Hitherto, philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it. Karl Marx
Economic & Philosophic Science Review
(P&P Bulletin Publications, PO Box 50, London SW17 9NL)(GPO Regd.)
No 839 Tuesday February 6 1996                                                                                                                     10p

Sales meetings in the Northwest, April 20th.

Inter-imperialist conflict's frightening perspectives cause guarded uncertainty in the working class. Labour's 'oppose the Tories' class-collaborating act still not fully exposed. Meagre SLP offering fails to convince. But fake-'lefts' trip up even worse over this centrist challenge to Labour, unable to rid themselves of their class-based anti-communist sectarianism.

The increasing evidence of capitalism's dismal problems worldwide is the necessary background to understanding the Hemsworth by-election result.

Economic and political catastrophes now loom in all directions, from Russia to Mexico, but inseparable from all these problems is the most terrifying nightmare of all for the 'free' world, ― the possible crash of the American imperialist economy itself, which pulls all the strings everywhere else on the planet.

In such circumstances, the rivalry of the smaller imperialist powers around Europe becomes ever more menacing now that the old routine of US domination as the ultimate arbiter of everything, shows such clear signs of eventually becoming impotent or falling apart.

And Helmut Kohl's tragi-comic outburst about "integrate Europe or face war in the 21st century" at Louvain at the weekend, which met such calculated hostility from some of the British press and Tories, illustrated this dramatically.

The international trade war can only continue to sharpen relentlessly, steadily demoralising the ruling classes which fear the worst from such a conflict-ridden outcome, possibly all of them. The time is approaching when chauvinistic fault will be found with anything any rival power comes out with, no matter how carefully they choose their words.

But in any case, Kohl is historically correct anyway, regardless of how he meant his words to sound. If monopoly-capitalism is unable to carry on its boomtime growth and merger frenzy in which slump and company-crash tragedies here and there always seem to leave some sort of replacement opportunity open, however foreign or unexpected, — then the surviving multinational competing organisations will eventually start fighting out the trade-war competition with only really big winners, or really big losers, emerging.

At that point, the rival nation-states will become fully involved in directing national economic survival operations, — — along openly chauvinistic and warmongering arms-race lines.

Kohl is right. Either there will be continued integration in Europe, — or there will be war. The problem for the weak British ruling class is that they know that they are already the big losers in the 'integration' trade-war that has already taken place, — mostly British industries and corporations, defeated in the trade war, being taken over by German, Japanese, French or American rivals. This wing of the Tory Party has no confidence left in the 'European Union' phase of phony 'collective development'(which puts the German ruling class in an ever-increasing dominant position inside the EEC and Europe as a whole).

It has not much confidence in any other outcome for British imperialism either, — whether of the 'go it alone' tendency, or the 'closer to the USA' tendency. Hence the unprecedentedly recriminatory mood inside the Tory Party, and the deluge of conspiratorial back-stabbing, and the virtual collapse of that most crucial authoritative ingredient in a monopoly-imperialist establishment, — ruling-class loyalty.

The Government's weak and spiteful mood has been added to by further humiliations at the hands of its so-called American imperialist 'allies', most recently over Bosnia, and yet again over Ireland, where the Mitchell Commission and its report's reception in the USA has bluntly condemned London for its ridiculous delaying tactics in finding ever new excuses for not convening the all-party talks with Dublin and Sinn Féin for a completely new political settlement for the whole island of Ireland, (getting rid at last of the despised artificial colonial statelet of non-existent 'Northern Ireland' which has caused all the trouble since being treacherously ripped out of Ireland at bayonet point in 1921 to deliberately frustrate the total independence of the country which Sinn Féin had fairly won overwhelmingly at all-Ireland elections in 1918 and had then won again on the independence-war battlefields from 1919-1920.)

Britain's ruling-class party will be further undermined later this month when the Scott Inquiry report is likely to condemn Tory Cabinet ministers for their lying part of the criminal cover-up of the illegal sordid arms-sales deals with Saddam Hussein at a time when the rest of the 'free'-world imperialist crooks (the United Nations) were supposedly imposing a sanctions blockade on Iraq for its warmongering activities around the Persian Gulf, — (activities which the very same Western imperialist powers had themselves initially encouraged Saddam Hussein towards, and supplied him with arms in order to accomplish, — as Britain continued doing, against the Westminster Parliament's own orders).

But this same wretched British ruling class nevertheless still receives loyal class-collaborating support from the Labour Party, — the 'Loyal Opposition', — at crucial national-humiliation times such as over Ireland, and probably shortly over Europe too.

Instead of exposing the British ruling-class bankruptcy in its silly shabby tricks of still trying to avoid facing up to the necessary eclipse of the wretched 'Northern Ireland' colonial disaster, the Labourites immediately give Major their full support in all his worm-like squirming. Likewise, they continue accepting the Orange-fascist British colonial gangsters in the Occupied Zone as the 'legitimate majority' there, instead of as the exposed and defeated imperialist pirates that they are.

Similarly on Britain's economic malaise as part of the insoluble international imperialist trade-war crisis, the Labourites will say nothing to rock the 'free-market' boat, dedicated to the capitalist system right up to their rotten little brains.

The Blairites will score points off the Tories over this or that item of monetary, investment, fiscal, or labour-market minutiae. They will even, via their carefully crafted major speeches like 'Faith in the City' or via their Keynesian journalistic pals more daring copy, emphasise just how disastrously the present economic order is failing the world generally, the British people, or even the American people:

Even as Washington reverberates to the sound of Democratic President and Republican Congress arguing not over the merits of downsizing government, but rather on the pace of change and to what degree the poor should share the burden, there are subtle signs that the argument is moving on. The Americans are beginning to be alarmed at developments in their famed "flexible" labour market, and worried that inequality and under-employment may menace not merely the economy, but beyond it the good society and even the American dream.

After all, it was de Tocqueville who argued in the 1830s that it was the "equality of conditions" that underlay the stability and unity of American society, along with Americans' notions of social and political equality. Now, as American inequality climbs to new heights, sound heads — even on the right — are querying whether de Tocqueville's aphorism still holds. This degree of inequality may be unsustainable.

