Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested.—V.I.Lenin
I.L.W.P. BULLETIN
Weekly newspaper of the International Leninist Workers Party (P&P Bulletin Publications, PO Box 50, London SW17 9NL)((GPO Regd.)   
No 651 Tuesday June 2 1992                                                                                                                          10p 

'New world order' delusions being crashed by the stark slump realities of inter-imperialist conflict

The United Nations' "independent guardian of international morality" fraud is coming unstuck fast now, along with all the other reformist poses which ultimately defined themselves by reference to the phony balance of the Cold War.

Japan's intended "peacekeeping" cover for war preparations and Germany's bid to relocate a headquarters of the UN in Bonn, plus the pathetic efforts by New York City to keep the lot where it is, all go to show how far the "one world" sanctimonious nonsense which sanitized US imperialist world domination after WW2 has already given way to a quite new scene: a sordid wrangling over who has the biggest "international legitimacy" clout, as preface to the coming armed struggle to decide which gang of robber-nations will finish up with the market-spoils. The heat is rising once again in the thieves' kitchen.

The original thieves' kitchen description with which Lenin branded the League of Nations (formed to divide up the spoils between the victor imperialist blocs after the first great inter-imperialist sorting out this century) could not before now without qualification be applied to the hybrid League of Nations II, the UN.

The postwar UN was indeed dominated by thieves, but had a peculiar house style of its own, reflecting the partial retreats forced upon imperialism by the growth of the socialist camp and the achievements of anti-colonialism.

Illusions from the workers state side of the fence along permanent peaceful coexistence lines helped stabilize the stand-off to imperialism's advantage at such key junctures as the partition of Palestine and of Korea. Habitually,
ineffectual criticism of the more outrageous imperialist excesses - e.g. the famous unimplemented resolutions condemning the zionist annexation of yet further Arab territories in '67 - was made quite harmless by the refusal to do anything serious about it, (e.g. Palestine, Lebanon) or by legitimizing direct counter revolutionary actions (Korea, the Gulf, birth of "Israel").

Revisionist illusions which saw the triumph of proletarian dictatorship armies over Axis imperialism, not as the first step in a progressive onslaught on bourgeois dictatorship positions worldwide, but as the preliminary to an indefinite extension of the class-collaborating popular frontist dream into permanent peaceful co-existence with a self-"stabilizing" capitalist world, served to confuse the world's masses about the role of the new UN.

The forcible removal from direct monopoly capitalist exploitation and organization of the new workers states in East Europe and the humiliation of forced decolonization were real and bitter blows against imperialism of all stripes, not least US imperialism itself. 

Trotskyite fantasies about some grand plan cooked up between Stalinism and imperialism to sell the revolutionary masses down the river are treacherously wide of the mark, missing out completely what an unforgettable (and in bourgeois eyes unforgivable) breach was made for all time in the bourgeoisie's claims of universal legitimate rule by October 1917 and the next 70 years of socialist achievement, influence and example.

Just as in the world beyond the walls of the United Nations imperialist activity was materially constrained by the proven might of the Red Army, the indomitable communist struggle of the Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Cubans etc. etc., and the anti-colonial ferment brewing in the third world; - so the ability of the US itself to act simply and exclusively as a rubber stamp for the bloody "Pax-" Americana was to an extent materially hampered by opposing class forces - even when that opposition was itself often fatally muddled by revisionist delusions. 

But without having had the opportunity or wit to conspire in advance for this side-effect, by simply following its opportunist nose for a market opening, US imperialism was at least able to turn the East-West stand-off to its sectional imperialist advantage.

The discipline of a common enemy in the form of a strengthened socialist and anti-colonialist presence in UN fora [forums] paradoxically made it easier for Washington to keep Bonn and Tokyo on a string.

Those material constraints on imperialism are in a sense still present to an extent. For example, before oil sanctions can be imposed on Serbia, China must first be won over or neutralized.

And in a more fundamental sense, the ultimate material constraints upon imperialist activity - its own paralysing contradictions and the ever-widening mass base of spontaneous revolt which the sharpening of those contradictions into crisis inevitably prepares - will be strangling imperialism outright long before any post-WW3 new imperialist order has any chance of getting itself established.

But the specific form taken by those constraints in such institutions as the UN in the years of Cold War and "Pax" Americana is gone for good - and this is not proving to the advantage of US imperialism. 

Right now the fear of revolution, for all the key players, is subordinated to the urgent struggle for top-dog status within imperialism itself. It was the move to the foreground of inter-imperialist anxieties which first presaged the end of the Cold War phase of US imperialist rule, and with it the end of the phony balance.

Neither the discipline of a common enemy - beyond the increasingly arbitrary and unconvincing villain-of-the-minute choices which scapegoat for the evils unleashed by imperialism itself (blaming Serbia for the break-up of civil peace in the Balkans, when it was imperialism which engineered the bloody collapse of socialist Yugoslavia, e.g.) - nor the constraints hitherto imposed by the existence of the Soviet giant, are any longer there to frighten Japan, Germany and the rest into resentful submission to the leadership of America.

Curiously, the UN's "holy neutrality" hypocrisy looked least unconvincing when under threat of being turfed out of New York without a cent by its Washington paymasters. Yet it is the end of the Cold War which is throwing the cruellest light on the question of why exactly the UN exists, putting its pretensions under the microscope to far more revealing effect than Reagan's early histrionics ever really managed.

Threats to pull the plug on the UN for supposedly spending dollar subsidies on pinko welfare schemes and do-gooding quangos came at the period when the unreal speculative credit-fed boom of the early Reagan years was being matched politically by new levels of hectoring anti-communism of the "evil empire" variety.

Like the "economic miracle" itself, the showpiece achievement of the anti-communist crusade - the 1983 butchery of the revolution in Grenada - was high on fascist glitz and spectacle, low on solid achievement; the Reaganism of the early Eighties was riding on something much less substantial economically than was the McCarthyism of the Fifties; and the sordid mugging of tiny Grenada could not compensate for the humiliation of US power in Vietnam.

When those peak levels of anti-communist hysteria had with remarkable speed evaporated into a surly detente, revealing that the real source of US bourgeois misery at this moment was not at all the "evil empire" but its own "free world" comrades, did some UN bag-carriers maybe suppose that the end of the Cold War might mean not only an end to the absurd "pink"-baiting harassment of its run-of-the-mill education, health and social programmes of palliative-manipulative reformism, but actually put some "peace dividend" cash behind the UN as the nearest available approximation on earth to a "world government" suitable to preside over the "end of history"?

In practice, all the provocative "new order" nonsense ran straight into the sand in the Gulf, and only washed out self-publicists like Fukuyama, Gorbachev and Redgrave go on whistling in the dark about the end of history, world government, seven fat kine etc.

The US continues to renege on its debts to the UN, and unsurprisingly the FSU is following suit. The feuding quangos which helped fudge the class-struggle contradictions through the Cold War look as if they may be for the chop - there is neither the will nor the money to go on propping up the institutionalized pretence that the worst effects of exploitation and uneven development are gradually being organized out of existence, even if such expensive bureaucratic theatrics could still hope to hypnotize the social demands of the planet's masses.

