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 
No 1139 June 11 2002

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                                             25p 

Continuing lies about global economic 'recovery' are merely taking brainwashing advantage of temporary shifts in the burden of 'surplus' capital disaster from country to country while the worldwide over-production problem still worsens, heading for a markets crash catastrophe. And with the imperialist propaganda offensive already faltering in its bid to take the world's mind off slump and economic crisis - via demented chauvinism and a sick 'war on terrorism', the US monopoly bourgeoisie's international domination comes closer to its inevitable ultimate humiliation and failure. Socialist revolution remains the unavoidably NECESSARY way forward for civilisation, and imperialist DEFEATS will be the main route for getting there. The anti-communist boastfulness of "a triumph of history for democracy and the free market" helped capitalism to survive the post-1945 period, but the collapse of the long boom now will turn 60 years of anti-communist propaganda on its head. Ever-growing mass armed revolt against imperialist tyranny will write its own philosophy, - a renewal of Marxist-Leninist science. And the half-hearted fake-'left' sectarianism of the Allende-Scargill kind will perish along with all 'parliamentary' bourgeois opportunism.

Panic and gloom throughout all investments for profit (the heart of the capitalist system in its monopoly-imperialist final phase) are no longer being hidden by international share markets or by the bourgeois press.

The phoney 'recovery' is yet more propaganda spin, - yet another part of the dumbing-down fantasy culture (Big Brother, Pop Idol, etc, and all the hysterical celebrity-worship now going on) which is laughably one of the class system's last hopes for a bread-and-circuses diversion to keep at bay a potential mass revolt against the injustices and the inadequacies of capitalism.

After nearly 60 years of non-stop anti-communist propaganda by the West to convince the planet that "freedom" and "democracy" and "an enterprise culture" really do provide everyone with happiness, prosperity, and opportunities galore, the private monopoly ownership racket, and its exploitation-for-profit methods of hire-and-fire, are facing a desperate credibility crisis.

On top of the short-termism and shallowness of what measure of "the good life” which monopoly racketeering has been able to provide fleetingly, the writing is now on the wall for any longer-term stability or prosperity at all as the international trade-slump and profits-collapse, created by "free-market" anarchy, relentlessly begin to tighten their stifling grip on the corrupt and dishonest system which spawned them.

This ultimate humiliation of this extraordinary longterm anti-communist propaganda blitzkrieg by the (bourgeois) “free world" is a key aspect of this turning-point in history; and the ridiculous excesses of government lies and spinning, - universal now throughout capitalist culture, -- reflect the terrifying scale of the disaster that the bourgeois world has created for itself by its incessant brainwashing that "freedom,, and "democracy" and "private enterprise" have "won the battle of history" and can provide "the good life" for the whole of mankind, and "endless opportunities for all", etc, etc.

That colossal international ideological offensive against the workers states and against all national-liberation regimes which have been too keen on copying the Soviet Union's planned economic development methods, has been dictated by the inevitable mass emancipation nature of the modern capitalist state in which the phenomena of minimum technological and factory skills, mass travel, universal telecommunications, mass consumer market advertising, etc etc, have become globalised.

With the majority of mankind no longer stuck in rural subsistence/simplicity/stupidity, but agitated by the undoubtedly tremendous opportunities for economic, social and cultural development that technology and organisation have brought (which inevitably accompanied the post-1945 completion of the globalisation process), this unprecedented worldwide anti-communist brainwashing blitzkrieg became unavoidable.

But to keep on winning this historical philosophical conflict for the future of civilisation, it is absolutely essential for the 'free market' economic system to NEVER FALTER again.

The planned Soviet workers-state transformation from the most devastated and backward major country on earth in 1917 to becoming in many ways the most advanced power on earth in the post-1945 period, will remain for all time one of the most remarkable and brilliant achievements in the whole record of civilisation's progress.

Only because the imperialist world trade boom kept going full blast from 1945 onwards; obviously outpacing in consumer products (because of the immense profitability of labour-exploitation on an international scale, especially in dirt-poor Third World countries) anything which the more justice-oriented, equality-minded and culturally-creative planned economies could achieve in the same field in so short a time, - did the Revisionist philosophical bureaucratisation of the workers states succeed in abandoning command-socialist structures for the "free market".

There can be no doubt that as soon as it universally dawns on people that capitalism's record-breaking postwar boom is now collapsing into yet another round of the class-exploitation system’s long history of periodic devastating market crashes and trade slumps (and even worse when cut-throat competition gives way to competitive devaluations, tariff barriers, trade war, and then invariably to deliberately manufactured chauvinistic hysteria and shooting wars again (World War I, World War II, etc)), - then the ineradicable international consciousness of what miracle transformations were once achieved by public ownership and five-year-plans and a truly cooperative international socialist and anti-imperialist camp, will come roaring back into action.

Since coming down from the trees, civilisation has never for very long gone back on major achievements of technological and political/social organisational advance, only ever suffering episodes of a temporary "one step forward, two steps back" nature.

Revisionism's stupid philosophical degeneration back to being temporarily blinded by the apparently "all-conquering glitz of market-forces productivity” is likely to prove to be one of the most ill-timed, temporary, and ludicrous episodes of civilisation-in-reverse ever to astonish the historical record.

What this theory of world development obviously still lacks is sufficient factual evidence on the ground to really recommence convincing people that Marxism had it right all along.

Although much circumstantial indication keeps piling up such as the now unconcealed bearish fears of the Stock Exchange professionals, - people who obviously really DO know a lot more about likely economic developments than what the public are fed (by Government and media bourgeois propaganda such as the more exaggerated-than-ever lies and spinning by this peculiar Blairite regime, - not a scrap of confidence or conviction about anything tangible, and seemingly purpose-built just for a crucial brain-washing interregnum), - real proof of this whole capitalist collapse perspective has still some way to go.

Even where the international "freemarket" racket has already crashed in ignominy, as in Argentina, - signs of the obviously anticipated answer to such a corrupt and fraudulent debacle, - namely signs of a communist revolution brewing, SEEM to be slow in developing.

But it is the PROCESS of revolt which is crucial, not reaching looked-for stages in a timetable dictated by natural human impatience.

