The urgency of unity

For all the nations involved, World War 2 was a collective enterprise. Everyone was mobilised for victory, or defeat for some. This was followed by the reconstruction of bombed out cities and industrial sites in Europe and the Far East, which also demanded general contributions and a unified purpose. The US had fought and won the war outside its borders, and had suffered no damages to its homeland. This put it in the lead for a return to the individualism of hard-core capitalism, and made it the main propagator of self-centred interests. There was opposition, however, from old industrial nations rebuilding themselves and from new post-colonial nations building their identities. Later, the support for black civil rights and resistance to the war in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, brought back a sense of unity among US citizens, and between them and all other opposition to US imperialism around the world. When the US withdrew its forces and abandoned its allies, the ensuing events in South East Asia dampened Western enthusiasm. The Vietnamese boat-refugees and the Cambodian death camps opened the way for Thatcher and Reagan to bring back the tyranny of market forces. Forty years on, most humans have become isolated competing units, struggling alone for survival.

The old axiom divide and rule has reached the ultimate stage of all against all. This is the result of a long systematic undermining, outlawing and discrediting of all forms of organisation and association that were susceptible to contradict or oppose individualisation. It meant giving wide coverage to opinions in favour of individualism and obstructing those who warned against it. Much was made of personal success in sports and arts, in industry, finance, show business and politics, from middle-class (very rarely working-class) anonymity to millionaire or billionaire celebrity. These were the paradigms all should admire and try to emulate. The very notions of solidarity, community and togetherness were ridiculed, while their specific materialisations, unions, associations, cooperatives, etc., were systematically attacked by legal and financial forces. And, more than ever, people have been obliged to move in search of employment, or just subsistence, thereby losing any social networks and geographic roots they may have had. Societies are in suspension, following the current towards a forbidding future, unable to act and falling prey to dangerous demagogues.

In his famous parting diatribe, Dwight Eisenhower should have included all of capitalism, not just its military department. After all, where is the distinction between Bayer and Lockheed Martin, or General Motors and Raytheon, in their wanton destruction of life? Guns and box-office hits are equally important, and are made use of according to circumstance. Capitalism is a totalitarian construction that is driven by a unique obsession for profit. Profit at any price, be it human misery or environmental annihilation. Having convinced the world there was no alternative, that monomaniacal drive is killing the planet’s inhabitants at an accelerating pace. And, having split humanity into myriads of nomads, there is no concerted opposition to capital’s deadly project. So far the only global protest has been led by school-children demanding action on curbing greenhouse gas emissions, with some support from retired grandparents, while the adult population is chained down by work and debt. Youths are also contesting political tyranny in numerous countries, but there is no apparent coordination. Their only resemblance is the age group concerned, the fifteen to thirty who own nothing and have nothing to lose. Their street fighting is able to disrupt the system but cannot bring it down because capital’s only weakness is its absolute dependence on labour. Capital and labour are the primeval and ultimate adversaries. Race, nation, gender and religion are just used to obscure the basic reality of class warfare. They are a formidable obstacle to the unity that is needed for workers to confront capital with any chance of success.

In 1864 the International Workingmen’s Association was founded in London, with an inaugural address by Karl Marx. It brought together representatives of working-class movements from several European countries. But, after his death in 1865, Proudhon’s dispute with Marx was taken up more virulently by Bakunin and led to a scission. Then, because of police harassment, the General Council moved to New York, where it was dissolved in 1876. A 2^nd International took form with the Paris congress of 1889 composed mostly of tepid socialists. With the outbreak of war in 1914, it split between the chauvinists and the internationalists. And this latter group was split again between Kautsky and Lenin. With ups and downs, and a break between 1939 and 1951, it has survived as the Socialist International. In 1919 Lenin created the 3^rd International or Comintern. But it was completely subservient to Moscow and Stalin’s fluctuating foreign policies, dismaying revolutionaries everywhere, notably in Spain and China. Stalin dismantled it in 1943. Finally, in 1938, Trotsky’s followers formed the 4^th International in opposition to Stalin. And, as numerous sectarian groups, it still exists today. In the past, international workers’ organisations have failed dismally because of national and ideological fractures. Even in the so called European Union there are no trans-national labour unions, though there are occasional spontaneous cross-border solidarities. Nations have been constructed as independent units, against their neighbours and the wider world. The notion of being different and special is confirmed by a spoken language and historic traditions. Centuries of “them” threatening “us”, or the other way round, are deeply ingrained as a form of resistance to the unfamiliar. Financial and industrial capital has globalised its operations, while resistance is restricted to some isolated spots on the world map. When will the working-class follow the example of Extinction Rebellion and go global? Language is the barrier, as “globish” has not yet reached the factories and fields. And it is not certain that today’s school-children will have the time to spread their methods across working society before financial and climatic disruptions set in seriously.

