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 (£25 p a.) & circulation:  078679 96074    [P&P Bulletin Publications PO B0X 50, London SW 17 9NL] [ Post Office Regd.]    www.epsr-marx-lenin.co.uk                                                
No 1133 Apr 23 2002                                                                                                                                              25p 
Northwest seminar Sat June 29. Pse collect receipts.

The shallow 'intellectual' thug Le Pen feeds off the deserved growing contempt for "Western democracy" (i.e. US imperialism) which is leading the world to warmongering chaos but whose fraudulent "parliamentary reformist" games the entire fake-'left' still insists on playing. The inevitable failure of anti-racism (until the divisive capitalist exploitation system is abolished completely) is the essence of the "old politics" which the despicable philistinism of Le Pen and the BNP scores votes against by denouncing.	 Le Pen's fascist chauvinism is exactly where all idiot 'British jobs for British workers' nationalism (SLP, etc) is heading. Denouncing Maastricht, the Euro, and the Americans (Le Pen) is the same deceitful small-mindedness as telling workers that capitalist degeneracy can be brought down by voting for a "full socialist programme". All reformist perspective daydreams only help the fascist-imperialist warmongering deterioration to continue. But it is understanding this and all the other current signs of imperialist WEAKENING which matters most. Is confidence about to collapse everywhere in the ability of Washington's counter-revolutionary world leadership? The evidence piles up. The mess in Venezuela, Argentine, Afghanistan, Palestine, etc, and the failure to get 'economic recovery' reveals a world situation no longer feasible for out-of-date imperialist system to any longer control. Understanding of Marxist revolutionary science needs spreading now.

Le Pen's success in France; anticipated BNP election victories in England; the Budget admission that DIY capitalism is not the solution to everything after all; the Venezuelan bourgeoisie's lack of faith in the CIA's attempted coup; US imperialism's split with its armed Zionist thugs in the Middle East; and above all the splits within the current American imperialist executive itself over the potential humiliation to its warmongering stunt in Afghanistan; - all reveal fatal divisions and lack of confidence in the international ruling class.

The crisis of the imperialist system, breaking apart in uncontrollable worldwide economic anarchy, has suddenly ripped gaping holes in the ideological blanket of the bourgeoisie's brainwashing hold on things.

All the specific details of 'free world' decay have to be investigated for their separate specific consequences and perspectives; but it is a million times more important to see what they all add up to, the end of the road for the historic SYSTEM of Western imperialist world-domination via bourgeois 'democracy', and the inescapable conclusion that only global mass revolutionary upheavals can possibly follow this total 'free world' mess and warmongering disaster.

All 'struggle for socialism' which opts out of this resurgence of Marx's original Communist Manifesto analysis is not only doing no good but is the biggest part of the problem, as was seen in France.

The sad decrepit philistinism and nastiness of Le Pen is old hat. The story is the utter uselessness of the fake-'left', - every scrap of it, - in how fascism's 'appeal' was fought against, and how the next developments are to be combated.

Le Pen's vote reflects primitive incoherent disgust at how capitalist 'democratic' society is falling apart in crime, political lies, and decadence, and at how France is caught up in general imperialist-system insecurity, muddle, and mess, (just like everyone else, of course).

Neo-fascist parties are growing all over Europe, and the BNP's vote will grow too.

But 'anti-racist' campaigning is the most pathetic fake-'left' answer imaginable.

And all the fake-'lefts' combining to make sure that Chirac defeats Le Pen in the second round is an even more useless response.

It is not what Le Pen stands for which makes French society sick. It is what Chirac stands for which is poisoning life.

Le Pen merely REFLECTS how demoralised, cynical, and small-mindedly bitter, people are being made by the INCURABLE failure of capitalist society to any longer remotely satisfy vital human needs.

Voting for Chirac merely continues capitalism's unstoppable process of more and more alienating (see Marx) the majority of people who have to live under this ludicrous elitist class system. Voting for Chirac will only ADD TO and MAKE WORSE the "Le Pen problem".

Exactly the same nonsense is all that is being achieved by the 'anti-racist' campaigning and 'stop the BNP' coalitioning that is going on in Britain. Cynical fascist philistinism will continue to increasingly feature as an end-product of capitalist 'culture' and particularly of capitalism's 'democratic' political culture, which is pure lying hypocrisy and opportunism, from far Right to far fake-'Left', (especially the Trotskyites (SWP, Nellistites, Alliance, etc) and the Revisionists (CPB, Lalkar, SLP, etc).)

When Le Pen and the BNP denounce "old politics", it is no answer at all to just say "then vote for REAL socialism, vote for FULL socialism" as a reply.

'Voting for socialism' has been THE CHIEF PART of the whole fraud of bourgeois 'democracy' FOR MORE THAN A CENTURY.

The whole trick of the Labour Party's long domination of the working-class vote lay in the endless series of Labour 'lefts' and TUC 'lefts' (Bevan, Foot, Benn, Jones, Scanlon, Scargill, etc) who were always endlessly promising to win at party conference for "full socialism" in the "near future".

Trot entryists inside Labour (Militant, etc) promised the same thing.

The Revisionist tradition was to stay separate from Labour but promote the same illusion that the day would come when "full socialism" would be voted in through Parliament, via a combination of Communist and 'left'-Labour MPs, and 'left' TUC pressure, etc, etc.

The current 'left' so-called 'alternatives' are still stuck in exactly this same old rut, peddling the illusion that "voting for socialism" via the SWP, the Alliance, the SLP, the SP, the SSP, the CPB, etc, plus supporting 'left' trade union struggles on the picket line and prominent 'left' outstanding individuals in society, will bring about "a socialist transformation of Britain".