The American political debate is as yet resounding to the familiar tunes, with multi-millionaire publisher Steve Forbes challenging for the Republican presidential nomination, climbing the opinion polls in the New Hampshire primary by canvassing a regressive flat-rate 17 per cent income tax for all. But sooner or later reality breaks in on even the most ideological of positions, Larry Lindsey used to work in the White House advising George Bush, and as an economist of Reaganite persuasions became a governor of the Federal Reserve Board — the US central bank — in 1991. The former Harvard professor holds impeccably conservative views about the merits of balanced budgets, the distorting impact of taxation and the need to shrink government — but his evidence to the House of Representatives last month about the worrying trends in income inequality make gripping reading.

Mr Lindsey is worried, as a central banker, that too many low-income families are incurring too much credit-card debt. The credit card is the great badge of membership of American society, with the credit-card companies this year planning to market 2.7 billion cards to 250 million; Americans  — up from 2.1 billion last year. In the old days the credit card was the preserve of middle- and upper-income groups, but demand is rising dramatically from low-income Americans — both to have their badge of membership and to finance credit so as to maintain their standard of living as their in comes fall.

It's not the "democratisation" of credit that worries Lindsey, with the proportion of black and low-income households reporting credit-card debt nearly as high as white middle-income households; it's that the trends are unsustainable. Workers generally are receiving a lower share of national income than they used to; but low-income families' income is falling: sharply as hourly-wage rates; drop in real terms. Nor, with current tax and welfare policies, is there any end to the process in sight. Ultimately falling incomes will collide with rising debt, and servicing the credit-card debt will become impossible — a financial crisis waiting to be triggered by the next round of interest-rate increases which will one day come.

Lindsey dismisses the Gingrichian argument that workers are compensated in part by rising dividends and stock prices through their share holdings in mutual funds (American versions of unit trusts). Eighty per cent of households, says this Republican economist, receive no dividends at all; and 2.5 per cent of households receive three-quarters of all dividend payments. Most Americans live off their declining wage packets, and as the share of wages in national income falls towards 50 per cent from the 66.6 per cent it used to be in 1960, the growth of consumption is faltering as well.

Lindsey is suitably cautious, but his message is unmistakable. In the same way that the quadrupling of oil prices in the early 1970s represented an economic shock, so rising inequality is a form of economic shock today. It threatens financial stability and the sustainability of the US recovery alike.

But it doesn't stop there. American society is rocking from the fall in hourly-wage rates for unskilled men and the accompanying disguised unemployment — MIT's Professor Lester Thurow reckons that true unemployment is nearer 14 per cent than the official 6 per cent. Hourly wage rates of $5 (£3.30) or less do not offer even subsistence diets and rents; but that is the rate for more than 10 per cent of US jobs. With 2 million extra to join their numbers as the Gingrichian welfare "reforms" bite, US economists estimate that wages at the bottom will fall by up to another 15 per cent.

But in desperation the badly paid are leaving the labour market altogether, stealing and dealing in drugs just to survive. One third of all American blacks between the ages of 18 and 30 are now either in prison, awaiting trial or under bail. This is close to an urban hell.

Here in Chicago a group of researchers from the local universities has established that there are four job-seekers for every job opening in Illinois — and that only 4 per cent of the jobs on offer would allow a welfare recipient with children to provide for basic family needs. In Chicago alone, a city of 3 million, wages are so low and welfare so threadbare that 80,000 individuals cannot pay rents even for the worst housing, and with public housing being phased out, there is no option rut to live on the street. If reproduced in Britain this would imply 1.5 million living rough.

But the Labourites will never go any further than occasionally stressing that permanent mass unemployment has already got a grip in the USA as well as in Britain, and that even worse slump conditions are only being held back by the insane creation of ever greater consumer debt via plastic credit cards, fictional purchasing power which can only help sink the whole economy eventually.

What Blair & Co will never say is that the capitalist system itself is heading for incurable crisis, and that monopoly imperialism is no longer anything but a totally disastrous regime for ordinary people to live under, — anywhere in the world, whichever party governs. Hence some of the enormous confusion and demoralisation which limits the Hemsworth working class to a derisory 28 votes out of every 100 potential voters there, to turn out for Labour last week in a by-election which could have told this most unpopular Tory Government in history exactly what ordinary people thought of it. No less than 72 people in every 100 refused to turn out to vote Labour in Hemsworth last week.

Of course, they did not vote for Arthur Scargill either, or for anyone else. They stayed away in a complete lack of enthusiasm for the party political process within capitalism which endlessly deceives people, and then betrays them if they do vote.

It is not necessarily easy to analyse the precise mood of the working class at any moment, in Hemsworth or anywhere else. But there is a fair bit of cynicism about in general, and some fear for the future. A feeling persists that people would rather prefer not to think too obsessively about how bad things might just become. Certainly there is not much confidence about the future, and above all no confidence that Blairism is really going to work wonders.

In such a sour and slightly apprehensive frame of mind, it would have been a very remarkable phenomenon indeed if Hemsworth, a devastated mining-industry area with trade-union and labour movement divisions plus a complete lack of scientific clarity in general about what the 1984-85 miners strike meant historically, — had gone overboard for the Socialist Labour Party when many shallow lumpen responses still blame Scargill for calling the strike, for the defeat, and for all the subsequent suffering at the hands of the vindictive Tory Government and capitalist system.

A large vote for the SLP would have implied a development in working class understanding far beyond what at present is to be anticipated. It would have required people to have grasped that the 84-85 strike was the definitive moment in ending illusions that the 'democratic rights' of trade unionists and the 'political pressure' of the parliamentary parties could guarantee, via a good 'left' push, that no really terrible injustice could befall large legitimate communities in Britain, and could guarantee that all the supposedly 'permanent' postwar welfare-state class compromises of arbitration settlements for all vexed questions would continue. 

The guarantees were worthless. All the postwar class-collaborative illusions began to be shattered; but there is no general understanding of that yet even among 'intellectuals', let alone workers whose hands are still full just trying to survive, and still assuming that the old mixture of routes as before is the way to just about surviving.

A large vote for the SLP would have required extending that understanding to seeing that Scargill's own role in that defeat consisted in his own illusion that calling for a Labour Government and a revived boom-era Plan For Coal was a feasible historical solution for the problems of the mining industry, when by 1984-85 it no longer was,(a lack of clarity made even more confusing by the fact that Scargill himself still seems not to have grasped this, or accepted it in public).

