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12th World Congress 2020

World Perspectives

The year 2019 marked a definite political turning point globally. Particularly in the final months, we saw mass struggles and general strikes around the world with revolutionary characteristics

Saturday, 8 February 2020 10:00 (UTC)
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This document is one of the resolutions from the 12th World Congress of ISA (formerly the CWI), which took place in January-February 2020. Following a certain delay due to pressing work and interventions into the stormy world situation, it was uploaded to our archive in July 2020, for the benefit of our readers. Documents were agreed on World Relations, Western Europe, Central & Eastern Europe, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and on women’s struggles and socialist feminism.

The World Congress, 27 January–1 February, agreed to the resolution on World Perspectives. It covers all important processes –  world economy, inter-imperialist conflicts, class struggle and other struggles, consciousness, and the climate. However, since this was written mainly in September-October, it was decided to add a short update, authored by the International Executive and published below as an introduction.

Introduction

The year 2019 marked a definite political turning point globally. Particularly in the final months, we saw mass struggles and general strikes around the world with revolutionary characteristics. This is a mass explosion, a result of accumulated anger and discontent against those in power, against their neoliberalism and lack of democracy. These protests have also featured some basic elements of a socialist struggle — most notably the strength of the working class and an instinctive internationalism.

At the same time, governments, dictators, and generals demonstrated that the ruling class will not step down voluntarily. In a number of countries, armed counter-revolution and brutal repression have been deployed against peaceful demonstrations and young activists.

Most governments around the world are silent about the violence of the counter-revolution, or are calling for “calm.” The news media talks about “violent clashes” between state forces and demonstrators. In fact, in every case “violence” means attacks by heavily armed counter-revolutionary state forces, while those protesters try to defend themselves. In Bolivia, more than 30 people were killed by counter-revolutionary state forces in a two week period, eight of them in a massacre in El Alto on 19 November.

For the key imperialist powers, these events are a sharp warning of the weaknesses of their global capitalist system. The inability of the ruling class to provide any solution is one of the dominant features. This wave of protests takes place at the same time as a sharp increase in inter-imperialist conflicts, a likely downturn in the world economy and a deepening climate crisis.

And the protests spread rapidly. In late November, Iran and Colombia became the next arenas for mass protests. In Iran, following another drastic price hike on fuel, protests took place in over 100 cities. The economic burden on workers and the poor was immediately linked to the theocratic dictatorship. The “Supreme Leader” Khamenei went on television to condemn the protests, claiming the extra income from fuel price hikes was destined for the poorest. The response was increased anger, including burning pictures of Khamenei. The repression from the regime was sharper even than in the previous years. Between 1,300 and 1,500 were killed by state forces.

In early January 2020, US president Trump ordered an attack that killed Iranian top general Suleimani at the airport in Baghdad. At first, the attack seemed to significantly strengthen the position of the Iranian regime against the mass movement. However, within days the protests re-emerged after the rulers of Iran admitted to having shot down a civilian aircraft with 176 passengers. The protests are fuelled by growing social need, economic crisis and dictatorial rule.

In Colombia, the general strike on 21 November, with 250,000 on street demonstrations, was followed by a second general strike on 3 December, against privatizations and cuts in pensions. The state answered with a curfew in Bogota and a heavy police presence. The movement continues, with a further general strike in January.

Also Macron in France has been challenged by the longest sustained period of mass strikes in the country since 1968, against his regime’s attempt to undermine the pension system which is one of the key post-World War II gains of the French working class. This began on 5 December, with up to 1.5 million marching in the streets.

Comparisons with 2011

Commentators have made historical comparisons with 1848 and 1968, when revolutionary and pre-revolutionary struggles spread to many countries. Comparisons have also been made with 2011, when a wave of revolutionary struggles in North Africa and the Middle East overthrew Mubarak in Egypt and Ben Ali in Tunisia. Now, nine years later, the wave of protests is not confined to one region, but is global in scope, and with clearer social demands: for jobs, water, electricity etc.

Politically, the masses have also drawn conclusions that regime change is not enough. In Sudan, the lessons of the Egyptian revolution, which ended with al-Sisi establishing a new dictatorship, have led the masses to continue their mobilizations after al-Bashir was overthrown.

Compared to 2011 and other protests in recent years, the struggles of 2019 are much more long-lasting. Protests in February 2019 in Haiti and June in Hong Kong were still continuing at the end of the year. Lebanon’s “October revolution” forced Prime Minister Hariri to resign after two weeks, but continued after his resignation. In mid-November, bank workers were on indefinite strike, roads were blocked around the country and state buildings were blocked by protests. In mid-January 2020, the protests resumed. Algeria has seen mass demonstrations every Friday, which did not stop after Bouteflika was forced to resign, with “New Revolution” as a frequently-used slogan.

Most of the protests have seen youth and women in leading roles, without question inspired by the youthful climate strikes and the global women’s and feminist movement. Seven million six hundred thousand people participated in the climate strikes in September, with an increasing understanding about the need for a movement for drastic social change. The feminist strikes and movements also have an international character and make use of the strike as a weapon.

Where the working class has taken decisive action with general strikes and strike waves, the balance of forces has been made very clear — the isolated small elite versus the majority of workers and poor. This has also underlined the economic and collective role of the working class, the force that can achieve a socialist transformation of society.

The movements are combining many issues: economic hardship and lack of democracy with the oppression of women and environmental degradation. This was made clear by the movement in Indonesia at the end of September. Student protests at over 300 universities were triggered by a bill making sex illegal outside of marriage, directed against LGBTQ+ people, but the protests also attacked corruption and the destruction of rain forests. In a number of countries, like Ecuador and Bolivia, native peoples have been at the forefront of the struggle against neoliberalism and reaction.

“Fun and Exciting”

Bourgeois “experts” are unable to explain this global political moment. Bloomberg.com stresses that these are not working-class protests, but rather “consumers” reacting against a rise in the cost of fuel, taxes, or travel costs. This totally underestimates the strong political demands of the movements, although in most countries a strong, organized and unified workers’ movement remains to be built.

The Economist magazine says “The search for a unifying theme is pointless,” stating protests can be “more exciting and even more fun than the drudgery of daily life,” and warns that “solidarity becomes fashion.” This, of course, explains nothing: why do the protests take place now and why do more people not always enjoy this kind of “fun”?

Marxists consider and analyze both: the clear common denominators, the strengths and weaknesses of these movements, as well as the different forces of counter-revolution. Of course, there are national peculiarities, but also many common features.

What is Behind the Explosive Anger?

The turn of the decade marks a global turning point, created by the deep political and economic crises of capitalism, its blind alleys and decay. Politically, we see the ruling class relying on right-wing populism and nationalism, in an increasingly parasitic economic system. They have no way out.

Who are these mass protests directed against? What is behind the explosive anger? There is extreme hatred against governments and political parties. In Lebanon, the dominant slogan is “all must go.” In Iraq, the movement wants to ban all existing parties from standing in coming elections, from the start including Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement, which was able to divert previous protests. Students in Baghdad displayed a banner with “No politics, no parties, this is a student awakening.” In Chile, people on the streets shout “Away with all thieves.”

This hatred is based on decades of neo-liberalism and shrinking living standards, and the prospect of no future. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) advises further neoliberalism through reducing state subsidies. This triggered the revolts in Sudan and Ecuador. In Lebanon, 50% of state spending goes to debt payments. New austerity was also the trigger in Haiti, Chile, Iran, Uganda, and other countries. It’s a question of time until it spreads further. This is linked to the extreme rise in inequality.

Strikes and Street Protest

The struggles show many common and important features. Enormous peaceful demonstrations were the starting point in many countries. Two million marched in Hong Kong in June (with a population of 7.3 million), over one million each in Chile and Lebanon, and several hundred thousand in Tahrir square in Baghdad. In most cases, the protests have not been only in the capitals or big cities, but spread over entire countries.

General strikes have been decisive in overthrowing and shaking regimes. 2019 started with the massive general strike in India (150 million), and continued with Tunisia, Brazil, and Argentina. The second half of 2019 saw general strikes in Ecuador, Chile (twice), Lebanon, Catalonia, and Colombia, plus citywide strikes in Rome and Milan. Iraq has seen big strikes of teachers, dock workers, medical doctors, and more.

The struggle developed creative methods of struggle and points toward a new society. Baghdad’s Tahrir square took up the tradition from its Egyptian namesake in the Arab Spring, with a hospital tent, free transport, and even a daily paper being produced. Ecuador saw the development of people’s assemblies and Chile also saw local organizing assemblies. The song, “Un Violador en Tu Camino” (A Rapist in Your Path, pointing to the state forces as rapists), spread from women in Chile all over the globe around the new year 2019–2020.

Sectarian division was overcome by common struggle, a feature typical in revolutionary events. In Lebanon, Shia and Sunni Muslims struggle alongside Christians. In Iraq, Shia and Sunni also worked together, with the struggle spreading to Sunni areas in the north of the country by the end of November. Internationalism is clear, with solidarity statements from the masses in Iraq to the protests in Iran, as well as the huge demonstration in Buenos Aires against the coup in Bolivia.

Victories and Complications

The movements won big victories and concessions. Longstanding dictators in Sudan and Algeria were overthrown; the government in Ecuador fled the capital, ministers resigned in Lebanon, Chile, and Iraq. In Chile, President Pinera first claimed the country was “at war” against the protests, then had to “apologize” and reverse all the measures that initially triggered the movement. Similarly in France, Macron was forced to retreat on fuel prices and increase the minimum wage as a response to the “Yellow Vest” protests last year. In most cases, the protests continued after these concessions.

Consciousness can take leaps forward based on the experience of struggles. This process has begun but, in the main, the mass struggles lack the organization and leadership necessary to point the way to the socialist transformation of society. No workers’ or left parties capable of this task have developed so far. The new left parties formed in the past period have been volatile and politically weak.

The comparisons with 1968 show how far the labour movement — workers parties and trade unions — has retreated in terms of its active base. However, this also means that Stalinist “communist” parties and social democracy have fewer possibilities to block and divert the struggles as they did back then.

Counter-revolution

The fall of 2019 also showed that the capitalist class will not hesitate to use the most brutal counter-revolutionary repression in order to stay in power. They generally prefer other, more peaceful, means but are prepared to use violence when necessary.

In Bolivia, there was a military coup with the support of U.S. imperialism and the Brazilian government under Bolsonaro. The new “president” Anez was “elected” by less than a third of parliament.

More than 600 were killed by state forces and paramilitaries in Iraq by the end of January 2020. 405 people have been shot in the eyes in Chile and 30,000 detained. In France in the spring, 40 people were blinded.

The year 2019 was full of discussions about the risk of a major clampdown by the Chinese army in Hong Kong, but fear of the consequences stayed the hand of the dictatorship in Beijing.

The ruling class — where they don’t seek to crush the movement by force — want to disarm the protests and derail them into elections or negotiations. The latter is a clear danger in both Chile and Ecuador, despite the distrust of the masses against deals at the top. In Argentina, the Peronist populist candidates, Fernandez and Fernandez-Kirchner, won the elections recently. The masses’ main target was to oust Macri, the former big hope for capitalism in Latin America, who presided over a new deep financial crisis. The new Peronist government, however, will not have a honeymoon, since it will continue implementing the policies of the IMF.

In Sudan, official protest leaders signed a deal over the heads of the masses with the military about sharing power. This left the real power with general Hemeti and his notorious Janjaweed militia. Now there are growing protests again, against the deal and the generals.

However, in general the movement in this period will recover more quickly from defeats than in the past. Mass protests in Iran were crushed in 2009 and again in 2017, but returned again this year. The same has happened in Iraq, Zimbabwe, and Sudan. New protests also show that the dictatorship in Egypt is not stable.

Challenging the Ruling Class

Indefinite general strikes and mass movements of a revolutionary character raise the question of power. Which class should rule?

Most of the present struggles immediately challenge the power of the capitalist class. The counter-revolution is preparing itself for such struggles, but in recent months they have found that their normal methods are insufficient to drive the masses back.

Another important historical comparison is with the first Russian revolution in 1905. The working class showed its strength and the Tsarist state hung on by a thread. A final confrontation was inevitable.

Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the workers in 1905, declared at his trial in 1906 that, “to prepare for the inevitable insurrection… meant to us first and foremost, enlightening the people, explaining to them that open conflict was inevitable, that all that had been given to them would be taken away again, that only might can defend right, that a powerful organization of the working class was necessary, that the enemy had to be met head on, that the struggle had to be continued to the end, that there was no other way.”

In 1905, despite the formation of the workers’ councils (soviets), the insufficient organization of the working class alongside the weakness of the struggle in the countryside, gave counter-revolution the upper hand. The experiences of 1905, however, laid the basis for the victory of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Today’s situation does not leave room for long periods of reaction with no struggle.

As the 2020s begin, we will without doubt see the wave of struggle spread to more countries and regions including “advanced” capitalist countries as it has now in France. Working people internationally will increasingly understand that determined social struggle is the only way to achieve real change. Anti-capitalist and socialist ideas will be strengthened by the search for an alternative to austerity, oppression, and repression. However, the weakness of the left and workers’ organization inherited from the last period means that it will be a drawn-out process, with both leaps forward and set-backs.

The general lesson, however, is the same as in 1905 or 1968 — it is still a question of the need for a workers’ government to defend the gains a mass movement can win and to move decisively to achieve fundamental change.


Resolution

General trends

At the time of drafting this document, the global economy is on the verge of a serious downturn. Industrial production in the EU, Japan and the US is already facing recession. In this conjuncture, the international youth mobilisations against climate change are not only impressive, but have huge significance for future developments. In September, millions of school students joined by many workers took part in mass mobilisations in over a hundred countries and in thousands of cities. This is to be repeated on 29 November. Staggering in its scope, this important youth movement, however, is one of many very significant developments.

Earlier, the historic mobilizations of millions of women in defence of their rights, against gender violence and for gender equality erupted. On the day of Trump’s inauguration in January 2017 and on 8 March every year since, millions have been on the streets, not just demonstrating, but also raising the idea of striking. The feminist movement has had victories of historical significance in a number of countries [See Congress resolution on the Women’s movement and socialist feminism for more extensive analysis] not least the tremendous 66.4% who voted in favour of the right of abortion in the Irish Referendum of 2018, a victory by a movement in which our Irish section played a role.