Each opportunist philistine sect would follow the same tired old routine of putting up a prominent 'left' trade union figure or other worthy citizen (locally or nationally) on a rally platform or as a candidate, and ALWAYS on a "non-confrontational" basis (i.e. don't ever polemicise about what they say, no matter what nonsense it is).

(See next story for ongoing 'left' capitulation to 'left Labour' posturing).

And what the entire fake-'left' also has in common which ties them to "old politics" is their total philistine paralysis on the utterly crucial questions of history which the whole world's attention will be drawn back to sooner or later, - the phenomenon of the Soviet Union and the workers states in the 20th century which over the last 85 years now have been providing the only alternative to capitalist society (the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie), - namely the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Either through carrying on the same old Trot anti-communism, or through the same old Revisionist inability/unwillingness for a thorough polemical unravelling (closely allied to museum-Stalinist mummification), the great historical questions of 'What was the USSR?' and 'What went wrong?' continue to be ignored.

The hopes of the fake-'Left' to avoid "internecine warfare" over such "difficult" questions (Alliance, SLP, etc) so as to prevent splits, - encouraging coexistence of several completely contradictory understandings of history (or no understanding at all) within the same 'party', - are doomed to failure as the worst part of "old politics", of course.

Joining the 'larger movement' to avoid being 'an isolated sect' was EXACTLY why generation after generation of 'lefts' and 'socialists' spent a lifetime (Scargill included) in the Labour Party, - all of the Trots at various times, and all of the Revisionists (either directly but under cover, or indirectly via trade-union affiliation).

Worst of all about fake-'Left' philistinism in trying to build a "workers vote for real socialism" movement on the doorstep but refusing to openly make it a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary approach (Bolshevism), - is that it plays right into the hands of fascism's fraudulent "down with old politics" appeal.

Nothing could be more "old politics" than fascism (the essence of all colonial domination and imperialist warmongering since monopoly-capitalist Western bourgeois started dominating the whole planet more than 500 years ago).

But the worst and most dangerous deception of all that fascism is being allowed to get away with by default is when it is allowed to dismiss the workers states as "failed old politics" along with everything else.

The one thing the Soviet workers state didn't do was fail. It was betrayed by fake-'Left' Revisionism and philistinism and petty-bourgeois anti-communism of exactly the same kind which constitutes the fake-'Left' in the West today.

Planned economic and educational and scientific and cultural development, - all working without any capitalist culture or market forces in sight, continued to 'work' right up until the last inheritor of Stalinist Revisionism, Gorbachev, finally pulled the plug once and for all on the abandoned perspective of world socialist revolution, and let 'democratic' market forces back in to rule the roost.

And now the former Soviet workers-state-lands are openly in the grip of big business/mafia street crime, fraud, exploitation, prostitution, loss of sovereignty, etc, etc, etc, - exactly the chronic daily-life insecurity of slumps, race-riots, and inter-imperialist trade-war threats which make the fascists' case for them (in France, around Europe and in Russia too now) but which the USSR had been virtually free of and constitutionally and socially immune to.

The entire fake-'Left' refuses to take up this challenge. Occasional bits of pro-workers-state propaganda are allowed, but these are always 'balanced' by allowing-in rancid anti-communism too, especially if it is a 'useful' trade-unionist insisting on having his 'anti-Gulag' worthiness reasserted.(e.g. SLP).

But this is utterly HOPELESS.

The world does indeed wait for a proper historical assessment to start (on where the Soviet workers state went wrong, and where it crucially went right). It might even be assumed that civilisation's progress is unlikely to get much further forward along anti-capitalist channels until such a complete historical reassessment has been made of all the workers-state experiences.

But just continuing with occasional bits of pro-Soviet or anti-Gulag ping-pong as SLP and others do is just reactionary "old politics" and playing right into BNP/NF hands.

There is no other way of tackling fascists on racism itself.

It is the capitalist exploitation system ITSELF which breeds racism, not any alleged shortcomings in 'democracy' under capitalism.

Telling non-whites in Oldham or France that racism can be stopped by "more democracy" is just a lie.

Telling would-be BNP or Le Pen voters that "the problems seen arising from immigration" can be solved by "better democracy" is a lie too.

Assuring the public that "Le Pen can never win a presidential election", as some fake-'lefts' are already doing, is also utter nonsense.

And the ultra-left politically-correct bravado of declaring that "a welcome to all immigrants and to all asylum-seekers is the only progressive way forward" is the silliest dilettantism of all.

Insoluble economic 'overproduction' crisis, which can only end in world slump and inter-imperialist tradewar warmongering, is irrevocably driving the whole 'free world' towards increasing racial/communal strife.

And racist considerations will increasingly become part of OFFICIAL policy everywhere too (on matters of immigration, nationality privileges, law and order, language education, social engineering, etc, etc).

No amount of do-good 'anti-racism' can stop this growing tendency, - hence the Le Pen and BNP phenomena (and many more around Europe).

Nothing can stop fascism from taking advantage of this increasing sickening of capitalist society.

Nothing can stop victimised or abused communities from increased self-organisation to resist this persecution.

More and more conflict is inevitable, thereby unavoidably confirming the more 'realistic' scenario of fascist politics, and rubbishing the petty-bourgeois PC idealism of all "we will stop fascism" subjectivists.

And in these circumstances, all ultra 'left' 'anti-racist' posturing of the "open the doors to all immigration and all asylum-seekers" kind will only be seen by the whole working class as throwing more fuel on the flames, and will thus further play into the BNP's hands.

The anti-immigrant turn by 'official' social-democracy will solve nothing either, - other than possibly save New Labour some votes that Blunkett & Co might otherwise have lost to the BNP.

But increased racist legislation is still a further drift down the road to fascism, whether introduced by Blunkett or the BNP.

