany play a role that is beyond its capabilities. It would be a mistake to confine oneself to a simple explanation such as: It is Germanys economic power. This exists, to be sure, but it is nothing like, for example, its pre-war economic power. Today its power is based mainly on the export capacity of its mechanical engineering industry. The German financiers and industrialists have channelled all their energies into the gap opened up for them by Schroder through driving down the cost of labour in Germany, before the consequences of an austerity policy in Europe closed down the channels of the European market. Today, at a time when Europe is shutting down, the power of the German economy depends increasingly on the Chinese markets capacity for absorption. From this point of view, its power appears extremely fragile and closely dependent on variations in world growth. Germanys most important achievements, which in the recent period have resulted in the country being described by every government as a model for the whole of Europe, stem first and foremost from the social peace that has been established there, especially in the last 10 years. But in recent days the whole world is afraid that those achievements might break apart.

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LA VERITE/THE TRUTH
How long will the dead-weight being pressed down on the German working class by the DGB leadership last? The pressure being brought to bear on Merkel by the IMF, the G20 and US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is pushing the government and institutions of the Federal Republic to breaking-point. Of course, the German bourgeoisie has profited handsomely from the countrys 20 years membership of the euro zone, but there is one detail that all of them are pretending to ignore. Twenty-three years ago, the German proletariat which brought down the Berlin Wall, which forced reunification through, came together in a single class organisation despite all the obstacles. From that point on, it formed the biggest battalion of the European working class. And we find ourselves in that paradoxical situation where the pacified social relations that exist in Germany are referred to every day as the model of responsibility which all European trade union leaders are being invited to imitate. That paradoxical situation is owed to the Social-Democrat Chancellor Gerhard Schroder. Practically 10 years ago, Schroder declared war on the workers in his government statement (Agenda 2010) of 14 March 2003. He imposed a cut in unemployment benefit and shortened the period it covered. With his Hartz IV law, he condemned hundreds of thousands of people to poverty, to insecure employment without any protection against being laid off. He greatly increased the scope for fixed-term contracts and temporary work. He all but placed explosive charges under what served as a Labour Code, putting into question the system of collective bargaining agreements and therefore the prerogatives of the trade unions as guarantors of the workers collective rights. He imposed the introduction of derogation clauses into the collective agreements. The working class tried to react; there was a wave of mobilisations against those plans That was when the credit rating agencies S&P and Moodys threatened to downgrade Germany if Schroders Agenda was not immediately adopted in full. In late May 2003, DGB President Michael Sommer and the leadership of the IG Metall union called jointly for all the industrial action to stop, in the name of the first so-called rectifications made to the measures. The trade union leaderships then called for actions to critically accompany the course imposed by Schroder, with demonstrations. During the 2008-9 crisis, the leaders of the big trade union federations worked with the bosses to draft all the measures for relaxing regulations to allow jobs to be saved. Short-time working was pushed the furthest possible, one of the consequences being the pillage of the unemployment benefits system and a new explosion in insecure employment. Finally something that was unprecedented on the eve of the Bundestag vote (29 September 2011) on the first Greek rescue package, Sommer ceremoniously published a joint statement with Dieter Hundt, President of the German Employers Federation (BDA). In that statement, they called jointly for members of parliament to vote in favour of expanding the EFSF. They called on them in the name of the common interest of workers and the entire German economy to take on their responsibilities and finally open the way to better coordination of economic policy at the European level. At the same time, the DGB was distributing a leaflet calling on members of parliament to vote to reform the EFSF. This leaflet was signed by the eight heads of the DGBs main member federations. The Social-Democrat leadership of the trade union apparatus was using all its strength on the side of the European banks, violating the most basic mandate of any trade union organisation, without referring the matter to any official body, siding with the bosses to make the workers pay the 210 billion euros in guarantees. They used all their strength to make the workers pay at a time when, like in Berlin, 21 percent of people under the age of 65 were living on social welfare. How long will they be able to maintain the dead-weight they are pressing down on the working class? The second Greek rescue package of 130 billion euros was voted through (27 February 2012) without Sommer daring this time to throw his weight openly on one side of the scales. Everybody can feel that the situation is becoming explosive. The workers know how to count: 210 billion + 130 billion = 340 billion. Three hundred and forty billion for the banks, at a time when tariff negotiations were starting in the public services and the metallurgical industry, with the bosses not wanting to give a cent. IG Metall is seeking a 6.5 percent wage-rise. Pressure from the union grassroots is high. Will the union leadership be able as it did in 2010 to give up a claim for a specific figure in the name of maintaining jobs? What happens in early March (3) assumes exceptional importance for the working class throughout Europe. The German workers have taken some hits, they have been prevented for the last 10 years from using all of their organisations power, but they exist as a class and they remain organised as such. The miracles announced in the area of defending jobs are going to vanish into thin air as soon as the first signs of the world recession appear in Germany. The most concentrated and organised working class in Europe is being inevitably pushed to take up the role that is its right within that European confrontation. It falls to the militant activists of the Fourth International to help build the leveragepoints that will allow it to deploy its full strength. Our enemy is in our own country (Karl Liebknecht) The system of imperialist domination is leaking everywhere. Pressure from US imperialism is bringing to crisis-point all the contradictions that run through German society. As far as US imperialism is concerned, the centre of gravity of the situation in Europe is the degree of control that Sommer is able to exercise over the working class (and until when?). In this sense, Sommer is infinitely more important than Merkel herself. Germanys financial and economic power can only play its role as a circuit-breaker for the crisis, can only protect the US banks from contagion, if Sommer is able to continue to neutralise the working class. This is the real and ultimate safety lock for the situation throughout Europe. Identifying this essential dimension, in order to allow the German proletariat to deliver its heartfelt sentence without appeal on the disgraceful act of a Sommer providing the authority of the DGB, of its millions of members, as cover for the shameful diktat addressed by Merkel to our Greek brothers and sisters this is the

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GERMANY AND THE CRISIS THAT IS SHAKING EUROPE

help, which is vital for the situation to mature, that the Fourth International has set itself the task of providing. Sommer publicly and provocatively claimed to represent the interests that are supposedly shared by the German workers and their exporting enterprises, in order to commit the trade unions to saving the euro zone together with Merkel and the bosses, and to supporting the insultingly firm language used by a Schauble regarding the Greek people. He is the one who has played a crucial role in allowing the Americans to push Merkel further into the role of a Gauleiter tasked with carrying out the murderous plans against all the peoples of Europe, not forgetting the German people. He is the one (even more than Merkel) who agreed to be the accomplice of all the provocateurs intent on unleashing xenophobic hatred across Europe, especially against the Germans, because he used his authority as President of Europes main labour confederation to provide cover and support for Merkel and the Troika, acting as the worst kind of bag-carrier for finance capital. Today he can swear, hand on heart, of his solidarity with the people of Greece. He can strut about with the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and chant: Enough is enough! but he is the one, let us repeat, who allowed Merkel to move into the vanguard to strangle the people of Greece. Delivering an uncompromising sentence on him is the most solid leverage-point for helping the working class to regain control over its class organisation, for making progress in achieving a united front and restoring the working class to its rightful position in the revolutionary upheavals that are underway in Europe. Only a careful and clear differentiation from the Sommer leadership will contribute towards restoring the German proletariat to its rightful place, in the front line of the struggle together with the Greek people, who are showing us the future to which finance capital would like to condemn us all. The militant activists of the Fourth International are devoting themselves to just that, in line with the instruction given by Leon Trotsky on 6 October 1932: The determined voice of a single Liebknecht was, during the war, of incomparably greater significance for the development of the German revolution than the sentimental semi-protests of the pacifists of the Independent Party. (4) ENDNOTES (1) The Chancellors majority (Kanzlermehrheit in German) is designed to ensure the establishment of a stable government, by requiring that a majority of all elected members of the Bundestag must vote by secret ballot to elect a Chancellor, as opposed to a mere majority of those that are currently assembled. (2) The Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB) represents eight German trade unions with more than 6 million members. (3) When this article was written Translator. (4) The Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) was established in 1917 as the result of a split of left-wing members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) who opposed the sacred union (the subordination of the labour movement to the bourgeoisies needs in the name of patriotism). The USPD remained fundamentally on the ground of pacifist protest.

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LA VERITE/THE TRUTH

14

Problems of the Revolutionary Crisis in Greece

By Christel Keiser and Dominique Ferr
The Folha de So Paulo, the newspaper of the Brazilian bourgeoisie, said the following on 23 February 2012 in the editorial of its finance supplement: To make things simple, the bailout plan reduces Greece to the status of a colony: no money, no autonomy over the budget, no credit, no nothing. () Clearly, nobody gives a damn about Greece and even less about ordinary Greeks. What the European elite are trying to do is gain time () and protect the banks and European governments from an accident in Greece (for example, a revolution). In Greece itself, George Karatzaferis, former minister in the Papademos government and leader of the far-right party LAOS (1), stated before committing to implementing the Troikas (2) new memorandum that he did not want to contribute towards an explosion of a revolution () that could spread across Europe. Everybody agrees: the revolutionary crisis is indeed on the agenda in Greece. A revolutionary crisis that is Greek in form, but European and international in its content (reinforced by the two new European treaties, the ESM and TSCG). By publishing a modest Greek-language discussion bulletin in January 2012 called The Fourth International Newsletter, the militant activists of the Fourth International were proposing to labour activists of all tendencies to open a discussion on the political problems posed by the mobilisation of the masses, and on the perspective of a regroupment for an independent labour political expression in Greece and across the continent. It is within this framework that we must immediately pose one question: how is it possible that the movement by the Greek working class together with its organisations for the last two years has not been able to put a stop to the vicious policy of austerity measures dictated by the Troika and implemented by the governments of Papandreou and then Papademos? This movement by the working class unequalled in strength, carrying with it its organisations and broad sectors of the petty bourgeoisie is faced with substantial internal obstacles obstacles which, for the moment, it has not managed to overcome. This being the case, the militant activists of the Fourth International are duty bound to make their contribution to the necessary debate between labour activists, in order to identify those obstacles and help to formulate the ways and means for overcoming them. In early 2012, the Greek masses: once again spontaneously demonstrated from the Orthodox Christmas holidays at the beginning of January, taking on one of the institutions of bourgeois order in Greece: the Orthodox Church and its Patriarch, accused by their own flock of taking the side of the rich and powerful once again responded en masse to the call by the trade union confederations for a 24-hour strike on 17 January, during the first visit of 2012 to Athens by the Troikas emissaries. mobilised on a wide scale from 6 to 12 February during the latest visit to Athens by the Troika, aiming to get the new memorandum (3) endorsed by the Papademos government and the leaders of each party in the government of national unity, and then by Parliament. Let us be clear: during that week of 612 February, it was the initiative taken by the masses, within and through their trade union organisations, that pushed the confederal leaderships of the private sector confederation, the GSEE (700,000 members), and the public sector confederation, ADEDY (350,000 members), to call a strike overnight for the following day, 7 February. In the same way, when after hours of continuous discussions the leaders of the three parties ratified the Papademos governments plan on 9 February, opening the way to a vote by Parliament on 12 February, it was once again the powerful pressure from below that led the GSEE and ADEDY leaderships to call for a 24-hour strike on 10 February, while trade unions and parties called for a demonstration in front of Parliament on 12 February, during the vote. This new mobilisation by the masses, carrying with them their trade union organisations and rallying around them broad layers of a petty bourgeoisie strangled by the crisiswas a new factor in the disintegration of the institutions and the apparatus of the bourgeois state. Six ministers resigned, including two from PASOK. In Parliament on 12 February, 43 members of parliament - half from PASOK, half from New Democracy were expelled from their parties for abstaining or voting against the memorandum. Crisis flared up again within the state apparatus: the main police officers trade union declared: You cannot force us to fight our brothers () demonstrating or demanding a change of policy. The chief obstacle Once again, as we explained regarding the events of October-November 2011, the situation in Greece was still marked by the fact that to quote Lenins famous formulation the lower classes do not want to live in the old way, and the upper classes cannot carry on in the old way (4). However and this sums up the whole contradiction they really did carry on governing, since the memorandum was voted through and applied, like all the barbaric measures that had come before. On 12 February, the centre of Athens saw a repeat of scenes from the strike of 19 and 20 October 2011: a gigantic mass (100,000, 200,000 people?) carrying with it the main political and trade union organisations that claim to stand for the working class, surrounded the Parliament building A mass of people united on a

15

LA VERITE/THE TRUTH
single slogan: Troika, out! and out with the government, members of parliament, parties and institutions that agreed to submit to it Once again, Parliament voted late in the night to approve the memorandum, by 199 votes out of 300. And not only did Parliament vote it through as we shall see, it approved it without the confederal leaderships of the trade union organisations issuing the slightest guidance on that vote. As far as the militant activists of the Fourth International are concerned, this major problem lies at the heart of its programme, which says in particular: The chief obstacle in the path of transforming the pre-revolutionary into a revolutionary state is the opportunist character of proletarian leadership: its petty bourgeois cowardice before the big bourgeoisie and its perfidious connection with it even in its death agony (5). In all countries the proletariat is racked by a deep disquiet. The multi-millioned masses again and again enter the road of revolution. But each time they are blocked by their own conservative bureaucratic machines. As one activist pointed out to us: On 12 February, as we stood facing Parliament, one shout could be heard ringing out everywhere: Troika, out! The workers have shown willing fifteen or twenty times, through 24-hour strikes, through sit-ins, through demonstrations, shown that they are prepared to see things through to the end. To the end means getting rid of the Troika and its representative, the Papademos government. Bring the country to a halt until the Troika leaves with its plans; thats what we expect of our organisations. Yet, one week later, on Sunday 19 February, barely a few thousand workers responded to the call by the GSEE and ADEDY to demonstrate in the same place. The situation can only change as part of a general uprising Moreover, this problem has begun to be posed within the Greek labour movement. Just after 12 February and on the eve of the meeting of the confederal union leaderships, the secondary school teachers union OLME sent this message to its confederation ADEDY, on 15 February: We are continuing our fight to overturn this policy. We urge the trade unions and union federations of the public and private sectors to call for the strike to be continued. We call on the ADEDY leadership to decide immediately to continue the fight using every form (strikes, sit-ins, demonstrations, rallies, etc.) until the Troika leaves. It is clear that the situation can only change as part of a general uprising that will have the characteristics of a political strike. Let us make clear: some groupings, like the anti-capitalist coalition Antarsia, also claim to be putting forward the perspective of an indefinite political strikewithout mentioning even once, however, that this poses the problem of uniting the whole of the working class, from top down and from bottom up, while in Greece and internationally it only exists through its organisations, with the trade union organisations in the front rank. Yet the leaders of the trade union confederations announced a meeting on 14 and then on 15 February, to discuss the continuation or not of their movement But as early as 13 February, the GSEE was asking for the immediate intervention of the European Parliament to protect the Greek workers. Who can believe that the European Parliament, which a few months ago approved the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) with a broad leftright consensus, which approved all the so-called plans to help Greece, could be a leverage-point for this fight? Two contradictory tendencies Finally, the confederal union leaders called for a new rallyon the morning of Sunday 19 February, on the basis of an appeal to rally to defend the Constitution, the law and democracy, in other words pulling the carpet from under the workers and refusing to use the only means of action that, by drawing on the workers formidable combativity, could prevent the implementation of the memorandum: a united general strike to put an end to the barbaric measures. Even within the 19 February rally, the aspiration contained in the OLME letter was expressed: one female pensioner, quoted in various press outlets and expressing what millions were thinking, yelled: Im now getting 600 euros a month instead of 1,200 euros But that makes five times they have made cuts, where are they going to cut now? The trade unions need to call everybody out on to the streets! Of course, nobody is unaware of the enormous pressure being brought to bear. The labour organisations are constantly seeing two contradictory tendencies being expressed in their ranks. One is the healthy pressure coming from the grassroots, taking over the labour organisation and carrying it into the fight for demands. The other, from the top down, from Brussels, from the state apparatus, pushing the labour organisations to accompany the Troikas plans, can only lead to the self-destruction of the organisations themselves. Thus in January, a common front on social dialogue was created bringing together the GSEE and the employers organisations proposing that the government should draft concrete measures for reducing non-wage labour costs and improving the national economys competitiveness. Faced with the dictates of the Private Sector Involvement (PSI), the GSEE leadership called for the National Collective Labour Agreement to be maintained, which was perfectly correctbut at the same time they agreed to reduce non-wage labour costs, which involves attacks on the Social Security and pensions systems. The (employers) National Trade Confederation seized on this, advocating the signing of a social protocol, invoking the example of the recent tripartite social agreement signed in Portugal by the UGT leadership. Here we have the problem facing the labour movement: accompany the Troikas plans, and therefore disappear as labour organisations within a corporatist dictatorship, or demand the withdrawal of the plans, in other words respond to the mandate given by hundreds of thousands of workers who were demonstrating across Europe, from Lisbon to Athens. The masses mandate: Troika, out! The mandate given by the masses to their organisations was the slogan shouted out by hundreds of thousands of workers on 12 February in Athens: Troika, out! Troika, out! means demanding that the organisations break with the Troika not only in words, but that they break off all links that tie them to the Troikas plans, to the implementation of the barbaric measures of cutting wages directly and indirectly, under the false pretext that

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PROBLEMS OF REVOLUTIONARY CRISIS IN GREECE

people should all pull together bosses, government and trade unions to find socalled solutions. Troika, out! means doing away with calls for isolated one-day strikes which in the long term can only wear the workers down. It means letting the workers carve out a path that overcomes the obstinate refusal of the leaderships to call for a general uprising. Of course, the perspective of such a general uprising and a general strike directly poses the question of power. In reality, this question was posed months ago. It was contained in the slogan of October 2011: Take your memorandum and clear off! In other words: out with a government that is carrying out the Troikas orders and strangling Greece, and therefore, give way to a government that will break with all of that policy and with the international institutions of the IMF, European Commission and ECB. What kind of government will rebuild Greece? What kind of government will cancel the measures in the memorandum and the past measures, will cancel the debt and break with the IMF and the European Union? There cannot be today, in Greece or in any other country of Europe, any other solution for the workers than to stand on the ground of breaking with the international institutions of decaying capitalism. Without being able to forecast its exact form, it is possible that such a government, breaking with the Troika, would arise from a general strike confronting the Papademos government in the pay of the IMF and European Union, through a united front of labour organisations political and trade union based on the demand: Troika, out! But such a perspective, like at the trade union level, poses the crucial question of uniting the working class and its organisations on the line of breaking with the international institutions and their policy, and breaking with the institutions of the decaying Greek state which today only exist as subsidiary institutions of the IMF and European Union. At the time of writing this article, the Greek press is saying that opinion polls are giving the left (in other words, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), the parliamentary coalition Syriza and the Democratic Left) between 30 and 40 percent of voting intentions if legislative elections were held. The same polls show PASOKs support collapsing to less than 10 percent of voting intentions, which also reflects the constant stream of resignations by party members and trade union cadres, as well as the collapse of the vote for its trade union factions in internal elections. Taking into account all the disclaimers regarding polls, one can say that the trend is for the workers to express confidence not without illusions in those parties that appear to them to be opposing the Troika and its government. Conversely, PASOK, whose leadership on behalf of the Socialist International is cynically calling for it to have direct responsibility for the policy of destruction, is facing widespread rejection. The most economical solution As far as the militant activists of the Fourth International are concerned, it is clear that the most economical solution would be for the leaders of the parties which today enjoy the confidence of the masses to adopt the path of breaking with the European Union and the IMF, in other words that they present a united front against the Papademos government for the formation of a government that would break with the European Union and the IMF. Far from isolating Greece from the rest of Europe, such a movement would win the sympathies of the workers from all over Europe, faced as they are with the Troikas murderous plans and the ESM and TSCG treaties, which aim at nothing less than institutionalising what the Troika is imposing on Greece today, according to Paul Quiles, a former Socialist Party minister in France. It would win the sympathies of the workers of the Balkans, like the Romanian people who in December 2011 stood up to the Basescu government and its counterreform of privatising healthcare as dictated by the IMF, in a spontaneous explosion that produced the slogans Privatisation kills! and IMF, out!. It would win the sympathies of the workers of Italy, Spain, Portugal, France and

An Appalling Campaign
Let us note on this topic that in Germany, as in Greece, an appalling campaign is being developed within the labour movement itself and relayed by certain senior figures; a campaign which the Fourth International is duty bound to denounce. In Germany, certain sectors that support Merkels policies and her hateful statements against the Greek workers are trying unsuccessfully to pen the working class inside a national unity operation. In Greece, certain groups that emerged from Stalinism are seizing on Merkels statements and are trying to replace the deserved hate of the Greek workers for the Troika, European Union and the French and German governments with a campaign against the Germans, Germany, etc., in order to clear the Troikas name. The workers must be vigilant: can such campaigns not lead to the kind of bloody fratricidal clashes manufactured by imperialism for which the Balkans already paid dearly during the 1990s? Against this policy of division that is aimed at clearing the name of the European Union, that prison of the peoples, the Fourth International in Greece lays proud claim to the continuity of the traditions of Pantelis Pouliopoulos (1900-1943), a founder of the KKE and the Left Opposition, then leader of the Fourth International in Greece a man who, facing a firing squad of fascist Italian troops, spoke out in their own language to those workers in uniform, who refused to obey their officers order to fire. It is this internationalist tradition that was applied by the German militant activists of all tendencies including the German Trotskyists who gathered in front of the Bundestag during the vote on the ESM on 27 February, standing with a banner that expressed the unity of the Greek and German workers against their common enemy, the promoters of the ESM-TSCG.

