The internationalists

After more than a year of increasing “turmoil” throughout the world’s financial markets and banking systems the United States — that champion of the free market — has been obliged to resort to state intervention to avoid “financial meltdown”, i.e. a total collapse of the banks, financial institutions, the stock market and eventually a run on the dollar.

The formal state takeover of America’s two biggest mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (whose debts were in any case backed by the state) was not enough to bring back that elusive lost confidence in the markets that central bankers the world over are having nightmares about.

Is it the end of an era? This is the question that spontaneously occurs to you when you observe the accumulating excitement over the events in the Southern Cone of the American continent. From Venezuela to Tierra del Fuego almost all the governments in what has always been seen as “el patio trasero” (backyard) of US imperialism are lining up in defence of the Bolivian President Evo Morales against the underhand attempts, supported, if not actually incited by Washington, to destabilise his government. The facts are known. Bolivia is a country with a huge gulf in social inequality, and, in a paradox that only capitalism can apparently produce, has in its subsoil huge resources of primary products, especially gas.

Israel is Rehearsing for a Possible Air Attack

On 5^th June, Israel finished a military exercise in the Mediterranean involving F15 and F16 fighters and combat helicopters covering a range of 900 miles, the distance between Israel and Iran’s nuclear plant at Natanz. It is well-known that there is bad blood between the two governments. That the Tel Aviv government fears that its fiercest enemy will develop nuclear arms is part of the imperialist challenge of the area. That the Tehran government is using anti-Zionism as a battering ram to escape the politic and economic isolation in which it has been placed, is just as obvious.

Beyond the Manoeuvres

But there is more to this.

The Israel manoeuvres had a double aim: that of sending a clear message to those in charge in Iran, and that of concerting with its American ally the possible strategies to be used in a real attack.

Beyond the Caspian

Georgia may have driven Iran off the front pages this summer but the stand-off the Islamic Republic’s alleged plans (which are probably true) to develop nuclear weapons continues. The Mullahs and their current mouthpiece Ahmadinejad are playing a dangerous game of brinkmanship, behind which stands the imperialist interests of the US and the Western powers on one side, with Russia and China on the other. We have already argued1 that the US military is currently in no position to hit Iran itself but the US is still using its ally, Israel, to ratchet up the pressure on Tehran as the article (from Battaglia comunista) which follow this shows.

As the Russian Army swept into Gori from where the Georgian Army had launched its assault on Tshkinvali they came face to face with its most infamous son. The statue of Josef Vissiaronovich Djugashvili, aka Stalin, still gazes down on the town of his birth. Stalin would have absolutely approved of the iron response the Putin-Medvedev regime gave to the reckless attack on South Ossetia by the Saakashvili regime. Stalin, despite his birth, was one of the great oppressors of all minority groups, but with particular ruthlessness towards Georgia.

Lenin, Luxemburg and the National Question

Many are aware that, in his final months, Lenin became aware of the danger posed by Stalin and began to take steps against him. What few remember, however, is that it was over the issue of Georgia and the Caucasus that Stalin’s real political character was fully revealed to him. Lenin’s position on nationalism was a complex one.

Since 1992 the question of Ossetia has troubled the Caucasus. Along with every other nationalism, Ossetian nationalism is part of an imperialist game that is being made increasingly difficult by the international crisis. The motive forces which have induced Georgia to attack the small autonomous region in the Caucasus and those which have impelled Russia to employ its army in favour of the Ossetian secessionists against the Tbilisi government lie well beyond what the immediate tale of local events would tell us.

First of all the Ossetian question involves the struggle between Russia and Georgia. The former cannot tolerate the Saakashvili government moving closer towards the United States, much less its declared aim to become part of Nato as a pawn of Washington in the area of the ex-soviet empire. That, along with Ukraine, would comprise an anti-Russian front along the mid-southern border.

This was the first statement issued by the Bureau at the start of the war and has been translated into several languages as has the article on South Ossetia which follows.

Probably the words which best describe the present situation in the southern Caucasus — as well as the divergent standpoints of the opponents — are those attributed to a private conversation between Putin and Bush at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. The Russian premier is supposed to have said in no uncertain terms that “in fact war has broken out in South Ossetia”, adding, however, that the intervention will only be for limited aims, but also that “in Russia many volunteers intend to go there and it is undoubtedly very difficult to maintain peace in the region”. Bush seems to have limited himself to replying that “nobody wants a war”.

