Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world in  various ways. The point however is to change it. Karl Marx
Economic & Philosophic Science Review
(Weekly.  Subscriptions £10/3 months;  £30/p.a.)  [P&P Bulletin Publications, PO Box 50. London SWl7 9NL.] [Post Office Regd.]
No 750 Tuesday May 10 1994                                                                                                                            10p
Southwest sales meetings Sat.July 9.Collect receipts

Tories fall apart as worsening inter-imperialist crisis looms demanding a German or US orientation. Fascist-warmongering inevitable, but bourgeois paralysis and capitalism's catastrophic failure are the crucial ingredients of such degeneracy, preparing the way for imperialism's revolutionary overthrow. A party of revolutionary theory is the great need. Without it, anti-fascist action will get nowhere.

With less than 15% of the people of Britain now prepared to go out and vote Tory (as demonstrated in the local government elections), and with the greatest economic crisis in capitalism's world history still unresolved and unresolvable, - it is no wonder that the ruling-class Government is split almost to breaking point.

It is also no surprise that the big issue dividing the bourgeoisie is where should British imperialism stand in the forthcoming all-out trade war conflict between the big monopoly-capitalist powers.

The various Conservative Party factions pretend to be talking about the appropriateness of different 'democratic' approaches to resolving big questions on the European Community such as a single currency and other proposed federal government innovations, etc.

But the sudden demand by Lamont and other factionalisers for a referendum on such a 'major' step is not really about 'democratic' niceties, about which no ruling-class politician could give a damn. Such rebellious talk is code for raising far deeper issues about whose side Britain should try to be on in the forthcoming inter-imperialist conflict.

The Tory splits are an almost exact replica of similar debilitating divisions in the 1930s when comparable economic-crisis conditions were threatening British imperialism with grave dangers.

Then the issue was whether Britain, in decline and closer to Europe than to the United States of America, should become more or less sympathetic to the 'new order' aggressive imperialism of Germany, Italy and Japan, or stick with the old Anglo-Saxon-French hegemony which was resisting the new imperialist powers' thrust for a bigger place in the sun.

The anti-fascist anti-appeasement factions (in retrospect most closely identified with Churchill) eventually won back office but only after a series of astonishing pro-appeasement capitulations and humiliations to 'British rectitude' under Chamberlain, sitting in the middle of the road and unwilling to offend the openly Hitler-enthusiast sections among the ruling class led by the Northecliffe newspapers around Lord Rothermere, and the Cliveden social set around Lady Astor.

The divisions in the ranks of the British imperialist bourgeoisie are even deeper this time round, and even more complex. So far has Britain's economic, military and political decline gone now that not a single Tory sect feels confident enough to actually declare itself to be 'anti-Europe'. Under the scornful gaze of Paris and Berlin, every Conservative pretends to be enthusiastically 'pro-Europe', - even the most staunchly 'anti-federalist' sectors (code for fearing to get too closely tied up in Germany's challenge to American domination of the Western world, conducted mostly through the EC, for the time being.)

But the scarcely-hidden emotive chauvinistic language of the critics of the Major joke 'leadership' make it obvious that what these Tory factions are really arguing about is where they fancy lining up in the international inter-imperialist confrontations to come for world economic supremacy.

This is the only plausible explanation for the endlessly bitter and protracted feuding within the Conservative Party about such seemingly innocuous matters as applying the extended qualified-majority voting rules for when the 12 next enlarge to becoming the 16 by taking in Austria and three Scandinavian countries, etc, - the matter which had all the EC hurling abuse at Major's head a couple of weeks ago as the weak Tory 'leader' tried a stunt to pretend that he was just as 'strong' in defence of Britain's interests versus the wily and untrustworthy Europeans as his more openly Euro-sceptical rivals for the Tory leadership.

Now the issue once again is, ostensibly, the long-vexed question of a single currency one day for the whole Common Market, - an extension of the very same controversies which on the surface led to Thatcher's downfall as prime ministers and Lamont's downfall as Chancellor of the Exchequer (following the fiasco of the pound collapsing out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, the precursor of the single currency, because of being overvalued (to the dislike of many Tories) or because of being in the ESM at all (to the dislike of many Thatcherites).)

While the Euro-appeasers confidently claim that the actual adoption of a single European Community currency is a matter that is still years and years ahead and requires no firm commitments either way at the moment or in the near future, the Eurosceptics pretend that the bureaucratic abolition of the pound sterling by Brussels busybodies is an immediate threat to British sovereignty and requires instant resolution now.

Both stances are just a cover for attitudes to much deeper questions. The appeasers and middle-of-the readers are fearful of rocking the European boat as the uncertain and stormy waters of international all-out trade war approach, and so want to damp things down over such emotive issues as the replacement of the British currency by a German-dominated Eurocurrency. The Eurosceptics fear for the fate of Britain from German behaviour in the upcoming part III of the never-resolvable world war for economic supremacy, - and feel safer asserting their 'independent' British sovereignty and chauvinism now, - to get a good start for what they are afraid Britain will have to flog itself into in the future as in the past (in part II of the world war, which British bourgeois consciousness falsely remembers as a great British triumph over Germany, - see subsequent correspondence).

