Back issues
No 1411 27th August 2012
Posturing Trotskyist bravado calling for "political" and general strikes over the shot-down mineworkers in South Africa is so much empty bluster covering up complete failure to begin talking about the revolutionary solution which is required in South Africa just as everywhere else. Their real message is sour defeatism on achievements of the anti-apartheid struggle, and capitulation to imperialist warmongering everywhere. But the revisionist SACP condemnations of the wildcat strikers is a wretched betrayal as well to cover its total failure to develop revolutionary theory–Leninism. Feminist diversions continue
Self-righteous fake-"left" posturing over the South African mine massacre, over the shallow Pussy Riot anarchist demonstrations against Putin's oligarchic establishment in Russia, around the fatuous feminist self-righteousness aiding Washington's manhunt of Wikileaks' Julian Assange, and most of all sustaining the continuing West-provoked rebellion to bring down the bourgeois nationalist Syrian regime, all underline how shallow opportunism blocks vital revolutionary understanding and can play an increasingly nasty role facilitating capitalist warmongering and counter-revolution.
Scientific revolutionary understanding of the world is needed ever more urgently by the working class as catastrophic crisis economic failure deepens.
Only total overthrow of the whole capitalist system can change the endless violent tyranny and exploitation it imposes and which is rapidly increasing, now that its crisis failure has hit a brick wall with the 2008 credit crunch, heading unstoppably for the greatest Depression disaster of all time.
But for all the posturing pretences about radical action from the assorted fake "left" no such understanding is being given.
Just the opposite, the endless single issue protesting of the feminists, black nationalists and pan-Africans, "gay" lobbyists and environmentalist heads attention away from the crucial issues that need to be worked out and is a deliberate diversion from the real fight.
And it heads attention away from the only possible solution there is anyway to all the problems in the world of inequality, racism, persecution and ecological disaster, the ending of the capitalist order and its rapacious greed and divisiveness, exploitation and unfairness.
What none of this shallow play-acting and holier-than-thou shouting about supposed "principles" and trivial self-interested "political correctness" does is bring the working class anywhere close to building an all round perspective of the breakdown failure of capitalism as a world historic system which has hit the buffers and is dragging the entire planet into yet another round of devastating Depression poverty, trade war hostility and all out warmongering culminating in Third World War on a scale never before seen.
Nor does it begin to develop the understanding that even as it steps up its fascist viciousness and worldwide blitzkrieging, the imperialist ruling class has never been so weakened and fragmented, more vulnerable than ever to defeat and setback, which will open the door for total revolution to break up and destroy the tyrannical and repressive grip of bourgeois class rule, and establish planned socialist production and society.
Just the opposite – it heads everyone away into trivia and outright diversion and prevents and blocks the fight for scientific socialist revolutionary theory that is the only path out of disaster.
Anarchic, wasteful, production for private profit which is repressive, viciously exploitational, near-slavery for most of the world at the best of times, is now riddled with such a weight of accumulated contradiction that it is once again clogged solid with "surplus" production (as Marx analysed must happen over and over again) paralysing its capacity to continue its easy plunder of world resources and labour output, and bringing the world to the finance and economic implosion, held off only by insane Quantitative Easing money printing but constantly teetering on the edge of further imminent catastrophe.
The huge trade, credit and financial war that has erupted has triggered a massive further escalation of the Third World turmoil and working class discontent in the "advanced" countries alike, most of all in the gigantic new revolutionary upsurge of the Arab world, still swirling this way and that without a coherent Marxist focus but creating vast new problems for imperialism, to add to the seething troubles everywhere else through Africa, Latin America and Asia.
But all these fake-"lefts" fail to warn the working class at all of the giant class war which is coming and from which there is no escape as ruthlessly intensified capitalist speedup and poverty level wages are imposed everywhere by a desperate ruling class, as its only way out of its failure and humiliation – culminating in World War once more as the only "solution" by which this historical outmoded and destructive system can regenerate.
War destruction in the great world wars of the twentieth century has been its only way to re-establish growth by wiping out the "surplus" accumulation to leave space for the surviving "victorious" capital to grow again, once the ruling class had destroyed half the planet (hundreds of millions dead, wounded and bereaved), with whole countries wiped out, and much of the industry and production previously built).
If the working class is to survive and overcome the renewed world chaos and destruction being imposed by the capitalist ruling class it has to end this class domination forever,
Above all the "lefts" NEVER mention the vital necessity of establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, the only means by which the future society will be able to resist and defend the inevitable and constant counter-revolutionary depredations and sabotage of the bourgeoisie, which already goes to any lengths to maintain its sweet worldwide dominance (400 coups, war, massacres, genocidal slaughter, counter-revolutions, invasions etc etc non-stop throughout over a century of modern capitalism, as well as three huge wars, the Franco-Prussian, the Great War of 1914-18 and the unbelievable horrors of the Second World War culminating in nuclear holocaust on Japan – the most cynical horror of history so far, done to "demonstrate" the weapons as a "warning" the Soviet Union).
They deliberately avoid pitching into the greatest mass debate in history to re-establish the crucial central weapon for the working class in these forthcoming and unavoidable struggles – the conscious revolutionary understanding of what it is that everyone is facing, to understand the catastrophic failure of the profit making system, to see clearly the worldwide balance of class forces – and especially to disentangle what is imperialist feint trickery and provocation from what is genuine upheaval (Syrian and Libyan pseudo-"freedom" struggles deliberately-provoked as Western disruption hoaxes to head off the enormous genuine spontaneous revolutionary surge of the Tunisian and Egyptian masses in the Arab Spring for example.)
