Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested. ‑V. I. Lenin
Economic & Philosophic Science Review
Subscriptions (£20 p a.) & circulation:078679 96074     [P&P Bulletin Publications PO 80X 50, London SW 17 9NL] [ Post Office Regd.]       
No 1104 September 18 2001                                                                                                                        25p

Anyone with an inkling of proletarian fighting spirit or a scrap of serious anti-imperialist class-consciousness would have instantly told hurt US prestige "serves you right". The petty-bourgeois fake-'left' crocodile tears for the accidental casualties were pure humbug to avoid 'terrorist' identification slander, and to cringingly maintain utterly crap 'democracy' credentials. US imperialism is not remotely 'strengthened' as cowardly Socialist Alliance Trots proclaim. The system’s incurable economic crisis ploughs on relentlessly. Manufactured patriotism can not halt Wall Street’s slide, and aimless Mid-East blitzkriegs will not bring recovery either, merely give further proof of US domineering losing the plot, alienating more bourgeois regimes, and breeding more revolutionary challenges. Only inter-imperialist World War III, after years of Depression-industrial-destruction and cut-throat trade war, will destroy enough 'surplus' capital to get a boom going again, by which time the world will have had enough of capitalism. Racist violence by Western fascists, and Afghan's 'holy-war' response, are just incidental features of deepening imperialist-system crisis, not a sick 'way out'. 'Kill them' rhetoric from US leaders, and attacks on mosques everywhere, sum up 'free world' rottenness, and point to the crisis’s end in warmongering fascism, just like last time. Suicide bombers won't stop them, but the revolutionary leadership, that will can never come from anti-communists who cannot relish such imperialist humiliation. Any defeat for imperialism aids workers everywhere.

The guerrilla-war attack on the USA has without question severely damaged the imperialist system cause worldwide, and undoubtedly given a tremendous subjective boost to everyone who has ever wanted to challenge Western monopoly-capitalist domination in any way whatsoever.

The threatened warmongering response by the American ruling class, and the pathetic and inadequate emotionalism and free-world patriotism manufactured by bourgeois posturing everywhere, look set to only to increase the universal contempt felt for the West's 'democratic' shallowness and hypocrisy.

This further evidence that the imperialists are losing their grip on reality (and losing more and more political control over what is happening in the world), will immensely add to the already-existing clear picture of loss of economic control of the exploitation system (through unstoppable international financial and industrial crisis).

Instantly, confidence that "Washington knows what it is doing" slipped several further notches in this humiliation to the bewildered US 'intelligence' juggernaut which supposedly "knows what everyone is saying and doing all round the planet, and can step in at any time"; - and the markets, (which consist of exactly the same patriotic free-world bourgeois boasting of a 'strong and total response' on the world's airwaves), - immediately saw a wave of new panic-selling.

And that is the real picture of what the entire capitalist system really thinks and understands at this juncture. It is looking into the economic-crisis abyss, and facing the completely politically unknown.

The truly barbaric and philistine clamour for revenge and retaliation hasn't a clue what to do in reality.

Occupy Palestine? It is already occupied.

Bomb Iraq? It has never stopped being bombed night and day for the last 10 years.

Blockade Iraq? A total embargo has already inflicted mass starvation and a widespread health disaster.

Conquer Afghanistan and put a pro-US stooge regime in? But Osama bin Laden started out political notoriety precisely as a CIA stooge to begin with, militarily and financially boosted in Afghanistan to stop the previous pro-Soviet revolution there. How long will the next stooge stay 'loyal'?

And conquer Afghanistan??????? Are they serious???

Conquer Iraq and put a pro-US stooge regime in there? But exactly the same problems. Saddam Hussein was precisely the clique picked out and promoted by the CIA 25 years ago to take over in Iraq from the leftist military regime which had overthrown the British-installed monarchy.

And if conquering Iraq is so easy, why did US imperialism and its European toe-rags not do it in 1990 after the Gulf War? And how long would any new stooge regime last anyway?? Saddam 'went native' into a form of anti-imperialism when he found that he could not maintain rule in any other way in such a period of increasing anti-imperialist hostility by every Third World population on earth.

Far from turning the clock back in the Middle East to the now long-dead era of safe pro-Western stooges everywhere, US imperialism and its European toe-rags want to start urgently thinking about the stability of what few remaining stooge-regimes they do have in the region, now that the inadequacy and vulnerability of the American Empire have been so dramatically demonstrated by a handful of suicide bombers.

Fundamentalist contempt for the pro-imperialist kow-towing by Mubarak's Egyptian regime has long been threatening the most catastrophic revolutionary setback imaginable to Western interests in the Middle East. The utterly corrupt and degenerate Saudi regime is in even greater danger of being contemptuously toppled. All the completely rotten Gulf feudal sheikhdoms are under similar threat.

The incredible feats of the guerrilla war attack on America will give colossal new impetus to all these various revolts against the pro-imperialist status-quo in the Middle East and almost certainly inspire more than a few brand-new revolutionary movements too.

And that impact could be compounded by the degree to which the disgusting bellows for 'blood vengeance' (by enraged fascist mentalities within the imperialist petty-bourgeoisie) persuade the intellectually-bankrupt Bush regime and the humiliated military top-brass to just thrash-out wildly with even greater injustice than the usual US imperialist zapping of 'problem areas' abroad.