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Germany. Now, it is a fact that some of these parties Synaspismos, Democratic Left are openly claiming that a solution to the tragic fate of working people is possible within the framework of a reformed or renovated European Union. This corresponds to the policy of the Party of the European Left (EL), of which Synaspismos is a member. A position which regarding the debt matches that of the so-called anti-capitalist groupings that are putting forward the supposed need for a citizens audit of the debt, in order to determine the proportion of what they call the illegitimate debt. It is a fact that against all the evidence and going against what millions of Greek workers are demanding through Troika, out! several forces of the left and far-left are stubbornly claiming that breaking with the European Union and the debt is not a key question for opening up a solution. Offering a favourable solution is incompatible with the euro and the European Union In recent months, the Fourth International has conducted a debate with several groups and militant activists. Among them are the comrades of the Organisation of Internationalist Communists of Greece (OKDE-Ergatiki Pali) (6), whose position on the European Union has evolved over the last few months. In July 2011, these comrades wrote the following, in a document entitled The position of the revolutionary Marxists in relation to the European Union: Offering a solution to the crisis that is favourable to the working class and the poor layers requires a policy that opposes and is incompatible with the structures and mechanisms of the euro and the European Union. This is all the more true in the case of a weak economy like that of Greece. For example, even the most timid of measures for rebuilding the productive fabric (industry, agriculture) presupposes an industrial and trade policy based on control-monopoly over foreign trade and on the possibility of exercising a monetary policy (which is impossible without a new currency) and a credit policy, a break with the directives of the Common Agricultural Policy, the nationalisation of the key sectors of the economy, beginning with all the banks, heavy taxation of capital and high incomes and property (including their confiscation), control over and restrictions on the movement of capital, in order to accumulate the economic sources and means for an alternative economic policy, cancellation of the debt in order to put a stop to the bloodsucking of the payments of interest and insurance to the Greek and foreign usurers. What is more, the most timid of measures for rebuilding the public sector and public services presupposes that not only would the memoranda not be implemented, but the barbaric plans and policies of the European Union, from the Maastricht Treaty via the Lisbon Treaty to the Stability Pact, would also not be implemented. What would most probably happen, if a countrys government decided to carry out any measure in that direction, would be that even if it wanted to stay in the euro zone or the European Union, it would be thrown out, and would suffer threats, blackmail and embargo. Other comrades, trade unionists, are posing the perspective of rebuilding a genuine workers party based on the trade unions, drawing attention to the absence of political representation for the working class. It is certain that during a period in which thousands of trade union cadres, especially those who have broken with PASOK, are pondering the issues, this debate deserves to be held. But can an honest labour party be built in Greece without taking a clear position in favour of breaking with the Troika, in favour of breaking with the European Union, those merchants of privatisation and poverty? As far as the Fourth International is concerned, it is clear that no step forward on the path of saving working people, in Greece or any other country of Europe, can be compatible with maintaining the anti-democratic institutions of the European Union, its treaties and its directives. And yet Synaspismos supported by the Party of the European Left is calling for the anticipated elections straight away, notably advancing the perspective of an alliance and, eventually, a government of the left (Synaspismos, KKE, etc.). This perspective is also being put forward by various anti-capitalist groupings. Now, would any left-wing government that did not put into question the framework of the European Union not be condemned to supplying a modern version of the Popular Front, tying the parties that comprised it to continuing with the implementation of the European Unions barbaric policy which today is hitting the Greek people? Should we not help to achieve a genuine united front of the working class against the government and the Troika? Conversely, fulfilling the mandate of those millions who today in Greece are demanding Troika, out! means responding positively to the enormous aspiration to bring about the unity of the whole of the working class with its organisations against the puppet government of Papademos in order to sweep it aside. To this end, the role played by the leadership of the Communist Party of Greece needs to be noted within the necessary debate, as twenty years after the destruction of the USSR it still continues to proclaim its attachment to the Stalinist bureaucracy and its international policy. To be sure, the KKE leadership puts forward in its propaganda, and within the sizeable layer of workers and labour activists it influences, the perspective of leaving the European Union and cancelling the debt. Its members of parliament voted against the memorandum. That vote and public positions indisputably correspond to a profound aspiration among the working class and oppressed layers who are demanding Troika, out! But this is where the whole contradiction is to be found. Far from addressing all the forces of the working class in order to propose a rallying together in unity on this perspective, the KKE leadership is using its public positions as an instrument for dividing the workers ranks. In a statement issued the day after the mass demonstration in front of Parliament (13 February 2012), the KKE leadership said: Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators chanted to the four corners of the country: The government and its criminal political line must leave now, with the Troika. No memorandum must be signed. No new agreement. The plutocracy must pay. Very good. It goes on: The PAME demonstration in Athens was impressive. Why only the demonstration by PAME (the KKEs trade union faction, which as always called a rally that was separate from that of the ADEDY and GSEE union

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confederations, despite the fact that grassroots pressure forced the PAME leaders to join the demonstrators in Syntagma Square)? How are we to characterise the fact that at a time when, once again, the Greek working class was forcing its confederal union leaders to all call for the same action at the same time to confront the government and Parliament, to confront the representatives of the Troika, the KKE leadership counterposed the contingents it organised to the other demonstrators? Revisiting the policy of the KKE leadership On 12 February, one of PAMEs spokespersons, Christos Katsiotis, addressed the demonstrators as follows: The people must not be afraid of them, nor sit quietly and let themselves be skinned alive. () What is vital is for the people to decide that it will not make any more sacrifices for the benefit of the plutocracy, to fill the coffers of the capitalists, while they and their children are plunged into total poverty and misery. What are we to understand from this? That if one memorandum follows after another and barbaric measures follow barbaric measures, it is because the people actually wants this and is letting it happen? Any PAME or KKE member knows very well that if the measures are raining down on the Greek people, this is not due to them simply accepting their fate; rather, let us repeat, it is due to the policy of the leaders of the apparatuses that control the labour movement. During the debate in Parliament, KKE General Secretary Aleka Papariga stated: The popular movement must move towards replacing this political system with a political system in which the workers and the people will have the power. Withdrawal from the European Union and unilateral cancellation of the debt; there is no other solution for the people. Very good. But what is the KKE leadership proposing to help the people get rid of this political system? In a communique dated 16 February, the KKE leadership evaded this question: Henceforth, the question for the people and for each worker, () is not just to free themselves from the parties of the plutocracy, but to support the KKE. It is only in this way that there can be a genuine break. Any sincere militant activist who is a member of PAME or the KKE knows that even if the KKE were to double its vote tomorrow, this would not resolve the urgent need to sweep away the Troikas memorandum and the government that is implementing it. Should we wait and suffer more and more trials on the pretext that the people has not understood that it should support the KKE? Or rather, should we not act now to build unity among the workers of all the organisations that are stating their rejection of the Troikas dictate in order to put an end to that policy? Almost instinctively, the Greek working class has carried with it its organisations, rallied together and united in the face of the governments in the pay of the Troika, demonstrating its class unity. It has done so on several occasions, making use of more than twenty calls for 24-hour and 48-hours strikes to affirm its wish to drive out the Troika and its representatives. Every time, has that wish not come up against the policy of the leaders of the labour movement who are refusing to call for a general strike and are reaching agreements with the bosses and the government to implement all or part of the memoranda, but also the policy of those who claim that a solution is possible without breaking with the European Union and the IMF, or again of those who while saying down with the Troika are systematically organising division among the workers ranks? Nobody can claim to have complete answers to the complex and difficult situation facing the Greek working class. It is nevertheless true that the questions posed in this article can only be overcome through free discussion as part of the common struggle being pursued by the workers and militant activists of the whole of Europe, to which the Greeklanguage Fourth International Newsletter intends to contribute. ENDNOTES (1) LAOS (Popular Orthodox Rally, far-right), New Democracy (right) and PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement, member of the Socialist International) are the three parties that formed the government of national unity headed by Papademos. (2) Troika: the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). (3) A new memorandum which among other things calls for a 22 percent cut in the minimum wage and new cuts in retirement pensions, the destruction of 150,000 jobs in the civil service and the complete privatisation of publicly-owned enterprises like the water, railway and electricity systems. At the same time, PSI (private sector involvement) demands the total elimination of the National Collective Labour Agreement. (4) V I Lenin, Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder. (5) With the bourgeoisie in its deathagony, which in this case means with the bourgeoisie and its institutions: the IMF, European Union and ECB, together with their plans and their treaties. (6) OKDE-Ergatiki Pali is an organisation which a few years ago broke with the Pabloite United Secretariat, and with which militant activists of the Fourth International have maintained discussions for several years.

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20

Egypt: Mubarak Fell One Year Ago

By Samir Hassan

The shockwave of the Tunisian Revolution, which delivered a blow to the US world order and brought about big upheavals in the Middle East, with mass mobilisations in Bahrain, Yemen and Syria, has found a powerful extension in Egypt. The revolutionary developments in this country, as in Tunisia, cannot be separated from the global revolutionary processes that are seeing the peoples rise up against US imperialism, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the European Union today in the very heart of Europe. For 30 years, Egyptian political life had been dominated by the National Democratic Party (NDP), the party of Mubarak and his clique. The states security service, which was devoted to the security of the regime, filled societys every pore through the distribution of bribes, job dismissals, deprivation of freedom, terror and torture. Elections were completely fraudulent. The sole aim of Mubarak and the military was to safeguard the despotic regime and then to pass power on to his son Gamal, in order to continue the corruption and organised usurpation of state wealth for the greater benefit of US interests. The influential US daily newspaper The Washington Post explained on 20 October 2011, in an article with the subheading In Egypt, Corruption Cases Had an American Root, how beginning two decades ago, the United States government bankrolled an Egyptian think tank dedicated to economic reform. () Formed with a $10 million endowment from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies gathered captains of industry in a small circle with the presidents son Gamal Mubarak at the center. () By the end of the 1980s, the public sector still constituted more than half of Egypts industrial production and 90 percent of its banking and insurance industries. Gamal Mubaraks allies helped draft legislation in 1991 that authorized Egypts privatization program, with a plan to privatize more

than 350 companies worth $104 billion and then the Cairo office of the giant Chicago-based international law firm Baker & McKenzie handled more than $3 billion of the privatization deals, including the governments sale of assets, companies and land. (1) This is how Egypt was integrated into the world economy, under the aegis of US imperialism, resulting in the brutal superexploitation of the working class and worsening oppression. In 2010, then-IMF Managing Director Dominique StraussKahn congratulated Mubarak and his team on the job they had done and at the same time invited them to speed up the privatisation programme. The 25 January revolution The demonstration on 25 January 2011, the first in a series that would see millions of Egyptians take to the streets for 18 straight days, brought together 15,000 people. The day before, daily newspaper Al-Wafd announced that neither the Copts, nor the Muslim Brotherhood, nor the liberal Wafd Party, nor the left-wing Tagammu party (2) would take part. Also before the demonstration, Mubarak visited the Police Academy that was named in his honour the same one where his trial would be held, five months later and delivered a speech there in which he talked about the attack on the Two Saints Coptic Orthodox church in Alexandria in the New Year and his 10-year fight against terrorism. On the eve of 25 January, the Muslim Brotherhood condemned a new wave of arrests from among their ranks. Day after day, participation in the demonstrations grew, in Cairo and the countrys other main towns and cities, especially in Suez, which saw something close to an insurrection. Police stations, government offices and NDP offices were stormed. For several days, demonstrators faced off against the military police. On 31 January, Mubarak under pressure from the Obama administration asked General Omar Suleiman, head of the

intelligence service, whom he had just appointed Vice President of the Republic, to open a dialogue with the opposition. The Muslim Brotherhood, Tagammu and supporters of El-Baradei (3) responded to the call. The masses continued to fill the streets, demanding Mubaraks immediate departure. On 1 February, 1 million people demonstrated in Cairo, 500,000 in Alexandria, 250,000 in the industrial city of El-Mahalla El-Kubra, 200,000 in AlMenya, 150,000 in Fayoum, 250,000 in Menoufia, Mubaraks city of birth, 100,000 in Port Said, 100,000 in Arish, 250,000 in Sinai, 500,000 in Mansoura and 500,000 in Suez. German news agency DPA estimated that at least 8 million people demonstrated that day throughout Egypt. Mubarak refused to resign, but made a commitment not to stand in the next presidential election due in September, as demanded of him by Obama. But the people were demanding that he leave immediately. On 2 February, the regime sent in its bully-boys and henchmen (baltageya), who violently charged the crowds in Tahrir Square on horseback and camelback, before being surrounded and unseated by the demonstrators. One of the instigators of that Battle of the Camel was none other than Hussein Megawer, President of the official Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF). The day after the battle, defence committees were spontaneously set up to defend the neighbourhoods and apartment buildings, and to control the access-points to Tahrir Square. But this move towards forming committees, which lasted a few days, went no further. While the government was pursuing its dialogue with the opposition, the anger of the masses continued to rise and turned against the NDP and the compliant media. The main NDP headquarters in Cairo was set alight. The Muslim Brotherhood did not support the demonstrations, but were not able to prevent their members and supporters from taking part. From 9 February onwards, hundreds of

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strikes broke out across the country, linking social demands to the democratic demands. The official trade unions opposed those strikes with all their might. In key sectors like the naval dockyards (owned by the military apparatus), the Suez Canal Authority and Cairo International Airport, the workers had to brave the hostile opposition of the official trade union representatives. Everywhere the energy and oil sectors, the textile and metallurgical industries, telecoms, agriculture, the banks, government ministries the workers were demanding wage-rises, permanent employment contracts and, within the same movement, the resignation of the ministers and directors appointed by the government and the right to set up their own trade union organisations that were independent from the official union. Hundreds of thousands of workers who up until then had participated in the mass demonstrations together with their families, neighbours and friends to demand Mubaraks immediate departure, now organised their strikes and sit-ins. The sudden emergence of the working class in the factories, offices and dockyards played a determining role in Mubaraks desertion by the White House and the army, and in his downfall. On 11 February, Omar Suleiman announced that Mubarak was resigning in his speech the day before, he was still hanging on to power. Suleiman announced that power had been handed over to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) some 20 senior officers headed by Field Marshal Tantawi in other words, in fact, to the military apparatus that had governed the country for the last 60 years. The heart of the regime had been affected, but the state apparatus, with the army as its spinal column, remained in place. The 18 days of demonstrations and clashes had resulted in 864 dead and 6,460 injured. Democratic transition gets underway The SCAF dissolved Parliament, suspended the Constitution that had been in force since 1981 and announced that it intended to lead a process of democratic transition. It announced that it would organise a referendum on 19 March on the adoption of amendments to the (suspended) Constitution, closely followed by legislative elections, the The setting-up of the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU) was announced during a press conference held in Tahrir Square on 30 January 2011. In its constituent declaration, it totally opposed the official ETUF and specified: The workers struggles paved the way to todays revolution by the people. This is why Egyptian workers and employees drafting of a new Constitution and a presidential election, all within six months. A process that was dreamed up and introduced against the demand for a sovereign Constituent Assembly that would represent the workers interests. The SCAF called on Egyptians to return to work and allow order to be restored. The NDP and Muslim Brotherhood were in favour of the generals roadmap. The Vice-chair of the constitutional reform committee, who had been appointed by them, was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. But far from coming to an end, the strikes continued and escalated. Teachers, doctors, textile workers, metalworkers, cement-works employees, telecoms workers, railworkers, bus-drivers, dockers, etc. all put forward their demands and called for the dismissal of managements that had been appointed by Mubarak. We demand that Egypt be rid of institutionalised corruption, the workers shouted, systematically linking social demands with democratic demands, conscious that one was interdependent with the other. At the same time, demands for the repeal of the state of emergency and the special military tribunals, for the dissolution of the state security service, for trade union rights, for press freedom were all expressed strongly. Very quickly, the demonstrators who had gathered practically every Friday in their tens of thousands, in Tahrir Square and in the public squares of every large town and city, demanded the departure of Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq, whom Mubarak had appointed before his downfall. The Shafiq government is the servant of the corrupt regime, we do not want Shafiq!, the demonstrators chanted. The masses wanted nothing to do with the regime, even though Mubarak had already been removed from it. The building of independent trade unions, constraints and confusion categorically refuse to allow the governmental general federation to represent them and speak in their name. Created in 1957, the ETUF has for decades been a key institution, a cog in the regimes apparatus for oppression and corruption. A 1976 law gave it a monopoly on representing the workers. The Sharaf government refused to dissolve it. On 4 August 2011, the government finally dissolved the ETUFs Administrative Committee and appointed a provisional committee made up of independent trade unionists, Islamists and members of the official trade union. Four general trade unions oil workers, millers, maritime transport and transport workers called for the dissolution of the provisional committee and went on strike to achieve this aim. The government then took the decision to replace those members with members of the official trade union. The EFITU held its first Congress in January 2012. It claims to have 2 million members organised in some 200 trade unions. But both trade unionists and other workers are facing serious difficulties. The new trade unions are enterprise-based unions that are hardly connected with their branch or geographical sector. Most of them have neither a trade union office nor a bank account and are having to deal with the presence of the official trade union, which continues to receive the compulsory dues deducted from wages. Another problem has arisen: confusion between trade unions and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs). One of the main NGOs, the Centre for Trade Union and Workers Services (CTUWS), or Dar al Khadamat al Niqabya in Arabic, is active as an NGO in setting up trade unions. Its main representative, Kamal Abbas, heads up the Egyptian Democratic Labour Congress (EDLC), which claims 214 member trade unions. The report on a meeting on 24 May 2011 between Abbas and Anick Coup, spokesperson for the Union Syndicale Solidaires in France, indicated without further comment that the CTWUS enjoys the long-term support of the NGO Oxfam. It has established links with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), organisations affiliated to the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and the AFL-CIO. It is also in contact with the Euro-Maghreb network, in which

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participate most notably the SNAPAP (Algeria), the CGT (Spain) and the Union Syndicale Solidaires (France). The CTWUS received the French Republic Human Rights Prize in 2007 from the Sarkozy-Fillon government. Its main representative has been active for many years in the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and speaks there on behalf of the trade union organisations. The masses face off with the army The wish to have done with the regime led increasingly broader layers of the population into confrontation with the military leadership. Conversely, the SCAF, whose aim was to maintain the regime at whatever cost by means of a democratic transition, continued with its attempts to smash the mass movement and ban strikes and sit-ins. Following the fall of Mubarak on 11 February 2011, not a month passed without repression or bloody provocation against the demonstrators. In March, a sit-in was violently dispersed in Tahrir Square, there were mass arrests, torture, and virginity tests were carried out on detained women. In April, young officers opposed to their hierarchy were arrested, and at least two of them died. In May, a Coptic church in the working-class district of Imbaba (Cairo) was set alight while the army looked on passively (12 dead, 186 injured), and a demonstration in front of the Israeli Embassy on the anniversary of the Naqba (4) was repressed violently (350 injured, 150 arrested). In June, families of victims who had gathered peacefully in a meeting-room in the centre of Cairo were brutally attacked. In July, demonstrators marching on the Defence Ministry in Abbasseya district (Cairo) were ambushed. In September, the ElMarinab church in Aswan was set alight. In October, a demonstration by Copts in front of the Maspero building of the state TV channel was savagely crushed (28 dead, 325 injured). In November, violent acts by troops in front of the Interior Ministry in Mohamed-Mahmud Street lasted 7 days (43 dead, some 1,000 injured). In December, there were 4 days of clashes near the seat of government (19 dead, 750 injured). On 1 February 2012, a massacre was carried out in the Port Said stadium (74 dead and hundreds injured), and then demonstrations against this massacre near the Interior Ministry and in Suez between 2 and 6 February were put down violently (15 dead and hundreds injured). The army is the pivot of the regime The army has used the regimes full arsenal of repressive measures: anti-strike law, state of emergency, extension of the special laws, military tribunals, threats to press freedom. The Egyptian army occupies a particular position. It heads up an economy which according to experts represents more than one-quarter of the national economy. The army developed that economic power considerably following the signing of the peace agreement with the State of Israel and thanks to the privatisation programme drawn up by the Mubarak regime and the IMF. In the 1960s, the generals ran some big state enterprises, but it was when Anwar el-Sadat signed the Camp David Accords that the army got involved in the production of the widest possible range of consumer goods. The military command converted a big proportion of its production infrastructure to the manufacture of consumer goods. Under the auspices of an ad hoc institution, the National Service Projects Organisation (NSPO), the Defence Ministry set up a string of commercial enterprises, the management of which was entrusted to military officers and which enjoyed an exceptional status: they did not pay taxes and were not subject to company law or the least governmental regulation. () In the early 1980s, the NSPO set up a string of dairies and got into chicken-farming and fish-farming. Officially, it was a question of involving the army in national economic development and to ensure the selfsufficiency of the troops. In fact, the agricultural concerns were cultivated by miserable young conscripts who, instead of receiving military training, collected eggs and distributed grain to batterychickens. Playing all the odds, the military took advantage of their political networks to obtain juicy contracts. They exploited a cost-free workforce of soldiers in factories that were not subject to trade union law, or even employment law. The army accounted for 18 percent of national food production. The profits could be counted in billions of dollars. (5) Then the wave of mass privatisations in the 2000s opened up a new El Dorado for the senior officers. Between 2004 and 2011, they obtained management positions in the newlyprivatised strategic enterprises (port infrastructure, naval dockyards, aviation and construction). At the same time, the military made novel use of the law that allowed them to requisition land for the defence of the motherland. They greatly increased the number of real estate and tourism projects on the coasts, selling their plots to developers who in exchange guaranteed them shares in huge touristsector projects. (6) Thus, the military are involved in all of Egypts administrative and economic institutions. Every President and Prime Minister, and most government ministers have come from their ranks. The Egyptian army is the regimes spinal column, it is the regime. Before Mubaraks downfall it did not open fire on the people, but once the democratic transition manoeuvre had begun, things were different. The army is not neutral. It was surprising to read this question in a statement dated 1 February 2011 by the Revolutionary Socialists (RS) of Egypt (linked to the UKs SWP): Everybody is wondering: is the army with the people or against it? And one year later, in a statement dated 6 February 2012, they observed: This army is no longer the peoples army. This army is not the one that defeated the Zionist enemy in October 1973. This army is closely linked to America and Israel. Its role is to protect Israel, not the people Yes, we want to win soldiers over to the revolution. But one should not be fooled by slogans saying the army is on our side. One could ask oneself who is fooling who, and pose this question: if this army is no longer the peoples army, does this mean therefore that it was once the peoples army and should become it again? When was it the peoples army? In 1973, under Anwar el-Sadat? These days it is only the generals who talk such nonsense. Down with the military government! Tantawi, resign! Since Mubaraks downfall, the strength of the revolutionary process has brought about the fall of two Prime Ministers and seen millions demand an end to the military government. General Ahmed Shafiq, Mubaraks former Aviation Minister, lasted 35 days. Mubarak had