History has ALWAYS shown actual developments to be vastly more convoluted and long-drawn-out than ever anyone expected, not least of all Marx himself.

But what matters is the Marxist scientific understanding of the NECESSARY DIRECTION of developments which alone can replace the imperialist system; in terminal crisis.

The key to the insoluble revolutionary crisis (from imperialism's point of view) is that once the vast majority of mankind (in the proletarian and colonially-exploited Third World) start to find Western monopoly-capitalist domination intolerable, and start to develop a confident, competent independent-mindedness which has made up its mind to no longer put up with the imperialist diktat, then ultimately nothing can stop this gravedigging of the international capitalist ruling-class system from being completed, as and when the economic crisis of the system reaches virtual breakdown point.

Past EPSR's have carried exhaustive proof, particularly from Japan, of how the relentless buildup of 'surplus' capital has, along classic Marxist lines, steadily begun to stifle ALL opportunity for continued profitable expansion of the Japanese economy. And although there is currently a renewed burst of periodic "recovery at last" official optimism from Tokyo, it really does need to be seen to be believed, and it still leaves the huge doubts over the "freemarket" anarchy system of "if capitalism is so clever, then why did it put up with 11 years of stagnation in Japan, the world's truly 'supereconomy', and cause such pain and, anxiety to the Japanese people?" 

And in any case, the phenomenon of "over-production" breakdowns and collapse has also temporarily devastated many other regional economies in the meantime, - notably the Far Eastern 'economic tigers' (still devastating the Philippines and Indonesia, causing their dictatorship regimes of long standing to fall and still unresolved); then Russia; then Brazil; and now Argentina, and so on, -- each time spreading like some horrifying virus and becoming more and more virulent with each bout of 'surplus-capital' sickness.

But it is in how the population of the world is being transformed by imperialist crisis that the clinching arguments of an unstoppable PROCESS at work are usefully found.

And one obvious place to look is in war developments where the insoluble and unsustainable underlying chronic contradictions of the intolerable imperialist-colonialist exploitation system show that it is impossible to hide them or overcome them.

Palestine is a priceless example of how the world really works.

Now outnumbered by their Zionist-imperialist conquerors and exploiters in the actual territory of old Palestine, and more comprehensively defeated and humiliated than almost any people in modern history, - and more often, - the Palestinian Arab nation has nevertheless staged an astonishing Intifada come-back, despite having been (and still being) written-off by the whole bourgeois world (fake'lefts' included) who all insist that there is no way now of ever dismantling the 'State of Israel' colonisation and expropriation of most of Old Palestine, and that the best that the Palestinian Arab nation can hope for is either a 'two-state solution' on pocket-handkerchief scraps of barren land here and there which the Zionist overlords might let the Palestinians fester on, or else in the supposedly 'more radical' solution of joint citizenship with the Zionist colonisers in a unitary state on the entire territory of old Palestine, i.e. a relationship of permanent servitude and domination without even the pretence of 'independence'.

Both fake-'left' so-called "solutions" are a complete anti-historical joke.

There can be no effective Palestinian Arab statehood or citizenship for as long as the 'Israeli' domination continues. The Zionist colonising tyranny is philosophically incapable of any serious withdrawal from past conquests (as daily evidenced by perpetual Sharon-type political dominance); and in practice within capitalist crisis, there could never be any harmonious settlement anyway, only constant aggravation leading repeatedly to renewed hostilities, just like throughout the whole previous 100 years of this monstrous colonisation project since rich Western Jews first started agitating for an independent stake in Western imperialism's Middle East colonisation game.

And even more tellingly, the internal politics of the Palestinian tragedy ought to make it clear to scientific Marxist historical observation that however much Palestinian bourgeois and religious nationalism has in the past (and continues to do) made a confusing muddle of its objectives, and made a poor fist at achieving any redress against Zionist tyranny, - the underlying trend among the Palestinian people, still confused by religion or not, is relentlessly towards ever-improving anti-imperialist understanding and ever-improving revolutionary-guerrilla competence.

The capitalist press itself tells the story, albeit with much continuing misunderstanding and misinterpretation, and with a completely hypocritical Western lack of honesty or any perspective which might upset imperialism by explaining the whole "free world" responsibility (via the United Nations 1947 decision to set up the Zionist colonisation) for this unspeakable tyranny and intolerable injustice perpetrated on the Palestinian nation:

"TARGET GAZA" cried the banner headline across the front page of the broadsheet Ma'ariv.

Less than five miles across the border, inside the Gaza Strip, the man whose name appears at the head of Israel's target list enjoyed breakfast with his family, unrepentant and apparently unconcerned.

Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi is the second in command of Hamas, the Palestinian group that has made 56 suicide attacks during the 19-month intifada.

A retaliatory strike that could claim the lives of dozens of Palestinians and destroy the homes of many more was imminent, yet Dr al-Rantissi seemed to half-welcome an attack. "It will make it easier for us to get at them," he smiled. "We do not have an army, but we do have fighters, and an invasion of Gaza will give our fighters the chance to fight easy targets."

The Israelis will pay a very high price if they come here. And even if they invade the Strip, they will not be able to stay here for long."

Referring to the bitter dashes at Jenin refugee camp on the West Bank last month that cost the lives of 23 Israeli troops as well as those of at least 52 Palestinians, Dr al-Rantissi said: "Gaza will make Jenin look like a children's game. There are 13,000 people in the Jenin refugee camp. At Jabaliya, just one camp in Gaza, there are 150,000.

Dr al-Rantissi, 55, is a paediatrician who founded Hamas 14 years ago alongside Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, an elderly paraplegic Muslim cleric. While Sheikh Yassin is regarded as the organisation's spiritual leader, most Palestinians believe that it is Dr al-Rantissi who calls the shots, even if he never pulls the trigger.

Married with four daughters and two sons, he lives on the third floor of a half-built block of flats on a dusty track in the El Zaitune district of Gaza City. There is a security camera above the entrance and a bullet hole at knee-level in the front door.