All of this is extremely vague at the moment, and not even remotely half-stated, - because no section of the bourgeoisie anywhere really wants to think about just how catastrophically (for everyone) inter-imperialist conflict is going to re-emerge, remorselessly. They all keep their fears half-suppressed because they all still hope that some miraculous international economic 'recovery' will enable all the trade-war competitors to triumph simultaneously.

And it is the vague uncertainty about all these doubts and fears about British imperialism's fate and what sort of events really lie in store which makes all the manoeuvring around the Tory leadership question so paralytic and convoluted. No one wants to do or say anything too outspoken too soon for fear of paying the price for that outspokenness as being 'the cause of the problem', - as Thatcher and Ridley paid the price, for example.

But equally no one wants to hide their light under a bushel for too long either, fearing that some other braver spark will burst forth and successfully give a new lead to whatever direction any decisive rump of the Tory Party feels it is time to go in, once the word is out.

So the only firm development in all this devious and code-language squirming is that the current leadership around John Major is just about universally despised, - the only 'safe' thing to do so far, these confused and deluded bourgeois think.

But this fearful negativism is obviously in fact the very worst thing for the British ruling class to get bogged down in.

What could be more damaging than to appear completely dithering and leaderless when approaching the greatest crisis ever in the history of capitalism and threatening the very survival of British imperialism more certainly than almost any of its rivals.
And yet, historically, exactly this paralysis is what might be expected.

In the understanding of Marxist science, before a new class is thrust forward to fashion a completely new form of society, the old order must first of all virtually come to a complete standstill and be seen to be totally bankrupt in ideas and purposeful action.

It is argued that the Tories never wanted Major in the leadership in the first place, and that he was just a stopgap due to the messy way in which the Thatcher reign had to be brought to an end.

But the point is that the Major leadership was all that the Tory Party could achieve, given all the conflicting passions and influences swirling around it, and given precisely the modern circumstances of the British imperialist ruling class simply no longer being in any position to be much of a world monopoly capitalist leadership of any kind. The inept Major phenomenon exactly reflects the absolutely incurable crisis threatening British imperialist survival as a whole in the catastrophic turmoil to come of part III of the historic inter-imperialist conflict for world economic supremacy.

There are obviously increasing signs of how aware vast sections of British bourgeois society are becoming that things are in a desperate state of chaos. The Tory party is in complete disarray; the local-government and bourgeois parliamentary circuses are justifiably held in contempt by everybody, making the 'alternative government' promises of the deluded Labourites and Lib-Dems seem just as demoralising and unappetising as the present Tory mess; and the capitalist press is lashing into its own ruling-class failures and foibles like never before (see subsequent correspondence).

All of which might indicate that the bourgeoisie is bound to drive itself into some new dynamism of some sort sooner or later.

Yes, but that is precisely imperialism's insoluble historical problem. Its only outlet from interminable capitalist slump-crisis is chauvinistic aggression, i.e. imperialist warmongering.

But the first two great episodes of this, parts I and II of the world war for economic supremacy, - were the biggest possible catastrophe for the capitalist system ever.

It is complete unhistorical nonsense to discuss the 'threat of fascism' outside of its inter-imperialist warmongering context. 

There has been no 'fascism' beyond what degenerate imperialist culture has unleashed on the way to inter-imperialist war, nor could there be any sustained political fascism different from routine police-state brutality (towards all minorities, political and cultural, all over the class-divided philistine capitalist world) outside of such a warmongering arms-race armageddon perspective.

There are scores of brutal 'fascist' regimes in power around the world now, and have been scores in the past. And the embellishment of street-gang race attacks is a terrifying additional unpleasantness of capitalist degeneracy.

But the most notorious 'fascist' regimes of all time remain German and Japanese imperialism of the 1930s precisely because of the degree of warmongering chauvinistic aggression required of those nations if they were to get out from under the trade-war stranglehold by which they were being held back and artificially punished economically by the Anglo-Saxon and West European world imperialist hegemony.

And the most crucial thing about that climax of race-hate genocide, torture, slave-labour camps, inhuman medical experiments, and random arbitrary brutality and butchery, etc, - was that it was part of the greatest catastrophe yet for the capitalist-imperialist system.

The destructive demoralising slaughter and devastation of war itself is infinitely more terrifying and undermining of humanity than any domestic 'fascist' government programme could ever be. Arbitrary terror and brutality from racist goon-squads will not be pleasant, but the substantive issue to fight against remains the capitalist system's inbuilt drive to inter-imperialist war, without which there would be no 'fascism'.

If capitalism lasts, 'fascism' remains a permanent feature of ruling-class tyranny worldwide.