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appointed him a few days before his own downfall. Essam Sharaf, Mubaraks Transport Minister in 2005, was used as a fall-guy by the generals when hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated, shouting Down with the military government! Tantawi, resign!, following the violent clashes in front of the Interior Ministry in November. His nomination had been proposed to the generals by youth coalitions that were in permanent contact with the SCAF. The RS welcomed this nomination, emphasising that he had participated in the liberation demonstrations. The masses, who were deaf to such ringing endorsements, quickly saw that Sharaf was refusing to lift the state of emergency and the antistrike law, which provided cover for the provocation in Imbaba, the massacre of the Copts at Maspero and the savage repression in front of the seat of government. They rose up to demand the end of the military government and the prosecution of the guilty. In order to save the regime, the SCAF persuaded Essam Sharaf to resign, and in his place appointed Kamal al-Ganzouri, Mubaraks former Prime Minister between 1996 and 1999. With the privatisation of 113 public enterprises, resulting in thousands of workers being laid off, al-Ganzouri wins first prize among those who fulfilled the contract imposed by the IMF and the World Bank. All forces united to defend the regime The sudden wave of demonstrations and strikes terrified the US administration because of the risks to regional and global order which the collapse of the Mubarak regime could create. Every political and institutional force united to block the movement begun by the masses and come to the rescue of the military apparatus, from the Salafists (ultra-conservative Islamists) to the left and far-left. National dialogue to save the regime As early as 1 February 2011, an anxious communiqu from Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu called on those in power to demand that any Egyptian government should respect the EgyptIsrael Peace Treaty. This crucial question was to dominate all the negotiations and decisions taken during the popular uprising and the current process. On 1 February, President Obama spoke with Mubarak on the telephone. He did not ask him to leave, as millions in the streets were demanding, but only not to stand in the presidential election due to be held in September 2011 which Mubarak duly announced a few hours later. Obama congratulated the Egyptian army for allowing peaceful demonstrations to take place one way of asking it to stand aside and maintain itself so as to be able to answer an eventual call later. The Egyptian chiefs of staff stayed in permanent contact with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, and Obamas Special Envoy to Egypt Frank Wisner. On 4 February, the United States discussed with the Egyptian generals the terms for the departure of Hosni Mubarak and the transfer of power to a transitional government led by the Vice President, General Omar Suleiman. Hillary Clinton called on the Egyptian government to immediately open a dialogue with the opposition and repeated that the armys duty was to protect the demonstrators. The opposition parties and the NDP were invited to a meeting with the government. On 5 February, Obamas Special Envoy Frank Wisner, who had met with the leaderships of both the regime and the opposition, said that Hosni Mubarak should stay in power to ensure the political transition to democracy: We need to get a national consensus around the preconditions for the next step forward. The president must stay in office to steer those changes through. That same evening, the Obama administration distanced itself from the envoys comments, saying: The views he expressed today are his own. He did not co-ordinate his comments with the US government. On 6 February, the military chiefs of staff prepared for a meeting with the Muslim Brotherhood, Tagammu and supporters of El-Baradei. The whole of the left including the far-left welcomed this initiative. The Muslim Brotherhood asked for a round-table to be organised with the regime. In their own statement, the RS urged the political parties to involve all the national political forces in that round-table. The Democrat Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry, described the discussions that were starting between the government and the Muslim Brotherhood as frankly quite extraordinary. Barack Obama reiterated his wish to see an orderly and meaningful transition that would lead to a representative government. Former US Vice-President Dick Cheney praised Hosni Mubarak as a good friend and ally to the United States while at the same time suggesting he should retire. On 7 February, the Israeli leadership were very worried. Even if the American position has become more nuanced in the last few days, it doesnt make it any less of a desertion. Thats what is most worrying, a senior Israeli official told news agency AFP, on condition of anonymity. On 11 February, the US administration cut Mubarak loose in order to save the regime. The Muslim Brotherhood become respectable The Muslim Brotherhood has been depicted as a shadowy organisation with links to terrorism. US imperialism and the European Union supported the dictatorships of Mubarak, Ben Ali, Bashar al-Assad and Qaddafi, in the name of their constituting a useful barrier to Islamists linked to al-Qaeda, especially after 9/11. Since the Muslim Brotherhood won the elections, assuring 235 out of 498 seats in the Peoples Assembly (43 percent), very senior US officials like Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, former President Jimmy Carter, John Kerry and John McCain have been meeting regularly with its leadership. Far from being limited to human rights, the discussions have focused on how the United States, the IMF and World Bank could help the Egyptian economy to bounce back in the current situation, and on respecting the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty signed in 1979. The Muslim Brotherhood has said repeatedly to its interlocutors that it would scrupulously respect the peace treaty. As for Egypts subordination to the IMF and World Bank, the Muslim Brotherhood has also been very clear. They gave their approval for a US$3.2 billion IMF loan that had been postponed by the government in June 2011 in view of the massive popular rejection of the policy of subordination to the financial institutions, as well as for another loan from the World Bank in the amount of US$1 billion. The Muslim Brotherhood is led by wealthy businessmen who swear by

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EGYPT: MUBARAK FELL ONE YEAR AGO

privatisation and foreign investment. The platform of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the Muslim Brotherhoods political arm, speaks highly of the mechanisms of the free market. In Chapter Four, it stipulates that economic activity is to be conducted in conformance with Islamic market mechanisms, which depend on fair competition and restricted free economy (without manipulation or monopoly). Economic activity will also rely on Islamic investment and funding methods. The platform calls for an end to state subsidies allocated to people who need them, and the substitution of social rights with charity. Is this programme any different to those of the US Democrat or Republican Parties or of the European Union? The Muslim Brotherhood simply dubs these measures Islamic. On 11 January 2012, the Muslim Brotherhood set up the Egyptian Business and Investment Association, a grouping of leading businessmen linked to the Brotherhood aiming to promote private investment. This grouping is headed by Hassan Malek, a textiles magnate and financial backer of the FJP, who has openly praised Mubaraks economic policies: We can benefit from previous economic decisions. There have been correct ones in the past. Rachid Mohamed Rachid (7) understood very well how to attract foreign investment. This government minister cited as a reference worked, like all the others, to privatise hundreds of Egyptian enterprises and to smash any hint of trade union resistance, in line with the plans dictated by the IMF and international institutions. He is one of the very few officials of the Mubarak regime to have been convicted of squandering public funds and embezzlement convicted in absentia, as Rachid fled to Dubai after Mubaraks downfall. When they were in opposition, the Islamist parties slogan was Islam is the solution! Today they are converts of democratic transition, just like US imperialism. They have not supported the call for rallies against the generals, any more than they have demanded the repeal of the anti-strike law. During the bloody clashes that preceded the launch of the elections in November, they put all their weight behind respect for the electoral timetable, and supported the SCAF as it implemented its roadmap. They intend to guarantee the continuity of the regime on every level. Will they succeed? That is another question. How are we to understand the propensity of some left and far-left organisations to be associated with the Muslim Brotherhood? What could be the meaning of the declaration signed jointly on 25 February 2011 by the Revolutionary Socialists, the Egyptian Communist Party and the Tagdid (8) together with the Muslim Brotherhood, entitled Towards the founding of a Workers Coalition of the January 25 Revolution (9), if not as an act of turning their back on class independence? And what are we to say of the forming of a United Popular Front grouping together nearly every political organisation that called a huge demonstration in Tahrir Square on 29 July 2011 but made a commitment not to debate controversial issues? This front included left-wing and far-left organisations, the liberals, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafists and the Gamaa Islamiya the latter two being supporters of an Islamist Republic. And since controversial issues were not supposed to be debated, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists brought hundreds of thousands of their supporters to the 29 July demonstration by chartered bus, and had them chant: We want it [the Republic] Islamic! and Do you hear us Tantawi, we are the voices of your children in Tahrir! Egypt, a special ally of the United States Egypt is a cornerstone of US imperialisms plans in the Middle East. The interest the US has vested in Egypt has been matched by the services rendered by the regime under Anwar elSadat, Mubarak and, today, the generals in power. Egypt became a special ally of the United States and posed as a factor of stability for the imperialist order in the Middle East following the negotiations carried out with the State of Israel, under the White Houses leadership. Those negotiations resulted in the Camp David Accords in 1978, then in the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty in 1979. Since that date, the United States has provided annual financial aid to the Egyptian army that has reached US$1.3 billion. The war launched in 1973 against the State of Israel aimed precisely at convincing the United States that Egypt could play an important role in the Middle East, and that support only for the Jewish State was not the solution. The first and hardly the least consequence of the signing of the Accords with the State of Israel was the isolation of the Palestinian people. Those Accords opened the way to the Oslo Agreement in 1993, which brought about the renunciation by Palestinians of their right to a nation and the scattering of that people over scraps of territory controlled by the Israeli army. As Sadats successor, Hosni Mubarak remained a fervent ally of the United States. He applied the Egypt-Israel treaty devotedly. He signed specific trade agreements with his Israeli partners and since May 2008 supplied them with natural gas at subsidised prices under a long-term contract. To cap it all, in order to be able to supply the contracted quantities of gas, Egypt has had to import gas from Qatar at normal world market prices. When the Israeli army crushed Gaza under a carpet of bombs in December 2009, Mubarak closed the crossing-point between Rafah and Gaza. In 1990-1, he participated in the first Gulf War by sending 35,000 men. Before his downfall, Egypt was therefore regarded as a rock-solid guarantor of the world order in the Middle East, an order based on breaking up and blowing apart nations that George Bush called the Greater Middle East (GME). This project consisted of a complete redrawing of the map of the countries from Afghanistan to Morocco, one of the main regions producing oil and gas. A project to carve nations up into pieces. In fact, the Obama administration has been implementing this sinister carve-up without speaking of a Greater Middle East. Iraq has become a mosaic of Shite, Sunni and Kurdish territories. On Egypts doorstep, Sudan has split into two under the auspices of the UN and, what is more, an army is claiming autonomy over a territory it controls in South Sudan. Following the war in Libya, waged in order to counter the revolutions underway in Tunisia and Egypt, chaos reigns. In Mali, mercenaries returned immediately after that war, armed to the teeth; they started a war there, in the east with alQaeda, and in the north-west, on the border with Algeria, with the Tuareg militias who are claiming independence. Thus, a veritable war is threatening neighbouring Algeria, which is seeing conflicts unfold on its own territory. Syria

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LA VERITE/THE TRUTH
is on the verge of exploding. Qatar and Saudi Arabia, pilot fish to US imperialisms shark, are pushing to intervene there, with all the considerable consequences that could entail for all of the countries in the region. It is in this explosive situation that imperialism is demanding of the generals in power in Egypt and of their Islamist supporters that they stay on course and guarantee that the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty is respected. This is an absolute necessity for them, because if the regime does not survive, order in the region will be destabilised. As far as the Egyptian people are concerned, something different is in order. In Tahrir Square, hundreds of Palestinian and Egyptian flags have often flown side by side. On 15 May 2011, the anniversary of the Naqba, and on 21 August, following the attack of the Israeli armed forces in the Sinai, killing 6 Egyptian army officers, demonstrations took place in front of the embassy of the State of Israel in Cairo, calling for the closure of the embassy and the expulsion of the ambassador, an end to the occupation of the Palestinian territories, the defence of the right of return for Palestinian refugees and the release of the detainees. On each occasion, the army violently broke up the demonstrations. French daily newspaper Le Figaro reported (16 May 2011) the comments of one demonstrator, which eloquently express what millions of Egyptians are thinking: We spent 18 days on Tahrir Square calling for our rights. Now we are demanding that the rights of our Palestinian brothers and sisters be respected; this is a natural extension of our revolution. The revolutionary developments in Tunisia and Egypt changed the situation once and for all. National unity against the revolution In order to counter the revolutionary developments and keep the regimes in place, the Islamist parties once excluded have today been integrated in the name of the democratic transition. In Tunisia, a government of national unity has been put in place, made up of the three main parties: the Ennahda movement (Islamist), the Congress for the Republic, and the Ettakatol (Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberties), affiliated to the Socialist International. In Morocco, faced with the wave that had swept away Ben Ali and Mubarak, the King revised the Constitution in order to associate the opposition notably the Islamist party and save his regime. In Egypt, it is the binomial militaryMuslim Brotherhood that is being put in place to save the regime. After spending 24 years partly underground, the Muslim Brotherhood legalised after Mubaraks downfall and controlling 43 percent of the seats in the Peoples Assembly have decided to play the national consensus card as broadly as possible, including groups and parties that are not represented in Parliament. It is consensus that allowed parliamentary elections to be held at a time (November and December 2011) when a genuine popular uprising was demanding the resignation of Field Marshal Tantawi, and when the workers on strike in several establishments were demanding the sacking of corrupt managements, wage-rises and permanent employment contracts. This consensus was aimed at reassuring the markets and establishing a climate of confidence for US, European, Saudi Arab and Qatari investors a consensus against repealing the privatisations, against strikes and sit-ins. A consensus which was precisely demonstrated in the refusal by the Muslim Brotherhood to oppose the law that criminalised strikes and sit-ins, decreed by the generals. The consensus which exists today for accepting a loan of US$3.2 billion from the IMF. A consensus President The presidential election is due to take place in late May. Taking into account the results achieved by the Muslim Brotherhood in the parliamentary elections, there is no doubt that the candidate who receives their support in the presidential election will be elected. The official registration of candidates is scheduled to take place between 10 March and 18 April 2012. A dozen declared candidates have entered the lists. Negotiations are underway. The Muslim Brotherhoods leadership has stated publicly that Egypt needs a consensus President. This formulation made the front page of all the newspapers. Everybody is providing their own commentary on this, but at the same time everybody recognises that it speaks loudly of a President who also has the support of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. The following question was put by a journalist to a US diplomat: Do you trust the Muslim Brotherhood? The diplomat replied: They have several facets. They are conservative. They are historically opposed to the West, but they are also strategists and they do not appear to me to want to rock the boat for the moment. The message is clear. The consensus between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood is that of the democratic transition wished for and supported by imperialism, against the process of the revolution that is continuing, in Egypt as in Tunisia, the expression of the new stage in the world proletarian revolution that is opening. ENDNOTES (1) James V. Grimaldi and Robert OHarrow Jr., How US Policy Helped to Corrupt the Egyptian Economy, The Washington Post, 20 October 2011. (2) The National Progressive Unionist Party (in Arabic, Hizb al Tagammu al Watani al Taqadomi al Wahdawi) widely referred to as Tagammu. (3) Mohamed El-Baradei, widely known as the Nobel Peace Prize-winning former Director General of the UNs International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), returned to Egypt on 27 January 2011 from the United States two days after the big mass protests began, declaring himself ready to lead a transitional government if that was the peoples wish. (4) The Palestinians speak of the creation of the State of Israel in 1947-8 as the Naqba, which means catastrophe. Much more than a historic act defined by a particular moment, the Naqba has in fact never stopped, and has become a long process of expulsion, deprivation and the denial of the Palestinian peoples basic right to exist. (5) French daily newspaper Le Monde, 22-23 January 2012. (6) Ibid. (7) Mubaraks Minister of Trade in 2004. (8) Socialist Renewal, another current linked to the UKs SWP. (9) See: http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/sp ip.php?article2102 on the United Secretariats website.

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Tunisia, One Year Later

By Lucien Gauthier
A year ago, the workers and youth regained their grip on their trade union confederation, the Tunisian General Labour Union UGTT, through their revolutionary mobilisation and drove Ben Ali from power. A year ago (March 2011), La VritThe Truth carried an article entitled: Tunisia, Egypt: For the Fourth International, yes, the proletarian revolution has started. Against all those who were talking about an Arab Spring or democratic revolution, the Fourth International stated: Yes, it is indeed a revolution that has started in Tunisia. It is not a question of just a democratic revolution, as the western media are reporting. It is a revolution to defend popular sovereignty and national sovereignty, to defend the rights of the youth, workers and the working population against a small corrupt minority acting on the orders of imperialism, particularly French and US imperialism, through the association agreements with the European Union and the IMF plans that threatened the national sovereignty of Tunisia, a country that had freed itself from colonialism and was engaged in the super-exploitation of the Tunisian workers. The mobilisation of the Tunisian people demands the expropriation of the corrupt minority headed by Ben Ali and of his party the RCD, a veritable gangrene in the Tunisian system. It is a workers revolution that is standing up to capital and the system of exploitation based on private ownership of the means of production. (1) Neither United States nor Qatar! One year on, the imperialist powers organised a Friends of Syria Summit in Tunis under the aegis of the United States and with the collusion of the Arab League and the Tunisian government, in order to prepare a military intervention in Syria. The Tunisian government was one of those which called loudest for military intervention in Syria. The day after the Summit, on Saturday 25 February, the UGTT called a demonstration in the face of threats, provocations and attacks on some of its offices in the provinces. The demonstration was extremely large, recalling the number of demonstrators who had marched during the fall of Ben Ali on 14 January 2011. The slogans shouted on the demonstration called by the UGTT indicate the frame of mind of the working masses: The Tunisian people are free no America, no Qatar!; The people demand national sovereignty; The Constituent Assembly is a joke and the same gang are still in charge; Bread, water, and no Ennahda! we should add that on the eve of the Friends of Syria Summit, the UGTTs National Administrative Council approved a statement that said: The UGTT condemns the massacres inflicted on our people in Syria by the dictatorial government and certain armed groups. It expresses its complete rejection of the Friends of Syria Summit, an imperialist and Zionist plot that undermines the freedom revolution, the dignity of Tunisia and its martyrs, and constitutes a leverage-point to try to make it submit, turning Tunisia into a channel for foreign interference aimed at the destruction of Syria, just as Libya was destroyed, and before that Iraq, and in so doing to try to smash the revolutions that have broken out in the Arab countries against despotism, dictatorship and colonialism. The UGTT calls on all of the nations vibrant forces to express their rejection of these plots and to unite in order to oppose them. The proof is there to see, against all those who would like to back the idea that the revolutionary process in Tunisia is over, ending with the election of a pseudo-Constituent Assembly and a government of national unity, that it is nothing of the sort. The revolution of the workers and youth in Tunisia is flowing its course, confronting several obstacles raised in its path by the big imperialist powers, who are using the three parties in the government coalition. Let us recall that following the elections to the pseudoConstituent Assembly, a government of national unity was formed, bringing together the Islamist party Ennahda and two secular parties, Ettakatol (member of the Socialist International) and the Congress for the Republic. Even before the government was formed, the three representatives of those parties went to the Tunis Stock Exchange to reassure the bosses and called on the big powers to strengthen their partnership with Tunisia. The government of national unity not only failed to denounce the Association Agreement with the European Union signed by Ben Ali, on the contrary it asked the European Union for a special partnership. It is in following this path that, since its formation, the government has continuously threatened the UGTT. Just before and during the UGTT Congress, which took place in late December 2011 and elected a new leadership, various members of the government and the three parties issued an increasing number of statements to put pressure on the UGTT. The Islamist Prime Minister called on the UGTT to contribute to national unity. The secular President of the Republic declared that the continuation of social conflicts would be collective suicide. These threats and calls to tame the UGTT came up against the reaction by the overwhelming majority of the delegates to the UGTT Congress, who reaffirmed the independence of the trade union organisation and the need to defend the demands of the workers and youth. It is in these conditions that organised provocations have been taking place against the trade union confederation for the last few weeks. Several local offices of the UGTT were set alight or ransacked in certain provincial towns and cities. A commando attempted a provocation at the UGTTs headquarters, but this was repelled by the response of the workers and union members. The government of national unity against the revolution An article in Issue No.4 of the bulletin

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LA VERITE/THE TRUTH
Sawt Al Oummal (The Workers Voice, an open platform of the class struggle, published on the initiative of supporters of the Fourth International in Tunisia), contained the following analysis of the governments policy: Diplomatic delegations and representatives of the international financial institutions are coming one after another to Tunis at an unprecedented rate. This is what Rached Ghannouchi, President of the Ennahda party, is saying. In fact, not a week passes without a representative of the European Union or the United States or the IMF or the World Bank or the Gulf States, especially Qatar, coming to Tunis to sign agreements and contracts with the Tunisian government. This is an excellent sign for the Tunisian economy, the European and US leaders, IMF and World Bank leaders, and the leaders of the parties in power, namely Ennahda, Ettakatol and the Congress for the Republic, are all saying in unison. Excellent for who? Let us look at what this economic policy that advocates unbridled debt is all about, beginning first and foremost with the situation of the public debt. The official data indicate that the public debt stands at 45 percent of GDP. That is way off the mark, say Tunisian economists, who locate it at around 100 percent of GDP, because the official data on which the World Bank bases its calculations do not take into account direct investment, which clearly needs to be taken into consideration when calculating the public debt. Since the implementation of the two structural adjustment plans, our countrys economic situation has simply continued in its upward spiral of debt. The signing of the Association Agreement with the European Union in 1995 widened the chasm of debt even further, handing the vast majority of public enterprises over to privatisation and in line with the stipulations of the Association Agreement opening up the customs borders to commodities and products from the countries of the European Union. The result of this shopping spree: a heavily indebted state, endemic unemployment andflourishing foreign businesses that are profiting shamelessly thanks to a cheap labour force and complete exemption from customs duties and taxes. At least, until the day they decide to relocate to even more profitable climes in Asia and India. The conclusion is clear: the pursuit of the policy of indebtedness is only widening the chasm of debt even further. The financial institutions, the banks and financial speculators are investing in order to add even more to their interests. The capital granted by the G8, the IMF, the European Union or the Gulf States is only of use for one thing: servicing the interest payments on the debt. Mustapha Ben Jaafar, the President of the Constituent Assembly, is proposing to the European Union countries that the debt owed to them should be recycled. Ben Ali proposed the same thing in 1993. Recycling the debt quiet simply means reconverting the debt into targeted projects that are even more profitable for the international financial bodies. It is clear that the policy being pursued by the Jebali-Marzouki-Ben Jaafar coalition government is the same policy pursued by Beji Caid Essebsi and follows in a straight line from the programme of submission to imperialism imposed by the Ben Ali-Ghannouchi government. The UGTT has called from the beginning of the revolution for a stop to the policy of indebtedness and for the refusal to pay the debt involving all the loans that were fraudulent or stained by corruption. The IMF, European Union and World Bank have been bleeding the Tunisian people dry for decades, taking away its wealth against so-called aid and so-called loans to help development, when in fact these were just funds invested at high rates of interest. The sovereignty of the Tunisian nation requires that an end be put to this policy of submission to imperialism. The sovereignty of the nation demands that we say immediately: No to indebtedness. Not to a public debt that is not a debt incurred by the Tunisian people but by the regime of corruption and dictatorship. Tens of thousands of workers, unemployed workers, university students and school students who marched on 25 February in Tunis to defend their UGTT chanted: The Tunisian people are free no America, no Qatar! Yes, the Tunisian people want to live free. They want to free themselves from the chains of imperialism. No to the United States, no to the European Union, no to Qatar! Defend the revolution, defend the UGTT! By attacking the UGTT, the government is attacking the very process of the revolution on behalf of the imperialist powers. It was indeed based on the demand of water, bread, and no Ben Ali! that the youth and workers together with the UGTT drove Ben Ali from power. The content of that movement was the demand to see their overall demands through to a successful outcome and the impossibility of seeing that successful outcome without driving the regime from power. Ben Alis dictatorial regime had but one function: to ensure order to allow the foreign businesses to exploit the Tunisian people. The Association Agreement with the European Union, based on the principle of free and undistorted competition, represented an iron heel on the Tunisian peoples neck. The revolutionary movement of the Tunisian masses carried the indissociable demands for economic, democratic and national rights. The only path for national sovereignty was to break the links of subordination to the big imperialist powers. The demand for a Constituent Assembly, put forward by the masses and conceded by the government, had as its aim to declare the nation as sovereign, which can only be achieved by breaking with imperialism. And this is precisely the reason why the big imperialist powers, with the collaboration of practically all the political parties, confiscated that Constituent Assembly in order to transform it into pseudo-legislative elections resulting in a government of national unity tasked with maintaining that subordination to imperialism. And this is why the government is attacking the UGTT on behalf of the big imperialist powers. The UGTTs roots lie deep in the history of the international labour movement. The first forms of organisation specifically for Tunisian workers, when the country was a French colony, were set up after the Tunis dockers strike in August 1924, followed by the Bizerte dockers, who then fired up the whole of the Tunisian working class. When we say that the UGTT is the historic organisation of Tunisias working class, this is not a figure of speech. It was in 1946 that the UGTT was formally

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TUNISIA ONE YEAR LATER

constituted. In the space of one year, it had over 65,000 members. As early as at its founding Congress, the UGTT declared itself in favour of independence for Tunisia, thus making a direct link between the workers demands and the demand for national sovereignty. Tunisia, like most of the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America, was a country under the domination of a foreign colonial power. In contrast with the countries of Europe and the United States, which in the 19th century had carried out their democratic revolution under the bourgeoisies control, driving out the aristocracy and achieving national sovereignty within the framework of the bourgeois regime and under its domination, the colonised countries did not follow that same road. In the epoch of imperialism and its world domination, full independence and full national sovereignty cannot be achieved by weak local bourgeoisies which are completely in the thrall of imperialism but by the working class freeing the nation from subordination to imperialism. Defending the revolution and helping it to deepen means precisely defending the UGTT, the organising framework of the working class, the only class able to guarantee national sovereignty. This is the struggle of the bulletin Sawt Al Oummal, conceived as an open platform of the class struggle, with the aim of guaranteeing free debate for bringing together activists of diverse political origins who nevertheless intend to fight on the revolutionary path against imperialism. ENDNOTE (1) Tunisia: its a revolution!, 21 January 2011.