What people's natural caution and conservatism sometimes lose sight of is the overall pattern of historical change.

The idea persists that such unprecedented economic and military power developed by US imperialism can not be seen as capable of losing, ever, - especially to the apparent background of the situation always 'recovering' for American monopoly-capital dominance even after a string of failures or a period of complacent negligence. Every period of economic-crisis jitters since WWII has always been 'recovered' from; and every political or military embarrassment such as the Vietnam fiasco or a host of minor setbacks, has also always apparently resulted in the same old relentless growth of American power and influence once things settled down again.

To this way of thinking, the self-capitulation by the Soviet Revisionist bureaucracy in order to pursue the economic and social 'success' of 'market freedom' was the icing on the cake of the 'American New World Order'.

But over this whole post-war period of time, actual reality has been much more developing according to a Marxist dialectical model. Superficial American imperialist-might has increased and increased. In the real world underneath, however, the contradictions have started to multiply astronomically between the USA's fat and complacent domineering, and the impossible task the exploited Third World faces of getting any worthwhile stable share of the good life that the world-competitive capitalist system can provide (for some).

All remotely rational people have instantly recognised, despite the fascist hysteria against the 'towel-heads', that the Palestinian nation, for example, has been forced to accept an unbroken diet of defeat, tyranny, exploitation, and humiliation ever since WWII, still being hammered into the ground at this very moment by the imperialist system’s front-line Zionist-colonist stooges. And thinking people also instantly accept that in general, the whole world's Arab population, Muslim population, and indeed the whole Third World population itself is bound to feel nothing but sympathy and solidarity with this Palestinian nation, thrown out of its homeland by Western diktat, and forced to suffer nothing but constant humiliating brutality and torment ever since, as well as a colossal death-toll whenever they have tried fighting back.

From this milieu, desperate suicide bombers are born.

The only worthwhile question arising out of this guerrilla-war blitz on the USA is:  Is the tyrannised Third World becoming more and more desperate and determined, and is it learning how to fight?

And the obvious answer from Saddam Hussein's cussedness; from the ejection of US and Zionist occupiers from Lebanon; from the relentlessly increasing Intifada resistance (to Zionist domination) by the Palestinians; from the audacity, courage, and genius of this guerrilla-war attack on the American imperialist puppet-masters; etc, etc; - is that the West's monopoly-capitalist bossing of the planet is coming under ever-increasing challenge from the deprived and the dispossessed of this world.

And the growing difficulty of keeping total control over everything is increasing exactly in line with the ever-worsening global economic crisis which threatens all the West's crucial levers of financial and industrial manipulation of the world with potential total collapse in the not-too-distant-future.

The crashing markets indicate a world economy increasingly slipping out of the control of imperialism's plans and deliberations.

The generally falling economy, which must then follow, means that it will become steadily more difficult to prop up the hated stooge regimes which keep most of the Third World quiet on behalf of the West's dominating role and interests.

The notion of "the day that changed the world" (surrounding the guerrilla-war blitz on America) is misleading as far as understanding the long-term undermining of Western imperialist control (via the insoluble and ultimately intolerable contradictions of the very economic-exploitation system which put the West on top in the first place).

But it makes sense as far as drawing the attention of the world to these very changes, and to where they will end up, - in the revolutionary overthrow of this rotten worldwide neo-colonial set-up.

Specifically, it could very much be a "day that changed the world" because of the likely massive spontaneous influence it will have everywhere in starting people to reconsider all kinds of anti-imperialist perspectives.

Another important potential difference these events are going to make is in international class-war understanding, judging by the spectacular way in which the fake-'left' in Britain has revealed all its rotten middle-class defeatism and anti-revolutionary reactionariness by effectively joining in with the moralising condemnation of this guerrilla-war action which bourgeois imperialist propaganda has been churning out.

Once again, the CPGB 'anti-terrorist' hysteria is worth putting on record for dissecting just how far and how fast the rancidness of fake- "leftism" will deteriorate into completely open reaction once events start moving rapidly in the general direction of real proletarian revolution in the world.

This deplorable Weekly Worker class-collaborating sycophancy is titled: Act of Despair, and declares:

	The appalling acts of devastation, carnage and mass terror witnessed by millions of television viewers around the world this week resulted from the desperate actions of those driven to the extremes of alienation by their powerlessness, driven to acts of inhumanity by their oppression and dreams of a reactionary anti-capitalism.  

The September 11 outrages, striking at the heart of US imperialism, will result in a final death toll of many thousands - overwhelmingly working class.

There is no doubting the dedication, courage, organisation and ruthlessness of the perpetrators - surely the characteristics of religious fanatics, driven by the bizarre belief that they are acting out the will of god and working to destroy his enemies.

In terms of propaganda, then, the kamikaze attacks can be described as a spectacular success. But how do they rate in the battle to defeat US imperialism? On that score, not even a pin prick. No matter how you judge it - military, economically or ideologically - its power has not been dented and its world hegemony remains intact. Despite their immensely destructive results, the suicide actions can only have been symbolic. Indeed, if anything, the beast has been strengthened - certainly in terms of rallying all sections, all classes of US society to the Bush administration. That fact will ensure he has even more of a free hand in the manner in which he carries out the acts of retribution that will inevitably follow.

