Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways.  The point however is to change it.  Karl Marx
Economic & Philosophic Science Review 
Weekly subscriptions (£10/3 months £30 p.a.)  [P&P Bulletin Publications PO B0X 50, London SW 17 9NL] [Post Office Regd.]      
No 0701 May25th 1993                                                                                                                       10p 

Important for workers to grasp the economic-crisis causes of Western imperialist disarray and not be misled by such symptoms as the Bosnian mess, however powerful the damage from a split. West so weakened by trade-war nightmare that even simple 'democracy' is now beyond it, as in UK paralysis over its anti-Irish crimes.

The 'free world' monopoly bourgeoisie have now retreated so far from their international fascist 'new order', proclaimed in such triumph only three years ago, that there is already open talk of a markets collapse.

The debacle of NATO imperialism's total failure to impose its edict on the Serbian nationalist remnants of the Yugoslav workers state is harmful enough to capitalist self-confidence (at a time of terrifying slump problems seemingly beyond anyone's control), but it is just a superficial rash compared to the towering fever raging lethally in the bowels of the system.

The Reagan-Bush 'new world order' is the climax of the sickest delusion in all world history.

On and on go the rantings still of consumer-glitz journalism about this or that new lifestyle, or new product, or new futuristic perspective, as if the annual diary of media events was all there had ever been to the record of civilisation, or all that deserved to be taken seriously.

The staggering phenomenon of the actual bankruptcy of US imperialist world rule, - economically, politically, and militarily, - at the very moment when its international 'democratic' hegemony was supposed to be indicating the 'end of history' as we know it (meaning the end of disorder and arbitrary chaos and injustice, etc), - - is just being shrugged off as of no consequence, or 'not real'.

The bourgeois propaganda machinery (the 'free' press) will be forced to think again.

Already, some capitalist reporting, for its own self-protection, makes a stab at revealing some aspects of the truth on many stories.

But only when severely edited does the hint at serious inter-imperialist contradictions emerge from what is superficially treated as 'just a row over Bosnia which leaves a nasty taste and which might have some bad implications but which has no deeper significance':

"There could be an encouragement of an anti-European trend in America," said Michael Dewar of the International Institute of Strategic Studies. "On Nato troops, the Americans could just say some are coming home anyway: why not just bring the whole lot home?

"There are already those in America saying that the Europeans are being nasty on Gatt, we need to address the economy anyway, so to hell with the Europeans. In the long term I hope cooler heads will prevail. We have to just wait and see."

The situation has a "whiff of Suez", a senior official said, comparing it to Washington’s bitter rift with Britain and France in 1956.

Diplomats on all sides are attempting to repair the damage. But they concede that President Bill Clinton has been humiliated.

They fear that the rift will encourage American isolationist politicians and leave a residue of resentment in the Clinton administration that will affect crucial security and trade matters.

So deep is the concern in both London and Washington that Warren Christopher, the American secretary of state, and Douglas Hurd, the foreign secretary, spoke four times on the telephone last week in an attempt to reduce the bitterness.

"There are certainly noses out of joint," said an American official close to the discussions. "But there is the realisation that if the finger-pointing continues there may be yet another casualty [the Atlantic alliance]. Both sides wish to avoid that at all costs."

Officials worry that the allied rebuff could affect Clinton’s international perspective for the rest of his presidency. Important matters such as the Nato alliance and the Gatt trade talks could be affected.

The bitterness stems from the fact that the young Clinton administration is under particularly critical examination for its leadership on foreign policy in the wake of George Bush, who proved masterful in forming the alliances for the Gulf war.

Christopher’s tour of Europe two weeks ago to drum up support for Clinton’s Bosnia policy was seen as the first real test of the president’s world leadership. It failed completely to persuade anyone to the American plan to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia and bomb the Serbs if they tried to intervene.

"I haven’t changed my views," Clinton said, acknowledging the failure after Christopher’s return. "I just don’t know if I’ve changed anyone else’s."

The rebuff by America’s allies has opened Clinton to withering criticism at home. A Time magazine cover story warned the president would "risk a loss of credibility by backing away".

In the White House garden on Friday, a testy Clinton fielded reporters questioning him on Bosnia with: "We are not vacillating. We have a clear, strong policy."

The week of name-calling had begun when Senator Joe Biden, perhaps voicing what Clinton would like to say blasted America’s allies for displaying "indifference, timidity, sell-delusion and hypocrisy".