Does the present mirror the past?

The Syrian civil war is in its final stage, with the prospect of countless more refugees crossing the border to Turkey, and from there to where. The revolution failed because it divided into sectarian factions with different agendas (al-Nusra, ash-Sham, al-Sham, ISIL, al-Qaeda, the Kurdish YPG, Assyrian and Turkmen minorities, etc.), and because the military regime received foreign assistance with weapons and combat troops. The social revolution, where poverty confronted wealth and the weak opposed the powerful, was doubled at the start by an ideological rift between the ruling Alawite minority and the Sunni majority. This religious divide perverted the social divide and, as Alawites are followers of Ali, encouraged support from the Lebanese Hezbollah, Iraqi Shia militias and Iran. And this helped Iran advance its pawns in its regional conflict with Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile the Russians, intent on keeping their Mediterranean naval base at Latakia, an Alawite stronghold, built an aerodrome and gave air support to the Assad regime.

The revolution had started with mass street protests demanding an end to despotic rule. It echoed events in Tunisia and Egypt. But, apart from a Copt minority in Egypt, these two nations are uniformly Sunni. There the ideological divide was between religious fundamentalists and secular military, and it was virulent enough to push aside the social question of wealth distribution. The mass uprisings of the Arab Spring were diverted into ideological oppositions. The demand for more equal, free and just societies was obscured by a contest of who held the “truth” and, ultimately, of who held the force of arms. The Tunisians have fresh avid faces governing them, but the system is unchanged. Egyptians have a new tyrant not yet weary of washing blood off his hands. And Syrians are struggling to survive the final act of civil war, a war where a minority with foreign assistance and unity of purpose has overcome a vast but divided majority.

Eighty years ago the Spanish civil war ended. Barcelona fell in February 1939 and several hundred thousand refugees crossed the border to France. Madrid fell the following month, but the city was surrounded and there was no escape. The revolution failed because it split into opposing ideological factions, anarchists, Trotskyists, Stalinists, Basque and Catalan nationalists, etc. Its opponents were victorious because they united behind the Caudillo, Francisco Franco, and because their Falangist ideology was close to Italian fascism and German national socialism, who helped them with arms, ammunition, infantry and aviation. The revolution got no such support. Soviet Russia managed to send a train-load of arms, but it was reserved for their affiliates. France and Great Britain set up an arms embargo and blockaded certain Spanish ports, and the US was far away preoccupied by its New Deal. However, thousands volunteered from all three countries and elsewhere to form several International Brigades. Nazis and fascists rallied round the Spanish Falangists, whereas parliamentary democracies refused to support anarchists, communists and regional autonomists, as these were the very movements they were repressing at home. And, at the time, Hitler, Mussolini and Franco had many sympathisers in French and English governing circles (The French war minister, Petain, had commanded troops alongside Franco in the Moroccan Rif region, 1925-26). Just six months after the fall of Madrid, on September 1^st 1939, German troops invaded Poland and set off World War 2.