The year 2019 started with the revolutionary mass upheavals in Sudan and Algeria and with the social explosion in Hong Kong, astonishing in its numbers, determination and duration. Sudan and Algeria demonstrated that the processes set off by the revolutions in North Africa in January 2011 have far from fizzled out. So too did the September demonstrations in Egypt against the dictatorial regime of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, which led to 1,900 arrests. In Iraq, October saw mass revolts with demonstrators demanding the fall of the government, which responded by leaving close to 200 dead at the time of writing and at least 4,000 wounded. In Jordan there was a very important and determined strike by teachers. In Lebanon, the middle of October saw the mass eruption of tens of thousands of protestors against an austerity package, taxing among other things social media communications. [See more in the Congress Resolution on the Middle East].

Latin America is once again experiencing a phase of instability, crisis and struggle after a short period in which the forces of neoliberalism and right-wing populism seemed to gain the upper hand. The most important developments centre on Argentina and Brazil, but the most recent social explosions have been in Ecuador and Chile, where we saw elements of a revolutionary situation. In both cases, we had victories for the mass movement: in Ecuador the government was forced to flee, in Chile it was forced to publicly apologise and ask for forgiveness, and in both cases the immediate neoliberal measures were repealed. The Caribbean island nation of Haiti has seen another popular uprising against poverty and corruption, which started in February 2019 and still continues. Latin American capitalism is in the grip of an acute economic, social and political crisis. The issue of the general strike is back on the agenda in a whole number of countries — Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and Chile. These issues are taken up more extensively in the congress resolution on Latin America.

In Asia, apart from H. Kong, to which we will return in this document, we had the developments in Indonesia, where mass student protests broke out in September against the rollback of anti-corruption measures as well as a law banning sex outside marriage, aimed primarily at LGBTQ people. The protestors also demanded action against the companies burning down the rainforest to create palm oil plantations.

The list of important struggles and social convulsions is very long and is not restricted to “developing” countries. The movement of the ‘yellow vests” in France; the turmoil in Spain, particularly Catalonia with waves of strikes and demonstrations against the heavy sentences on the leaders of the independence movement (see more in the congress resolution on Europe); the determined walk-outs by teachers and, more recently GM workers in the US; the important strikes especially in the health sector and at the Harland and Wolff shipyard Ireland in which our party played a very prominent role are just some such struggles. Now international strikes by Amazon and Ryanair workers demanding better pay and conditions are becoming a feature.

All of these struggles and revolutionary explosions are happening when growth rates in the world economy are still positive in the context of quite a complicated picture of class consciousness for the broad masses and even activists; and despite the rotten role of the trade union leaders and bankruptcy of the vast majority of left organisations.

These processes and their contradictions will inevitably intensify when recession hits. The movement of the masses, their struggle, and their victories will push consciousness forward. Valuable lessons will be drawn from possible defeats. This will be reflected sooner or later on the political plane and inside the trade union movement, as is already evident in the US.

The political scene in many countries is in flux. There is a deep crisis of confidence in bourgeois democracy, reflected in a lack of confidence in bourgeois institutions and a polarisation in many countries. Right populism has gained further ground with Boris Johnson in Britain being the latest important example. Social democratic and right-wing conservative establishment parties are losing ground, in some cases facing collapse — the Social Democrats in Spain and Portugal are exceptions to the rule as they have become reliable props for the establishment. The Greens are on the rise, partially filling the space left by social democracy. The large majority of left parties, including the left formations created in the last couple of decades are, in one way or another, facing crisis. Despite the emergence of many new left formations in the past decades, the vacuum in the left remains huge.

A significant part of the world’s population lives under right populist regimes which have a significant social base, actively promoting racism and xenophobia or viciously persecuting ethnic and religious minorities. These include the US, India, Brazil, Russia, the Philippines, Hungary and Poland. At the same time, traditional parties, including social-democratic establishment parties, have also adopted the anti-immigrant agenda of the right. This may seem like a moment of great strength for right populism, but most of these regimes are far from stable: they too will face the wrath of working class people and the youth when the recession arrives as they seek to make them pay for the crisis of the system.

A new recession will have very important repercussions on mass consciousness, pushing big layers in an anti-capitalist direction. Capitalism is not in a position to overcome its contradictions or the economic, social and political impasse in which it finds itself. The main factor that allows it to survive is the lack of a revolutionary leadership in the struggles of the labouring masses.

Trade war — a trigger or a symptom of capitalist impasse?

The imperialist conflict between the US and China, which has erupted with full force in the past two years, opens a new historical stage of global capitalism and international relations. It is much more than a trade war. It is part of the trend towards a reversal of globalization (which includes trade and supply chains, but also financial flows) but it is also a stage in the general economic, geopolitical and strategic clash between US imperialism and the rising challenge of China for domination over the planet. It is what bourgeois commentators have described in the course of 2019 as a new “one hundred years’ war” or “Thucydides trap” — the idea that, when one great power threatens to displace another, war is almost always the result. In previous historical epochs such clashes would always lead to war — in the 20th century, two world wars.

“There is something eerily reminiscent of the summer of 1914 about the state of US-China relations,” warned The Guardian in an editorial. Other commentators call this a “new cold war” — a term that does convey the intensity and magnitude of the most dominant inter-imperialist conflict, between the US and Chinese capitalisms. At the same time, the analogy with the historical Cold War between US imperialism and Stalinism should serve to better clarify what’s fundamentally different in today’s process: It is not a conflict between mutually exclusive social systems. This has important repercussions on the dynamic and perspectives of this process, as well as on programme.

As is the case in any acute inter-imperialist conflict, of course military tensions can significantly increase, and both ruling classes are already resorting to some nationalist incitement (anti-Chinese, anti-American), which could seriously sharpen at a later stage. The conflict may even revive in future the type of mass existential fear of a nuclear war. But this is a more “classical” inter-imperialist conflict, despite its global scale.

Given that it is a wrestling between two giant nuclear powers, the logic of Mutually Assured Destruction does play a role in the conflict — nevertheless, the current process doesn’t have the acute “social-existential” character of the historical imperialist confrontation with Stalinism. Today, the idea of a “communist takeover” of US society is not a credible threat. Despite the formal Stalinist relics in the Chinese regime propaganda, the US ruling class will find it extremely hard to use this conflict to nurture “Red Scare” against socialism, although, as seen with the case of Venezuela, an element of it may develop. The Chinese regime, unlike Stalinism as a superpower in the past, will not be capable of appealing to revolting masses anywhere in the world with revolutionary “credentials”. However, both regimes are increasingly injecting an “ideological” element into this contest: “China is exporting its authoritarian model” versus “the US is fomenting a colour revolution” … “to split and destroy China”. Both regimes attempt to enlist support in third countries for their own imperialist agenda, but garbed in the language of “opposing US political interference” and “defending Asian values” on the Chinese side, versus a US narrative of “defending sovereignty [against a Chinese takeover] and democracy”.

But, a “hot war” between the US and China (and their allies) is not on the cards because both sides have nuclear weapons. Moreover, contemporary class relations play a role. The destabilizing effect for the ruling classes in this era that the threat of a massive scale war could unleash is huge — with an inevitable explosion of a mass radicalized anti-war movement internationally, which would dwarf the international movement against the imperialist war on Iraq in 2003.

However, the possibility of proxy wars involving states and armed groups tied to the rival imperialist powers will increase, as we have already seen in Syria and Yemen and could see at some stage in the South China Sea and over Taiwan. Such conflicts can become more widespread as the capitalist crisis deepens.

While the historical Cold War kept the inter-imperialist rivalries within the capitalist world (“first world”) more in check, this will not be the case this time, not least in an era where any imperialist alliance is drastically shaken and ruptured by growing centrifugal national pressures. Thus, in this “new cold war” between the two most powerful imperialist states, other imperialist rivalries — Russia, the European Union, India and Japan — have and will emerge at times “more independently” to re-assert their interests.

Notwithstanding this and any possible temporary deals and agreements, the US-China conflict is now the main axis around which the global situation revolves. It will be a long drawn out process affecting all spheres — economic, political and geopolitical and a key defining feature of world relations in the next period.

World economy

The new head of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, recently declared, “The global economy is now in a synchronized slowdown.” (Wall Street Journal, 10/8/19). The IMF and World Bank now estimate that 90% of the world economy is experiencing a slowdown compared to two years ago, when 75% experienced accelerating growth. This includes the massive Chinese economy, whose rate of growth has slowed to the lowest level in 30 years and may well be significantly below the officially reported numbers. Germany, the key industrial power in Europe, is teetering on the edge of a recession. Some countries, like Argentina and Turkey are facing an even sharper crisis. Global trade is expanding at its lowest rate since 2009.

A major trigger for this downturn, the US-China trade war, reflects the weakening but still dominant position of US imperialism. While the US economy continues to grow, it is also slowing down. The latest reports indicate that manufacturing, agriculture and shipping, accounting for 1/5 of the US economy, are already in recession (Paul Krugman, New York Times, 10/4/19). Consumer spending which accounts for 2/3 of economic activity is still unaffected, but this will not continue if there are significant layoffs in manufacturing and other sectors.

The deeper causes

The crisis of 2008–9 exposed the underlying realities of capitalism in this period. The neo-liberal era which began in the mid-1970s after the collapse of the post 1945 expansion was an attempt that gained pace and was galvanized as a whole new strategy after the Chile “experience” and a period of disorientation and loss of confidence by the ruling classes — to restore profitability. Faced with dwindling profitable outlets in the “real economy”, in essence the ruling classes turned empirically to financial assets (coupled subsequently with the massive expansion of credit) and moved to launch a brutal offensive on the organized force of the working class internationally, and to massively privatize state assets. The deepening of the exploitation of the working class was coupled with the turn to accelerated globalization and later the restoration of capitalism in the former Stalinist world. The economic counter-revolution was accompanied by the massive ideological counter-revolution, with a poisonous effect on the workers’ movement internationally. These features reflected a ruling class unable to expand the productive forces as they did in the post-war period or offer a better future. Instead it resorted to looting society, restoring profits by radically reducing the share of wealth going to working people.

The result was a staggering increase in inequality with 26 billionaires now owning as much wealth as the bottom 50% of the world’s population. While Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and his family have amassed $160 billion, hundreds of thousands of Americans are homeless and millions more are one last pay-check away from disaster.

For years the ruling class has claimed that a “recovery” is underway. But the reality is that the benefits of this expansion have gone overwhelmingly to the capitalist elite. The vast sums of money pumped into the financial sector of key capitalist countries through measures like Quantitative Easing (QE) have overwhelmingly gone back into speculation rather than productive investment. The infamous global derivatives market today has a nominal value of $1.2 quadrillion ($1,200,000 billion).

The crisis this time

Whether the new phase of economic and social crisis will match the scale of 2008–9 depends on various factors. The US and China have apparently negotiated a pause in the escalation of their trade conflict, but other triggers, maybe Brexit or a new Middle East conflict provoking a sharp oil price increase, could exacerbate the crisis. Whatever, it is hard to see a resolution any time soon.

There are several reasons why this crisis, as it worsens, could be even more difficult to address. Although compared to 2008–9, the ability of central banks to respond effectively has been severely undermined, there is a bigger problem. Then, the capitalists relied on the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), whose economies were relatively dynamic, to pull the world economy out of the ditch. China, in particular, invested in massive infrastructure projects and imported vast amounts of raw materials.

Today, facing its own debt crisis, China is not able to play this role. Its “Belt and Road” programme of infrastructure investments abroad has created crises for countries now having to repay the Chinese loans that financed the projects. In fact, all the BRIC countries are facing slowdown (China and India) or are in danger of going into recession in the coming year (Russia and Brazil). Brazil has barely emerged from the most brutal recession in its history, which has left 13 million unemployed with many more underemployed.

Ten years ago there was a coordinated international response. This is almost inconceivable today with Trump at the helm. US tariffs on imports are now at a higher level than at any point since the 1930s (Barrons, 5/10/19). However, Trump also came to power after a decade in which protectionist measures were increasing internationally. In reality we are experiencing the partial unwinding of globalization. There are limits to this because over-accumulation of capital and overproduction are creating the necessity for the different national capitalist classes to invest their capital abroad and sell their goods abroad. This is one important reason for the complexity of international production chains but it is remarkable that today we are seeing the beginnings of a “decoupling” of the US and Chinese economies.

And while globalization and its neo-liberal trade deals were done at the expense of workers and the environment, a resurgence of economic nationalism and protectionism offers no way out for the system and has nothing positive for the working class. At the same time, it is also dangerous, pointing towards increasing international tension and conflict between states.

An untenable situation

Recessions are normal under capitalism but this situation is not the boom and bust cycle of a forward moving system, but rather the increasing spasms of a system in decline. None of the underlying issues that in 2007–9 caused the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s have been resolved. There is still massive overproduction and overcapacity in the global economy as working people, whose share of the wealth has shrunk, are unable to buy the products they make. But it is important to note that overproduction and overcapacity is rooted in the anarchy of capitalist production and the logic of the capitalist system. A time ago the chief of the BMW motor company put it: “We know that there will be too many cars, but we know that there will be too few BMWs.” There are massive levels of state indebtedness. Although some pro-capitalist commentators are falsely trying to convince themselves this is not a problem, in reality debt repayment consumes an ever greater percentage of governments’ spending thus constricting their ability to stimulate the economy.

As a result of mass pressure, the climate crisis and growing inter-imperialist competition, there could be a move towards more state intervention in the next period. Capitalism has experienced different eras or “regimes” with different balances of class forces and policies. Neo-liberalism, although very unpopular, survived past its sell by date in large part, despite the willingness of working people and youth to fight after 2008, because of the general weakness of working class organizations since the collapse of Stalinism.

But that may be beginning to change. Even before the full crisis breaks out, there has been an astonishing development of struggle by working people and youth internationally. Working people will not be as shocked by the next crisis, in the way they were by the previous one of 2008–9. While a serious slump can have a “stunning effect” especially as people cope with mass unemployment and evictions, this phase can be expected to be of far shorter duration than after 2008. When struggle resumes it will very quickly be on a wider scale, more determined and with more far reaching demands.

United States

At the tail end of the economic cycle in the US, after a record ten years of expansion in which the benefits have gone overwhelmingly to the ruling class and those who are already affluent, the working class is looking for ways to fight back. In 2018, more workers went on strike than in any year since 1986.

The strike wave began with the teachers’ revolt in 2018 in West Virginia, Arizona and Oklahoma to end and reverse the vicious neo-liberal agenda of cuts and privatization. This struggle then spread early this year to Los Angeles and Oakland in California. The revolt is not over, with teachers in Chicago now on strike. In 2012, it was Chicago teachers under a left leadership who popularized the slogan “our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions” and inspired many of those now organising strikes.

