Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it.  Karl Marx
Economic & Philosophic Science Review 
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No 0864 Tuesday July 30th 1996                                                                                                10p

EPSR readers' circles meetings in the Northwest Aug 10

The best programme is a correct analysis of modern world history, constantly brought right up to the minute, dissecting the dominant world imperialist crisis, and examining the history of the dictatorship of the proletariat and its further development, the only possible answer to that crisis. The CPGB programme falls far short of what is necessary.

The renewed fears and confusion about 'world terrorism', following the TWA 800 and Atlanta Games bombs which have shattered American imperialist complacency, are a good point at which to re-analyse how ruling classes keep in power, and how the challenge to them grows.

The US domination over the world's television, broadcast, and printed news agencies will work flat out to try to play up universal apprehension about boundaryless international guerrilla-war activities, and petty-bourgeois complacency and irritation against the "disruption and danger by these mindless men of violence", etc, plus plenty of tastelessly over-publicised genuine tragedy about innocent victims, etc.

But the real aim is to pretend that American imperialism can easily cope with this 'isolated, degenerate evil', and to present the phenomenon as just a sick aberration with not even the slightest hint of historical justification or even superficial reasoning, as well as having not the remotest chance of achieving anything against US power, or of ending up anything but totally crushed, - such is the image Washington needs to project of masterly power.

The historical reality is totally different, of course. Individual terrorists might be closed in on. Individual terrorists can even be widely despised. But at this dramatic stage in human history, American imperialism is beginning to have to face up to an international problem of potentially uncontrollable dimensions which even the bourgeois media are starting to describe as a 'virulent' phenomenon "eating away at the public life" of US power.

The threat to imperialist domination from the Middle East and Muslim countries alone is unfathomable and inevitably highly explosive, in more ways than one.

The Arab nations, for example, harbour an indescribable sense of hatred and grievance against the historic Western control of their oil-rich region, crucial to current world development but which only ever reminds the Arab masses of their own humiliating powerlessness, both within their own countries against NATO-backed feudal reactionary stooges, and internationally against the virtual fulltime Western military occupation of their vital geographical region.

There is so much accumulated hatred for past and present Western persecution, exploitation, and injustice that the astonishing thing is how long it has taken for revolt to commence systematically damaging US, British, or French interests (in the main), and how little developed that still is, bad enough as it is becoming with the non-stop attacks on the West's Zionist-Occupation surrogates, and now land attacks on American forces to add to the terror attacks on aircraft and other property abroad.

But grow it will, and Washington's ability to do anything about it will look increasingly pathetic and fragile.

And that is only the Middle East. But American imperialist domineering is hated the world over, as are the shaming and destructive effects of all Western monopoly-capitalist exploitation and allied military bullying.

How much worse would it already be for the survival of Western domination if it was not for the tragic collapse of serious anti-imperialist ideology and struggle over much of the 'advanced' world in recent decades, highlighted by the degeneracy of reformism, revisionism, and Trotskyism, and how they have played into the hands of the monopoly-capitalist ruling classes and the way that they hang onto power.

The first crucial ingredient is obviously keeping all the key controls in the bourgeoisie's own hands over the state's forces of law enforcement, education, and information.

The second crucial ingredient is to use this immense propaganda and persuasion power to keep workers divided about all important domestic and international issues by depriving them of as much knowledge and feeding them as much distortion and prejudice as necessary, and by picking on scapegoats, 'enemies within', or bogeymen to frighten people with or arouse their chauvinist bile.

Anti-communism has been the greatest reactionary triumph in all capitalist history, sowing divisive chaos and ignorance deep into the workers movement worldwide for generations over the nonstop grotesque disinformation put out by bourgeois propaganda about the achievements of the workers states.

Bias and prejudice due to anti-communism has so corrupted modern society, with the connivance of vast philistine sectors of so-called 'left' or 'progressive' opinion, that now not only has a 'Red Scare' rod been made for every protester's back, whether communist or not, but the average levels of performance in the workers movement can no longer even grasp what keeps them divided, or what is the process for trying to rebuild some sort of anti-imperialist struggle and unity.

As endless quotations from Marxism-Leninism can verify if it is not just plainly self-evident, the only way towards ever-greater measures of unity is via ever greater measures of agreement about what has happened and is happening in the world, and what are the forces which can do something about it, and how is it to be done.

The last thing workers need to help them towards greater revolutionary unity is to hear endless subjective-idealist sectarianism about whether "the practice of leader centralism in the guise of democratic centralism is incompatible with a multanimous party that is structured to ensure equality of opportunity in the independent collective elaboration and articulation of "ideas" or whatever, - column after column of which pedantic academic nonsense appears regularly in the press of some "non-ideological" contenders for the role of revolutionary leadership.

What is needed is a fight to the finish, for example, to demonstrate whether or not it makes sense to demand that British imperialism should dismantle its colonial partition of Ireland, disarming every aspect of colonist society, before getting out, or just demand that British imperialism get out and leave civil war chaos behind it, causing the Irish even more suffering from the British-bayonet-imposed colonial partition; and whether or not Marx's understanding of British workers putting chains on themselves by supporting British imperialist colonisation of Ireland required or anticipated British workers helping to overthrow imperialism in a socialist revolution in order to resolve their predicament, or whether it merely envisaged British workers agreeing to a British imperialist withdrawal from Ireland (for whatever reason or under whatever excuse) in order to help begin lifting imperialist domination from their own backs; and whether or not it infringed a proper appreciation of Irish workers' right to self-determination to call for British dismantling of its colonial partition before it left, or whether a truer respect for Irish rights would see British imperialism suddenly pull out without notice or preparation in utter chaos, with the colonial partition community still fully armed and organised, leaving Irish workers to face the civil-war mayhem to deal with "as they themselves decide", etc; - plus countless other matters which it would be helpful to clarify so that British workers could decide if they were being offered a worthwhile new lead or not, after the collapse and historical disgrace of Labour's "reformist" pretensions.

When workers can see a party which describes the actual world struggles to them in terms of what the immediate main reactionary imperialist enemy is, and what might lead to its defeat in order to lead on towards even bigger and better defeats for imperialism subsequently and elsewhere as well, and then demonstrates that precisely this revolutionary view of history is what is working out, - then the workers' own revolutionary consciousness and determination will strengthen, building up ever greater unity and potential for unity.