For all these and many more reasons, the working class of Hemsworth probably could not see why Scargillism 1996 was really so different from Scargillism in 1984-85. It is also possible that the working class at the moment is still more frightened now of losing what it has got than it was in 1984-85 (when workers trade union confidence was still quite high), but is far from yet reaching the point where it begins to feel that it has nothing else left to lose, a point of possibly revolutionary departure.

The real significance of Scargill's move, — the first break by a major labour-movement figure away from the accumulated treachery to the working class of all reformist thinking and parliamentary opportunism, (while in no way implying any shift towards revolutionary science in the thinking of Scargill himself), - has probably not registered with many in Hemsworth yet.

The unfortunate superficialities of the SLP campaign, and its obvious omissions, have more caught the eye, most probably, — — such as blithely insisting that unemployment could be totally eradicated tomorrow, just like that, if a Labour Government really wanted to do it; and failing to hardly refer at all to the international imperialist economic crisis conditions completely surrounding the SLP in Britain and making the whole political situation what it is; and such as trying to inspire workers with the comparison that the SLP was like Keir Hardie starting out 100 years ago for a new-labour-party break from Liberalism, and losing his deposit (a grim perspective of yet another 100 years of fake-'left' electoral promises and betrayals to come, backed by equally ultimately ineffective 'left' trade-union pressure, if not understood correctly).

In reality, neither the SLP nor anything else could ever tread such a one-off reformist blind alley again. Spontaneous developments alone, much such as the SLP phenomenon itself must be considered to be, would inevitably take the class struggle into new territory, not to mention the real transformation towards conscious revolutionary struggle (which the last 100 years of super-imperialist profits, financing 'reformist' welfare-state class-collaboration of all kinds, has steadily been preparing via the slow decline in British imperialism's world-dominant position, making such concessions ever more difficult to provide.)

As has always seemed most likely, it now looks as if it will be the return of another Labour Government, the ninth, (or just possibly Blairism's failure to defeat the Tories), which will begin to speed up the understanding that British monopoly-capitalism itself is what can no longer deliver what is required by the British working class, - not just the people currently running it, overall, in the Government, — as Blair, and to a large extent Scargill himself, still pretend.

Spontaneously, reformism's basic servitude to the capitalist system, and its inability to offer a serious alternative to capitalism, will begin to force workers towards ever more profound SLP-type breaks from the old parliamentary game of musical chairs. Conscious revolutionary agitation will inevitably add its influence to such spontaneous developments, whether of new forms of trade-unionism, or united-front electoralism, or workers-council type sovietism.

Only standing apart from such developments, or artificially avoiding taking a leading role in them if it happened that way, would constitute an attempt at sectarian substitution for the way workers themselves want to go, or create confusion about how large a centrist phenomenon will be 'necessary' or 'inevitable'. A few dry wells may be sunk; but sinking wells is hardly a barrier to finding water eventually. 

And seeking out revolutionary cadres within the labour movement, however long the search may go on fruitlessly, can never be a waste of effort because the development in understanding from the struggle itself is the midwife of all revolutionary theory anyway, the only possible basis for guaranteeing that Leninist parties ever will be built again.

The SLP's embryonic centrism has already put a cat among the fake-'left' sectarian pigeons of every anti-proletarian-dictatorship, anti-Leninist kind (i.e. all 57 varieties), causing them to trip over their own feet in all directions.

Listen to how the Weekly Worker of the CPGB (the 'Leninist' rump) initially 'welcomed' in issue 122 (Dec 14) Scargill's announcement of an SLP which "gives the left an opportunity to unite politically and organisationally with a mass movement, disaffected with Labour," followed by detailed advice to Arthur as to when he ought to hold his inaugural conference, how it should be arranged, etc, so as to allow 

"the widest possible discussion and debate as to the programme and organisational shape of the SLP. To this end, the SLP must have open debate.... to create a serious, mass leftwing organisation in Britain. It is crucial that such an opportunity is not wasted on the altar of political sectarianism or bureaucratic methods."

But a later article in the same issue already starts finding that this conditional 'welcome' to give the CPGB sectarians an opportunity for a rare orgy of bureaucratic kibbutzing at someone else's expense, has immediately run into disappointment:

THE publication of the proposed Constitution and Rules may come as a shock to those who have welcomed Scargill's call for a Socialist Labour Party, but have so far been excluded from debates.

A meeting last Sunday was by invitation only, and many were quite obviously excluded, primarily those in other leftwing/revolutionary political organisations. Even Tommy Sheridan from Scottish Militant Labour had trouble receiving an invite apparently.

This is disgraceful, given his own and his organisation's history of struggle in Scotland, whatever criticisms we may have of it.

The Provisional Central Committee of the CPGB feels that so far the debates towards a Socialist Labour Party have been conducted in a conspiratorial manner at odds with the interests of the working class. A party which can truly serve the interests of the working class will be forged through struggle itself and at the initiative of leading partisans of the class. It cannot be hatched by a handful of selected trade unionists and Labour Party members, whatever their proud and militant history.

Following Sunday's meeting the Constitution and Rules, drafted it seems primarily by Scargill, is now in circulation. It has to be said that this document does not bode well for the success of a future Party.

Unfortunately it still seems unclear how widely this document was intended to be distributed and how open it is for change. More invitation-only meetings are planned for January. A special meeting has been arranged for the Scottish Socialist Forum, since these comrades were the main opponents of the proposed Constitution on Sunday.

As communists we would have much to disagree with both in detail and the whole approach of the document. But fundamentally Clause 11 on eligibility for membership would doom this Party as useless to the working class from the beginning and so must be opposed.

Other areas of the Constitution can be fought through and won and lost in the course of struggle and the heat of debate. But if individual members in other political organisations — let alone those organisations themselves are excluded, this battle cannot take place. We are led to believe that 'other political organisations' would include animal rights campaigns, CND, Amnesty International presumably, not to mention the Labour Party.
  
As Scargill implied in his original call for a Socialist Labour Party, he is obviously terrified of what he calls 'sectarian' wrangles. So he is in particular concerned to keep out organisations on the revolutionary left.