Imperialist crisis has moved onto a distinct new phase in its progress towards WW3, pushing the UN to the sidelines. Boutros-Ghali can read Carrington and the EC a penny lecture:

"My message, what I am asking, is for the Europeans to be more involved, to pay more attention, to be more there," he said repeatedly in the first extensive interview he has given since he took up office in the UN's inner sanctum, the elegant 38th floor suite high above New York's East River.

Yugoslavia is being dismembered, its refugees are spilling into neighbouring countries and it is Europe that is most affected. The Europeans should be banging heads together, to achieve a political settlement, and rallying their putative defence organisation, the Western European Union, to underpin their diplomacy, Dr Boutros-Ghali argued.

The Egyptian is not a man to indulge in careless talk. Long experience as a diplomat, bloodied in the miasma of Middle East politics, taught him the importance of words. But the inflections in his voice, and the way he phrased the argument, showed how strongly he felt about who was responsible for ending the carnage in Bosnia.

The EC should not be passing the buck to the UN. Nor was it good enough for Lord Carrington, the chairman of the Yugoslav peace conference, to send for the leaders of the warring factions and spend an occasional day with them in Brussels.

"They — the EC — should work at it," said Dr Boutros-Ghali.

"You see, if you want to do a serious negotiation, you have to be on the spot and to have a month of discussions; continuous meetings sitting around a table. If the fighting in Sarajevo makes it impossible to talk there, let us have it in Belgrade, or on the border between Serbia and Croatia."

But if this is designed to suck up to German lebensraum agendas, or to reinforce the war threats from Bush, or simply to remind anyone listening that the UN still wants to be in the game, such strictures in themselves are unlikely to have any more
consequence than handwringing over America's back rent.

From the tone of Boutros-Ghali's recent remarks to the press, there has already been a conscious recognition that the old game is up and the UN opportunists best hope of a few more miles of track for the gravytrain lies in getting ready to spread the cloak of "international legitimacy" across the back of whichever rival imperialist alliance looks best placed to secure its own predatory advantage behind phony "democracy and human rights" banners:

NEW YORKERS yesterday belatedly woke up to the prospect that their city, a byword for danger and excitement, could lose a significant proportion of United Nations personnel to a sleepy small town in Germany.

The German chancellor, Helmut Kohl, earlier this month proposed an offer that the UN secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, may not be able to refuse: a costless shift of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and related bodies to Bonn.

New York's mayor, David Dinkins, let it be known that the city would do everything it could to keep the UN united and in Manhattan. He called on the US state department to support the city in its efforts to resist the wooing by Bonn and the German government.

Germany may be strapped for cash these days and unlikely to complete the transfer of its government and parliament to Berlin by the original deadline of 1994, but it is prepared to pay the price of bringing international bodies to the former West German capital.

According to New York city officials, the departure of the UNDP, the Fund for Population Activities and the Development Fund for Women could mean the loss of more than one-third of the world body's workforce in the city, and up to $200 million in goods and services.

Bonn, which entertains rather fanciful hopes of becoming the seat of the proposed European Central Bank, has a whole series of new office blocks being constructed in its government district which could easily become Canary Wharf-style white elephants once the move to Berlin gets underway.

So Dr Kohl has offered the UNDP a large building, rent-free, near the new and perhaps rarely-to-be-used Bundestag chamber, and promised even more office-space for other UN bodies or international organisations on equal terms.

His government is promoting Bonn as a new international north-south centre in close proximity to other UN bodies in Vienna, Geneva and Paris, and having easier access to Africa than New York can boast it is also discreetly pointing out that the US is way behind in payments to the UN while Germany pays its substantial bills on time.

William Draper, the UNDP director-general, who was courted by German government and city officials in Bonn last month, is reported to oppose a move away from New York, but middle and junior management staff are said to be longing to enjoy Bonn's quality of life.

JAPAN'S deputy prime minister, Michio Watanabe, has threatened a double election, involving both houses of the Diet, in an effort to persuade the opposition socialists to support a bill allowing troops to take part in United Nations peacekeeping operations.

The question of whether to dissolve the lower house in July at the same time as upper house elections are scheduled has become inextricably linked to the armed forces bill.

Mr Watanabe, who is also foreign minister, has a strong interest in seeing the bill passed. He and the ruling party see it as signifying Japan's coming of age, taking on an international political role to match its economic status.

An objective is for the UN to promote pluralism and democracy. "I know this can be interpreted as interference in the internal affairs of member countries. During the last 30 years, the UN has put the emphasis on the construction of roads and hospitals. But we have not paid enough attention to institutions promoting human rights or democracy.

"I know it is more difficult to address these matters; but I don't know why. If people accept the advice of foreign doctors — which involves your own body — why not accept advice on establishing an independent judiciary, or free medical and the organisation of political parties?"

"Hamdallilah, we have ended the Cold War. So perhaps we can win the fight for democracy," Dr Boutros-Ghali smiled.

But this breathtaking ignorance of the reality of imperialism, as perceived by the huge majority of the world's propertyless, can only be a doomed, cynical pose, impotently marking time as imperialism, complete with its exposed and rotting cargo of bent courts, bought media and multi-party futility, slips deeper
into chaos and war.

Dominic Hull.

Anti-communist myths of all kinds beginning to collapse like ninepins

The latest disastrous trade figures have begun to turn scepticism about a 'recovery' for the British imperialist economy (and the West in general) towards open ridicule:

IT WAS quite like the old days last week when the latest current account figures were released. Just like the summer of 1988, in fact, the year of scorching sun, surging imports and a string of government excuses.

Now, you might think that it would be pretty hard to explain away the fact that after seven quarters of grinding recession Britain's trade gap in April stood at £1,361 million but it's not difficult at all, once you know the rules of the game.

First of all, you make it clear that it's rather bad form to look at the 8 per cent growth in the volume of manufactured imports over the past year when exports are doing so well (up 4 per cent).

Only the pinkos on the Guardian and the Observer ignore the glorious success of our new-age entrepreneurs in world markets and suggest that the trend in the current account might be reflecting the underlying health of the economy. All the other papers know the truth: Germany is washed up, Britain is on course to become Europe's economic hub.

This message is not enough and has to be buttressed by a gentle reminder that in its early stages a current account deficit symbolises an increase in demand for foreign consumer and investment goods. In other words, it's not a problem that imports of capital goods in the three months to April were 14 per cent up on a year ago but a sign of a thriving economy.

If that doesn't work, you can always fall back on the old Nigel Lawson argument, that a current account deficit doesn't really matter because it's only a private-sector problem. As we all know from our thorough grounding in free-market economics, a private-sector problem is self-correcting, even if it does involve minor inconveniences such as 15 per cent base rates along the way.

Besides, the deficit is pretty small beer as a proportion of GDP and easily financeable in today's liberalised capital markets. Finally — and this is the clincher — the supply-side reforms of the 1980s have made the UK such an attractive haven for foreign investment that we can look forward to an era of export-led prosperity.

However, one reason for some concern might be the long-term trends in import and export volumes, disguised temporarily by the squeeze on domestic demand during the early stages of the recession. Put bluntly, imports — particularly of manufactured goods — have tended to rise far more quickly than exports for several decades and that trend has been exacerbated by cuts in industrial capacity in both the early 1980s and 1990s.