A giant part of that debate must be to sort out all the past revolutionary turmoil of the last century, and to set in proper context the titanic and historically unprecedented achievements and advances of the working class revolution, beginning with the great October Revolution of 1917 and the seventy years of staggering and never-before-seen human development of the Soviet Union (followed-up with and inspiring the giant wave of socialist and national liberation struggles of the post-war end-of-direct-colonialism period) which have produced social, educational, scientific and technological advances which, even in the early and difficult days of still subverted and under-siege socialism, far outpaced capitalism (man in space, nuclear science, aeronautics, and much more), usually for a tenth or less of the cost and in a society without the massive unfairnesses, exploitation and poverty of world capitalism.
The great waves of national and communist revolutions that were triggered by that, and particularly in the wave of 1945 post-war disgust after the imperialist war, also need to be grasped and understood – included among them the giant achievements of the dogged anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and its support from Cuba, Angola and the world working class.
But equally important, the great failures and philosophical retreats of that first enormous history-making experiment in the USSR need to be thoroughly understood, not least so that the West's relentless reactionary brainwashing nonsense of "communism does not work, and is only a dull stifling totalitarian nightmare" can be exposed and refuted.
The USSR proved once and forever the huge possibilities of a world without private production and ownership and the potential flourishing for the first time ever of the individual development of every single person in the population – against the relentless unfairness and privilege of capitalist exploitation which holds 90% of the world in educational and physical deprivation, condemned to see their capacities wasted in near-slave drudgery and hard labour in sweatshops and plantations.
[Currently, as an example, no Olympic gold medals are available for the desperate poor of Dehli, Hyderabad, Mumbai or Calcutta however much they might "want it" and however many "110%s" they are "willing to give" as the individualist mantra of capitalism lyingly pretends is the "key to success" – but the fantastic achievements of the Chinese workers state show how countless numbers of ordinary people have their chance to develop and shine in sport as they can in culture, science, medicine and industry. The comparison between these equivalent giant Asian nations shows how the planned economy can release extraordinary individual capabilities against the stultifying oppression of capitalism.]
Beijing's "don't rock the boat" revisionism still hampers China's full development which is only possible when the ending of all capitalism has been achieved which can only be by the greatest revolutionary upheavals of all time.
But nothing of such a world wide historic perspective is even beginning to be fought for around the latest tragic slaughter of 34 miners (and wounding of 80 more) at the Lonmin Marikana platinum mine.
These world revolutionary perspectives alone could make sense of and transform the situation in South Africa which led to this suicidal outburst against multinational corporate monopoly capitalism.
What is needed is a coherent national (and international) revolutionary struggle for socialism, but it is not even being mentioned let alone being fought for.
It is hard to know which of the fake-"left" responses to the South African killings displays the more craven stupidity and theoretical bankruptcy, the wooden "condemnation" of the Association of Mineworkers & Construction Union led strike by ossified revisionism in the form of the South African Communist Party (but reflected by Stalinist revisionism everywhere), rigidly sticking to some mechanical programme of slow and steady change within the bourgeois nationalist anti-apartheid ANC regime, and failing to give any kind of lead to the obviously surging spontaneous anger expressed by some of the working class against its endless exploitation, or the instant shallow Trotskyist formula calling for more politically contentless "workers rank-and-file action", light-mindedly putting yet more lives on the line from the comfort of their Islington armchairs, all laced with the usual sour hostility rubbishing the great anti-apartheid victory of the national-liberation government by "condemning" it as a "sellout" for being "bourgeois" and blaming it for the violence.
The subsequent demand by expelled ANC youth leader Julian Malema for nationalisation of the Lonmin mine may indicate possible revolutionary consequences following the atrocity, and is certainly among the kind of measure required for the working class to take power, but equally threatens to be nothing but empty demagoguery unless it is filled out with a world revolutionary perspective.
A thousand further implications and questions are raised if such nationalisations were to occur, with huge ramifications for the rest of the economy and for the capacity of South Africa to exist in a still capitalist world.
That is not to hold back any struggle – but it is to say that it demands a gigantic effort of leadership and understanding, once again raising all the questions discussed above and much more.
Without that, even a flurry of strikes and occupations, will simply be more adventurism and prey to further repression.
The kind of exploitation imposed by the British multinational will continue for as long the capitalist system dominates not just South Africa but the rest of the world creating desperation, frustration and fragmented lives.
And with it will come endless repression and brutality, and the more so as every part of capitalism is driven into a frenzy by the devastating world crisis collapse, which is ratcheting up international cutthroat competition for markets and profits to unbearable levels, squeezing the working class ever harder in the interests of the hunt for profits for the tiny few in the ruling class.
The need is for a thoroughgoing transformation of the whole country from bourgeois capitalist domination to a workers state, ending every aspect of capitalist rule and building a planned socialist economy.
The suicidal desperation of the wildcat strike at the Marikana mine, and even a wave of strikes,is a long way from the enormous widespread and coordinated struggles implied by such a wide perspective and, as far as can be garnered from a long distance away and bourgeois news reporting, the new union was not explaining the implications of their fight any more that the SACP NUM has been.
Instead it was declaring that better wage demands and other changes could be won by more militancy, a "harder" push against the mine owners inflaming the violent attack that was always likely to draw a counter-response from the police.
The panicked excess of the shootings are monstrous but the workers needed a much deeper explanation of what they were up against.
The minority "wildcat" strike was clearly heading for a disastrous confrontation before the event.
The strikers action had neither won the majority of the workers at the mine or the overall political arguments and then attempted a kind of minority armed attack which almost inevitably drew an excessive and bloody response, as capitalism has always done.
Further questions are thrown up about the splits caused by the new union with the existing NUM which is far from simply to be written off as an alleged "company union" as the Trots' demented anti-Stalinism leads them to do.
Minority actions attempts to take a lead are not necessarily ruled out in all circumstances but not the remotest hint of serious revolutionary perspectives and fight to win mass support for them were revealed in the demands made by the new union, nor now in the political responses following it.
There is a not a word either to indicate that the AMCU has got any kind of revolutionary political agenda let alone a Marxist-Leninist understanding of the world around which it could crystallise a growing coordinated struggle to end capitalism in South Africa and build a workers state.