In Palestine hundreds of the oppressed rejoiced in the street at what they saw as a blow against their number one enemy's main ally, and backer -- scenes that were repeated on a much smaller scale in several European cities. But the Palestinian Authority of Yasser Arafat quickly condemned the atrocities and was doing its best to dampen down any celebrations. With good reason. It knows only too well that it could be deemed responsible, since it already stands accused of 'shielding' terrorists. Even if the US decides to pin the blame on Osama bin Laden and again hits out at Afghanistan, it is entirely possible that the Israelis could take advantage of what they see as the tide of world opinion to take out leading Palestinian figures.

More to the point, a blow against the US is not necessarily a blow against imperialism, let alone an advance for the cause of human liberation. Killing thousands of US citizens in a terror attack, hitting the Pentagon and ensuring the economic downturn becomes a recession has nothing whatsoever to do with a positive supercession of capitalism and its social relations. So, although the hijackers will gain enormous prestige amongst the most alienated and desperate throughout the muslim world, their actions contain within them nothing of the desired future. Of course, for those whose main aim is to win for themselves a hero's place in another world, that matters not at all. But for us communists, who work for the liberation of humanity in this world, it is an essential prerequisite for success. The movement we seek to build must not only be mass-based, but must build upon the advance represented by global capital. The role of the working class in the metropolitan capitalist countries, not least the USA, is in the last analysis, key.

- nothing could be more antithetical to that aim than murdering thousands of their number. If we succeed in winning US workers to side with the victims of their oppressor state, then we will have won them to fight for their own self-liberation too. That is why we unreservedly condemn the barbaric acts perpetrated in New York, Washington and Pittsburgh.

Central to the total obscenity of this self-righteous confusion, and treachery to vital elements in anti-imperialist struggle, is this deranged utopianism which sees proletarian revolution as exclusively "a positive supercession of capitalism and its social relations".

This crass academic idealism of the armchair 'socialist' reveals the traditional middle-class hatred of the actual mechanics of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and of the inevitable huge amount of destruction of bourgeois power’s physical and social representation that defeating counter-revolution will result in from the more difficult anti-imperialist struggles.

These non-Marxist betrayers of the anti-imperialist armed socialist camp in Europe (when it existed) are as dominated as Revisionism has ever been by the social strength in the West of bourgeois propaganda. Eventually, every "Stalinist outrage", real or imaginary, was cause to scuttle quickly and safely into the camp of anti-communism.

Eventually, the bankrupt Revisionist bureaucracies of the workers states were bullied into submission by these co-thinkers in the West and by the illusory power and attractiveness of Western glitz, - with catastrophic consequences for all East Europe, of course, but for the whole of mankind as well.

That Revisionist failure to stick with the solid worth of planned socialist state construction, and to defy the endless propaganda subversion by the West of the population in East Europe, is partly why the idiosyncrasies of Muslim Fundamentalism have had the opportunity to play an anti-imperialist role in more recent world developments.

But here are these same old CPGB Revisionist Utopians denouncing and disowning real anti-imperialist developments and struggle because of its 'lack of purity' (i.e. its frequent crudity, bad mistakes, or messy violence) while still seated comfortably in petty-bourgeois, pseudo-intellectual, Islington bliss.

These are just class traitors in the workers camp acting effectively as mouthpieces for bourgeois propaganda.

But the anti-imperialist struggle will not be deterred in the slightest by such weak-mindedness, no more than it will be by all the monstrous new bluster and bullying threats from US imperialism.

The personal tragedies of the 'innocent victims' and their families are beyond dispute, and to become such an accidental casualty in someone else's war (tormented Third World versus imperialist exploitation) could bring real sadness to anyone.

But what are all these crocodile tears for in all directions?

From fake-'left' to far right, endless horse manure has poured out in the spirit of class-collaboration about 'barbaric acts', 'outrage', 'appalling violence', 'reprehensible despair', 'condemnation & blame', etc, etc, just to help play right into the hands of the bogus 'democratic' system of US-imperialist-led world domination and tyranny, which is desperate to mobilise maximum ideological pressure against any notion of it being right to violently resist oppression.

Shame on all the weak-minded posturing petty-bourgeois loudmouths who all fell for this disgusting groupie sycophantic hysteria.

The tens of millions of truly 'innocent' victims every year of the war with imperialism, - those at the Third World wrong end of the unequal battle, - are the tragedies to shed tears for, AT THIS TIME as at all other times.
Even the tens of thousands of accidental road deaths each year are more truly 'innocent' victims. If you live in the capital cities and finance centres of an imperialist system which gets its fat living by exploiting the Third World with maximum brutality and ruthlessness (when it comes to putting down revolts against the system), then you can expect to be in danger of some comparable Third World blitzkrieg retaliation once in a while. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, as the Americans love to say.

And the classic prize for insincere, class-traitor codswallop in the fight against imperialism must go to this CPGB remark that the sad casualties must have been "overwhelmingly working class".