And although it is precisely all the OTHER problems of imperialism (slump, inter-imperialist trade war, etc) which make fascism the system's final destination in crisis, (racism being the SYMPTOM of fascism and not remotely its CAUSE), ever-increasing confusion about ever-increasing social degeneration is not helping anything.

Only a programme which is nothing whatever to do with racism, or immigration, or asylum-seeking directly, can now affect this increasingly deteriorating situation, - the programme explaining capitalism as now declining irrevocably into revolutionary warmongering crisis everywhere, and at last giving the opportunity to start building a planned socialist flourishing for ALL, in workers states in every country in the world, stopping all need for emigration or asylum-seeking so cruelly placed on people of the Third World by imperialism for so long. 

And although all racist backwardness was obviously never entirely eradicated from the workers states, their help in the onslaught on the colonial empires, and their strictly non-racist formal international stance and genuine practical help to anti-imperialist struggles everywhere, began to have the decisive impact on world anti-racist understanding after 1945. The decisive historical change in a previously totally racist world came only once states of proletarian dictatorship had begun to challenge the previous world dominance by states of bourgeois dictatorship.

And this remains the only sensible answer to all other current world political and economic strife too.

The nervous distaste of 'crisisism' by unconfident fake-'lefts' is increasingly having the ground taken from under its feet by the ever-quickening avalanche of astonishing world-political upheavals.

The sound academic understandings such as "it is easier to achieve the overthrow of the capitalist class than to 'reform' capitalism through parliamentary legislation (impossible)" and "it is easier to overthrow the monopoly bourgeoisie everywhere than to stop imperialist-system warmongering (impossible)" will shortly give way to such sheer degeneracy, breakdown, and destructive turmoil, all over the planet, that only revolutionary solutions will emerge as feasible, with no further argument.

Collapsing fastest and most importantly is the fake-'left' delusion in the unprecedented superiority of US imperialist strength which created a New World order which allegedly (SLP) "imposed a 'peace' sell-out on the IRA and Sinn Féin", for example, - etc, etc.

No such thing. The COLLAPSE of the imperialist system is what is driving British colonialism out of Ireland, hounded out by an unbeaten and unbeatable national-liberation revolutionary struggle, led by Sinn Féin and the IRA. Dramatic US imperialist setbacks now come so thick and fast that significant capitalist media admissions of capitalist-system failures now outrun EPSR weekly ability to cover them all fully. The CIA's failed Venezuela coup arouses particular interest because of the implications of growing disenchantment throughout the whole of the Third World stooge bourgeoisie with the perspectives and achievements and competence of American counter-revolutionary world leadership. Washington's now barely-concealed brazen bravado that a coup was all Chávez deserved; -  and will get soon - can't obscure the disaster of this failure and its implications:

THE FAILED coup in Venezuela was tied closely to senior officials in the US government, The Observer has established. They have long histories in the 'dirty wars' of the Eighties and links to death squads working then in Central America.

Washington's involvement in the turbulent events that briefly removed left-wing leader Hugo Chavez from power for a time last weekend resurrects fears about US ambitions in the hemisphere.

Chavez's chief ideologue Guillermo Garcia Ponce, director of the Revolutionary Political Command, said dissident generals, local media and anti-Chavez groups in the US had plotted the president's removal.

The events also deepen doubts about policy in the region being made by appointees to the Bush administration, all of whom owe their careers to serving in the dirty wars under President Reagan.

One of them, Elliot Abrams, who gave a nod to the attempted Venezuelan coup, has a conviction for misleading Congress over the infamous Iran-Contra affair.

The Bush administration has tried to distance itself from the coup. It immediately endorsed the new government under businessman Pedro Carmona. But the coup was sent dramatically into reverse after 48 hours.

Now officials at the Organisation of American States and other diplomatic sources, talking to The Observer, assert that the US administration was not only aware the coup was about to take place, but had sanctioned it, presuming it to be destined for success.

The visits by Venezuelans plotting a coup, including Carmona himself, began, say sources, 'several months ago', and continued until weeks before the putsch last weekend. The visitors were received at the White House by the man President George Bush tasked to be his key policymaker for Latin America, Otto Reich.

Reich is a right-wing Cuban-American who, under Reagan, ran the Office for Public Diplomacy. It reported in theory to the State Department, but Reich was shown by congressional investigations to report directly to Reagan's National Security Aide, Colonel Oliver North, in the White House.

North was convicted and shamed for his role in Iran-Contra, whereby arms bought by busting US sanctions on Iran were sold to the Contra guerrillas and death squads, in revolt against the Marxist government in Nicaragua.

Reich also has close ties to Venezuela, having been made ambassador to Caracas in 1986. His appointment was contested both by Democrats in Washington and political leaders in the Latin American country.

The objections were overridden as Venezuela sought access to the US oil market. Reich is said by OAS sources to have had 'a number of meetings with Carmona and other leaders of the coup' over several months. The coup was discussed in some detail, right down to its timing and chances of success, which were deemed to be excellent.

On the day - Carmona claimed power, Reich summoned ambassadors from Latin America and the Caribbean to his office. He said the removal of Chavez was not a rupture of democratic rule, as he had resigned and was 'responsible for his fate'. He said the US would support the Carmona government.

But the crucial figure around the coup was Abrams, who operates in the White House as senior director of the National Security Council for 'democracy, human rights and international operations'. He was a leading theoretician of the school known as 'Hemispherism', which put a priority on combating Marxism in the Americas.

It led to the coup in Chile in 1973, and the sponsorship of regimes and death squads that followed it in Argentina, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and elsewhere. During the Contras' rampage in Nicaragua, he worked directly to North.

Congressional investigations found Abrams had harvested illegal funding for the rebellion. Convicted for withholding information from the inquiry, he was pardoned by George Bush senior.

A third member of the Latin American triangle in US policy-making is John Negroponte, now ambassador to the United Nations. He was Reagan's ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985 when a US-trained death squad, Battalion 3-16, tortured and murdered scores of activists.