As Robert Lind and Kevin Darlington, of UBS Phillips & Drew, rightly noted in the wake of last week's figures: '"The recent surge in imports suggests to us that the manufacturing supply-side, seriously weakened by a recession-induced wave of bankruptcies and rationalisations, is struggling to satisfy what demand there is, giving a rise in import penetration."

Messrs Lind and Darlington point out that the 14 per cent increase in imports of capital goods mentioned above was accompanied by a 6 per cent drop in domestic production.
Kevin Gardiner, of SG Warburg, said it was worrying that in both the 1974/5 and 1980/81 recessions imports had fallen pretty much in line with the decline in output. This time, imports had started to grow again even when output was continuing to decline, and market share at home was being lost earlier in the cycle.

Nick Parsons, of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, says if the Treasury is right in asserting that import growth reflects stronger demand, then the logic is that the bigger the deficit the stronger the economy, so we should be positively rubbing our hands in glee at the (likely) prospect of the return of £2 billion monthly current account deficits.

Try that on the Chancellor next time you see him.

Although two generations have grown up since the epoch of US world domination (after 1945) engineered a seemingly endless inflationary boom, deeper folk memories in every country still remember vividly the catastrophic reputation of capitalism during the 20th century overall.

Two devastating slumps followed by murderous trade wars set up the most degenerate episodes in all human history - World Wars I and II.

The ridicule for a still-major imperialist state because of its ludicrous inability to solve its longstanding serious economic problems contains within it a vague suspicion that the 'free-market' cutthroat competitive system could just be leading mankind back into the greatest warmongering chaos that has ever befallen civilisation:

IT IS difficult not to be aghast at the inability of the economics profession to tackle the world's problems. The Earth Summit in Rio has scant chance of agreeing anything significant to reduce the northern hemisphere's environmental degradation, let alone remove the scandal whereby the poorest countries of the world are handing over more cash to the richest through debt repayments than they are receiving in new money. As a cure, this is like draining blood from a haemophiliac and giving it to the donor.

In eastern Europe, an outbreak of means-oriented economics (privatisation and so on) rather than an end-oriented approach, which improves efficiency by the most appropriate methods, is leading to economic chaos.

In Britain, in recent years, there has been an unprecedented explosion of interest in economics as a subject that is in inverse proportion to the success economists have achieved. Since 1951, the number of students choosing economics at A level has risen from 1,891 to a startling 43,163, according to the Economics Association. Add another 15,000 doing business studies and this means more than 58,000 a year are taking economics-related A levels.

Much of what is taught is locked in a time warp. Students learn about "the theory of the firm", which few modem enterprises would recognise, and they are told that consumer behaviour is governed by maximising something called "utility", which can't be measured, observed or understood by the people allegedly practising it.

Later on, if they are good, they will study econometrics, which applies sophisticated mathematics to give bogus significance to equations which ultimately depend on the will-o'-the-wisp behaviour of consumers exercising free will.

Thus, econometric forecasts of the economy tend to be reliable when you don't need them — when the future is the same as the past — but pretty useless when the future is different, as was the case before the boom in the late 1980s and the subsequent depression.

Neither of these was picked up by highly paid forecasters who are all at sea now because of underlying changes in the structure of the economy. These have not fully been picked up by extrapolations of the past and they point to a much more serious deterioration in the economy than most forecasters realise.

No studies have yet been made of the effect of the surge of interest in economics in the UK, but it must have led to a huge improvement in economic awareness among many thousands of people even if they do not subsequently become professional economists.

If such an explosion of interest had happened in science and engineering (instead of partly at their expense) we might be on the way to solving some of our problems.

But, you might wonder, what have we to show for this huge investment in terms of breakthroughs comparable to those achieved in medicine and science? I am pushed to think of one recent major breakthrough in macro-economics which I could say has greatly improved the lot of the man in the street.

Instead, the study of economics has imploded into a kind of bifurcated time warp, in which variants of Keynesianism vie with resuscitated classical economics in the form of monetarism while the economy wallows in a far more serious recession than does any other comparable country.

In Britain, computer models have failed to appreciate the structural changes taking place let alone the importance of human psychology, and it is not just that the world is now a deregulated economic village with instantaneous communications in which the flow of speculative money far exceeds that generated by trade in goods.

The UK economy is in the throes of having an industrial heart-transplant as more and more of its growth industries (motor manufacturing, televisions, videos, cameras, computers and so on) are taken over by foreign companies, whose exchange rate calculations can be quite different from those of indigenous firms. One of the crucial determinants of economic activity in the short-term is the psychology of people in debt which economics is only slowly appreciating. This is curious for a behavioural science founded on human choice.

The erosion of the UK's manufacturing base has produced the unique situation where the economy is trying to escape from recession at a time when it is running a current account deficit of about £12 billion a year instead of the usual cyclical surplus. The Treasury computers are deluding themselves if they think we are going to surge back into sustainable growth of 3 per cent next year.

There is, of course, enough spare capacity in the economy for a short burst of growth. But, in forecasting the longer term, you have to ask two questions. From what source is the growth coming from? Second, even if it does arrive, how long could it keep going without plunging us into a serious balance of payments crisis or its equivalent when they merge our trade figures with those of the EC?

Most of the domestic sources of growth seem too bombed out to contribute in the way that they did in the 1980s. Consumers deem themselves too indebted to borrow more, and, with real interest rates at 28 per cent in some high street stores, who can blame them.

Industry is waiting for a lead from consumers here or abroad: but with investment 16 per cent down last year they are not best prepared to cope anyway.

The banks, whose output grew by over 100 per cent in real terms in the 1980s, are sick as canaries and unlikely to be lending for vital entrepreneurial initiatives.

Nor will the rest of the world provide an early rescue. There is a modest pre-electoral revival in the debt-stricken US, but Japan and Germany are in trouble and there are a few problems to resolve before eastern Europe's insatiable markets come to the rescue.

Unless we drop our suicidal reliance on high interest rates as the elixir and change to an end-oriented approach in which all solutions to a problem are at least on the agenda, we will deserve what we get.

Spontaneous petty-bourgeois public opinion is not yet voicing any widespread fears of things getting so bad that inter-imperialist WWIII begins to be seen as inevitable.

But at some stage, the growing uneasiness at the constant story now of 'recovery' being put off yet again and again for 'just a little bit longer', etc, - is going to turn into a major political phenomenon itself the re-birth of international popularly-shared doubts that capitalism has any answers at all to modern societies' problems.

Far from there being the faintest sign of any universal rejoicing at the 'triumph' of the 'new world order', there are only indications to the contrary, - namely that people are beginning to suspect that something has seriously gone wrong with the 'free-market' system and its international framework:

JAPAN'S mighty car industry, which has dazzled the West as the post-war world's greatest manufacturing success story, is heading for the rocks, according to a new report that has caused a sensation in Japan.

It warns that without a sharp change of course, based on reducing the number of models, sharply cutting hours worked, and making Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mazda and other companies adopt a new, socially responsible concept of manufacturing, the sun will set on the fabled Japanese auto empire.

These conclusions come from the heart of the Japanese car industry and call into question the concept of "lean production", now the favourite manufacturing TOE, or Theory of Everything.

The report, entitled Japanese Automobile Industry in the Future: Towards Coexistence with the World, Consumers and Employees, has just been published in Tokyo by the Confederation of Japan Automobile Workers Unions and it challenges every accepted theory about the strength and future prospects of the industry.