No supposedly 'methodological' or 'organisational' aspect of theory, such as arguing that the launching of a polemic to settle disputed issues of political theory via a victory over other tendencies represents a 'vanguardist' approach, distinct from a supposedly 'Marxist-Leninist' approach which would polemicise in order to develop rapprochement among communists by "collectively resolving demarcations", can itself be satisfactorily sorted out except by implicit or explicit reference to actual historical disputes in the struggle for revolutionary leadership which saw Marxism or Leninism triumph over an actual revisionist or anti-scientific disaster.

The appeal to Leninist theory to demonstrate with chapter and verse that only historically proven or historically provable correct understanding is worth aiming for, is in general an appeal to the historical validity of the whole of Leninism for its accepted reference points.

It is because of this that anti-communists have increasingly begun to drop the usual pretence of being 'Leninists' in order to actually start challenging whether there was any historical value in Leninism at all, (the deceitful route that the degenerate philistine Gorbachev pursued, tolerated by the rest of the complacent bureaucracy, to dismantle the dictatorship of the proletariat and move from defending the Soviet workers state to destroying it).

Reconfirmation of every aspect of Marxism-Leninism as embodied by successful revolutionary history should be the permanent practice of every serious socialist movement.

Far from it being 'bad' to 'keep going on about Ireland or the Soviet Union' or whatever, - it is the only possible route back to a serious revolutionary party in Britain and the world.

Only in the course of making a sensible analysis of world history, - incorporating all that was proved correct in Marxist-Leninist theory by the whole experience of overthrowing imperialism and building workers states and the national-liberation movements - can any worthwhile statements be made at all about the present class struggle and how world social development should proceed henceforward.

In other words, all theory is merely concentrated human experience, and political theory is nothing but the historical record, variously distorted, ignored, or distilled correctly.

The real meat that all anti-communists truly want to chew on is a total challenge to Leninism itself, but many of the more discreet anti-communists (like more than half the British 'left') are still too uncertain and mealy-mouthed to come out with it openly.

What the petty-bourgeois fake-'left' hate about Leninism is its ruthless championing of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and its merciless assault on factionalising dilettantism.

It was Leninism which blitzed the 'pro-Soviet' rank-and-fileist Kronstadt revolt. It was Leninism which tore up the results to the post-October-1917 Constituent Assembly elections. It was Leninism which routed several 'national independence' revolts in the southern republics and elsewhere using implacable Soviet force. It was Leninism which decided to construct socialism inside Soviet boundaries on its own, in the absence of any spread of revolution into Europe. It was Leninism which re-introduced such free capitalist market measures as were necessary for economic expediency. It was Leninism which sought temporary peaceful coexistence deals with Western imperialism in order to give the USSR a bigger reconstruction breathing space before the next imperialist warmongering. It was Leninism which suppressed factionalising inside the ruling Communist Party because of the danger to the workers state security. It was Leninism which hired bourgeois experts at above average pay to help develop Soviet state and economic power. It was Leninism which granted concessions to imperialist monopolies to exploit Soviet resources which the USSR was in no position to exploit as successfully itself. It was Leninism which set up a powerful state security police. And so on, and so on.

All of these unavoidable historical developments, and scores more besides, were all subsequently attributed to Stalinism alone in additional bogus demoralising accusations which totally dominated the planet in the aftermath of Lenin's death as the Soviet workers state under its Bolshevik Revolution continued to flourish and strengthen, threatening the spectre of world communism as it developed.

The enormous actual revisionist damage inflicted by Stalinism was tragically bad enough. But the vain cultism, the paranoid suspicion, the bureaucratic fear to encourage ever wider and deeper democratic involvement, and the arbitrary tyranny, which this defeatist retreat from Marxist-Leninist philosophy allowed to flourish, was in turn ludicrously embroidered upon by bourgeois anti-communism to further its real anti-Leninist aims. 

Central to this greatest propaganda/disinformation coup in all history, - by the imperialist bourgeoisie or by any other challenged ruling class, - was the turncoat role of the Trotskyite and state-capitalist 'left' in the West.

Until decades of fundamental lies in basic Western education, greatly facilitated by the fake-'left' pursuing their bitter and vengeful anti-Soviet vilification path, - are unlearned, - then the generations of workers and intellectuals who fell for anti-communism will have continued to make a rod for their own backs.

The Soviet Union may be no more, - but there is only one dictatorship of the proletariat, only one basic form of the workers state and its security relations with the outside world, and only one basic form of socialist planned economic development and its essential social infrastructure. Condemn 70 years of Soviet workers state development (and East European development); and avoid (or hope to) having to comment on China, Cuba, and Vietnam, - and the whole historical fight against the imperialist free-market forces has been abandoned for all time. 

There is no alternative to the dictatorship of the proletariat. There is no alternative to the workers state and its difficult security with surrounding imperialism in the possibly short or long interregnum before the completion of the world socialist revolution. There is no alternative to planned socialist economic development plus its essential social infrastructure.
 
And in terms of its actual colossal unrepeatable impact on world history dominating the 20th century, there is no alternative to the experience of the Soviet workers state as the first great achievement running society without a free-market capitalist imperialist ruling class dominating society via its half-hidden dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

Anti-communism remains massively powerful in the West, and that it rests on abysmal historical ignorance is reflected in the abysmally weak position which serious Marxist-Leninist philosophy also now commands under capitalism, its name and heritage ridiculed by such appallingly idiotic opportunism as represented by Living Marxism, by the Marxist Party, and previously by Marxism Today, etc, etc.

Scargill's launch of the Socialist Labour Party has been a reflection of the growing divergence between what the reality of proletarian exploitation and alienation remains under monopoly imperialism, and what petty bourgeois opportunism has been swept along into claiming about 'freemarket democracy' in the wake of the West's extraordinary coup in getting the USSR revisionist bureaucracy and its closest allies to capitulate to imperialist domination without further fight under the guise of "joining in building our common European home" and other such mind boggling gibberish.

But as most now agree, Scargill may have broken from the Labour Party but he has not remotely broken from Labourism, and his philistinism will never allow him to. Approaching the SLP in the confident expectation of being able to turn it into the revolutionary party was always a mistake, one likely to lead to unnecessary tactical errors.

Scargill's party is likely to become a centrist phenomenon at best, occasionally talking of socialist revolution and even of Marxism, but sticking in reality to the traditions, methods, and expectations of bourgeois parliamentary democracy and trade unionism.

But the SLP's launch has helped bring about a challenge to entrenched sectarianism around the 'left' of the labour movement, a slight thaw itself reflecting the colossal political upheavals demonstrated by the liquidation of revisionism and reformism but with their roots in the growing crisis of imperialism itself as inter-imperialist conflict and trade war began to overshadow even the Cold War in importance for specific bourgeois imperialist survival interests.