By resorting to warmongering aggression as a way of 'solving' its insoluble economic crisis, the cut-throat competitive imperialist system (whose long history of slumps and starvation around the globe have caused immeasurably more human misery and suffering than all the fascist police cells combined could ever have done) at last drives millions of people towards a revolutionary insurrection against ruling-class power.

Part I of the world war showed that 'fascism' is not necessary for dragging tens of millions into such grotesque pointless terror, pain, and hopelessness that the wave of seething revolt toppled not just the Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian and Turkish imperial dynasties but threatened to topple the ruling class everywhere else too.

And it was the conclusion of the inter-imperialist military slaughter of part II of the world war in 1945 which then saw communist revolution spread right across Asia and East Europe and on into Africa and Central America subsequently.

The 'fascist' threat is an excellent symptom of capitalist degeneracy to organise against, but it can become a complete diversion from revolutionary struggle if this 'threat' is divorced from the real mainstream development of inter-imperialist warmongering of which fascist party activities are just one of many racist-chauvinist appendages of the ruling imperialist bourgeoisie's main degenerative arms-race programme.

Nothing can stop a fighting resistance to fascism from developing in Britain or anywhere else, if only because the racial minorities affected will not just sit back and let themselves be persecuted without a fight.

But the folk-memory of the proletariat worldwide is not that stupid anyway to just walk back into the embrace of supremacist fascist parties without a second thought.

But it is precisely fascism's subsidiary links to monopoly-capitalism's inter-imperialist warmongering drive which need stressing.

Imperialism is going to go to war, - and imperialism is finally going to be brought down everywhere precisely because of going to war yet again - something which it cannot help doing.

But it is the inter-imperialist war connection of monopoly-capitalist crisis which needs bringing into workers' understanding, not its fascist connections which are already well understood.

It was the colossal educative work of Lenin's Bolshevik party which changed history, nothing else. And that work can be read in its entirety in the collected volumes. And relatively few lines go on anti-fascist agitation in spite of the appalling terror inflicted by the Tsarist Black Hundreds and other fascist movements. All of Lenin's science is devoted to proving to the working class the utterly bankrupt futility (for every country) of the capitalist system's inbuilt inter-imperialist warmongering tendencies, and proving the need to end capitalist crisis (and end fascism and every other aspect of bourgeois society degeneracy) by building a party of the revolutionary theory of proletarian dictatorship.

This was not achieved by concentrating on more aggressive anti-fascist street fighting, or by aggressively publicising the degenerate licentiousness of the ruling class (as is being urged on the ILWP in two current discussions).

It was done by continuously deepening the grasp of the fundamental Marxist-Leninist analysis of the imperialist economic system's all-round destructive crisis, and of the failures of various reformist, centrist, ultra-left, and revisionist tendencies to correctly explain the world so that the working class could develop a confident understanding and programme, plus strategy and tactics, of how to overthrow once and for all that imperialist crisis.

This was achieved first and foremost by organising a cadre party, no matter how small, which was to embody the essence of the only possibly approach to proletarian unity, - an organisation of total democracy around correct understanding itself, not around constitutions; individuals; personal posts or committee memberships, etc. If an understanding of the international class struggle proves correct, it survives. If it proves incorrect, then a full examination of what went wrong and why must be produced and prove adequate.

To build such a party of united collective leadership in such a painstaking way is necessarily a very slow process to begin with. But it is the only way if it is not to be built on sand and eventually collapse like countless numbers of the 57 varieties of ultra-left petty-bourgeoisie 'revolutionary' groups of the anti-Leninist swamp have done in recent years. And ultimately, of course, it is the only possible way to make rapid successful revolutionary progress. Without a Bolshevik Party, there can be no eventual triumphant revolutionary action, no matter how devastatingly the spontaneous struggle initially rocks the capitalist state to its foundations, whether from trade union struggles, anti-fascist action, or whatever.

Rabble-rousing speeches or pamphleteering to expose the fascist threat or the degenerate licentiousness of the ruling class are all grist to the mill, but do not in themselves come remotely close to making Bolshevik cadres who are required to be able to give all-round scientific political understanding that the working class has learned to have confidence in. One mass meeting can be roused by a fine speech one day. But where are they all the next day? And what is the reliability that the rabble-rousing speech will be equally as sound? There is none, and relying on such spontaneous developments to overthrow the imperialist rulings class is ultimately a costly delusion to put it no stronger. In many situations, of course, relying on such spontaneity will represent nothing but the continuation of the philistine opportunism which is the hallmark of the demagogic 'left' swamp.

There are other grave historical illusions in both these connections.

There is a myth in the British labour movement that prewar Mosley fascism was stopped here by the 'left' working-class resistance in the 1936 battle of Cable Street in East London, for example.

Heroic as was that communist-led anti-fascist action, and important as it was to be able to organise it, it is just nonsense that that is what stopped fascism coming to power in Britain.

Mosleyism was rejected by the British ruling class in the same way that open pro-Hitlerism was rejected as the best stance for British imperialism to adopt in the great monopoly-capitalism political and economic slump-crisis.