Hurd tried to tone down the rhetoric by saying: "It’s very important this shouldn’t get into shouting across the Atlantic."

SENIOR government officials in London and Washington fear that the chill between Europe and America over Bosnia, which reached its low point last week, will prove to have caused lasting damage to the Atlantic alliance.

Even after the rows and confusion, however, military action has not been ruled out.

This story, implying serious rifts throughout the whole 'free world' system, did not have quite that appearance or order of priorities in the original.

The bourgeois propaganda machinery will never be able to quite grasp the awesome significance of the hopelessly unsolvable contradictions of an international order based on imperialist market power. To grasp it is to become a communist.

But what the capitalist press can do is provide the best kind of evidence available (from the horse's own mouth), judiciously selected and edited, of what is really happening to the world-crisis-ridden market economy and to its most dominant subjective-political active circles.

The latest interpretation of Bosnian developments gives the frankest appraisal yet of how totally frustrated Western imperialist warmongering ambitions have been by Serbian nationalist resistance:

BOSNIA’S Muslim president, Alija Izetbegovic, yesterday rejected the international community’s much-heralded new strategy for containing the savage war in his country, a scheme widely seen as freezing Serbian gains and postponing indefinitely plans for a comprehensive political settlement.

But the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, praised the new approach as "realistic". He said he was prepared to open talks about dividing Bosnia into three separate ethnic states instead of the 10 semi-autonomous provinces linked to a decentralised Bosnian state envisaged in the Vance-Owen plan, which now seems doomed.

Vital details of Saturday’s Washington agreement to contain the bloody 14-month conflict remain to be worked out, but critics are already saying that the international community has conceded that its refusal to use force means it cannot roll back Serb conquests.

President Clinton, who failed to secure European agreement to military measures, was strongly attacked. Bob Dole, the Senate minority leader, said the plan "amounts to writing off Bosnia as a state." Senator Patrick Moynihan said: "We are legitimating genocide."

A carefully crafted statement issued on Saturday after intensive consultations between the US secretary of state, Warren Christopher, and his counterparts from Russia, Britain, France and Spain, papered over a damaging breach between Washington and its allies, but showed agreement only on the lowest common denominator.

Billed as a "joint action plan", it said little that had not been previously agreed.

Even its key innovation — an American commitment to help protect UN forces if attacked — is carefully qualified, and Mr Christopher made it clear that there would be no American air strikes to protect beleaguered Muslims. America’s role would probably be limited to flying in helicopters to evacuate threatened UN personnel.

The language of the text is revealing. Safe areas "could" make a valuable contribution, but details remain to be formalised and securing and expanding the enclaves depends on further troop contributions.

Nothing new is said about how to achieve a peace settlement, except by "building on" Vance-Owen, tellingly described as a process rather than a plan.

A senior British official admitted privately that the UN-EC peace plan was now all but dead — although the need for some kind of political framework makes it unlikely that it will be formally abandoned.

Bosnia’s Muslim vice-president, Ejup Ganic, said: "I expect Lord Owen and the others to resign after this. It’s a total repudiation of his plan."

EDMUND BURKE argued that no man can draw up an indictment against a whole nation. Tony Barber obviously disagrees as he vilifies us and our efforts to defend Serbs’ national rights and physical existence in the face of threats arising from the break-up of the Yugoslav state for the second time in our lifetime ("What makes the Serbs the way they are", 9 May).

Mr Barber accuses us of delusions. As a small nation surrounded by powerful neighbours, we have been placed in a position of having to respond to outside pressures, assaults and divide and rule, a goal of great-power politics. This is no delusion but learnt from experience.

The Serbian leadership after the First World War did not press for the creation of a Yugoslav state. On the contrary, this was forced upon us by the Allies as part of their geo-political strategy for containing Germany, Hungary and Russia. Then it was the Croats and Slovenes who wanted a Yugoslavia, to have the Serbian army defend them against Italian aggression. The then prime minister, Nikola Pasic, prophetically opposed the plan and instead proposed a Great (not Greater) Serbia to include all Serbs and as few minorities as possible, but was overruled.

Second, the Muslims’ desire to establish an Islamic fundamentalist state is not an "allegation" but an unfortunate fact. Mr Barber ignores President Alija Izetbegovic’s "Islamic Declaration’, which explicitly calls for a pure Islamic state modelled after Pakistan, on which he fought the elections with support from the religious hierarchy. To ignore it is like ignoring Hitler in the 1930s, which is precisely what Neville Chamberlain and his media chorus did when they damned the Czechs at such cost.