Japanese unions are quite unlike their Western counterparts because of their close integration with the company.

A Japanese union official is not a shop steward who retains his links with the assembly line. He is more likely to be on a temporary detachment from the company's personnel department. and after a few years of union work will be slotted back into management.

According to the report, Japanese car firms today suffer from three potentially fatal maladies: their workers are exhausted, the companies make no profit, and the rest of the world hates the Japanese car industry either because it takes over existing firms and markets, or it blocks imports into Japan of cars from Europe or the US.

The report acknowledges the criticism long levelled at Japanese car firms about their superhuman level of working — up to 50 per cent higher than in Europe. In recent years, workers have put in 350 hours of overtime a year, roughly an extra working day a week. Drivers of delivery transporters are working 500 extra hours a year on over-congested roads. And they are so tired they stay in their cabs to eat lunch.

Younger employees do not want to work for car firms and temporary workers dilute the "overall collective power in the workplace found in the teamwork system, high morale, and workers' input into products", notes the report

Labour shortages, tension, and workers leaving their jobs threaten the "just-in-time" system, which is based on high-quality products being made and delivered at the right place, in the right quantity, exactly when needed.

If the Japanese workforce is being corroded by excessive working hours, then company profits are low because of an obsession with market "satiation", based on a huge variety of models each competing on a low-price basis.

There is no value-added left to convert into profit from domestic sales on the current basis of production, while the rest of the world will no longer accept that Japan can "expand overseas markets based on a domestic structure of excessive competition".

The unions argue that the market economy is not almighty. Instead, they say, Japan must adopt a policy of "coexistence — a concept which transcends the limits of economic principles". The first remedy is a reduction of working time from 2,200 hours to something closer to the European 1,600 to 1,700 hours a year.

But, more than that, cars have to be refined as "public assets" and no longer seen exclusively as personal belongings. This means that the consumer should accept a higher price for a car so that it incorporates environmentally friendly technology. A recycling deposit should be included in the price so that companies are obliged to take back cars for recycling.

The high-pressure door-to-door selling of cars should be abolished. The unions carried out a poll among 6,000 car-owners who said they wanted a different approach to marketing from the companies.

Perhaps the most damning criticism in the report is reserved for what is often seen as the essence of Japanese industrial life. "The relationship between companies and employees has become distorted," it says. "Have we not been looking to the company for too great a portion of our lives? Under the pretext of sharing a common destiny, companies do seem to have been too demanding of their workers.

"Companies and their employees have turned inward into the confines of the company. This has created a gap between the companies and society, which has caused the trade conflict and the misreading of consumer requirements."

The immediate, let alone long-term, impact of this report is hard to estimate. Japan has a long history of producing much sharper self-criticism than is realised by Westerners.

However, commenting on the contemporary car industry, as it is described in the report, Professor Haruo Shimada, of Keio University, said: "Competition for the sake of competition has dominated, and everything was sacrificed, including wages, working hours, profits, subcontractors, dealers, the lives of Japanese workers, and employment opportunities of workers abroad.

"Even if one beats competition in such a manner, can it really be called fair competition? When competition itself becomes an end and people can begin to compete at all costs, it becomes a monster that can destroy life, society and even the economy."

If any of the report's recommendations are put into practice, it will herald as important a revolution in the world car industry as when Japan's car firms set out a quarter of the century ago to conquer the global car market.

The capitalist press itself is reflecting this changing mood throughout the West (and beyond) by its open cynicism about the economic recovery, its avid reporting of an ever-lengthening catalogue of frightening warmongering developments in all directions, - and also in turning towards the most outspoken commentaries on the sins and faults of others, - preparing the ground for a mad or propaganda struggle in which the leading powers start viciously publicly blaming each other for what 'has 'gone wrong' with the system:

WHEN a Hamburg television station reported last month that the Polish authorities desperately needed funds to repair and maintain the former Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz, something stirred in the German soul. Letters arrived by the sackful at the headquarters of the Nord-deutsche Rundfunk. Some were sympathetic. Most brimmed with hate.

One man wrote that he would be happy to see Auschwitz repaired, provided Heinz Galinski, leader of Germany's Jewish community, was first into the renovated gas chamber. Another offered to pay for the first 50kg of Zyklon B poison gas. He wrote: "That's the best way to solve the immigrant problem."

Broadcasting officials were stunned to read so many letters sneering at the appeal and accusing the programme producers of "raking up the lies of the past". One man demanded Auschwitz be turned into "a good bonfire" on which "the relics of the past can finally be made to disappear". Another warned: "The day will come when those German politicians who dirty their own nest, and you television forgers of history, must answer for betrayal and high treason."

Some of the letters were signed simply "A German" or "Adolf', but many bore names and addresses. As unexpected as it was shocking, the episode provided further disquieting evidence of the hatred fomenting increasingly close to the surface of German political debate.

With Chancellor Helmut Kohl's government wallowing last week through its worst political and economic crisis since it first came to power in 1982, it was becoming ominously clear that the greatest threat to future German stability and prosperity derives not from striking dustmen and postmen (whose stoppages last week were remarkable mainly for their moderation), nor from shaky coalitions (though Kohl's is suddenly so shaky it may fall).

The most alarming phenomenon to spring from Germany's unification has been the growing disenchantment of significant numbers of voters with the comfortable, consensus-style leadership that has distinguished German politics since the war. The people are turning their backs on the political establishment in Bonn.

The rise of the extreme right wing in regional elections, the continuing violence and hostility towards foreigners, and the growing readiness of extremist supporters to give public voice to racism and bigotry are all signs of a deep disillusionment that is spreading poison through German society.

It is a phenomenon that Kohl and his ministers have failed catastrophically to grasp. Struggling both politically and economically for the first time in a generation, Germany needs cool, confident leadership of the kind that served it so well after the fall of the Berlin wall. Last week it got a three-ring circus that seemed to have been taken over by the clowns.

There remains a considerable mystery about the timing and manner of the resignation of Hans-Dietrich Genscher after 18 years as foreign minister. Genscher reportedly told Kohl of his intentions in January. He has had plenty of time to prepare his liberal Free Democratic party (FDP) for what was bound to be a traumatic handover. Why did they make such a mess of it?

The most popular theory last week was that the veteran foreign minister had done his sums on the cost of unification and decided to depart before his reputation as a master diplomat could be muddied by an economic debacle. Genscher is also a notoriously vain man who, for months, has taken unconcealed pleasure in teasing the media over how long he might remain in office. If the joke was to continue he had to keep the secret to himself. When he made his announcement, there was no mistaking his delight that no leaks had spoilt his surprise.

But the jolly jape soon palled as it became clear how poorly Genscher had prepared his colleagues for the news.

Irmgard Schwaetzer, an FDP stalwart with few distinguishing features, was duly anointed his successor by party bigwigs, but became queen for only a day. A backbench rebellion turfed the luckless Schwaetzer into oblivion and selected Klaus Kinkel, the justice minister, in her place.

Kinkel is a respected FDP heavyweight who has deftly traversed the minefields surrounding the trials of former east Germans accused of human rights crimes. But few were impressed by the manner of his promotion and Schwaetzer's parting shot to another senior colleague was: "you scheming swine".