The overwhelming majority of people anywhere are working class. So if terror-bombing blitzing of Iraq's cities (to try to cow the population from giving any more support to the Saddam regime) is stepped up from its usual levels, and the Iraqis find a way of terror-bombing New York in retaliation with similar motives, they should not do it "because the majority of the victims will be overwhelmingly working class"???

It is in this sort of mind-boggling stupidity that the real 'despair' lies. This could only have been written by a group of petty-bourgeois mentalities who only see 'working class' as a key factor in fake-'left', point-scoring political polemics with like-minded middle-class academics.

The real concern here is just a petty-bourgeois fear of all acts of violent revolution. Gratuitously labelling the victims 'working class' is just further evidence of the utter syntheticness of this fake-'leftism'.

The point about the working class within the major imperialist powers is, however, a very interesting one, - and also one which the CPGB could not get more howlingly wrong if they tried.

Only one clear understanding is suggested by history on this matter, which is that only DEFEAT for the metropolitan power ('our' ruling class) in conflict can seriously be looked-to for breaking US workers, say, from class-collaboration with the American bourgeoisie in all matters of 'international politics', etc.

The First World War proved this in all directions. The Second World War proved it for most of East Europe's prior Quisling regimes, and also gave a huge 'Red' scare to Italy and France. And Vietnam War proved it specifically in the USA's direction. There are already signs that British imperialism's defeat by the Irish national-liberation struggle has at last begun to break a majority of British worker masses from solidarity with the continuing formal ruling-class state position that 'Northern Ireland' for the moment remains part of Britain. Class-collaboration was abandoned in the latest opinion poll which said Ulster should be restored to unity with the rest of Ireland. DEFEAT for the 'No Surrender' British colonial dream of 'Northern Ireland' (via the warmongering Orange bigotry and RUC dictatorship which recently reigned supreme there but then got torn apart by the Sinn Féin/IRA national-liberation struggle), can be the only explanation for a large part of this turnaround in majority British allegiance for the flying of the Union Jack there.

To the extent that the spectacular dimensions of this guerrilla-war action on the USA constituted such a large part of the huge blow to US imperialist prestige and cockiness that it turned out to be, then the element of defeat for the USA was greater depending on precisely how much damage was inflicted.
Thus the bigger the catastrophe, the MORE it works in the direction of stopping US workers identifying with their ruling class and US state imperialist policy, - exactly the OPPOSITE of the artificially-constructed 'deplorable' index ('It plays into Bush's hands'), insincerely manufactured by the CPGB to keep pretending 'revolutionary leftism' while yet keeping in with their petty-bourgeois milieu of hand-wringing 'condemnation' sycophancy towards the USA.

The 'hearts and minds' of American workers need to be won to the notion that the imperialist system they thrive by does it by being camp-gaoler and gendarme in repressing the whole Third World; and that any kind of mass revolt, using any weapons and any amount of violence in any direction whatsoever, amounts first and foremost to a massive blow against the prestige of the 'New World Order' and will give huge inspiration to millions more fighters-against-imperialism everywhere.

It is Bush and the imperialist system which has brought war casualties to the USA, not Third World resistance which the CPGB wants to see hanged from an American gallows for "murdering thousands of workers".

An equally stupid attempt to grass-up the Third World for even more imperialist retaliatory blitzkrieging is made by the Weekly Worker in accusing them of "ensuring the economic downturn becomes a recession", - also revealing that the CPGB gets its economic understanding about the world off of lollipop sticks.

The fake-'left' reluctance to accept the Marxist science of capitalism as an incurable system of inevitable periodic 'surplus' capital crisis and collapse, has long been obvious, but this mishmash of a description of what is happening to the world economy, - and blaming it on a handful of Fundamentalist suicide-bombings, - beats everything.

All such incidental 'causes' for the coming Crash are pure piffle. There will always be any number of accidental triggers, turning one event into another event, and then into ever bigger and bigger events. Bourgeois 'science' is currently blaming market sickness on airline stocks collapse, and that in turn on a new fear of flying after the Boston hijackings, etc.

But no-one wants to be fooled. The exploitation game of stealing 'surplus' value out of the pockets of the workers who produce it, remains forever the ultimate cause of 'surplus' mountains of monopoly-capital accumulated investment which all want to supply the whole world with their products (in order finally and definitively to 'win' the endless trade-war competition or else permanently live with constant imminent 'defeat' and bankruptcy) but who obviously all cannot succeed in doing so because the value left in the world workers' pockets can never equal the value of all the profitably-priced products placed on the world market. Hence the repeated phenomenon of 'over-production', quickly followed by ever-sharper suicidal cut-throat trade war, ending only in mass bankruptcies, long Depression, and international shooting war to finally sort out all the grievances and the new imperialist pecking-order.

To any extent to which suicide bombers on New York can add to the growing lack of confidence in the political regimes' collective ability to keep the entire world imperialist economy from spiralling down increasingly out of control, then so much the better for ALL who hate the system anyway.

The idea that this incurable capitalist economy process can be CHALLENGED by the notion of "a positive supercession of capitalism" is pure Mary Poppins. The CPGB has never left the infantile 'socialist' stage of endlessly constructing fantasy socialist paradises in the head.

