Editorial for Revolutionary Perspectives 59

2011 has seen a dramatic leap forward in the global capitalist crisis. Not only have we witnessed the stirrings of the “Arab Spring” but we have also seen the occupation of city centres across the world. First came the indignados in Spain who found their imitators elsewhere. Now comes the “Occupy the World” movement which took place in 90 countries across the planet on October 15. At the same time there are also small signs that some workers in the advanced capitalist countries are beginning to see that they have to take back the struggle into their own hands rather than leave it to the official unions. These developments make up the core of this issue.

At the same time the crisis in Euroland shows that the global capitalist crisis is not going away. And with banks still trying to hide astronomically high debt burdens it is clear that it still has some way to go. In our view it is insoluble without the massive devaluation of capital. By this we don’t just mean a few “haircuts” or the writing off of current debts. We mean the massive physical destruction of value. This is what capitalism did in two world wars last century. The only reason that the option has not already been taken is that the international system of imperial competition is still sorting out the lines along which war will break out. Within every ruling class the struggle is going on to identify the best way forward for each state. In the meantime making the working class pay for the crisis the capitalists have inflicted on us is the number one priority. In this regard the fight against austerity should be the global theme for the revival and unity of working class struggle. If only life (and the tortuous path of the class struggle) were so simple.

The fact is that there are many obstacles on the route to a sustained class fight back. Some are dealt with in 30 November: One Off Protest of Working Class Reawakening? (as well as the article on Germany, Limits to an Expansionist Project) such as the threat of unemployment and its demoralising effect on workers. Others, though, are more immediate and more pressing.

What is Anti-Capitalism?

The first arises from the “Occupy” and other movements of this type. This is the question of what “anti-capitalism” is. Some of those camping in town squares are influenced by the “no-global” ideology of Naomi Klein, ATTAC et al. This is not anti-capitalist at all but anti-big business or anti-monopoly. It is reflected in ridiculous demands such as the call for “democratising the financial institutions”. Any serious anti-capitalism has to take as its starting point the nature of the capitalist mode of production. The key relationship here is the exploitative worker-capital one. This has to be broken as the basic premise of any anti-capitalist struggle. The fatal weakness of the “Occupy” movement is that it is an inter-class movement which is therefore not really connected to the wider working class and to strikes which are what capitalism really hates as they are material blows against the wealth of the exploiters.

The Left of Capital

The second is the plethora of organisations who claim to be the voice of the working class and which have many working class members. They are the Trotskyists and Stalinists who claim to be “socialist” but have long since severed any connection with the original Marxist vision of socialism as a movement for the emancipation of the working class. The Trotskyists in Britain still hang onto the coat tails of the Labour Party. This can be seen in the anti-cuts movement. Instead of stating clearly that the crisis, and the cuts which flow from it, are a symptom of the capitalist system which has to be destroyed, they deem that workers are too far away from this message. So they call only for a fight against the Tories. They are not so crass as to openly call for support for Labour (difficult given its recent history) but the implication is that getting the Tories out means bringing Labour in.

Worse than the Trotskyists’ reformism is the survival of Stalinism. Whilst most former Communist Parties have taken the road of support for capitalist democracy there are still those who hanker for a return to some Stalinist order. This was epitomised best by the Greek Communist Party shortly before we went to press. On October 20 they orchestrated a violent conflict with the rest of the protestors in Greece with the obvious aim of trying to pose as the real serious opposition to the PASOK (socialist as in Labour Party) government. More of this is at leftcom.org but the whole episode demonstrates how forces which claim to be on our side of the barricades have their own pro-capitalist agendas.

A Revolutionary Aim

In short, serious revolutionaries have a real battle on their hands to dismiss both the illusions of the “anti-capitalists” and the manipulations of the old Left. We need to create a movement which unites all those who can see the problems we are talking about here. This movement (or party) has to have at its head a clear vision of the society we want. We would call it a communist programme. It has to be based on the autonomous struggles of the working class as they increasingly break free from the shackles a hundred years of reaction has imposed on us. Its goal has to be that we abolish the exploitation of wage labour and money, as well as the state, standing armies and national frontiers. We have to reassert the original view of Marx that we are fighting for a society of “freely associated producers” where the principle is “from each according to his ability and to each according to his need”.

At the moment there are many groups and individuals around the world who recognise this but we are either too scattered, or too divided, to take a lead in forming such a united movement. Some object to it on principle declaring that the spontaneous movement will take care of itself. We wish we could share their confidence. We think responsible revolutionaries should re-examine their differences, asking ourselves if the things that we thought divided us now do so in the light of this new period in working class struggle. We should emphasise not the little we disagree on but the much that we agree on. We should seek to work together in common struggles not simply to recruit this or that individual to our own organisation, but to widen the consciousness of what a real working class struggle means. In the face of the obstacles we have outlined above it would be suicidal not to.