That was not the last of the bellylaughs. The FDP was then obliged to replace Kinkel as justice minister. It searched amid its thin and distinctly unglamorous ranks and came up with a capable but previously invisible lawyer who rejoices in the name of Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger.

Political commentators could barely contain their mirth. Not only had the right of choosing one of the most important and potentially influential ministers in world politics fallen to a bunch of sulking liberals, but Kohl and his government had also acquired as their leading legal brain a 40-year-old expert on patents whose selection! shrieked desperation.

While this kindergarten caucusing continued, Theo Waigel, the powerful finance minister who doubles as head of the third partner in the coalition, the Bavarian Christian Social Union, was furious he had not been consulted over such momentous ministerial changes. At a stroke, Genscher had castrated his own party, angered a powerful ally and left Kohl cracking a whip that suddenly seemed to be made of feathers.

CONSTITUTIONALLY Japan is a democracy, but effectively it is a one-party state. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has monopolised government for the past 37 years. It has no political ideology: it rules by consensus. Policy is thrashed out in committees with the help of bureaucrats. All special interests are consulted and squared by back room horse-trading.

Because change is agreed by everybody who counts, opposition parties cannot offer a credible alternative. Time-warped, like Britain's Labour party, they defend outdated foreign, defence and nuclear policy positions.

Japan's idiosyncratic electoral system is partly to blame. The country is divided into 130 constituencies, each represented by several Diet members. But electors can only vote for a single candidate. Party votes are split and consequently LDP candidates fight each other, rather than their opponents. It is easier to persuade a voter to switch between candidates in the same party than to switch parties.

Threats are one method of gaining support, particularly in small rural constituencies where people know one another. Employers recommend candidates. A bad word from the local political boss ruins an individual's career and makes his family social outcasts. Ballots are supposedly secret, but poll booths are poorly shielded and electors must write in candidates' names on blank ballot papers, under the gaze of official "observers". It takes guts to vote the wrong way. Suspicion prompts reprisals.

Bribery is expensive and expected. On polling day in 1990 the police arrested 7,000 people for offering bribes, one of whom was brazenly handing out socks filled with Y1,000 notes (about £4) to passers-by in the street. Elections are costly. LDP candidates spent on average Y650m (£3m) each during the 15-day 1990 campaign. A candidate without family connections may spend Y1 billion and still lose. Consequently only one LDP member aged under 40 is not related by blood or marriage to a present or past member.

Political contributions come from special-interest groups, notably farmers' organisations, dentists, doctors, business bosses, stockbrokers and yakusa gangsters, who control construction companies and pachinko gambling parlours. Favours are given in return.

Politicians have close links with bureaucrats, whose "administrative guidance" gives ample scope for corruption. Ministerial appointments are exploited to the full. Honey-pot jobs in, for example, the ministry of construction, enable their holders to direct public works to their constituencies and to secure lucrative contracts for local companies. Opposition MPs receive pay-offs for not causing trouble.

The politicians' only concern is wealth and power. The LDP is riven with factions, parties within the party, which compete for the honey-pot jobs. Factions are held together by family ties and bonds of loyalty. Faction leaders collect money for their supporters; faction members support their leaders' claims to the top jobs. The more money a leader collects, the bigger his faction and the easier it becomes to collect more.

Corrupt money politics protects special interests at the expense of the general interest. Over-represented rural areas get preferential treatment; there are three times as many voters per seat in urban constituencies. The man-in-the-street is the loser, the salaried serf living in Japan's overcrowded cities. He did not mind during the miracle growth years, but he minds now and demands change.

Change is glacial when nobody who counts can be offended. Consensus politics spawns political paralysis. Salaried serfs and foreigners do not count; they provide little money or clout. None the less, the LDP faces a similar dilemma to that which destroyed the old Japanese shogunate following the arrival of the American Commodore Matthew Perry's "black ships" in Edo in 1853. America demanded that Japan be opened to trade. To refuse meant an unwinnable foreign war, to accept meant civil war. As the former promised immediate disaster, the shogun chose the latter, postponing but not preventing his downfall.

Excess saving has caused large and persistent trade surpluses. Foreigners complain of unfair competition and demand reforms. The government must choose between a trade war, leading to depression, or reforms that alienate its paymasters.

The LDP has embarked over the past decade on a timid programme of reform. As a result, a generational battle has broken out.

There is civil war within the LDP.

The deepening recession will cause Japan's trade surplus to soar. Political paralysis will prevent action to mollify foreigners. Trade war with America and Europe will follow. Miyazawa, already seen as a disaster, will be blamed and ditched, leading to a violent power struggle for the LDP leadership. The corrupt old Taisho politicians will doubtless win. But the fragmentation of the LDP, barely averted during previous leadership battles, will probably follow. Aided by more scandals, the breakaway Showa politicians will take the issue of reform to the country. Public pressure for change will become irresistible.

The LDP and system of consensus politics are both doomed. They cannot resolve Japan's growing crisis. Agreement will never be reached on reforms. They involve too great a redistribution of wealth, income, and influence. Parties will emerge representing the public interest.

Politics will become confrontational. Japanese whose interests are threatened will take to the streets to challenge elected governments, spurred on by yakusa gangsters. The "big bang" that blows the LDP apart will mark the end of the era in which Japan became electronically great; with luck it could mark the beginning of a new era in which it becomes socially just.

Most Japanese are overworked, overcrowded and ill-housed, coerced to conform to group norms by employers, bureaucrats and yakusa gangsters. They lack the space, individual freedom, social and public amenities that we take for granted. Their economic system, for all its success, fails to provide what they want.

The kick in the teeth for joke 'world government' illusions (see lead story) from Washington this week in the Bush regime's contemptuous dismissal of the Rio 'earth summit' proposals for environmental protection plus international responsibility for the impoverished regions of the world, - can only add mightily to this growing cynicism:

US economic interests must take priority over "extreme" environmental concerns, President Bush told a weekend campaign rally in California after the state department in Washington fired a second torpedo into the summit by refusing to sign the bio-diversity treaty drafted by 98 countries over 15 months to give legal force to the protection of endangered plant and animal species.

The US and some other wealthy countries are concerned that the treaty would give an open-ended commitment to funding biologically rich regions in Third World countries. There is also a dispute on the ownership of the drugs which are extracted from plants in reserve in the Third World.

"The United States does not: and cannot sign an agreement that is fundamentally flawed merely for the sake of having that agreement," the state department in Washington said.

The convention covers the complex issues of how to halt the destruction of millions o plant and animal species, mainly in tropical forests.

Western governments and multinational drug companies want these places, which are mostly in developing countries, preserved while they exploit the plants for medicines.

In return, the developing countries want drug companies to provide funds and equipment for home-grown scientists to do their own research. They want compensation for withholding these lands from logging, ranching or other uses.

They also want a share in the profits from any drugs developed from genetic plant banks in their countries.

William Reilly, administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, said the bio-diversity treaty would have "blown away" intellectual property rights and patents of US companies that market biological inventions.

President Bush, speaking on the eve of the California primary, said: "We cannot shut down the lives of many Americans by going to the extreme on the environment."

Jose Lutzenberger, until recently Brazil's environment secretary, accused large Western drug companies of wanting "to control on a worldwide scale the genetics of plants and living organisms". He also said the Third World feared that a few multi-national companies would own all the world's seed banks of genetically-engineered food crops, leaving poor farmers dependent on them.