And tied up with that disarming myth is the even worse historical delusion from the Third International's Moscow revisionist stable that there was a 'good' imperialism and a 'bad' imperialism at work on the planet, - the 'good' supposedly being the Anglo-Saxon camp with whom it was eventually possible to have a wartime alliance against the 'bad' imperialism of Germany, Italy, and Japan, etc.

All of this, of course, is an extension of the nonsense that 'fascism' is some very special kind of ruling-class police-state tyrannical behaviour which must be made war on by workers quite specifically and independently of all other considerations of the imperialist slump-crisis and how to fight it.

It was the revisionist nonsense about 'good' and 'bad' imperialisms which then helped Stalinist defeatism directly on to its next monstrous stupidity about it being possible for the world to avoid new international wars altogether eventually because of gibberish about 'permanent peaceful coexistence' between the capitalist and socialist systems.

And this retreat from the Leninist science about the need to complete the international socialist revolution for the total overthrow of the world imperialist bourgeoisie eventually degenerated further under Gorbachev into the liquidationist insanity which finally abandoned the dictatorship of the proletariat for the supposed benefits of capitalist 'market democracy', - or licence to be re-dominated by bourgeois dictatorship as soon as Washington and big money can get its act together.

But in the saddest contradiction of all, those who now jeer at communism as 'being seen to have failed by tens of thousands of working-class youth' are themselves still mired in the most primitive mistakes and misunderstandings which helped Moscow bureaucratic revisionism onto its eventually catastrophic liquidationist path in the first place, - diverting from the need to internationally overthrow the monopoly-capitalist bourgeoisie (by completing the world proletarian-dictatorship revolution) through pretending that 'fascism' was absolutely something separate and special, and that if 'fascism' was fought successfully, all would then be well for the international proletariat everywhere.

What desperately destructive nonsense.

Imperialism paid a huge price for its warmongering anarchy at the end of part II of the inter-imperialist conflict for economic supremacy, losing half of Asia and beyond to communist revolution. But that revisionist gibberish from the Moscow bureaucracy, still backed by every philistine non-Leninist around, helped imperialism to hang onto the other half of the world and to carry on inflicting such 'fascist' damage, - not the slightest bit different to the 'fascist' damage inflicted by German and Japanese imperialism, - as the genocidal torture and massacre of the Algerian people by France; of the Palestinian people by Western Zionism; of the southern African people by Portuguese, Belgian, British, and South African imperialist representatives of Anglo-US capital; of the Vietnamese and Indo-Chinese peoples directly by US imperialism at the head of a consortium of 'good' free-world imperialist powers which tried bombing Indo-China back to the stone age, and slaughtered millions with its Agent-Orange dioxin chemical poisoning of the entire countryside, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.

The BNP are an unpleasant and dangerous racist phenomenon, but they are child's play compared to the self-damaging confusions and complexities of trying to give the working-class a correct international revolutionary orientation on the need to complete the Marxist-Leninist proletarian dictatorship overthrow of imperialism itself, - the monopoly-capitalist-system root of every problem of bourgeois society.

But such a Bolshevik movement must and will be built. It is pointless to jeer at how puny is the propaganda weapon in the hands of the few Leninists around. Most propaganda damage to imperialism will self-evidently be done by the capitalist press itself, as has always been understood by Marxist science. And the building of a cadre party precisely relies on workers who are not mesmerised by the apparent 'difficulty' of the task of taking on bourgeois ideology nor feel obliged to try to counter mass philistine influences at their own game by rival 'left' gimmicks and such like.

Leave all that defeatism to the petty-bourgeois fake-'lefts'.

Lenin did not bother writing one word about the degenerate influence of Rasputin on the Romanov court. He did not have to. The capitalist press itself, - and common gossip, - did a far better job of exposing the disgusting licentiousness stupidity of the superstitious court than any Bolshevik newspaper or pamphleting (of necessarily limited output) could ever hope to do.

Lenin's comments on Rasputin are to explain precisely how that specific example of degeneracy was not at all out of the ordinary or requiring particular reformist agitation, but on the contrary was typical of the whole rotten crisis of capitalism and could never be dealt with other than on the basis of seeing imperialism's warmongering rottenness right through to the very core of free-market 'democratic' society, and demanding a total revolutionary dictatorship by the proletariat before any serious transformation of society could even begin.

Bolshevism was all in favour of anti-fascist defence-squad action, taking the lead in such agitation wherever it could, and working willingly on a local basis, - and publicising the fact widely in its general propaganda, - in a united front with whatever groups were also willing to defend working class communities against Black Hundred, Cossack, and other police-state provocations and pogroms.

But Bolshevik propaganda does not even begin to describe fascism as a special challenge by imperialism's degenerate crisis. Aggressive racist gangs are simply accurately analysed as manifestations of the bourgeois state needing to go onto the desperate extra-parliamentary offensive to try to disrupt the growing revolutionary circumstances afflicting Russian imperialism, - as a way of trying to head off the masses from communist revolution.