We shall not make the Czechs’ mistake.

Rajko Bogojevic
Chargé d’Affaires
Yugoslav Embassy, London W8

THE remnants of the Serb community in the government-controlled bulk of Croatia are suffering widespread human rights violations despite Zagreb's pledge to protect its minority, according to diplomats.

They say the Croatian government’s failure to halt abuses makes a mockery of its efforts to present the republic as a democratic state.

"The laws of Croatia are democratic and meet the best European standards, but in practice there is systematic discrimination," a Western observer said.

Of an estimated 400,000 Croatian Serbs who once lived in the republic — excluding the Krajina area occupied by rebel Serbs — 75 per cent fled during the war and its immediate aftermath.

Victimisation of the remaining Croatian Serbs, many of whom are still loyal to the Zagreb authorities, shows little sign of ebbing. Since the official end of hostilities in January last year, about 5,000 Serb homes have been blown up, according to government figures.

Thousands of Serbs are reported to have been dismissed from their jobs and scores murdered for no other reason than their ethnic origins, local human rights activists say.
Croatia is an internationally recognised state with a commitment to guarantee the rights of its citizens irrespective of their nationality.
Serbs say that discrimination continues. They cite the persistent arbitrary sacking of Serbs, their eviction from former Yugoslav army flats and the problems some face in acquiring Croatian citizenship.

War crimes trials of Serbs in absentia and the judiciary’s reluctance to prosecute Croats for blowing up Serb homes have also been criticised.

Zvonimir Cicak, president of Croatia’s Helsinki Citizens’ Committee for Human Rights, established to monitor abuses, launched a stinging attack on the government accusing it of failing to end Serb-suffering. "The aim is to disturb the Serbs, to make them leave," he told a French newspaper.

"They go to Krajina, Serbia, even to Bosnia. Therefore, even if they do not approve of Serbian expansionism, and have no desire to join the rebels, there are tens of citizens every week, as far as I know, that leave Zagreb."

Professor Zarko Puhovski, another member of the Helsinki Citizens' Committee, dismissed the minister’s argument, insisting that Croats should not be absolved for seeking revenge. "I can understand someone who’d lost his family wanting to blow up a Serb house, but not why the state does nothing to prosecute him." he said.

And not only does the capitalist press admit that Serbs are victims too of the tragic undermining by Western market forces of the Yugoslav workers state's great record of 45 years of inter-ethnic collaboration, but condemnation of NATO's damaging intervention can even be heard from Croats and Muslims:

WHILE the international community hopes to end the Bosnian war by pressing the Serbs to join their rival Croats and Muslims in accepting the Vance-Owen peace plan, in Travnik the proposed plan looks not so much the solution as the core problem.

As the Muslims pour in, the non-Muslims move out. The bulk of the small Serbian minority left long ago. Now, with Croat-Muslim tension at fever-pitch in central Bosnia, the Croats are leaving, too.

A year ago, the municipality’s population of 70,000 was 50 per cent Muslim, 37 per cent
Croat, and 11 per cent Serb. The war, says Muhamed Cuvic, the Muslim mayor, has brought an influx of 19,000 Muslims. Almost as many Croats, he says, have left.

"My town of Travnik has turned into a mad hospital," says Josip, a moderate Croat who is reluctant to join the exodus. He surveys the main street brimming with men in army uniform and peasant refugees in baggy trousers. "I don’t recognise anyone. I don’t know anyone here anymore," he says.

Travnik is the Vance-Owen plan in action, as far as its Balkan beneficiaries are concerned.

"Vance is like a crazy seamstress with his plan," says Fikret Cuskic, the Bosnian government’s military commander.

Ivo Knezevic, a Sarajevo philosophy professor, says implementation of the plan will entail "years of poor peasants taking their horses and carts, packing on their belongings and wandering across the province borders in search of new homes".

In Travnik, that prediction is already a grim reality. The multi-cultural city celebrated in the writings of the Nobel laureate, Ivo Andric, is in its death throes, reflecting in miniature the death of Bosnia that the Vance-Owen plan prescribes.

But the twist, highlighting the complex absurdities of the tripartite division, is that the Vance-Owen map gives Travnik, now overwhelmingly Muslim, to the Croats.

For the British commanders whose troops patrol this region from their base at Vitez, 12 miles away, the bitter Muslim-Croat fighting that has seized the area in the past two weeks is directly attributable to a Croat campaign to impose their vision of the Vance-Owen map.