Hotel workers, grocery workers and recently auto workers have joined the strike wave. The United Auto Workers strike at General Motors involving 50,000 workers was the longest auto strike in the US in 50 years. Workers aimed to reverse the concessions made by a particularly corrupt union leadership over many years. There was a remarkable degree of solidarity between temporary and permanent workers, whose pay and conditions for doing the same work are far different as a result of these concessions.

While the outcome was a partial defeat, it will probably not cut across the fragile momentum of this strike wave. In reality, this is only the beginning of the rebuilding of a fighting labour movement in the US. Although it could be temporarily cut across by a recession, it reflects much deeper processes.

In particular, there is already widespread disillusionment with capitalism among tens of millions of working people and youth, flowing from the catastrophic effects of the 2008–9 recession and the policies of the corporate leadership of the Democratic Party, which did nothing to help working people while bailing out the banks. The outcome has been a massive political polarization and the loss of legitimacy of capitalist institutions. It has undermined the two-party system of corporate politics, which had served the ruling class very well. The campaigns of Trump and Sanders in 2016 were both, in different ways, expressions of this rejection of the status quo.

Among young people, there is increasing radicalization and support for “socialism”, in reality for radical reforms of the type Bernie Sanders advocates. However, there is growing openness among many to more far-reaching proposals, including for bringing some sectors of the economy into public ownership. In the last five years, there have been youth revolts against racist police violence, mass school shootings and now the beginnings of the movement against climate change arriving in the US.

Since Trump has come to office, the process of polarization has deepened. Trump has sought with some success to stoke racial division and xenophobia and captured the Republican Party with an economic nationalist agenda. On the Democratic side, the election of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) to Congress in 2018 reflected the development of the new left in the US, currently largely within the parameters of the Democratic Party. The DSA has grown to 60,000 members, a result of Sanders’ failure to build a membership organization for his supporters in 2016 as we urged.

But while the class struggle has developed, until the recent climate strike, which brought hundreds of thousands out on the streets across the US, street protests have been largely absent in the past year. This reflects the lack of a left political force, despite the development of the DSA, that has sufficient weight to unify the different strands of resistance to Trump, the right and the corporate elite.

Impeachment

After opposing calls to impeach Trump for two years, Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives is taking the first steps in this direction. The Ukraine issue, in which Trump clearly leaned on Zelinsky to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, one of his political opponents ahead of the 2020 elections, is much clearer than “Russiagate”, the allegation that Trump colluded with Putin to win the 2016 election.

The House, which the Democrats dominate, may well vote to impeach Trump, leading to a trial in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority is required to remove the president from office. Given the Republican domination of this body, they will acquit Trump barring catastrophic revelations.

But this is not the key point. If the Democrats convince a majority of the US electorate that Trump should be removed, he will be seriously damaged ahead of the election. Currently, a majority in national polls are in favour of proceeding with the impeachment inquiry, but Trump’s base, essentially 40% of the electorate, remains very solid.

Even if Trump is looking more vulnerable, the impeachment process is not risk free for the Democrats either. If they focus on Trump’s call to Zelinsky, it can appear that the Democratic establishment is just protecting Joe Biden, the favoured choice of the establishment in the Democratic presidential primary.

Presidential Election

Even leaving aside the impeachment issue, Trump faces a difficult but not impossible road to re-election. From the point of view of perspectives, as opposed to what we advocate, it is definitely preferable if the Democrats win a decisive victory.

Another Trump victory would have contradictory effects. Although it would be seen as a major, although temporary, defeat by significant sections of the working class, it would throw the Democrats into an even deeper crisis.

On the other hand, a Democratic victory, especially if they controlled both houses of Congress and the White House, would significantly raise expectations and create far more favourable conditions for struggle by removing the constant excuse used by the Democrats that they can’t change anything because of “obstructionist Republicans”. The inevitable disappointment with the Democrats in the context of serious struggle would create a real opportunity for the creation of a new party of the left in the US This would have major repercussions internationally.

Any “honeymoon” after a Democratic victory would be short compared to that experienced by Obama. In addition, the base of the Democratic Party has moved sharply to the left compared to a decade ago.

The biggest danger to Trump in 2020 is if the expected recession starts and causes significant layoffs in those key states in the Midwest that he narrowly won last time, he might be finished. The Democrats’ biggest weakness is their candidates, especially Biden ,who politically is very similar to Hillary Clinton.

Biden is slowly sinking in the polls. If he begins to really flail, it can’t be excluded that the corporate establishment will try to push someone like Buttigieg instead, but it may soon be too late. Warren and Sanders would then be the two frontrunners. They are both classified by the media as progressives and on the surface advocate a number of similar ideas. Combined, they now consistently poll far higher than Biden, reflecting a further shift to the left in the base of the Democratic Party since 2016.

The Warren surge has taken away some of Sanders’ support, especially his softer, more middle class support. She is presented as more “electable” and less “extreme”. Although Sanders’ age, especially given his recent heart attack, is also a factor weighing against him, he has received a big boost from the endorsement of AOC and Ilhan Omar.

Warren, focusing on “accountable capitalism”, receives a mixed reaction from the ruling class: some Democratic Wall Street donors state that if Warren is nominated, they will sit out the general election or back Trump while the corporate “centrist” Third Way group, which supported the Clintons, say they could support her.

Sanders speaks directly to working class people, saying gains won’t be won without a mass movement and that, if elected, he will be the “organizer-in-chief”. He declared recently, “If there is going to be class warfare in this country, it’s time that the working class of this country won that war.” Nevertheless, he is not challenging the dominance of capital, but arguing for pro-working class reforms. Despite this, the ruling class is unequivocal: they would prefer a second term for Trump rather than a Sanders presidency, because his victory would massively raise the expectations of working people. Sanders’ base is solid, more working class and the US section orients to it as the potential base of a new party.

While Sanders winning the primary remains unlikely, it is not impossible. It would represent a massive earthquake in US and even global politics. Even if he is blocked again, the outcome will not repeat 2016. There will be more determination to continue the “political revolution”. The DSA could see another phase of growth but there could also be more serious moves towards an independent left party.

The development of such a party is implicit in the situation in the U.S. Such a development would have without doubt world-wide repercussions. For US Marxists it would raise important tactical issues and challenges of historical proportions.

US-China relations, China, Hong Kong

US-China relations have turned into a cross-domain struggle encompassing economic power, technology, global diplomacy and geopolitics, military competition and “ideology” or rather an attempt — by China and the West — to disguise a struggle for profits, markets, and global power, in ideological terms. Western capitalism has suddenly awoken to the existence of a “dangerous autocracy” in China responsible for brutally repressive policies such as the mass incarceration of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang and the onslaught against Hong Kong’s very limited democratic rights. A myth has been concocted by bourgeois politicians in the West to the effect that they were “misled” or “duped” into believing that as China was integrated into the global capitalist order it would evolve towards liberal “democratic” capitalism. Western strategy, however, was always about getting access to China’s vast labour force and growing market. The recent revision of official Western attitudes has nothing to do with unfulfilled promises and everything to do with China’s growing economic and political power at a time of global capitalist crisis and sharpening international rivalry.

The trade war is just one front in this conflict, albeit the one that arouses the most immediate fears of the global bourgeoisie. IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva warned the US-China trade war could cost the global economy $700 billion by 2020, the “equivalent of making Switzerland’s economy disappear”.

World capitalism is exiting the era of neoliberal globalisation, the dominant trend for almost four decades, and entering the era of “geo-economics” in which the clash of interests between the major imperialist powers is the dominant factor. National borders are being reasserted, while issues of “national security” impinge upon economic policy. Among the advanced capitalist countries this process has gone furthest in the US under Trump, which as the world’s dominant economy sets the bar for the rest of the world.

Trump’s “America First” mantra, and the US-China conflict, which is its most important battleground, are features of a wider process of de-globalisation. Since 2008, there has been a partial retreat from many of the processes that dominated capitalist development since the 1980s, including the rapid growth of trade, closer integration of regions and trade blocs, and the explosive growth of global financial markets and foreign direct investments (FDI).

If the volume of world trade in 2000 is taken as 100, it rose to 117 by 2007 but fell back to 105 in 2017. A similar picture emerges for global FDI flows, which according to the OECD decreased by 27% to $1.1 trillion in 2018 from the previous year. As a share of global GDP (1.3%) this was the lowest level since 1999.

Trump’s claim in 2018 that “trade wars are good, and easy to win” has come back to bite him, on a par with George Bush’s “mission accomplished” speech in 2003. The tariff war against China shows no signs of de-escalation, despite a largely bogus “interim deal” reached between the two sides in October. It has escalated through successive rounds with new or increased tariffs levied in July and September 2018, and again in May and July 2019, with Trump threatening a further batch of tariffs in December 2019. If implemented, 97% of all Chinese goods entering the US will be subject to an average tariff of 27%.

The most likely perspective is prolonged stalemate with Trump’s tariffs and China’s countermeasures becoming more or less permanent, while Trump may lower some tariffs as the election gets closer. J.P. Morgan estimates the average US household will lose $1,000 per year based on current tariff levels. Both the US and Chinese regimes want to de-escalate the conflict but are equally hemmed in by the high political price for “losing” this contest.

For China the economic cost is likely to be greater, with GDP falling 2% in the short term and 1% in the long term, according to the IMF’s October 2019 projection. Overall the US will suffer a 0.6% cut in GDP in both the short and longer terms. Ironically, China’s trade surplus rose 36% to $298 billion in the first nine months of 2019. While its exports have been affected, imports have fallen the most, making China for the first time this century, “a net drag on global demand” according to Bloomberg.

But for the Chinese regime, the immediate economic fallout is outweighed by bigger concerns, which have dampened its interest or belief in any quick deal with Trump. It has adopted stalling tactics and attends the negotiations largely for show. Xi Jinping has compared China’s current position to a “new Long March”, stressing the need for “sacrifices” by the Chinese people for a “long-term and complex” struggle.

The political risks for Xi’s regime are extremely high if it shows weakness in the confrontation with the US. It confronts the reality that even a successful deal or compromise with Trump won’t reverse the damage already inflicted on China’s economy. In the eyes of China’s rulers, “the value of a trade deal with the US has greatly diminished because Trump’s tariffs have already done enormous long-term damage to China’s manufacturing sector,” says author Minxin Pei. They have accelerated the trend of manufacturing companies moving production out of China, mostly to Southeast Asia and to a lesser extent, Mexico. According to the American Chamber of Commerce, 41% of US companies have shifted or were considering moving manufacturing from China. The reshoring trend is most prevalent among Japanese and Taiwanese companies and in the capital machinery and electronics sectors, which are crucial to China’s plans to modernise its industry.

If Trumps’ tariffs stay in place at current levels, the cumulative impact will reduce US GDP by $1 trillion over the decade to 2029, according to the US Chamber of Commerce. It’s unlikely the US president thinks so far ahead. His focus is on the 2020 elections, increasing the pressure for a face-saving “dea”’ and relaxation of some tariffs to boost economic growth. But the prospects for a deal, while not excluded, are bedevilled by the hardening of positions on both sides. The Chinese regime refuses to offer anything more than a rehash of earlier, rather superficial concessions, far short of the “structural” changes US trade negotiators previously insisted upon. And in US political circles, anti-China sentiment is hardening, outflanking the President and recasting him in a new and unexpected role as a “moderate” voice on China.

This sharp political shift within the US ruling class, both capitalist parties and the state towards a more aggressive anti-China stance, “predates and will outlast Mr Trump” as The Economist noted. The speed of this change took the Chinese regime by surprise. Beijing initially counted on its significant influence on Wall Street to weather the storm and exert pressure on Trump to dilute his trade policies. But while disagreeing on tactics, whether to use tariffs or not, most US corporate leaders now support a harder line against China

A “100-year conflict”

In “The Art of War”, the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu counselled, “there has never been a protracted war that has benefited a country”. Both the US and China stand to lose from a lengthy conflict, which the FT associate editor Martin Wolf predicts will be a “100-year conflict” (Financial Times, 4 June 2019). This conflict, he says drawing similar conclusions to our own, is not primarily about trade. “The aim is US domination,” he wrote. “The means is control over China, or separation from China.” Expressing the pessimism of the more far-sighted wing of the international bourgeoisie, Wolf warned: “Anybody who believes a rules-based multilateral order, our globalised economy, or even harmonious international relations, are likely to survive this conflict is deluded.”

The Economist’s special survey “A new kind of cold war” argued: “The original cold war with the Soviet Union ended with an American victory. In a new Sino-American cold war, both countries could lose.” Such a perspective — of a protracted struggle, inevitably experiencing ebbs and flows, in which the two main imperialist powers wear each other down — has profoundly revolutionary implications.

The Belt and Road Initiative

Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which aims to organise Asia, Africa and the Eurasian landmass into a Chinese-led economic sphere, has inevitably become a key battleground between Chinese and US imperialism. Launched in 2013, the BRI has been described as China’s “Marshall Plan of the 21st century”, spanning more than 70 countries and over 60% of the world’s population. Chinese loans are used to build roads, railways, seaports, airports, pipelines and mines under the auspices of the BRI, binding these countries to China’s economy through debt dependency. The project is so important to the Chinese dictatorship that in 2017 it took the unprecedented step of enshrining the BRI in China’s constitution, signalling it to be irreversible.

Through the BRI, “Imperialism with Chinese characteristics” using the export of capital — state capital in the case of most BRI funding — aims to establish a vast sphere of economic and political influence from the Pacific Islands to the Balkans at the expense of the US and other major powers. The EU is so alarmed at the Chinese state encroaching into its “backyard”, eastern and southern Europe and especially Italy, which became the first G7 member and founder member of the EU to join the BRI in March 2019, that it has declared China a “systemic rival”.

China’s loans to developing countries soared 10-fold between 2000 and 2017, to more than $5 trillion. This makes it the largest official creditor, much larger than the IMF and the World Bank. But this rapid expansion of Chinese credit has come at a growing cost to the state and its banking system which, after a historically unprecedented credit expansion to sustain domestic economic growth after 2007–8, is now under significant stress. This is confirmed by a wave of bailouts in China’s regional banking sector (one-sixth of the total banking sector by assets) and in Baoshang Bank (Inner Mongolia), the first bank nationalisation since 1998. There are fears the regional banking crisis can spread to the bigger banks threatening a systemic crisis.