Its tactics were the opposite of Leninism which has always been very careful to constantly consider the overall balance of forces and adjust its tactics accordingly.
In the fast changing circumstances of the Russian revolution for example there are many occasions on which the Bolsheviks cautioned against premature action by the working class, while waiting for a shift in the overall balance of class forces in favour of the revolution, for example in the "July days" of 1917 when the new bourgeois government reaction which had taken the power was suppressing the working class and its leadership, before a sufficient proportion of the masses had swung behind the Bolshevik leadership and its understanding.
An attempted revolt was to be held by workers at that time and the (largely forced underground) Bolsheviks counselled against it, as likely to lead to a slaughter, managing to limit the actions of the seething working class to an armed demonstration only.
Later on, when greater sections of the peasant dominated army had deserted and declared support for the workers, the balance swung enough for the October revolution.
To pretend that the tragic mine confrontation can now lead in a straight line to the beginning of a much greater struggle by simply issuing a few moralising "condemnations" and general strike support calls is nonsensical and facile.
But just such a rash of empty posturing has rapidly followed from the Trotskyist poseurs of all types, shouting loudly about "nationalisation without compensation" and "general strikes" and demanding that the world working class should unequivocally support all the demands of the minority union.
The Trotskyist Workers Power is typical for example with its high-horse issuing of condemnations all round these South African events which tell the working class nothing about the real causes in the world capitalist crisis and does nothing to warn them of the full scale and scope of the struggle they need to embark on:
The League for the Fifth International condemns the brutal massacre – reminiscent of the Apartheid era – of 34 striking miners at the Marikana platinum mine, Rustenburg, South Africa.
We condemn the actions of the British-based Lonmin owners for refusing to negotiate an increase in the poverty wages, for using its own brutal mine guards to attack the strikers – causing deaths even before the massacre and for calling in heavily-armed police to finish the job. We condemn their arrogant demands that their workforce return to work or face dismissal.
We further condemn the Police Chief Mangwashi Victoria Phiyega, as fully responsible for the bloody massacre and for previous violence.
We likewise condemn the National Union of Mineworkers of South Africa – that in the years of struggle against Apartheid played a heroic role – for resorting to strike breaking against the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu), who broke away from the NUM because of its repeated failures to defend mine workers, and whose demands and "wildcat" strike is fully justified.
Last but not least we condemn the ANC government of Jacob Zuma for acting as the enforcers for the mine companies and for shamelessly violating all their promises to the working class communities by leaving economic power in the hands of big capital.
We call on the international workers' movement and youth to come out unequivocally behind the Marikana miners, their communities, their union and their demands.
We demand the immediate granting of the miners' claim of a rise from the current poverty wage of R4000 to a living wage R12500 .
We call for the withdrawal of all armed police and mine guards from the mining area and the arrest and trial of the Police chief and the officers responsible for ordering the shooting.
We call for the arrest of the mine management for crimes against its workforce , the nationalisation without compensation of all the mines and the recognition of workers' control in them.
We urge rank and file workers in the NUM and all the COSATU unions to convene mass meetings call their officials to account and come out in support of the Marikana strikers – including by taking political strike action up to and including a general strike to win the platinum workers' demands and extend the struggle for a living minimum wage to all sectors of the workforce.
Plenty of denunciations going on here in all sorts of posturing directions.
But empty barrels make most noise as the proverb puts it.
Most of this "fiery rhetoric" is nothing but reformism, both in the wage demands it spells out, and in the vengeful calls for "arrests" and condemnations of the police commisssioner (who is a black, female ANC appointee rather than some Boer apartheid throwback), spiced up with a little bit of rank-and-file "workers control".
Who is to do all this arresting and holding to account anyway? The same bourgeois nationalist state that is being condemned??
The workers themselves? But there is not a mention of establishing a workers state and of the gigantic task that implies of overall national revolutionary education, organisation and leadership, only empty calls for "political strike action" without any content whatsoever.
What politics are the strikes to be about? And in what way would calling for them to become a general strike give these empty words any greater content – other than allowing the Trots to adopt even more "militant" poses?
The only politics on display here is the sour condemning of Jacob Zuma "for acting as enforcers for the mine companies" allegedly and a few swipes at the revisionist South African Communist Party and the main NUM union it influences – but from anti-communist hatred.
And on what basis is the NUM condemned as a "strikebreaker"? The NUM did not call a strike and was opposed to the existing strike – so why is it condemned for not supporting the adventurism and anarchy of the breakaway?
This is not strengthening the morale and grasp of the South African working class, or the international working class the Trots so grandly call upon.
It is denouncing the very achievements that have already been made.
The Trots want to bolster their long running defeatist sneering at the South African national-liberation struggle, declaring it to have been nothing but capitalist stoogery and sellout, and writing-off the huge victory and significance of the long anti-apartheid armed war and revolution, which finally overturned the primitive near feudal colonialist backwardness of the White Supremacists.
This is in line with the general Trot "pure revolution" sneering that has poured out from all these groups over the years against such struggles as the Palestinian intifadas and revolts against the monstrous Zionist colonialist occupations and land theft of their homeland (where they have lived fore the last 1500 years); against the dogged and determined urban revolution of the IRA/Sinn Féin in occupied Ireland finally forcing moribund British imperialism into the long snail's pace withdrawal now steadily moving towards full reunification; against the ZANU-PF revolution led by Robert Mugabe which overtured both British colonialism and its white supremacist reactionary (and brutally vicious) unilateral successors under the 1970s Smith regime; and most of all their cowardly and craven "condemning of terror" around the US morale shattering 9-11 attacks and just about any kind of world ferment since expressed in "terrorist" or "insurgent" or religious terms.
But if the working class is to make the kind of revolutionary fight that will be able to challenge the power of multinationals by establishing a workers state socialism in South Africa as part of the overall world fight for socialism, it needs now to have its history clear – including understanding the giant significance of the anti-apartheid armed struggle which imposed a world shattering defeat on imperialism.