It has been a great step forward for parties and groups to take advantage of the changing climate to begin trying to clarify and maybe overcome their differences, but anti-communist prejudice remains the huge obstacle to rapid progress. It will have to be addressed and demolished, but this process cannot even begin under the barmy delusion that unity can be achieved by avoiding or suppressing differences. They can only be fought out to a conclusion. 

Worthwhile joint political struggle can be continued in the meantime, but the quantity and quality of that activity will increase the greater the degree of genuine unity because more vexed questions have been resolved rather than swept under the carpet.

A seductive substitute for pressing on with clarifying all issues is to waste endless time debating the formal minutiae of steps towards joint activity, - the same sort of boring trade-union legalism and constitution mongering with which Scargill's SLP bureaucracy has already tried to kill off political development inside his party.

It reflects a lack of confidence in discussing political perspectives, and above all a lack of confidence in the Leninist essence of political agitation and education, always proceeding from the very highest point of development of the international class struggle, meaning its very latest manifestations, analysing them as regularly and rapidly as possible in order to continuously confirm, extend, or correct the existing revolutionary world view.

Platforms, programmes, strategy, and tactics are all vital, and all require some formal attention. But what the working class is suffering from most desperately is the continuing complete confusion in the labour movement as a whole about how the current world scene is to be described and analysed in even the most general terms. Is it a period of firm US-controlled 'new world order', or is it a time of unprecedentedly colossal uncertainty and upheaval which could break out into total worldwide mayhem of trade-wars, market collapses, civil-wars, inter-imperialist wars, and revolutions at any moment?

Are the workers state successes for the last 80 years of this century just a sour sad wrong turning in history, best soon forgotten, or have they been the outlines of the obvious only future development for mankind which can tolerably function as planned socialist economies and societies without any need for uncontrollable capitalist market forces which have totally imposed their dominating brutality and destruction on the 20th century so far.?

Is there such a phenomenon as 'stageism' which has prevented the world socialist revolution from already being completed because of a lack of permanent revolutionary boldness in human thinking, or is the overthrow of imperialist domination a long historical process going through many phases which reflects a steadily growing general level of world revolutionary consciousness, advancing via many paths and forms towards international rational Marxist-Leninist science, and which in the real world has been undermining imperialism's positions bit by bit, but always susceptible to dramatic leaps in leadership ability and understanding to take advantage of the continuing possibility of dramatic leaps in revolutionary advance here and there from time to time.?

The obvious way forward for deepening the investigation and clarification of all these issues rests, as always, in specific cases. Argument and polemics are the only avenue for proceeding. Long before Open Polemic and rapprochement were even thought of, EPSR comrades would regularly attempt to exchange publications with 'left' groups with a view to polemicising with them. The negative sectarian response was invariable. The CPGB now resists having political clarification introduced into a discussion on joint platforms, and prefers to spend three hours reinventing the wheel ('bourgeois elections can provide a tribune for revolutionary politics') rather than make a start to sorting out the huge political differences which leave the working class without a revolutionary programme beyond the existing 57 varieties of sectarian subjectivism. Needless to say, the CPGB of course refuses an exchange of publications with the EPSR.

Without exception, this sectarianism goes way back with every single group. All have been challenged at some time or other over such wretched opportunism as welcoming the CIA-Vatican counter-revolutionary stunt Solidarnosc; joining the bourgeois chorus against the NUM in 1984-85 for a miners' strike ballot; falling for the Western propaganda stunt about a non-existent 'massacre' in Tienanmen Square; refusing to say a word about what became of the 'political revolution' when the endless undermining of the European workers states finally resulted in only counter-revolutionary reaction and not one jot of 'perfect rank-and-file socialism'; failing to grasp basic Marxist anti-colonial national-liberation positions on Ireland; etc, etc. All have avoided openly examining their mistakes and drawing conclusions from them, which is the crucial and only way for Leninist science to proceed.

The CPGB draft programme suffers from being insufficiently oriented towards the crisis of imperialism, which is the real character of the epoch, however grand sounding it is to term it "the epoch of revolutionary transition from capitalism to communism"; and insufficient attention to the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is the Marxist-Leninist description precisely of the transitional period between world capitalism and world communism, (not 'the international socialist revolution' as the transition period, as circles close to the CPGB try to insist).

It is not enough to briefly dismiss past socialist revolution as always facing the danger of deformation and counter-revolution if the world socialist revolution did not spread, and that the victory of socialist revolution in one or more countries could remain only partial.

Though true, it simply ignores the reality of the 20th century which is the huge conflict between the partial world socialist revolution and surrounding imperialism which has been the background to all struggle for socialism ever since, with the dictatorship of the proletariat, as Marxist-Leninist science fully and accurately predicted, as the crucial ingredient in that conflict, on which the whole of world attention has now been concentrated by bourgeois propaganda for 80 years.

What about the battles for proletarian dictatorship as they have been fought, as they have been responded to by Western middle-class ideology, and as they ought to have been fought?

The character of the epoch remains the crisis of world imperialism precisely because these are the live issues, totally determining what progress can be made in the world. Allende, the New Jewel Movement, the Sandinistas, and others, all failed to argue for or fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Where are they now? What happened to Gorbachev's USSR which abandoned the dictatorship of the proletariat, which has not happened to China, Vietnam, and Cuba who have also introduced some degree of capitalist market measures? Who is going to seize state power next in the world, and what is US imperialism going to do about it, - and therefore how should that power seizure be envisaged and accomplished?

All the real juice of an analysis of the modern world and what ways forward it offers are just ignored by the CPGB 'programme' as presumably too difficult to deal with. This, of course, flows from years of running away from polemics about their own past mistakes, - e. g. their refusal to back the Polish workers state against Solidarnosc; their disgraceful hypocrisy in hiding behind the 'official communist' label for so long without having the slightest intention of really defending the East European set-up (unconditionally from counter-revolution while criticising its obvious weaknesses) and their refusal to comment on this once it suited them to pull out; their past attachment to dubious international theoretical gurus now mysteriously dropped without comment; etc, etc.

The CPGB is way behind the real struggle. It is in great need of much more political discussion. It is in even greater need of studying the work of the Economic and Philosophic Science Review.

A serious programme analysis of the world would begin as follows, taking in the main issues which have helped form modern consciousness and have brought the world to its present position, hardly any of which even gets mentioned in the CPGB's academic 'draft programme':

The 'new world order' proclaimed by the American ruling class after the disintegration of the revisionist bureaucracy in the USSR and elsewhere, is just the old imperialist order staggering on ever deeper into an insoluble economic/warmongering crisis.