In the real world revolution brings capitalism down, almost certainly very messily including millions of differently-motivated local actions merging into the stew of revolution. Then by blood, guts, and leadership, the whole of the new revolutionary society has to be disciplined and organised to withstand the counter-revolution. Then by further bitter struggle, the planned socialist reconstruction and state-building can start to make 'positive' headway.

What these Revisionist Weekly Worker counter-revolutionaries are on about is diverting as many workers as they can into harmless channels of waiting permanently to support the 'perfect' and 'pure', 'socialist' revolution when it comes, which it never will, of course. This 'revolutionary' understanding has another name, - simple harmless reformism, or pure day-dreaming class-collaborationist treachery to the working class, which the Labour Party and the TUC have been criminally dispensing for 100 years. Revisionism has come on the scene to belatedly sweep up the droppings of this foul imperialist 'democracy' system.

The 'beast' of imperialism only "strengthened"???  The 6% collapse on Wall Street as American markets reopened for business tells another story. It also routs the notion that 

"the imperialists won't allow the stock exchange punters to just sell-out in panic and wreck the economy. The $50 billion sent by Congress for Bush to use for anti-terrorist Armageddon are just an example of how monopoly-imperialism can dictate any immediate economic effects it wants to".

Really?  Unprecedented moral pressure, financial threats, and economic inducements (more interest-rate cuts, etc) were put into capitalism's trough by the Bush desperadoes ("We want Bin Laden dead or alive", the Alice in Wonderland version of 'law' and 'justice', namely "Sentence first; trial afterwards".)

It marginally stemmed the panic, but share-selling went ahead anyway, reflecting the real-world economic crisis which was long years in the making and build-up, long before the suicide bombers made their impact. And the only wilful voluntarism Big Business has shown itself capable of is in sneakily using the 'emergency' atmosphere to get announcements out about massive redundancies which were due anyway, but using the emotionalism of the moment to somehow make it seem yet more bad things can be blamed on the bombers.

Meanwhile the thug-like ignorance of Bush is rapidly destroying the synthetic bourgeois solidarity which the media's ludicrous emotional posturing had initially created, alienating anew a thousand years of Muslim bitterness and desire for revenge, - and worldwide anti-Christian suspicion and resentment of imperialism, by praising a 'Crusade' against Fundamentalism.

The 'Crusades' have a worse historical image in the Third World than Nazism does in the West.

Speaking of which, the one serious historical parallel which needs making about this outburst of self-righteous bullying-imperialist-aggression is precisely with German imperialism arrogantly posturing prior to two world wars that its strength, genius, and all-round excellence demanded that the world should grant it far more respect, and freedom to re-order things around, the world exactly as it wished, - much, more than 'abroad' or 'out there' was allowing to happen.

Every cretinous "speech" written for Bush to read out, consists of not much more than that America is great, heroic, determined, and deserves the whole world bowing to its every whim and capitulating to its every demand.

On top of that, the edited-TV news is proudly showing spotty youth after spotty youth vowing a one word vengeance against Third World hatred of the USA. "Kill them! Kill them all!"

And instantly, the beating of a taxi driver to within an inch of his life by three thugs in Hounslow just for 'looking Asian', starts to be replicated all over the place as every fascist on earth gets the green light from Bush's degenerate rhetoric.

The promised arbitrary blitzkrieg on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Iran, etc, or anyone who tries to get in the way of such an arbitrary blitzkrieg, will set the dogs of war and fascism barking even more.

As this imbecility escalates, much of the posturing bourgeois coalition against the "horrors of terrorism" will start to evaporate. It could end up with just Bush, Blair, and the CPGB on board as the realisation dawns that the states most closely 'allied' to US imperialism such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt have as many financial-support and political-encouragement connections to Osama Bin Laden's Fundamentalist anti-Zionist and anti-Western preoccupations as do the 'rogue' states like Iraq and Afghanistan.

The conspiracy theory that fascist elements inside the US Establishment have already made up their minds to create a world war situation, no matter what the political fall-out, in order to head off the long Depression and worldwide revolutionary political upheaval that an incurable economic crisis would otherwise impose, - is another false hope or misleading fear as far as various confused perspectives are concerned.

The arms-economy delusion about solving capitalism's crisis problems can be seen to miss the target by a mile now that a markets-crash is imminently actually arriving because of massive 'surplus' capital mountains worldwide.

It is each other’s basic industries that the USA, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, etc, need to be destroying to prevent the declining rate of profit, and massive bankruptcies all round the planet, as market after market collapses. Just bombing Afghanistan's rubble and dust some more will solve nothing.

Even throwing away a lifetime's cultivation of stooge regimes in Egypt and Saudi Arabia by dementedly insisting on blitzkrieging all countries who "declare they are against us by refusing to declare they are for our invasion plans" (in Hillary Clinton's clearly fascist rhetoric), would only speed-up the world economic crisis by further collapsing international bourgeois confidence.

And just more spending on armaments as such, already at unbelievably record highs and constantly threatening to totally wreck US internal and payments-balance health (already sick enough to regularly shake the dollar stability and Wall Street), would just send despair at US imperialist economic mismanagement through the roof.