Surely the extremely restricted, invite-only, December 10 meeting was not the 'Discussion Conference'? At the very least, the wider meeting mooted for February 13 of next year should have the authority to adopt a draft constitution of the party — providing it is genuinely democratic and representative of all “those committed to founding" a party to challenge Blair [my emphasis]. The final decisions should still rest with the founding congress of the organisation.

Ironically, Future strategy for the left points out that it was the 'modernisers' of the time the Labour right wing that were responsible for "introducing the bans and proscriptions which were prevalent in the 30s and later during the Cold War period of the 50s". Is the new organisation going to go one better and proscribe communists and other revolutionaries from its very foundation?

There is no more room for secret meetings or hidden debate. The party of the working class is the property of no one but the working class itself. A party which is built bureaucratically around a few individuals' own schemes cannot possibly rally the energy, imagination, discipline and commitment of leading sections of our class. To deliberately keep workers divided around the basis of different political affiliations and organisations is the worst manifestation of sectarianism, and a crime against our class.

How interesting, therefore, to read that by issue 127, the Weekly Worker had changed its tune slightly:

THE Socialist Labour Party's by-election campaign in Hemsworth is an important step forward. This fight deserves the wholehearted support of all sections of the left.

Communists have participated in the campaigning work in the constituency with enthusiasm. We say that a vote for Brenda Nixon, the SLP candidate, is a vote for a break from the Labour Party. Of course, we have many disagreements with the platform that the SLP has stood on in this election. But that is a secondary question. This campaign has put the call for a genuine workers' party - a serious challenge to the poison of Labourism - firmly on the practical agenda of everyone in the workers' movement.

A successful Hemsworth by-election campaign will be a blow for independent working class politics and against the stranglehold of Labourism - a death grip that has paralysed the majority of our class throughout this century. Every socialist, communist and revolutionary should support the important fight of the SLP in Hemsworth.

Even more interesting, this issue 127 of 25/1/96 takes a rare old swipe at the SWP for getting its line on the SLP so badly wrong:

But it is the stance of the Socialist Workers Party that is the most contradictory. It has now dropped its 'hard line' objections and has been eager to be involved in the by-election. More generally, it has shifted to a position of soft support for the new organisation...but only where it stands in safe Labour seats! The SWP is caught in a real contradiction. It seems to believe that as long as the new party presents no real challenge to Labour in the ballot box – the most important arena for Blair's party - then it is perhaps worthy of grudging support.

The SWP cites the SLP's "electoralism" - Socialist Labour actually stands in elections - as the key problem. The mere act of contesting elections is crassly counterposed to 'class struggle'.

And so on. It is a fact that just after the WW issue No 122 had gone to press, issue 832 of the Economic & Philosophic Science Review was circulating, by the middle of the very same week. This contained a massive analysis of the SWP's hopelessly sectarian political response to Scargill's development, exposing in particular the SWP's falsely opposing election interventions to 'struggle outside the Commons', and its hostility to any SLP candidate in marginal Labour seats which might split the vote and let the Tories back in'.

That issue 832 of the Review added, among much else:

'Let Scargill damage Labour as much as possible. Let the SLP stand in every constituency in the country to expose and taunt Labour's bogus credentials as a party of working-class interests. Leninists will gladly help this fight along. Scargill is just as hopeless a 'left'  centrist posturer as the SWP, and Leninists will openly point this out, even while helping the cause of debunking Labour. But Scargill is an opportunist who has at last turned his political programme in a slightly more useful direction than when he guaranteed that the 1984-35 strike would fail (it was probably doomed anyway at that time for many other historical reasons) by limiting its revolutionary political horizons merely to a return of a Labour Government committed to the Plan for Coal (in a reformist-boom capitalist economy of the past which could never then be restored, and never will be in the future either). Deep down, the working class had no faith in the effectiveness of such a Labour Government orientation, and the working class was right (as was the unconditionally supportive Leninist participation in that strike, - see ILWP Books vols 6 & 7).

And Arthur Scargill also happens to be a very outstanding trade union leader with a highly creditable record of service to the cause of the working class, at home and internationally. When such a lifelong traditional 'left' Labour-movement figure starts pushing the boat out to such an extent, it will generally help the struggle for clarity to everyone's benefit to give him a hand.

Nothing but a huge and useful debate can flow from SLP candidates standing against Labour calling on workers to opt for socialism as a solution to the capitalist crisis rather than the murderous policies of Blair & Co who will do anything to maintain Britain's imperialist position in the "free world" (the latest stunt being to damn the Irish peace process more certainly than the Tories are risking by demanding a fatuous IRA arms surrender even more stridently than the fascist Unionists are doing).'

How interesting that the Weekly Worker should then change its tune.

One particular piece of kibbutzing hypocrisy by these CPGB sectarians should be noted. When a group of serious students of Leninism were first starting out on a movement which has resulted in the building of the Review and all its achievements, we offered a membership-to-membership debate to these CPGBers (to avoid the closed-mind droning of their sectarian leaders). Nearly 20 of the Review's then London supporters turned up, - from all stages of recruitment, education, and polemical preparation, - for a genuine membership-to-membership debate. The CPGBers sent just their two most hard-bitten sectarian bureaucrats. Yet now they have the cheek to posture to Scargill: 

"A party which is built bureaucratically around a few individuals' own schemes cannot possibly rally the energy, imagination, discipline, and commitment of leading sections of our class."

The class mentality of these sectarians is petty-bourgeois politics, founded on an opportunist scuttling away from unconditional defence of proletarian dictatorship, in its actual historical setting, at every opportunity (see countless past Bulletins and ILWP Books). Scargill's fear of posturing sectarian entrists is well founded.

These charlatans only ever pretended to be pro-Soviet. They nestled inside the anti-communist CP for decades, parading their 'Leninist' badge ostentatiously, but opportunistically milking their 'official world communist movement' cachet for all it was worth against genuine Leninists outside, slyly safe in the knowledge that the 'Eurocommunist' degeneracy of King Street, insanely tolerated by the equal degenerates in Moscow, would never put them on the spot of having to defend any really tough acts of proletarian dictatorship (the essence of Leninism) which could embarrass them in their fake-'left' intellectual circles.