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30

The Chinese Working Class, the Bureaucracy and Obamas American Pivot to Asia (Part 1)
By Alain Frandor
Xi Jinping is being presented as the man who is sure to become the next General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and head of state. He paid an official visit to Washington in mid-February 2012. Dan Blumenthal, a former United States official in charge of US-China relations, describes the hopes of the US administration in these terms: They hope Xi will finally be the Chinese leader who accepts the U.S. view that China does best by embracing the made-in-America rules of the road. But, he points out, Xi Jinping cannot make clear commitments lest he ignore what China calls social tensions. (1) This social unrest heralds a dangerous year, warns the British business magazine The Economist (28 January 2012). China is facing its worst wave of labour unrest since a series of wildcat strikes at Japanese-owned car plants last year, the British financial daily newspaper Financial Times reported with alarm (23 November 2011). Similarly, according to American Time magazine (25 November 2011), the labour actions were the most significant since workers at several foreign-owned plants went on strike in the summer of 2010. Thus, although commentators are welcoming economic progress which nothing, apparently, can slow down (China has supposedly become the worlds second biggest economic power), at the same time they are becoming alarmed at the risks of unrest. That workers should go on strike against a Hong Kong or Japanese factoryowner for better pay seems natural, a classic situation so to speak. But and this is the point of the thought I want to develop in this article those strikes are happening in a country where most of the big means of production are still owned by the state, and not by private owners. What is the nature of the system of ownership in China? What are Chinas relations with the world market? What remains of the gains of the 1949 Revolution? It is in relation to these questions that we will begin with a few reflections on the current labour unrest. A new wave of strikes since October 2011 On 17 October 2011, more than a thousand young workers went on strike at a Citizen Watch factory in Shenzhen, the city famous for its Special Economic Zone. 1,178 employees complained that management had been deducting 40 minutes a day from employees timecards for restroom breaks since 2005, although they were entitled to that time, press agency AFP explained. Here are their demands: payment for time deducted illegally between 1 October 2005 and 31 October 2011; pension contributions to be calculated and paid based on real salary; compensation for workers hit by the relocation of the factory; honest negotiations with delegates chosen by the workers. The strike lasted 12 days. Several negotiation sessions took place until the management finally gave in on 28 October. This was the tenth official strike in Shenzhen to occur in October. Since then, a wave of strikes has developed in various provinces and not only in the private and foreign manufacturing sector of the exportfocused Guangdong province in a situation where price inflation, especially affecting food, has been rampant for more than a year. A report published this month by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) says that, compared with those in 2010, the strikes of 2011 were better organised, more confrontational and more likely to trigger copycat action, warned The Economist (28 January 2012). Those strikes, which are now affecting state enterprises, began their development in private enterprises belonging to the multinationals. But, it hardly needs reminding, the multinationals setting up in China did not fall from the sky. It resulted from political decisions by the government in Beijing. The government decided to encourage the arrival of the multinationals, protected them, and as each strike began, the official trade union sided first of all with the bosses. The strikes carried out against the direct exploiters of those workers therefore put the political power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) into question. The fact that the authorities could in some cases subsequently seek to present themselves as mediators with the aid of the official trade union indicates the power of the movement by the workers and the rifts it can provoke among the senior ranks of the party. When strikes break out in state enterprises where it is the CP leaders at the national, provincial and city levels who are deciding on restructuring or wage-freezes, this confrontation with those holding political power, with the state, appears even more clearly. Thus, the three-day strike for pay in a state-owned steel-mill near Chengdu in early January won the concession of an increase in real wages, undoubtedly acting on government orders, as pointed out by The Economist (28 January 2012). This also applies when the strikes are against the privatisation or breaking-up of an enterprise, therefore against the so-called reform policy leading to the elimination of state ownership. We should also note that these strikes are occurring in a country where the right to strike has not been part of the Constitution since 1992, and where the only legal trade union organisation is explicitly under the control of the party that holds exclusive political power, the Chinese Communist Party. Thus, whether relating to foreign businesses or state enterprises, the strike

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movements are the expression of the activity of a single class, of the Chinese working class seen as a whole, which is coming up against both penetration by imperialism and the governing bureaucracy acting as its trouble-shooter. (2) Reference to the 2010 Honda strike: elected delegates Why is Honda referred to so frequently in relation to the current unrest? What characterises the Honda strike in Foshan in May 2010 is that young workers started to take care of their own interests themselves: they discussed, prepared and organised, and decided together and democratically on their demands and the strike, electing their own delegates for negotiations, and side-lining up to a point the factory representatives of the official trade union, the ACFTU, who were lining up with the Japanese bosses. The delegates were mandated by mass strike meetings, and they could sign nothing without previously having consulted the mass meetings. All these strikes are formulating demands on pay and social welfare, in contradiction with the demands of the multinationals supported by the Chinese authorities. In practice, they seek to impose the exercising of rights of which the workers had been deprived: the right to strike, the right to negotiate collective contracts and rights, the right to demonstrate, and the right to organise independently of the government institutions. It is indeed the class struggle that once again seeks to bring real life to these rights. It is the activity of the Chinese working class that is once again placing these rights on the agenda and often is imposing respect for them (at least temporarily) despite the ever-present threat of repression. Thus, today it is rare for the government to take the risk of sending to prison or re-education camps workers who are going on strike or demonstrating. Repression is focused on the governments wish to be able to prevent any permanent organising by the workers. The villagers of Wukan also choose their representatives Wukan is a fishing and farming village with a population of 15,000 located on the coast of wealthy Guangdong province. In China, land is collectively-owned and managed by a village committee. For years, people have been protesting against the plundering fraudulent sale of farmland by local bureaucrats. This is not an unusual event in itself: some experts suggest that twothirds of the 90,000 mass demonstrations, petitions, strikes, etc. that occurred in rural areas in 2010 were due to the illegal sale of land (sociologist Sun Liping puts the figure at 180,000, or 500 on each day of that year!). On 21 September 2011, a demonstration marched to demand the return of the farmland into public ownership; local government offices were ransacked and the towns Communist Party Secretary had to run away. On 21 November, several thousand people once again demonstrated peacefully, flags flying, demanding: Give us back our farmland! The government promised to solve the land problem but they havent done anything! They are liars. If they dont handle it this time, it wont be peaceful next time!, warned one demonstrator. Another explained that 80 percent of collective land had been sold to developers, netting 700 million yuan (85 million euros) for the authorities, but just 550 yuan (65 euros) per inhabitant! Not getting a response from the village authorities, the people of Wukan then decided to appoint their own representatives, twelve delegates chosen for their combativity. The bureaucrats were driven out of the village: the local authority buildings were empty, because the officials and police commissariat had abandoned them Henceforth, decisions were taken in front of the local people in one of the village squares. One of the representatives who had to negotiate a few days later with the provincial CPs number two who had been hastily despatched to the area insisted: The most important demand that must be met is the legal acknowledgement of the temporary, transitional 12 village representatives. (3) An agreement was reached a few days later, described as the beginnings of a victory by one of the village representatives. French news agency AFP reported at the time: The Chinese authorities ended up making concessions (). This U-turn, after more than ten days of the big village of Wukan being blockaded, shows that the government is worried about the stir caused throughout the country by this uprising and dreads its possible spread to other towns. One reporter for the Reuters news agency emphasised (12 December 2011): The real worry for authorities is not the number of protests, but their tendency to become more persistent and organised. There is no doubt about this, and it certainly explains the fact that indeed elections were held in Wukan on 1 February 2012 to choose an 11-person commission including delegates who had been active in the villagers mobilisation tasked with organising and supervising the elections to the village committee. China and the world market What was the international context for this surge in political and social demands? In 2008, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao explained that China was deeply worried about the state of the US and global economies: Global economic developments cannot but have an impact on China () 2008 might be the most difficult year for Chinas economy, because there are uncertainties both inside and outside the country. And Wen Jiabao stated at the AsiaEurope Meeting (ASEM) in Brussels in October 2010: If China saw social and economic turbulence, then it would be a disaster for the world. He could deliver the very same speech in 2012, expressing even more concern The whole world is afraid of what might hit China today, unleashing uncontrollable forces. Victor Shih, a specialist on the Chinese economy, has warned that today China is a huge monster, and if it has problems, the whole world will have problems. What was one of the most senior representatives of the Chinese bureaucracy acknowledging with those words? Not only that the Chinese economy could not be kept separate from the world economy, but above all that the way in which its links with the world market had been tightened and diversified made China even more dependent on it. It was an admission of the fallacious character of all the theories about socialism in one country and, more precisely, of a Chinese-style market socialism. The widespread world crisis into which the system of capitalist exploitation had plunged and the decay of

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the world market together pose a direct threat to what was once called Chinese prosperity. What is the real situation in China, at a time when it is designated the worlds second biggest economic power? The economic consultancy Xerfi gave this summary of the countrys situation during a conference on China on 15 April 2011: The prices of raw materials are going through the roof, inflation is soaring, especially for food products, competiveness is eroding and the number of bubbles is growing, particularly in real estate, forcing the authorities to intervene to try to cool the economy down. But on the surface, at least, the picture is attractive. Last year, GDP growth reached 10 percent after an almost imperceptible slowdown in 2009. And this year, despite the international unrest and the disasters in the surrounding region, we continue to expect growth of the order of 9.5 percent. This high-speed progression is clearly linked to the good performance of investments, but also foreign trade. Last year, China even knocked the United States off the top world spot in terms of volume of industrial production. Of course, the modes of production are radically different. For comparable industrial production, you need eight times more employees in China than in the United States. The value added in production is also radically different. For an iPhone Assembled in China with an estimated cost of US$189, China ultimately gets just US$6.50. A pittance. These few figures indicate the extent to which China is still a backward country in terms of labour productivity (4) a little over 4 percent of the United States despite its title of the worlds second biggest economy. Furthermore, let us reflect on the conditions in which China was awarded that title. They are simple. The bureaucracy supplies the multinationals with a cheap workforce for assembly manufacturing that is deprived of the right to organise. The multinationals export throughout the world and the whole of the international press almost unanimously hails Chinese growth. But 60 percent of those exports (more than 85 percent of high-tech products) leaving China are not Chinese, but US or European exportsfrom China which is not at all the same thing. In an article in US financial magazine Forbes headed Made by America in China (25 July 2007), senior editor Robyn Meredith explained: China seems strong but it is weak. (). For instance, when China exports a shoe that sells for $100 in the US, just $15 of the price stays in China in the form of workers wages, transportation costs or other value. American companies keep the remaining $85. Things have not changed since then. The Economist (21 January 2012) quoted a July 2011 study carried out by three California academics which showed that the labour cost of Chinese workers to US company Apple (in reality, what was received by the employer as payment for the workforce) represented just 1.8 percent of the value of an iPhone 4! The private manufacturing sector on the front line In fact, especially from the summer of 2008 onwards, the crisis hit China where it had most integrated with the world market, namely the manufacturing sector dedicated to exports to the countries of the European Union first of all, then to the United States. Tens of thousands of subcontracting or joint venture companies with big payrolls linked to the export sector and therefore entirely dependent on the economic situation in the Western countries closed their doors. Twenty million migrant workers were laid off or were unable to find work, as the CP leadership was forced to admit in February 2009. Forty-one million jobs were destroyed by the crisis, according to one research director at the Institute of Population and Labour Economics (September 2009). Faced with the looming social disaster, the government decided to react, and in autumn 2008 it launched a massive stimulus plan worth more than 450 billion euros designed to create millions of jobs in an attempt to compensate those who had been or were about to be caught up in the mass lay-offs, giving priority to state enterprises. These decisions temporarily reversed the direction of the policy pursued for years by the bureaucracy. Contrary to the bailout plans for the banks and the anti-labour measures implemented in various industrialised capitalist countries that had been presented as being necessary for facing up to the crisis, the Chinese state because it is the owner of the big means of production was able to mobilise material and financial means aimed at guaranteeing the economys course and therefore the creation of jobs: most of the funds under the plan were dedicated to the building of infrastructure (highways, bridges, underground rail systems, tram and train networks, airports, etc.) and reserved (over 90 percent) for state enterprises. But the parasitic and corrupt bureaucracy could not reform itself, even with the aim of saving its own skin. Its bureaucratic management had given free rein to the forces in place in the provincial and local authorities and in the state enterprises, in other words to the misappropriation of huge amounts of money swallowed up by corruption (the scale of the embezzled funds was such that the Railways Minister caught with his hand in the till had to be dismissed), tied up in property speculation, and undoubtedly also in speculative financial circles that were even betting against their own countrys currency. And today, the problem of tens of thousands of private enterprises closing down is being posed once again, but this time in an even sharper fashion: Falling exports and global economic uncertainty have hurt scores of toymakers and other manufacturers in China. A few thousand toy factories closed in China in 2011 while about 10 percent of workers in the industry lost their jobs, according to the Toy Manufacturers Association of Hong Kong. (5) Official figures released in early December 2011 showed that industrial production had fallen to its lowest level for 32 months. The non-manufacturing sector also fell. Undoubtedly, tens of thousands of jobs have already been cut, first and foremost in the private sector. As these involved migrant workers who generally-speaking do not have employment contracts, they did not feature in the official statistics The Federation of Hong Kong Business Associations estimates that it is possible that one-third of its 50,000 businesses located in China may have shut down or carried out mass lay-offs by the end of 2011! In this case, hundreds of thousands of jobs, even millions, would be at stake! but in fact, the whole economy is under threat With the property and financial

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bubbles, the finances of the local authorities, the corruption that is eating away at all the economic channels at every level, and the speculation, the bureaucracy is undermining its own system from within. There is the crisis that is starting to erode the prospects of the state enterprises (steel-mills and naval dockyards, for example), but there are also the decisions taken by the bureaucracy that are leading to the multinationals competing (inevitably in their favour) with the Chinese public enterprises: On 1 July, the Ministry of Finance announced that the policy of supporting local innovation, which foreign companies saw as a handicap to their responses to public tenders on equipment and technology, was lifted. The American and European chambers of commerce welcomed the announcement, but are waiting to see if the local government will comply with this adjustment. They also urged China to sign up to the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement. (6) Clearly, the same problem is posed even more sharply regarding control over the movement of capital, a task that is made increasingly difficult by the fact that international speculation is gaining ground thanks to the institutions and instruments that the bureaucracy itself has put in place. That speculation is focusing particularly on the perspective of the appreciation of the yuan the Chinese currency a demand being repeated continuously by imperialism. Substantial amounts of speculative capital have in fact entered the country since the start of the crisis, in the hope of seeing the yuan appreciate. In 2010, while direct foreign investment amounted to US$106 billion, Chinas State Administration of Foreign Exchange had around US$35 billion available for speculation. However much The Financial News, which is published by the central bank (Peoples Bank of China) might declare that large-scale currency appreciation does not figure in economic policy plans for next year because at such a crucial time, any big fluctuation in the yuans exchange rate would have a significant impact on the Chinese economy and would not be in the countrys fundamental interest (7), this does not make much difference: The markets are speculating on the yuan appreciating and are pushing the Central Bank to regularly set new limits on the yuans conversion rate against the dollar. (8) In this situation marked by the rise in speculative processes, let us note these figures from a study by Crdit Suisse: 10 percent of Chinas richest people enjoy 62 percent of illegal income, or 1,000 billion euros, and they are either CP leaders or linked to the CP. The crucial question of the Chinese currency The question of the Chinese currency is one illustration of the relations between China and the United States. The yuan (or renminbi) is neither fully convertible nor has its rate set by the markets, and for years US imperialism and the European Union in turn have been putting on pressure for the value of the Chinese currency to no longer be determined by the Peoples Bank of China, but instead by the markets. This pressure from imperialism is expressed through the continuous demand reiterated for more than 10 years to revalue the yuan in reality it aims to push for the yuans full convertibility in order to offer it up for speculation in the financial markets. The Central Banks governor and the Chinese leadership are still refusing to revalue the yuan (which is manipulated and undervalued, according to imperialisms dominant circles) however, they are in favour of having the yuans value determined by the financial markets. In October 2011, US senators passed a law aiming to apply customs duties on certain Chinese products entering the United States, because the yuan was highly undervalued In fact, since 2005 it has appreciated by 40 percent against the US dollar. And yet, as explained by Yao Tang, Director of the China Center for Economic Research at Beijing University, in an article entitled Chinas $3.2 Trillion Headache (9), there is an absolute need to limit liquidity flows in order to avoid an uncontrollable rise in currency value because a study by the China Center for Economic Research has found that a 20 percent appreciation against the dollar would entail a 3 percent drop in employment more than 20 million jobs.! For the time being, the fear of seeing the Chinese working class unleash vast movements is preventing the bureaucracy from giving in completely to these demands by imperialism over the currency. For the yuan to become a currency like any other, the system of state ownership (which includes legislation for controlling credit and capital flows) would have to be completely overturned, which would threaten the bureaucracys very existence. While it has agreed to the appreciation of the yuan, the bureaucracy has not at this stage agreed to its full convertibility. Can China offer a solution to the crisis? For years, China has been using its exchange reserves in US dollars to buy US Treasury bills (widely referred to as T-bills). The question facing the Chinese leadership is: should China now come to the rescue of the euro zone in order to save its export prospects? Europe, the leading destination for Chinese exports, is on the verge of collapse. The peoples of Europe are being subjected to the dictates of the Troika. And the Chinese bureaucracy has announced that it indeed supports the series of stabilisation measures adopted by the European Union, the ECB (European Central Bank) and the IMF (International Monetary Fund), as well as the stability of the euro. It has bought Greek sovereign debt in an attempt to avoid collapse, then Portuguese debt and Spanish debt. The Chinese Central Bank wrote on 7 January 2011: China supports the measures adopted by Spain for its economic and financial readjustment, with the firm conviction that it will achieve a general economic recovery. The bureaucracy is thus coming to the rescue of the world economic order, either by buying T-bills issued by the United States to finance its ever-increasing debt, or by buying up European sovereign debt in the secondary market all of this, using its reserves in US dollars. It should be remembered that those reserves in US dollars are the result of the superexploitation of the Chinese workers in factories in the export manufacturing industries. The Chinese factories are paid for production in dollars by the multinationals, the factory managers bank that money, and the Chinese Central Bank uses it to buy T-bills. Nevertheless, this aid extended by the bureaucracy cannot save a capitalist system entered in an advanced stage of decay.