Speaking to The Times yesterday, Dr al-Rantissi vowed that the suicide-bombing raids would continue. He acknowledged that the Israelis and Palestinians were locked in a cycle of violence, but had no wish to break it. "Support for Hamas has been increasing since the Palestinian people discovered that what people call the peace process is a falsehood," he said. "We have stated over and over that the only option is resistance.

"We have few weapons, and the most effective weapon is martyr bombings, so we don't have any choice but to use it. The martyrdom operations will continue as long as the Israelis kill our civilians."

"Perhaps it will end in my lifetime, perhaps not," he said "But history shows us that countries like Great Britain and the Soviet Union did not remain major powers. The strong will not always be strong, and the weak will not always be weak."

................................

The Hamas bomber cradling his rifle, clapped and two escorts ran over with a plastic bag. He poured the white powder into his hands, a man confident in his trade. 

It was powerful enough, he said, to blow up an Israeli Mirkava tank, and he and his men had enough of their secret concoction for 10 years of war.

The fact we were out in the open and that Israel has him on a list of Palestinian militants to be shot on sight hardly seemed to bother him: When you are a fugitive, shuffling between safe houses and protected by a network of spies and guards, you know when to relax.

This was Hamas territory, on the edge of Gaza City. I had been taken by taxi to the movement's political headquarters and on to this undisclosed location; the man I met was not the bomber I had asked about, but another in the military wing.

Nidal Farhat was strong framed, his greenish eyes and sandy hair hardly typical of a Palestinian. But he spoke with religious and political zeal and his dedication to the cause of ending the Israeli occupation burned through every sentence. Another click of the fingers and more home-made landmines arrived; they had thousands, Farhat said. Crudely cut metal gas bottles followed, another type of mine with a specific blast pattern, he explained.

Many Palestinians are brought up in tight-knit communities where skills are passed down through the generations; some learn to be musicians, others carpenters. When Farhat was young, his family sheltered Imad Akel, founder of Hamas's military wing, and he had run errands for him. He grew up a bomber, aware that one false move could end everything. His life, literally, was in his own hands.

Now Farhat is 30 and has his own children, one boy and four girls. The eldest is nine and he openly talks to her about the dangers of his trade.

As a leading member of the Hamas military wing, Farhat is an assassination target. Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority has been given his name by the Israelis, who want the bombers arrested and handed over, if not, they will be killed. Already there have been more than 50 such "targeted assassinations".

Farhat, who began his deadly career in the first intifada during the 1980s, has already spent five years in jail. "From the day I was born I have been living in a prison - the occupation" he said. "I have no regrets about the course I have selected."

After they found documents on a Hamas emissary recruited by Farhat last December, Israeli intelligence identified him as one of the engineers of the Qassam rocket, a local version of a north Korean missile with a range of three miles. They know if the technology is moved to the West Bank, large population centres can come within range.

Farhat no longer sleeps at home and sometimes he does not see his wife and children for months at a time. He often changes his name, lives in areas where he is unknown and switches his daily routine. He never uses the same car for very long and he is always on the lookout for Israeli collaborators. His "work" involves visiting arms-factories, developing explosives and coordinating strategy with other Hamas commanders.

Farhat embraces the role of potential martyr in a family where it is all too familiar. In March his younger brother, Mohammed, 18, was gunned down after infiltrating the settlement of Gosh Katif on a suicide mission in which he killed five Israelis.

Farhat is happy to reveal he selected his brother for the mission. "When a person sacrifices himself this is not out of desperation or a hate for life," he explained. "By sacrificing himself tie is in effect allowing others to live."

Another brother, Wissam, 28, is serving 11 years for trying to smuggle explosives from Gaza "I cry daily for my martyred son," said the men's mother, Um. 

"I sob for Nidal, whom I cannot see. Yes, my heart burns continuously for one or the other, but I am willing to sacrifice them for they fight for a much nobler cause, and I know that my pain has a sweetness because our rewards are in the life after."

Farhat, meanwhile, continues to make his bombs, ranging from mines to suicide-belts. "This substance is highly explosive," he said, passing me the white odourless powder, akin to salt yet damp and soft in texture, that he packs into his bombs.

"They are made from the simplest and most basic ingredients," he said proudly, as Israeli planes streaked across the azure skies above.

He described a network of mines, planted in readiness for the expected invasion of Gaza, and he said thousands of his grenades and suicide-belts would be worn and carried by the city's defenders. 

Farhat shows no sympathy for the Israelis whose lives they claim and has a simple response for those who brand him a terrorist. "The source of terrorism is Israel, the United States and the western world," he said. 

"Give us back our rights, freedom and land and the suicide attacks will immediately cease. It is that simple."

And if the most wretchedly-betrayed and most humiliatingly dominated nation on earth can refuse to lie down and can fight back like this, then what does this say about how the rest of the world is likely to respond to the inevitably increasing viciousness, cynical, and purposeless repression which the Western imperialist system can never cease imposing (without ceasing to be the worlds effective monopoly-capitalist ruling class)???

If the Palestinian nation has now grown up enough, despite its demoralisation and colossal disadvantages, to no longer be able to tolerate imperialist domination any longer, then there is clearly only a revolutionary future for the whole planet against an international monopoly-capitalist ruling class which cannot possibly even think of ever voluntarily ceasing to exploit the entire world for profit, endlessly threatening or trying to dominate it militarily to enforce its economic control.

This losing perspective for Western imperialism can also be dimly discerned in some of the more worried, thoughtful, or despairing commentaries, such as this in the Times & Guardian:

A year ago, the Hebrew University sociologist Baruch Kimmerling observed that "what we feared has come true ... War appears an unavoidable fate"; an "evil colonial" war. His colleague Ze'ev Sternhell noted that the Israeli leadership was now engaged in "colonial policing, which recalls the takeover by the white police of the poor neighbourhoods of the blacks in South Africa during the apartheid era". Both stress the obvious: there is no symmetry between the "ethno-national groups" in this conflict, which is centred in territories that have been under harsh military occupation for 35 years.