A fuller picture of the 'Leninist' CPGBers anti-communism will be to hand when ILWP Books vol 15 eventually appears, but their treachery to the Polish workers state in 1980, at the height of the CIA/Vatican counter-revolution around their fascist stooge Walesa sticks in the memory. These sectarian opportunists put on a clever show of not falling for the CIA's "Solidarnosc rank-and-file socialism" fraud as the rest of the fake-'left' did (despite the Sparts subsequent denials), but could still never bring themselves to supporting any firm proletarian-dictatorship stand by the Polish workers state, because "that had faults too", or words to that effect.

And the hopeless philosophical bankruptcy of this cowardly fence-sitting confusion remains the putrid petty-bourgeois essence of these CPGBers to this day: 

"Let the difficult and painful history of international proletarian-dictatorship attempts to keep Western imperialist domination at bay go to the devil. No more bureaucratic-revisionist cock-ups or Stalinist clumsiness for us. Somewhere there must be a perfect communist revolution, and that is what will go down well in our 'left' circles", etc.

And they are still at it over the corpse of the Soviet workers state, and the Chinese Peoples Republic, etc, always fearing too close an identification with anything which "might go wrong", etc, or "be an embarrassment", etc.

But what is crucial to workers philosophically is precisely this complete class identification with what the workers states represent historically, - the world of the proletariat struggling for the right to keep on striving to develop without a bourgeoisie in power, or aid from international capital or commerce, — and striving to overcome their own mistakes in the teeth of relentless and devastating Western imperialist propaganda onslaughts, economic sabotage, political subversion, and military arms-race threats, etc.

Every anti-imperialist struggle to survive, to develop, or to come into being by proletarian-dictatorship forces, or vestiges, gets automatic unconditional support from Leninist science, - whatever the supposed 'horrors' or 'crippling embarrassment' (such as quelling the petty-bourgeois 'democracy' movement of Tienanmen Square, or the unsubtleties of the leadership cult in North Korea). Let bad workers-state practices or understandings be overtaken by better workers-state practices or understandings, not by bourgeois-'democratic' revivalism. Let proletarian-dictatorship rule plumb the depths of arbitrary vindictiveness or voluntarist folly. To the workers states, comradely criticism to help strengthen their proletarian dictatorships. To the 'free'  world, get lost with your hypocrisy & lies about 'Red terror'.

Historically in total, it can never amount to a tiny fraction of one percent of all the horrors that bourgeois-imperialist exploitation, slumps, colonialism, and inter-imperialist wars have already imposed, and will continue to impose in the future, on mankind. And planned socialist economic powers under proletarian dictatorship rule can only continue improving on their already considerable historical achievements, and learning from their historical mistakes. The bourgeois-capitalist system can only continue to fall into crisis, and degenerate into complete rottenness. The class war between the two is absolute. The fake-'left' petty-bourgeoisie in the West has always been on the wrong side.

The total division between proletarian rule and bourgeois dictatorship is re-emerging relentlessly in Russia, where, whatever the bureaucratic complacency and inefficiency of the final revisionist degeneracy in the USSR, the yearning is insistently heard for getting back to old Soviet certainties and rough justice, - and as far away as possible from the total corruption, unfairness, and anarchy of the renewed 'free-market forces', i.e. bourgeois dictatorship under so-called 'democracy'. All this is now being admitted, reluctantly, between the lines, by the capitalist press itself:

We are not striking for more money. We are striking because we have not been paid at all" said the deputy engineer, Valery Mazurev.

Four years ago he lost all his savings, 50,000 roubles, everything he had earned in 15 grinding years. "I had saved the equivalent of five Ladas. Then Yegor Gaidar came along, raised prices in January 1992, inflation soared and my savings turned to paper."

Neither management nor workers had been paid and there was no one to rail against, except the government; the whole region was grinding to a standstill.

The village boss, Volodya Cherkassov, a former miner, walked in. He said: "My friend Kolya came to me in the administration and he was extremely angry I asked Kolya: 'What do you want — coffee, tea, biscuits?'  Kolya swore at me and said: 'Look at you drinking coffee with biscuits and look what I take to eat underground.'

"He opens his paper and he showed me two pieces of black bread, two boiled potatoes, two salted cucumber. 'This is what I have been eating for the last two years.' I felt so ashamed."

Mr Cherkassov has left the independent miners' union, which helped Boris Yeltsin come to power.

The old Communist union is back in power.

Djamila Khalilova, a miner's wife, said: "We don't believe in Yeltsin."

Her husband, Irfan, part of a community of Tatar miners, recollects: "Before, to be a miner was something. Each month you brought home a wad of money. You retired 10 years earlier than everybody else and the pension was very high — 120, 160, even 175 roubles. Today this means nothing, but then the rouble was a rouble. To be a miner today means being a non-person. We don't exist any more."

Anatoli Diedok, the mine's acting director, sat with the men. He had not been paid either and felt equally bitter. He said: "We need the rule of law in Russia, and normal people don't understand why the West is supporting our president and our government, who are now considered to be very doubtful people. When everything gets out of control, as it has done now, Russians start to ask themselves why is the West so interested in supporting Yeltsin?"

The mood was angry, mistrustful, resentful. Pits were being closed and the community was dying.

THIS time last year the talk at the World Economic Forum was of how  Mexico had slid from being the darling of the West to the brink of bankruptcy in six short months.

Russia is an economy halfway into the abyss. What's worse, the catastrophic slump is not only continuing but has started to poison the well of Russian politics, with the liberals on the defensive, President Yeltsin winning support from the extreme nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky for his hard-line on the Chechen, and the communist Gennadi Zyuganov the front-runner to take over in the Kremlin after this summer's presidential elections.

Both the liberal Grigor Yavlinsky and Mr Zyuganov have been in Davos, but where the Mexicans have been using the gathering of the world's business and political elite for an unashamedly open sales pitch, the Russians have been washing their dirty linen in public.

To some in the West, the widespread corruption, the power of the mafia and the lack of any formal legal structure within which business can operate with any confidence have vindicated the cautious approach adopted since the collapse of communism at the end of the 1980s.

However, not everyone sees it like that. Professor Jeffrey Sachs, the Harvard professor who drew up a blueprint for Russia's transition from a command to a market economy is scathing about the way in which the Group of Seven industrial nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have dithered and delayed.