More than 100 people died in events before and after the coup. In Caracas on Friday a military judge confined five high-ranking officers to indefinite house arrest pending formal charges of rebellion.

The White House yesterday confirmed that a few weeks before the coup attempt, administration officials met Pedro Carmona, the business leader who took over the interim government after President Hugo Chavez was arrested on Friday.

The US defence department also confirmed that the Venezuelan army's chief of staff, General Lucas Romero Rincon, visited the Pentagon in December and met the assistant secretary of defence for western hemispheric affairs, Roger Pardo-Maurer.

But the White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, denied that the US had offered any support for a putsch.

However, it was not made clear why the talks broached the subject of a coup, four months before the event.

Mr Chavez yesterday hinted at the possibility of US involvement in the coup attempt, noting that only days before he was ousted, dozens of Venezuelan military personnel working in the country's Washington, Bogota and Brasilia embassies returned to Caracas with no explanation. The implication was that these were military staff sympathetic to the opposition whom he had sent abroad when he became president in 1999.

Mr Chavez had earlier said he would investigate the presence of what he said was an American plane on the island prison where he was detained by the Venezuelan military. Mr Fleischer said yesterday he did not know whether Washington had provided a plane to fly the Venezuelan president into exile.

A Latin American diplomat in Washington said that when Mr Carmona and other opposition leaders came to the US they met Otto Reich, the assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affair.

As the crisis deepened, Mr Reich set the tone of US policy. According to one diplomat, Mr Reich told ambassadors on Friday that although the US did not support a coup, President Chavez had been the first to "disrupt Venezuela's constitutional order":

The same message was echoed on Saturday by the US ambassador to the Organisation of American States (OAS), Roger Noriega, at an emergency meeting in Washington.

One OAS diplomat said: "We were in that room for 14 hours, and for most of that 14 hours, Noriega was pushing the line, that it was Chavez that had 'created the problem'.

The OAS denounced the coup attempt, as did all Venezuela's neighbours. Washington, however, acknowledged the new government. "A transitional civilian government has been installed," Mr Fleischer said on Saturday.

Some of the key participants in US meetings with Venezuelan figures in the run-up to the coup were veterans of Reagan-era "dirty tricks" operations. Mr Pardo-Maurer served as the chief of staff to the Nicaraguan contras representative in Washington between 1986 and 1989.

Mr Reich was the head of the office of public diplomacy in the state department, which was later found to have been involved in covert pro-contra propaganda.

The fascist rat Otto Reich's sordid Nazi history (p8 this issue, and subsequently) explains the Le Pen development too. The anti-communist 'logic' of imperialism drives the system only to fascism when the 'free world' doesn't go as planned.

'Democracy' failing in France? Le Pen has the answer. 'Democracy' throws up a bad result in Venezuela? Let the State Department and the CIA organise a fascist coup.

This apparently smooth cynicism could be concealing the most chaotic breakdown of the imperialist world order ever.

Fascism is a desperate last resort on route to total failure, not a strengthening of reaction of any kind. The most important thing about Hitler's 1,000-year Reich supposedly 'halting the slide to Bolshevism' is that it ended in utter catastrophe after just 12 years, and only narrowly avoided communist revolution. 

France is now in all kinds of turmoil, with its 'reformist' social-democracy heart totally discredited and humiliated, and deservedly so, and the fake-'left' too. It was a predictable come-uppance for the 'anti-fascist' fraud that Mitterand the 'socialist' President represented (a WWII Quisling), and for the class-collaborative petty-bourgeois reality of all fake-'lefts' who in any crisis always only plead to the bigger bourgeoisie for "more action to help keep out the bogeyman" (see story on Brixton TH fake-'left' rally) Chirac for now, but Jospin alternatively too if he could get back into the contest. What they fear is the breakdown in utter chaos of capitalism. As a perspective, it is certainly hardly likeable, but that misses the point. That anarchist chaos is inevitably the only first way forward from the rottenness of ALL 'old politics', fake-'left' included.

A general collapse of world-wide bourgeois confidence in the counter-revolutionary leadership ability of the current US imperialist line suggests itself beyond Venezuela too. Why did the ruling class let the CIA coup fail? The kick in the groin the Argentine rulers got from world finance can hardly have encouraged 'free market' confidence in Caracas:

Argentina slid further into financial crisis last night when the government ordered the indefinite closure of the country's banks in an attempt to prevent the wholesale collapse of the economy.

The government said it had halted all banking and foreign exchange transactions, to stem the growing tide of money being withdrawn from the crippled banking system.

The move could spark more riots among Argentinians already frustrated at the growing unemployment and poverty. Riots last December led to looting, toppled the former government and left 27 dead. 

Some estimates suggest the creaking banking system has bled more than 10% of total deposits since January. At least one major banking group, the Canadian-owned ScotiabankQuilmes, had earlier been  ordered to halt most of its operations in the country due to cash shortages.

The vice-president of Argentina's central banks Aldo Pignanelli, told the Argentinian Banks Association the closure would last until congress could pass legislation preventing further cash withdrawals by the anxious population. 

"The bank has decided to call a banking and foreign exchange holiday from the close of trade on April 19," the central bank said in a brief statement. A spokeswoman declined to comment further. 

A total breakdown of Argentina's financial system would be catastrophic for Latin America. Argentina is the third largest economy in the region.

President Eduardo Dualde is working with advisers on a programme that would convert savings accounts into bonds - a plan he hopes will stem a growing number of successful lawsuits against a four-month old banking freeze already in effect. 

Under the existing restrictions, cash withdrawals have been limited to $500 (£350) a month, triggering angry protests outside many Buenos Aires banks.