The means by which World War III might eventually destroy enough 'surplus' capital to get a new long-term world capitalist boom going, is only after years of cut-throat, trade-war Depression to wipe out or run down industry after industry through bankruptcies, thereby creating enough political spite, chauvinist hatred, and economic despair to then enable a totally destructive serious inter-imperialist-World War III to get going to complete the groundwork for capitalism's eventual 'recovery' back to 'health' via total destruction.

But this insane nightmare, as it tries to unfold, will basically just educate the world socialist revolution. Workers everywhere desperately need to denounce the fake-"leftism" of middle-class anti-communist defeatists like the SWP who likewise came out in their latest edition sneering at the "wrong" and "desperate horror" of the guerrilla-war attack which "is not a method that can break US power".

Misrepresenting the Marxist position on terror completely, the SWP merely quote Trotsky's notoriously unreliable 'authority' for asserting that "only police repression grows more savage and brazen" as the sole result.

The SWP then roundly declares: "We abhor violence".

This is as far removed and hostile to Lenin's position as it is possible to be, and the way that Lenin began to see the international class struggle developing after the Bolshevik Revolution, - via the soft underbelly of imperialism in Asia, - opened up national-liberation guerrilla war perspectives such as China, Vietnam, and Cuba in the Americas eventually achieved, which Marxism had never been able to comment on.

But the Leninist position had never been to 'denounce' anarchist terror, but only to explain that in Russia, proletarian political revolution could seize power much more quickly, directly and securely. The idea, however, that this meant "abhorring violence" is so ridiculous that the mind is only able to see the notorious deep-rooted anti-communism of the SWP middle-class counter-revolutionaries in this chaos.

Lenin's ecstatic praise for the brilliant spontaneous impact on world consciousness of the Easter 1916 (effectively middle-class putsch) in Dublin by the IRA demonstrates how real revolutionary leadership (which Trotsky biliously opposed from 1903 onwards until opportunistically jumping on the Bolshevik bandwagon just nine weeks before the October Revolution in 1917) flowed not from arid self-righteous doctrine, but from class-consciously sensing how each development in the anti-imperialist struggle was having an effect.

The humiliation of US military might, 'intelligence', and arrogance on September 11 will have sent a huge wave of inspiration through proletarian anti-imperialist fighting masses all over the world.

The further humiliation of American 'know-how', 'influence', and 'world' control', - flowing from the subsequent low-fascist imbecility and threatened viciousness of every action and rhetoric the US Administration has bewilderedly stumbled through since then, will only have infinitely increased the widespread suspicion of total imperialist system bankruptcy and redundancy.

Of course suicide bombers are not a "method that can break US power". Only imbeciles could suggest that people bold enough, smart-enough, and courageous-enough to carry out this colossal self-sacrificing feat of guerrilla war, would ever kid themselves that this act alone would "break US power".

The point, however, was precisely to encourage a huge new upswell in worldwide anti-imperialist struggle. This it will achieve in abundance.

With the experience since Lenin's time of the openly colonial fascist-aggressive mantle being brazenly worn by imperialism's leading powers in turn, - Germany, Japan, Italy, France (in Algeria), Britain (Malaya, etc), and the USA (Vietnam, and everywhere else since that has had to be blitzkrieged or have a fascist coup planted on it like Chile), - the notion now that "brazen and savage police repression is only brought out if terror provokes it" (Trotsky) is so naïvely backward that once again it only leads to doubts about the 'revolutionary' sincerity in the first place of the misleading and self-righteous authors.

The weakness of terrorism and anarchism lies in its disastrous failure to develop the Marxist-Leninist science of communist revolution and proletarian dictatorship. Laughably, that is exactly the catastrophic failing of Trotskyism and fake 'leftism' too. Build Leninism. EPSR

LONG CAPTION FOR “Firefighters raising the US flag picture:

Anti-Americanism is being declared the 'new racism'. But the posturing emotion, forcing the world to stop everything for nearly a week, is the real racism. Half-a-million Third World women and children have routinely died of disease, starvation, and EXPLOITATION in that week. Hundreds more have been tortured to death by such US imperialist & NATO 'allies' as Turkey in that week. Where is the phoney emotion to stop the world for them? They don't count. They are not Americans. That is the real racism in all this. And what a pathetic confession of emotional mess this picture represents, re-raising the Iwo Jima flag over a total DEFEAT. But having ruled the world with lying propaganda for so long, US imperialism is now too degenerate to even notice the futile stupidity of all this "we are the greatest" master-race boasting. Even more sinister fascist-racist garbage.  

	World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles). 
	
Revolutionary nationalism denounces calculated reformist sell-out to last-ditch imperialist 'new policing' stunt as British colonisation reaches its last legs.

AS EXPECTED, the SDLP finally succumbed to London and Dublin Government pressure. John Hume formally announced the party's support for the British Secretary of State's implementation plan for reform of policing in the Six Counties. Hume told a press conference that the SDLP would now adopt a policy of encouraging young Catholics to join the force. The party's support comes despite the fact that John Reid's proposals still fall far short of what was laid out in the Pattern Report.