This capitalist press coverage obviously fails to bring out the full menace of this American imperialist stance - namely that US state power is what makes the world go round in the current era, and that is how things are going to stay.

The 'world government' daydreamers are spitting against the wind. It will take time for people to fully grasp the contradictory understanding that the demotion of the Cold War by Washington in order the better to fight the inter-imperialist struggle for world trading domination in the face of ruthless cutthroat German and Japanese competition (and others too) in fact finally puts all the UN's 'impartiality' pretences to the sword.

Paradoxically, it was precisely the period of the all-pervasive Cold War, which was supposed to be the ultimate 'terrible threat' to mankind, which was in fact to some extent a fools paradise for most of the planet.

The tragic peoples of Korea, Vietnam, Indo-China in general, Angola, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Grenada, Nicaragua, etc, were scapegoated by Western warmongering bullying to 'draw a line in the sand' across which 'communist aggression' was not supposed to pass, etc, etc, etc. But the world's majority was able to bask in the deceitful stupidity of '40 years of unbroken world peace'.

In reality, the period since 1945 has been one of the most sustained brutal bloodbaths all over the world in the whole of human history with more than 250 episodes, - many brief but many prolonged, - of Western colonial repression in the form of counter-revolutionary wars as in Algeria, Malaya, Vietnam, Korea, etc Western-financed proxy wars and subversion, and CIA-run putsches, palace revolutions, and economic sabotage.

But the unchanging serious nub of 20th century world history, - inter-imperialist holocaust, - was avoided. And US imperialism was indeed constrained to limit itself to Cold War confrontation with the main centres of proletarian revolution in Moscow and Peking.

This misleading fake 'balance' of world forces was, however, put to good use by American imperialism. It employed its phony 'shield against communist, aggression' role to police the whole of capitalism, and virtually forcibly guarantee the pre-eminence of the American ruling class over all others. It was the foundation for effective world domination by US imperialism.

In this false atmosphere of 'balance' (in which US imperialist eagerness to ruthlessly police the entire non-communist world was not remotely matched by the revisionist delusions in Moscow and Peking that permanent peaceful coexistence between the two systems would finally overthrow the monopoly-capitalist bourgeoisie everywhere or else induce it to change its spots and give up its world domination plans), - the petty-bourgeois mentality of United Nations Associations moderately flourished. Moscow and Peking could be humoured for their 'commendable restraint' in not militarily storming every country on the planet or financing immediate violent revolution everywhere (which the revisionists had not the slightest intention of doing anyway). And Washington could be humoured for 'limiting' its counter-revolutionary blitzkriegs to the more 'out-of-the-way places' like Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, etc.

This fools' paradise of 'reasonable world government in the offing' suddenly came under a catastrophic cloud the moment that US imperialism dramatically decided that it could no longer afford the expensive Cold War posturing to face down a non-existent 'threat' (by Moscow to seize the whole planet by military aggression), but would have to start really serious preparations to see off the very real menace to American world domination from the relentless cutthroat trading competition from Germany and Japan (and others).

The period now approaching is akin to that of the steady demise of the League of Nations in the 1930s as first Japan (1932) and then Germany (1933) simply withdrew from the organisation to join the USA outside it where the real government of the world was being decided in inter-imperialist competition.

The League simply stood by as an impotent bystander (and aider and abettor with its ridiculous 'world government' petty-bourgeois mentality) as Japan crushed Manchuria, Italy crushed Ethiopia, and Germany crushed Austria and Czechoslovakia, etc.

Anti-communist myths of all kinds beginning to collapse like ninepins 'New world order' delusions being crushed by the stark slump realities of inter-imperialist conflict. 

Today, the imperialist powers are just about managing to keep up an appearance of unity over the in fact contentious slaughter of Iraq, and currently the dismemberment of Yugoslavia. But the fake and uneasy harmony over such dirty work cannot last.

Sooner or later, the latest fashion for victimising a new Saddam-type 'outcast' every few months is going to pick on some situation where one of the major imperialist rivals has an unrelinquishable vested interest, - and then the pushing of diplomatic intrigue and trade-war competitiveness will turn into the shoving of open warmongering arms-race. Inter-imperialist armageddon for world domination will be on the warpath once again.

But importantly before all this, - as cynicism grows about everything from the non-existent 'economic recovery' to the 'earth summit' in Rio to protect the planet's environment and care for the world's needy, - so will grow the relatively novel (recently speaking) idea that perhaps capitalism is not the answer to civilisation's development problems after all.

Such a changed climate will be of priceless advantage to the struggle for Marxist-Leninist scientific understanding. The fight for theory is just beginning. A profound development in mastering Marxist-Leninist science is called for. For the ILWP to get this across to its slowly growing number of supporters will be worth a thousand 'spectacular activist triumphs' which the entire opportunist and Trotskyite fake-'left' swamp has continually claimed for itself since the Soviet workers state was first stabbed in the back in the 1920s, - all with ultimately a totally negative cumulative achievement as far as building a successful revolutionary party is concerned, in Britain or anywhere else.

In this area of anti-Marxist confusion in the class struggle, other chickens are also now coming home to roost with the collapse of the Cold War and revisionism's deliberate class-collaborating liquidation of the Soviet workers state.

The weird 'state-capitalist' theory stabbing proletarian dictatorship in the back from the opportunist 'left' from the 1920s onwards, has come totally crashing down in ruins.

The SWP has simply quietly discarded 90% of these longstanding barmy views about Soviet state-capitalism being so successful because it was the 'coming form' of all capitalist-imperialism, establishing a worldwide 'permanent arms economy' to frustrate socialist revolution, etc.

Now the SWP blindly go on cheering Yeltsin as a 'democratic step away from this powerful state-capitalism' when to even the dimmest brain he is clearly trying to restore capitalist domination over the planned and publicly-owned Soviet economy (socialism).

The SWP's extreme philistine hostility to theory simply ignores the cataclysmic developments in the USSR (despite leading on it in the heat of the moment and declaring in Aug 1991: 

"Communism has collapsed...It is a fact that should have every socialist rejoicing")

 - and casually analyses the turmoil from its bankrupt 'theoretical' point of view as nothing more interesting than "a step sideways".

"The transition from state capitalism to multinational capitalism is neither a step forward nor a step backwards…"

But why, then, make such a change at all, - especially with such catastrophic upheavals and dislocation?

If the mark of a true revolutionary had to be to declare: 'Neither Washington nor Moscow. Defeat the conspiracy of the two capitalist super-powers to keep the working class under exploitation everywhere", etc, - then why did Gorbachev & Co bother changing a perfectly-worked trick for bamboozling millions of workers worldwide to keep them away from socialism???

Obviously, this SWP-type rank-and-file cretinism has been living a petty bourgeois anti-communist lie from the very beginning.

It was the dictatorship of the proletariat which aroused this middle-class hostility.

This 'state-capitalism' allegedly found in the mature Soviet Union was a complete bourgeois-idealist fiction so that these counter-revolutionary opportunists of the SWP and such anti-theory anti-communist activist outfits could scream and agitate their hatred at the USSR's dictatorship of the proletariat but without being seen so clearly to be stabbing in the back a workers state building socialism.