In recent months, many Argentinians have won court orders overturning the freeze, pulling out more than $100m a day, and few fresh deposits are being made.

The forced closure of ScotiabankQuilmes, part of the Bank of Nova Scotia, was a signal to foreign-owned banks that they needed to inject more funds into their Argentinian operations.

Hundreds of people lined up outside the bank's Buenos Aires branch to withdraw their salaries. Within hours other banks had closed their branches and put guards at the doors.

"I have 12 pesos (£3) to last me until the end of the month," said 28-year-old telecoms worker, Maximiliano Lopez, as he waited outside Scotiabank's downtown headquarters. "I probably won't eat much today because that much money doesn't stretch that far."

The Bank of Nova Scotia is the first to clearly state it is not willing to shore up its local business until the bank rules are clearer. Banking experts warned that this latest move could scare foreign-owned banks off altogether. "If they think it is impossible to operate in Argentina, no one will want to stay," said one analyst. 

The proposal from the government is to replace savings with 10-year bonds. Legislators are expected to support the plan, which will fuel further anger among savers.

State workers in the poor Andean province of San Juan, were still occupying government offices to demand backpay last night, a day after police dispersed protesters in the northern province of Jujuy using teargas.  

Argentina has asked for at least $9bn in aid to avoid defaulting on International Monetary Fund and World Bank loans. But international lenders have been demanding evidence that provinces will stop the runaway spending that forced Argentina to default on part of its $140bn debt pile.  

And the whole trend in Latin America has been away from past military-coup dictatorships for fear of communist revolution as the obvious only answer. 

But does Washington's failing-appeal also reflect a historical aspect of globalisation whereby paradoxically, although the supremacy of the mightiest world financial and military power is greater than ever in the record of imperialist domination, the relationship between world-hegemony and local bourgeois-stooging has changed (from bringing railways, communications and social administration in the early days of colonialism to now merely being rival players in trade war competition and arms-trade racketeering)?

Elsewhere, US domination has been humiliated by Zionist recalcitrance. The tail of fascist colonialist tyranny is now wagging the dog of 'New World Order'.

And this highly dangerous utter fiasco (more next week on the revolutionary implications of Sharon's blitzkrieg) will cause further huge damage to US imperialism's main anti-crisis warmongering project against 'terrorism' into Afghanistan, etc, etc, - badly in trouble already.

The latest 'war' press conference showed a US Junta split, with the War Dept being blamed for letting Bin Laden 'escape' and for the Generals directing things from Florida instead of in the Afghan mountains, bogs, or deserts.

And in Afghanistan itself, the makings of a long bloody conflict which the West is unlikely to 'win' and which will appear increasingly pointless, - loom ever larger. (For details, read almost every Western press story now).

The inevitable slow exposure of the war crime destruction of Jenin by the USA's main counter-revolutionary ally in the crucial Middle East, the Zionist colonists, is going to seriously damage Washington's 'can-do' know-how reputation even further (more next week).

The key requirement for an effective socialist response to all this imperialist turmoil is to expand the scope of Marxist-Leninist scientific understanding of everything as far and fast as possible in all directions.

"Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary practice" as fake-'lefts' even say on mastheads but then do everything possible to prevent developing.

And the barmiest thing to do for developing and spreading Marxist understanding would be to stifle polemical debate and historical analysis in order to fit in with the bureaucratic-sectarian requirements of a larger movement oriented towards 'left' trade-unionism and where the most reactionary labour boss sycophantism and guru-worship prevails.

Such a milieu produces the imbecility of "condemn Sept 11" and no ability thereafter to discuss it or challenge it, plus a continuation of Stalin-worship which (again undiscussable) simply beggars belief within a supposedly serious-minded struggle for Marxist-Leninist science.

As the EPSR has shown several times in its history, performing well within larger mass movements, when worthwhile, is not very difficult.

But without the opportunity to fight for an ever-improving revolutionary understanding, it is very very pointless.

Most insane of all is the idea that the indisputable factual record of pioneering understanding of world crisis developments in the EPSR's name is going to be 'isolated' as this understanding comes into its own.

There will be many new movements of various kinds, - possibly countless new movements depending on how long imperialism's warmongering crisis takes to spin itself out to full final disaster. The EPSR's ideas, or ideas very like them, will play a leading role, which is all that matters.

What original understanding of anything is the working class indebted to SLP/Lalkar for? To 'condemn' Sept 11? British jobs for British workers? IRA/Sinn Féin 'succumbing' to a US imperialist 'peace' imposition? Genoa anti-globalisation anarchists being fingered as 'imperialist agents'?  An Indian nuclear bomb for the Indian bourgeois state? Long live a two-state solution allowing 'Israel' to survive on colonised Palestinian land???

The list of total reactionary garbage coming from this 'movement' is absolutely endless. Is there one single pioneering understanding which was not read in the EPSR first?

And so how do ideas and understanding come about? Believe it or not by conducting a deliberately-organised fight for ideas and understanding, and not allowing ANYTHING to get in the way of that open and honest struggle, - a revolutionary perspective spelled out fully in front of workers movements whenever possible and necessary. 

"Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary practice". The fake-'left' still don't get it, and nor will they. Build Leninism. EPSR

Socialist Alliance 'lefts' hand their "anti-war" influence straight back to the New Labour warmongers 

In time-honoured (Menshevik) fashion, the anger against US and Zionist warmongering generated at the Stop the War Coalition meeting in Brixton last Monday was turned straight around into support for New Labour. 

Despite every sneer directed at Blair's contemptible toadying to Bush's "war on terror" blitzkrieg of Afghanistan, threats to Iraq and collusion with Zionist barbarism, the platform speakers and those from the SWP etc on the floor always cheered and embraced the Labour 'lefts' who deigned to speak, George Galloway and Diane Abbott.  

But these complete opportunists are part of the "war party"!