The Oslo "peace process", begun in 1993, changed the modalities of the occupation, but not the basic concept. Shortly before joining the Ehud Barak government historian Shlomo Ben-Ami wrote that "the Oslo agreements were founded on a neo-colonialist basis on a life of dependence of one on the other forever". He soon became an architect of the US-Israel proposals at Camp David in 2000, which kept to this condition. At the time, West Bank Palestinians were confined to 200 scattered areas. Bill Clinton and Israeli prime minister Barak did propose an improvement: consolidation to three cantons, under Israeli control, virtually separated from one another and from the fourth enclave, a small area of East Jerusalem, the centre of Palestinian communications. The fifth canton was Gaza. It is understandable that maps are not to be found in the US mainstream. Nor is their prototype, the Bantustan "homelands" of apartheid South Africa, ever mentioned.

Not surprisingly, the guiding principle of the occupation has been incessant humiliation. Israeli plans for Palestinians have followed the guidelines formulated by Moshe Dayan, one of the Labour leaders more sympathetic to the Palestinian plight. Thirty years ago Dayan advised the cabinet that Israel should make it clear to refugees that "we have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave". When challenged, he responded by citing Ben Gurion, who said that "whoever approaches the Zionist problem from a moral aspect is not a Zionist'. He could have also cited Chaim Weizmann, first president of Israel, who held that the fate of the "several hundred thousand negroes" in the Jewish homeland "is a matter of no consequence".

The Palestinians have long suffered torture, terror, destruction of property, displacement and settlement, and takeover of basic resources, crucially water. These policies have relied on decisive US support and European acquiescence. "The Barak government is leaving Sharon's government a surprising legacy," the Israeli press reported as the transition took place: "the highest number of housing starts in the territories since ... Ariel Sharon was minister of construction and settlement in 1992 before the Oslo agreements" - funding provided by the American taxpayer. Current modifications of US rejectionism are tactical. With plans for an attack on Iraq endangered, the US permitted a UN resolution calling for Israeli withdrawal from the newly-invaded territories "without delay" - meaning "as soon as possible", secretary of state Colin Powell explained at once. Powell's arrival in Israel was delayed to allow the Israeli Defence Force to continue its destructive operations, facts hard to miss and confirmed by US officials.

When the current intifada broke out, Israel used US helicopters to attack civilian targets, killing and wounding dozens of Palestinians, hardly in self-defence. Clinton responded by arranging what the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz called "the largest purchase of military helicopters by the Israeli Air Force in a decade", along with spare parts for Apache attack helicopters. A few weeks later, Israel began to use US helicopters for assassinations. These extended last August to the first assassination of a political leader: Abu Ali Mustafa. That passed in silence, but the reaction was quite different when Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi was killed in retaliation. Bush is now praised for arranging the release of Arafat from his dungeon in return for US-UK supervision of the accused assassins of Ze'evi. It is inconceivable that there should be any effort to punish those responsible for the Mustafa assassination.

Further contributions to enhancing terror took place last December, when Washington again vetoed a security council resolution calling for dispatch of international monitors. Ten days earlier, the US boycotted an international conference in Geneva that once again concluded that the fourth Geneva convention applies to the occupied territories, so that many US-Israeli actions there are "grave breaches", hence serious war crimes. As a "high contracting party"; the US is obligated by solemn treaty to prosecute those responsible for such crimes, including its own leadership. Accordingly, all of this passes in silence.

The Americans are now openly saying they have "no dog in the Afghan fight". Last October can be seen for what it always was, a punitive revenge raid for domestic consumption. Finding Osama bin Laden was not a priority, since Pakistani negotiations with the Taleban and Saudi Arabia on his extradition were then on a knife-edge. The story is told by Rohan Gunaratna of St Andrew's University in his remarkable new study, Inside Al Qaeda (Hurst). The bombing wrecked the negotiations and abruptly cemented a weakening alliance between the unpopular al-Qaeda and the Taleban in Kabul. That did not matter to the Americans. Bombing mattered.

Today the reconstruction of Afghanistan is no longer America's business. Nor are conditions in the appalling prisons of Britain's so-called ally, General Dostum. Nor is the reopening of the opium warehouses and the falling price of European heroin. Nor is the fate of Kabul's hapless Hamid Karzai, desperate for Western troops to hold territory outside his capital. Afghanistan may still be host to the world's "special forces', eager for bounty or glory. But the country is off the political map.

The truth is that America's war aim, unlike Britain's, was coherent. It was to hit hard and get out. Americans are not now whingeing about the Taleban "refusing to confront Our Boys and fight". They are not complaining that we cannot tell "friend from foe" or that "they keep returning to their villages", all reported comments of British Marines last week. Americans are not staying around to police the unpoliceable. Once it was clear that Osama bin Laden was not to be found, the US declared the battle won. Mr Blair can tell the Afghans that "Britain will not desert you" but President Bush has moved elsewhere.

The Taleban were bound to disappear and bide their time. There is no territory for the British to capture and hold. Local warlords can only be "rented but not bought". There is no political pacification to be engineered short of colonisation, which would be suicide. All outside troops can do is bomb suspect "al-Qaeda" villages and explode suspect arms dumps. This wins no friends and hardly rates a score on the regimental banner. Brigadier Lane's chief engagement has been with the British press. But it too will not join battle. It flatters, feints, ambushes and decapitates.

Now Washington has sold the Afghan pass. The US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, has warned Americans that "another September 11" is "not a matter of if but when". His Homeland Security colleague, Colonel Randall Larsen, adds that the attack will be "much bigger than September 11". It might involve cyanide in air-conditioning systems or bombs stuffed in apartment blocks. Al-Qaeda has not been curbed. Its networks have not been destroyed. The world is no safer today than it was before September 11. Nobody mentions Afghanistan.

Nobody even mentions Pakistan. If Afghanistan was so great a threat to the West when the bombing began last October, why is not Pakistan the same threat today? Waziristan and the NorthWest Frontier harbour the same warriors as protected al-Qaeda in the Afghan mountains. Eager to avenge the sons, fathers and brothers killed by Western bombs in Afghanistan, they have already fired missiles at the American base at Miram Shah. Are they not also plotting to undermine Western freedoms?