Understanding that as part of the growing world setbacks for imperialism is crucial for a Marxist world view and correct assessment of the balance of class forces.
It is, as always, defeatist poison which pours from the Trots to declare that because immediate full socialism was not created, the ANC fight was essentially "sold out" and is "no different to the old apartheid regime".
The nationalist struggle in South Africa was only ever a bourgeois nationalist fight and the international capitalist system certainly adapted itself to continuing a capitalist economy with a new mixed race bourgeoisie and new middle class, leaving intact the underlying contradictions of capitalism and continuing exploitation of the black working class (and any few white workers there might be as well).
But the old apartheid was ended.
Superficially at least, the responses of the ANC to the killings, – with Jacob Zuma travelling to the area, inquiries to be made into the events and potential criminal actions against the police who shot the miners are of a different character and order to the racist contempt of the past.
That does not stop the relentless logic of the capitalist slump and the rapacious exploitation of the multinational corporations to which the new black majority style of capitalism is as bound as any other part of the world profit making economy.
The contradictions and pressures of that existence are intensifying massively in South Africa as everywhere with the world capitalist economic meltdown (most obviously and directly here in falling metal prices and squeezed profits).
Increasing signs of discontent have long been growing with the ANC and its failure to deliver any real improvements to the poor masses, while the same corruption and greed that capitalism generates everywhere has emerged.
The giant forces of the capitalist crisis will hugely intensify the antagonisms of the society along class lines as the eruption at mine indicates.
They will not be contained by "condemning" the AMCU as "violent and provocative" as the SACP has done, arguing for the "responsible" actions and negotiations which its dire "peaceful road" revisionist complacency has long sunk into, saturating the NUM leadership.
But the willingness or desperation of at least a quarter of the workforce to go along with this suicidal tactic equally reflects the growing and deepening desperation and despair of working class in South Africa and the profound need for a much deeper revolutionary battle to transform the society there – just as it is needed throughout the world to end a system that has hit a brick wall of Slump disaster and can only drag the entire world into destruction.
Adventurist or not, action like this are driven by the contradictions of the crisis and it is certain that such tensions will burst through increasingly.
What such spontaneous outbursts need is not sick and smug condemnations from a revisionist philosophy which has failed to give the world any revolutionary lead for decades, but better and deeper Marxist understanding.
Exactly as Lenin argued in his 1906 article Guerrilla warfare the answer to inadequate organisation, limited or anarcho-terrorist outburst is clearer scientific conscious understanding of the fight and the full extent of the world balance of class forces, an understanding fought for in and among the working class, in unity and conflict with it.
But this is just what revisionism has completely failed to do, covering its inadequacies and failings with petty bourgeois moralising blame constantly, "condemning" the 9-11 attacks on New York's World Trade Centre, and fingering, by the revisionist Greek communist party, the KKE, the anti-state violence of the anarchists in the streets of Athens as "just police provocation".
This foulness echoes the disgusting clamour of self-righteousness which the fake- "left" poured out at the time of the Italian police fascist attacks on the anti-globalisation demonstrators in Genoa in 2001, blaming the Black Bloc as "the cause of the violence", and "giving the state its opportunity to attack" (a nonsensical misrepresentation of capitalist state repression which needs and will need no such excuses to suppress working class revolt).
Police stooges may well find it easier to infiltrate the anarchists because of their shallow petty bourgeois rejection of Marxism and revolutionary discipline, and provocations do occur, but the answer is not to help set the anarchists up for repression and working class hostility.
Many ordinary people have been driven by the crisis into movements like the "Occupiers" which are saturated in anarchism – are they too to be ostracised and condemned?
As the EPSR has said about condemnation attitudes to "terrorism" in the past and which equally can apply to adventurist strike actions:
It is total lies that Marxism-Leninism ever took any such attitude. It is an utter slander on communist revolutionary philosophy to suggest such a calumny. Lenin simply argued that the mass revolutionary political involvement of the working class was the ONLY way to final revolutionary success, and that the terror-advocates, anarchists, and others were merely wrong to argue that their favoured tactics were equally important or even better.
NOWHERE did Lenin attempt to grass-up these alternative arguments as "playing the autocracy's game for it", or as "the enemy within", or as being "the CAUSE of repression on our heads", etc.
Even less would it have entered Lenin's mind to adopt this petty-bourgeois proprietorial mentality of these fake-'lefts' who think they OWN the fight for socialism and the anti-imperialist struggle, and moralise against anarchists and others as though they had no RIGHT to fight back against reaction in any way they think fit.(EPSRNo1106 02-10-01)
Any "Marxist" condemnation of "terrorism" for striking blows against hated imperialism is nothing but a self-confession of inadequacy by such "Marxists".
If the revolutionaries want to see a better-led and more effective long-term anti-imperialist struggle, — then go out and do it.
If the communists were getting on with their revolutionary war properly, then there would be very little space for anarcho-individualist terrorism to spark so brightly, Lenin concluded. EPSRNo1224 16-03-04)
But the revisionists long ago lost all connection with even a revolutionary spirit despite the formal mentions they will give to the "need to overthrow the capitalist system" here and there, and least of all are preparing the understanding of the need for the struggle to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat to defend the building of planned socialism.
The crisis is forcing more such spontaneous rebellions out everywhere including in the anarchic Orthodox Church disruptions by the Russian Pussy Riot punk band, for which they have just been imprisoned by Putin's Bonapartist state.
It has been suggested that the last EPSR was not sufficiently clear in its last issue in explaining that the oligarch-gangster capitalism which temporarily plunders the huge wealth, labour and resources of the former Soviet Union, deserves every ounce of contempt coming its way, and particularly the restored mumbo-jumbo confusion mongering of the parasitical priests trying to drag what remains in society of its giant cultural and scientific Soviet achievements back into medievalism..
But while such outbursts have the right spirit the shallow feminist politics surrounding them are not at all useful.