The capitalist system and bourgeois ideology of all kinds, had never ceased to be to the dominating force on the planet. The socialist camp had been retreating from Marxist Leninist leadership for decades, and the undoubted might and influence of the workers states, potentially superior to that of the 'free world', had long been made impotent by the loss of communist philosophical perspectives.

Without a correct world view of imperialist crisis as the decisive factor in historical change, the colossal achievements of planned socialism began to be scorned even by its own bureaucrats.

Philistinely unable to grasp that the West's apparently inexhaustible affluence (for financing damaging anti-communist propaganda and provocations, and glitzy free-market boasting) would not last forever; the Moscow revisionists yearned to capitulate to private monopoly capital so as to lead an even quieter life than ever.

Before the 'free world' idiots had drawn up their ridiculous 'end of history' conclusions, the anti-Leninist bureaucracy had abandoned any further thought of a new inter-imperialist crisis breaking out any year now (damning capitalism once and for all).

These spontaneous class-collaborators were theoretically incapable of seeing the coming all-out three cornered war for supremacy between US, German, and Japanese imperialism, and instead dreamed of a Popular Front to end all Popular Fronts, - with imperialism itself, in a 'merger' of the two systems.

What US imperialism 'triumphed' over was not communism but the muddle headed opportunism of careerists like Gorbachev.

And what triggered this final liquidation of revisionism, whose path had been prepared for by half a century of anti-Leninist 'popular front' and 'peaceful road' confusion, - was in fact a new lurch in imperialism's crisis. There is indeed a 'new world order' of sorts, but it is the challenge to Washington's international supremacy by resurgent German and Japanese economic imperialism which is the essence of these dramatic changes.

Moscow had not been seriously seeking to overthrow imperialism for years. The Cold War arms race was far more importantly a vehicle enabling US imperialism to dominate the capitalist world than it was a 'shield' supposedly protecting Westerners from being murdered in their beds by rampant agents of international communism.

America's hysterical anti-communist crusading permitted McCarthy fascism to silence domestic critics of imperialist exploitation, boosted US monopoly capitalism's key armaments industry bringing in $billions in worldwide export sales and advancing US technology at the taxpayers' expense, and provided an excuse for more than 200 colonial war actions by the West since 1945 to 'halt the spread of communism', true, but mainly to maintain US imperialism's role of interfering international gendarme in the whole world's affairs; including continued military occupation rights in Germany and Japan.

But this Pax Americana ruling the planet since 1945 was also very costly, piling up ever huger US budget and foreign trade deficits from propping up an endless series of fascist-stooge regimes and military dictatorships on every continent (provided they were sufficiently anti-communist).

Paradoxically, it was under the arch Cold Warrior Ronald Reagan that these world domination bills finally threatened to bankrupt the US Treasury, so deals were struck with Gorbachev to slow down or cut out some of the more expensive but pointless aspects of the Cold War armaments race against the USSR.

The purpose of the economies and relegating some of the more tub-thumping 'evil empire' features of anti-communist crusading to the back burner, was to save the dollar from collapse and to free Washington's hands to prepare for serious all-out conflict against the true challenge to the USA's dominant influence in the world, - not from complacent, bureaucratic, revisionist, peaceful-coexistence-seeking Moscow but from the now resurgent and rampant economic imperialism of Germany and Japan whose immense finance-capital power was now beginning to overshadow America's.

It was as a by-product of this dramatic shift in the international balance of class and national forces that the careerist, opportunist, petty-bourgeois mentality of the CPSU cadres and leadership, delightedly embracing Washington's new soft-cop phase replacing the hard-cop threats of previous years, finally reached a qualitative turn in its slow degeneration from Marxist-Leninist philosophy and embraced Popular Front liquidationism totally.

Class-collaboration was always at the heart of this Stalinist policy in a defeatist search for bourgeois allies for the USSR, both in class forces within every domestic political struggle to isolate extreme reaction, and internationally to isolate fascist states such as German imperialism under Hitler, - but sought not as a temporary expedient tactic but as a new permanent class-collaborating order for the planet.

Not only was this illusion unattainable, it goes without saying, but it also implied ultimately a complete rejection of socialism by the Soviet bureaucracy itself.

The Marxist understanding of the class war essence of history was summed up by Lenin in his article The Third International & its place in history:

'Whoever has read Marx and has not understood that in capitalist society, at every acute moment, in every serious conflict of classes, the only thing possible is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of the proletariat, has understood nothing of either Marx's economic or political doctrines.'

In the Spanish civil war, either the proletariat would have to set up a completely revolutionary dictatorship to harness the full potential mass might of the workers and peasants, - or else Franco and the fascist-putsch generals were bound to win.

But the revisionists abandoned Leninism, and tied the fate of the working class to that of petty-bourgeois parliamentary democracy by limiting the armed struggle to the 'defence of the (bourgeois) republic'.

This 'democratic' communist stance failed to win a single bourgeois state ally for Republican Spain (to counter the grotesque intervention by fascist Germany and Italy behind Franco) and could never provide the firm class leadership behind which the petty bourgeois masses can sometimes unite with the proletariat's stronger sense of purpose and resolve. Franco won easily, and the fascist blitzkrieg on the USSR two years later became inevitable.

The Soviet bureaucracy's simultaneous international 'peace' campaign similarly failed to halt the drive to inter-imperialist war (inherent in the insoluble capitalist economic crisis for worldwide trading and colonial hegemony); and only some neat last-minute footwork by Stalin in signing a non-aggression pact with Hitler (after the West had spurned an anti-fascist alliance with the USSR) avoided the Soviet Union having to fight the forces of warmongering imperialist crisis on its own. By turning Hitler West first  (after the Munich agreement and other Anglo-Saxon conspiracies had initially attracted Hitler towards Eastern adventures, sacrificing Czechoslovakia, Austria, etc to the Third Reich's Nazi 'lebensraum' demands), - the USSR at least did end up in anti-fascist alliance with the West.

But that temporary expedient suiting both sides was farcically projected by Stalinism after 1945 into completely disarming myths about a 'peaceful road to socialism'  and 'permanent peaceful competition between the two systems, capitalism and socialism' now being the way forward, which socialism's 'economic superiority' was bound to win because of capitalism's 'incurable slump' (see Stalin's Economic Problems of Socialism 1952, and Bulletin 641).