A World Bank study from 2019 shows that almost half of BRI investments are in the energy sector and a quarter in transportation. China’s BRI investments are therefore mostly focused on the extraction and transportation of raw materials to power Chinese industry, reinforcing a colonial economic relationship, rather than spurring all round economic development.

BRI projects are also, crucially, an outlet for China’s chronic industrial overcapacity, the result of years of debt-driven expansion under China’s state capitalist economic model. This has resulted in huge imbalances between the forces of production and a domestic market constricted by the repressed spending power of the masses. As growth in China’s housing market slows and infrastructure in many regions reaches saturation levels, new markets are needed especially for China’s gigantic construction, power and railway construction companies.

Overcapacity in China’s steel industry is commonly estimated at 325 to 350 million tons, equivalent to the combined annual steel output of India, Japan and the US (the three largest steel producers after China). In cement, China accounts for 45% of current global overcapacity, which according to official Chinese data is enough to “fulfil the world’s needs for the next 20 years at least”.

The BRI has been overhyped by Xi and his ruling group for reasons of the internal regime power struggle and to boost shaken business confidence among the Chinese capitalists as the economy slows. The widely cited figure of $1 trillion assigned to the BRI is an “urban myth” according to the Financial Times. The real level of Chinese loans and investments in BRI countries is probably closer to a quarter or at most one-third of this sum.

Beijing’s propaganda machine has become noticeably less gung-ho about the BRI during the course of 2019. The regime has scaled back expectations as problem debts rise and disputes, over which government controls the projects (Pakistan), environmental destruction (Myanmar), corruption (Bangladesh) and debt concerns (Malaysia), have proliferated. A US study from 2018 found 23 of 68 BRI countries to be at risk of debt distress. In 2019, Beijing announced tougher oversight of loans and projects. “The BRI is not a charity,” declared a spokesman for a Chinese think-tank.

This shift from yesterday’s BRI triumphalism is of course impacted by China’s conflict with the US. Last year US imperialism opened a new front with a concerted political counteroffensive against the BRI aiming to fan anti-China sentiment in BRI countries and increase the pressure on Beijing. The BRI is now denounced as “debt trap diplomacy” and “predatory economics”, which coming from representatives of US imperialism smacks of the worst hypocrisy. This struggle, across all continents and even including the Arctic region, is set to intensify.

China at a turning point

Over two decades the Chinese state has perfected a “carrot and stick” approach to maintaining its rule and defusing potential mass challenges, especially for many workers’ strike struggles and “mass incidents” in the countryside. Some concessions are offered, in many cases mere promises that are never honoured, combined with heavy police repression, censorship of the media and internet, arrests of “ring leaders”, sackings, and other forms of “white terror”. Under Xi Jinping’s rule, since 2012 repression has increased exponentially. Xi stands for bigger “sticks” and smaller “carrots”. The severe crackdown on left students and youth activists, connected with the Jasic workers’ struggle of 2018, while not a mass movement, was an extremely important new milestone in the state’s repression under Xi.

For 30 years from 1979 until 2010, China’s average annual GDP growth was 10%. But this has fallen three percentage points to 7% during Xi’s six-year reign. China’s official figures are inflated, although no one knows for sure by how much. Real growth has been overstated by about two percentage points annually, according to the US-based Brookings Institution, which calculates China’s economy to be 11% smaller than it claims. Even taking the official GDP data at face value, China’s GDP growth is at its lowest level for 30 years. This does not tell the whole story as far as the working masses are concerned. Significant layers of workers and even of the middle classes are experiencing stagnating or falling real incomes as costs for housing especially, healthcare and schools, outstrip the growth in wages.

As growth slows, Xi’s regime has massively bolstered its internal “stability maintenance” apparatus, which consistently consumes more government spending than the military. While massively pumping up its nationalist propaganda against “anti-China” and “Western” plots, the regime’s primary focus is, as always, on internal as opposed to external threats. Last year’s national budget for police, courts and prisons, was $193 billion, which is more than Kazakhstan’s GDP. China will boast 600 million closed circuit security cameras (almost one for every two citizens) by 2020, plus the world’s most advanced facial recognition technology and “AI”– enhanced crowd control systems. Internet controls are the most sophisticated in the world, with up to 10 million government paid trolls and internet police plus a whole industry of companies that work with filtering and censoring the internet.

Our Chinese comrades have explained that Xi Jinping’s personal concentration of power, his dismantling of the dictatorship’s internal ‘checks and balances’, the collective power-sharing structures and division of powers introduced by Deng Xiaoping more than 30 years ago, was a sign of regime crisis rather than vitality. Xi’s ruthless centralisation drive, backed by large-scale purges, was the regime’s attempt to “carry out surgery on itself” with the aim of saving the CCP-state from itself, from gridlock and stagnation, in order to push through long delayed and painful economic “reforms” (many of which are identical with Washington’s list of neoliberal trade demands). Xi was universally described as the strongest leader since Mao, which we argued was an exaggeration. Today, more and more observers inside China and internationally have seen that Xi’s power is more limited than they thought. Multiple crises in US-China relations, the economy, and Hong Kong’s popular rebellion, have dramatically increased the pressure on Xi and rekindled the power struggle within the ruling elite.

Lessons from Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s unprecedented summer and autumn of discontent may one day be looked back upon as Xi’s ‘Waterloo moment’. The dictator’s own instincts, reportedly, were to prepare for sending in the PLA and People’s Armed Police to crush the protests. However, the economic consequences of a PLA takeover would be “too huge to pay” as even Beijing’s puppet Carrie Lam admitted. It would threaten the global financial status of Hong Kong capitalism, which is used by Chinese companies to access foreign capital and to issue bonds, for money laundering of illicit capital connected with elite CCP families and is increasingly important as China’s debt crisis worsens.

Reportedly Xi was pressured to abandon a military option, at least for now, by opposition from within the ruling elite and especially from former leaders and factional rivals Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin. If true, this is the first known case of Xi being checked on a major political issue since coming to power. The Hong Kong crisis “has put Xi Jinping on the defensive” noted Jean-Pierre Cabestan of Hong Kong Baptist University. His “strongman” doctrine is not known for retreats or concessions, but Xi has been forced to make several, while the regime’s traditional obsession with “saving face” and delaying concessions has aggravated the crisis. These events therefore mark a turning point — a serious and embarrassing defeat for the Chinese regime and for Xi personally.

In one of the most spectacular miscalculations of public sentiment by any government, Carrie Lam’s administration has been overwhelmed and paralyzed by the sheer scale and tenacity of the mass protests. She was effectively forced into hiding for over a month before making a sheepish reappearance in early August — ordered by the Chinese dictatorship to “get back out there”. Completely demoralised, Lam was secretly recorded admitting she wanted to resign for having caused “huge havoc”, but this was not allowed by the dictatorship — even for Hong Kong’s leader there is no freedom! Eventually, despite Beijing’s deep aversion to concessions, the Hong Kong government was allowed to withdraw the hated extradition law, by which time that issue had already largely disappeared from popular consciousness, with the mood of the mass movement having escalated to demanding free elections and achieving “five demands, not one less!”

In any other comparable situation, the Hong Kong government would have collapsed under the sheer weight of the protests — with more than a quarter of the population marching — but in the Chinese political system this would set off a chain reaction that could topple the Chinese dictatorship itself. Eventually, a plan to remove Lam has emerged, dragging this process out for as long as possible, disguising it as dismissal, the result of her bosses’ patience running out rather than a concession to mass pressure. This is in keeping with the CCP’s playbook, but this latest retreat is proof of a deep crisis within the Chinese regime, which has repeatedly misread the mood of Hong Kong society. “The protesters have demonstrated more resolve than the Chinese Communist Party has, so the initial strategy of not acquiescing to the protesters’ demands seems to have backfired,” said Australian CCP expert, Charlie Lyons Jones.

The mass movement in Hong Kong has not fully realised that there are two governments to defeat rather than one. The local government, the weaker of the two, has all but been destroyed by the mass struggle, but the more powerful government, in Beijing, will not be defeated by a movement in Hong Kong alone. The illusion that the Hong Kong government enjoys a degree of autonomy and freedom of action has not completely dissipated among the masses, although this process has advanced considerably since the protests began. But this then runs into a further contradiction: the widespread feeling that the Chinese dictatorship is too big and too strong to overthrow.

While the Hong Kong capitalist class is closely integrated into China’s authoritarian system through a web of business ties, political sinecures and personal connections going back almost four decades, and has repeatedly stated its vehement rejection of the liberal opposition’s demands for a “normal” bourgeois democracy in Hong Kong, significant splits have developed in recent years. A considerable section of the capitalists is now deeply concerned that the Chinese regime has created, aggravated, and is incapable of peacefully resolving the current Hong Kong crisis. With the Hong Kong capitalists increasingly no longer a reliable ally of Beijing, it has been promoting a bigger role for mainland Chinese capitalists in Hong Kong’s economy, mostly from the state capitalist sector, at the expense of the local capitalists.

The Hong Kong capitalists do not want “democracy” locally and understand that it would threaten China’s much cherished political “stability”, in which they have a major stake. Beijing’s inflexibility and resistance to making political concessions, such as sacrificing Lam and some police commanders, is alarming them. Hong Kong is therefore afflicted by deep pessimism and a loss of belief in the future, affecting all classes in society. In an incredible statement, even Lam acknowledged a “huge degree of fear and anxiety amongst people of Hong Kong vis-à-vis the mainland of China,” and confessed, “maybe they [the CCP] don’t care about Hong Kong — but they care about the country’s international profile.” All layers, including the bourgeoisie, now realise that “Beijing is the problem” while also believing this cannot be changed.

Hong Kong’s mass struggle has been an inspiration for movements in Indonesia, Catalonia, Chile and elsewhere, with many similar features, including in some cases the failure of government concessions to defuse the protests. So explosive is the unprecedented anger which, after decades of worsening injustice, is erupting like a volcano across the capitalist world, that to a degree it has actually complicated the task of organising the movement. In Hong Kong, there is the emergence on a mass scale of a new type of “anarchism” without anarchistic ideology, politics or traditions. One-third of the 2,500 so far arrested are teenagers. Amongst a section of the youth, sensing that maybe the struggle cannot be won, powerful nihilistic moods have developed, captured in the slogan: “If we burn, you [the establishment and CCP] burn with us!” Just like with the CCP’s disastrous misrule in Xinjiang, and because of the lack of a working class alternative, the Chinese dictatorship’s policies could drive a section of Hong Kong’s youth in a terrorist direction, thus fulfilling their own prophecy.

The special features in the Hong Kong situation that have given rise to a powerful rejection of all “leadership”, “organisation” and the worship of decentralisation as summed up in the struggle-philosophy “be water” are rooted in the many betrayals over a long period by the bourgeois liberals (pan-democrats) who have dominated the democracy movement. The right-wing “nativists”, who appeared to be a radical alternative to the pan-democrats during 2014’s Umbrella Movement, have also been largely marginalised.

Pouring forward almost like a force of nature, the movement has often lacked any control or direction, leading to new complications and reinforcing the mistaken idea that organisation is redundant and that a formless, decentralised movement networking on social media is a superior model. In fact, this completely misunderstands what has really happened. The Hong Kong movement was ignited precisely by a decisive “centralising” moment: the mass one million-strong demonstration, which was followed a week later by a two million-strong demonstration, both organised by the Civic Human Rights Front (a coordinating body of pro-democracy parties and NGOs). After this, for all the undoubted technical ingenuity and tactical creativity of the youth, which offers many valuable lessons for the international workers’ movement, it has been the “whip of counter-revolution” in the form of unprecedented police violence and state repression that has propelled the movement forward.

Similar features are emerging in other mass struggles, while perhaps not in the same concentrated mix as in Hong Kong. In Chile, Catalonia and Puerto Rico, the weapon of the general strike played a more prominent role given the much stronger traditions of trade unions and the left in contrast to Hong Kong. Nevertheless, even in other contemporary struggles we see similar features among the militant youth in favour of a “leaderless”, decentralised and formless movement.

In Hong Kong there is now a certain pro-US shift in consciousness among a layer of the masses, which was not present in the first months of the struggle. They are seeking salvation from US politicians who are mostly grandstanding for American votes rather than offering sincere support for the democratic struggle. This political confusion has been compounded by the complete lack of organised structures and democratic forums to debate and strategize. Ironically, the Chinese dictatorship is partly encouraging this pro-US shift as a “vindication” of its own “hostile foreign forces” propaganda and because it knows this to be a branch that will bear no fruit for the mass struggle.

Such movements are a crucial test for Marxists and the forces of the CWI. The complexity of the movement has dictated changes in our orientation, the slogans we emphasise and the methods we find appropriate at every given stage if our voice is to be heard and not simply disappear in the tidal wave. CWI comrades have launched initiatives against the victimisation of workers, for a bank workers’ trade union (in an industry with 200,000 employees and no union) and for school strikes. The CWI was the first to take up the call for the general strike and to “spread the revolution to China”. While strikes have been “called” there has still not been a real general strike. Union involvement in the struggle as a whole has been peripheral. By recognising the real situation in all its complexity, and looking for openings, changes that allow us to make a bigger impact, the CWI has strengthened the forces of revolutionary internationalism during this movement, which is not yet a situation in which spectacular advances are possible.

The strike calls in August and September mobilised quite big rallies, 200,000 in August, but were not organised by trade unions and weren’t actually strikes in the real sense of the word. Most participants saw these as “demonstrations during working hours”, the purpose of which was to “support the youth”, i.e. the regular street battles against the riot police. The union leaders threw away these opportunities to recruit and build the unions and to raise consciousness about the workers’ movement, not to mention to promote a programme and strategy to win the struggle. On the question of China, while this idea is acknowledged more widely than before, as yet no concerted, conscious approach to win over the mainland Chinese masses has materialised.

The Hong Kong government and the authoritarian political system it rests upon are unlikely to recover, even partially, from this struggle. Beijing’s plan, presumably, to install a new puppet head of government through the existing small-circle “election” committee, in which just 0.03% of the electorate vote (1200 individuals), will stoke even more opposition. The frail “legitimacy” this system commanded in the past is broken beyond repair. At the same time, as long as the Chinese dictatorship remains in power, no meaningful democratic concessions are likely, meaning the impasse will continue. The reckless “scorched earth policy” of the Chinese regime, using police-engineered destruction in Hong Kong, with widespread infiltration by police and CCP agents of protests and online forums to incite riot-like behaviour as an excuse for a bigger crackdown and state of emergency, will leave an explosive legacy. Whatever the outcome from the current struggle will be: there can be no going back. While no mass movement can continue indefinitely, a situation of tense, even explosive stalemate can continue for a longer time.