The Spanish and Syrian revolutions followed similar paths, where mass social movements split into conflicting ideological groups. What seems to happen is that the reactionary forces have recourse to extreme violence, which obliges the movement to take up arms. But there is no unified command or strategy, and the military leaders who emerge from the fighting have regional and personal objectives. This is when the different existing ideologies come to the fore. Social demands are universal, whereas ideological constructs are sectarian. However, social rebellions do not always tip over into civil war. They have sometimes led to elections, a change of government and social reforms. The reactionaries are pushed to the side line but are not destroyed. They regroup and wait for an opportunity to take back power. They have the backing of wealth and use it for propaganda and corruption. When they return, with the force of money and mercenary guns, they break all that had been achieved. For attempting to bring peaceful social change to Egypt, Mohamed Morsi and thousands of his supporters in the Freedom and Justice Party were arrested, tortured and jailed, and dozens have been executed. In Brazil, Lula da Silva and the Workers Party managed to improve living and working conditions for millions of their nation’s poor. He is now in prison, and may be left to die there like Mohamed Morsi. Meanwhile, El-Sisi and Bolsonaro gloat and dismantle.

How can a social movement concerned about the commonwealth and general wellbeing take political power and keep it? Violence leads to a contest of military might. Elections are open to corruption and propaganda, and abstentionists form the largest party. A workers’ dictatorship needs powerful unions and a vast cross-nation organisation able to control production, banks, transport, energy distribution, the media, the military, the police, intelligence agencies, etc. As things stand, such a widespread organisation is pure fantasy. But, as climatic disruptions increase in intensity and as financial structures slowly or suddenly break down, the neoliberal system of property and governance will no longer function. Then the alternatives will be either a dictatorship relying on armed force, or one relying on common sense and decency. The wealthy few will do their utmost to maintain their privileges. But when workers put aside their ideological differences and stand together, the rich are just paper tigers. But if they are unable to unite, the Syrian tragedy could be the prelude to a much wider conflict.

Also this previous posting: https://lelezard.blogspot.com/2013/09/deja-vu.html

The same as it ever was

“.... it really seems as though old Hegel, in the guise of the World Spirit, were directing history from the grave and, with the greatest conscientiousness, causing everything to be re-enacted twice over, once as grand tragedy and the second time as rotten farce.” Friedrich Engels, a letter to Marx of 3 December 1851

(Wikipedia)

To make a profit capital takes more value out of the market than it puts in, and that extra value must come from somewhere. Over a century ago Rosa Luxemburg came to the conclusion that it was obtained by colonial plunder (1). Since then things have moved on. In a post-colonial system, capital exchanges its surplus consumption, weapons, luxury goods, food, for investments, mostly raw materials. Instead of supplying a colonial administration, capital supplies a local one, and the plunder continues unabated. This transformation of consumption into investments realises some of capital’s profits, but is far from enough. The rest is realised with credit and debt, which in turn charge interest. So debt pays for profits and interest. As debts accumulate, the payment of interest grows and leaves an ever dwindling share for the payment of profits. This means there must be more and more borrowing for the same amount of profit.

Finance and production (interest and profit) divide the plunder and compete over who gets the larger share. These conflicting interests evolved out of those that opposed the landowning aristocracy to the merchant bourgeoisie. Then as now they determine the political division of society. One party favours bankers and the other favours bosses, and neither represents the people. However, bosses have far more employees than bankers and, by claiming that workers and employers have shared interests, this can give their party an electoral advantage. On the other side, bankers do not have to put pressure on their work force to extract surplus value – they get interest and other financial gains – which allows their party to voice a more liberal discourse than their opponents. The political struggle is about sharing the plunder between profits and interest, never about reducing or stopping the looting. And both governing parties, whatever they may say to differentiate themselves, agree on the maintenance of the system as a whole.

In an interesting article for the Monthly Review (2), Utsa and Prabhat Patnaik consider that the actual reactionary trend may have points in common with what happened in the 1920s and 30s, but that it cannot reach the apotheosis of the 1940s. A totalitarian regime presents everything external to itself as an enemy. And the nation it rules over must be protected and isolated from dangerous outside elements. The Patnaiks argue that today’s global financial network dominated by the US dollar would not allow that to happen. What is not taken into consideration is the possible collapse of world finance, crushed by too much debt. Or the fact that America under Trump is itself on an isolationist path. Nothing is foretold but, with the added stress of climate disruption, the farce may end up more barbaric than the tragedy.

1. The Accumulation of Capital

See this previous posting: https://lelezard.blogspot.com/2017/09/rosa-luxemburg.html

2. https://monthlyreview.org/2019/07/01/neoliberal-capitalism-at-a-dead-end/