In other words, Third International revisionism was beginning to completely lose sight of the Marxist understanding that the world society could either be a bourgeois dictatorship or a proletarian dictatorship, but not both. One was bound to batter the other into the ground, and with Stalinism abandoning completely the aim of world socialist revolution, then revisionism's self-liquidation became only a matter of time unless Leninist philosophy could triumph again in the Third International.

Maoism flattered briefly but it was much closer to Stalin than Lenin on crucial questions of the fight for revolutionary theory, without which the world socialist revolution will not be completed. (See ILWP Books Volume 16). Peking quickly abandoned world revolutionary Marxist-Leninist leadership for nationalist-sectarian voluntarism.

The Vietnamese and Cuban revolutions heroically carried forward the revolutionary fight against imperialism, more tentatively followed elsewhere such as in Nicaragua, Zimbabwe, Grenada, Angola, etc.

But as brilliant as these achievements were, there was still no challenge to Moscow's theoretical bankruptcy. Imperialism was being fought pragmatically, - not with leadership by a correct Marxist-Leninist philosophical world view, however.

As a result, Cuba's heroic internationalism in Angola, for example, routing the South African invasion forces, was marred by Havana's catastrophic endorsement of Allende's renewal of Popular Front nonsense in Chile in 1970 which predictably ended up in fascist slaughter by 1973 because of revisionism's now reactionary ignorance of proletarian-dictatorship science, and even hostility to it. Similar disastrous theoretical confusion surrounded the brutal overthrow of the Grenadan revolution in 1983 (see ILWP Books vol 12).

With the lightweight bureaucratic philistine Gorbachev, this Third International retreat from Leninism reached its climax (see ILWP Books, volumes 11,13,17).

Naïvely convinced that world harmony was an instantly achievable goal through class-collaboration, Gorbachev bent over backwards further than any previous chief bureaucrat, and started trying to import and imitate some of the trivial superstructure of so-called 'capitalist democracy', ludicrously believing that Reagan's belated reluctant response to yet another Soviet 'peace' initiative meant that the imperialist and socialist systems could begin to merge together.

All that happened was that the dictatorship of the proletariat was finally buried politically as it already had been buried theoretically, and the Soviet workers state and planned economy began to be broken up for takeover by capitalist scrap-metal merchants.

Because of many decades of CPUs’ retreats from Marxist-Leninist philosophy (see ILWP Books 3, 4, 6. and 7), the party's cadres were hopelessly all over the place in trying to resist Gorbachev's effective liquidationism.

His subjective-idealist devotion to propaganda miracles (such as 'a common European home', glasnost [openness], and an abstract perestroika [reconstruction] which remained in a perpetual muddle about what its final aims were) amounted in the end to a total capitulation merely to parliamentary cretinism, - the most trivial and ancient petty-bourgeois delusion imaginable.

Socialism can only be built in step with the conscious philosophical construction of a proletarian dictatorship under a leadership party of deliberately scientific Marxist Leninist revolutionary theory.

The Moscow bureaucracy was, in the finish, so far removed from a Marxist-Leninist world-revolutionary understanding that their spontaneous petty-bourgeois philistinism was completely hostile to the anti-imperialist essence of socialism.

The new mythology that socialism was defeated by capitalism is laughable. The potential greatness for a planned world economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat would put the 500-year epoch of bourgeois dictatorship greatness in world history as firmly in the shade as capitalism overshadowed the achievements of feudalism.

But the dictatorship of the proletariat was utterly betrayed by the cowardly vestiges of petty-bourgeois revisionism, worming their way back into the workers states because of a failure to carry forward the development of the revolutionary theory of Marxist-Leninist world leadership.

Despite the difficulties of relative economic backwardness, of being outnumbered, and of just having had to recover from the most devastating invasion-war in all history at the hands of German imperialism, the Soviet workers sate was nevertheless able to match US imperialist nuclear encirclement threats blow for blow, eventually getting ahead in nuclear rocket potential and other weapons of advanced destructiveness.

And this ability to defend itself, after 70 years of socialist camp development, had grown steadily stronger over the years, was not subject to boom and slump fluctuations, and was steadily increasing its sphere of influence over the planet. Soviet Russia had similarly risen to the challenge of Western imperialist aggression in the 1930s when Germany's fascist Third Reich was the threat.

The USSR and the socialist camp were brought down completely from within by a chronic failure of CPSU and Third International revolutionary philosophy to keep up with the world leadership obligations which had been thrust upon them.

In his 1920s work Left-wing communism - an infantile disorder, Lenin warned about the well-known dangers of ideological regression all the time that imperialism remained a powerful force on the planet:

'We in Russia are going through the first steps in the transition from capitalism to socialism, or the lower stage of communism. Classes have remained and will remain everywhere for years after the conquest of power by the proletariat.....Small commodity producers...must be re-educated and remoulded only by very prolonged, slow, cautious organisational work. They encircle the proletariat on every side with a petty-bourgeois atmosphere which permeates and corrupts the proletariat and causes constant relapses among the proletariat into petty-bourgeois spinelessness, disunity, individualism, and alternate moods of exaltation and dejection. The strictest centralisation and discipline are required within the political party of the proletariat in order to counteract this, in order that the organisational role of the proletariat (and that is its principle role) may be exercised correctly, successfully, victoriously. The dictatorship of the proletariat is a persistent struggle , - bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative, - against the forces and traditions of the old society. The force of habit of millions and tens of millions is a most terrible force...Whoever weakens ever so little the iron discipline of the party of the proletariat (especially during the time of its dictatorship) actually aids the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.'

Lenin's description of how petty-bourgeois revolutionism joins with bourgeois reaction to deride the 'prolonged, slow, persistent struggle - bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative - by the proletarian dictatorship against the terrible force of the habits and traditions of the old society' is remarkably prophetic of the most decisive offensive against Leninism in modern history in support of Solidarnosc in Poland. The entire reformist, Trot, and Eurocommunist revisionist swamp joined forces with Reagan, Thatcher, the Vatican and the CIA to try to prevent the Polish workers state from reimposing centralised discipline over the Catholic revolt for bourgeois democracy (see ILWP Books 3,4,&7). Walesa's fascist worship of 'new order' capitalism in Japan, Sweden and Pilsudski Poland eventually caused a minority of the left swamp to jump off the Solidarnosc bandwagon. But, for example, The Leninist still refused to give unconditional support to the Polish workers state because these fair-weather fence-sitters feared further 'embarrassing difficulties' for Warsaw.