Conditions in Hong Kong, with record levels of inequality, the world’s longest working hours, no public pension system, a worsening economy, a generation excluded from the housing market, and burning hatred of an arrogant authoritarian ruling elite — these conditions also exist in broad outline in almost every city in China. Understanding the Hong Kong events within the perspective of the Chinese and world revolutions is the only way to prepare our forces for what’s ahead.

Europe

Europe is entering a new period of instability — economic, social and political [see more extensive analysis on Europe in the two congress resolutions, one on the EU and another on Eastern Europe]. Among the “developed” sections of the world economy, the EU suffered perhaps the most in the course of the decade following the 2008–2009 crisis. The debt crisis brought the Eurozone to the verge of partial collapse, class struggle rose to new heights in some countries, particularly Greece, new mass left parties such as SYRIZA and Podemos came into being and right-wing populism and the far right increased their support and even became dominant in a number of countries. In addition, the EU had the slowest recovery after the 2008–2009 economic collapse compared to US and China. Now it is faced with Brexit; the nightmare of the Italian public debt, threatening to get out of control at 134% of GDP; and with the coming new recession. The EU economy is in a process of pronounced slowdown, with Germany at the epicentre. The manufacturing sector is already in the negative zone and the service sector is not far behind.

There are serious divisions, particularly within the European Central Bank (ECB) over how to handle the coming downturn. The outgoing ECB President, Mario Draghi, supported by a majority of the ECB’s Governing Council, has agreed to a new massive injection of liquidity into the European economies by reducing interest rates down to minus 0.5% and relaunching quantitative easing by buying bonds worth €20 billion from member states each month, starting November 2019. The previous bond-buying programme, worth €2.6 trillion ended just 9 months earlier. This decision met opposition within the ECB, in a rare instance when the Council rejected the advice of the bank’s Monetary Policy Committee, consisting of technocrats from the ECB and the 19 Eurozone national central banks. At the same time bankers across the Eurozone, particularly in Germany, strongly protest at the negative interest rates, which cut across their profits. And, of course, bourgeois economists are very worried about whether further cuts in negative interest rates will be effective.

Capitalist economists in both the EU and the US argue that the Eurozone needs to move towards a common budget with a unified fiscal policy and a unified banking system able to recapitalize any bank facing collapse, backed by an all-Eurozone guarantee of a minimum level of deposits if a banking crisis develops. But this is abstract talk, which fails to take into account the conflicting interests of the main protagonists in the EU and the Eurozone and implies that the stronger economies, essentially German capitalism, should pay for the “weaknesses” of the periphery. This is not on the agenda.

Brexit is driven by the conflict between the ruling classes of Europe, in which the British lost the competition with the capitalists of continental Europe, with the German ruling class being the clear winner. This pushed a section of the political representatives of British capitalism in the direction of Brexit. But they have ended up in a nightmare situation. Boris Johnson’s election as Prime Minister reflects the collapse of the position, power and prestige of British imperialism. Despite their “hard-line” stand, to discourage other member states from leaving, the EU leaders are actually bewildered by what to do. If they pushed Britain into a no-deal Brexit, this would have repercussions for both Britain and the EU economies at a time when a new recession is looming. However, if Brexit is completed relatively smoothly by agreement with both sides (which is the more probable development), then the ruling class propaganda that the British economy will suffer a catastrophe will be revealed as gross exaggerations to say the least. This could encourage other member states to leave, starting perhaps with Italy, where Lega, the 5-star movement and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia are all against the EU and the Euro to one degree or another. Another side effect of the developments in Britain is the revelation of the “weakness” of the left of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. His inability to make a concrete proposal for a struggle against the capitalist EU and for a working class, socialist approach to the exit from the EU in the concrete conditions of the referendum in 2016 is what has actually allowed Johnson to have the initiative and the Tories to lead the polls. Despite the fact that Johnson does not enjoy the confidence of the biggest section of the British ruling class and the Tory party faces the deepest crisis in its history, he could well score a major victory in the coming elections in December. Only a combative, anti-austerity, class approach on Corbyn’s side could cut across this development.

Johnson is the latest in a series of European right-wing populist leaders to take power in the last years. Right-wing populists and far — right parties in a whole series of countries, like Italy, Hungary, Poland, Austria have won elections. They have very significant support in, among others, the Nordic countries, France and Germany.

These parties made additional headway (depending on the country) by taking advantage of the particularly acute “crisis” regarding refugee flows that erupted in 2015–2016, which in combination with the economic crisis that shook the EU to its roots, allowed them to turn the anger of sections of the population against the refugees, instead of against the system. The rise of far-right parties precedes the so-called “refugee crisis” of 2015–2016. Far-right parties are not “responding” to large-scale immigration, cultural and demographic changes. Instead, they take up the wide-spread resentment of the political and economic elites and the European Union, especially in regions that had experienced a notable social and economic decline the past decades, and channel the anger of big sections of the population against refugees, instead of against the system. The failure of the left and the alienation of a growing number of people from the parties of the political establishment provided fertile ground for these parties to grow.

Having said this, the most decisive factor behind the rise of right-populist and racist forces has been the complete incapability of the parties of the Left, both traditional and new. They have failed to provide answers to the economic crisis, failed to provide leadership to the struggles of the labouring masses and youth and of course, to take the fight against Fortress Europe and the EU’s racist migration policy which has seen at least 18,000 refugees drown in the Mediterranean since 2014, many, many more caught up in “hell-on-Earth”-camps like Moria or the Libyan slave camps, or in war zones like Afghanistan, or in the nightmare of trying to survive in Europe without papers.

In some countries, the populist/far right seems to be losing momentum. In October 2019, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party suffered a heavy defeat in Hungary’s local elections. The Nazi Golden Dawn in Greece failed to cross the 3% threshold to enter parliament in the June 2019 election. However, there should be no complacency. In most countries they are still maintaining support. The economic crisis will be back on the agenda and this can be combined with another major flow of refugees on the lines of 2015–2016 or more. In this context, to justify more severe cuts and worsening conditions, the attacks on refugees can become more intense and brutal from the far right, as well as by the traditional establishment parties who have adopted their racist agenda.

The entry of refugees into Europe was blocked after 2016 by the EU’s shameful agreement to provide EU funds to Turkey to keep the refugees within its borders acting as the EU’s border patrol. Those refugees, mainly from Syria, who do escape are piled up to live in abysmal conditions in refugee camps on Greek islands, mainland Greece and elsewhere as the main EU powers pay Turkey, Greece and many African states to keep the “problem” away from their doorstep.

But relations between the EU and the regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan are on a knife edge, after Turkey’s invasion of Syria and the conflict over hydrocarbons in the East Mediterranean. Erdogan has openly threatened to release the 3.5 million refugees, kept at present within Turkey, into Europe. Given the approach of the European ruling classes to the refugees and the character and limitations of the Left, this could give a further push to right-populist and racist forces in Europe.

The EU and the Eurozone could find themselves again in a serious crisis sooner rather than later. On a capitalist basis there is no solution to any of the aforementioned contradictions. The partial break-up of the Euro can come back on the agenda. Class struggle, in the sense of industrial struggles, hasn’t stopped in Europe, even though it has not been as intense as in the US and at a lower level than at its peak in 2010–2013. It will inevitably intensify again in the future and consciousness will develop further. Although industrial struggles are on a comparably low level in general, other forms of class struggle have been particularly intense in Europe: the youth climate movement was born in Europe and, also, some of the most decisive feminist struggles took place in European countries (Ireland, Spain, Poland, etc).

Latin America in revolt

In the last period, Latin America has again become one of the main focuses of the crisis, instability and mass struggles. The mark of the current situation is the popular rejection of neoliberalism and of the right-wing political forces that rose to power in the vacuum created by the failure of the former so-called “progressive” centre-left governments in the previous period.

The entire region is marked by economic, political and social crisis. The present economic stagnation can soon develop into a much more acute crisis, as indicated by the partial default of Argentina in August 2019.

This crisis scenario is mainly reflected in the intensification of class struggle in most Latin American countries. At the forefront of this process are the historic popular uprisings in Ecuador and Chile, where elements of a revolutionary situation are present. In addition, powerful mass mobilizations took place in most countries — notably so in Haiti, which is in a process of permanent mobilization since February 2018, and Honduras, ten years after the coup d’état organised by the military and supported by US imperialism. In these struggles, the working class has left its mark, particularly so in the general strikes that took place in Argentina (May 2018), Brazil (June) and Colombia (scheduled for November), as well as Ecuador and Chile.

On July 24, 2019, the Puerto Rican working class and poor scored a major victory in bringing down Governor Ricardo “Ricky” Rosello after secret messages from the Governor and his administration ridiculed the dead and survivors of Hurricane Maria, homophobic tweets towards the LGBTQIA community and total indifference to the suffering of the masses under neo-liberal austerity was made public. The two-week mass uprising in Puerto Rico, a colony of the United States since 1898, coincided with the explosive events in Hong Kong. Since 24 July, the island continues to face uncertainty with elections looming, inaction by the Trump administration around aid and resources, and a series of devastating earthquakes and tremors that have rocked the masses to their core.

The popular, indigenous and workers’ rebellion in Ecuador in October 2019 was a forceful response to the profound turn to the right adopted by Lenín Moreno’s government following the dictates of the IMF. Moreno, who was elected in 2017 having adopted a “progressive” type of rhetoric, in the face of the economic crisis came to an agreement with the IMF and adopted harsh neoliberal measures and repression. One of these measures, the end of the fuel subsidy, was the trigger of the social explosion that finally forced the government to retreat in its policies and to flee from the capital, Quito, occupied by thousands of indigenous people in the midst of a general strike.

The events in Chile, a country presented as a model of Latin American neoliberalism, are even more striking. What we saw in Chile was a social explosion, which put out on the streets decades of accumulated anger. The detonator of this explosion was the increase in transport fares and the revolt against the harsh repression against the protests, initially led by the youth. The multitudinous marches and the general strike involving port workers, miners, education, health and other sectors forced the ultra-right wing government of Sebastián Piñera to take back all the measures, publicly ask for forgiveness and announce new social policies that, although limited, would be unimaginable for this type of government.

In both cases, what we have is a strong demonstration of the strength of the popular masses, indigenous people, youth and workers. We have seen the revolutionary potential existing in the situation and how the counterattack of the right (the whip of counter-revolution) can end up stimulating a revolutionary response by the masses.

Despite determination and self-sacrifice, the mass movements in Latin America lack a revolutionary and socialist strategy, programme and political organization. This opens the space for illusions in the electoral plane and in centre-left alternatives that can be back on the agenda again.

In Argentina we have the most obvious example of how the powerful mass struggle to defeat Mauricio Macri’s counter-reforms, as in the case of the strong women’s movement, ended up being temporarily channelled to the electoral plane. Macri’s defeat in the first round of elections in October and Cristina Kirchner’s return to power, this time as vice-president of the moderate Peronist Alberto Fernández, has the symbolic effect for the entire region of showing the failure of right-wing neo-liberal alternatives. This of course does not represent any prospect of ending the crisis from the point of view of the workers. The new Argentinean government of Alberto and Cristina will have to assume the task of fulfilling the agreement made with the IMF. Applying this policy will mean a cold shower for the Argentinean masses. The social conditions that led to the social explosion of “Argentinazo” in December 2001 exist once again in Argentina.

In Colombia, President Iván Duque and the ultra-right forces organized around former President Álvaro Uribe suffered a major defeat in the October 2019 regional elections, losing in the country’s two main cities, Bogotá and Medellín, and winning just two of the country’s 32 regional governments.

In Brazil, the struggle against Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right government reached its peak in the first half of 2019, with millions on the streets in May defending public education and a general strike against the pensions counter-reform in June. The government had the worst approval rating for the first year of a presidential mandate since the end of the dictatorship and there are strong divisions between the different sectors of the right inside and outside the government. Even so, Bolsonaro continues the offensive against social and democratic rights and maintains his “anti-communist” rhetoric.

The approval of the pension counter-reform in Congress represented a defeat for the workers and had an impact on the resistance movements. The majority of the union leaderships and social movements, under the direct influence of the PT and the “Lulista” camp, continue to look for an electoral way out. But this path has already proved impossible to defeat the right and extreme right in the country. That was the PT’s biggest “mistake” in 2018: to stop fighting so as not to hinder electoral plans.

New struggles are inevitable in Brazil and it is no coincidence that Bolsonaro is already taking preventive measures in the face of the possibility of a “Chilean scenario” in the country, a repetition of the social explosion of the “June 2013 days”, only in a much more polarized and radicalized context.

The crisis of right-wing governments that emerged as an alternative to the so-called “progressive” previous governments also limits the capacity for growth of the right-wing opposition to the self-proclaimed “Bolivarian” governments in Venezuela and Bolivia. The failure of the attempted coup in Venezuela (organized around the president of the National Assembly, Juan Guaidó,) mainly reflects a popular repudiation of the Venezuelan reactionary right than support for President Nicolás Maduro. The revolutionary processes mentioned above are further developed in the congress resolution on Latin America.

North Africa — unprecedented convulsions

“This part of the continent is this time entirely threatened”. That is how the French-language magazine “Jeune Afrique” described the situation in North Africa. Alarm is rising among western imperialist powers about their hold over the region, which is going through unprecedented political and social convulsions. The year 2019 has seen the latest episode of Libya’s protracted civil war, fed by the intensified competition between local and global powers for the region’s control. The regional consequences of this raging conflict, including the possible re-emergence of ISIS, cannot be underestimated. However, North Africa has also witnessed a significant upsurge of struggles.

Passing through different stages and rhythms, and each adopting their own features, Algeria, Tunisia and Sudan are all the scenes of unfinished revolutionary processes. While the toiling masses have not as yet succeeded in imposing their will, they have brought serious blows to the dictatorial edifices that had maintained them subjugated for decades, and the ruling classes are struggling to reassert political control. This is compounded by the latter’s lack of economic manoeuvre to build any sustained social base, in the face of a contracting world market, accrued dependence to foreign creditors, and austerity programmes dictated by the IMF — as well as by the widening number of countries affected by mass street movements in the neighbouring Middle East, stimulating the dynamic of this new revolutionary wave.