It is exactly the shallow single-issue individualist and moralising nonsenses of the "politically correct" feminism flavour which have long been substituted by all varieties of fake-"lefts" for any real revolutionary perspective and understanding, which are now being used as one of tools for capitalism's growing class war onslaught on all resistance to its warmongering and slump impositions.
The central warmongering leadership of crisis-wracked world imperialism in the form of the Obama presidency was slipped into place by just such diversionary pretences after the disastrous Bush regime had effectively collapsed in humiliation, brought to a historic level of unpopularity by the slow defeats and quagmires of the "shock and awe" wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the already emerging economic crash (on top of the long accumulating general build-up of distrust and contempt in the lying bourgeois "democracy" racket anyway.)
To salvage its highly useful "vote for change" pretences – parliamentary democracy being by far the best and most effective trick ever invented by the ruling class for keeping its class dictatorship in place behind a façade of illusory "participation" – the ruling class had to play both the feminist and the black emancipation cards via Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton, hoodwinking enough of the population with these long prepared diversionary tactics to revive some of the old illusions.
The four years of escalated warmongering, illegal death-squad assassination (Osama, Gaddafi, countless "insurgents" droned down among "collateral" civilians slaughter, the fascist NATO Libyan destruction and the CIA provoked Syrian civil war destruction, have rapidly confirmed the EPSR's warnings of what such single-issue reformist "gains" were really a cover for, namely the extension and increase of the fascist war path ALREADY embarked on openly by Bush (and to some extent Clinton previously) to preempt all anticipated crisis resistance and challenges by intimidating the world into continued American empire dominance despite its utter bankruptcy.
The same feminist nonsense is well to the fore in the Pussy Riot incident and being hyped up relentlessly by the West and the fake-"lefts" (either directly as the Trots or because they don't challenge this reformist rot, like the Stalinists).
Genuine enough these particular anarchists may be and suffering for it, but their political naïvety and shallowness also lays them open to Western trouble-making.
Signs of a coordinated Western efforts to discredit Putin have been growing, and it may be that Western ruling class circles who want to push the break up of any lingering remnants of the old Soviet Union, or just to fragment remaining Russian power are gaining the upper hand as the crisis deepens.
It is notable that the reactionary little Western-connected "democracy" dissident Gary Kasparov was making a meal of street demonstrations and an arrest for the TV cameras for example.
The constant "dissident" provocations and "freedom" demonstrations against Putin's stitched-up elections, have all the hallmarks of other CIA or western inspired "colour" and hypocritical "democracy" revolts, tapping petty bourgeois reaction from Ukraine to Iran, with a loud chorus of coordinated Western media hypocrisy.
It is difficult to fully grasp all the complexities of the Bonapartist balancing act between the (real) anarchy of capitalism's counter-revolution and the old centralised state structure which Putin turned to in order to try and prevent the complete penetration of this "free market" by international monopoly capital and particularly American domination.
The Putin-ite nationalist dreams of maintaining Russia as a "Great Power" alongside the other imperialists have always been a contemptible and deluded fantasy even before the 2008 credit crash because there is not room for another imperialist power in the world and even less so now that the true cutthroat world battle for collapsing markets (expressed in trade war and international currency manipulations) has surfaced.
But as long as Putin accommodated the oligarchs and pandered to the West with his declarations that they should "thank him for helping end communism" and aped the degenerate Western "war on terror" with his barbaric and mass murderous onslaughts on Chechnyan self-determination ambitions, much of the ruling class in the West has more or less tolerated this stupidity as sufficient to keep the counter-revolution in place.
But even Putin's conceited pretensions have been shaken by the onset of the full capitalist crisis and the stepping up of the Washington warmongering in the NATO blitzkrieg on Libya, and the obviously manipulated civil war in Syria to destroy the bourgeois nationalism of Assad, which has never been sufficiently compliant with US (and Zionist) interests.
Both artificially provoked wars served at the same time to intimidate and suppress the gigantic spontaneous revolutionary upheavals of Egypt, Tunisia and the Gulf states driven by the crisis.
The "war on terror" is now more and more clearly just war against the rest of the world and dangerously close to home for the Russian borders as large swathes of the Middle East are attacked, with the non-stop war drum noises against Iran indicating the next likely victim.
The Kremlin's refusal to go along with this US manipulation and intimidation and back the creation of United Nations figleaf motions to "justify" more NATO onslaughts is nothing to do with principles so much as self-interest and perhaps the residue of old Third International revisionist "thinking" that somehow war can be stopped (which is certainly the basis of Beijing's revisionist diplomacy on Syria trying to tell everyone to "calm down" and advocating "peaceful settlements", a marginally less unprincipled line than its initial UN support for sanctions on Libya and then abstention on the "no fly zone" motion which initiated the six month blitzkreig as even a ten-year old could have predicted).
There is no stopping the warmongering which is driven by the epochal collapse and failure of the capitalist world system and can only ended by ending that entire system of capitalist world domination.
But the Russian refusals will have sent Washington into paroxysms and maybe tipped the balance of argument towards trying to stir up as much "revolt" as possible.
There is no question of supporting Putin (and the oligarchs he relies on) but exposing the imperialist provocations and seeing them defeated is part of the revolutionary Leninist understanding needed in Russia as everywhere – to bring down the newly re-established capitalism (Putin too) and re-build the Bolshevism which could rebuild a socialist state.
Meanwhile the feminist confusion which all the fake-"left" has pandered to over the decades continues to be a major weapon for the US Empire's burning thirst for revenge against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, and the considerable damage done to its worldwide conspiracies and democracy and "rule of law" garbage justifications for war, by revelations of diplomatic cables, exposed war crimes, revealed torture centres and so forth.
Assange's semi-hippy conviction that such work in itself can change, and-or reform world imperialist tyranny, is as naïve as the Pussy Riot-ers but the damage done is significant and anyone who does not grasp that he is a major target for US reaction to "take out" is even more naïve at best or saturated in petty bourgeois smug complacency verging on outright reaction.