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Is China a capitalist state? Is China, whose role in the world market we have just described, governed socially by the laws of the capitalist system? Is the functioning of the Chinese economy determined by the search for profit by a capitalist class that possesses the means of production as its private property, and is the state constituted on the basis of defending capitalist social relations, and therefore capitalist property relations? Are we to believe that there has been a smooth and peaceful counter-revolution that has somehow re-established the political and economic domination of the capitalists? There are a growing number of Chinese millionaires, the international press tells us. Several articles also insist that private sector businesses have the upper hand, or that it is the private sector that employs the greater number of employees. (10) Although it is of course indicative of the mafia-like character of the bureaucracy, the fact that 200 dollar billionaires exist does not in itself allow us to draw the conclusion that capitalism has been restored. The fact that the bestplaced members of the bureaucratic caste are depositing billions the result of embezzling and pillaging social property in tax havens or gambling them away in the casinos of Macao is not enough to establish the formation of a bourgeois class, and even less that such a class should have succeeded in changing property relations. This only confirms that the policy carried out by the bureaucracy favours the constitution of a parasitic social layer that is growing in size, that owns private capital, and is linked to the policy of handing over public entities to the private sector, to speculation in raw materials (energy, metals, etc.) and in real estate. For example, a quarter of recent billionaires owe their position to the development in real estate marketing and speculation based on the 450 billion euro stimulus plan launched in late 2008 a development partly linked to directors of state enterprises and local apparatchiks, which explains how 75 members of the National Peoples Congress are among the 1,000 richest people in China. For all that, has the restoration of capitalism in China been accomplished? In 1936, Trotsky wrote about the USSR in Revolution Betrayed: Is the bureaucracy a ruling class? Classes are characterized by their position in the social system of economy, and primarily by their relation to the means of production. In civilized societies, property relations are validated by laws. The nationalization of the land, the means of industrial production, transport and exchange, together with the monopoly of foreign trade, constitute the basis of the Soviet social structure. Through these relations, established by the proletarian revolution, the nature of the Soviet Union as a proletarian state is for us basically defined. He added, regarding the obstacles to the restoration of capitalism, that the Soviet Union would remain an enemy in the eyes of the bourgeoisie until the monopoly of foreign trade is broken and the rights of capital restored. How does this relate today to China? We can begin to address this question by starting from these two terms used by Trotsky. We should point out here that the conditions of the Russian Revolution, based on workers councils and led by a revolutionary party, are not identical far from it to the conditions of the Chinese Revolution of 1949, where the CP expropriated the masses from the very beginning. Nevertheless, the Chinese Revolution resulted in the expropriation of both national and foreign capital, and in order to understand this, the method of analysis used by Leon Trotsky is indispensable. State ownership in industry and the policy of reforms Are the state enterprises as essential constituent elements of state ownership which formed the basis of the development of the Chinese working class still today the enterprises of the key sectors of production that form the core of the economy and dominate it? Originally, a state enterprise would include workshops, machinery and canteens, but also accommodation rented very cheaply to the workers and their families, a kindergarten, a school, a college, a hospital (or a dispensary for smaller enterprises), theatres, etc., the activities of which were open to all and practically free. And it was above all an iron rice-bowl that guaranteed employment and paid retirement, and the iron armchair that allowed an official position to be passed on to an heir or close acquaintance. It is all this that the Chinese bureaucracy is getting down to dismantling at the demand of imperialism and all the financial institutions, in the name of integration into the world market and out of respect for what they call market norms. It had to commit to restructuring the economy to make it more competitive and get rid of unprofitable enterprises, then get rid of the biggest of their indirect costs, in other words state accommodation, education and social welfare systems. In 1984 there were 87 million workers in state enterprises, and in 1995 there were 112 million, despite 15 years of the policy of opening up and reform aimed at restructuring them or selling them to the private sector, and out of 31 million jobs created during that period, 20 million were in state enterprises. More recently, according to official statistics produced by the governments information bureau, in late 2009 there were 64.2 million workers in state enterprises (compared to 90.6 million in 1998), or 20.6 percent of urban workers (11). On the other hand, some 50 million workers supplied to those state enterprises by temporary employment agencies are not included in those statistics Restructuring, closures, privatisation for the benefit of the old leadership, the theft of public wealth but also its sale through the issuing of shares to employees and bureaucrats every method has been used to respond to the needs of the market and the demands of imperialism. It was in late 1978 that Deng Xiaoping undertook the launching of the policy of reform and opening up which in 1980 was expressed by the opening of the first four Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Through a series of successive regulations up to 1988, this reform, which gave a large role to market mechanisms, caused mass layoffs in the state enterprises. The consequences of opening up to the market, combined with a big rise in the cost of living and the development of large-scale corruption, led the Chinese working class to stand up to the government in the form of the revolutionary outbreak of 1989. The bureaucracy (supported hypocritically by all of the worlds governments) responded with bloody repression, notably during and after the Tiananmen Square Massacre

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in Beijing. Between 1995 and 2002, the number of state enterprises in Chinas industrial sector fell from 77,600 to 42,000. In total, between 1995 and 2004, urban employment fell from 147 million to 97 million (state enterprises, collective enterprises and limited companies). In 10 years, therefore, some 50 million state enterprise employees were relieved of their post. According to Sean Dougherty, a former senior advisor at the OECD: The big reduction in the number of state enterprises in industrial productive activities is due mainly to a disengagement by local governments; thus, 87 percent of the disappearances of state enterprises in the industrial sector between 1998 and 2003 are due to a withdrawal at the prefecture or district level. (12) During the same period, the number or private enterprises went through the roof: from 655,000 in 1995 to 5 million in 2006. (13) Today they represent 75 percent of all enterprises, compared to 3 percent in the early 1990s. What economic and political reality does this cover? Small and micro-sized firms serve as a significant channel for creating jobs, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao announced proudly. (14) Let us examine the official figures supplied three months previously by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC). According to Xinhua, in the first quarter of 2011, 36 million individual enterprises had almost 74 million employees, ortwo employees per enterprise. This fact greatly qualifies the fantastical figures on the development of private microenterprises. And what of the relative weight of the state enterprises? Willy Lam, former chief editor of the South China Morning Post, wrote: Thirty-three years after the beginning of the reform and open-door era, the party-and-state apparatus still has a stranglehold over the economy. The 129 central-level SOEs () enjoy monopolistic status in areas including oil and gas; minerals and power generation; banking and insurance; telecommunications and transportation; as well as aerospace and defence. While many of the 129 so-called aircraft carrier conglomerates are listed on the Chinese and in some cases also the Hong Kong and New York stock markets, the central government holds at least half of their shares. (15) Cheng Li, a committed supporter of the market, has pointed out that the fall in number from 196 to 121 of big state enterprises controlled by the central government was a result of mergers and acquisitions among themselves intended to enlarge and strengthen several flagship companies: The total assets of the SASAC companies, however, increased from 3 trillion yuan [300 billion euros] in 2003 to 20 trillion yuan [2,200 billion euros] in 2010 (16). Another indication of the relative weight of the state enterprises in the economy: if one adds up the profits made in 2009 by Chinas 500 biggest private enterprises, these are less than the profits of just two big state enterprises, China Mobile (one of the two biggest telephone companies) and Sinopec (one of the two biggest oil companies)! And in the 2010 classification of Chinas 500 leading enterprises, 66 percent are state enterprises, representing 85 percent of profits made. For his part, Richard McGregor, former Beijing correspondent of the UK financial daily newspaper Financial Times, began by welcoming the role of the private sector, only to then express this concern: But the main reins of the economy remain in the hands of the state: oil, petrochemicals, mining, banks, insurance, telecommunication services, steel, aluminium, electricity, airlines, airports, railways, ports, highways, auto industry, health, education and administration. (17) In these conditions, how could one claim that the functioning of the Chinese economy is determined by capitalists who own the means of production and have available to them a state that corresponds to those property relations? The fact remains that the policy of permanent concessions to the demands of capital being carried out by the bureaucracy has already swept away 50 million workers and given another 150 million over to savage exploitation. The bureaucracy has jeopardized and continues to jeopardize the economy based on state ownership, for it is placing the whole country under the pressure of the needs and norms of the market economy and the demands of imperialism. In this sense, the bureaucracy is the main vehicle for the restoration of capitalism, even though this policy is pushing it towards its own disintegration and certain death. In Part Two of this article, we will deal with the following questions: Is China imperialisms indispensable ally or its irreconcilable enemy? Recent relations between the United States and China. Hilary Clinton: The United States is back in Asia, but I want to underscore we are back to stay. What is the situation in the Chinese Communist Party and the bureaucracy on the eve of the next CP Congress? What are the whole worlds governments afraid of? The awakening of the Chinese working class. How is the march towards political revolution in China and the policy of the Fourth International being expressed. ENDNOTES (1) Dan Blumenthal, Bull in the China Shop, Foreign Policy, 10 February 2012. (2) The term bureaucracy is used frequently in this article. Let us therefore clarify that the Chinese bureaucracy is the social layer that exercises exclusive control of political power and identifies itself with the state, drawing its privileges and socially dominant position from that political dominance exercised through the one-party state. It is not a new class, in that this dominance is not determined by a particular role in the relations of production, but a social layer whose privileges depend on parasitically feeding on state ownership and the preventing the working class from having any kind of its own political representation. Basically, it is therefore a social layer of the same type as the Stalinist bureaucracy analysed by Trotsky, and one cannot understand its reality or contradictions unless one begins from the analysis made by Trotsky in Revolution Betrayed. This does not mean that it is identical to the Stalinist bureaucracy in every way. It was born out of different historical circumstances, from a historical development the analysis of which lies outside of the scope of this article, but which one can find notably in the document adopted by the International Secretariat of the Fourth International in May 2008 (see La Vrit-The Truth Issue no.62, September 2008). (3) UK daily newspaper The Telegraph, 20 December 2011. (4) Let us remember that the essential

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factor for measuring any economy is productivity, as Trotsky emphasised in Revolution Betrayed by quoting Marx: All economy is finally reducible to the economy of time. For example, let us note that, taking their respective populations into account, China could produce the same as the United States in volume with five times less productivity. A purely hypothetical case, as we are still very far from this! (5) Reuters, 13 January 2012. (6) Jean-Paul Yacine, Chinas reserves and US Treasury bills. The force of circumstances, 4 September 2011, at www.questionchine.net. (7) Reuters, 16 December 2010. (8) French daily newspaper Le Monde, 1 October 2011. (9) Project Syndicate, 18 August 2011. (10) Even then, bourgeois specialists in the Chinese economy recognise that the available statistics are extremely unreliable, because the criteria used to define the type of ownership are extremely confused. Sometimes the term private is applied to enterprises that are managed by the provinces and municipalities the so-called collective sector simply because they are deemed to be non-state. It is sometimes forgotten that the big Chinese enterprises quoted on the international exchanges belong to the state, that the term private enterprises also covers tens of thousands of small workshops and small shops, and that many of the private enterprises are the equivalent of small businesses run on a self-employed basis. (11) Official press agency Xinhua, 10 September 2010. (12) CEPII seminar, 2005-2006. (13) China Economic Quarterly, July 2008. (14) Xinhua news agency, 1 February 2012. (15) China Brief, 14 January 2011. (16) China Leadership Monitor, No.34, 2011. (17) Le Monde, special supplement Le Sicle chinois [The Chinese Century], October-November 2011.

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38

Arms Economy and Capitalisms Crisis of Decay

By Pierre Cise, Daniel Gluckstein and Jean-Pierre Raffi
2012: Wars are spreading across every continent. Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, growing threats against Iran, intervention in Libya resulting in the permanent presence of NATO troops, the dispersal of centres of war and destabilisation throughout the African continent, threats of destabilisation of the whole of North Africa, threats of direct imperialist intervention in Syria. All this fully justifies the initiative taken jointly in Algeria by the Workers Party and the General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA) to convene the Emergency Conference which in December 2011 brought together delegates and representatives from over 40 countries activists, workers from every current of the labour movement in addition to broad delegations from Algerian organisations. This conference firmly declared its position in favour of setting up a broad united anti-imperialist front against any foreign interference, against threats of military intervention and for the defence of the sovereignty of nations, beginning with that of the Algerian nation. Imperialisms tendency to more fully resort to war owes very little to chance. It is the result of a convergence of several needs that are vital for a capitalist system that has entered its phase of decay. First of all the need to maintain, re-establish and protect its political domination. Then, the need to pillage natural resources. But also the need to contain the revolutionary movement by the masses: it is easy to link the counter-revolutionary intervention in Libya with the revolutionary process begun a year ago in Tunisia, or with the revolutionary developments in Egypt. Another need also arises here: the arms economy (which tends to be transformed into a war economy) has for decades played a particular role as a parasitic and artificial drive-wheel of a capitalist system that is on its knees. Today the role of the arms economy is being revived. One can only understand it if one links it to all of the mechanisms of the crisis of decay of a capitalist system based on private ownership of the means of production. A pre-eminent means for the realisation of surplus value In a previous article (1), we established that what observers are calling the debt crisis is nothing more than the expression of the contradictions of the capitalist system. production seeks Capitalist continually to overcome these immanent barriers, but overcomes them only by means which again place these barriers in its way and on a more formidable scale. The real barrier of capitalist production is capital itself, Marx already wrote in the epoch of ascendant capitalism. (2) But in the epoch of decayed capitalism that of imperialism although the means used by the capitalist system for pushing back its own barriers are the same on the face of it, they have very different consequences. From a capitalism that in its ascendant phase could push back its own limits through the (artificial) means of credit, today we have reached the stage of decayed imperialism, where the massive injection of credit and the accumulation of mountains of debt are resulting in the mass destruction of the productive forces (3), we wrote on the subject, recalling this passage from Marx and Engels: In the development of productive forces there comes a stage when productive forces and means of circulation are brought into being, which, under the existing relationships, only cause mischief, and are no longer productive but destructive forces (mechanisation and money) (4). And we added the following comment: Subsequently, Rosa Luxemburg would complete this list by adding to machinery and money a third major lever for parasitically driving the capitalist economy: militarism (what today we call the arms economy). (5). In fact, Rosa Luxemburg emphasised in 1913 the double function of militarism in the process of capitalist accumulation based on private ownership of the means of production and the exploitation of labourpower. One the one hand, she wrote, militarism fulfils a quite definite function in the history of capital, accompanying as it does every historical phase of accumulation. It plays a decisive part in the first stages of European capitalism, in the period of the so-called primitive accumulation, as a means of conquering the New World and the spice-producing countries of India. Later, it is employed to subject the modern colonies, () and to turn the natives into a proletariat by compelling them to work for wages in the colonies. It is responsible () for extorting railway concessions in backward countries, and for enforcing the claims of European capital as international lender. Finally, militarism is a weapon in the competitive struggle between capitalist countries for areas of non-capitalist civilisation. (6) On the other hand, for Rosa Luxembourg militarisms other function is that, from the purely economic point of view, it is a pre-eminent means for the realisation of surplus value; it is in itself a province of accumulation in which control by the state (therefore the arms budget and hence its financing through taxation and public borrowing) plays an essential role. The dramatic change in the capitalist mode of production in its imperialist phase brought this aspect to a qualitatively new and ever-growing degree. The arms economy became an essential means for capital to try to overcome its contradictions. Monopolies, the formation of which is one of the essential characteristics of the imperialist stage, play a decisive role in economic life (7) and therefore have played a driving role from a very early point. Finance capital, the result of the merging

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of bank capital with industrial capital and the basis for the creation of a financial oligarchy, also very quickly found significant ground to operate in. Rosa Luxemburg wrote: In this way capital turns historical necessity into a virtue: the ever fiercer competition in the capitalist world itself provides a field for accumulation of the first magnitude. () Needless to say, after a certain stage the conditions for the accumulation of capital both at home and abroad turn into their very opposite they become conditions for the decline of capitalism. (8) An artificial drive-wheel of the economy Put another way: although we have been led to characterise the public debt as a weapon of mass destruction, the contemporary expression of the formidable destructive force that money has become in other words, the everbudding proliferation of capital invested in increasingly speculative and risky activities, this analysis would not be complete without linking it to the role of the arms economy (and beyond that, to the war economy) as an artificial drivewheel of capitalism that has entered its phase of imperialist decay. The arms economy is not one characteristic among others of the latest period of capitalisms historic existence; it is the driving force and the basis for the period of accumulation, based on the transformation of the productive forces into destructive forces which the capitalist economy has recently undergone and which is now being completed. It has been able to mitigate the cyclical crises of recession, but not eliminate them; it has delayed the manifestations of capitalisms fundamental contradiction, but this has only re-emerged on a wider scale. At the same time, it lies at the root of supplementary symptoms, because this time the march towards global crisis is taking place in a form that () first of all is assuming the aspect of a monetary crisis. (9) Let us point out that these lines were written in 1971. In reality, the whole history of capitalism since the big crisis of 1929 has revolved around the axis of the arms economy. Michel Dauberny wrote on the subject: War, through its colossal destruction of material and human productive forces, would allow imperialism to resume the process of accumulation from 1945 onwards (). The rebuilding of the European and Japanese economies constituted a privileged market for US capital, which made considerable profits in the war economy. But this did not last long. Between 1945 and 1946 in one year private investment in the United States grew from US$10 billion to US$30 billion. In 1948, it reached US$46 billion, only to fall to US$35 billion in 1949. That same year, the trade surplus fell by half. The market once again proved to be too narrow (). In 1949, GDP per capita fell to US$2,170, in other words below 1942 levels. (10) They had to wait until 1953, in other words the return of war, this time in Korea, for the United States GDP to regain its 1945 level. Military budgets subsequently constituted the drive-wheel of the US economy, each period of slowdown being followed by a recovery stimulated by increases in public spending, especially military spending. In actual fact, military aims and macroeconomic aims became combined, without the possibility of distinguishing who had the most impact, the advocates for the USA to be the worlds policeman, or the industrial lobbies. Following the 1961 recession, the recovery was apparent above all in 1965-6, with the surge in budgets intended for funding the war in Vietnam. In 1968, the defence budget represented 45 percent of the US federal budget! The war in Vietnam played a determining role in that whole phase in the history of US finance capital, both as an artificial driving force of the economy but also as part of the whole policy of counter-revolutionary containment which, from the Korean War via the Vietnam War to the blockades policy (Cuba, etc.), formed a continuity of imperialisms policy since October 1917. Clever tricks have their limits The arms market is, in effect, a privileged market. The state is the only buyer, and competition is ruled out. This is not the case for other products, which are subject to competition in the world market. The capitalist economy makes its profit there. But the productive forces no longer have the aim of increasing humankinds material wealth. They are then transformed, to quote Marxs formulation, into forces of destruction. Clever tricks have their limits. From the late 1960s onwards, the pursuit of the accumulation of capital proved to be increasingly difficult. In fact, the production of military equipment ordered by the state, and therefore financed by imports, was achieved to the detriment of other consumer goods and household equipment. The arms economy diverted surplus-value for the benefit of the industries working in weaponry: aeronautics and space, electrical and electronics, metallurgical, chemical, and so on. It deflected the crisis in sectors of heavy industry and leading-edge industry, but precipitated the crisis in other sectors. Due to this, the fall in capitals profitability could not be put off indefinitely, and the average rate of profit began to decline from the mid-1960s onwards. (11) It is precisely with the turning-point of the 1970s that the arms economy appeared to have run out of steam as the parasitic drive-wheel of the capitalist economy. When US President Nixon ended the link between the value of the US dollar and its gold standard in August 1971, thus subordinating the world capitalist economy even more closely to the demands and needs only of US capitalism, the Political Bureau of the OCI (12) stated: With imperialism, the highest form of capitalism, the whole planet is subject to the capitalist market; the carving-up of the world has been completed. () The militarisation of the economy and the arms economy become for a more or less lengthy period and as a preface to the war economy and war the preferred means of realising surplus-value. () The consumption of commodities by and for the army () opens up a new market to which everything else is subordinated: machinery, the labour of millions of producers, scientific and technological research, and the industrial applications of research. The arms economy consequently guarantees the functioning of the overall system and all of the branches of capitalist production. () But stabilising the capitalist economy is not enough. Sooner or later, if war does not become its logical conclusion, the limits of the market structured on private ownership of the means of production in the epoch of imperialism restrict the arms economy sector, just like all other sectors

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of the capitalist economy. Nixon has just stated those limits in the measures he has just taken. Nixons decision to end the link between the dollar and the gold standard was the start of the series of all the measures of financial and monetary deregulation that would open up fields of speculation of unprecedented scope and breadth for the battered capitalist economy. This was the source of the chain of processes that, from the 1980s1990s onwards, would lead to a series of speculative bubbles; and as each bubble burst, it resulted in considerable losses that were compensated by the inflation of the next bubble, which in turn burst and resulted in even greater losses, etc. The restructuring of the arms economy However, from the 1980s onwards, although the arms economy was no longer sufficient as the artificial drive-wheel of the world economy, it regained an increasingly important role first and foremost for political reasons. With the break-up of the USSR closely followed by the war on Iraq, imperialism tried to put in place what it called its new world order. With the war on Iraq in 1991, deployment of US and British troops in the Gulf in 1997, a new offensive in 1998-9 but also intervention in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo and a military presence in Macedonia the disintegration of the old world order led imperialism to preserve and strengthen a military potential that was capable of facing up to any situation where the protection of its interests, those of Wall Street and the multinationals, might be threatened. Within this framework, the relative stagnation or even fall in US arms spending during the 1990s could appear misleading. It was about a vast process of restructuring the arms sector, on which we have already given our position (13) and which we will only outline here. In the first place, the era opened by the fall of the Berlin War and the disintegration of the USSR no longer necessitated the accumulation of weapons (especially nuclear ones) that were intended more as a deterrent than actually to be used; rather, what was now needed was to build systems for combat, weapons and strategies designed to provide real service, in order to permit the development of the capability to intervene anywhere in the world to maintain the imperialist order. From this point of view, the export of weapons and equipment to all of the armies of new countries joining NATO required the arms sector to be made cost-effective in order to win those markets. On the other hand, it was a question of increasing that sectors cost-effectiveness by concentrating it even more and eliminating multiple producers of the same product or the same service. This was the starting-pistol for a vast movement of merger-acquisitions, making the Stock Exchange what it was before the arrival of the stars of the new economy and the new technologies for information and communication (NTIC). Six of the biggest US arms corporations that exist today are the result of the merger of 26 companies since the early 1990s. In total, around 50 companies merged into 12 corporations, a restructuring that in practice was organised by the US government. A 60 percent increase in 10 years! Since that period and following the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York (11 September 2001), imperialism threw itself wholeheartedly into the intervention in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan and, more recently, as a firebreak to the revolution that erupted in Tunisia, the intervention in Libya, the creeping intervention in Syria and the threats against Iran as well as against all the countries of North Africa, Sub-Sahara Africa and the Middle East. War on a mass scale is once again on the agenda as an essential means for imperialism to impose its iron heel against the workers and people. The arms economy is once again becoming a major artificial drivewheel of a dislocated capitalist economy, offering it margins of profitability that far exceed those available to the whole of the capitalist economy. Let everybody judge for themselves. According to the latest known statistics (14), global military spending reached US$1,630 billion in 2010, a 60 percent increase in 10 years. The main driving force for this growth has been US imperialism, whose spending increased by 78 percent over the last 10 years. The United States on its own weighs in with 43 percent of the worlds military spending, to the tune of US$698 billion. Second comes China, which only represents 7.3 percent of world spending (see Table 1). US military spending has obviously been boosted by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which together accounted for two-thirds of spending in 2009. But at the same time, a whole series of arms programmes were already underway or have been launched, and these also play a

Table 1: The top ten countries in military spending (2010)

Country Spending World Share (US$ billion) (%) 698.0 119.0* 59.6 59.3 58.7* 54.5 45.2 45.2* 41.3 37.0* 43.0 7.3* 3.7 3.6 3.6* 3.3 2.8 2.8* 2.5 2.3*

United States China United Kingdom France Russia Japan Saudi Arabia Germany India Italy

* Estimates. Source : SIPRI Yearbook 2011.