In Tunisia, the presidential and legislative elections in the autumn dramatically exposed the erosion of social support for the capitalist “democratic transition” and all the parties associated with it — a transition which has left to rot all the problems posed by the masses in the 2011 revolution. Significantly, one of the most popular electoral proposals of the newly elected President Kais Saied was to devolve power, by first electing local councils who would then choose regional representatives and for these to elect leaders to a national parliament, with all elected officials to be recallable if they abuse their power. This is a measure of the large discredit affecting the political institutions of the post-Ben Ali era.

The Tunisian left has not escaped this fate, being almost totally rooted out of the electoral scene for having embedded itself to these institutions rather than having fought for revolutionary policies. Notwithstanding this factor, the mood reflected in the results of the elections will inevitably translate into further social explosions — the new austerity budget for 2020 being a likely focus for the next one.

In Algeria, the military junta’s attempt to spearhead the political “transition” is massively rejected on the understanding that this means the reproduction of the old regime. The mass movement has been able to force the cancellation of two presidential elections and is preparing for a massive boycott of those planned for 12 December 2019.

Besides the weekly mass demonstrations against General Gaïd Salah’s rule, which have gone through an upward trend since the end of the summer, a number of workers’ disputes have taken place over the last months involving pay and conditions, like in the oil and textile sectors. The idea of the general strike was popularised on a large scale as a by-product of the uprising against Bouteflika’s reign. It is now coming back on the agenda, with a successful regional general strike in Bejaia in September, and a nationwide general strike organised by the autonomous trade unions on 28 October.

Boosted by the mass movement, the Confederation of Autonomous Trade Unions (CSA) is playing an important role in the dynamic of the movement. Yet it is solely organising workers in the civil service, and has mostly been concerned with democratic demands, calling for the departure of the military regime and the installation of a “second republic”. These demands are important — as indicated by the rising repression from the Algerian state, the arbitrary arrest of dozens of demonstrators and political activists, etc. But they should be connected to the battle to transform the economic plight of the millions of workers and poor, with a view to mobilise the most combative rank-and-file sections of the official UGTA, the private sector workers, the unemployed and all the oppressed layers.

The mass eruption of anger against the new law on hydrocarbons, tailor-made for the profits of big energy multinationals — the main lines of which had been discussed with these companies before Bouteflika’s ouster — shows the continuity between the old and the new regime’s economic policies, and the intricate connection between the fight for democratic rights and the fight for the working class’s control over the country’s wealth.

In Sudan, the power-sharing deal between the Military Council and the civilian opposition has been lauded by the international media. Yet this deal provides a political fig-leaf for the power of the counter-revolutionary generals, security apparatus and militiamen to continue. The murderous Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are in de facto control of Khartoum and other main cities. Their leader, Hemeti, is now the most powerful man in the country, controlling the goldmine business and many other companies. Meanwhile, the unresolved conflicts at the periphery of Sudan could reignite if the rights of minorities and their oppression by the central authorities are not addressed, issues which cannot be seriously tackled as long as the rule of the corrupt junta is allowed to continue.

The new so-called “technocratic” government of Abdalla Hamdok which has emerged out of the deal is facing increased mistrust in the streets. Many Sudanese are expressing discontent at the lack of real change, against the background of a devastating economic crisis and mounting food insecurity in several parts of the country. In October, hundreds of thousands poured into the streets to demand real justice for the martyrs, an end to the reign of the militias and the dissolution of al-Bashir’s ex-ruling party, the activities of which have been allowed to continue by the new administration.

The protests were called by the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), which was among the signatories of the power-sharing deal leading to the formation of the current government. As opposition crystallises against the new political rulers, the SPA will not be able to continue riding two horses at once. Unless it goes back to the militant stance which allowed it to build its original appeal, it will face a crisis. As it stands, the rank-and-file supporters of the SPA, the grassroots of the “resistance committees”, and the re-emerging independent trade union activists, can provide the basis for the forging of a revolutionary party, an indispensable asset for the success of the ongoing Sudanese revolution.

Global antagonisms — the Middle East

During the 1990s “Pax-Americana” came to an end and Fukuyama’s short-lived theory of the “end of history” found itself in the “dustbin of history”. A multi-polar world of competing world powers, mainly the US, EU, China and Russia, has meant new heightened antagonisms on a global level.

The situation in the Middle East most clearly reflects this. Wars dictated by US interests against Afghanistan and Iraq and the interventions in Syria and Libya, to mention only the main episodes of the endless wars in this region, have not strengthened the grip of Western, essentially US imperialism, but actually weakened it. This has allowed Russia to enter as a key “player”. The Israel-Palestine conflict has, of course, its own separate dynamic.

One of the main beneficiaries of the impasse into which US and European imperialism has found itself is exactly the country that was the intended target of the West’s policies, Iran. The Iranian regime is in an irreconcilable conflict with the US and Israel. Too much water has flowed under the bridges since the Iran-Iraq war of 1980–88, which left up to a million dead and which was aimed at destroying Khomeini’s “Islamic revolution”. Now Iran has a major, if not dominant influence, in a whole number of nearby countries, such as Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and to a lesser extent also in relation to the Palestinian Gaza. Iran’s growing power and influence pushed the Trump administration onto a miscalculated “offensive”, withdrawing in May 2018 from the “Iran nuclear deal framework” which was agreed in 2015 (between Iran and the US, UK, Russia, France, China, Germany and the EU) as well as imposing sanctions. With the US’s European allies believing this to be a serious mistake, they have tried to either find a compromise between the sides or keep the deal working without the US. On both fronts they have failed.

Trump’s actions have had unintended consequences. The 14 September air attack on Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil refineries which disabled more than 5% of global oil production was completely unexpected, catching both the US and Saudi regime by surprise. The highly sophisticated US-supplied Saudi defence systems proved unable to stop or even spot the attack in time. The “Houthi movement” in Yemen, officially called Ansar Allah (Supporters of God) supported by Iran and at war with Saudi Arabia, took responsibility for the attack.

The US and Saudi Arabia not only blamed Iran, which provides military and other support to the Houthis, but claimed that they had evidence that the attack was launched from Iranian land. However they did not retaliate and this is notable given the US’s immediate military response in similar cases! This is a clear indication of weakness on the side of both the US and Saudi Arabia.

Actually, this incapacity to act raised immediate concerns, not only in Saudi Arabia but also in Israel: if the US cannot protect them in similar circumstances, then a military and defence policy more independent of the US would be needed. In part, this explains the Saudi attempt to come to an understanding with Iran, in order to avoid war between the two countries, which, as Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, warned at the end of September, would mean “oil prices jumping to unimaginably high numbers that we haven’t seen in our lifetimes” leading to “a total collapse of the global economy”.

The shifting balance of forces and the changing geo-strategic alliances are best reflected in changes in the stand taken by the Turkish ruling class. Until the turn of the century, the Turkish ruling class was a “watchdog” of US imperialism in the area, at a late stage also in negotiations to enter the EU, and a close ally of Israel. While it is still formally a NATO member, it is very revealing that Erdoğan threatened recently to “unleash” refugees into Europe, insisted on the purchasing of the Russian missile defence system (S-400) and threatened to close down the US military base in İncirlik, which hosts US nuclear weapons. Over the last two decades, under the AKP rule with its “neo-Ottoman” aspirations, the Turkish regime has clearly shifted its orientation in world and regional relations. Its attempt to assert itself as a more independent regional player, and particularly its intervention in the Syrian civil war, brought it into sharp tensions, particularly with US, Israel and western imperialism, but also with Russia. This line has been opposed by a section of the Turkish ruling class, who supported the military coup attempt and the Kemalist opposition, which fears an eventual breakdown of alliances with western imperialism. But the regional turmoil has only pushed Turkish capitalism with greater force on this trajectory in an attempt to exploit and strengthen its regional position — as is evident in the recent heightened tensions on the issue of gas drilling in the Mediterranean and with Turke’s intervention in Libya (explained in later paragraphs).

The issue of the Kurds has been central to Turkey’s changing positions. The role played by the Kurdish militias in Iraq against Saddam Hussein and in Syria against ISIS has been very important for Western imperialism, which began to look on the Kurds as an important ally. Historically, the Kurdish populations and militias in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, have been left-oriented and, in the past, pro-Soviet. After the collapse of the USSR, the Kurdish leadership, as a result of their Stalinist analysis and “stages theories”, were in complete confusion and shifted rightward. Although anti-US and anti-imperialist feelings remained extremely strong amongst the Kurdish populations, this changed during the war in Iraq, as the Kurds felt that the autonomy they gained, with the support of their “new friends” from the US could gradually lead to their self-determination. This idea was greatly enhanced in Syria with the heroic Kurdish resistance against ISIS in Kobane and the creation of the autonomous region of Rojava. The reaction of Turkey to these developments was inevitable.

The discovery of significant quantities of hydrocarbons in the Eastern Mediterranean and the creation of an alliance between Cyprus, Egypt and Israel to extract natural gas and build pipe-lines that could transport it to Greece and from there to the rest of Europe is another point of clash. The Turkish ruling class, left out of the deal, is demanding a share of the profits. In a particularly belligerent move, Turkey has agreed with the Libyan government, which Turkey supports against the offensive of Khalifa Haftar, to divide up the Eastern Mediterranean “Exclusive Economic Zones” between the two states, essentially neglecting Cyprus and Greek islands like Crete.

In addition, Turkey has been buying its own drilling equipment and, in October 2019, Turkish ships began drilling in an area which had been contracted to the French Total and the Italian ENI, openly challenging the EU. Turkey is a powerful regional imperialist power, in conflict with its neighbours. It directly challenges Greek imperialism, which although weakened in the past decade is still powerful in the region not only around the Aegean and the Mediterranean, but also in the Balkans. Here Turkey is trying to increase its influence, leaning on the Muslim populations in Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Bosnia and so on. Tension is high in East Mediterranean with the US and France moving in battleships to defend their interests against Turkish threats.

Turkey’s “new” foreign policy is partly based on balancing between the different imperialist interests. It has purchased the S-400 missile system from Russia and even considered replacing US F-35 aircraft with Russian fighters. It has “weaponised” the Syrian refugees, using them to hold the EU hostage. Both the EU and the US have partially retreated under Turkey’s pressure. The EU agreed to supply more funds to check the refugee flows. And the US agreed to evacuate North East Syria (and Rojava) to allow Turkey to create a “buffer zone” against the Kurdish populations — in reality to crush the relatively autonomous Kurdish Rojava.

This last move by Trump represents one of the worst own-goals in US diplomacy. The more far-sighted ruling class media, like the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, described it as “a blunder”, “a mess”, “a fiasco”, “catastrophic” etc. Not because they really bother about the democratic rights of the Kurdish populations, but because Trump’s decision strengthens the Syrian regime and Putin’s Russia.

Trump gave Erdogan the green light to enter Syria, smash the Kurdish militia and destroy the autonomy of the area, without, it seems, fully understanding the implications. Erdogan’s regime decided to go one step further, declaring that it intended to move up to 2 million Syrian refugees, from the 3.6 million living in Turkey, with the aim of changing the demographic character of the area. Essentially, this would mean the military occupation of a huge area of between 10,000 and 15,000 square kilometres for an indefinite period. A few days after the beginning of the invasion, the Assad regime, supported by Putin, decided to “oppose” the Turkish invasion. Putin struck a deal with Erdogan to evacuate the area from the Kurdish militia and to check this with joint Turkish-Russian military patrols. Unable to face the Turkish military machine on their own, feeling betrayed and abandoned by the US, and without a class approach to the Kurdish problem, the Kurdish leadership agreed to Putin’s plan and also agreed to incorporate their militias into the Syrian army (although there have been some contradictory reports on this). Despite the agreement between Putin and Erdogan, there were armed confrontations between the Turkish and Turkish-backed militias on the one hand and the Syrian army on the other, as the latter moved into the Kurdish areas after the deal — but they have been of a small scale.

When the balance sheet of this conflict is drawn up, it will include a further strengthening of the Russian presence in the region, a further consolidation of the Syrian regime (which will re-establish control over northern Syria, after 9 years of civil war) but for the Kurds, it will mean the end of the autonomy they had achieved in Rojava with rivers of blood — 11,000 dead fighters in the war against ISIS.

The conflict between the Turkish ruling class and the aspirations of the Kurdish people for self-determination is irreconcilable on a capitalist basis. The Turkish ruling class will not allow a Kurdish state to be created on its doorstep, as similarly the Israeli ruling class won’t allow a Palestinian state in its backyard. Turkey will not accept a situation in which the hydrocarbons discovered in Eastern Mediterranean will be shared between its opponents in the region, without itself having a major share in the spoils. The clash of interests between Iran on the one hand, and the US and Israel on the other, is also irreconcilable on a capitalist basis — unless hypothetically a pro-western imperialist political “regime change” takes place, which, given the broad anti-imperialist sentiments among the Iranian masses is not at this stage a likely development, and would be highly unstable. It is clear that the “anti-imperialist” rhetoric of the Iranian regime is a major factor which allows it to still maintain a significant base and mobilize supporters in significant numbers against the threat of revolution.

While Russian imperialism has clearly come out of Syria with the upper hand on a regional basis, the current balance of forces does not allow for any clear. All the contesting protagonists will remain, armed to their teeth and waiting for an opportunity to strike a blow at some more favourable time in the future. All the major forces in the region will be aiming to acquire nuclear weapons in the medium term.

Although capitalism cannot resolve these tensions, this does not exclude that there can be agreements and treaties signed at different stages. But there is no permanent solution possible unless the capitalist system is overthrown and a voluntary socialist federation established in the region — with high and equal living standards, guaranteed equal rights for existence and self-determination for all national minorities across the region, and equal worship rights and freedom from any religious coercion.

The Kurdish people will not be able to exercise their right of self-determination on the basis of capitalism, only on the basis of the class unity of the Kurdish workers, peasants and youth with the labouring classes in the countries where they live, on a socialist programme, strategy and perspectives. Therefore the presence of our International in Israel, Turkey, Cyprus north and south, Lebanon, Tunisia, Sudan and so on is of extreme importance for the future.

Youth and women

One of the most important characteristics of the past few years has been the emergence on a global scale of mass movements of women struggling for their rights and of youth fighting against climate change.

Marxists recognize that the struggle against all forms of oppression is critical to the overall struggle to end capitalism and class society itself. But the struggle of women and LGBTQ people, like the struggle of oppressed racial and ethnic minorities, has its own dynamic which must be understood. Oppressed groups cannot “wait” until the wider working class is ready to fight; on the contrary, the struggle of oppressed groups, such as the movements of women in country after country in recent years, can act as a spur to the wider class struggle.