We have been writing for some time about the New Great Game in Central Asia and the Caucasus and about the connection between all the conflicts there and the Middle East. The common denominator is the world’s energy supplies and in particular oil and gas pipelines [1]. The two wars in Chechenya in the 1990s, the Beslan massacre in September 2004, the local wars that broke out in 1993 in Georgia with South Ossetia, Abkhazia and other former autonomous regions of the USSR are all part of the same struggle as are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the constant pressure on Iran to wind up its nuclear energy programme.

This article was written before the US Government takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae but the purpose of it is explained clearly here. This is the biggest financial bailout in capitalist history. The cost of bailing out the two home loan corporations is equivalent to more than twice the entire GDP of the United Kingdom and more than 17% of US GDP. And it won’t be the last …

Even without sharing our view that the present economic “downturn” marks another stage in capitalism’s long-running post-war accumulation crisis it is clear that times are changing for the working class, and not for the better.

Holding the Olympics in Beijing is wasting manpower and money, the country is still poor. The Olympics could only put powder on the false face of the regime. The communist regime stole the land from the villagers by cheating; now it will cheat the foreigners. [1]

Thus spoke a Mr. Li, a retired Communist Party cadre, one of the thousands forcibly evicted from the heart of the 2008 Olympics site, the residents of Datun village, Chaoyang district, Beijing.

And it is easy to see how this accusation of “powdering” an ugly reality [2] goes far beyond the present moment in China. Very much like that other great compensation for daily misery, the Roman games, the Olympics offer escapism on a grand scale, and an arena for the contending nation states to assert their supremacy and revive that great reactionary opiate, patriotic pride, one of the most effective antidotes to emerging class consciousness known to our rulers.

Another trend is happening, simultaneously: The worldwide rise of anxiety, despair, self-harm and general malaise. Children as young as three are diagnosed with depression. [1]

Although the scope of this article is restricted mostly to exposing national events and conditions, there is absolutely no doubt that the root cause of these events lies in the machinations of a savage globalised capitalism that manifests itself in a myriad of social ills the world over. The situation is negative throughout the capitalist heartlands, for example some 19 million children live in poverty in the EU, about a fifth of the bloc’s citizens below the age of 18. However, a case could be made to show that the United Kingdom does demonstrate a more advanced version of the problem, for here, at least according to Ian Duncan Smith, “Family breakdown is the worst in Europe”.

As the economy unravels before our eyes, with the credit crunch opening the door to a housing crisis and ever higher food, fuel and living costs, the usual suspects are trotted out for blame. Or rather, usual suspect, for as ever it is the working class which is seen as the culprit for an ever worsening situation. City analysts cannot accept that the years of so called economic growth were built on foundations of sand and therefore bound to crumble in spectacular fashion. Instead they lay the blame for the origin of the credit crunch squarely at the feet of those American workers who ‘greedily and recklessly’ tried to buy their own homes and then came unstuck when they couldn’t afford the payments.

And as in the rest of the world, workers in Britain are being held responsible for the effects of the domestic economic crisis. No matter they are the ones feeling the brunt of the downturn most severely.

Brazil

The inflation gripping the country and constantly reducing wage levels is provoking a response from metal workers in different areas of the country. Inflation has risen in recent months and now runs over 6%. The workers of auto companies, well aware that the sector has been enlarged and how high profits have been in recent years, have taken to the streets to get real wage stability.

The workers of the production lines of Nissan, Renault and Volkswagen in the state of Parana in southern Brazil have been on strike since Aug. 29. The agitation involves more than 9 000 workers and is centred on an immediate increase in wages, 8, 5% ,plus a bonus of 800 reais that should at least partly offset the high inflation in the country. In the same state, Volvo employees (about 2000) will receive an increase of around 7% in November and a one-off bonus of about 620 euros.

Turkey

The strikes over previous months involving workers of the Port of Istanbul have extended to the neighbouring naval dockyards of Tuzla. At those enterprises the struggle has also had the objective of putting an end to what is a real nightmare caused by unsustainable rhythms of work in conditions of total insecurity. On 14^th of June hundreds of strikers, with the support of thousands of other workers and many political militants, demonstrated in front of the naval dockyards. The situation they are struggling against is unacceptable, only in recent months in the Tuzla district have 25 people been killed in various incidents at work. Last May two workers died in the space of a single week. The struggle for competiveness in a market in profound crisis has led the naval dockyards to subcontract much of the labour force from other companies, and they in turn impose a criminal level of suffering and working conditions.