	Besides, Pakistan is a base for terrorism in Kashmir, much of it penetrated by al-Qaeda. Whatever the provocation and however much Is	lamabad may struggle to deny it, this terrorism is no less lethal than that of September 11 or the suicide
	bombers of Palestine. It is probably more dangerous since it has led a million troops to confront each other across the Kashmir partition line, both armed with "weapons of mass destruction". Yet because Pakistan is a "friend" nobody talks of bombing Waziristan or of sending special forces to Kashmir.

No one reading Gunaratna's book could be in any doubt that al-Qaeda is an awesome force. It is scattered not just across the Muslim world but had, and presumably still has, a corporate structure in states across the entire world. It is a sinister fundamentalist church in thrall to a charismatic leader. The attack on Afghanistan was like combating an international drugs cartel by bombing the boss's house in Marbella. Many al-Qaeda leaders were killed, but the networks remain, together with the targets, the training, the young men eager for martyrdom.

I doubt if Mr Cheney was last week bluffing to divert attention from allegations of White House negligence prior to September 11. But his constant terrifying of hypersensitive Americans does al-Qaeda's job for it. An al-Qaeda memorandum after September 11 gloated that Americans were now so scared that Intercontinental had to lay off 20,000 employees, "thanks to Allah's grace". Al-Qaeda can tax the American economy of billions of dollars merely by getting Mr Cheney to do its work for it, on pain of a "negligence" charge in Congress.

The only sensible conclusion is that we know as much about Operation Condor as we do about its predecessors - Anaconda, Ptarmigan, Snipe - and before that, Tora Bora: very, very little. Follow the reports for the past six months and there is a ludicrous pattern of claims of victory, then a few discordant details trickle out and, finally, an admission of failure. So, now we know that Tora Bora was regarded as one of "the gravest errors of the war": the US depended too heavily on unreliable Afghan fighters. Osama bin Laden and many AQT fighters managed to escape.

We were told that Snipe had inflicted a "significant blow" on the AQT by blowing up an arms dump, but immediately a stubbornly off-message Afghan commander popped up to say, rubbish, that was his dump left over from the fight against the Soviets. We were initiated into a new form of warfare - don't measure success by bodybags. This is a very interesting form of fighting: first the US didn't want to get any of its men killed, then the AQT sensibly followed suit and the result is death-free war, a whole new concept of "pacifist war".

Even the marines know this is very silly. Afghanistan is in danger of becoming the most embarrassing chapter in the recent history of British military engagements. A peevishness has crept into the briefings. Brigadier Lane complains that the AQT are "not showing a predisposition to reorganise and regroup to mount offensive operations against us". They just won't come out to play. Well, would you if the place was crawling with some of the most sophisticated weaponry in the world? Far better to lie low and look after your goats, or visit some relatives over the border in Miram Shah in Pakistan's Waziristan, and brush up your Koranic chanting.

Any AQT strategist can rely on the fact that their commitment and patience will comfortably outstrip that of the western soldiers currently trudging up and down the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, like any terrorist organisation, doesn't need a base in Afghanistan to launch its attacks, while the Tbliban can sit tight, quietly recruiting and regrouping, before reemerging in Afghan politics. It's an ignominious ending to the triumphalism of the fall of Kabul just over six months ago. Here we are discussing a bad tummy bug, military latrines and whether our boys are using disposable cutlery. Then, we were celebrating music on the streets and women news presenters back on the TV.

Afghanistan offered the perfect solution to September 11 - a massive expiation of US anger and, more subtly, guilt. Dropping all those bombs felt doubly good: it was retaliation for a terrible crime, but also getting rid of an evil regime. The emotional rush was everything; whether the latter actually worked has fallen off most people's radar screen. They're not interested. The selective memory means that what is remembered is that a few women in Kabul threw off their burkas in November, not that many more women in northern Afghanistan have been raped since then in a wave of ethnic revenge against the Pashtun. Nor is anyone much interested that since the fall of the Taliban, the old lawlessness of highway looting and illegal road tolls has re-emerged. Or that in the past few months there have been at least two major conflicts between warlords - in Mazar-i-Sharif and in Gardez Nor, curiously has there been much said on the spectacular failure to halt the poppy crop. The Taliban virtually wiped out the trade (which supplied about 75 % of the world's opium) but Afghan farmers are a canny bunch and no sooner was Mullah Omar on the run than they started planting on the assumption that no new government would have the authority or will to stop them. They've been proved right.
Despite huge EU grants, Hamid Karzai's government has backed off, well aware that its position is too fragile to take on such an unpopular battle.

By the time of the first anniversary of the fall of Kabul it will no longer be possible to ignore the accumulation of these awkward details, and we will be embarrassed to be reminded of our naive triumphalism. The war was a crude and clumsy intervention which did little for the wretched Afghans, and even less for the struggle against terrorism.

In December, Downing Street put out a memo castigating the pundits who had got it "wrong" : The war had made the world "safer for you and your family" it declared. Try telling that to Mrs Pearl or the families of the French engineers blown up in Karachi last week. Try telling that to Americans who have been warned that there is a danger of a terrorist attack on a nuclear installation on July 4.

This will become a key aspect of the imperialist system's propaganda failure, would-be rational bourgeois commentators who cannot but help themselves start admitting, in between the lines, that the "free world" continued global domination project is having less and less success, and is making less and less sense.

Reversing 60 years of mass anti-communist brain-washing will not be achieved by any 'alternative' publication on its own, - even one struggling only to present invaluable Marxist science like the EPSR (as opposed to an endless variety of sectarian fake-'left' rags which opportunistically only promote their own brand image in endless procedural and back-stabbing manoeuvres and moralising gossip around the fringes of the mainstream labour and trade-union movement, always steering clear of any serious polemics with any really competent Marxist opponents).

It will be achieved in bulk by the bourgeois brainwashing system itself, losing its nerve and exposing itself by mutual recriminations within the imperialist system as it falls apart in murderous trade-war and political crisis and warmongering chauvinist diversions.

India and Pakistan may yet avoid war this time round, but the very fact that these two huge countries indulge in such chauvinistic belligerent diversions over such pointless, thin, and wretched "cause" (Kashmir), - in both cases to take their populations' minds off their parallel capitalist-regime crises - is typical unconcealable proof of the basic bankruptcy of capitalism's 'New World Order' and proof of the utter barminess of the notion that the 'US imperialist superpower' can 	intervene anywhere, any time it likes, to sort out all world problems and 'impose solutions' to prevent any situation getting 	completely out of hand and totally wrecking the whole "peaceful, prosperous, and democratic" image of the "free world" against the utterly imaginary 'tyranny' of the brief (so far) history of workers states.