The sanctimonious posturing about "rape" and "sexual molestation" (which actually in British law is no such thing anyway though the press continues to use those terms with the implication of much more serious and violent UK offences-failing to explain the actual situation) is very much a case of not seeing the wood for the trees, reflecting the utmost idiocy about the world.
In one of his more eloquent outburst "left" Reformist maverick MP George Galloway has put the issue well to the apoplectic outrage of the Trot influenced "liberal" Guardian:
In an extraordinary and graphic speech made through a weekly online video broadcast called Good Night with George Galloway, the Respect party MP for Bradford West addressed allegations of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion made by two women – known as woman A and woman B – Assange met on a visit to Stockholm in August 2010, including having sex with one of them while she was asleep. Assange strongly denies the allegations.
"Even taken at its worst, if the allegations made by these two women were true, 100% true, and even if a camera in the room captured them, they don't constitute rape," Galloway said. "At least not rape as anyone with any sense can possibly recognise it. And somebody has to say this.
"Woman A met Julian Assange, invited him back to her flat, gave him dinner, went to bed with him, had consensual sex with him, claims that she woke up to him having sex with her again. This is something which can happen, you know. I mean, not everybody needs to be asked prior to each insertion."
Lawyers and anti-rape campaigners said Galloway was wrong and the law is clear that consent is required every time someone has sex.
Galloway said he was speaking out because "a reign of intellectual terror has descended in Britain" on this issue and he believed the sexual assault claims were part of a "setup" intended to deliver Assange into the hands of the US authorities angered at his publication of state secrets.
"It is staggering just how ignorant, factually and morally incorrect George Galloway can be," said Katie Russell, spokeswoman for Rape Crisis England and Wales. "It is very concerning that an elected MP should display such ignorance of the law for all the women and men he represents. It sends a negative message to all the women and girls who have experienced sexual violence and a disturbing message to perpetrators. He says he doesn't believe these women or these allegations and that is a very powerful statement because every woman or girl who has made an allegation of sexual violence deserves to have that treated fairly."
A magistrates court has already ruled that: "What is alleged here is that Mr Assange 'deliberately consummated sexual intercourse with her by improperly exploiting that she, due to sleep, was in a helpless state'. In this country that would amount to rape."
The high court also ruled: "It is clear that the allegation is that he had sexual intercourse with her [woman A] when she was not in a position to consent and so he could not have had any reasonable belief that she did."
In his broadcast Galloway said: "Some people believe that when you go to bed with somebody, take off your clothes, and have sex with them and then fall asleep, you're already in the sex game with them. It might be really bad manners not to have tapped her on the shoulder and said: 'Do you mind if I do it again?.' It might be really sordid and bad sexual etiquette, but whatever else it is, it is not rape or you bankrupt the term rape of all meaning."
Assange remains holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in Knightsbridge, as he attempts to avoid extradition to Sweden where he is wanted for questioning over sexual assault claims. The lawfulness of a European arrest warrant issued by the Swedish authorities was confirmed in May by the UK's supreme court.
Assange and his supporters believe that if he travels to Stockholm he may be rendered to the United States and charged with espionage for publishing leaked military logs from Iraq and Afghanistan and highly classified diplomatic cables from US embassies around the world. They fear he faces life in prison, or even the death penalty in the US.
On Twitter, Galloway reacted dismissively to the uproar surrounding his remarks.
"Oh how this 'liberal' chorus of Pavlovian reaction must delight the Pentagon!" he tweeted. "Oh my, what a lot of 'liberal' useful idiots the Empire can count on. It's about WIKILEAKS stupid...!"
In a characteristically hectoring broadcast, Galloway also addressed allegations made by the second woman against Assange, over which he is wanted for questioning.
"She claimed that while she did have consensual sex with him, the condom ripped and yet he continued to do it," he said. "Now you wouldn't just need to be in the room with the two of them to know the truth of this allegation. I don't want to take the biology too far, but you would actually need to be somewhere located inside the woman to know if that allegation were true. And if it were true, is it rape?"
The Respect MP concluded by declaring: "I think the whole thing is a setup. I don't understand how so many of you can't see that. If he did these things, he's a rat. But the United States empire, the British empire, the imperial system that around the world is slaughtering human beings by the million, cutting their throats, starving them to death, leaving them to die of poverty and avoidable disease in their millions, is a much bigger rat, no? Imperialism is a much bigger rat than Julian Assange, no? So why would you want Assange to be delivered to the United States and silenced for ever, unless you were on the side of empire."
Galloway is as opportunist as they come and consciously hostile to communism and revolutionary perspectives, deliberately continuing to foster illusions in parliament; and with a particular eye on his own career.
But he sees better than many some of the depravities of capitalism.
But the answer is to build Leninism. Don Hoskins
Don Hoskins
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World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).
Biofuels stealing food
Emilio Godoy
The food crisis, aggravated by the use of corn and other grains in ethanol production, was one of the central issues discussed May 17-18 in the Mexican capital by deputy ministers of agriculture from the G-20 industrialized and emerging countries.
The impact of this problem on humanity is analyzed in the report "Biofueling Hunger: how U.S. corn ethanol policy is increasing food prices in Mexico, presented May 16 and sponsored by the U.S. office of ActionAid International.
Timothy Wise, director of the Research and Policy Program at Tufts University's Global Development and Environment Institute, told IPS that there have been very steep food price increases since the end of 2000, repeated in 2007 and again in 2010 and 2011.
Wise, co-author of the report, stated that this coincided with ethanol expansion in the United States. What can be seen in Mexico is an increase in the price of corn tortillas, the country's traditional foodstuff, the price of which has risen 60% since 2005.
Wise and likewise co-author Marie Brill, Action Aid policy director, confirmed that, since 2005, Mexico has lost $250-500 million a year importing the grain, due to
high prices on the international market.