The sick joke that the 'labour movement' includes and needs these 'leaders' is simply protected by the Socialist Alliance. 

Lindsey German, editor of the laughable 'theoretical' rag of the SWP Socialist Review, talked pure reformist garbage: "Tony Blair should know better"; "this war is making the world more dangerous"; "if 100,000 people march against the war and there was civil disobedience then we could force a reversal in Tony Blair's policy [leaving Bush isolated] and the war would stop". 

Opposing the war threats to Iraq, Labour MP George Galloway said: "We are winning this argument, and winning this struggle." 

"Votes will count and MPs will be worried about retaining their seats, and will be forced to shift their stance to peace." The parliamentary-reformist illusion peddling could not be clearer. But no Socialist Alliance member wanted to puncture this nonsense.

While all EPSRs and all Marxist science warn that imperialist warmongering will not stop until the monopoly-bourgeois system is DEFEATED and OVERTHROWN for good, the SWP and other Alliance charlatans spread the lethal delusion that 'protesting' is enough to stop war in its tracks.

Their petty-bourgeois reformist ideology simply will not countenance that capitalism's economic domination is doomed to collapse in global "free market" disaster, trade war turmoil and shooting war recriminations of a scale to bring humiliation and defeat on the big Western powers themselves, thereby unleashing working class revolution in the metropolitan countries themselves.

Instead, in a grotesquely Menshevik way, all enthusiasm for anti-war protesting was directed to the hope of 'left' progress in New Labour (even if the floor speaker called for a Socialist Alliance vote in May's local elections).

The Alliance's 'anti-war' posturing - given completely free rein in a 'left' public meeting - amounts only to parliamentary cretinism. Just like the Mensheviks in 1917, who were only capable of handing all power over to the big Tsarist bourgeoisie, because of incurable ruling class infatuation and affiliation. 

Galloway, parliamentary-reformist weathervane that he is, also pleaded with the Western warmongers and Zionist fascists directly: "Sharon shouldn't wipe out Arafat and progressive Arab nationalism because waiting in the wings are the Islamists and Bin Ladens. 

"After Fatah the deluge." 

So this is what this 'left' reformism amounts to: scare-mongering against an Arab revolution and warning the Establishment - including the Zionist thugs themselves - that Western interests are under threat.

The EPSR comrades present handed out the London leaflet that presciently warned workers that the Socialist Alliance "stop the war" posturing conveyed deluded reformism, but were prevented from speaking by the chairman because he knew the platform speakers' fake-'left' nonsense and brown-nosing to Labour 'lefts' would take a hammering.
 
Embarrassingly for him - especially given the posturing that had gone on in the meeting over the capitalist media's blackout of coverage of the anti-war demonstrations - he was forced to admit that he had deliberately ignored the EPSR comrade's raised hand. 

(In fact, the chairman nervously refused to look towards the comrade at all in the discussion period of the meeting, thereby disenfranchising the 200 people in that half of the hall, an act of contempt for workers democracy that angered several others present).

The 'left's 'opposition to war' is a sick joke. 

Build Leninism. Spread the EPSR's revolutionary leadership.

Chris Barratt

War cannot be stopped by protest and "opposition" and fighting for stability and "democracy". Only the very turmoil of the INEVITABLE slump slide of the whole capitalist system into warmongering chaos gives the working class the chance to finally OVERTHROW the whole system and thereby end the source of war for good. To do that demands conscious struggle to understand the whole of capitalism and the need for revolution - not reformist illusion.

"Revolts" in the pro-capitalist New Labour establishment over the accelerating warmongering degeneracy of imperialism are mainly a reflection of weakness and turmoil within the whole ruling class as its system heads for the biggest slump and war crisis in history, rather than some late conversion to the working class cause.

As a sign of the ruling class's problems such splits are welcome but if full scale defections to the "anti-war camp" are to be encouraged as such they need to go a lot further than demands to "stop the war" on Afghanistan or "halt the plans to attack Iraq", [along with the multi-hued fake-"left".]  

	If they don't, such defections and splits remain part of the problem for the working class, - not the answer, adding to confusion and not to clarity about the world.

Fostering the illusion that it is enough to shout "no to war" on a few marches to bring the imperialist degeneracy skidding to a halt "if only enough of us are united and determined enough" is almost a bigger fraud on the working class than the parliamentary democracy racket itself.

Imperialism is hell bent on a plunge into worldwide war and mayhem - currently under the cynical pretence of a "war against terrorism" - and nothing is going to stop it while the capitalist system lasts. King Canute would have more success stopping the tide coming in.

Warmongering is not some "nasty turn" in policy that can be stopped or reversed, however strong the forces of opposition might be, but an absolutely inbuilt feature of the antagonistic profit making competitive system of capitalism itself.  

No-one has yet ever demolished the brilliant understanding of Karl Marx that capitalism's relentless accumulation of capital all seeking to make a profit as the expense of the exploited masses, must eventually clog the whole system.  
	
Periodically the endless need of "normal" competition to drive rival capitalists out of business and into bankruptcy, intensifies into a desperate need to wipe out large chunks of capital itself - to eliminate "surplus" capital and restore profitability to what remains.
	
The system simply accumulates far too much capital chasing ever diminishing opportunities to invest in profitable production. There is just:- 
	
"'too much' investment capital seeking profitable outlets; 'too many' multi-national monopoly giants trying to all keep profitable, selling cars to the world; 'too much' farm production causing 'surplus food' mountains or wrecking the market prices for beef, sheep farmers, coffee, wheat, etc, etc; 'too many' workers in industry after industry (unemployment will soon be rocketing); 'too much' competition to keep everyone profitable in the televising of football; etc; etc; etc).