If by the capitalist press's own admission the US imperialist intervention to "sort out" Afghanistan is already a total joke, then what "intervention" is supposedly feasible against such giant independent countries as India and Pakistan???

And as already well underlined by the EPSR, imperialist economic intervention against the devastations of the global economic crisis is now equally a non-option. "Not strategically important" was Bush's inane comment to cover Washington and the IMF's inability to do anything about Argentina's economic disaster anyway.

It remains to be seen how easily some of the possible endings to Argentina's turmoil may be ignored. The USA has never stopped regretting its failure to step in when Castro completed the Cuban revolution against capitalist collapse and corruption in 1959.

And even if the fascist American record of direct or proxy armed interventions against Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Chile, Grenada, Panama, and Nicaragua can be continued against the far more difficult prospect of a revolutionary Argentina, a vast and vastly populated country, then what will be achievable against the even vaster and even more vastly populated Mexico or Brazil when these countries, even weaker than Argentina economically and in political development, go to the wall under the same crisis that is now devastating Argentina???

The crucial duty for the fight for socialism remains to patiently explain the insoluble crisis of the imperialist system which will prepare the way for the only solution possible, - a revolutionary-dictatorship takeover by the proletariat. All that workers everywhere lack is this Marxist philosophical understanding of the NECESSARY pattern of future world development, without which no successful revolutionary party-organisation will ever be built. But all that fake-'lefts' of all persuasions continue to do is refuse to even discuss this EPSR understanding of the revolutionary-crisis essence of Marxism, thus giving the working class nothing to follow or get excited about, thus guaranteeing (for the present) the continued lack of interest in voting or supporting just more of the same old 'left' reformist promises to "introduce real socialist measures" that workers have been hearing from the 'left' of the Labour Party, and from 'left' infiltrations into the Labour Party, for over 100 years.

This may change, and some centrist demagogic posturing like Scargillism might be what 'democratic' parliamentarism (i.e. the capitalist state) might have to turn to for survival in extreme crisis circumstances.

But how long would such an empty fraud last, and what would such 'left'reformist demagogy lead to??? Nothing better than the catastrophe which the 'Marxism' of Allende led Chile into, a fascist takeover nightmare because of a total hostility to revolutionary theory and a philistine opportunist ignorance on the crucial question of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

History had to turn to total Leninism for hugely important developments during the 20th century.

Even more total Leninism, uncorrupted by Revisionist degeneration away from world revolutionism and proletarian dictatorship, is daily demonstrating that it will become the NECESSARY way out for civilisation as the utter chaos, and tyranny, and destructiveness of imperialist system crisis mounts inexorably.

The absolutely vital relevance of these lessons today is made clear even by the capitalist press itself, as a latest report from Argentina makes clear:

Blanco, 65, was comfortably off. He had the money to pay for the operation - $400,000 in a bank account. But there was one snag. Like millions of other Argentinians, Blanco has had his account frozen since Christmas. Banks only have to pay out if judges rule that there are special circumstances. Blanco's case was not considered serious enough, and he was offered just 10% of his money, not in dollars but devalued pesos. The operation cost a lot more and Blanco died last week. 

For many Argentinians, Blanco's story summed up what has been happening to their country over the past four years, as it has been transformed from the blue-eyed boy of Latin American globalisation into a country imploding economically, politically and socially. Those who want to know what the Great Depression was like for America in the 1930s need look no further than Argentina in 2002.

Unemployment is 25%, the economy is contracting at a rate of 15% a year, the central bank is running out of money to defend the currency, half of all infants are suffering from anaemia, and a quarter of children are suffering from malnutrition in a country so rich in farmland that it produces enough to feed 10 times its own population.

Outside the Casa Rosada, where Evita waved to the adoring crowds from the balcony, there are demonstrations every day against the Peronist president, Eduardo Duhalde: These are not demonstrations orchestrated by the young, but by the grande dames of Buenos Aires, banging away on their pots and pans like May Day anarchists but decked out in their best coats and with their hair nicely tinted for the occasion. Argentina's middle class has been hollowed out, pauperised, reduced to barter. And it is very very angry indeed.

Having been used as a test-bed for free-market ideology, it is now the laboratory mouse for what to do when those ideas go badly wrong. These are uncharted waters. Countries are not allowed to go bust, even though, effectively, Argentina has.

So where did it all go wrong? All this was unthinkable as recently as the mid-9os, when the Peronist president, Carlos Menem, was praised in the west for taming Argentina's hyperinflation and introducing a package of market-friendly reforms. For a while, Menem was every neo-liberal's wet dream. He pegged the peso to the dollar, abolished exchange controls, privatised large chunks of Argentina's state-owned firms and opened up the country to the full blast of foreign competition. The key to his early economic success was the dollar peg.

But the "miracle cure" contained within it the seeds of its own destruction. Being pegged to the dollar was fine when the US currency was falling, as it did for the first half of the 90s, because that meant that Argentinian exports to the rest of South America and Europe remained competitive. It was a different story, however, once the dollar started to rise sharply on the foreign exchanges from 1995 onwards. A rising dollar meant a rising peso, making Argentinian exports dearer in foreign markets. It meant Chilean rather than Argentinian wine on supermarket shelves in Britain.

The deflationary impact of the dollar peg was exacerbated by another development - the spate of financial crises in developing countries that started in Mexico in 1994 and spread to Asia, Russia and Brazil between 1997 and 1999. Star pupil of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) she may have been, but Argentina still had huge debts built up during the military dictatorship and by the democratic governments that followed. Foreign creditors demanded higher interest rates for financing Argentina's debts, further slowing the country's growth.

Now that Argentina has collapsed, its critics say that the problem was the government's failure to curb spending, its big-budget deficits adding to inflation, putting pressure on the currency and leading to last year's collapse. According to Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning former chief economist at the World Bank, this argument is false.