But Trot critics of the SWP like the frenziedly self-righteous Sparts, have an even bigger nonsense to get rid of than the dimwitted 'state-capitalist' theory, - namely the equally non-existent 'political revolution' which was supposed to eventually triumph in the 'degenerated workers state' to get rid of the new 'counter-revolutionary bureaucratic caste which had usurped power', after which it would be possible to start building 'real socialism', etc.

It is pointless for the Trots to laugh at the SWP because this 'theory' is the ultimate in philistine petty-bourgeois rank-and-fileism (at which the SWP themselves do indeed excel).

This subjective bourgeois idealism was Trotsky's way of stabbing the Soviet workers state in the back (for rejecting him as its leader after Lenin) while also (like the state-caps) not appearing to be turning his back on socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

This middle-class 'theory' is all too transparent.

It implies by every means available that the genuinely socialist achievements of the USSR's planned economy and anti-imperialist military and political sacrifices are basically the achievements, of course, of its working class, - and that anything wrong or incomplete about any of these Soviet developments is, naturally, the fault of the Party and state leadership.

In reality, of course, as Lenin consistently explained (see ILWP Perspectives), it is indeed the working class which makes socialism. But it does so only under the firm leadership of its cadre party of revolutionary theory. 'The dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of the party' Lenin memorably declared.

Thus the supposedly crafty 'solution' for the Trots to conceal their anti-communist hostility to the dictatorship of the proletariat, - playing upon the middle-class rank-and-file-ist idea of paradise by saying 'keep the Soviet workers state but butcher and behead its party leadership', - now appears as the crassest opportunism and the most despicable treachery to proletarian dictatorship.

There never was any way that 'rank-and-file' workers (an artificial distinction in itself where building parties of revolutionary leadership are concerned) would or could as such rise above and go outside of the very political forms which the working class itself had been first won to by the Bolshevik Party, and then defended with their lives in order to maintain the Bolshevik Party government and the dictatorship of the proletariat against all anti-communism and ceaseless imperialist sabotage and aggressive military onslaught.

The only hope, such as it was, in the USSR for transforming the party leadership back towards Leninism and away from the defeatist revisionism which slowly corrupted the party philosophy during the Stalin period, - was for unconditional supporters of the Soviet workers state to raise constructive criticism with the whole of the party and Soviet society.

The 'political revolution' approach for overthrowing the party and state leadership (while allegedly 'preserving and strengthening the Soviet workers state and dictatorship of the proletariat') was nothing but a deliberate disgusting fraud on the working class by Trotsky, - a monstrous elaboration of petty-bourgeois rank-and-fileism which found such a ready response amongst anti-communist middle class 'lefts' all round the capitalist-bourgeois world.

There was never any scientific basis for such rank-and-file spontaneity, - a semi-anarchist pipedream of workers 'leading' themselves without leaders.

And the entire subsequent history of the USSR has confirmed totally what a complete diversion was this rank-and-fileist fantasy.

It was the whole revisionist stance of the Soviet workers state from top to bottom which had become disoriented by Stalinist defeatism. Only a far more advanced philosophical grasp of the world situation than the Stalin leadership possessed could have hoped to turn things round.

The subjective sectarian sniping by Trotsky in his personal vilification of Stalin merely helped consolidate the leadership's revisionist errors, and played disastrously into the hands of anti-communist propaganda circles worldwide.

In terms of a retreat from or ignorance of Leninist theory, Castro today is every bit as bad as Stalin ever was, and on some theoretical questions, a great deal more shaky, even.

But only a posturing academic 'left' opportunist of the most degenerate and irresponsible kind would today propose 'strengthening' the Cuban workers state in its hour of peril encircled by vicious imperialist aggression (as the Soviet Union was in the 1920s and 1930s) - via the 'revolutionary' overthrow of Castro and the entire party and state leadership.

Least of all would anyone in their right mind propose this putsch to workers inside Cuba itself and not expect to get popularly lynched for it.

The Sparts and others just keep quiet now about demanding the armed overthrow of the Castro leadership by Cuba's workers in the name of 'strengthening the socialist revolution'.

The Trots desperately need to ditch their childish 'theory' of the so-called 'political revolution', and none have felt so exposed as the mightily posturing Trot 'theoreticians' - the Sparts.

One of their chosen tactics is to now use the term 'political revolution' so widely and so loosely that they hope everyone will have forgotten before long that it once was meant to convey a very precise and special significance indeed, - only of use really in the particular rare circumstances of the Soviet workers state which had to be preserved while its leadership which guided its creation had to be put to the sword.

Above all, the phrase was never to be confused with just any old socialist revolution against capitalism which would have to be a 'social' revolution.

The Sparts are not so fussy about such niceties these days now that the Soviet workers state has almost been liquidated anyway.

To get rid of Yeltsin's capitalist regime and petty bourgeois bonapartist state, the Sparts still say 'political revolution'.

But these academic fantasists will no more say at what precise moment it will no longer be appropriate to still describe 'political revolution' (but not 'social revolution') as the way back to 'real socialism', - than Trotskyism ever explained at what precise moment it was that the leadership of the Soviet workers state became counter-revolutionary and requiring a 'revolutionary' overthrow itself in the 1920s and 1930s (well before the Soviet workers state under its party and state leadership had routed Western imperialist aggression in World War II and unleashed a flood of capitalist-class overthrows from Czechoslovakia to Vietnam, from Korea to Yugoslavia).

Another Spart tactic for putting workers off the scent of the failed 'political revolution' theory is to frantically clean up the record so that the Spart name should have no connection whatever with past disastrous anti-communist tactics by the 'left' swamp in the West supporting counter-revolutions in socialist countries under the guise of backing actual or potential 'political revolution' to produce 'real socialism', etc.

Monstrously, the Sparts go for the Goebbels Big Lie technique. They are most vulnerable over the semi-fascist Solidarnosc counter-revolution in Poland which the Sparts supported for a year before realising what a reactionary nationalist CIA plot they had been attracted to.

So now the Sparts simply rewrite history (in the best Stalinist style) and baldly pretend that they never supported Solidarnosc and were for its defeat from the start!!

Poland was an acid test for the left. Today of course the reactionary policies of Solidarnosc are more than evident, and the fake left goes around claiming that Walesa and Co "betrayed" its original ideals. But by the time of its founding conference in 1981, Solidarnosc had consolidated around a pro-capitalist programme, echoing the CIA call for "free trade unions" and free parliamentary elections, demanding that Poland join the IMF.

The SL called for "Stop Solidarnosc Counterrevolution!" In contradistinction, the fake lefts cheered on the Vatican's, CIA's and Thatcher's favourite union. The SWP sought to deny the close ties between Solidarnosc and clerical reaction:

The whole deception here is based on the sly phrase "but by the time of its founding conference in 1981".

The carefully unstated implication is that Solidarnosc dramatically changed its line from when it first appeared in August 1980 to its first conference 12 months later, - in spite of the Sparts using this very same accusation of naïveté against rival fake-'lefts' as a poor excuse.

There certainly was no change in the whole character and purpose of Solidarnosc at any time, - as any genuine revolutionaries with half a brain could tell from the first moment that Walesa hopped over the wall at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk to back up the strike over the dismissal of the rabid Catholic reactionary Valentynowycz from her crane-driving job for anti-communist agitation.