The SDLP's announcement also came immediately after Catholic bishops in the Six Counties had also endorsed the plan, timing which laid the party open to accusations that it’s policies are dictated by the church, accusations which were duly levelled -  by of all parties - the DUP which referred to Hume as the poodle of the Catholic Church.

In an article in Irish News, Seamus Mallon defended the SDLP's decision to settle for significantly less than what was promised by Patten by claiming that his party had secured some 94 alterations to the British Government's original proposals for the force. He spoke of new but unspecified legislation which will, apparently, "meet key SDLP demands on policing" and presented cuts in the force's Special Branch (as opposed to abolition); the fact that' new recruits will not be permitted to fire the recently introduced, more lethal plastic bullets; and cosmetic changes to the name and symbols of the force as a victories secured by him and his party. The 'spirit' of Patten is, it seems, sufficient for the SDLP.

Thus, what Mallon did not address in his article were the following, critical, failures in the Reid implementation plan:

• It provides no means for instituting inquiries into past human rights abuses or for any investigation into and sanctions against known human rights abusers currently serving in the force.

• It allows serving officers to continue in service without having to take the new oath.

• It allows for the continued use of plastic bullets.

• Special Branch will not be abolished; instead it will merely be cut by 50%.

• The powers of the proposed District Policing Partnership Boards are still restricted; their role will be 'consultative', which in practical terms means that the police force would still remain unaccountable to local communities.

• The British Secretary of State will still retain the power to veto inquiries ordered by the Police Board.

• It allows for the possibility of the exclusion of individuals from the Police Board on the basis of previous political offences.

The SDLP's decision to endorse Reid's implementation plans also seems to have as much to do with narrow party interests as with its oft-stated desire to see the formation of a truly representative, accountable and humane police force. The party was severely traumatised at being overtaken by Sinn Féin at the last elections and is clearly engaged in colluding with the two governments, the Catholic Church and the UUP in order to try and isolate Sinn Féin on the question of policing and boost its own electoral prospects in the process. .

There is a great risk, however, that this plan will backfire horribly as the nationalists the SDLP is urging to join the police force begin to understand the practical reality of the failure to adopt Patten in full. Indeed, one unnamed party worker told the Anderstonstown News that "if the SDLP goes for half-a-loaf on this issue, it may go down well among supporters in Antrim and Down, but west of the Bann the party will be decimated by Sinn Féin.

"Giving the SDLP seal of approval to the new police force will be the kiss of death for moderate nationalism in those areas where the republican threat is greatest and effectively hand over the role of guardians of nationalism to the Provos. Patten was the compromise and the SDLP should hold out for Patten and nothing less than Patten.

"The party big-wigs in Belfast think they're going to isolate Sinn Féin by lining up alongside the Irish and British Governments on this one. Unfortunately, the only people who are going to end up being isolated come the next election are the SDLP standard bearers."

Meanwhile, the Pat Finucane Centre in Derry has issued a statement saying that it will not recommend that people join the new police service because outstanding concerns about human rights have not been addressed. It said that the Patten report was a "baseline" which could be worked with, but the Police Act 2000 and the new Implementation Plan together "still fall far short of that baseline".

It went on: "As the situation stands at present, the institutional factors which have led to human rights abuses in the past have not peen adequately dealt with. In the absence of adequate change, a fairminded person joining the police would still have little or no impact on the type of policing experienced by the community.

"While there have been some improvements, there are still a number of key ways in which the Implementation Plan fails to deal with the institutional and cultural conditions within the RUC which have led to human rights abuses in the past and which could lead to their occurring again."        ●

ADDING to the general thrust of negative forces now attempting to isolate Sinn Féin and impede the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, the SDLP's decision to accept this week's policing proposals amounted to little more than a genuflection to John Reid. 

The SDLP decision also revealed why they are traditionally referred to disparagingly in some quarters as the 'stoops' - or 'stoop down low party'. Browne reminded readers in Wednesday's Irish Times that there is no point in trying to push through policing legislation without the support of Sinn Féin, because "however unfortunate it may be, the SDLP and the Catholic hierarchy don't matter. They went along, for the most part, with the reformed RUC of 1970 -  and remember what happened to it? 

In an act of establishment choreography, the Dublin Government, followed by the Catholic bishops, followed by the SDLP, endorsed a very watery dilution indeed of the Patten Report. 

It still fires plastic bullets, still refuses to take an oath on the upholding of human rights, cedes the power to block judicial inquiries to the British Secretary of State and the RUC Chief .Constable, and is based on a grey implementation plan which is not to be set in train until the end of 2002 -  a grey package endorsed by all the grey elements of Irish society.

Clearly, this falls short of what nationalists and republicans require in terms of policing - their rights, now, and in black and white. The SDLP, as Mitchel McLaughlin put it, is prepared to accept "half a loaf". Sinn Féin is not. As a result of the SDLP decision, the British Secretary of State, John Reid, is now maintaining that the policing debate is closed --  "non negotiable".

COLOMBIA HYSTERIA

Not only have the SDLP been strengthening John Reid's hand this week, but the securocrats have been at it as well. The arrest of three Irish men allegedly carrying false passports in Colombia has formed the basis for more speculation than the deaths of JFK, Elvis Presley and Vladmir Rasputin combined. British Intelligence have peddled tales of IRA Volunteers procuring everything from drugs to napalm bombs in the Colombian jungle.