The IMF has now agreed a $9 billion package of loans, but Professor Sachs believes the money has come four years too late.

There are some who are sceptical about parts of this analysis. Anatoly Chubais, the reformer recently sacked by Mr Yeltsin, argues that Professor Sachs' policy of selling off state industries en masse is at least party responsible for the endemic corruption that has followed.

Adair Turner, who worked as a consultant in Russia before becoming director-general of the CBI, believes that it is not just the lack of money but the fact that there was only the thinnest of topsoil in which capitalism could grow.

The West, prodded by the Americans, reacted swiftly to the Mexican crisis rustling up $50 billion within a matter of weeks.

But if Mexico has problems, they are dwarfed by those in Russia, where since the slump started, industrial production has dropped by 50 per cent, investment is only a third of its previous level, living standards have fallen by 28 per cent, the teachers have joined the miners on strike, there is no money to pay state pensions, 37 million people are not earning enough to support themselves and their families, and the death toll from organised crime in the last year has been greater than total Russian losses in Afghanistan.

Little wonder that a growing number of people now look back with nostalgia on communist rule. Who can blame them?

The ludicrous mess that anti-communism has made of the Soviet Union is an indication of what will be happening to the entire Third World and also to the weaker monopoly-capitalist powers as the international imperialist economic crisis continues to strengthen its grip, and also a permanent reminder of how the proletariat dragged itself out of the mire during an earlier inter-imperialist crisis. 

Build Leninism. Adam Carr

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

Official UN paralysis against American imperialism's Cold-War tyranny to try to stifle the life out of socialist Cuba.

For three consecutive years and with the support of a growing number of countries, the General Assembly of the United Nations has passed Resolutions 47/19, 48/16 and 49/9, which express the need to bring to an end the economic, commercial and financial blockade maintained against Cuba by the United States for an uninterrupted period of more than three decades.

In each one of these resolutions the General Assembly has also rejected the extraterritorial nature of the U.S. measures which violate the United Nations Charter and international law.

Recently, the international community witnessed new initiatives placed before the U.S. Congress, - guided not by any respect for the resolutions adopted by the General Assembly calling for the lifting of the unilateral blockade imposed on Cuba,-but containing measures to further extend it.

The Helms-Burton bill, which among its other objectives aims to internationalize the blockade of Cuba, only serves to demonstrate that the cold war still exists for some.

The General Assembly has been kept informed of the negative effects of these aggressive measures on the Cuban economy, as well as on the living standards of the population, and how our relocation of markets has rebounded in a significant increase in acquisition costs, insecurity of supplies and the destabilization of distribution and production.

Information has also been provided on how the anti-Cuba measures applied by the United States have made existing financial difficulties more acute, by depriving the Cuban economy of access to international sources of finance.

For Cuba, its scant and costly external finance resources (despite being in the main guaranteed by sugar, nickel and other export items), include in their cost, already elevated due to coming from commercial sources, surcharges of at least three percent, purely on account of Cuba's "high-risk country" status as a blockaded country. This is given because of the lack of support from the international financial institutions and a substantial number of private agencies, in view of potential reprisals from the United States of America, and because of the business world's general awareness of the extensive range of restrictions under which Cuba has to trade due to the blockade.

In the same way, the U.S. authorities have proceeded to freeze funds released by Cuban companies in order to make international payments, via the controls they exert on an important part of international banking transactions.

The General Assembly had timely knowledge of how the U.S. Government has completely ignored the international community's outcry. The United States has not only failed to lift the criminal and illegal blockade it maintains against the island, in non-compliance with the resolutions already approved, but it has not hesitated to resort to covert methods of aggression, through the use of intimidation, blackmail and dirty tricks on third countries, in order to intensify its policy of hostility to and isolation of the Cuban nation.

This government has continued its detailed and systematic monitoring of agreements and the development of all trade negotiations or investments that Cuba initiates with capital from third countries, with the aim of thwarting them.

Last year the government of the Republic of Cuba was informed by the representatives of two important companies in the developed world that the big tourism investment projects currently being developed in Cuba by them would be halted as a result of direct pressure on them by the U.S. authorities.

One Canadian company, an important supplier of paper and wood to Cuba, recently reported that it was unable to continue its operations as a result of heavy pressure from the U.S. government. According to the company's directors, this pressure translated into substantial losses to the company, given that 80 percent of its operations are based in the United States.

In the field of energy the pressure has been particularly intense.

A Mexican company engaged in an important project to make operational one of the country's main refineries, received a visit from U.S. officials who pointed out that their business with Cuba went against agreements established between Mexico and the United States and could damage relations between the two countries.

On May 13, 1994, the Cuban Fishing Fleet in Canada transferred 45 000 U.S. dollars to the SERVINAVES Panama company, in order to guarantee payment of services required by the vessel Golfo de Guahanacabibes boat on passing through the Panama Canal. This transfer was sent by the Toronto Bank, but it never arrived at its destination because the U.S. Treasury Department office for the control of foreign goods retained the money.

Another concrete example of the effects of the blockade on the development of Cuban foreign trade is maritime transportation.

For every journey from Europe or Asia undertaken by a ship involved in trade with Cuba, the additional costs in comparison with a similar voyage from the United States amount to 215 800 dollars from Europe to Havana and 516 700 dollars from Asia to Havana.

Since the Torricelli Act came into force, many shipping companies are demanding higher freight charges, claiming that after docking at Cuban ports their vessels are not admitted into U.S. ports for a six-month period.

These shipping companies have quoted concrete examples such as the case of the state of Virginia, USA, where the authorities have included in their official documents for operations within the port, a declaration that the vessel concerned has not docked at a Cuban port for a period of 180 days prior to its arrival in the United States.

Recently, cereal transportation, an import commodity that Cuba cannot do without, has had to be contracted out at a rate of 80 dollars per metric ton, compared to approximately half that figure in previous years.

Adding up the losses related to surcharges levied on various imported products and the increased freight costs, in 1994 alone these totaled some 60 million dollars, a similar level to the volume of losses due to the same causes in 1993.

The blockade has been specifically targeted at hindering Cuban export products, one of the scarce sources for obtaining hard currency for the country. This has hit the sugar industry, one of the fundamental pillars of Cuban industry, particularly hard.