Revolutionary socialists develop a Marxist analysis and programme on these questions as a crucial guide to intervene in and bolster such movements. In doing so, we seek to build the widest active support for class, socialist, struggle based politics within these movements with a view to linking them to the organised working class and the struggle for the socialist transformation of society, as this is the only way that their demands can be fully met. This needs to be done sensitively and flexibly, taking into consideration the character of the mass organizations, whether trade unions or political, and the role they play in relation to the struggles of these layers and in general. Naturally, pressure must be put on the traditional organisations to take seriously the issues of women’s rights and the environment, and they should be severely criticised when they do too little.

On 20 and 27 September, between 6 and 7 million youth, including significant numbers of workers, took to the streets against climate change. The emergence of this youth movement is an extremely important development on a global scale, a key element in the present situation. It is a reflection of a rising consciousness in an anti-capitalist direction, by millions. It is of exceptional importance that this movement has started from and is based upon the mobilization of the school students. This is the new generation that will enter the workplaces and the industrial struggles of the future.

This movement was preceded by the mobilization of millions of women over the issues of women’s equality and rights, which acquired a new dynamic with Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. Importantly, the idea of women’s struggle has also begun to be linked to women’s strikes. These issues are developed further in the congress resolution on women and socialist feminism.

These “new movements” often take place outside the official trade unions. Similarly they mainly take place “outside” the parties of the Left, which may take part in these but do not initiate them and play no significant role in them.

For example in Germany, around 1.4 million took part in the “save the climate” demonstrations on 20 September in more than 400 cities — this was the biggest mass mobilization relative to the population compared to any other country. However, there was no influx into Die Linke and Die Linke was not able to put its stamp on the movement. In the UK, where the demonstrations against climate change were massive, estimated at around 350 thousand, Corbyn’s support is at a low level, having lost the dynamic of previous years. In Britain, of course, Brexit is a complicating factor, but this does not change the essence. This is a general phenomenon on an international level although with variations from country to country.

Our international organization has intervened excellently in both of these movements. The work of the Irish section around ROSA is an example to follow, popularising socialist-feminism and playing a role in the historic victory of the referendum of May 2018, with a tremendous 2/3 majority! In particular, the work of the Irish section played a decisive role in the winning of free abortion up to 12 weeks on request. Other sections, like the Belgian section, have followed the example of the Irish section, setting up ROSA and putting particular emphasis on campaigns against women’s oppression. On the climate issue, our International was very fast to take an initiative and to intervene on the demos of 20 and 27 September in over 25 countries globally. This will be repeated at the next international youth mobilisation, on 29 November. The discussion on what kind of youth initiatives we may need to take in order to intervene more effectively in this movement has started and will continue in the ranks of the International.

Environment

The international climate movement entered a new unprecedented mass stage in 2019, led by the youth in revolt. They have been radicalized in the face of a completely impotent and blind capitalist system, while the climate crisis is already developing in a more intense and brutal manner, affecting human lives — and this is just the beginning. The mass echo received by the slogan “system change” is very important, in the context of a general trend of evident mass left radicalization among youth in many countries in this era.

The understanding that individual actions are insufficient has been linked mostly in a positive manner to the idea of mass protest and the idea of “climate strikes”. Although the idea of a strike is still mainly a question of school strikes of students and school students — it is not to be overlooked that trade union bureaucracies were brought under pressure and in some cases expressed declarative support for “climate strike” initiatives. Those are token measures, but are also the result of sometimes direct pressure on the unions, as despite the reactionary role of pro-capitalist bureaucracies, sections across the movement have developed conclusions in the necessary direction in their attempt to galvanize the movement towards more powerful and decisive actions. So not only a necessary “system change” is raised in this movement — even if not yet coupled with clear “anti-capitalist” programme — but also, in an incipient way, the potential social force for such a change, the objective power of the organized working class, is implied, and must be further emphasized in the intervention of Marxists in the movement.

It is clear that this issue will continue to be a major radicalizing factor for the masses internationally. Climate change and the issues around the environment represent the biggest and most immediate threat to human civilization as we know it. This is now recognized not only by scientists, environmental and left activists but also by broad layers of working-class people.

Pro-capitalist liberals will attempt to channel concerns about climate into lifestyle and consumer choices, and so-called market solutions. However, the most important trend that will continue to grow is youth and workers seeing the need for system change, for internationally coordinated action. While this is not a socialist understanding, it points in that direction.

While a section of political and other representatives of the ruling class have acknowledged the truth of climate change and its impacts, the actions taken or agreed to are woefully inadequate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported in 2018 that there are only 12 years left to take the measures needed in order to limit global warming to 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels.

The core measure that ought to be taken is to stop using fossil fuel for the production of energy. The call to limit the rise to 1.5oC on average was not made by scientists because it is considered safe. Even that will mean that hundreds of millions of people around the world will be hit by deadly heat waves and other extreme weather events more frequently, millions will face water scarcity and more severe droughts, rising sea levels will destroy a growing number of habitats and an innumerable number of species will be lost.

As well as radical impacts, the dislocation and suffering from climate changes can feed into increasing social tensions, nationalism, racism, wars and so on. This will increase with governments supporting oil companies, mining and deforestation, such as Bolsonaro’s policies towards the Amazon. Until recently the regions most existentially affected by climate change were the more rural regions in the neo-colonial world. With drought threatening the water supply of northern European cities like Berlin in the heart of one of the least affected regions and most recently several of the biggest cities in Australia being engulfed in hazardous smoke from bushfires for weeks at a time, the consequences of climate change have become a reality for millions of the urban working class, affecting their everyday lives and working conditions. This creates strong objective grounds for struggles of a new quality.

According to the UN environmental programme UNEP, the countries’ commitments must increase five fold to keep the temperature increase at 1.5oC. To stay below 2oC would still need three times as high climate commitments than what governments have promised so far! If only the current promises would be fulfilled (even this seems unlikely at the moment) the rise in temperature would, in a medium scenario, point towards a devastating increase of 3.2oC before the end of the century.

The current trajectory points towards the world passing dangerous tipping points in the next few years, where the increased temperature leads to irreversible changes (such as collapsing polar ice or melting permafrost) that in itself lead to an even higher temperature increase. Before the failed climate summit in Madrid, 11,000 scientist warned, “Especially worrisome are potential irreversible climate tipping points and nature’s reinforcing feedbacks (atmospheric, marine, and terrestrial) that could lead to a catastrophic “hothouse Earth,” well beyond the control of humans (Steffen et al. 2018). These climate chain reactions could cause significant disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies, potentially making large areas of Earth uninhabitable.”

Some scientists argue that these tipping points might already be unavoidable, and that the thing we still can control is in what pace they will take place and what damage they will cause.

The first climate summit was held in 1979 and climate negotiations have been going on for the past 20 years. Yet CO2 emissions have not been reduced by one single tonne! Capitalist governments refuse to agree to the necessary measures and often don’t apply even the semi or pseudo measures they do agree to. Seeing that governments and big business are not taking any substantial measures to halt global warming, leads a growing number of scientists to believe that the battle to keep global warming to 1.5oC is lost and that the margin to keep global warming at 2oC is already very narrow.

US President Trump and the Brazilian President Bolsonaro are the most cynical representatives of an ignorant approach. The first used the cold weather in New York in his election campaign in 2016 to say, “it’s cold and snowing in NY — we need some global warming.” The latter openly supports the practices and companies that destroy the Amazon by farming, logging and mining. He has essentially encouraged the fires that caused outrage internationally, in the summer of 2019.

There are a number of governments which, under the pressure of the youth climate strikes, have declared a “climate emergency”. Britain, France, Canada and Ireland are among these countries. However, they have not taken any concrete measures to address global warming. On the contrary, they continue to give $27.5 billion per year to the fossil fuel industry, both at home and abroad — via subsidies, tax reductions and other financial support.

Energy multinationals advertise their investments in renewable energy technologies, in technologies which capture carbon from the atmosphere and store it, which they use as a pretext not to give up fossil fuel. Yet the vast majority of their investments are in fossil fuel. New drillings are planned in many parts of the world such as Alaska, the Eastern Mediterranean, and Scotland. And, unbelievably, the US, Canada, the EU, Russia and China are all increasing their military presence in the Arctic ready to support their companies as global warming makes the huge hydrocarbon reserves currently under the ice accessible. Fracking is being used more and more extensively.

Fossil fuels still account for 86% of the total energy produced in the world and there is no serious plan to change this under the current political and economic system. Since the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2016, 30 banks have invested $1.9 trillion in fossil fuels! Other huge industries that are dependent either totally or to a great extent on fossil fuels such as the plastic industry or the fashion industry (about 60% of material made into clothing is plastic) also see a shift to green technologies as a threat to their profits.

The almost full stop in the use of fossil fuels that is necessary would under capitalism mean that enormous fossil fuelbased “assets” would become worthless for the capitalists, causing not only a crisis for the fossil industry, but risk the stability of the whole capitalist financial system. This is one important reason why the decisive changes necessary will never come under capitalism.

Apart from the issue of climate change, the devastating effects of capitalist attacks on the environment has provoked other movements such as the Standing Rock movement and the struggle for clean water in Flint in the US, struggles against gold mining in Greece, Romania, North Macedonia and Turkey, against coal mining in Germany (Hambach), struggles against the pollution of drinking water and the destruction of forests in many countries of Latin America, or the disposal of waste in Russia. In China, one in three mass protests is linked to the environment.

Globally, plastic pollution, which poses very serious threats to the health of humans and to the existence of many species, the capitalist agricultural and farming models and collapsing biodiversity are also rapidly becoming serious issues. Capitalism is incapable of dealing with these crises. They are rooted in capitalism’s reductionist worldview, its treatment of the natural world as external and disposable, all of which derive directly from the ferocious competition for profit which characterizes the system.

Under the pressure of the mass movements governments can take some measures in the direction of renewable energy, but this will not be enough — it will be too little and too late. Capitalism will not halt global warming. It will not make the major and drastic shift required from fossil fuel to renewable energy and other green technologies. It will not change the agricultural and farming model which destroys the forests, the world’s largest terrestrial carbon sink, because it undercuts the profits made by the multinationals which dominate energy production, food and agribusiness. Nor will capitalism, which is cutting public spending and demolishing public services and the welfare state, make the necessary mass investments in efficient recycling systems, energy efficient buildings and public transport.

Movements around environmental issues

The nightmare perspective of what the planet’s temperature rise will mean is pushing millions into activity. Large sections, particularly the youth, have become very sensitive to other environmental issues, like plastics and agribusiness, switching their modes of nutrition. Vegetarianism and veganism are on the rise, often causing heated debates on social media. The fact should not be ignored that to produce 1 kilo of potatoes, for example, 100 litres of water are required while a kilo of beef needs 13,000 litres. The production of methane, a gas for which modern farming methods are the single biggest contributor, is about 35 to 35 times more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. This is not to mention the massive destruction of forests in the Amazon and in South East Asia (especially Indonesia) to create arable land, for cattle and the production of soya and palm oil. As a result of the anger caused by the criminal destruction of the planet’s environment, even “eco-terrorism” is beginning to arise in some instances.

NGOs, Green parties and more open defenders of capitalism, are, of course, putting their emphasis on the issue of “personal responsibility” (the classic liberal approach to any social problem). Our forces need to be well prepared to answer all such arguments in a friendly way, avoiding general aphorisms about capitalism’s inability to provide solutions. We should not be dismissive to attempts by individuals to adjust their personal lives, nutrition and so on in a way that is environmentally friendly. But at the same time we need to stress that personal “solutions”, even if practiced by millions, can only have an extremely limited impact and can provide no solution to the problem when capitalist corporations globally are massively destroying the environment.

The technology, skills and wealth to tackle the most immediate and pressing crises exist. Switching to renewable energy and other green technologies, which is the predominant and most important measure in the struggle against global warming, is entirely possible with the present state of technology. The barrier to doing this is that the control and ownership of technology and wealth is in the hands of the capitalist class. While capitalist governments can be forced to intervene with more significant measures, the chaotic and blind character of this system also means delay and limitation in vital research, and that the manner of implementation of some “green” measures could be hazardous in itself to communities and wildlife. This poses the need to raise the demand for democratic working-class control over any major “green” project, as well as over any corporate “green” production or service — to call out the bluff of any “Green Wash”, frustrate any disinformation and insist on socially and environmentally effective democratic solutions.

It is necessary, therefore, to nationalise, under workers’ control and management, the giant enterprises that destroy the planet’s climate. Only under public ownership and democratic control of major parts of the economy is it possible to replace the chaotic profit-hunting “market”, with the absolutely necessary plan for a fast, resource efficient and fair transition for working people to a fossil fuel free society. If there is one problem that cannot be solved on a national basis, it is the climate. Internationalism is an indispensable part of the struggle to save the environment.

This is a powerful new element in the intervention of Marxism — to propagate a revolutionary, internationalist, socialist programme requiring that we take up all the specific angles of the environmental issues and provide a complete transitional programme, in relation to renewable energy options, the elimination of plastics (made of hydrocarbons), the mode of agricultural production and farming linking all these to the need to diversify production and take it out of the hands of the capitalists.

There needs to be a mass conversion programme with re-training and skilling of displaced, un — and under-employed workers, without any loss of pay creating plenty of good/rewarding jobs related to conversion to clean and efficient energy or restoring ecological damage. The private ownership of land and resources is an obstacle to planning and to their use for the benefit of humanity and protection of a safe planet. It is necessary to point to class solutions, explaining that competition between nation states and the private ownership of land and resources are fundamental obstacles to international planning and actions.

It is imperative to intervene in these struggles to help direct them towards the struggle to build a mass workers’ movement to overthrow capitalism and for the socialist revolution. To do this it is necessary to propose and popularise the need to tackle ecological crises using global coordinated action based on a democratic planned economy.

The environment is one of the most radicalizing factors in the present epoch. It has been very important for the whole of the previous period even in countries where there have been no mass protests against climate change. The global movement to save the environment is more concentrated in the industrially developed countries, but very important environmental struggles have developed in less developed countries. The dynamic is continuing and our forces will continue to intervene energetically in the movement to infuse it with the ideas of revolutionary socialism and recruit from it to build our forces.

Consciousness

In a certain sense the youth movement on the environment is a recurrence, with its own special characteristics, of the global movements that we saw developing over the past couple of decades, starting with the Seattle mobilizations against the WTO in November 1999. This was the beginning of the anti-globalization movement, and soon after, the protests against the invasion of Iraq in 2003, which characterized a large part of the 2000s.