In a warning to the international working class of just how long and difficult would be the development of successful socialist states (especially in view of the frenzied disruption of the Soviet camp later by the fascist-imperialist blitz on the USSR by German, Italian & Japanese capitalism and their allies, followed by the US imperialist nuclear encirclement and $billions Cold War propaganda subversion campaign, bribing dissidents etc.) Lenin adds:

'Under Soviet rule your proletarian party and ours will be invaded by a still larger number of bourgeois intellectuals. They will worm their way into the Soviets, the courts, and the administration, - for communism cannot be built otherwise than with the aid of the human material created by capitalism: and the bourgeois intellectuals cannot be expelled and destroyed, but must be vanquished, remoulded, assimilated and re-educated:  -  just as we must, in a protracted struggle waged on the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat, re-educate the proletarians themselves, who do not abandon their petty bourgeois prejudices at one stroke by a miracle at the behest of the Virgin Mary, at the behest of a slogan, a resolution,  a decree, - but only in the course of a long and difficult mass struggle against mass petty bourgeois influences. Under Soviet rule these same problems...are arising anew within the Soviets, within the Soviet administration...Among the Soviet engineers, the Soviet school teachers and the privileged (the most highly skilled and best situated) workers in the Soviet factories, we observe a constant revival of absolutely all the negative traits peculiar to bourgeois parliamentarianism, - and we are conquering this evil, gradually, only by tireless constant, prolonged and persistent struggle, proletarian organisation and discipline.

'Compared with these truly gigantic problems of re-educating, under the proletarian dictatorship, millions of peasants and small masters, hundreds of thousands of office employees, officials and bourgeois intellectuals, of subordinating them all to the proletarian state and to proletarian leadership, of vanquishing their bourgeois habits and traditions - compared with these gigantic problems it is childishly easy to establish under the rule of the bourgeoisie, in a bourgeois parliament, a really communist group of a real proletarian party.
 
Lenin - Left Wing Communism - an infantile disorder.

(to be continued). Build Leninism. RB

[Article on the Trots' hero, George Orwell, the rat-fink secret police stooge, is held over]

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 32, 82 Colstom St., Bristol BS1 5BB]
No. 181. Sunday 28th July 1996

From Atlanta to Jakarta, imperialist crisis sets the agenda.

With Atlanta's 'Berlin Games' style triumphalism strangled at birth (seemingly at the hand of homegrown fascist reaction), hunger-striking communists and Kurd nationalists in Turkish gaols forcing Washington's butcher-allies into a propaganda retreat, and the corrupt CIA-nurtured Suharto clan facing popular revolt in Indonesia, this has been another lousy week for the "new world order".

In fact, every week that passes provides fresh evidence that the old Cold War mechanism of US domination can no longer be relied upon, and that they cannot simply be replaced by a new version of undisputed US hegemony.

And at the heart of the crisis of world imperialism (which is driving all these developments) lies the crisis of the US dollar economy itself, mesmerising the world with its white-knuckle rides on Wall Street and Greenspan's tightrope walk on interest rates.

The dollar's troubles against the yen appear to be a combination of both interest rate and, political factors. Worries about higher interest rates are being compounded by renewed concern about political friction between the US and Japan, with trade talks between the two countries apparently not making much progress:

	Among the biggest investors in US bonds have been the Japanese. As the Bank of Japan slashed interest rates to lift its economy out of slump, investors borrowed at rock bottom rates in Tokyo and piled into US bonds.

	Over the past year the Japanese bought $150bn of US bonds, more than the entire US budget deficit. Meanwhile, the household savings of Main Street, America poured into shares. In the first half of this year mutual 	funds pulled in a staggering $25bn a month. 

Share prices, particularly in high-technology stocks, were pushed to wide-blue yonder levels.

Gail Dudack, equity watcher for UBS in New York, perspicaciously warned of a coming correction - and believes Wall Street has seen only the half of it.

"The problem is corporate earnings. What makes me suspicious is that there is a large number of companies reporting earnings neatly one penny above the consensus. There seems to he a pattern that implies corporate America has got very sophisticated at guiding analysts.

"Margins are being cut because in this low inflation environment companies have no pricing power, corporate restructuring and cost cutting is substantially played out, and energy costs are 15 per cent up on a year ago.

"Over the summer and autumn we will see the second half of this correction."

Wall Street is not out of the woods. And insiders point to two worrying developments. First, on three occasions last Tuesday the wild share price swings tripped the "down-tick" rule, triggering a circuit-breaker introduced to help prevent a repeat of the October 1987 crash.

Circuit-breakers are only meant to kick in during exceptional periods of volatility. But the down-tick rule has been triggered 67 times this year - an unhealthy pointer for a global equity market that is not supposed to perform like a thinly capitalised emerging market roller-coaster. 

Second, the flows into mutual funds look to have gone into reverse, with estimates of the June figure suggesting a $4bn outflow in the week to July 17 -  after a $15bn inflow for the month of May.

As for August 20, the market still fears a rate rise, which could be the first of several. And if the Bank of Japan raises rates this autumn, as is likely, this could staunch the flow of money into Wall Street. Greenspan's dilemma remains acute: how to ease rates up without triggering a market meltdown.

In the words one bond market vigilante in London on Friday: "Poor Greenspan, he's damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't.'  

The disparaging reference to "emerging market roller coasters" is doubly revealing, both in its tacit admission that the manic capital expansion in the Tiger economies is reality nothing like a historical repeat of the USA's (relatively) stable postwar boom expansion under (unrepeatable) conditions of world monopoly domination, and is the admission that for the US too this hegemonic 'golden age' is gone for good, and it must relearn in its dotage how to scrape by on its market wits.

This tale of Japanese investing in US government bonds whilst Americans get on with the job of stoking up the shares market is not just some sideshow, but is at the centre of American capitalist existence. Conversely, whatever seriously disrupts this balancing act also disrupts productive existence throughout the world dollar economy and beyond.

If a hike in Japanese interest rates spoils the game of raising cheap capital in Tokyo to spend an interest-yielding bonds in New York, or if central banks no longer buy up dollars because dollars are so weak, how is the gigantic US government debt to be financed?

It is 'unthinkable' that it should NOT be financed, after all, whose 'bailiffs' will undertake to distrain US imperialism's 'furniture' if it defaults? But this is only to say that it is 'unthinkable' how imperialism is to outlive the crisis which its uneven development is imposing on the world. Any doubts about the seriousness with which rival monopoly capitalists will be prepared to strive for undivided possession of the fruits of exploitation, once push comes to shove, should be removed by the sight of the hi-tech war preparations pushing ahead on ell sides (Treasury restrictions or no Treasury restrictions).