This anarchy of speculative investment has undoubtedly been historically remarkably innovative; and its regular wasteful disaster when 'enterprise' goes wrong (often criminally or farcically so, and always cruelly exploitative of all the livelihoods, career hopes, or other aspirations destroyed) is maybe accepted as tolerable in boom periods when other opportunities often come along, but at a time of major worldwide slump-crisis for capitalism, such a ludicrous SYSTEM of economic anarchy becomes intolerable political dynamite, which starts to totally poison all international relationships, and all human relationships within every country."[EPSR 1130 April 2nd 2002].

The history of the twentieth century is dominated by the worldwide destructive momentum of capitalist crisis and slump, with its inter-imperialist rivalries rapidly building from beggar-thy-neighbour trade-war to strangling economic warfare erupting suddenly (and inexplicably to non-Marxists) into the devastating World War I and World War II.

Escalating economic turmoil and collapse has been eating in from the edges of the worldwide "globalised" imperialist system for years already with regular currency and credit implosions in South America, the shattering and still ongoing disintegration of the "Asian Tigers" economic miracle in 1997 (excepting communist China), the constipated 11 year stagnation of the world's second largest economy in Japan,  the ruthless imperialist impoverishment of the African continent, and the carpet-bagging asset stripping of the former Soviet and eastern European socialist states (with the working class majority reduced to desperate straits).	

Slump collapse and chaos reaching even into the heart of imperialism has been obvious for the last few years from the bursting of the hi-tech IT bubble to the inability of the Stock Markets to climb off their knees.  Now regular revelations of the criminal hollowness of the system from the Enron debacle to nationwide pension fund collapses are all straws in the wind for the UNPRECEDENTEDLY MASSIVE crisis to come. 
 	
Early signals of the deadly international rivalries brewing have also come from the sudden escalation of threatened trade war over steel and the US tariffs imposed in complete contempt for "world democratic" trade "agreements". 

Whether or not Britain and Germany head the rest of Europe off at the pass from an antagonistic response this time, the issue will not go away.  

There is no solution and the world is inexorably heading for war, which is why the most powerful imperialist of all has already taken advantage of the INEVITABLE explosion of hate filled extremist reactions (to the misery crime and unfairness its system imposes on the planet), to step up the warmongering atmosphere under the guise of a so-called "war on terrorism". US imperialism is making sure that the whole planet, (and most of all its really significant rivals, the other imperialist powers), get the message that as this crisis reaches maturity it is ready to put the boot in. No getting caught out by a Pearl Harbour attack this time.

But the other side of the brutal aggression and bullying (more and more on show, and more and more openly encouraged in the most barbaric of imperialist stooges, the fascist mad-dog "Israelis") are growing SPLITS, CONFUSION and FAILURE to keep the lid on the imperialist "New World Order".

The same favoured Zionists and their ruthless attempts to out-NAZI the NAZIs in keeping the lid on the Middle East (to allow continued imperialist exploitation) are also increasingly a source of embarrassment and PANIC for the imperialists, fearful that they might be provoking the very revolutionary forces that might eventually lose them their control here (and further afield):

"US imperialism at loggerheads with Zionist imperialism, albeit only semi-seriously at the moment, nevertheless fulfils a long-standing EPSR understanding that inter-imperialist CONFLICT is the key to all historical development.

The ultimate perspective, only half-joking, is for bourgeois-imperialist ideology to become so fevered and panicky at the idea that its world-domination might get bungled and LOST in the revolutionary turmoil of international crisis that one half of billionaire American government might go into battle against the other half, - CIA and State Department hawks against Joint Chiefs and Defence Department 'doves'.

But in the tiniest embryo, this fantasy is already present in this embarrassing major disagreement between the US Government and its Zionist armed-thug protégés (built-up into an 'independent' war machine for permanently terrorising and controlling all would-be Arab anti-imperialist developments, but without this colonising tyranny-without-end and its constant criminal-fascist excesses being directly attributable to Washington).[EPSR 1131 April 9th 2002].

Equally, splits with the EU over steel are the beginnings of huge difficulties for the ruling class. And the messy chaos of Afghanistan shows their FAILURE.

It is this weakness and CHAOS of imminent slump that gives the working class is best prospect for ending war -  by taking advantage of the ruling class’s increasing inability to rule over billions increasingly unable and unwilling to live as exploited wage slaves. 
	
Far from decrying the instability of onrushing slump and war the working class needs to see it as the major OPPORTUNITY to finally finish completely with imperialism.  There is no other way to stop war.
	
Least of all should the working class be led to "condemn" the upheavals and ANY efforts of the world’s exploited and downtrodden masses.  US imperialism INSISTS that Arafat condemn the desperate and heroic young Palestinians willing to kill themselves to fight back, trying to head off the fightback spirit.  The fake-"left" also "condemns" them standing hand in hand with Bush and Blair, in the biggest capitulation since the Second International voted war credits for their own bourgeoisies in 1914.

Building revolutionary theory and mass leadership is a better way to fight than suicide bombing. But it is not done by condemning those who do fight in their own way. Build Leninist understanding. EPSR supporters London.

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

The President's men – the terrorist Mafia

HE was the one who permitted terrorist Orlando Bosch to find permanent refuge in the United States. He was an associate of Jorge Mas Canosa, founder of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), and continues to be linked to the most irresponsible anti-Cuba circles. He distinguished himself in Central America as chief of the disinformation campaign accusing the Sandinistas of obtaining a fleet of MiGs. He's an associate of Frank Calzón, CIA agent and the brains behind the anti Cuba Freedom House in Washington. Otto Reich is another one of the President's Men, and when George W. Bush says that he'll find him a post in his administration, he means it.

The fact that he's a professional liar, associated with discredited elements of the ultra-right, or that he has shared dreams with known terrorists doesn't matter. The president insists - obsessively - on maintaining his candidate for the White House's primary representative in Latin America, as the assistant secretary of state for hemispheric affairs.