According to Stiglitz, the obvious solution to the problem was to abandon the peg with the dollar and devalue, just as Brazil did in 1999. But Argentina did not. It listened to the IMF and cut back on government spending, intensifying the slump. Argentina in 2001 was like Britain in 1992, when the John Major administration insisted that the pound would remain pegged to the German mark even as unemployment edged towards three million and record numbers of people lost their homes and businesses. The lid blew off the volcano last December when there was a run on the banks and widespread looting. Attempts by the government to grant itself emergency powers were thwarted by a revolt of the middle class. Argentina went through five presidents in a fortnight, and bank accounts were frozen.

The economic consequences of stopping depositors from getting hold of their money have  been swift and brutal.  Without working capital, businesses have gone bust. Without cash in their pockets, consumers have been reduced to bartering or using the 15 local currencies that are in circulation as a means of exchange.

Blanca Dominguez is a practitioner in the new economy that has sprung up in an estimated 5,000 barter clubs across Argentina. "I baked some bread and bartered it for shoes," she says at a club in the Floresta district of Buenos Aires. She brandishes a green note, similar in size, shape and texture to monopoly money: Her husband's chauffeuring business has collapsed, she has lost her job.

"I call this poor people's money," she adds. "With this I manage to survive, but I can't pay my utility bills and the telephone has been cut off. I used to be middle class and look down on the poor people's money. Now it's the only money we have. I blame the people who run the country, the politicians who do nothing but steal and steal."

	Fury is directed not just at the politicians but at the banks. There is a strong belief that the
	financial institutions saw what was coming and moved billions of dollars offshore. There are reports that rich savers were offered safe boltholes for their money through back- to back loans, and that an injection of IMF money was used to bail out Wall Street by buying up Argentinian bonds.

The campaign to find out what did happen to all the money in the banks is being led by two opposition politicians, Alicia Castro and Mario Cafiero. Castro, of the Front for Change, and a critic of the freemarket reforms of the past decade, came to prominence in parliament last month when she brandished the stars and stripes and said it should replace Argentina's flag. Cafiero says that detailed analysis of the banks' balance sheets shows that more money left the system last year than could be accounted for by the stampede of depositors to remove their cash. "The banks have done something wrong. They are worried that the law will be used against them. If they have nothing to account for, they should throw their books open and show that they have nothing to hide."

The banks say Cafiero's analysis is flawed and that the decline in their assets is the result of the economic crisis. But there is little doubt which version Argentinian depositors favour.

Marcelo Wakstein and his wife Susana had $75,000 deposited with the HSBC. It has been frozen since December, converted into pesos at 1.4 pesos to the dollar. The current exchange rate is around 3.7 to the dollar.

"I put the money in the bank because I was afraid it would be stolen. Now I find it has been stolen,." Wakstein says. 

A plumber for 30 years, he removes two short pieces of galvanised pipe from the pocket of his windcheater. "These are the tools of my trade," he says, banging them together to demonstrate his preferred mode of protest. "The banks took our money and they took it out of Argentina knowing that they would never be able to pay it back. This is the crime of the century."

'Despite months of delay, Duhalde has yet to find away of unfreezing deposits that satisfies the depositors, compensates the banks for the losses made as a result of devaluation, and alleviates the IMF's fears that the country could slip into hyperinflation. He is now trying desperately to cut a deal with the IMF that would provide a bail-out in return for the acceptance of stringent conditions. Until recently, the fund's tough-love approach was supported by ordinary Argentineans, who were convinced that any cash provided would find its way into the pockets of the country's notoriously corrupt political establishment.

But the IMF's insistence on two further conditions has altered the public mood. The first is that the government in Buenos Aires changes its bankruptcy law to allow foreign - almost certainly American firms - to buy up liquidated Argentinean firms at bargain-basement prices. The second is that Argentina scraps an economic subversion law that was  originally passed to deal with leftwing terrorists in the 70s, but is now being used against hankers accused of spiriting millions of dollars out of the country. The fund says that the reforms are vital if the confidence of foreign investors is to be restored. Argentinians think otherwise. "First they came for our companies and they took them away," says a fly poster on the iron doors of Bank Boston, pitted with dents from hammer blows and, like every bank in downtown Buenos Aires, protected by corrugated cladding. "Then they came for our savings and they stole them. Now they are coming for our  whole country. Argentina rise now or never."

Argentina is a country rich in resources and culture. With its wide, tree-lined boulevards, glorious opera house and art-house cinemas, Buenos Aires is often called the Paris of South America. It feels its humiliation deeply. "People see us banging on the doors of the banks and they think we are savages," says Wakstein. "We are not savages. We are desperate."

The feeling is that the economic situation will get worse before it gets better. Ann Pettifor, of Jubilee Plus in London, says the country is crying out for an international bankruptcy court that would provide justice for both creditors and debtors, and give Argentina a fresh start. Contrast, she says, the different treatment of Argentina and Enron, which both went bust at the same time late last year.

"Enron has had its debt payments suspended. Argentina has to pay the IMF, the World Bank and Spain. Enron is forced to open up its books, and the whole of US business is having to clean up its act fast. Argentina is still a big secret. At Enron, the advisers to the company are in shit street. The shareholders had a process. Compare that to Argentina. The IMF is still calling the shots."

History suggests that the combination of a dispossessed middle class and a working class with nothing to lose is a catalyst for revolution. Certainly, Argentina is a country in political turmoil. The country has faith in its football team, but in little else. Politicians, unions, business, the banks, the IMF and the United States are all included in a hate-list growing longer as 19,000 people a day drop below the poverty line. But the talk of a new politics - of an alliance of the unemployed, small businesses, university professionals and Argentina's cultural elite - to challenge the corruption of the old is not the only solution should the country become ungovernable. For the first time since defeat in the Falklands war (20 years ago this month) spelled the end for the military regime, there is talk of an authoritarian backlash as the country's ruling class seeks to cling on to power.

Nobody knows for sure what will happen next if, as expected, the economy continues to deteriorate. Any talk of Argentina adopting the US dollar as its own currency has faded away amid rising economic nationalism and anti-globalisation sentiment. Alicia Castro wants a New Deal for Argentina and believes that there is a chance of sweeping away the entrenched corruption that is the lasting legacy of Peronism. It is not; however, the only option.