And if it's the case that the true ratio of share prices to corporate earnings is even more over stretched than the massaged official figures admit, and further major "corrections' (market crashes) are in the offing - perhaps already heralded by the current outflow of mutual funds, suggests the capitalist press, - then what is shaking is the central pillar of the world financial system itself, and no combination of circuit breakers, central bank 'coordination' or G7 political horse-trading can be relied upon to save it.

Imperialism has got to scramble for SOLUTIONS to these problems, not just on paper and in conferences breathing the pretended Olympic spirit of 'good will to all nations', but in a world riven into competing trade blocs, each with the identical goal of world market domination at the expense of all the rest.

Washington can't get used to losing its trusted Cold War trump card of anti-communism as it fights to hang on to its world market positions. Far from being kept in line by Washington cracking the whip over Cuba, Europe has been driven into open trade-war antagonism. And by extending the scope of the trade bans to Iran and Libya as well, Washington has trodden on enough toes to (momentarily) unite all Europe against this common enemy:

President Bill Clinton will sign legislation imposing sanctions on foreign companies investing in Iran and Libya despite strong objections froth its European partners. The European Commission yesterday condemned the law which targets the two countries' oil and gas industries, as "unacceptable".

The spokesman said the EU might meet any threat which the legislation posed to European economic and commercial interests by using retaliatory measures being drawn up in Brussels.

He said nothing in the EU's proposed measures limited their application to Helms-Burton cases, and the Council of Ministers could decide to amend the proposals specifically to cover problems raised by the Iran-Libya legislation.

The economic implications of the Iran-Libya legislation for the EU are potentially much bigger than those of the Helms Burton Act, because it is aimed at countries which supply about a fifth of Europe's energy needs, and in which the European oil industry has large investments.

... widespread suspicion in the US that a terrorist bomb, possibly of Iranian or Middle Eastern origin, brought down the TWA Boeing 747 jetliner killing all 230 passengers and crew last week, leaves Mr Clinton with little choice but to sign the measure, even if he were inclined to veto it.

The irony of the latest legislation is that the inclusion of Libya, which was not a Clinton administration priority, has actually prompted a common response among European oil companies.

"If it had been Iran alone then many companies would have said 'let the French go their own way'," said another London-based executive who oversees oil projects in Libya.

Only Total, the French oil company, has signed a deal with Iran. But the extensive and well-established European presence in Libya created common ground for companies from many countries.

Oil groups with big interests in Libya include Agip of Italy, Repsol of Spain, Austria's OMV, Belgium's Petrofina and Total of France.

Other companies, such as Lasmo of the UK, are currently exploring for reserves. 

At the moment the sole discordant voice on this issue is Britain's, still unable to decide whether to be an outclassed also-ran in Europe or an unpaid fifth column for an ungrateful America:

Britain has thrown into uncertainty European Union plans to retaliate against controversial US anti-Cuba legislation by threatening to veto some of the EU's proposed measures unless it is satisfied they do not infringe British sovereignty

Britain had previously been among the governments pressing must strongly for a robust EU response to the Helms-Burton Act.

An official said it was unclear whether the UK had fundamental objections to the proposals. or whether it was engaging in temporary delaying tactics in an attempt to pre-empt accusations from Tory Eurosceptics that it was aligning itself too closely with the EU against the US.

Such treachery under trade-war fire will doubtless be recalled next time Britain waxes indignant over its right to privileged access to the 'Target' market in the Euro currency, or insists on the permanent priority of London over Frankfurt as European finance centre.

Meanwhile, as over-capacity gets a grip on established markets, and the battle gets under way to shape and dominate new markets coming through in Asia and elsewhere, France and Britain are spotted trying to slip under the trade-bloc wire. It seems they hope to use their flagging prestige as 'independent' nuclear-armed members of the permanent Security Council club to secure a sly market advantage over the rest of the German-led pack:

The Asean Regional Forum, a caucus for debating security issues in Asia, yesterday said it might grant membership to the UK and France, even though both countries are already represented through the European Union's participation in the grouping. 

The forum brings together foreign ministers from 20 countries as well as the EU.

It allows China, Russia, the US, Japan, India and others to debate security issues in an open forum once a year with the seven members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) - Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, the Philippines and Vietnam.

A European Commission official expressed dismay at the British and French application.

He said that the move displayed a lack of trust by London and Paris in the abilities of the EU.

"This certainly creates frictions," the official said.

Mr Ali Alatas, Indonesia's foreign minister and chairman of forum this year, confirmed that formal applications from the UK and France had been received.

Two senior Asean officials said that under new guidelines announced yesterday the UK and France would be more fitting as forum members than the EU.

The guidelines state that members must be sovereign states and should have a clear relevance to Asean on security matters. The UK and France are both nuclear powers and permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. 

Such 'unfair' moves are the essence of 'free competition' monopoly style, and can expect to be countered by similar and worse treachery as the game gets nastier and the key challengers to US hegemony (Germany and Japan) come to the fore.

What keeps shoving everyone down this road is the world crisis of overproduction, which in reality capitalism cannot be prevented from imposing except through its revolutionary expropriation.

Until that point is reached, however, all monopoly capitalists continue to hare off after new markets to replace the glutted-out old markets, praying that new monopoly positions can be established there from which all rival capital expansion can be excluded and wiped out, thereby (supposedly) ridding the world market of the profit draining curse of over-capacity.

Established motor vehicle markets such as western Europe, the US and Japan, are likely to decline further as the industry looks to new expanding markets such as South Korea, India and China  - Even new types of vehicles will not lift sales.

Rather than stimulating demand, greater choice will only result in changed buying patterns, with consumers switching to smaller vehicles. That will lead to even tougher competition and more pressure on manufacturers' profits as more resources are devoted to marketing and advertising.

Greater output and competition will put car prices under pressure exacerbating the poor profitability of many European volume carmakers.

Almost all new entrants will be from Asia. South Korean car companies, already with booming sales are expected to reinforce their position. In the longer term, the report expects additional low-cost manufacturers from India and, later, China and other parts of south-east Asia, to target Europe.

The upbeat outlook for brands such as Hyundai and Daewoo concurs with a separate report on the future of the south Korean motor industry.

This predicts sharply rising output of cars and commercial vehicles in the next five years as new capacity comes on stream and manufacturers push into new markets.

The growing gap between South Korean manufacturers' domestic sales and output will be bridged by higher exports. Although direct exports to neighbouring Asian countries will be a central focus for South Korea's carmakers, the report also predicts a sharp rise in the number of vehicles they will be building abroad.

Production by South Korean manufacturers will be a big factor in the expected surge in vehicle output in India.