In the space of a few months, the myth that there not only is no alternative to capitalism, but that there is no need for change has been shattered. The image of a high-tech, global, self-confident capitalism which promised indefinite prosperity for everyone, even if the gulf between rich and poor is getting wider and wider, has suddenly given way to a world of rocketing food and fuel prices and growing protests against the impact on people’s lives.

Even if in Britain the effect of rapidly increasing prices has so far only put Gordon Brown’s premiership into question, there is no doubt that the prospect of a revival of class struggle haunts our political and economic overseers. As we said in our last issue, they are right to be worried because workers are no longer being taken in by the official inflation figures.

Persepolis is the film version of Marjane Satrapi’s graphic

autobiographical novel (i.e. comic book ) of the same name. It tells the story of Marjane and her middle class leftist family, from the overthrow of the Shah, through the heady days of the “February Revolution” of 1979 [1] and the creation of the Islamic Republic, to the Iran-Iraq war, and Marjane’s subsequent self-imposed exile in Europe.

Marjane is a wilful and adventurous child who displays a passionate loathing of injustice from an early age. Her Uncle Anoush, who we assume is a member of the Iranian Communist Party, the Tudeh, becomes an important influence on her after he is released from the Shah’s prisons. The euphoria of the early post-Shah days with its mass movements, begins to be replaced with a growing concern over the rise of the Islamists. Yet Uncle Anoush remains optimistic and comments that the Islamists are not as bad as the Shah.

The Importance of Zimbabwe

The Zimbabwe elections in March have once again brought the Zimbabwe situation onto the front pages of the bourgeois press. Our rulers would dearly love to see the end of the Mugabe regime and cataloguing its repressive savagery, its attempts to rig, then amend, the election results serves this purpose. The European and US ruling class, however, despite their pretended outrage at the brutality of Mugabe’s regime, have no concern for the violation of human rights in Zimbabwe or indeed anywhere else in the world. This is clearly demonstrated by their own violations of human rights and international law in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and numerous other places where they torture and murder their enemies without hesitation. Nor have they any concern for the desperate situation of the Zimbabwe working class.

At a time when global food prices are rising anyway, due to the short-term effects of freak weather conditions1 in key crop-growing areas like Australia, Canada and the Ukraine, and the long-term effects of the increased demand for meat and dairy products (which require far more grain for animal feed than would be needed to provide the same amount of energy if humans directly consumed the grain) by better-off sections of the populations of China, and, to a lesser extent, India, the competition for land for biofuels can only exacerbate the rise. All this, as the declining value of the dollar, the currency of international trade, pushes up food production costs and “farm gate” prices while speculative activity shifts from the subprime and associated sectors to the food sector.

Even though we knew that it was something more devastating than a mere soap bubble, when the subprime crisis first broke out we could not have envisaged how much worse it would get in such a short time.

Unprecedented State Aid …For the Bankers

A few weeks ago the US monetary authorities took the unprecedented decision to lend Morgan Chase a stack of dollars at an almost zero rate of interest so that it could purchase Bear Stearns — one of the biggest investment banks in the USA but now on the edge of bankruptcy — at a knock-down price. Given that this is a commercial bank which is listed on the stock exchange and whose shares are held by the major institutional investors (pension funds, other big investment banks, municipal investment funds, etc.), there was in fact a risk that the collapse of Bear Stearns would unleash a chain reaction that could have drawn in the entire American financial system and with it a good part of the rest of the world.

A long-time correspondent recently wrote to us asking us if we intended to send any delegates to a meeting in London at the end of June organised by the “Campaign for a New Workers Party”. We had received no invitation to the meeting but we have been aware for some time of this initiative. One of the great needs of our time is for workers to create a political instrument which can give organisational form to an anti-capitalist consciousness. As an affiliate to the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party the CWO is obviously duty-bound to comment on such an initiative.

Love Labour’s Lost

However, it does not take much of a glance to see that this so-called “New Workers’ Party” already has an ancient and sorry history. In the first place it is the initiative of the Socialist Party. Older readers will know that this was the label the old Trotskyist Militant Tendency took when it was expelled from the Labour Party in Neil Kinnock’s spell as leader.