The 24-page report concludes that the expansion of biofuels is contributing to food insecurity in Mexico. Price rises associated with ethanol are negatively affecting consumers, especially those who lack food security and are not producers.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, last year 53,302 million liters of corn ethanol was consumed in the country, with 40% of corn harvests directed to its production.
The United States, the largest producer and exporter of corn in the world, implements a tariff protection policy in favor of national biofuels, and gives producers subsidies and a mandate to mix gasoline with up to 10% ethanol.
Brill stated that the G-20 has to solve the food crisis. The 2011 summit addressed the situation, but it has to ignite the engines first. Mexico is an example of what is happening in other countries.
The leaders of the G-20, currently presided by Mexico, are to meet from June 18-19 in the northwestern city of Los Cabos to draw up policies to resolve the economic-financial crisis affecting the North, food security, green growth and combating climate change.
This bloc unites the industrialized countries of the G-8 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) with the European Union as such and emerging economies such as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey.
THE TROUBLES OF CORN
The planting of corn destined for biofuels began in the region in the mid-20th century and experienced a boom in the 1970's, vhen the Latin American countries took off as suppliers of raw materials
for the markets of industrialized nations and in response to the first major oil crisis.
In recent years, the development of certain mono-cultivations has mutated toward providing raw materials for the manufacture of fuels. The expansion of agricultural products to this end is also the result of the depletion of oil as an energy source and carbon dioxide contamination from the use of hydrocarbons, leading to global warming.
Corn is loaded with a symbolic power from Mexico to Nicaragua. The increase in channeling this grain into ethanol production is extremely strong, driven by high oil prices, Timothy Wise stated, • (Excerpts from IPS) •
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World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).
Child poverty affects almost 81 million children in Latin America and the Caribbean
Almost 81 million children under 18 years of age suffer from child poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to a study by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). These organizations call upon governments to invest in children and reduce the ongoing inequality, as reported by EFE.
According to the Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) study, a very uneven situation exists within countries such as Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Peru, over two thirds of children are poor, while in Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay, fewer than one in four children live in poverty, the Child Poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean analysis reveal.
GRNM29May11small.jpg)
In the study of child poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean a measurement and diagnosis system of child poverty with a focus on children's rights in the region and seeks to put forward public policy recommendations to overcome the problem.
The study, carried out over 2008-2009, measured multiple dimensions of child poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean, linking each one to compliance with the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was approved in 1989.
The study took into account factors such as nutrition, access to potable water and sanitation services, quality of housing, the number of people per room, school attendance and availability of information and communication media, as their absence contributes to a profile of poverty and social exclusion. •
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World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).
McGuinness-Queen handshake another step in snail's pace British withdrawal from Ireland
'Irish republicans will be judged by our actions as well as our beliefs' - Adams
GERRY ADAMS spoke at the West Belfast Sinn Féin Convention in the Felons' club that selected ex-prisoner Rosie McCorley as a replacement MLA for Paul Maskey MP on 24 June. Coming just three days before the meeting of jolnt First Ministers Martin McGuinness and Peter Robinson and President of Ireland Michael D Higgins with the English monarch at a Co-Operation Ireland initiative in Belfast, Gerry Adams said: 'This is a different visit [to Dublin last year] - in a different context."
The Sinn Féin leader said:
"I would like to especially thank the relatives of dead ira Volunteers and the relatives of those killed by Britain's armed forces and loyalist organisations for the generous way they have responded to this initiative.
My experience over the last 20 years of the peace process is that many of the relatives of those who lost loved ones in the conflict are the most considerate, the most willing and the most understanding when republicans have had to make difficult decisions to consolidate peace and open up new phases of struggle to bring the people of this island closer together.
As an Irish republican party, our core publican beliefs are rooted in the ethos and philosophy of Wolfe Tone and the United Irish Society, who sought the unity of Catholics, Protestants and Dissenters.
Republicans are in the business of nation building. We want to see a real republic shaped on our island.
A new agreed Ireland based on the rights of citizens is needed to achieve this.
I would like to speak directly to unionists.
We acknowledge the British queen's place in the hearts and minds and sentiments of the unionist community. though as republicans we do not subscribe to the idea of royalty and monarchy.
This meeting is therefore a meeting of equals.
Last year, Queen Elizabeth II visited Dublin. Sinn Féin declined to participate.
That was exactly the right decision. That visit marked a rapprochement in relations between that state and the British monarchy.
That was a good thing. It took 100 years to achieve. In the course of her visit, the Queen of England made some important gestures and remarks, including an acknowledgement of the pain of all victims, which demonstrate the beginning of a new understanding and acceptance of the realities of the past.
I welcomed that at the time and said it should be built upon This is a different visit - in a different context.
This week's meeting is a clear expression of Sinn Fein's desire to engage with our unionist neighbours and to demonstrate that we are prepared, once again, to go beyond the rhetoric as we seek to persuade them that our new Ireland will not be a cold house for unionists or any other section of our people.
Unionists have lived on this island for centuries. This is their home. It is where they belong and it is where they will remain.
Our Protestant neighbours also have a proud history of progressive and radical thinking which many of them may not be conscious of. The founders of Irish republicanism were mainly Protestant. They were for the emancipation of their Catholic neighbours and for equality. The fall of the Bastille was celebrated in this city and Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man was widely read. This is a history which should be reclaimed by the people of the Shankill and Sandy Row, by the Protestants of County Down and Antrim.
Republicans are democrats and the new republic we seek is pluralist - now and in the future. It is 'An Ireland of Equals' in which there is space for everyone and for all opinions and identities.
Sinn Féin is for a new dispensation in which a citizen can be Irish and unionist, where one can also claim Britishness and be comfortable on this island. It is an Ireland which would in a real and inclusive way live up to the ideals of the 1916 Proclamation and cherish all the children of the nation equally.