The Solidarnosc programme was already worked out by the CIA and the Vatican well in advance of Walesa's well-publicised launching of the 'trade-union' stunt in August 1980.

The rest of the 'left' is charged with excuse-making that they continued backing Solidarnosc to its fascist-nationalist end only because Walesa had 'betrayed' the original rank-and-file Solidarnosc ideals that the 'left' had so believed in.

But who is really using this excuse most of all - but keeping quiet about it? The Sparts.

Consider their record. They began by welcoming the counter-revolutionary Solidarity movement in Poland ('Polish Workers Move' 5/9/80).

As late as May 1981, 9 months after the Workers Party[*] had first (and repeatedly) fully exposed the counter-revolutionary essence of Solidarity, the Sparts were still urging workers to join in Reagan's worldwide anti-communist claque to "bitterly protest a Russian military intervention" in Poland.

Only in October 1981, after 5 months' licking their wounds after the Workers Party's denunciation of them, did the Sparts put up the pretence of a begrudging support for the USSR to rout Solidarity's "counter-revolution" (at last admitted, 15 months late).

But NOT ONE WORD do they say about this dramatic switch in their line, no mention of the fact that they have been forced to completely change their position.

And most of all no mention of the correct criticism made of their dangerous error by the Bulletin.

Lenin correctly said that the decisive test of the revolutionary party was how honestly it could face up to its own mistakes and learn from them.

In May 1981, the Sparts declare (SB 32): 

"Genuine proletarian internationalists must bitterly protest a Russian military intervention which would represent a defeat for the cause of socialism."

But less than 20 weeks later (SB 36), they declare: 

"Solidarity's counter-revolution must be stopped. If the Kremlin Stalinists, in their necessarily brutal stupid way intervene militarily to stop it, we will support this."

But TOTAL SILENCE to their readers and supporters that the line has been changed.

The least the Sparts are is a bunch of DISHONEST FRAUDS.

But their political position is in fact FAR FAR WORSE.

For 15 months until October 1981, anti-communist Polish reaction, aided by at least $1,000 million from the CIA and the Vatican (see Bulletin 151 on the Vatican's missing funds scandal), was being screeched on by an unprecedented propaganda campaign from Western political circles (all departments), press, and television to maintain the dual power that Solidarity had established, - with the Sparts either joining in the sneering at the Polish workers state or at best remaining neutral.

Suddenly they discover that this movement, whose suppression the Sparts were going to "bitterly protest", is in fact a raging counter-revolution.

But NOT THE SLIGHTEST ATTEMPT TO ANALYSE how supposed 'Marxist revolutionaries' could have been on the brink of such a fatal mistake of joining in the international bourgeois clamour (CIA orchestrated) to undermine the defence of the Polish workers state.

WORSE STILL, the Sparts totally ignore the correct revolutionary Marxist voices raised in the West against this counter-revolutionary conspiracy, thereby showing an utter contempt for the real interests of the working class and a completely doomed REACTIONARY preoccupation with their own subjective interests.

But much worse than that, the Sparts smugly JUSTIFY their own reactionary analysis, implying that real life was at fault in not conforming to the Sparts bankrupt prejudices, and not vice versa. For at the bottom of their amazingly thick-skinned statement completely changing their international line without a word of explanation, the Sparts guiltily sneak in a little self-consoling paragraph excusing their earlier wrong position by saying: 

"As Trotskyists we orientated towards the potential for development of a left opposition from among those Solidarity and Communist Party militants who wanted a genuine 'socialist renewal'," 

an opposition which "would have" put forward a programme etc.

The only thing wrong with this explanation for supporting counter-revolution for 15 months is that there are no such 'militants', there is no such 'programme'.

The whole thing is a complete figment of the Sparts' imagination.

In other words, the Sparts are saying that a fictional "third force" fantasy, existing solely in their poor deluded petty bourgeois heads, should be ample justification in workers eyes for the Sparts having misled the working class for 15 months into not demanding the crushing of counter-revolution in Poland (as urgently in the interests of the international socialist revolution and the fight against imperialism.)

Even worse than that, the Sparts quickly show that their hasty conversion to the anti-Solidarity camp is a complete OPPORTUNIST FRAUD anyway, done merely because the stink around the anti-communist 'free trade union' was getting too bad for these wiliest of 'revolutionary' charlatans to dare risk any longer.

For not long after their announcement that the Sparts will no longer join Reagan in opposing the crushing of counter-revolution in Poland, these incurable petty bourgeois go back to their "third force" idiocy, urging a "period of underground regroupement" for Solidarity 'militants'.

Lenin' s exhaustive theoretical struggle against the enormous petty bourgeois counter-revolutionary reaction against the dictatorship of the proletariat under the Bolsheviks - stressing again and again that there were only TWO forms of class power, proletarian dictatorship or bourgeois dictatorship, - was in vain as far as these philistines are concerned.

To underline their comfortable, arrogant Western contempt for the Polish workers state and the enormously difficult problems of constructing socialism in a still-hostile imperialist world environment, the Sparts add that they won't "advise the Warsaw bureaucrats who have ruined the Polish economy, how to get out of the hole they're in", a remark of breathtaking conceit and stupidity (Workers Vanguard 296)
(ILWP Books vol 3).

Yet now, to cover up their 14-15 month flirt with fascist-nationalist counter-revolution organised and financed by the CIA and the Vatican, the Sparts keep totally quiet about their support, - and slyly lie about Solidarnosc only 'changing' to counter-revolution in September-October 1981.

The Sparts keep think[ng that one day they will get away with this crap and that the ILWP will go away. They could not be more mistaken.

It is not a question of the ILWP simply tripping up the Sparts for its own sake. The question that has to be asked is: Just what sort of people would want to continue to falsify the historical and scientific record just to preserve their own egos?....or to hide something even worse.

These petty-bourgeois academics are FRAUDS masquerading as potential revolutionary leaders.

They have not the first clue about crucial Leninist philosophy on the importance for the revolutionary party's credibility of its ability to face up to its own mistakes (see 'Leftwing Communism, an infantile disorder').

They are incapable of treating remotely seriously the most vital question facing all mankind, - revolutionaries and bystanders alike, - to find out the objective truth about the complex developments of world society and to try to discover the necessary path forward for civilisation's best progress.

Philosophically this petty-bourgeois Spart sect is stuck deep in the personal mire of subjective idealism.

Prophetically, the Spart brittle hypocrisy declares elsewhere in their latest slash at the CPGB fake 'Leninists' that 

"Those who prematurely give up on the existing gains of the workers movement will never make a revolution anywhere".

Tell that to the Polish workers state which the Spart sect, in however tiny a degree, helped to kick in the teeth in 1980s in support of Western imperialism's Solidarnosc anti-communist racket.

This hypocrisy also makes a good epitaph for Trotskyism as a whole which lifelong did nothing but try to totally confuse workers in the West by fictions about a non-existent 'political revolution' in order to, in reality, stab the Soviet workers state in the back.

Exploding all this nonsensical Trot 'theory' which, along with revisionism, has held back the development of Marxist-Leninist understanding in the West for more than 50 years, - will also help the climate greatly for developing the struggle of the ILWP to build a party of serious revolutionary theory. Spread the ILWP Bulletin. Joe Harper