There is never one hint of defeatism in the descriptions of Black Hundred activities and racist agitational propaganda as being remotely likely to 'win over the masses before us if we do not get busy', etc. The analysis if Black Hundred activities is always couched in terms of how many new millions of proletarians are going to be driven into political revolt by these fascist manifestations of the ruling-class state desperate for gimmicks to disrupt and persecute the revolutionary agitation spreading rapidly, both deliberately and spontaneously, among the masses.

Leninism has nothing but admiration for the heroic fight put up by all anti-fascist resistance everywhere, and willingly supports such activities where they are not being turned into a sectarian stunt by some petty-bourgeois 'revolutionaries' or others.

But such revolutionary defencism will be organised anyway. It would be impossible to stop it.

What will not be organised anyway unless Leninist science deliberately sets about doing it, - is the building of a party of proletarian-dictatorship revolutionary theory without which there will never be an end to fascism.

Fears that young workers will be far more easily attracted to fascism than to communism 'which is a failed dictatorship tyranny to most youth', etc, - are just premature defeatism, based on utter confusion about what stage has been reached in the international imperialist crisis.

The fight for Leninism has regularly been taken onto the doorstep and onto the streets, and has always done as well as any small agitational group (or vastly better in terms of the rate of Bulletin sales, etc).

But no great mass movements thirsting to hear truly revolutionary propaganda are in the offing yet. The stage reached in the imperialist crisis so far is still one of recruiting Bolshevik cadres in ones or twos here and there from time to time in a period of very complex difficulties for understanding a Marxist-Leninist world view of what has happened to the international anti-imperialist revolution and where it is heading, - a steady development of polemical and understanding activity completely in contrast with the liquidationist crisis which has afflicted many revisionist and Trotskyite ultra-left groups in this same period.

The Bulletin has no monopoly on wanting to build a Bolshevik party, obviously. But it has always been open to polemics with allcomers about how building a party of revolutionary theory is to be achieved. The active polemical struggle, the height of revolutionary activism, goes on.

But it is also premature defeatism to simply write off the question of communism in popular understanding as simply some failed historical relic just to do with dictatorship and tyranny.

The youth of Hungary are not necessarily any the less smart than the youth of Britain, but they have just helped the former Communist Party bosses of Hungary to stage the most amazing comeback into political office, - just four years after the supposed 'end of history' and 'end of communism' as the idiotic propagandists of 'new world order' imperialist crisis were trumpeting.

Obviously, this new party is a reformist opportunist joke on the Hungarian workers state which achieved such a brilliant social transformation of the education, culture and jobs-exploitation scene.

But the big question is why did easily the largest majority voting block of the Hungarian electorate plump for the old Communist party? They had mare than two dozen parties to choose from, most of them highly critical of what 'progress' there has been under capitalism so far.

Clearly they all voted that way because the historical issue of what were the workers states and what did they achieve, running without the capitalist system or capitalist ethics corrupting the very heart of society, - is still a gigantic question which will not go away. The 70 years of the Soviet Union without a capitalist class in charge is a monumental historical achievement which is already a profound part of human history (clear to all of the Third World if not to pampered youth in Britain), and which is only awaiting the full onslaught of the imperialist slump-crisis to bring back to full centre stage as the issue to deal with, - just as the socialist camp was the issue to deal with in all Third World political struggles for so many decades.

This is not to go back to the moribund form of revisionist mistakes as now disfigure the inheritance of the Bolshevik Revolution as seen in the 'failed' socialist camp of workers states, - but to realise that 20th century history is unique in demonstrating for the first time ever that the corrupt degeneracy of free-market forces was not at all necessary for the running of healthy and successful societies, capable of inspiring their masses to take on and defeat the worst that imperialist aggression could throw at them and successfully resist US imperialist encirclement and isolation for another 40 years of murderous arms race.

Having proved that such socialist workers states can work once, it can be proved again, - as Cuba is still doing, for example.

The issue now is to correctly analyse where revisionism went wrong back in the 1920s and 1930s first of all, and to understand the anti-Leninist philistine nature of that petty-bourgeois defeatist confusion which overtook the Third International leadership.

This may still be rejected as a 'dull read' in Britain, - or even in Hungary, for the moment. But be aware of what early stages the terminal imperialist world-economic crisis is in, and work as hard as possible now to master the Marxist-Leninist science of imperialist crisis so that when spontaneous revolutionary events do start to escalate all round the planet, workers who have the ability will have made themselves ready in an unbreakably united party of revolutionary theory to give consistent reliable confident leadership to all workers in struggle which will consciously take them towards the only real solution to all their problems, everywhere, - the proletarian-dictatorship revolution.

All past critics of the ILWP have always eventually demonstrated that they never believed in or understood the dictatorship of the proletariat to start with. Study Leninist science is the only answer to that ignorance, starting with the ILWP's own struggle to analyse the relevance of Marxism-Leninism to the history of the international class struggle since correct Leninist leadership was last being applied to it.