It was claimed that the three were caught on Colombian cameras training FARC guerrillas. This was later retracted. It was claimed that the three had traces of bomb-making material and cocaine on their clothes. This was retracted also. It was claimed that one of them was charged - retracted again. Sinn Féin rubbished reports that one of the men was the party's Cuban representative - such a position does not even exist. On Wednesday, the men were charged but the Colombians have yet to come up with any substantive evidence that the men were engaged in any illegal activity on their journey to Colombia.

Indeed, the family of one of the men, Niall Connolly, has now asked Dublin Foreign Affairs Minister Briar Cowen to intervene, expressing deep concern for the men's wellbeing. They can be held for up to eight months while the Colombian authorities attempt to build a case against them.

The incredible thing about all of this is that the vast bulk of the establishment media has been prepared to take the word of British securocrats and print and reprint allegations that they had no hope of substantiating. Incredible also, that the arrest, without charge, of three Irish men, 5,000 miles away, has warranted, in one week, mare media coverage than the 200-or-so loyalist attacks on nationalists and republicans this year. The hypocrisy is baffling.

	UNIONISM BENEFITS

For unionism, as An Phoblacht observed last week, recent events have been going very much their way. David Trimble's intention of collapsing the institutions, creating a crisis and blaming it all on republicans has, with a little nifty MI5 media manipulation, worked a treat.

Again, the choreography was perfect. The IRA makes a proposal on arms, which is summarily rejected by the UUP. The British Government takes the perverse step of backing up the UUP position by suspending the Agreement institutions, leaving the IRA with no choice but to revoke its proposal, citing UUP intransigence and British Government failure to keep the process on track as their reasons for doing so.

Now, with the support of the SDLP, the two governments and even the DUP, the erosion of the Good Friday Agreement Trimble prophesied after "crisis" and "suspension" is regrettably coming to pass.

What is lost in all of this is the principle of democracy. The SDLP's decision to support the new policing proposals was heralded as the historic acceptance of policing in the Six Counties by nationalists, while John Reid says the proposals are non negotiable.
But the proposals themselves take democratic power away from the people in that it is not the people of the Six Counties, or their elected representatives, but John Reid and Ronnie Flanagan who are the final arbiters of what amounts to a repackaged RUC will look like. They must be reminded that fair, impartial, accountable policing is not a concession. It's a right.
	BRITS OUT POLL

The UUP's Michael McGimpsey stated this week that Sinn Féin is "isolated" and "out of touch". But disturbingly for unionism, there is another democratic trend running contrary to what David Trimble and, indeed, the British government are trying to achieve. According to an ICM poll, published in The Guardian newspaper this week, only26% of British people think the Six Counties should be occupied by Britain, while 46% support a United Ireland: The other 23%, The Guardian surmises, simply don't care. While unionists can take succour from the behaviour of British spooks and Irish stoops this week, in the long term it is they, rather than Sinn Féin, who are facing isolation.	

YOUNG NATIONALISTS and republicans will not be fooled into accepting less than their just entitlements; they will not be fooled into joining this repackaged RUC; they will not join a police service still controlled by the securocrats." So says Fermanagh/South Tyrone MP Michelle Gildernew, who this week described the British Implementation Plan on Policing as "deeply flawed" and pointed out that for the second time within a month a British Government deadline has been broken.

"Clearly, the Implementation Plan is not the last word," she said. "Negotiations on policing are set to continue. Even those who have accepted the British Government proposals on policing admit that the threshold of Patten has not yet been met and that work remains to be done.

"The days of nationalists accepting less than our just entitlements and rights are long gone. Nationalists will not be fooled into believing that what is on offer amounts to a new beginning to policing."

Sinn Féin Chairperson Mitchel McLaughlin said that Sinn Féin has carried out an exhaustive assessment of the British Government's Implementation Plan and will deal with it in detail shortly. "But it is clear from our examination of the plan that the British Government has failed to resolve many of those crucial issues that are vitally important to nationalists and republicans.

"Sinn Féin has been consistent in our criticism of the Mandelson legislation and implementation plan. We have argued that it does not form the basis for the new beginning to policing as promised in the Good Friday Agreement. Without a return to the Patten report as a starting position for change, any new proposals will remain unacceptable.

"The implementation plan currently being offered by the British Government does not go far enough. It does not constitute a genuine attempt to bridge the gap between republican and nationalist aspirations for a proper and consensual approach to policing.

"Key issues which need to be resolved have not been resolved. These include the limitations on the initiation of inquiries; powers of and appointments to the policing boards; powers of the Ombudsman; protection being offered to human rights offenders and informers; and changes to the Special Branch.

"With respect to all of these issues there are no substantive changes to what was already on the table. The Implementation Plan does not constitute a decisive effort to win nationalist and republican support for the new police service.

"More importantly it does not deliver on the new beginning promised in the Good Friday Agreement."

"Sinn Féin will continue to demand that the British Government honour their commitments and create the new beginning to policing envisaged in the Good Friday Agreement," pledged Michelle Gildernew. "It will only be at that point that nationalists and republicans will give their whole hearted support to a new police service."