Our vision of a New Republic is one in which the Orange and Green unite in a cordial union.
This is the right thing to do at the right time and for the right reasons.
I ask all Sinn Féin members and all republicans to support this initiative.
I urge everyone, everywhere on this island to take ownership of out future.
By our actions, Irish republicans will be judged, as well as our beliefs.
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World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).
IRA key to anti-apartheid 'spectacular' by ANC bombers
THE IRA played a central role in the 1980 bombing of the apartheid South African regime's Sasol oil refinery, according to the [recently] published memoir of the late Kader Asmal, African National Congress minister and founder of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement.
The attack was a huge psychological blow to the Pretoria regime, a boost to the resistance movement, and made headline news across the world.
Asmal left South Africa in 1959 to study in Dublin to take two MK operatives off on 'two weeks of intensive training' law and graduated from the London School of Economics before teaching at Trinity College Dublin, specialising in human rights, labour and international law. He served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts from 1980 to 1986.
Professor Asmal was the founder of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement and became a minister in anc governments in post-apartheid South Africa.
In his memoir, 'Politics in My Blood', he claims that while he was in political exile in Ireland he was involved in arranging contacts between the ira and the military wing of the anc, Umkhonto we Sizwe (better known as 'MK') in the late 1970s.
He says that ira military experts arrived in Dublin to take two MK operatives off on "two weeks of intensive training".
Later, on the night of 31st May 1980, a massive bomb attack hit the Sasol Oil Refinery at Sasolburg, near Johannesburg in South Africa. The operation, timed to coincide with the apartheid state's Republic Day', was carried out by the Solomon Mahlangu Detachment of the MK's Special Operations Unit and struck a major blow against the racist regime.
The MK originally claimed that the special units which took part in the operation were trained in Angola in July 1979 before arriving in South Africa to carry out reconais-sance on the plant. MK said:
IRA training camp
"The teams were infiltrated into the country and a final reconnaissance was carried out the night before the attacks. Special limpet mines with thermite were then placed on fuel tanks and the teams withdrew undetected. The limpet mines exploded and eight fuel tanks in all were destroyed, causing damage estimated at £45million."
The fires caused by the explosion could be seen for miles around and blazed for almost a week before they were completely brought, under control. Nobody was killed in the attacks although a security guard was injured.
An MK operative who was part of the unit that carried out the operation said the bombing was hailed as "a great success by MK commanders and Chief of Staff Joe Slovo". Kader Asmal, recalling the attack, writes: "While the damage to the refinery was, according to the apartheid regime, relatively superficial, the propaganda value and its effect on the morale of the liberation movement were inestimable. Yet only Louise (my wife) and I knew the attack on Sasolburg was the result of reconnaissance carried out by members of the ira."
Asmal died of a heart attack in June of this year, aged 76. His book, 'Politics in my Blood', is available from the Sinn Féin Bookshop.
IN 2009, the then British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, David Miliband MP, was asked by bbc Radio 4's Great Lives' presenter Matthew Parris whether there were "circumstances in which violent reaction, terrorism, is the right response?"
Miliband responded:
"The most famous anc military attack was on the Sasol oil refinery in 1980. That was perceived to be remarkable blow at the heart of the South African regime. But I think the answer has to be yes — there are circumstances in which it is justifiable, and, yes, there are circumstances in which it is effective — but it is never effective on its own.
"The importance for me is that the South African example proved something remarkable: the apartheid regime looked like a regime that would last forever, and it was blown down.
"It is hard to argue that, on its own, a political struggle would have delivered. The striking at the heart of a regime's claim on a monopoly of power, which the ANC's armed wing represented, was very significant."
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World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).
United States: Best at judging others
by Dalia González Delgado
IN terms of human rights, the United States acts like the judge and executioner every time that it attempts to accuse virtually the entire planet, when its own criminal record makes it a prime example of human rights abuses.
Once again, the U.S. Department of State has sent to Congress its annual report on human rights in the world and, once again, it expresses concern about what is taking place in many other countries, Including Cuba, where the report states, "the systemic regression of fundamental freedoms" continues.
It would seem that the opinions of many public figures, such as Elías Carranza, director of the UN Latin American Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, who said, "Cuba is the safest country in the region," go unheard or are not seen as important. It is not the first time that the United States has ignored UN criteria.
The world is changing; Cuba is changing, but U.S. rhetoric toward the Revolution remains the same. It insists on including the country on its blacklists in order to justify the blockade, which is a massive, systematic violation of human rights. In fact, the Geneva Convention of 1948 describes it as an act of genocide.
According to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the 2011 report makes it clear that governments all over the world are being watched and will be held responsible.
The Department of State is looking everywhere except inward.
With the largest prison population in the world, the United States is the only country where minors can receive a life sentence without the right to parole. Approximately 10,000 minors are incarcerated in adult penitentiaries.
What is taking place in the U.S. prison camp on the illegally occupied Guantanamo base is a violation of human rights. What is happening to immigrants in the United States is a violation. Is it not a fact that the country is one of the most racist on earth? The same divine right allows it to judge everyone, gives it the freedom to decide upon others' lives and frequently kill civilian populations with drones and preventive wars.
It is outrageous to accuse Cuba, a country which is making every effort to promote, in practice rather than rhetoric, the most fundamental right of human beings: the right to life.
This is evident to any visitor and most likely the reason for the Cuban travel ban in place for U.S. citizens.
Speaking in Cannes before the screening of the film 7 Days in Havana, Benicio del Toro, who directed one section of the movie, affirmed that the restrictions the U.S. imposes on its own citizens who wish to travel to Cuba could be considered a form of censorship.
Another of the directors, Spaniard Julio Medem, who emphasized that the film "talks of the suffering of the situation and of survival," but also of the optimism of the Cubans themselves, "beautiful, talented, close, cordial..."
One could continue with examples but the list would be endless.
Besides, it is clear now: the United States needs to play the role of judge to avoid being judged as the executioner. •