determining role. The rise in military spending varies in significance according to the country or continent in question. Thus, although it is globally limited in terms of volume, the biggest increase in military spending is to be found in Africa, which nevertheless only represents less than 2 percent of global spending. Faced with threats of imperialist pillage, the preservation and protection of wealth in raw materials (especially oil) has played a crucial role in this, not only in the producing countries (North Africa, Nigeria, Chad) but also in countries through which the oil transits or which are located in strategic zones from this point of view (like Burkina Faso, for example, a country that notably borders Niger and Cte dIvoire whose arms spending has risen by 115 percent). This is why military spending has increased considerably over the last 10 years in several non-oil producing countries, spending that has necessarily been carried out to the detriment of all other budget expenditure, already strangled by the structural adjustment policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and

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the World Bank (see sidebar). After Africa, the biggest rise in military spending is in Latin America, especially in Brazil. According to the 2011 report of the Group for Research and Information on Peace and Security (GRIP), Brasilia is far ahead of all the other countries in the region. Brazilian military spending in 2009 exceeded the total military spending of the 10 other South American states (US$25.8 billion). Clearly, this should be considered in relation to Brazils role as henchman for maintaining the imperialist order in the region, like in Haiti, for example. Wars, oil and the breaking up of nations The March 2008 monthly newsletter of the Oil Revenues Management Watch (OGRP) said: In the Republic of Congo, the history of the wars is connected with oil activities and the presence of the French company Elf Aquitaine, now Total. In CongoBrazzaville, it has been indicated that the recurrent conflicts since 1997 have brought to light the activities of that company, and especially oil as the main vector. Elf and Congolese oil epitomise the whole history of the relations between France and Africa, sometimes referred to as Franafrique (), that loose conglomeration of economic, political and military actors in France and Africa, organised in lobbies and a network and focused on monopolising two forms of income: raw materials and public aid for development. The purchase of the weapons that were used in the civil wars was mainly funded by oil revenues, as acknowledged by Mr Loik Le Floch-Prigent, the companys former CEO, in his book Affaire Elf, affaire dEtat [Elf business, state business]. Moreover, the sole objective of the struggle between the elites for control of the government was control over the godsend of oil (and reserves of diamonds, copper, cobalt, uranium, etc.). The same applies today for Nigeria, ranked sixth among the worlds oil exporters thanks to its huge oil reserves located in the Niger delta. The same also applies to South Sudan in terms of uranium, etc. US imperialism is gradually prising that godsend away from Franafrique in a war within a war that everywhere is spreading chaos and the disintegration of nation-states that were artificially drawn up during the colonial period in Africa. The example of Chad, whose oil production today represents 80 percent of its exports, is convincing. Seventy percent of that production is controlled by the United States through a pipeline that crosses the country and neighbouring Cameroon. Since 2003, control over the exploitation of Chads oil has passed to French and American companies (ExxonMobil, Chevron and Petronas). As pointed out by TchadOnline (12 August 2011): In the proxy conflict between Chad and Sudan via third party rebellions, the oil stakes are the determining factor at both the regional and international levels. During the crisis, it is business as usual On a general level, we should underline the fact that the volume of military spending has continued to increase despite the eruption of capitalisms widespread crisis in 2007. While the economies of the OECD countries grew by an average of 1.4 percent during the period 2007-10, even with a recession in 2009, military spending in those same countries grew by 4.2 percent. For the same period, while the United States saw an average annual economic growth of 1.2 percent (including a 2.5 percent recession in 2009), its military spending rose by an average of 5 percent, with of course a slowdown in 2009 and 2010. These tendencies are also reflected in the sales figures of the worlds main arms-manufacturing corporations. In 2009 this amounted to more than US$400 billion for the top 100 arms manufacturers, an 8 percent increase compared to 2008. As many of those same corporations also have civilian sector activities, military sales represent on average 40 percent of their global sales. Of those 100 top producers, 45 are from the US and 33 from the European Union. The tendency is for a strengthening of the US corporations position: on the one hand, one notes that two European companies dropped out of the table between 2008 and 2009, and on the other hand several European corporations (especially the UKs BAE Systems) draw a big proportion of their sales from US orders. This tendency is demonstrated even further in the top 10 producers, which between them account for 60 percent of the Top 100 sales (see Table 2). No less than 7 of these corporations are American, and have been in the top 10 for several years. We should also mention that several companies from the dominated countries have entered the global Top 100. It would be a mistake to see in this the emergence of new military powers competing with the imperialist powers. For the most part, these companies occupy specific niche markets that are completely dependent on the activity of the arms economy dominated by the imperialist powers, and mainly US imperialism. On the one hand, it is a question of what can be assimilated by sub-contracting, or rather the offshoring of certain segments of the production of weapons and combat

Table 2: The worlds top ten arms companies (2010)

Company Sales
(US$ million)

Profits
all activities (US$ million) 2,926 2,419 3,307 3,095 3,945 2,105 1,565 746 1,750 4,711

Share
of sales linked to military (%) 93.4 96 48 90 82 93 27 58 83 21

42,800 Lockheed Martin (USA) BAE Systems (UK) 33,109 30,858 Boeing (USA) Northrop Grumman (USA) 31,181 General Dynamics (USA) 26,622 23,420 Raytheon (USA) EADS (Europe) 16,287 Finmeccanica (Italy) 14,443 L-3 Communications (USA)13,074 United Technologies (USA)11,600

Sources: Aerospace and Defence, 2010 year in review and 2011 forecast (PricewaterhouseCoopers) and the 2010 annual reports of the companies concerned.

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systems (Hindustan Aeronautics and Indian Graph 1: Wall Street indexes comparing shares in the Ordnance Factories in India, arms sector to those in the rest of industry (1996-2011) ASELSAN in Turkey). The military sector cannot escape Note: The DFI (bold black line) is the index for defence sector shares, the this present-day tendency of Nasdaq covers hi-tech shares and the two others (including the Dow Jones the economy, although this occurs to a lesser extent than in Industrial Average) cover classic industrial shares. the civilian sector, if only for strategic reasons. On the other hand, the main activity of some of these companies is the supply of logistical services close to actual or potential theatres of operation (Agility Logistics in Kuwait). This falls under the general tendency of the imperialist powers, especially the United States, to sub-contract (and, in practice, privatise) certain activities in the combat zones. Compared to 2010, it seems that the increase in total sales by the arms corporations slowed down (up 2 percent) and one may think that an equivalent tendency could emerge in 2011 (the 2011 financial reports have not yet come out and the official statistics are even further off). But the maintenance of military budgets at levels that despite Taken from Luc Mampaey, Military expenditure, production and everything are still growing, transfers of weapons Compendium 2011, GRIP. the almost permanent income generated by procurement programmes that are often proceeding on the basis of the which there seems to be no other response spread over several years, a very high compromise agreed in early August 2011 than to increase military spending. This level of export activity (see Table 3), and is the conclusion drawn by GRIP in its by the Republicans and Democrats on the all this with public funding (and therefore 2011 report (15). Beyond the sordid question of the debt and budget deficit public debt) that does not truly appear to aspect which quite rightly fills the reports under pressure from the financial markets, be under threat, quite the opposite all authors with indignation, there is above envisages cuts in federal military this has meant that up to now the arms all a logic, that of a system of exploitation spending. For all that, should we believe sector has been able better than other which has reached an advanced stage of that, just as they were telling us in the industrial sectors to protect itself from the decay and which, in its desperate search 1990s, we are going to enter a period of consequences of the crisis that has been for artificial means that would allow it to cuts in military spending described as a ravaging the capitalist system for more survive at any cost and maintain its peace dividend? In no way whatsoever. than four years. In 2008 and 2009, when domination, is turning increasingly the stock markets saw record falls, stocks Arms economy and Research and towards the arms economy. and shares in the big arms corporations Development Within this framework, maintaining a recorded only half or a third of the fall high and increasing level of military registered by those in other sectors of As we have referred to above, at the spending, at a time when the systems production (see Graph 1). strictly economic level military deep crisis imposes measures to destroy Business as usual, and it would be spending is a vital question for capitalism the gains of the working class to an nave to be surprised at that. There is in its imperialist stage. Besides the data unprecedented degree, has a certain logic. nevertheless something sordid about the given above on the arms economy and the But it is nevertheless the case that there fact that the political elites have given powerful corporations that operate within appear to be some doubts about the future their unconditional support to short-term it, this is clearly demonstrated when one level of military spending. The current industrial strategies in search of profit looks at Research and Development budget debate in the US Congress, that generate increasing instability, to

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(R&D), which is one of the essential parameters of capitalist accumulation and the orientation of capital in search of valorisation. Let us once again take the case of the United States, the leading global arms economy. From the immediate aftermath of the Second World War onwards, the arms economy and the weapons industry carry decisive weight in the area of R&D. In the 1950s, the armed forces and specialised federal agencies were the main sources of funding for the countrys basic research. The role of R&D in the aeronautics sector, for example, is wellknown. Most of Boeings products are civilian versions of military products not to mention IT, telecommunications, chemicals, special steels, machine tools, etc. Although for the last 15 years or so the share of public funding of R&D represents on average around 1 percent of US GDP, more than half (and in some years close to 60 percent) of that funding was destined for defence. Spending on military R&D tops the table, way ahead of health, space and energy (which moreover includes the military share of spending on nuclear research). In Europe, an average of 13 percent of public funding of R&D is devoted to arms, but in France the figure is almost 30 percent (source: Eurostat). But looking at this more closely, one notes that the balance between research and development leans greatly in favour of the latter. Although it is true that several civilian technologies are versions of military technologies, it is also true that the military sector is increasingly monopolising for military purposes technologies resulting from civilian research which is often carried out with military funding. The same applies to technologies that have proved their worth in the civilian sector, like graphics boards, games consoles, smartphones and tablets. Today these are increasingly being used for military applications and are already present in military equipment. Games consoles, for example, are used to control drones (pilotless planes) remotely or for demining. The same applies for example to green energy, in which developments form a significant share of research today. Moreover, several observers estimate that green technologies will head more towards the military sector than the civilian sector biofuels, energy supply (solar panels, waste recycling, etc.) not through a concern to reduce CO 2 emissions, but to reduce the cost of transporting fossil fuels to fields of operation. To this end, the arms economy is making the private sector and the universities work for it, either through direct budget allocations or by offering incentives (especially fiscal) for innovation. Thus in the United States, a little over 40 percent of federal R&D budgets are carried out by industry, but in 85 percent of cases this involves R&D carried out on behalf of the Defense Department. This means that the industrial arms corporations carry out one-third of all federal R&D, although this sector does not account for the same proportion in the economy or the financial markets. What is more, when talking about the sector, in fact we are referring to five corporations that between them capture the major share of those budgets. The central strategic role played by the arms industry, the impossibility of states allowing this industry to go bankrupt, largely due to its crucial role in technological innovation, the need for war or the threat of war in order to maintain world order all this means that fundamentally the arms economy will not pay the cost of reducing public deficits as demanded by the financial markets. The privatisation of war All the more so because new spheres of activity are opening up for that economy, most notably that of the privatisation of war, which allows the appearance to be given of a reduction in military spending, while in fact, as is the case in all instances of privatisation, it increases spending in that sector, and for very long periods. DynCorp, one of the worlds biggest private military contractors (PMCs), employs 17,000 people and declares sales of 2 billion euros. It is a member of the International Peace Operations Association, a US lobby group representing the interests of the biggest actors in what it calls the peace and stability industry. Let us remember that in official terminology, a military intervention is called a peace operation According to US magazine The Nation, since Barack Obama became President the company Xe Services (formerly Blackwater) signed contracts worth US$174 million with the US State Department alone in 2010. According to the New York Times (3 September 2010), Blackwater also created a web of more than 30 shell companies or subsidiaries in part to obtain millions of dollars in American government contracts. This allowed it to sign a contract worth US$2.2 billion with the State Department even after being condemned for multiple murders, acts of torture and bloody operations against Iraqi civilians. (16) Just in terms of the war in Iraq, the number of mercenaries used in the war by private companies has risen to 200,000 (compared to 130,000 regular soldiers). Between 2004 and 2009, employees of Blackwater equipped US army drones with missiles and laser-guided bombs in Afghanistan and Pakistan, acting on behalf of the CIA. Other companies have flown drones in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to statements by several US military officers. The UN has thus become one of the main employers of PMCs. Since 2005, PMCs have helped the United States to train around 80 percent of African peacekeeping soldiers. In one study journal (17), LieutenantColonel Marie-Dominique Charlier, political adviser to the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), noted: In light of various return of experience reports by French officers on the Afghan theatre and my own experience, it is clear that the PMCs have no interest in stabilising the situation or in the successful Afghanisation of the ANA [Afghan National Army]. That would lessen the need for contractors, which would be against their financial interests. Thus, through the device of privatising war and military spending generally, they want us to swallow the lie that military budgets are falling, when in fact they are not. All the more so because the strategic orientations of maintaining capitals iron heel that form the basis for military R&D and direct production in a concerted fashion towards the arms corporations greatly contribute to those tendencies. Centres of insurrection are springing up everywhere For when one looks at the arms products and sectors that are due to be cut back in the United States, one gets the very clear impression that the current

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orientation of the arms economy is towards urban warfare, to use the term preferred by the CIA and the Pentagon. Helicopters, radars and sensors, smartphones and tablets, cybersecurity and above all drones the market for which is estimated at more than US$11 billion over the next 10 years are today in favour with the Pentagon. Other programmes (armoured vehicles, ships and aircraft-carriers, and above all the F35 Joint Strike Fighter, each unit costing a mere US$200 million) have not been abandoned but adapted to new strategic orders based on an assessment of the world situation in the class struggle. This assessment was summarised in a study by a researcher with the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) published in November 2010 (18), which focused on the deplorable state of the European defence industry and called for a restructuring as soon as possible. The researcher highlighted one of the issues for the arms economy in Europe; an issue that forms part of the general tendency of the arms economy: We must be brave enough to face up to reality. All around us is instability. Centres of insurrection are springing up everywhere, including in our direct neighbourhood [This was written a few weeks before the launch of the Tunisian Revolution Editor]. Everywhere, including at home, there is a growing threat of violence, a trend which can only increase with the gradual disappearance of the welfare state, the rise in inequality and resurgence (sic) of social tension, populism, demands for recognition and extremism of all sorts. In other words, the class struggle is forcing capitalism in its decayed stage of imperialism to increase military spending in an attempt to shore up its domination. Firstly, because that spending offers a priceless outlet for capital whose valorisation is continuously being hampered. But above all, it is necessitated by the requirement to maintain the system of capitalist exploitation at any cost, by removing any resistance to the free circulation of capital and the pillage of material and human resources, and to counter the social explosion which imperialisms policy inevitably generates. Here we are indeed at the heart of the questions raised notably by the Algiers Conference in November 2010 and the Emergency International Conference (Against wars of occupation, against interference in countries internal affairs, in defence of the integrity and sovereignty of nations) of December 2011, both of them convened on the initiative of the Algerian Workers Party and the UGTA. These questions were concentrated in the slogan: Down with war! Down with exploitation! this slogan is shared by all activists, groups and organisations from every tendency of the democratic labour movement who are part of the campaigns and proposals promoted by the International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples. As far as the Fourth International, which part of that broad united front, is concerned, this slogan is especially farreaching. Its basis lies in imperialisms nature of being reactionary all down the line (Lenin) and the particular role played within it by the arms economy. Going beyond the indispensable united front against war and exploitation, it calls for the struggle to put an end to the system of exploitation itself, in other words to the capitalist system based on private ownership of the means of production. This is the objective for which the militant activists and sections of the Fourth International are organising. ENDNOTES (1) La Vrit-The Truth, No.71, October 2011, Debt crisis? No, a system in its death-throes. (2) Karl Marx, Capital, Vol.III, Part III, Chapter 15, Exposition of the Internal Contradictions of the Law. (3) La Vrit-The Truth, No.71, op. cit. (4) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, Vol.I, Part 1D, Proletarians and Communism. (5) La Vrit-The Truth, No.71, op. cit. (6) Rosa Luxembourg, The Accumulation of Capital, Chapter 32. (7) All quotes in this paragraph are from V I Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Chapter VII. (8) Rosa Luxembourg, op. cit. (9) Crise montaire et marche la crise conomique mondiale [Monetary crisis and the march towards world economic crisis], Georges Mazet (Grard Bloch), La Vrit-The Truth, No.554-555, October 1971. (10) Economie darmement et parasitisme au sein du capitalisme lagonie [Arms economy and parasitism at the heart of capitalism in its deaththroes], Michel Dauberny, La Vrit-The Truth, No.554-555, October 1971 (reproduced in Retour sur trente ans de crise du systme capitaliste - Ecrits de Michel Dauberny [Revisiting thirty years of crisis of the capitalist system Writings of Michel Dauberny], Slio 2008). (11) Complementary Study No.1 (Revisiting 50 years of world history: myths and realities of the Thirty Glorious Years and the twenty years that followed) in Daniel Gluckstein, Class Struggle and Globalisation, San Francisco, APIO Publishing, 2000. (12) OCI: Internationalist Communist Organisation for the reconstruction of the Fourth International, precursor of todays Internationalist Communist Current (CCI), French section of the Fourth International and current of the Independent Workers Party (POI). (13) La Vrit-The Truth, No.32, March 2003, The return of the arms economy. (14) Unless otherwise indicated, the figures quoted in this article come from the SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, website: http://www.sipri.org/) database for the years 1988-2010, from the SIPRI Yearbook 2010, and from the 2011 report and other publications by GRIP (Group for Research and Information on Peace and Security, Brussels; website: http://www.grip.org). (15) Luc Mampaey, Military expenditure, production and transfers of weapons - Compendium 2011, GRIP. (16) For example, the Blackwater henchmen killed 17 Iraqi civilians without any cause (to quote the words used in the FBI report) in September 2007. (17) Etudes de lIRSEM, April 2010. (18) Olivier Jehin, European Defence Economy Affected by the Crisis, Visions (IFRI), November 2010.

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46

United States - Latin America The Class Struggle Today: Prepare for the worst! (IMF)
1. The current capitalist crisis began five years ago in the United States with the appearance of the subprime crisis, related to the financing of real estate. Within this framework, what is the situation in Latin America in 2012? 2. Considered over a century ago as the private hunting ground of a US imperialism that has since been hegemonic in the world for over half a century, the Latin American continent could in no way remain sheltered from the turbulence that has been buffeting the heart of the system as a result of then social resistance and shocks of the class struggle produced in the United States itself (in the context of the Obama government), and the revolutionary movements in Tunisia and Greece. Although it continues to be the USs private hunting ground, today Latin America no longer looks the same as it did a century ago. Following the masses victory over the pro-imperialist military regimes that were in power from the 1960s to the 1980s, the foreign debt crisis appeared, followed by an avalanche of privatisations and free trade treaties. But since then, the struggle of the exploited and oppressed masses has resulted in a new situation opening on the continent at the turn of the century, marked by the collapse of the former USSR. Within the limits of this article, we must point out that the resistance to imperialist pillage the result of the direct struggle of the masses, who unmasked or eliminated several pro-imperialist traditional parties, while the old CPs collapsed and guerillaism failed militarily and politically (the Sandinista government of 1979-90 is one example) has brought about the appearance of elected petty-bourgeois nationalist or popular front-style governments, ranging from Chavez in Venezuela (1999) to Lula of the Workers Party (PT) in Brazil (2002), via Tabar of the Broad Front in Uruguay (2003), Evo Morales in Bolivia (2005) and Rafael Correa in Ecuador (2006). These governments have been led to renegotiate their relations with US imperialism (the debt, control over national resources and heritage, integration into world trade, etc.), touching on the key question of ownership. Along this path, some have gone further than others, without breaking with imperialism (deappropriating with compensation is not expropriation). In Argentina, the revolutionary explosion at the time of the 2001 financial collapse resulted in a de facto renegotiation with imperialism (a new discount in the value of sovereign bonds comprising the debt), bringing back bourgeois Peronism in government with the task of rebuilding a state that had been shaken to its core by the masses. But these governments are different from the others the open agents of imperialism such as in Peru, Mexico or Colombia, or even Chile of the Concertacin coalition which have maintained their customary harmony with Washington, in countries where, despite higher growth rates, the masses standard of living are still falling. 3. In this context, President Obama was elected in the middle of a crisis in the United States, with the task from imperialisms point of view of winning back the political and economic positions that had been lost on the continent. Gains that previously had been tolerated were now being reviewed. Although the Presidents image was one of being more flexible, in reality his administration was harder than that of Bush. For an initial period, the capitalist crisis provided a breathing space, but reaction set in and restricted the margin for manoeuvre of all those governments who were now called upon to bail out the banks and therefore the system of private ownership of the means of production itself. One by one, each of the new progressive regimes went back on measures they had introduced previously, piling up new confrontations with the masses who had elected them, and who generally still supported them. a) Evo Morales, in Bolivia, began 2011 with the gasolinazo, an adjustment measure (a reduction of subsidies, hence huge increases in the price of fuels) in order to meet payment of the debt, but he had to retreat in the face of the popular rising led by the Bolivian Workers Confederation (COB), which rediscovered its independence in relation to the government. Resistance to the opening of a road through an indigenous reserve, intended to provide a corridor for exports, deepened the disagreement among sectors of the governments social base among rural workers and the indigenous population. b) Rafael Correa, in Ecuador, renegotiated the oil contracts. For five years he had tried to make the state the sole proprietor facing oil companies acting as service providers, but he never achieved this. Four years later, production fell and he retreated, renegotiating contracts in favour of private companies, which in 2012 ended in new market offers to the foreign oil companies. c) Dilma Rousseff, in Brazil, is using deep cuts in the budget to top up the primary surplus in order to service a public debt weighed down by interest (US$238 billion in 2011) and the target for speculators, thus continuing Lulas policy. She outdid him with the first big privatisation since the PT came to power, holding an auction for the concession (with foreign participation) made up of the three most profitable airports, a deal worth US$24.5 billion. d) Christine Kirchner, in Argentina, cancelled the subsidies which for 10 years had balanced the books of the privatised enterprises (gas, electricity, water, etc.) and raised taxes. The Buenos Aires underground railway, run by the local authority, lost 50 percent of its subsidies and doubled the ticket prices. Obama stated (12 December 2011) that the country must honor its existing commitments to creditors, and the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB) blocked credits that had been approved previously. The United States accounts