At the start of the 2010s, the Occupy movement developed, acquiring its name from “Occupy Wall Street” in the US, in reality inspired by the North African revolutions of the beginning of 2011, particularly Tahrir square in Cairo. This was followed, later in the present decade, by the women’s mobilizations on a global scale leading to the recent youth movement against climate change.

That a “spark” in one country is followed by the development of similar movements in a whole number of countries, developing very quickly like a chain reaction, is a very important characteristic of how consciousness is developing in our epoch. Although yet far from being socialist, internationalism is acquiring new dimensions. The new technologies and social media play a particular role in this, but fundamentally it is a new political consciousness.

In the situation we are currently experiencing, mass consciousness is very contradictory, in many ways more contradictory than in previous historical epochs. The capitalist crisis of 2007–2009 marked a historic turning point for the international class struggle and development of consciousness. It spurred a new era of a fundamentally undermined and crisis-ridden global capitalism, most importantly reflected in generalized trends of revolution and counter-revolution on a global scale, including in the “advanced” capitalist countries. In the main lines, our analysis and perspectives at that time have been vindicated in the following decade, and even spokespersons of the capitalist system had been compelled to admit the dysfunctional state and blind alley their system has dragged the world into. The ruling classes have been shocked and awe-stricken in the face of the melting of their traditional political parties, the eruption of mass movements and revolutionary crises, and the popular rise of “anti-establishment” political figures and forces from the right and the left. The rise in popularity of anti-capitalist, working-class struggle and socialist ideas has been an important feature in the contradictory but undeniable “scissors” movement narrowing the gap between the depth of objective crises and the mass realization of the necessary measures to overcome those crises.

We correctly recognized the heavy throwback of class consciousness as a result of decades of neo-liberal economic and ideological counter-revolution, in the aftermath of the fall of Stalinism, including the bourgeoisification of social democracy and capitalist globalization, although to a certain extent we initially expected a more rapid leap in class consciousness and struggle. Although the developments have been dramatic in comparison to the whole previous two decades (and in some cases even more than that), the process of mass consciousness — an objective factor in relation to our forces — as part of the class struggle is still characterized by significant complicating factors.

There are still quite powerful echoes of the throwing back of consciousness that followed the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of Stalinism. Of course the problem was not the end of the Stalinist bureaucracy but the restoration of capitalism. The ruling class went on the ideological offensive, the traditional parties of the working class, social democratic and communist, swung sharply to the right and lost their mass base. At the same time, with the fall of Stalinism and the bourgeoisification of the traditional reformist workers’ parties over the past three decades, the newer layers of workers have no personal experience with either historical phenomenon. They are entering struggle with neither the baggage nor the experience of the generations before them, which contributes greatly to both the anti-party mood (having no experience with workers’ parties) and the openness to radical and socialist ideas (having no experiences with Stalinism).

Objectively, notwithstanding complicating factors of de-industrialization (due to relocation and “automatization”) in some countries, not only the numerical class ratio but more decisively also the social-economic weight of the working class, stemming from its position in the economic process, indicate its potential role as the revolutionary agent in contemporary capitalist society. If anything, the developments in the recent decade have only increased both the oppression and exploitation of vast sections of the working class and placed it on the trajectory of inevitable heightened confrontation with the ruling classes. Yet, politically the working class is, generally speaking but with notable exceptions, “weak”, politically confused and unable to stall the offensive of the ruling class. This became clear post-2008, when the ruling class used the crisis caused by its own system to step up its offensive.

Sections of the petit bourgeoisie use the current state of the working class to repeat the old argument that “the working class has ceased to exist” using as a pretext the contraction of the industrial working class in the traditional “advanced industrial” countries of North America and Northern Europe. Not only do they neglect the fact that there is a new industrial proletariat, numbering hundreds of millions in Asia and especially China, they also ignore changes in the working class in the developed world, with the entry into its ranks of huge numbers of public employees from the education, health and public service sectors as well as those who work with the new technologies. In their vast majority the latter are badly paid and in precarious jobs. These new layers do not represent a weakening but a strengthening of the working class, which now comprises a majority of society, not only in the industrially developed countries, but also in developing countries. Whether in the public or the private sector, they can and will play a decisive role next to the “classical” industrial proletariat, once the conditions are created for a mighty movement of the working class. This has been proven by the revolutionary developments in the revolutions of North Africa in 2011 and in the developments in Sudan, Algeria, Hong Kong, Chile, Ecuador, etc, in the course of 2019. It was demonstrated too in Greece from 2010–13, when the working class was, from an objective point of view, in a position to take power, even though Greece has a weak industrial base.

The political weakness of the working class is due to a combination of consciousness thrown back in the course of the restoration of capitalism that meant three decades of intensified neoliberal policies. Social-democracy became bourgeoisified, the leadership of the trade unions moved to the right, the leadership of the new left formations (NLFs), in so far as such organisations emerged, showed themselves incapable of organizing effective struggle and providing a socialist perspective. Fundamentally, the potential for taking up radical and even socialist demands and a readiness to fight will be realized if there is a force that constantly explains, organizes the fight back and politically challenges the ruling class. If there is no such force, i.e. a radical left party, this will inevitably be reflected in a “weakness” of the working class to fight back and will retard the development of a socialist consciousness.

This “weakness” is not a permanent block against strikes and struggles. The mass mobilizations, bold action and determination to fight by sections of the working and middle classes have underlined the limitations and fundamental political weaknesses of the majority of forces on the left today, including those of the “new left” who, against the background of capitalist crisis, have meteorically surged in popularity at different stages. There is a fundamental link (although not linear or static but developing in a dialectical manner) between the development of mass consciousness and that of mass or semi-mass political groupings, including the changing character of political support for any political figure or formation and to what extent it translates into active involvement.

The past decade generally did not see a sharp growth in revolutionary left forces internationally. Our own forces of course did develop, extended to new countries, and in the US also relatively leaped forward, against the backdrop of mass radicalization, but objectively this has been limited, as has been the development of the whole revolutionary left. Despite vital mass radicalization, particularly among youth, there is no distinct mass “anti-capitalist” or “socialist” consciousness yet in the developing movements, in terms of programmatic content. There are developments in that direction, and this is hindered and further complicated by the relatively low level of distinct organized working-class struggle, the role of right-wing trade-union leaders and the programmatic weaknesses and opportunist tendencies of most forces on the left (as explained in later paragraphs).

The consciousness of the mass of the working-class will inevitably develop first to test out political routes of least-resistance. In this process, we recognize the dual role played by figures and forces on the left — of different political shades, from ambiguous radical populism to moderate reformism at this stage. Some of those, like Sanders and Corbyn, have been pulled by mass support from the margins of the left, and have contributed clearly to the popularization of ideas in an anti-capitalist direction, for the popularity of the broad idea of socialism, and even for enhanced class consciousness. They have been pushed further to the left since their emergence on the main political stage. But their limits, and in the case of Syriza also a rapid outright betrayal, have also played as a brake on consciousness. At different stages of struggle, as happened in Greece, mass consciousness can be sharply to the left of the political “left leaders”, who then prove politically to be unworthy of the invested hopes and confidence of the mass of the working class and youth.

Some of the popular “new reformists” will sell out earlier, others, under pressure from their base and developing movements will be pushed for a while towards a more radical programme. In a general sense, this painful process of testing out political ideas is inevitable — this does not mean, however, that it is automatic. It is a living struggle between forces pulling in different and contradicting directions. The more that the dynamic of the class struggle and skilful intervention by Marxists can assist in sharpening the objectively necessary conclusions about what needs to be done and pushing for mobilizations and political groupings around those class struggle and socialist ideas, the more it will be possible to cut across the demoralizations and setbacks in this process, including the openings for intervention by dangerous populist right-wing and far-right forces.

Political vacuum — the limitations of the Left

New explosive mass struggles will eventually search for a political expression. This will sometimes find temporary and often shallow reflection in pro-capitalist parties like the Greens, Labour or the Democrats. Through the course of struggle though, the question of new left formations will come up yet again. We advocate for mass working class parties and the need for a revolutionary Marxist backbone to push these wider formations forward in struggle.

There is no mass party of the left, globally, which raises socialism as a direct strategic aim. There is no previous epoch in the history of the working class, since the emergence of Marxism, when this has been the case. Despite the massive crisis of the system and the huge opportunities for the Left to grow, the parties of the Left are, in most cases, either stagnant or in crisis. The leadership of the trade unions, as a general rule, see themselves as pillars of the system and play the role of a brake on the development of struggles.

Following the shift of the traditional parties of the working class to the right, there were numerous attempts to fill the vacuum, with the creation of new left parties, a phenomenon that we described as new left formations (NLF). Beginning in the early 1990s, these parties were a response to the pressing social needs, the need of the labouring masses to acquire a voice and a reflection of the continuing class struggle. Several of the best-known early NLFs, the Communist Refoundation in Italy, the Scottish Socialist Party, the Socialist Alliance and later Respect in England, the New Anti-Capitalist Party in France, have ceased to exist or have no appeal. Those that remain, the Socialist Party (ex-Maoists) in the Netherlands, Workers’ Party in Belgium (ex-Maoists), Die Linke in Germany, PSOL in Brazil have been joined by the new wave, most notably SYRIZA in Greece, the Left Bloc in Portugal, Podemos in Spain and Melenchon’s La France Insoumise. Elsewhere these social processes are reflected so far, not in the creation of new parties, but in the emergence of new left currents inside Labour around Corbyn in Britain and in the US Democrats around Sanders and the DSA.

The situation is different in Ireland, where our forces play a role in leading struggles and achieving victories. The FIT in Argentina has an important base despite the setbacks in recent elections. The coming elections in Seattle will show the extent to which we can continue to play the role of reaching a mass audience, with an important impact on the rest of the US. These are very important exceptions to the general rule, but they do not represent mass forces yet.

No NLF raises socialism as a clear strategic aim but only as a kind of good idea, possibly, at some distant future. All the NLFs are reformist, but reformism in our epoch has one notable characteristic: as a general rule, it is far to the right compared to the reformism of previous historical epochs. This can change in the next period — though no time limits should be put on this. Under the pressure of big events, reformism can move to the left, as is currently indicated by developments in the US. Above all, reformism will be forced to move to the left once mass struggles and sizable Marxist forces begin to develop. A flexible application of the united front method will have to be applied to avoid the danger of left reformism or centrism becoming an insurmountable obstacle to the development of the forces of revolutionary socialism.

New left formations are generally unstable in this period. The capitalists will not grant ongoing positive reforms for working people in this period, and therefore a stable mass base for new reformist formations is extremely unlikely. As a result of this and the weak programme and leadership of these formations, they have not attracted a strong activist layer as of yet. This can change as struggles increase and Marxists are able to have an impact on debates within these parties and the movements that emerge. This process can also give rise to newer left formations as well.

No NLF has, so far, been able to sink real and deep roots inside the working class. Nearly all are in crisis in one form or another. The capitulation of SYRIZA was a factor that pushed them further to the right. For a section of the masses, the experience with SYRIZA, which was considered to be the furthest to the left of all the NLFs, increased disappointment and suspicions to the Left in general, and strengthened the anti-party mood in many countries.

Our tasks

Today there are not even strong fighting left reformist parties, let alone an international revolutionary party of the working class. History shows that the vast majority of the working class will first try the seemingly easier way through left reformist parties. Revolutionaries therefore in this epoch have a dual task. It’s our task to help to rebuild the workers movement, while also building the forces of international revolutionary Marxism.

As long as the forces of revolutionary Marxism, i.e. Trotskyism, are weak on an international scale, any new mass or semi mass left formation is bound to be reformist. There will be struggle and contradictions inside these formations, but some variant of reformism or possibly centrism will dominate. The greater the appeal of a new left party and the closer it comes to governmental power, the more it will tend to move to the right. This dynamic will change when Trotskyism is able to build sizeable forces in at least one important country. This then will act as a beacon on an international level.

New left formations and figures will face enormous pressure to bend to the will of the ruling class the closer they get to governmental power. They can also face enormous pressure from below to go further than they intend. It will require a clear revolutionary leadership with authority in the working class to overcome this contradiction. This will take time to construct on a national and international basis, a process in which the forces of Trotskyism will play a key role. However, breakthroughs in the consciousness of the advanced layers of the class are entirely possible in the next period based on major events and can significantly accelerate this process.

This clarifies the central task that we have in our epoch: to build our forces. At the same time we take part in rebuilding the workers’ movement, the unions, the union left and new Left parties. The precise form that this should take and the balance of emphasis in our work needs to be discussed concretely for each one of our sections. There is no one “recipe” for all our sections and there does not exist one, uniquely correct tactic for every section.

Capitalism is caught up in insurmountable contradictions. It is not in a position to generate any real growth of the productive forces or to solve any serious economic or social problems. On the contrary it will bring new attacks on living standards and rights. Even in its period of positive rates of growth, after the recession of 2008–2009 massive neoliberal attacks continued everywhere. A large proportion of new jobs, even in the “developed” countries were precarious. Unemployment fell but at the expense of rising underemployment, low pay and precariousness.

These policies will continue even if under the pressures of the coming recession the ruling class turns to greater state intervention, an increase in government expenditure and fiscal deficits, or even nationalizations, as it did in 2008–2009.

Even where capitalism can give a push to the forces of production, it is creating the ground for new explosions in class struggle and mass consciousness. Robots, the pride of today’s capitalism, are entering all spheres of the economy with extreme speed. But they will cause mass unemployment. It is estimated that in the course of the next decade up to 150 million jobs could be lost. In a speech in Canada in April 2018, the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, described the fears of the ruling class in the following words: “If you substitute platforms for textile mills, machine learning for steam engines, Twitter for the telegraph, you have exactly the same dynamics as existed 150 years ago — when Karl Marx was scribbling the Communist Manifesto.” And he warned: “Marx and Engels may again become relevant”.

The youth of today are facing worse living standards and conditions than the previous generation and the same will be the case with the next generation of youth. This is a decisive factor in their radicalization. The coming downturn, its timing, duration and depth cannot be predicted with accuracy. But it will definitely have major implications on consciousness. A new surge to the left is unavoidable in the next period. It will have to do with the coming recession but above all it will have to do with the fact that millions are already on the streets. Things of course never develop in a straight line. But what is unquestionable is that there will be new very important opportunities for the building of Trotskyism and of our International.

Uploaded to our archive in July 2020.

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World Perspectives (08 Feb 2020)

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