In August, Senator Harry Reid, assistant Senate majority leader, sent Reich's nomination back to George W., suggesting that he look for a decent candidate. Just like that. On October 11, Senator Christopher Dodd, in a letter to the Wall Street Journal, repeated the message and invited the president to send a "qualified" candidate.

But George W. Bush was not impressed.

'AN HONORABLE MAN'

Thus, a few days ago the "nomination" reappeared at the Senate's door. And this time in the hands of Secretary of State Colin Powell himself, who put his own reputation on the line. And a more angelical argument as well: the Gulf War hero asserted that there is nothing in Reich's background that "disqualifies" him for this very important position.

According to the ANSA press agency, Powell stated that Reich had been investigated for all the accusations made by his adversaries. The conclusion was that he is an "honorable man."

Perhaps "honor" in the White House is a distinctly different concept than what's universally recognized.

The son of an Austrian father and Cuban mother, Otto Juan Reich was born in Cuba 56 years ago. He left the island in 1960 as a teenager, when his family settled in Charlotte, North Carolina.

After finishing his studies, Otto Reich spent two years in the U.S. Army, based in Panama. In 1972, he moved to Miami, where he quickly became firmly attached to far-right Republican circles, guaranteeing his future in politics.

As a good opportunist, he always made use of his Cuban origins - even though he left the country when he was 15 years old - to fabricate an anti-Cuba rhetoric that soon produced the desired benefits. Recognizing his demagogic talents, the leaders of the Miami terrorist mafia opened up the doors of power to him.

With the arrival of Ronald Reagan in the White House and the 12 following years of Republican reign, Reich moved to Washington and took ever more important posts, to the rhythm of his declarations of blind faith in the establishment and in the ultra-right. He went from the Agency for International Development to the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy, and became U.S. ambassador to Venezuela in 1986. 

AN ACCOMPLICE TO TERRORISTS

There he met Orlando Bosch.

Held in a Caracas prison, Bosch was awaiting a trial for a sinister crime: the sabotage of a Cubana Airlines plane that took the lives of 73 people, including the entire Cuban junior national fencing team, which was returning to the island after winning a continental competition.

With a hysterical hatred toward Cuba, Bosch joined any conspiracy, from the early 1960s on, with the most violent elements in South Florida, and with the blessing of the Central Intelligence Agency. According to a modest estimate, he participated in a minimum of 30 assassination attempts in two decades. In 1968, he was sentenced (finally!) to 10 years in prison for firing a 57-millimeter bazooka at a Polish freighter docked in Miami harbor.

But, benefiting from protection, the terrorist disappeared from Florida while he was out on parole, resurfacing in Venezuela, where he would soon be identified as the accomplice of another extremely dangerous terrorist and CIA associate, Luis Posada Carriles, in the explosion of the Cubans airliner off the coast of Barbados, a few weeks earlier.

In spite of the overwhelming proof of his guilt, the judges of a military court were divided about Bosch's fate. Reich, in the meantime, had personally prepared Bosch's rapid departure from the country. Recently declassified documents reveal that Reich pressured the State Department to approve the terrorist's readmission to U.S. territory.

In a secret note sent before the court verdict, Reich informed that "friends" of Bosch were ready to whisk him out of Venezuela within four hours of his release from jail. Bosch was freed and quickly sent to Miami, where he continues to enjoy U.S. hospitality, despite an FBI report calling him one of the most dangerous terrorists. 

PROFESSIONAL DISINFORMER

At that time, the Iran-Contra scandal - an operation whereby the Reagan administration was able to finance the dirty war against the Sandinistas with secret sales of arms to Iran - was coming to light.

And who took on the role of disinforming the U.S. public? The "honorable" Otto Reich, who as director of the new Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD) utilized all the resources of his fertile imagination, not only to hide from the public the criminal activities of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, but also to disinform, disorient, and deceive through any propaganda method.

Thus, under Reich's instructions, OPD personnel wrote letters from alleged readers to the major U.S. newspapers, without disclosing OPD involvement. These texts defended Reagan's policies in Central America by all means, including lying, with the objective of manipulating the public and the mass media.

Asked by the White House to keep a low profile, given the possibility of an appearance before the Senate, according to the Miami New Times, Reich momentarily retired to his office in Arlington, from which - under the shadow of the CIA, also located in this D.C. Suburb - he ran his lobbying firm, dedicated to influencing (without corrupting) the highest circles of power. RMA International, with four employees, devoted itself to representing the interests of LockheedMartin, well-known maker of military aircraft, and rum producer Bacardi, eternal sponsor of the more frustrated sectors of the anti-Cuba mafia.

Amongst his other occupations, Reich is currently active with the Center for a Free Cuba. The Center is associated with Freedom House, which was created by the CIA and is permanently headed by Frank Calzón, another familiar figure in the anti-Cuba industry, with whom Reich maintains close relations. Likewise. he keeps in contact with all the leaders and ex-leaders of the CANF, and nostalgically recalls his late associate Jorge Mas Canosa.

BUT 'SENATOR NO' IS GONE

Although his friend John Negroponte went running to his seat in the United Nations to hide himself behind the columns of smoke from the September 11 attacks, it is certain that Otto Reich will not enjoy the same momentary Senate unanimity. Some fundamental factors have changed since May. Aging Senator Jesse Helms, longtime Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and nicknamed Senator No for his reactionary stubbornness; has now announced his retirement.  

And there's more. Various Republican senators have already withdrawn their support for the blockade against Cuba, a genocidal invention of the Cold War. They have simply stated that when a policy fails for 40 years, it is reasonable to believe that it is an aberration.

And the obsolete rhetoric of people like Otto Reich, towards Cuba and the continent as a whole, can only generate misunderstanding and more failures.