The fight against capitalism's 'feel good' 'hands-on' spontaneous consumerist society is either a fight for a much higher scientific understanding of the class struggle, human society, and life on earth, - or it is nothing at all. Bellyaching 'reformist' agitation complaining that this, that, or the other should all be better spontaneously, without any effort on anyone's part, is just a whingeing pipedream. The anti-imperialist struggle needs to get down to some serious work, - as much anti-fascist organisation as necessary, - but a vastly greater fight for a full study of all revolutionary theory than has ever been undertaken ever before.

This is the direction that all anti-imperialist struggle will be driven towards. Nationalist determination, for example, in the Middle East, in the Balkans, in East Europe, to resist continuing imperialist-political or capitalist-market obstacles to full self-determination will always be sold out by local bourgeois-nationalist or religious class compromise. Arafat's pocket-handkerchief 'independence' deal, whether or not it yet proves to be grist to the mill of the anti-Zionist struggle by exposing how unreal is any notion of voluntary Zionist decolonisation, - is looking more and more like the PLO prima donna's political-suicide negotiation, as the Bulletin first tried to analyse it. And the ANC's class-collaborating electoral stitch-up to reach pre-arranged structures of local Ihkatha rule (by 0.001% of the vote despite massive ballot rigging), of PW Botha vice presidency (by a similar remarkably close margin) and of the ANC just failing to attain a constitution-rewriting two-thirds majority (so that the young comrades should not put on too much revolutionary pressure) will only feed the delusion of permanent cross-class harmony for as long as the lull in the international trade-war storms lets it happen.

And all this work of analysing all such complex problems of forthcoming revolutionary theoretical developments is the best part of human existence anyway, - as Marxist philosophy long ago established in explaining that the capitalist need to work in order to live should be transformed into the communist need to live in order to have the privilege of being able to do some interesting, absorbing, and helpful work. Build Leninism. Joe Harper

World Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles.)

CHINA

CHINA DOUBLED its gross national product (GNP) and achieved record production by pursuing its own policies to build socialism, following reforms and an opening initiated in 1978.

Its GNP has shown a 7.9-percent average increase since 1988 and 13.4 percent last year. Growth will be kept at nine percent to the year 2000, in line with a decision not to "overheat" the economy, primarily in order to avoid runaway inflation and to ensure that everybody is paid according to their work (basic salary bonuses). The intent is also to watch over the ideological formation of millions of Communists, as was determined by the Party's 14th Congress in 1992.

All this development is based primarily on industrial development, with 21-percent growth over the previous year. China is the world's leading producer of coal (1.141 billion tons) and cement (360 million tons) and the fifth in oil production (144 million tons).

China also had unprecedented external trade figures, totaling 195 billion dollars, the tenth largest in the world Investments reached an all-time high of 25.8 billion dollars, 130 percent more than in 1992.

To give two examples: tourism increased from a world standing of 41st to 17th in 1993. Forty million tourists earned the country 4.6 billion dollars, and postal and communication services grew by 58.9 percent.

These successes do not mask the reality of an unequal development between the more developed east and the west. Due to this, the central government undertook new measures to extend reforms in banking, finance, tax collection, planning and investments. In this context the government is trying to control a worrying inflation, which reached 23 percent in 1993, and corruption.

In conjunction with economic advances, China has been able to decrease illiteracy from 80 percent in 1949 — when the People's Republic was created —- to 16 per cent last year, In 1994, four million more adults will be able to read and write.

Likewise, China hopes to repeat its historic grain harvest of 456 million tons achieved in 1993 — which is still inadequate — and increase by five percent the 800 million peasants' low income (the annum equivalent of 151 dollars per capita), a fundamental factor in increasing the production of meat (5.5 percent), milk (6 4 percent) and eggs (seven percent).

For this reason, the country will apply its main efforts to agriculture until the year 1997. This year alone, peasants will receive the equivalent of 6.28 billion dollars in credits. China will also accelerate the development of its infrastructure and basic industries, develop service industries and science and technology, and will continue its opening to foreign markets.

Within the framework of what China defines as the socialist market economy, the negotiating bodies of the state enterprises will intensify pricing reforms so that the central government can regulate and control them.

World Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles.) 

Arms

WHAT WAS a dream for many even just a few years ago is becoming a reality for some, although it could turn into a nightmare for everyone.

This is not a play on words but about a sad present-day reality.

The warlords were thinking of a nuclear-free world, not exactly their world but that part of the world which, by dint of a great deal of effort, sacrifice and talent, had been able to develop a weapon capable of putting a brake on the unbridled arms race.

They never concerned themselves about the rest of the world, the underdeveloped world which is home to most of the world's population. They didn't need to, since hunger, disease and unsanitary conditions are far more deadly than any nuclear weapon.

The warlords' aims could come true this year.

NATO, with all its sophisticated armaments, has taken on the role of one of the principal military tools used by the United States and its allies, to bring about the unipolar world they hope to consolidate.
 
