2009 will be remembered above all as the year that the political and
social fallout from the world capitalist crisis began to dramatically
affect hundreds of millions of workers throughout the entire world.
it began with the savage Israeli invasion of Gaza. Millions watched in
anger as the Israeli army fought a grossly one-sided war against the
Palestinians. At least 1,400 Palestinians were slaughtered while only
13 Israelis were killed. Four of these were killed by so-called
friendly fire, although the Palestinians no doubt didn’t think it was
friendly. The invasion sparked mass protests which demonstrated the
fact that, in the world of the internet and 24 hour news, the crimes of
imperialism are a lot more difficult to cover up.
But of course everything was apparently about to change with the
inauguration of Barack Obama. It’s probably true to say that no other
US President in history (including JFK) has ever come into office with
so many hopes riding on him. Many of those aspirations and expectations
have been cruelly dashed over the past months as US unemployment has
continued to rocket, standing now at 15.1 million. As it appears from
the last set of elections, the Apathy Party has begun to gain ground.
Banking Crisis
consequences of the banking crisis have revealed themselves as a slump.
As we’ve explained elsewhere, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79
didn’t wipe out Pompeii. It was the fallout of ash afterwards that
choked the people. Throughout the world, companies have been falling
like ninepins. In Britain unemployment is approaching 3 million and
tragically 1 million of these are young people under the age of 25. But
that’s not the end of it and next year could see the rate rising to 4
million. As might be expected, figures like these don’t engender a
warm, loving feeling towards the government and New Labour’s woes only
increased in the June local and European elections. Large swathes of
what were previously Labour heartlands have now turned a murky shade of
blue and yellow with victories by the Tories and LibDems. The stench of
privatisation in these councils is more reminiscent of the sort of bile
and brimstone of the Thatcher years. It was 25 years since the
beginning of the miners’ strike in March this year, a timely reminder
of what a Tory victory nationally would really mean for workers.
New Labour’s star is on the wane. Murdoch’s Sun has now nailed
itself to the Tory mast and the days when Tony Blair and Mandelson were
the toast of News International editors and the bosses are long gone.
The MPs’ expenses scandal, though it affected all parties, inevitably
served to further discredit New Labour as the party in government.
It is to the eternal shame of Blair, Brown and New Labour that tens
and even hundreds of thousands of Labour voters just don’t bother
turning out to vote at the moment. After all, the right wing of the
party has had 12 years with a huge parliamentary majority but, far from
squeezing the rich, Blair and Brown have frustrated many workers with
their pro-business policies. A minority of disillusioned workers have
turned to the racist programme of the BNP. Griffin and another BNP
candidate managed to get elected to the European Parliament, but what
was most noticeable in those elections was the abstention rate. The
reformist/nationalist programme presented by the Communist Party of
Britain and Socialist Party’s NO2EU campaign received a derisory vote,
proving that there are no short cuts to fighting in the official labour
movement for a socialist programme. This socialist programme is also
necessary to undermine the BNP and send them scuttling back under their
stones. We saw a glimmer of that fighting approach in November in Glasgow with the campaign against the ‘Scottish Defence League’.
But despite the lack of movement on the political front, the workers
have moved towards industrial struggle instead. Notable in 2009 has
been the reappearance of factory occupations in Britain. Socialist
Appeal readers will be familiar with the wave of occupations in Latin
America, but it’s been a long time since we saw factory occupations
here. In fact the first examples of occupations in these islands
weren’t in Britain, but in Ireland. The workers of Waterford Crystal
took over the factory after management announced it was going to close.
occupations are different to strikes. They are on a higher level and
require the active support of the workers outside. The occupation at
Waterford Crystal eventually ended after the company effectively held a
gun to the workers’ heads, threatening them that they would lose their
pensions unless a buy-out went through. But the political lessons
weren’t lost on workers in the Belfast Visteon plant who occupied their
plant when it was threatened with closure. The Visteon occupations
spread to Basildon and Enfield, and a few months later the Vestas
workers on the Isle of Wight took the same line when their plant came
into the firing line. These occupations were crisis measures by workers
who stood to lose everything, but who weren’t prepared to go down
without a fight.
Depth of recession
While the depth of the recession forced many workers to take a sharp
intake of breath in 2008, what’s been noticeable in 2009 has been
sections of workers taking a stand against job losses and pay cuts.
This was particularly the case with the construction workers at Lindsey
who took on the bosses after they had tried to undermine their national
trade union agreement. Despite a virulent campaign in the press, which
tried to present the strike as a battle around “British Jobs for
British workers”, the management were forced to back down in the face
of solid united strike action. Just recently the postal workers have
been involved in a series of strikes against Post Office privatisation,
backed up by an absolutely solid strike ballot result. These struggles
have fed through into the trade unions themselves, most notably in
Jerry Hicks’ support in the Amicus-Unite General Secretary election.
a sense 2009 represented the passing of one political period and
beginning of the next. It was the end of the series of fireworks
associated with the banking crisis and little old ladies queuing up
outside Northern Rock, and a period where workers began to draw their
conclusions from the political and economic crisis that they found
themselves in. There are big changes in workers’ consciousness taking
place under the surface and big struggles and class conflicts are being
prepared, not just in Britain, but on a global level. Three
international examples stand out. On the one hand the enormous movement
against the electoral fraud in Iran, which has refused to die down
despite repression by the state. From Iran’s history: the revolutionary
movement of 1979 demonstrates that the Iranian working class are quite
capable of toppling even the most heavily armed regime. On the other
hand the mass movement in Honduras against the coup that toppled Mel
Zelaya reveals the weakness of reaction. Despite the farcical agreement
signed recently, the working class, properly prepared and mobilised,
could potentially overthrow the illegitimate government provided that
the correct leadership is present. In Venezuela the Bolivarian movement
continues to develop and the next period will see the strengthening of
the PSUV, the mass party led by Chavez. Sooner or later the Bolivarian
Revolution needs to move forward and challenge capitalism in Venezuela,
and then in the whole of Latin America, if it is to succeed.
Limits of Imperialism
The limits of imperialism are further revealed in the ongoing war in
Afghanistan, which has now spread into Pakistan. The conflict is
proving a huge drain on US and British resources – and for what? The
recent elections have proven to be a farce with widespread
irregularities, and neither Karzai nor the Taliban offer any solution
for the masses. If the health of a society is reflected in the way that
its women are treated, then Afghanistan looks to be on life-support for
decades to come. The only solution for the workers and peasants of
Afghanistan lies in a socialist federation in South Asia. That can only
come about through the strength and combativity of the South Asian
working class.
As 2009 reaches its conclusion across the Middle East, Asia, South
America, the ruined European economies and the USA, millions of workers
are looking for a way out of the misery of capitalist crisis.
Capitalism has reached an impasse. The capitalist crisis has seen a
bigger collapse in production than in 1931 but, given the growth of the
world market and the interpenetration of the capitalist economies, its
political ramifications will echo around the whole of the globe for
years. We have a world economy, a world market and world politics. A
successful socialist revolution in one major country would have a
dramatic effect and would act as a beacon for the entire world. Latin
America has been the epicentre of huge movements over the past few
years, but the effect of the crisis means that the potential to
transform society along socialist lines exists all over the world.
World socialism would allow us to transform the lives of millions of
people, to plan the harmonious development of society and to lift whole
continents out of misery. It would see an end to the horrors of
capitalism, sectarianism and poverty, starvation and disease. That’s a
big prize.