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for US$6.8 billion in terms of creditors who have not accepted the debt discount, and US$330 million owed to US companies has been referred to the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) (see below). e) Chavez, in Venezuela, is looking for balance in a difficult situation of rising prices and mass unemployment, with an eye on the elections due this year. He decided to quit the ICSID, which is dominated by the multinationals, following the sovereign initiative to repatriate gold reserves held abroad. But there are no new big nationalisations, he is increasing the influence of the military within the government and is supporting the development of a socialist trade union confederation, the National Workers Union (UNT), that will compete with the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV), in order to strengthen his own power rather than relying on the masses. 4. The facts show that the pressure created by the crisis is being felt. In this sense, one of the keys to Obamas orientation is his State of the Union address in January 2010: To help businesses sell more products abroad, we set a goal of doubling our exports by 2014. This expresses the wish to wipe out what remains of any national element in the industrial sectors of the dominated countries, through fierce competition with the European imperialisms for control over the continents markets. In line with this orientation, Obama has flooded the markets with billions in a series of currency issues by the Federal Reserve of the United States (widely referred to as the Fed), provoking an exchange rate war as well as a trade war. Undoubtedly, this is about more than just confronting rival Chinese and German exporters. The intention is to monopolise trade in the region by opening a safety-valve in the domestic crisis (threat of bankruptcy, unemployment, class conflict, etc.). But he cannot give up the means of global financial pillage the wheel of history cannot be turned back 100 years within the configuration of the imperialist epoch that has established the supremacy of finance. 5. In terms of political evolution, Honduras is a classic example. In June 2009, a classic military coup seen throughout the previous century overthrew Manuel Zelaya, an elected bourgeois President with vague national desires for land reform and a Constituent Assembly who joined the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA, a grouping of governments introduced by Chavez-Castro, with aspects of economic collaboration that does not pose the question of imperialisms widespread domination). The coup ratified by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and in practice by Obama symbolises the wish of the new administration to regain the positions lost during the previous decade. Despite the fact that the initial boycott of the coup-plotters supported the domestic resistance to the regime, a negotiation in 2011 within the framework of the Organization of American States (OAS) ended in Zalayas final return to Honduras, under the influence of Chavez and with the backing of Castro and Lula. Zalayas return was based on a political amnesty for the coup-plotters, who were reintegrated into the OAS, and support for the murderous regime of Porfirio Lobo. This is an indication of Chavezs willingness to negotiate, in this case by subordinating himself to imperialism. In one way, this resembles the previous agreement on the 9 new military bases established in the continent by the United States seven in Colombia, one in Curacao and one in Aruba together with the Union of South American Nations (UNASUL), which includes a military cooperation agreement between those governments without the presence of the United States. 6. One can see here the limits of the confrontations, following the forming of the ALBA and UNASUL and other variable-geometry projects inspired by Chavez (Bank of the South, Petrosul, Telesul, etc.), which resulted in the forming of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in 2011 (see below). Despite the discourse and sometimes the joint voting at the UN by some of these governments on questions linked to the sovereignty of Iran, Libya or Syria, they have not been able to spread national sovereignty on the continent, or in Honduras, where they had a concrete responsibility in the face of imperialism. 7. On this question, the evolution of the situation in Haiti is another significant example. The United States used the tragedy of the 2010 earthquake as a pretext to show who is in charge, by carrying out a direct military intervention with almost double the number of troops than MINUSTAH (the UNs stabilisation mission in Haiti, with the participation of troops from more than 40 countries, commanded by Brazil), proposed by Bush to the UN Security Council in 2004. This is a good illustration of what has changed between Bush and Obama. 8. Bush needed an intermediary in order to negotiate, rein back and try to reverse the course chosen by each regime under the impact of the masses (Chavez, Morales or Correa). In fact, he used the legitimate authority of Lula of the PT in relation to the movement of the masses and the role of Brazil in the continent. But Obama needs to go further, and he can manage up to a certain point without intermediaries thanks to his role in the class struggle in the United States itself. And in the final analysis, a mediator needs a certain amount of room in which to operate. Thus, Bush needed Lula to head the intervention in Haiti Obama, not necessarily. This is why, even after withdrawing his troops, he left behind the Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti (CIRH), headed by Bill Clinton, as the real body in power, indicating the wish for complete control. It is true that Obamas rise goes hand in hand with a new crisis of domination in the United States, but as can be seen in Haiti and Honduras, this does not mean a decline of domination in the dominated countries! 9. The reorganisation continued with the presidential election in Haiti (20102011). Obama used the OAS to accuse the winners in the first round a Duvalierist former first lady and President Prevals son-in-law of fraud in an election that once again was marked by a record level of abstention. But instead of logically declaring the election void, he appointed Martelly a singer who came third as a candidate in the second round in order to beat the former first lady. Incidentally, this went against the view of MINUSTAH, which in the previous fraud (in 2006) had selected Preval due to his origins in the Lavalas popular movement

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of the former deposed President Aristide. Finally elected, Martelly named as his Prime Minister the former principal private secretary to Clinton at the CIRH and so it was the US establishment that was in charge. As the Liaison Committee of Haitian Trotskyists has said, no project can be carried through to a successful conclusion without the CIRHs stamp of approval; the government has to submit management reports to it. Everything passes through the NGOs, while the government has absolutely no power to monitor or control. For example, the President wanted to reconstitute the army, but the United States did not agree, the international community warned him off, and the project was buried. If the country must have an army, it is not the embassies that should structure it, as the head of state announced. MINUSTAHs role as guardian of the puppet regime is maintained. The UNs decision to reduce its contingent to the same level as before the earthquake, like its eventual disengagement within a period of a minimum of five years, do not change the equation of interference in the service of imperialism. 10. In relation to this outcome, we need to define the policy of Cuba and Venezuela. Their humanitarian aid to a puppet regime for some 8 years now demonstrates their search for an agreement with imperialism in the region. A surprise? At the Sao Paulo Forum, a continental meeting of parties and organisations of the left (set up by the PT and the Cuban CP in 1990), it was even a question of combining the different aid that the governments were able to give some with oil or medicines, others on security issues In reality, between 2005, when the Forum made a wish for the Haitian nations rapid sovereign reinsertion in the international community (XII Encounter), and the 2011 resolution (XVII Encounter), an evolution had taken place. The latter urges the continents popular governments of the left and centre-left () to allow for an agenda of economic co-operation (), the broadest popular participation () by increasing the humanitarian presence, without at all mentioning the term national sovereignty and without speaking of the concrete question of the occupation by UN troops. Finally, here we have a resolution by parties participating in governments that are providing the occupying troops, like Brazil (PT), Uruguay (FA), Ecuador (PAIS), Bolivia (MAS), Peru (PNP), or by parties collaborating with the government (Argentina), not counting the PSUV of Chavez and the CP of Castro. It is true that Chavez did come to put the MINUSTAH into question. But then, accompanying the Castro brothers, he kept quiet at a time when what was required of governments like those of Cuba and Venezuela was to condemn the interference by multinational troops orchestrated by the United States, a precedent that threatens every one of the continents nations. But their recent evolution is going in the opposite direction. A political rapprochement of the governments is apparent. Martelly himself participated in ALBAs XI Summit (February 2012, in Caracas), where, inspired by the Cubans, it was decided to hold the next meeting of the member countries Chancellors in Haiti. 11. Cuba is an important element in US diplomacy, and an anti-imperialist symbol. Out of all of Obamas promises of a negotiated normalisation of relations, of partial freedom of movement and a relaxation of restrictions on the remittance of funds, we have not even seen the closure of Guantanamo. But under pressure from the markets in crisis, Castro proposed to attack the gains of the revolution through plans for privatisation and the announcement of the laying-off of 500,000 workers passed over to the private sector (after two years of resistance within the country, these layoffs were officially reduced to 137,000). How can we separate that from the policy adopted for neighbouring Haiti, where Cuba is collaborating with the regime under MINUSTAH supervision, which guarantees the savage exploitation of the workforce in the free-trade zones? 12. The resolution of the International Secretariat of the Fourth International (January 2012) points out that the campaign for the withdrawal of the MINUSTAH troops is an instrument of struggle against the submission by the continents governments to the policy of the United States, the consequences of which for the broad masses are sharpening within the process of the world capitalist crisis, in particular the so-called nationalist governments supported by the labour and popular organisations that are participating in the MINUSTAH or collaborating with the occupation. This is possible across the whole continent, following the convening of the Continental Day of 1 June for the withdrawal of UN troops from Haiti, launched by the continental meeting of Sao Paulo (5 November 2011) which set up the Continental Committee, and adopted by the Caribbean Conference in Haiti (18 November), initiatives that were promoted by the International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples with the support of the sections of the Fourth International. 13. On the other hand, firmness in the anti-imperialist struggle, without concessions for the progressive governments, does not imply that one loses ones lucidity on the reality of their relations with the masses. They are not finished. A few months ago, we had a particular situation where Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela did not have an accredited ambassador to the United States. The reasons for this varied (vague charges, expulsion and the replacement blocked by the US Senate), nobody wanted to break off diplomatic relations, and economic relations even less, but the simultaneity of the situation proved that tensions persisted. More important is the forming of the CELAC in December 2011. In the Caracas Declaration, the CELAC invokes Dessalines, the hero of the revolutionary liberation of Haiti, but it avoids mentioning the shameful occupation of the country today. What is more, in Point 28 it indicates that CELAC, as the only mechanism for dialogue and consensus that unites the 33 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, is the highest expression of our will for unity in diversity, where henceforth, our political, economic, social and cultural ties will strengthen on the basis of a common agenda of welfare, peace and security for our peoples, with a view to consolidation of our regional community. Thirty-three countries, in other words with Cuba but without the United States or Canada. Thirty-four are members of the OAS, once described by Che Guevara as the United States Ministry of the Colonies. And if words have any meaning, the only mechanism for

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dialogue and consensus that unites the 33 countries means to say that the CELAC has superposed itself on an OAS that has been rid of its content. The building of this formal politico-legal framework as distinct from the OAS could create a rift with the United States, which already does not look upon it kindly (UNASUL itself played a role against the proimperialist coup dtat by the leaders of Bolivias crescent moon departments against Evo Morales, who at that time was defended by the masses). All the more so as the initiatives that interested imperialism, like the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA-ALCA), have been abandoned or fragmented, commensurate with the struggles of the masses in the cities and countryside which gained elements of a domestic consumer market (for example, the Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA), private investment in a network of export channels, created during the ALCA negotiations, is in the process of disappearing). It is the masses struggle and not a regional integration model, which does not really exist that explains the alleviation of poverty through a drop in unemployment in the region throughout the last 10 years, as noted by the ILO study falling to 6.8 percent, the lowest rate since the study began in 1990 even though half of the new jobs are informal and youth unemployment remains double the average. 14. It is true that in the eyes of the masses the situation is associated with the progressive elected (in several cases, re-elected) governments, to an uneven degree insofar as each one is a different case. But it is even more true that this whole situation is in the process of changing rapidly due to the global crisis. The governments know this and Washington, the banks and the IMF know it better than they do. Examining the dynamic of growth, the IMFs latest World Economic Outlook report (September 2011) stated that: The regions external current account deficits are set to widen slightly during 2011-12 despite the strength in commodity prices. Indeed, the reliance on capital flows to finance these deficits has increased the regions susceptibility to a sudden turnaround in investor sentiment. (p.92) What is more, due to the crisis, on 2 February Nicolas Eyzaguirre, Director of the IMFs Western Hemisphere Department, forecast that in 2012 the region should hope for the best (or at least better times), but prepare for the worst. 15. In reality, the strength demonstrated by the Latin American masses at the turn of the century, reining back the wave of privatisations and attacks on their rights, was only the prelude to the decisive battles that lie before them. The governments that were elected over the last decade are tending to turn to the right, and the governments that are openly agents of imperialism are intensifying their policy. More than ever, the trend is for seeking to permanently associate the trade union confederations through mechanisms of consensus, dialogue or pacts in each country (which we will not address here). The coming to power of the Peruvian Nationalist Partys Ollanta Humala in Peru in 2011, a late nationalist arrival to the current group go office-holders, no longer created the same illusions, except with regard to the determination of the old Peruvian CP, which still controls the General Confederation of Workers of Peru (CGTP). Not having much room for manoeuvre, in six months, rather than concede something, he carried out a cabinet reshuffle and launched a policy of civil war against the masses in favour of foreign mining interests. This is somewhat similar to the limits of the presidential campaign pursued by Obrador, the progressive candidate in the continents key country of Mexico, destabilised by a so-called war on drug trafficking (60,000 fatal victims so far) which in reality is simply an extension of the pillage under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The moment has come to affirm that the only barrier to the huge pressure from imperialism is a sovereign policy for protecting the nation, centred on defending the workers who are the main productive force. A policy of broad antiimperialist unity that includes breaking with the foreign debt, promoting land reform and defending the industrial base, including the renationalisation of everything that has been privatised and the protection of the countrys natural wealth a programme with national characteristics which we will not describe here, but one which only governments of the workers and peasants will defend to the end. To do so, the governments will not be able to avoid touching private property. This is a policy of dismantling imperialist oppression the terrible face of which in Haiti is not an exception, rather a taste of the future it has in store on the ruins of which will be built the Free Union of Sovereign Nations of the continent, in close collaboration with the workers and the oppressed of North America. 16. These perspectives require a political instrument, for which the continents sections of the Fourth International must fight: the building of powerful independent workers parties within a process that can be slow or fast according to the country, in particular starting with the best cadres of the trade union confederations who are resisting on the grounds of independence, and also regrouping to defend existing organisations that are being threatened. This is not easy. But, following the formation last year of the Political Organisation of the People and the Workers (OPT) on the initiative of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), then the decision of the Congress in January of the Bolivian Workers Confederation (COB), at the proposal of the Miners Federation, to work for the building of a political instrument for the workers a party belonging to the workers, as the local press emphasised in recognition of the traditions and experience of the Bolivian proletariat, the orientation and course is clear to see for the whole working class from the north to the south of the Americas. ENDNOTES
(1) All the data given here exclude the Caribbean. If the tax havens of this region are also taken into account, the flow of profits to the United States from Latin America exceeded US$100 billion in 2011. (2) According to the United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations, acquisitions accounted for 60 percent of FDI in Latin America between 1990 and 1999. What is more, declining amounts of FDI in fact came from the head offices. In the last four years, 87 percent of FDI came from reinvestment (retention of profits), therefore from money that never actually crossed borders (data of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, US Department of Commerce).

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The second wave, 10 years later, with the emerging countries crisis (1995-2002), saw a return to financial flows via a new hike in interest rates. From 2005 onwards, there was a third wave of heavy transfers. Now, it was the profits obtained by the multinationals subsidiaries that were sent back in an abnormal way to the parent companies. The flow increased strongly in Figure 1. the last four years, in the face of a US Rate of Profit vs. Flow of Earnings new fall in the rate of profit due from Latin America to US Private Sector to the crisis of 2007-8. Returns are beating all the records, year after year. In 2011, they reached US$40 billion, double the amount of foreign direct investment (FDI) made that year. (1) With each wave, it is the Latin American urban and rural workers who in the first place have to apply themselves to generating such surpluses. In the 1980s, the governments devalued their currencies, reduced wages and supported exports. In the 1990s, the wave of privatisations allowed for the payment of United States, imperialism reacted by calling on Latin interest on the foreign debt. The current wave is derived from the significant weight of the multinationals America to collaborate by paying interest. One can observe three big waves of transfers (shaded throughout the continent, following so many acts of areas in the graph) of surplus-value extracted from the offshoring (with the maquiladoras and the special export workers, the origin of profit. The first wave, during the zones) and the free trade treaties; but also from lucrative 1980s and 1990s, was the payment of interest on the financial operations. foreign debt. In the third wave, interest was overtaken by In order to guarantee being able to send profits, the the realisation of increasing profits for the multinationals continents countries must ensure significant levels of that were paid to the parent company. exports, specialising increasingly in primary products Overall, this pillage impoverished and deindustrialised (agricultural and mineral). For now, the rise in the continent, to the point where capital is fighting against international prices for these products guarantees a the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, as analysed by surplus in the balance of trade. But the rise depends on a Marx. speculative bubble, inflated by cheap money injected by The first wave came after the sharp fall in profit in the the central banks of the United States, Europe and Japan. 1970s. Capital reacted: Nixon decreed the end of the Latin America has had a trade surplus with the United dollars convertibility against the gold standard, leading States of more than US$75 billion. But a big proportion to an explosion of financial speculation. During the of this remains in the reserves of the Latin American following decades, the tendency to fall was reversed or central banks, who invest it at reduced rates in US diminished. In the United States, the unprecedented Treasury bills. At the same time, the multinationals in Latin America attacks on the working class reduced the cost of labour. Alongside wars, the United States developed another are increasingly moving their FDI out of industrial external instrument: the forced transfer of flows of production. Figure 2 shows that in the early 1980s, half of all surplus-value in the form of astronomical interest from investment was destined for industry; the banking and Latin America in the foreign debt crisis. Trade between the United States and Latin America is marked by exploitation by the dominant imperialism. There is a close relation between the rate of profit in the United States and the rate of income flows from Latin America. As Figure 1 shows, during the second half of the century, when the rate of profit was falling in the

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... Exploitation and Pillage (ctd.)

Figure 2

services sectors accounted for barely 33 percent. During the 1990s, have of those resources were pulled out of industry and moved into mergeracquisitions of banks and financial companies and services (public service concessions, etc.) during a

wave of privatisations. (2) Finally, in recent years industrial production has been relegated to 30 percent of investment, while the banking and services sectors dominate completely with more than 55 percent. With their strategic positions in the

chain of production, the multinationals occupy a prime spot in the process of deindustrialisation. Latin American industrial production, which in the 1970s and 1980s represented more than 40 percent of GDP (as much as 50 percent in the case of Argentina and Brazil), has fallen back to around 30 percent. As the currencies of several of these countries have remained overvalued, production for import is falling even more. The valorised exchange rate is the result of the arrival of short-term investment, a veritable speculative bubble headed for our region. Cheap money injected by the central banks of the United States and Europe is feeding the speculators, who are able to borrow at rates close to 0 percent and then lend on to the governments of Latin America at the highest rates in the world. Those who are paying the bill for this are the national budgets and the peoples (in Brazil, for example, almost half of the budget is devoted to paying interest on the public debt).

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Once Again on the Outraged Movement

By Andreu Camps
The upsurge of the outraged movement occurred in a situation where a majority of the youth felt betrayed by the traditional parties of the working class without finding an answer in the big trade union organisations the UGT and CCOO that are bogged down in their policy of social dialogue. Let us remember that the signing of the pact on 2 February 2011 which puts the pensions system into question represents a major rift between the adult working class and the youth without rights or work. The objective conditions of the upsurge of this type of mobilisation are clear: it is a safetyvalve, beyond the wishes of the hundreds of thousands of youth who mobilised throughout the country, including significant layers of workers. In all of their public statements, the outraged present themselves as a citizens movement. And in the more recent period, influenced by Occupy Wall Street, they have been saying that society is divided into percentages the 1 percent and the 99 percent and that they representthe 99 percent. Clearly, society is not divided into percentages. In every country, society is divided into classes: the class that owns the means of production, trade and exchange; the wage-earning working class that lives on the proceeds of selling its labour-power; and the extremely heterogeneous middle class, composed of small employers, shop-owners, the liberal professions and rural workers a layer which, purely in terms of numbers, forms the majority in most countries. It is therefore the capacity of societys two main classes their degree of organisation and consciousness that allows us to determine which are the objectives that allow the biggest grouping of the majority, and this forms the startingpoint for characterising the different movements that exist. In this sense, politically the outraged movement falls within the framework of reforming the system of private ownership, within the framework of giving it a human face and reforming the existing institutions in our case, the monarchy that is the heir of Francoism, based on the regionalisation of the country and subordinated to the European Union. In no instance does this movement characterise the institutions as institutions of finance capital acting on its behalf or created by it. This is why this movement is attempting to bypass the division of society into classes, claiming to speak in the name of all of society; and in its most extreme expressions, it is transformed into the enemy of the organised working class. We shall return to this point. Since 20 November The victory of the right in the legislative elections in Spain has been used by PSOEs leading apparatus to try to deliver a blow against the resistance of the working class, by making the class bear responsibility for the partys own electoral defeat. As an indirect consequence, this has also resulted in the dispersal of the outraged movement which during the preceding months had given the impression of an apparent unity across the different regions of the country thanks to one day after another of mobilisations and demonstrations. In November 2011, a book was published entitled There are alternatives: proposals for creating jobs and social well-being in Spain. Today this work is the Little Red Book of the assemblies and groups claiming to represent the outraged. It was written by three politically active men: Vicen Navarro, a university professor and former political exile who spent a long time in the United States, a member of the left wing of the Democratic Party, an advisor to Clinton on his healthcare reform and someone who presents himself as a sincere socialdemocrat; Juan Torres, a journalist who is well-known for his defence of republican ideas; and Alberto Garzon, a young member of parliament for the United Left, the electoral coalition of the Spanish Communist Party, and one of the leaders of the outraged in Malaga (southern Spain). In their dedication, they address all those, especially the youngest, who starting from 15M flooded the streets in order to reject the neoliberal policies that are suppressing social rights and to call for other alternative and fairer measures for exiting the crisis. What are their proposals? The first demand that needs to be addressed is that of reforming the international bodies in order to democratise them. (p.183) It is necessary to strengthen the organisation of the United Nations. (p.189) As Spain is a member of the European Union and the euro zone, a very thorough democratisation of the European organisations is needed (p.180). The European Union should be restructured within a federal framework that would allow a social capital-labour pact at the European level. (p.177) We therefore consider it indispensable, if we do not wish to see the euro zone blown apart, to strengthen European governance in economic relations (p.175). The European Central Bank should be converted into a genuine central bank (p.176) that will be obliged to report to the European Parliament (p.212). Obviously, democracy needs to be regeneratedwith the introduction of direct forms of participation () like binding referendums (p.206). And finally, there is a need for another economy, another kind of social relations, another kind of human being (p.81), and this means that we must learn to think in the opposite way (), not in order to be slaves to caprice but in order to master need. (p.200) The least one can say is that these political figures are being very clear: theirs is the old refrain of the Catholic Churchs social doctrine, disguised as socialdemocratic politics. This is why their historic reference-point is Roosevelt and the New Deal. As Roosevelt affirmed when he signed the Declaration of Philadelphia in 1944 , labour is not a commodity and universal and lasting peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice. Let us be clear: politically, there is a direct link between this and what the European Trade Union Confederation