Deadly weapons are disappearing from one part of Europe, but the first nuclear weapons which threatened and still threaten world peace remain intact Millions of peace-loving people fought for decades to get rid of the atomic arsenal, and the extent to which they were able to do this, depended on the existence of this kind of weapon in countries where the most progressive ideas predominated.

NATO and its allies are overjoyed. Their former enemies are no longer enemies and not only that, they are disarming, leaving control of the nuclear situation in the hands of those who started the arms race.

 With some disarmed and others armed, we who live in the Third World can ask ourselves, with good reason, why are mass destruction weapons necessary? To put an end to hunger or to the hungry? To get rid of diseases or the sick? To do away with death or the living?

Perhaps they are hoping to use such weapons to put an end to social inequalities, the unemployed, neo-Nazi groups, racism, xenophobia and other evils that exist in those countries, in spite of the fact that they are considered to be the richest.

We well know that such weapons were built to destroy, terrorize and impose their will. For a long time these aims were held in check by similar weapons.

Nowadays people don't talk about mass destruction of all nuclear weapons, which was always one of humanity's aspirations, they only talk of destroying some of them.

If this comes about, there is absolutely no doubt that it will turn the dream of millions of people into a nightmare and will make the next century a period of uncertainty for humanity. 

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. VI Lenin
South West Bulletin
[P&P Bulletin Publications (South West), BOX 50, London  SW17 9NL]
No. 68 Friday May 6th 1994

Ruling class perverts and their 'politically correct' counterparts reflect a deeply rotten capitalist system.

The extraordinary combination of whingeing despair and bullying pomposity expressed by ruling class perverts like 'Polly' Portillo and Prince Charles at the 'Undermining of British Values and Traditions', trying once again to whip up a moral frenzy around a rightwing 'back to basics' agenda, shows the ruling-class capitalist system of class domination to be at its fag end, rapidly headed for the dustbin of history.

It almost defies belief that a ruling class establishment, internationally renowned for its obsession with flagellation and buggery, should expect anyone to take seriously their lectures on how children should be brought up.

The kinds of 'Traditions and Values' these fascist-minded sickoes enjoy and recommend have had a good airing in the capitalist press itself recently. Reminiscences about the 'traditional' teaching methods of the ex-headmaster of the elite ruling-class Eton school provide an interesting insight into how so many of today's leading members of the ruling class gained such moral self-righteousness with which to lecture the working class:

In my day Trench had two methods of beating boys, the most common of which was with the cane. The boy removed his jacket, bent over the chair or the sofa, and was given a thrashing, probably six strokes plus or minus two. That was typically (though not exclusively) the Trench remedy of first resort for a range of misdemeanours such as smoking, disobedience and homosexual activity. The other method, whereby the boy was beaten with a leather strap on the bare behind while prostrate on the sofa (Trench meanwhile kneeling beside him on the floor) was typically the Trench solution for carelessness or underperforming at work, and usually reserved for younger boys. If he tended to select the same boys for this treatment, and if on occasion it took rather a long time (while simultaneously going through some Latin prep perhaps) to administer in this position the customary four to 12 strokes, whatever was behind it, it was not, I think, a sense of decency and respect.

Before the obsession disappears from our national psyche, it would be useful to know precisely what Chenevix-Trench did get up to — and to cross-examine his grateful victims. John Major must therefore, without further ado, set up a public inquiry under Lord Justice Scott. It would be just as fascinating as the last Scott inquiry, and might have some striking similarities. Presiley Baxendale would, foe instance, again have the chance to take evidence from Douglas Hurd, who as a prefect at Eton was so ferocious with the cane that he earned the nickname "Hitler".

There is another witness whose testimony will be crucial. When Chenevix-Trench arrived at Eton, he was counselled on what he should and shouldn't do by the president of Pop, an elite group of boys who wielded more power than the masters. Who was the head of Pop at the time, and what advice did he give on beating? Only a public inquiry will get to the (ahem) bottom of the second question, but I can at least assist by revealing the boy's identity. It was William Waldegrave.

When the likes of 'Polly' and 'Lily', 'Tampon man' Charles and 'Hitler' Hurd, or many of the thousands of other bourgeois 'establishment' figures, start preaching about teaching 'respect for authority' and the desirability of 'disciplining children with smacking', then it would be sound advice to all children to keep their backs very firmly to the wall.

All lack of respect towards ruling-class institutions is fully and richly deserved.

The very real problems of child-rearing which millions of ordinary people struggle to get right every day, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, have nothing to do with the sick and abnormal worlds of Prince Charles, Portillo, the dead Milligan, Lord McAlpine and their ruling-class circles and 'friends'.

There is no more complicated job in the world than that which millions of workers undertake every day in trying to raise their children to be civilized members of society. Struggling to maintain family life in often overcrowded housing conditions, with little money, poor schooling, inadequate health services, and (most damaging of all) in a political culture (capitalism) which values only individual achievement against collective effort, - is no easy task.