The progressive deterioration of sugarcane cultivation over the last four years has been significantly influenced by the deficit of chemical products (fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides) required for its harvesting and by the fuel needed to maintain the high level of mechanization attained in the past.

Apart from Cuba's geographical proximity to the United States, the latter country is the most competitive world market in terms of chemical products. The additional cost incurred by Cuban purchases in 1994, in both price and freight charges, came to more than eight million dollars.

These additional costs, which are not the only ones, cut into Cuba's limited financial resources, already depressed by the fact that its principal industry is only producing at half of its actual capacity.

As was the case in 1993, transactions with U.S. subsidiaries based in third countries were practically zero in 1994 due to the effects of the Torricelli Act, especially in the context of its extraterritorial implications, a situation already recognized in the Secretary-General's report (A/49/398).

At the beginning of this year, the government of the United States of America sent a further document to an important group of countries warning their respective governments, economic entities and investors of the disadvantages of investing in Cuba and the negative implications' such activity could have on their businesses.

We know that recipients of the aforementioned letters include the Spanish Confederation of Business Organizations and Venezuela's Foreign Trade Institute.

In February of this year, a representative of a Dutch firm In Cuba supplying the Cuban fishing fleet with spare parts and other resources informed the Tuna Fleet office that he had been subjected to pressure from the U.S. authorities to cease trading with Cuba.

To the foregoing examples should be added the consistent influence brought to bear on the governments of developing countries not to acquire new, and in some cases, unique products from Cuba's biotechnology industry, with no thought for the thousands of children's lives that could be saved by the recognized efficacy of these products.

If a greater number of examples of actions of this nature on companies, institutions or governments has not been presented, this is due to the risks and further sanctions such a revelation might involve.

According to preliminary estimates, in 1994 the total loss to the Cuban economy — taking into consideration income that is no longer in evidence and the additional spending due to the blockade — amounted to one billion dollars, a figure representing approximately 50 percent of the country's total imports during that year.

If the blockade did not exist, Cuba would not only be able to use those one billion dollars to increase its imports by the same amount, but would have access to additional financial sources currently prohibited as a consequence of its negative effects.

The continuing and recently escalated aggressive measures against Cuba on the part of the United States are designed to cause a "downward spiral" effect on the economy, i.e. to provoke a progressive reduction in the availability of resources to the point of total economic collapse. The promoters of this policy calculate that it would induce such widespread deterioration in living conditions that spontaneous public demonstrations would inevitably follow, thus putting an end to the revolutionary social process initiated 36 years ago, this being the main objective of the last nine U.S. administrations' foreign policy in terms of Cuba.

In 1989, the per capita nutritional index of the Cuban population compared favorably to countries with similar, or even higher levels of development.

Due to the factors detailed previously, and in particular to the effect of measures designed to further increase the U.S. blockade of Cuba, a progressive deterioration in the daily intake of important dietary elements has been noted. Taking as a base food consumption in 1989. by the year of 1993 there was a loss in the daily per capita diet equivalent to 40 percent of fats, 67 and 62 percent of vitamins A and C respectively, 22 percent of iron and 19 percent of calcium.

Nutritional deficits are especially notable in sectors of the population such as pregnant women and children up to five years of age. Incidences of anemia are increasing among pregnant women and children between six months and five years of age.

The low weight at birth index has grown from 7.6 percent in 1990 to nine percent in 1993. In terms of low weight in women at the commencement of pregnancy, among women whose nutrition is supervised, this increased from 8.7 percent in 1990 to ten percent in 1993.

The Cuban government has made enormous efforts to offset the traumatic effects of the criminal blockade against the Cuban nation and has tried to maintain equity in term of food consumption and medicine distribution among the population with the country's limited resources, and to maintain the levels of health care, education, social security and assistance.

Changes within the country's economy have been put into effect to increase food production, to recoup its export potential, to deactivate production in various spheres and to reestablish an acceptable level of basic services. Modest results in these areas, although falling below need, are encouraging.

Although a significantly high amount of the money allotted for imports is spent on foodstuffs and medicines, the effect on the country's payments capacity is of such magnitude that the resources necessary to maintain the operative levels of health care services, and to provide the medicines and nutritional levels our country achieved in earlier decades are no longer available.

The shortage of nutritional and industrial requirements imposed on Cuba by the blockade translates into the physical and mental wearing down of our population. Cuban women are especially affected, since they have to find solutions to satisfy and improve their families' nutritional needs and to maintain levels of personal and domestic hygiene, to the detriment of their leisure and relaxation times.

It is practically impossible for our food industry in current conditions to produce convenience or canned foods, which means that working women face a second working day at home in the kitchen.

This situation of economic deterioration and restricted access to markets resulting from the blockade has had severe repercussions in terms of increased shortages of several essential supplies to guarantee the functioning of key sectors bringing services to the Cuban people.

One of the most illustrative cases is apparent in the health sector, where shortages in cleaning and hygiene materials and vector controls have rebounded on the hygienic-sanitary conditions of the population, with a consequent tendency toward the occurrence and spreading of diseases.

Large pharmaceutical companies and suppliers of medical equipment and parts, who have had long-standing commercial dealings with Cuba, have recently officially informed the" Cuban authorities that they are no longer able to supply items requested as a consequence of the prohibitions imposed on them by U.S. federal agencies, as their products contain elements or have technological licenses from the United States.

Companies that have found themselves compelled to adopt such decisions include:
—  Wellcome (Diagnostic Division) UK. This Division is now under U.S. representation and supplies have been cut.
—  Shuber Seal of Denmark, which supplies rubber seals for medical use. The company stated it would not be able to continue exporting to Cuba due to U.S. government regulations.
—  Ohmeda, UK. The company sells pulmonary ventilators and anesthetizing machines and is unable to offer equipment and spare parts since it requires a special license from the U.S. authorities.
—  Hospal of the Federal Republic of Germany. Cuba ordered dialysis and plasmapheresis machines which the company was unable to provide because of U.S. regulations.
— Janssen of Belgium. The company informed Cuba that in order to sell us medicines, they would have to request an export license from the government of the United States of America, involving a six-month wait.
— Miramed of Italy, which sells medical material and instruments for patients suffering from renal insufficiency. The company gave similar reasons for being unable to sell its products to Cuba.