The report recognises that exports will also have to rise if the manufacturers are to find buyers for their planned output. Several commercial vehicle manufacturers are already trying to boost exports, mainly to Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Booming domestic demand, as in India, will be one of the driving forces of the motor industry in China; according to a fourth report. The introduction of the socialist market economy in 1993 and promulgation two years later of plans to restructure motor industry policy has opened immense opportunities for foreign companies.

Seoul's experiments in capital export may prove less significant as an expression of S. Korea's own 'independent' growth than as an early feature of a more general all-Pacific Rim pattern of monopoly capital development, with renewed Japanese hegemonisn striving to hold the centre in contention with the US and others.

But however this pans out, all that opening up this new market arena can do is to add a vicious new warmongering spiral to the crisis of imperialism, whilst at the same time preparing future revolutionary development by putting fresh strains on surviving Cold War stooge regimes and drawing into modern proletarian existence ever wider masses. The mass proletarian unrest now breaking out on the streets of Jakarta, chafing at the corrupt and bloody rule of the CIA-imposed Suharto dynasty, is just a taste of what will be unleashed as international trade war rivalry intensifies class exploitation and tramples all over America's Cold War political arrangements right across the region.

Bambang is sinking a cool billion dollars into making the two saloons in a joint venture with South Korea's Hyundai for a cost to customers of between US$17,000 (£10,900) and $20,000. Unfortunately his flamboyant younger brother, Hutomo Mandala Putra, generally known as Tommy, pulled a fast one on him.

A decree issued by President Suharto in February allows 33-year-old Tommy to market a "national car" made entirely in South Korea without paying the usual duties on imported parts or an onerous 35 per cent luxury tax that hits other producers. As a result the Timor, as Tommy's car is named, will hit the market in three months' time, selling for about half the cost of his brother's.

The ruling stirred a mixture of derision and indignation. "An example of nepotism and irrational decision-making on a grand scale," wrote David Roche of Independent Strategy. "It's a joke. They import a totally built-up car, sell it locally and pocket the tax break," fumed an Indonesian business consultant.

The saga of the national car has turned an unflattering spotlight on affairs at the heart of a family dynasty which now shapes the fate of 190 million people in the world's fourth most populous state.

Asia's biggest debtor it may be, with more than $100 billion outstanding loans, yet startlingly good results in the 1995/6 financial year have eased World Bank unease over mounting trade deficits and looming inflation...
		...foreign investors are surging in, channelling ever more funds into ever bigger projects.

No-one has prospered more than the first family. The international airport you land at was built by Bambang, Indonesian analysts explain, mapping out the dimensions of one of the world's biggest business empires, with tentacles stretching to every corner of the economy.

The onward domestic flight you take is likely to be on the airline owned by Tommy, or the cab you take into the city may belong to eldest daughter Sin Hardiyanti Rukmana, known as Mbak (sister) Tutut. The toll road that takes you into the city was built by her.

Eat noodles or drink Jakarta's bottled water, smoke a kretek (Indonesia's clove cigarette), buy a mobile phone or a Mercedes, watch three of the five television channels, stay in Jakarta's Grand Hyatt, one of its smartest hotels, or shop in the mall downstairs and you are contributing in some way to a business either owned by the family or by one of a tiny group of Chinese business magnates whose conglomerates are entwined with theirs...
		...the children now market crude oil, run gas pipelines, ship liquefied natural gas and build billion-dollar petro-chemical plants. F-l6 fighters purchased from the US are said to have come in through one family enterprise, the export of birds' nests for Chinese soup go out through another.

Two years ago, an executive order transferred four satellites and a communications network, with a probable value of several hundred million dollars, from state ownership to Satelindo, a company majority owned by Bambang, apparently at no cost to the recipient.

Local researchers tracing the confusing web of interests believe Bambang is involved in at least 140 companies with net worth of $1.2 billion and Tutut has links to 100 companies with even higher net worth of $2 billion. Tommy came in a distant third, linked to 70 companies with net worth of some $600 million.

Heavy-handed military measures against Sukarno's daughter Megawati have badly backfired, to enhance her popularity.

The government's handling of this issue casts a shadow over the performance of the economy. Sitting in Jakarta skyscrapers a few miles from the action, bankers and businessmen were unaware of the beating administered by troops to pro-Megawati demonstrators earlier this month. A prompt dip on the Jakarta stock exchange, however, left no doubt of the impact of CNN film of the event on investors overseas.

Growing dependence on foreign funds to finance Indonesia's deficits leaves the economy more vulnerable to investor confidence than even a decade ago. "Capital inflows quickly could become capital outflows, putting pressure on the economy," the latest World Bank report drily observes.

If Mr Suharto and his children are sensitive to such concerns, they do not much show it. Far from slowing down their accumulation of projects and businesses, the children appear to be accelerating it. 

Popular dissent on the streets of Indonesian cities would matter less to the business community if it were not for the hairline cracks in the New Order establishment as a result of sibling rivalry over the spoils of development. 

The national car is a case in point. Bambang, less than pleased at Tommy's coup, lobbied for identical privileges, to no avail. Tutut also reportedly jumped into the fray, pitching for a car venture of her own. Indonesia would soon have six national cars, local wags joked, one for each of Mr Suharto's offspring.

THE matter is vastly unamusing, for Japanese car manufacturers who hitherto have dominated the market and American manufacturers trying to break into it. The Japanese, in particular, may have thought the billion dollars' worth of annual aid that their country gives might have earned a more sympathetic hearing. Both are threatening to fight the case in the World Trade Organisation. 

" We feel what is at as stake is our national survival. The format of the New Order designed to answer the challenges of the 1960s and 1970s is no longer capable of dealing with challenges ahead," asserts political scientist Dewi Fortuna Anwar. 

"President Suharto has done something quite spectacular. It is unfortunate his rather short-sighted favours for immediate family members could actually undermine the good things he has done."

The aptly named 'New Order' was set up over the mass-slaughter in cold blood of thousands of revolutionary Indonesian workers, carried out by the army using lists of names furnished by the CIA. 

The same US backed criminal regime went on to occupy and brutally suppress East Timor. But whatever temporary benefits such crooks as these can still derive from playing the S.Koreans off against the Japanese or the Japanese off against the Americans, the writing is on the wall for all such local reactionaries as they increasingly have to fend for themselves. Their patron's unchallenged hegemony over the 'Free World' is over, and the destabilising and warmongering consequences of the coming battle for markets will be the best possible recruiting sergeant for Bolshevism. 

Build Leninism. Paddy Chambers