The overwhelming achievement of millions of working-class families in making out against all the odds, and in successfully raising children, is in marked contrast to the foul behaviour of many ruling-class 'Hooray Henry' children, whose mindless vandalism, thuggery and snobbishness is somehow overlooked whenever there is a 'debate' on standards of behaviour in society.

To proclaim that 'smacking is the answer' which will instil 'respect' and redress what is in fact becoming the economic/political/cultural collapse of an entire society, is as futile and stupid as the 'political correctness' which demands that no parent must ever smack their children, and draws up meaningless bills of 'children's rights'.

Neither the ruling-class perverts nor the super-reformist 'lefties' are of any use whatsoever on this issue, or any other.

Debate around how society rears its next generation, with all the potential for human progress on an unimaginable scale (with the benefits of late 20th century technological advance and sophistication), is reduced by the bourgeois ruling class down to nothing more than expressing their desire to see working-class children beaten into respecting ruling-class authority.

While Charles, 'Polly', and their ilk, want to batter and bugger the next generation into being loyal servants of capitalism, Penelope Leach, Esther Rantzen and Claire Short, and their ilk, would rather 'empower' children, 'enabling' them to 'facilitate' their own oppression voluntarily by convincing them capitalism can be made to work for everybody's benefit, if only it was managed better, or differently.

Neither side in this phoney 'debate' could really give a damn about the welfare prospects and future of working-class children, other than that they should show respect' for the establishment, not get too 'pushy', - and die for 'their country' when ordered to.

Why should children, or anybody else, respect the parasitic Royal Family, the lying BBC, the corrupt and irrelevant parliament, or any other bourgeois institution?

It is the fact that these institutions of capitalist rule and oppression are becoming more and more exposed for what they are, due to the weakness of the British ruling class in the international trade war, that 'respect' for them is dying fast.

The entire capitalist system of private ownership of the means of production, the enrichment of a tiny minority at the expense of the vast majority, is the root cause of all anti-social behaviour, yet not a single 'lefty' parliamentarian, or 'politically correct' child-development 'expert' will say so. Instead they would rather witter on endlessly about children's 'rights', or more smacking, or no smacking, more spelling tests, or fewer spelling tests, more grammar or less grammar etc., etc... Meanwhile, Rome burns.

The extent and depths of alienation created by capitalism are far too great to be reformed away. It is simply impossible anyway, just like asking capitalism not to be capitalism - it can't do anything else.

Only a fullscale social revolution which turns society upside-down, (with the working class on top, owning the means of production and building a society based on human need, not profit can begin to overcome the deep social problems created by capitalism.

Only in this context is it meaningful or helpful to debate the complex issues involved in child-rearing and education.

Build Leninism, build the ILWP. DW

Major's backfiring D-Day stunt stupidly concentrates minds on the class issues around WWII.

The crisis of imperialism has forced John Major to call for celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the Normandy landings. 

Major, by calling for the celebrations, is opening up a can of worms, and the unresolved questions about what the working class were fighting for and who defeated Fascist Germany, 90% of the Fascist German armies were facing the Soviet Union when over 20 million Soviet workers died defending the Soviet Union in the defeat of Fascism, - or as reported in the capitalist press at the weekend:

As a result, Dr Trotnow said, the figure of 20 million Soviet war dead, which Western historians have often found too high, was probably a conservative estimate. "It now seems there could have been well over 20 million Soviet war dead," he said.

John Erickson, Professor of Defence Studies at Edinburgh University, said many historians would agree that more than 40 million people—a quarter of the population—died.

The Soviet Union asked the Allies to open up the Western Front two years before the Normandy invasion. Only when it looked like the Soviet Union was going to liberate all of western Europe was it that the Allies went into action.

What has the working class got to show for the defeat of Fascism? Millions unemployed, thousands homeless, the welfare state being dismantled. At the same time, Major calls for celebrations - and Britain laps up to Italy's neo-Fascists:

BRITAIN is spearheading efforts within the international community to win recognition and respectability for the neo-fascists who are poised to join Italy's next administration.

The Foreign Office's pragmatic approach puts it ahead of the United States and Britain's European partners.

The alliance was a leading component of the rightwing front which surged to victory under the media tycoon, Silvio Berlusconi, in Italy's general election on March 27-28. Mr Berlusconi confirmed last weekend that members of the alliance would be in his cabinet.

Last month, the British ambassador, Sir Patrick Fairweather, became the first European Union envoy to meet the alliance's leader, Gianfranco Fini. Their lunch at a Rome restaurant took place shortly after Mr Fini had described Benito Mussolini as "the greatest statesman of the century".

His remark was seen as casting doubt on his claim that the alliance has renounced its fascist past. Mr Fini's insistence that he is a "post-fascist", rather than a neo-fascist, is central to the charm offensive he is waging on Italy's European partners.

Its sole victory so far has been the lunch with Sir Patrick.

With World War part 3 on the agenda, the bourgeoisie will have a difficult job to mobilize behind the flag.

The Western imperialist powers are playing warmongering games again because of the insoluble trade-war contradictions.

Build the ILWP.

Jack Milton