One particularly dramatic case is the situation confronted by those Cuban citizens whose lives depend on a pacemaker implant.

For several years Cuba has imported pacemakerss from two firms: Teletronics of Australia and Siemens Elema of Sweden.

Towards the end of 1993, Teletronics, in spite of a long-standing sales contract, informed Cuba that it was experiencing difficulties in supplying this product to the country as it contained U.S. components.

In July 1994, Siemens Elema sent a written communication informing Cuba that their pacemaker division had been sold to St. Jude Medical INS., St. Paul MN, USA, and future sales requests would have to be directed to them. As is known, no company located in the United States can sell its products to Cuba.

That is to say, Cuba's two regular suppliers of pacemakers have ceased to supply this vitally important medical aide.

Education at all levels has also been affected by a lack of materials essential to its adequate functioning.

The fact that no educational or health care center has been forced to close, and that the principal indices of mortality and morbidity have been preserved, has been achieved thanks to highly qualified and humane teachers, doctors, nurses and technical staff, and to the organization and structure of the country's education and health care systems. However, in a general sense, material limitations have led to a deterioration in service levels, notable in some sectors, and have also caused the interruption or postponement of certain health care programs.

Moreover, the blockade policy violates the inalienable right of the Cuban and U.S. peoples to enjoy regular and unrestricted flow of cultural exchanges.

Important Cuban musicians have consistently been denied entry visas for the United States, in spite of having been invited by prestigious institutions in that country.

Cuban musicians and composers are not able to collect royalties due from the performance, broadcasting and commercialization of their music in the United States or in other countries on account of the blockade's extraterritorial applications. This is in violation of internationally recognized norms regarding the protection of intellectual property.

The existence of the U.S. economic, commercial and financial blockade of Cuba does not only affect the Cubans living in Cuba. The increasing effects suffered by Cubans resident abroad, especially those who decided to settle permanently in the United States itself, have been verified on more than one occasion.

In recent years, and in the face of increased shortages in Cuba, the practice of Cubans resident abroad sending remittances and parcels of foodstuffs, medicines and other items for personal use to their families on the island, as a form of family aid, had become more frequent.

Cubans resident in the United States visiting the island, and those returning to Cuba after visiting family members in the United States, could travel with up to ten kilogram excess baggage in the form of medicines.

In 1993, some 30 000 Cubans traveled to the United States on family visits, the majority of whom brought medicines back with them on returning. Some of the Cubans resident in the United States who visited Cuba did the same. Estimates on the volume of medicines as family aid received by. Cubans resident on the island in 1993 is to the order of approximately 300 tons.

From August 20, 1994, this situation was made extremely difficult when the U.S. government issued new restrictions which damage the whole spirit of family reunification and the basic right of Cubans resident in the United States to freely travel to their country of origin.

These restrictions also have psychological implications for the thousands of Cuban families established in the United States, who no longer have the opportunity to help their family members in Cuba, and who feel the tensions and frustrations of being unable to do so in the midst of the difficult conditions the country is facing.

These measures contradict the spirit and the letter of Resolution 49/182, approved by the General Assembly with the objective of reaffirming the importance of family reunification and the freedom to travel as universally recognized human rights.

In spite of this resolution those people who have exercised their rights to' travel have come up against these regulations. They are now living in a climate of fear, subjected to pressure from U.S. institutions, particularly from the Treasury Department.

In response to some Cubans' decision to travel to the island via third countries, this Department, through the office for the control of foreign goods, has begun to implement a more effective application of the regulations laid down in relation to the travel ban, by informing the people involved that they will be liable to fines of up to 10 000 dollars or a five-year prison sentence or both.

The negative effects of the blockade are also felt by Cuban business people resident in the United States and in other parts of the world, since they are prevented from doing business with their country of origin on equal terms: those residing in the United States, given the ban on the establishment of commercial links between any U.S. based company and Cuban agency imposed on them by the government of that country, and those who live in other parts of the world due to restrictions they would be subject to by the United States in the event of any trade relations with Cuba.

The United States, far from assuming a sensible and realistic stance vis-a vis its relations with Cuba, is taking steps to make the blockade even harsher, and moreover is seeking to internationalize the policy of unilateral aggression and sanctions it has imposed on the Cuban nation for over thirty years.

in spite of the stipulations resolved by the General Assembly which call on all states to refrain from passing and enforcing laws and measure of the kind referred to in the preamble of Resolution 49/9, in accordance with their obligations to respect the United Nations Charter and international law, on February 9 of this year a bill sponsored by Senator Jesse Helms was placed before the U.S. Congress.

The main objective of this bill is to internationalize the economic blockade of Cuba, and includes the following measures:
—  To prevent Cuba receiving any type of foreign financing or becoming a member of the international financial organizations.
—  To supervise all economic transactions made by Cuba and to put pressure on those involved in such operations.
—  To obstruct the flow of investments to Cuba and, as a consequence, the country's economic recovery by means of sanctions on business executives and companies who are 'trafficking" in U.S. properties nationalized following the triumph of the Revolution, including the expropriated property of Cuban nationals who later traveled to the United States and adopted U.S. citizenship.
— To establish formulas, concepts and definitions to set up a "government of transition or democratic government" in Cuba, hence ignoring the Cuban people's right to self-determination.
— To put maximum pressure on third countries in order to eliminate their most minimal economic links with Cuba. This clearly defines the bill's extraterritorial elements. The United States would not only be in a position to coerce other states into not investing in Cuba, but would also be able to punish the citizens of other countries who fail to comply with its wishes, making them answerable to the jurisdiction of its courts.
—  The United States will also interfere in the trade of- third countries by prohibiting their import of sugar, molasses, syrups and other products containing these which other countries, in their turn, have imported from Cuba.

This aspect of the bill also contravenes the principles of the recently established World Trade organization (WTO), which stipulate the reduction of trade barriers and the elimination of discriminatory treatment in international trade relations.

This bill, in every sense, is a legal, political and economic absurdity.

Even though parts of the text could be modified, the U.S. federal authorities have made clear their intention to overthrow the government freely and sovereignly elected by the people of Cuba.•