Luis d'Elia, one of the leaders of the Piqueteros, workers who favour direct action along the lines adopted by French farmers and lorry drivers blockading roads, stopping trucks from getting through - is just the sort of activist who, 25 years ago, would have been one of the 20,000 who "disappeared" under the junta. He thinks there is a real chance of an authoritarian backlash. "The right wing is always lurking in the shadows. It contains a strong Nazi ideology within it. I wouldn't be surprised if it invoked the current crisis to justify repressive measures." 

Build Leninism. EPSR

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

What is emerging and what is now in the public domain is a picture of the British government's involvement in the murder of its own citizens

THE FINUCANE FAMILY'S long campaign to find the hidden truth behind the UDA murder of Pat Finucane seems set to continue, despite the Weston Park proposal of the appointment of an international judge to "thoroughly investigate" six cases, including Pat's case.

If the two governments and the local political leaders have highlighted these cases then why not establish public inquiries in these cases immediately? Why go to the time and expense of appointing a judge to hold six private investigations, particularly if it is likely that full public inquiries will be set up afterwards? It doesn't make any sense.

Unless, of course, the real reason for the appointment is delay or, more concerning to the Finucane family, if the real reason is to prevent the establish a full public judicial inquiry by the establishment of something less in the guise of something more.

Tony Blair said, when he established the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday, that:  "Bloody Sunday was different because, where the state's own authorities are concerned, we must be as sure as we can of the truth, precisely because we pride ourselves on our democracy and respect for the law, and on the professionalism and dedication of our security forces."

The Finucane family were not informed that Pat's case was going to be used by the two governments as a "bargaining chip" in the Peace Process. 

The case has been the subject of a high profile campaign for 13 years.

What is emerging and what is now in the public domain is a picture of the British Government's involvement in the murder of its own citizens. The British military unit which directed Brian Nelson who directed the LIDA, was apparently involved in hundreds of murders of nationalists and republicans, including that of Pat Finucane. That is the allegation. That allegation has been published time and time again by many investigative journalists.

Pat Finucane was subjected to death threats from RUC officers in Castlereagh Interrogation Centre prior to his murder. These threats were documented prior to his murder. Douglas Hogg, the British Home Office Minister made a statement in the House of Commons that some solicitors were sympathetic to the IRA, three weeks before the murder. Pat was murdered with a British Army browning pistol. Brian Nelson, the British Army agent, who directed the murder, was directed by the secret British Army unit, the Force Research Unit (FRU). Billy Stobie, who was an RUC agent provided the weapons for the murder.

In 1999 on the tenth anniversary of Pat's murder, British Irish Rights Watch compiled a report which included copies of British military documentation. The documents contained information which led to the clear conclusion that the military unit (the FRU) were involved in conspiracy to murder.

The Report was handed to the British Government with a request to authenticate the documents. So far they have not refuted the allegation that the documents are genuine.

The disturbing thing is that they have not denied that such a conspiracy existed.

The European Court rulings last May (Jordan, McKerr, Shanaghan,and Kelly v UK) severely criticised the British Government for their failure to provide a proper investigative process for hundreds of cases involving state or loyalist killings.

The six cases highlighted at Weston Park are not the only cases in which there are serious concerns about state involvement in murder. The four cases taken to Strasbourg were representative of hundreds of cases which, over a thirty year period, were not properly investigated.

Nationalist and unionist leaders have also highlighted these cases. They are cases of "urgent public importance". What could be more important than allegations of a state's involvement in the murder of its own citizens?

In British law, if a matter is of "urgent public importance" and has been passed by both houses of parliament then a public inquiry under the Tribunals of Inquiry Act 1921 must be established. Such an inquiry will have all the powers of the High Court to call for relevant material and subpoena relevant witnesses who can be questioned in public.

The Finucane family and other human rights organisations such as the Human Rights Commission do not regard the Weston Park proposals as satisfying the requirements of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

They do not see why they have to get over another hurdle.

The facts should be examined in public where the family can challenge any purported explanation or denial. They are entitled to have an input into the calling of relevant evidence and the questioning of relevant witnesses.

They wilt be able to do none of this if the Weston Park proposals are implemented.

It will take a very long time for any judge to "thoroughly investigate" six complex cases.

That is why the Finucane family see this effort as a cynical exercise in delaying or attempting to prevent the inevitable.

They took the same view when John Stevens was appointed, for the third time, to reinvestigate Pat's murder. The family decided to treat the Stevens police investigation as a delaying tactic and the public can decide if the family took the correct approach.

The third Stevens investigation or Stevens 3, as it is known, resulted in a delay of three years. A trial resulted in which Billy Stobie was acquitted. He was subsequently murdered. The Stevens report, whether published or not will instil no confidence that Pat's case was thoroughly investigated no more than the establishment of a judge to privately investigate the same thing in which the family have no meaningful input.

The Finucane family want the truth. They don't want a report from a judge who examines the facts in secret and then publishes a report which purports to be the truth.

Make no mistake about it. This is not the public judicial inquiry that the family has been campaigning for. It is not the public inquiry that the family are entitled to. This is a private, behind closed doors, judicial investigation similar to the Dublin/Monaghan investigation and probably does not meet the requirements of European Convention on Human Rights. The Human Rights Commissioner, Brice Dickson has recently said so.

The campaign will continue. The family will continue to seek support. They have waited long enough for the truth.

Pat Finucane in his short career sought justice for a large number of people. He was too successful.

Launching a document at a Belfast press conference, Elisa Massimino, Washington Director of the Lawyers' Committee, was joined by members of the Finucane family and representatives from a. number of human rights organisations

"The evidence that has emerged in the Finucane case has stretched the traditional concept of collusion to its breaking point," reads the document. "The term collusion conjures up images of an isolated officer or group slipping files to members of paramilitary groups" but what was actually at work was much more entrenched."

Describing a "complex web of intelligence units" whose agents operated actively while reporting back to their government handlers, the document says: "In this context, collusion is an institutionalised phenomenon, one that wears away the boundary between paramilitary and government."