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(ETUC) is arguing for and trying to impose on all the national trade union confederations. In fact, on 29 February 2012 the ETUC called for a decentralised European day of action under the slogan: Enough is enough! Alternatives do exist. For employment and social justice. Let us recall that on 7 December 2011, eight of the most senior European trade union representatives including Sommer of the DGB (Germany), Thibault of the CGT (France), and Toxo and Mendez of the CCOO and UGT (Spain) called for a new European social contract, explicitly making a clean sweep of all the rights and gains won through struggle by the working classes in the countries of Europe after the Second World War. How different is this to what is being proposed by those considered by the outraged as their oracles? The so-called co-operatives as a solution! We are not writing about Vicen Navarro because of some kind of complex or bitterness. He is a genuine activist for his cause. He takes every opportunity to defend his positions: in meetings, rallies, media appearances and press articles. Recently, he has discovered cooperatives. On 25 January 2012, Navarro wrote a laudatory article on Obamas policy of nationalising General Motors, saying that Obama had succeeded in saving General Motors without mass lay-offs. He also saluted the trade union UAWs ability to get its membership to agree to wage-cuts and a reduction in working hours in order to avoid job-cuts. Obviously, the reality of the situation is not so rosy something the American workers have paid dearly to find out. According to the US press, the workers concessions amounted to a slash in all-in labor costs from around $76 per workerhour in 2006 to just over $50. Abandoning decades of principle, the UAW approved a two-tier wage structure in which new hires start at $14 per hour roughly half the pay and benefits of more senior line workers. To top things off, Treasury demanded just one more teeny thing a strike ban. The pice de no rsistance! Under the governments agreement with the companies, any strike by workers is grounds for forfeiting the [federal state aid] loan. Their words, not ours. Navarro, who is perfectly familiar with the situation and who in any case should know better, nevertheless considers this to be a positive thing. This is why, in the article referred to above, he began by saying: The trade union UAW has asked the Mondragon co-operative in the Basque Country for advice on transforming one of the biggest companies among the worlds manufacturers into a co-operative. Great! What is the Mondragon co-op? One can play on the ignorance of US workers, but not with the facts namely, what Mondragon represents in Spain. We refer to an article entitled Selfmanagement and co-operatives in Spain, published in 2008 by the POSI, Spanish section of the Fourth International, and signed by J Bejar. Two pieces of information: the Mondragon co-op is Spains seventh biggest industrial and commercial group. It was set up in the 1920s by capitalists linked to the Basque Nationalist Party, a clerical party that advocates the Catholic Churchs social doctrine. It grew before and during the Franco dictatorship, among other things because the right to join a trade union and go on strike were banned. And workers who had been laid off under the Franco dictatorship were not reinstated after its fall. This was the high-point of the association of capital with labour. A few elements on the recent activities of the outraged In Spain, like in the United States, tens of thousands of workers and their families have been evicted from their homes. Just last year, the figure exceeded 50,000. This prompted and continues to prompt a huge resistance movement, sometimes taking the form of gatherings to prevent the evictions from being carried out. Every militant labour activist, especially those belonging to the Fourth International in Spain, naturally are taking part in those gatherings and calling on their trade unions to take a clear position on the issue. They are also calling on the political parties to declare their positions. What is the outraged movement doing? It has launched a national signaturegathering campaign that will run until 5 November 2012, with the aim of presenting the Cortes (Parliament) with a citizens or popular law initiative: The solution that we are proposing through this popular law initiative is to allow properties to be given back in order to pay off the mortgage. The campaigns objective is therefore to gather 500,000 signatures so that Parliament would pass a law on this issue. We wrote about the consequences of adopting such a measure in Issue No.72 of La Vrit-The Truth. In any case, this measure does not pose the crucial question of banning all evictions and, taking into account the fact that the banks own the properties, the question of nationalising the banks. Against the trade unions, against the labour movement The following announcement appeared in the first week of January 2012 on various internet sites associated with the outraged : Rallies at all CCOO and UGT offices We workers cannot allow a new betrayal by the CCOO and UGT leaderships. For this reason, next Thursday, 12 January 2012 at 6pm, we invite you to convene in your respective towns a rally at the offices of both trade unions, to show our rejection of this new pants-dropping. Similarly, we call on grassroots activists in those trade unions to raise their voices and not allow another betrayal in the name of trade unionism. At that time, new negotiations between the trade unions, employers and government on a new social pact had been announced. A contradictory debate raged inside the trade union organisations, and several activists and representatives at the highest level had declared their opposition to signing a new pact. The appeal by the outraged did not result in big gatherings. On the contrary: hundreds of trade union activists occupied their union offices in order to defend them. But this allowed the apparatus to say that those who were attacking the negotiations within the framework of the organisations governing bodies were provocateurs Thanks to the outraged. On 19 February 2012, they tried to go further. In fact, after the Rajoy government decreed a new reform of the Labour Code on 10 February, a reform which dismantles the Code and gives employers every right, the main trade union leaders were forced to call demonstrations on 19 February in every town and city in the country against this reform. They even announced that if necessary, if the government did not rectify the situation, they would call a general strike. Every labour activist, of course including members of the Fourth

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International, did everything they could to ensure the success of those demonstrations, fighting then as now for the struggle against the new reform to have clear objectives: the non-negotiable withdrawal of the reform, and the withdrawal of the union signatures to the social pact of 2 February 2011 against pensions and the social pact of 25 January 2012 on the wage-freeze. Several official bodies have taken a public position on this point. The stakes are high. But what are the outraged doing? It would be an exaggeration to say that they have a homogeneous position across the country, but let us give one significant example: the position adopted by the gathering at Puerta del Sol (Madrid) that met on 13 February at least, apparently, as these meetings are acquiring an increasingly confidential character During that meeting, it was decided to participate in the 19 February demonstration through the constitution of a critical, organised and differentiated bloc, therefore starting from a different spot to the one chosen by the broader demonstration, but with the intention of joining up with it later In Madrid, a few dozen demonstrators moved up and down the demonstration under the slogans PP-PSOE, the same shit! and The trade unions are for sale! Going cheap! (Barato, barato, se vende el sindicato!), and threw rotten eggs at the trade union leaders marching at the head of the demonstration. Thus, at a time when the working class was once again demonstrating its strength throughout the country and the choice was between rectifying the reform or withdrawing the reform, the so-called outraged insulted the trade union leaders precisely at the moment when they were calling for demonstrations. The outrage and anger felt by the workers and youth of all the peoples of Spain will undoubtedly find their way as part of the struggle for the unity of their organisations around clear objectives: the withdrawal of the reform and the repeal of all the adjustment plans.

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A Review that Supports NATOs Intervention in Libya: Inprecor

By Dominique Ferr
As this issue of La Vrit-The Truth goes to press, a Libya freed by NATO is sinking a little deeper each day into chaos and clashes between tribal militias, while the gravest threats of a new military intervention are weighing on Syria and Iran (see in this issue the statement of the International Secretariat of the Fourth International). As we said over a year ago, there is no Arab revolution or an Arab Spring; rather, there are contradictory processes of revolution and counter-revolution. Revolutionary uprisings against regimes subject to imperialism in Tunisia and Egypt, imperialist interventions against the sovereignty of the nations of the whole of the Maghreb, with the intervention in Libya. The militant activists of the Fourth International are faithful to the tradition of Marx and Engels, for whom a nation cannot become free and at the same time continue to oppress other nations (1), incorporating the defence of the oppressed nations of Ireland and Poland at the heart of the founding of the International Workingmens Association, and we are faithful to the principles of the first four Congresses of the Communist International of Lenin and Trotsky, which defined the line of the united anti-imperialist front in the oppressed countries. For the Fourth International, it is a duty to help organise the struggle against imperialist interventions, at a time when the peoples from Tunis to Athens are seeking to shake off the yoke of domination by the bankrupt system of private ownership of the means of production. The importance of the Emergency Conference (Algiers, 10-12 December 2011) Let us also draw the attention of our readers to the significance of the Emergency International Conference against wars of occupation, against interference in countries internal affairs, in defence of the integrity and sovereignty of nations, co-organised by the General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA) and the Workers Party in Algeria, which regrouped broad sectors of the antiimperialist, democratic and labour movement from five continents. The conference resolution, which was largely endorsed by the delegates to that conference, says in particular: We met on 10, 11 and 12 December 2011 in Algiers, in a Conference Against wars of occupation, against interference in countries internal affairs, in defence of the integrity and sovereignty of nations called by the UGTA and the Workers Party of Algeria (PTA) following the foreign military intervention in Libya. () Yes, there is an emergency when the great powers decide to intervene militarily in Libya under the aegis of NATO, opening the path to insecurity and instability in the region, jeopardizing the integrity of the countries of the Sahel, while those same powers have already destroyed Iraq through a war of occupation, are continuing the war in Afghanistan, keeping Haiti under military occupation, and imposing military bases in different regions of the world. We condemn the military intervention in Libya, which far from freeing the Libyan people is laying the groundwork for future acts of violence on a tribal, ethnic and communal basis. We affirm that this intervention has merely added to the suffering, hardship and insecurity of all the peoples of the region, at a time when many African countries have already been ravaged by armed conflict and the foreign pillage established by the servicing of the debt. It also said: We oppose any foreign military intervention anywhere in the world, and therefore in Syria and Iran, with or without the UNs backing. On the eve of the imperialist intervention in Libya, the co-ordinators of the International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples said in a statement on 5 March 2011: The same people who before invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and are continuing their murderous occupation there, are already committed to a military intervention in Libya. Such an intervention would not only be turned against the Libyan people, but also against the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. It would be turned against the sovereignty of all the regions nations, taking another step following the introduction of the AFRICOM troops (a joint command designed to co-ordinate all of the United States military and security activities on that continent). It would be turned against all the peoples and all the workers, including those of Europe and the United States who oppose the privatisations, the counter-reforms imposed by the IMF and European Union and the threats to national sovereignty. The only position in line with the labour tradition of fighting against any military intervention We know that although NATOs imperialist intervention in Libya was directly sponsored by Washington and facilitated by the UN Security Council which approved it, with the Russian and Chinese representatives abstaining it was the French and British imperialist leaders who led the charge of the armed intervention, supported by the petrodollars of the ultra-reactionary Emirate of Qatar. In those countries, the militant activists of the Fourth International defended the only principled position in line with labour internationalism: rejection of any intervention in Libya. In France, the National Secretaries of the Independent Workers Party (POI, which is not affiliated to the Fourth International, but within which the members of the FIs French section form the Internationalist Communist Current) declared the following public position: Any organisation claiming to represent the working class, democracy and the peoples right to self-determination that gives its backing under any pretext whatsoever to the intervention would thus be agreeing

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to rally to the flag of the US, British and French governments and would be disqualifying themselves in relation to the principles they claim to embody. () As far as the POI is concerned, in the Libyan peoples difficult hours there is but one position in line with the labour tradition of fighting against any military intervention dictated simply by the defence of the oil interests: that of demanding against the French, British and US governments, the UN, NATO and the European Union: Stop the military intervention against Libya immediately! Withdraw all foreign troops! No to the bombings! This lengthy reminder of what a principled anti-imperialist position entails, based on the tragic example of the intervention in Libya is all the more necessary for the fact that, in a whole series of imperialist countries, especially in Europe, there is a surge in initiatives relayed by left and far-left groups, using progressive verbiage, aimed at laying the ground for an intervention in Syria. Let us recall that a year ago, political forces that for decades had had nothing to do with the Fourth International all the while usurping its name, like the Pabloite United Secretariat (USec) of KrivineSabado-Besancenot shamefully provided cover for imperialisms armed intervention in Libya, of course claiming this to be in the name of the Arab revolutions and the peoples right to self-determination. Inprecor/International Viewpoint discovers democracy in Benghazi A few months after the liberation of Libya by French, British and Qatari troops (arming and training the militias of the National Transitional Council, the NTC) the Pabloite United Secretariats international political review Inprecor/International Viewpoint (No.575-576, JulySeptember 2011) devoted a big section to Libya. In a report headed Impressions of the new Libya (2), a Lebanese Pabloite leader, presented as a Lebanese activist of the Revolutionary Communist Group (a sympathising organisation of the Fourth International) who visited Benghazi in June 2011, on behalf of Inprecor/International Viewpoint, paints a eulogistic picture of the so-called New Libya under the yoke of NATO and the insurgents, whose leaders, if they had not emerged from the state apparatus of Colonel Qaddafi, had newly arrived from London and Washington. Inprecor/International Viewpoint placed an equals sign between the genuine revolutionary uprisings that had taken place a few weeks previously in Tunisia and Egypt (driving out the regimes of Ben Ali and Mubarak, the local representatives of imperialism) and the bloody intervention in Libya by imperialism. However, wrote Inprecor/International Viewpoints correspondent in Benghazi (the city where the NTC based itself before Tripoli was taken by NATO), as in the other Arab democratic uprisings, what happened in Libya with NATOs help was a democratic uprising. He described the multiplication (sic) of activities of several associations () in Benghazi since the uprising. Inprecor/International Viewpoints correspondent went into raptures over Liberty Square (Tribunal Square before February 17) [which] has become the forum where different political and social opinions are expressed. After 5 pm, people meet to watch Al-Jazeera television on the giant screen, while participants of all ages offer the public songs, poems and speeches on political or religious themes. He barely regretted, within this idyllic scene, the segregation of Liberty Square in a section for men and another smaller one for women. A new discovery: Whereas under Gaddafi the authorised press was limited to that of the regime, the existence in Benghazi today of more than 65 titles of newspapers, dailies, weeklies or monthlies, constitutes one of the main gains of the revolution. Of course, of course, it is possible that for a short time there was a little room for part of the urban population to benefit from greater freedom of speech. But under the yoke of imperialist intervention, a mechanism had been put in gear. And the ink had hardly dried on that issue of Inprecor/International Viewpoint before occupied Libya became bogged down in intertribal clashes and the NTC proposed the introduction of Sharia law The imperialist countries as guarantors of the Libyan peoples freedom? The author added: Paradoxically, the flags of the USA and the European Union are also there as a reminder that the freedom of the Libyan people depends in great part on the support of these governments. Yes, you read that right, according to this so-called revolutionary communist, the freedom of the Libyan people depends in great part on the support of these governments, the imperialist governments of Europe and the USA! The significance of the simple fact that flags of imperialist countries were flying over a dominated country did not even occur to this revolutionary! What could this mean other than the symbol of imperialist oppression? Inprecor/International Viewpoint did not stop there. Under the headline The revolution seen from the inside (3), the Pabloite review published without any commentary an interview in Benghazi with a certain Azeldin el-Sharif, an opponent of the Gaddafi regime, who was described as having spent 10 years in exile in London before returning to Benghazi. Straight away, this individual stated his support for what he called the beginning of NATO air strikes, which was supported by the Libyan masses. This opposition figure added that when we were in Britain, the Libyan opposition abroad demanded from the United Nations an intervention as soon as possible. We put pressure on the British government by writing and demonstrating, with few results. El-Sharif added: Thanks be to God, there was Resolution 1973 of the United Nations for the protection of civilians (). Then we moved on to the stage of striking at the depots and bases where Gaddafis missiles are kept. In this sense Resolution 1973 was in the service of the Libyan people and the protection of civilians. Thus Inprecor/International Viewpoint opened its columns wide let us repeat, without the slightest commentary to individuals who campaigned for imperialist governments to carry out armed interventions! (4) Well, whatever these opponents and their friends at Inprecor/International Viewpoint might think, we stand in the tradition of Lenin and Liebknecht: The enemy is in our own country, it is our own imperialist government! For our part, we refuse to offer the slightest support for our government in any intervention against a dominated country, under the false pretext of democracy and freedom. The demand of support for the United States and the UN Inprecor/International Viewpoint laid it on thick, asking el-Sharif this question: As regards Western support, we are seeing

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air-raids on the strategic points and centres of Gaddafi, aimed at neutralizing his forces. But are the Western countries also providing arms to the revolutionaries? The opposition figure continued his pro-imperialist diatribes, with the shameful indulgence of Inprecor/International Viewpoint, saying, among other things: Indeed, the United States was the second country, after Britain, to demand that Gaddafi goes. However it is well-known that France, China and Russia refused the solutions put forward by Britain and the United States. Subsequently, the French position evolved positively, since it proposed to the European Union and took the initiative on it air strikes to prevent Gaddafi from advancing towards Benghazi. () The part played by the states of the Arab League for the adoption of Resolution 1973 at the Security Council shows a high sense of responsibility towards Libya. It is necessary to emphasize the positive role played by Qatar. () And the countries which will be able to invest in oil and gas will be those which have helped the Libyan people. Concluding, el-Sharif gave the full sense of the installation of a puppet government paid for by NATO on the borders of Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt, by adding: We hope for a revolution in Algeria, so that the Algerian people can get rid of this repressive military regime. Very happily for him, the Algerian people did not need any el-Sharif to tell them what a genuine revolution, like the one it carried out victoriously 50 years ago to free itself from the French colonial yoke, really is! At that time, as now, the militant activists of the French section of the Fourth International stood unconditionally at the side of the peoples oppressed by their own imperialism. In these conditions, one can well understand what el-Sharif means here by revolution: imperialist interference from outside against the Algerian people, against its sovereignty and independence won through struggle 50 years ago, at a cost of a million and a half martyrs cut down by French colonialism! The reader could object that this reactionary pro-imperialist prose expresses the views of an individual interviewed by Inprecor/International Viewpoint and does not necessarily commit the Pabloite USec. What then, are to make of the article headed NATOs Conspiracy against the Libyan revolution signed by Gilbert Achcar (5), whose document on the same subject appears as a report on the meeting of the so-called International Committee of the Fourth International on 25-29 February 2012? A NATO conspiracy in Libya: NATO did not carry out enough bombings! Which NATO conspiracy against the Libyan revolution are we dealing with here? Achcar, author of the report on the Arab revolutions in the main meeting of the Pabloite USec leadership, levelled this terrible accusation against NATO: In Operation Desert Storm launched by the US-led coalition against Iraq in 1991, it took only 11 days to equal the above number of air sorties flown over Libya in 78 days. The total number of sorties in 43 days of Desert Storm reached 109,876an average of 2,555 per day. After the devastation brought about by that storm and further bombing campaigns during the 12 embargo years between 1991 and 2003, 41,850 sorties were flown during the first 4 weeks alone of so-called Operation Iraqi Freedom. Of these, 15,825 were strike sorties, averaging 565 per day. () The crucial questions are then: why is NATO conducting an aerial campaign in Libya that is low-key not only in comparison with the air component of the war to grab similarly oil-rich Iraq, but even compared to the air war for economically unimportant Kosovo? And why is the Alliance at the same time refraining from providing the insurgents with the weaponry they have consistently and insistently requested? For Achcar, the problem in Libya was that there had not been enough air-strikes, in contrast with thosde carried out during the wars of extermination against the Iraqi people in 1991 and 2003, or the NATO bombing of Serbia and Kosovo in 1999! (6) Achcar acted like a genuine sales representative of Libyas NTC, praising the fact that contrary to the Afghans, the insurgents are willing and potentially able to pay for whatever weapons would be delivered to them. And then he turned into a NATO adviser: The logical corollary of NATOs refusal to arm the insurgents would have been its waging a very intensive war campaign to compensate for the weakness on the ground of those it purports to support. And yet second paradox NATOs Libya air campaign pales in comparison with the Kosovo one, not to mention other US-led aerial operations in recent times. Who are these revolutionaries who dare to claim to represent the Fourth International, and who regret the socalled weakness and limitations of the bombings by NATOs imperialist aircraft? The emancipation of the peoples will be the act of NATO? But fundamentally, the matter is not circumstantial, and does not concern Libya It is a question, as Achcar concluded, of stating a theoretical invention: the freedom and selfdetermination of the oppressed peoples can pass through ugly phases such as intervention-occupation under the auspices of NATO, as is the case in Libya. An exaggeration on our part? Judge for yourselves! Achcar wrote coolly: The situation in Libya as in Tunisia and Egypt and all the other countries of the Middle East where the present revolutionary process is unfolding is only at the beginning of a protracted and tumultuous course of development. This is the normal destiny of revolutionary upheavals. Western powers will have much difficulty controlling the process. They dont have troops on the ground let alone the fact that they failed anyway to control the situation in countries where their forces are deployed, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. The process of peoples liberation and self-determination is convoluted, and can well go through ugly phases. But without this process and the readiness to pay the inherent cost, which may prove heavy indeed, the whole world would still live under absolutist regimes (our emphasis). This veritable pro-NATO manifesto did not remain in the realm of analysis and articles destined for publication in a review. It was embodied in public appeals to demonstrate, in imperialist countries like France, in favour of recognising the NTC and implementing Resolution 1973. (7) What is revolutionary about such a policy? Such a policy is nothing more than cover provided by the far-left for the criminal policy of US imperialism against the peoples, in the guise of defending democracy. The struggle for democracy, of which the labour movement must constitute the vanguard, is inseparable

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from the right of nations to selfdetermination, in other words the clear rejection of any imperialist interference in the dominated countries. ENDNOTES (1) Friedrich Engels, speech at the International Meeting held in London on 29 November 1847 to mark the 17th Anniversary of the Polish Uprising of 1830. (2) See http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/s pip.php?article2227. (3) See http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/s pip.php?article2276. (4) Let us point out in passing that it is not only a question of el-Sharifs remarks. In France on 18 March 2011, the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) published a joint statement of which it was a signatory, calling for rally of solidarity with the Libyan people in Paris, in the following terms: The western governments and the dictatorships of the Arab world are hesitating, equivocating, pretending to agree on an eventual UN Security Council resolution, and even on the details for military intervention. () A genuine, criminal counter-revolution is underway in Libya: Let us mobilise urgently, let our ranks be numerous in giving our support to the Libyan people in danger. A veritable appeal for foreign intervention and to the UN, ending with the demand for recognition of the interim National Transitional Council (NTC), the only legitimate representative of the Libyan people A demand which Sarkozy had already satisfied by recognising the said NTC the previous week. (5) See http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/s pip.php?article2245. (6) Let us acknowledge that Achcar, without even realising it, is quite right to regard the imperialist intervention in Libya and the interventions against Iraq and Kosovo on the same level. Let us recall on this subject that already in 1999, the Pabloite leadership supported the UCK mercenaries, the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army, which in reality was a militia created by the German secret services, then controlled by the US secret services and funded by trafficking heroin in Europe. In May 1999, the French Pabloite leadership wrote in their review Rouge (No.1822): The UCK has declared: Either NATO sends troops on the ground, or they give us weapons as the means to defend ourselves. It is the second hypothesis that must be retained. The Albanians and their military organisation must be given the means to win back their right to live in Kosovo and to make the Serb forces withdraw. (7) See note 1.

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