The Croat militia pulled out of Travnik last week, moving its guns to the southern hills. Before, Muslims and Croats jointly patrolled the town under a dual administration.

"Here, the Muslims are the majority and this will be a Muslim town. If you think Travnik will be run by the Croats, you’ve no idea of democracy," Commander Cuskic says.

A United Nations officer who has monitored the town for five months says the Muslim and Croat military chiefs around Travnik are well-intentioned moderates, old chums from their days together in the pre-war Yugoslav army.

They have struggled hard to prevent the poisoning of community relations. But the odds are stacked against them, in the combination extremist politicians from outside stirring up trouble, the influx of refugees, many of whom are bent on avenging their dispossession, and the rogue police and militia units exploiting the wartime chaos to prosper as common criminals.

Senad Mujic, a lorry driver turned Muslim militiaman, says: "This will not be a Croat province. We’ll fight against that. The problem is we have the numbers but not the weapons to defend this town." The Croat, Josip, concedes that the Vance-Owen map has compounded the local crisis by awarding Travnik to the Croats. "That can’t be. There are too many Muslim refugees here. But if Travnik becomes a Muslim province, I’m leaving." The Croat guns trained on the city have joined the Serb artillery aimed at Travnik from the north since last autumn.

If the Croats cannot have the town, the UN officer says, they will choke it. They control the supply routes from the southwest "The HVO will do a deal with the Serbs. It may pull out and let the Serbs take over. If the Croats cannot have it, they will deny it to the Muslims and give it to the Serbs."

But it is the collapse of the bourgeois delusion that the 'free' West had basically solved all the world's worst problems, or at least had established the supremacy of a 'democratic market' system which could solve them all, - which will lead to rude awakenings on an immeasurably vaster scale internationally than the limited lessons of Yugoslavia.

Tens of millions of workers are already worried about the worldwide slump. Tens of thousands of bourgeois are already beginning to panic, - as their own capitalist press reveals:

The warning signs are everywhere. Share prices in the relentlessly upbeat stock market now stand at sky-high levels by historical standards, and dividend yields have fallen to near record lows—classic signals that the bull market that began 2½ years ago has got dangerously long in the tooth. At the same time, companies continue to flood Wall Street with new issues to cash in on the bull’s run before it can stumble—another omen that the market may be overheated and headed for a fall. Even the current rush of little-guy buyers is usually a harbinger of a bear market.

Much of the money propping up share prices comes from small savers who have put their money into mutual funds simply because returns on alternative investments have got so low. With money-market deposits and CDs barely eking out 2% in interest, individuals poured a record $11.3 billion into stock mutual funds in March, snapping up shares so fast that managers barely had time to invest all the cash.

This stampede into the risky world of stocks has only heightened concern that the market may soon come tumbling down. 

"People start thinking of the ’20s and ’30s," says author and retired fund manager Peter Lynch, "and almost everyone seems to have had an Uncle Louie who lost everything and ended up selling pencils." Still, many investors—and especially small investors—are starting to get nervous. One source of concern is the Clinton Administration, which many on Wall Street now regard with disdain.

Clinton s often wishy-washy style has helped chill business and consumer confidence. "A weak presidency' always makes markets very nervous," says Stephen Bell, the Washington-based managing director of Salomon Brothers.

The U.S. economy is throwing off its own confusing messages. A continuing, sluggish recovery is certainly bad news: it threatens to trim corporate profits and cause stock prices to slump.

Even without higher interest rates, Wall Street bears argue, the market is perilously overvalued. On average, stocks now fetch prices that are 23 times as high as corporate profits as measured by earnings per share; the stock of a company with profits of $3 per share would therefore sell for a whopping $69. This heady price-earnings multiple is nearly twice the average for past markets and stands even higher than the one just before the 1987 Wall Street crash.

The bears further point out that stocks are returning little to investors in the way of dividends. On average, dividend payouts currently equal just 2.8% of stock prices, the lowest yield since August 1987. "The market has rarely been this high in terms of price to earnings or dividends," says James Grant, an investment-magazine editor who predicts a break in prices.

That is going to be scary for a lot of people who are very naïve and inexperienced out there" Says Blood of Brown Brothers Harriman: "There are people who are buying funds who don’t realize that one day they can wake up and lose three years of accumulated income."

And while such market chartism can be taken as a reliable measure of nothing more substantial than middle-class defeatism, and wholly unpredictable even then, - there is plenty of weightier evidence to show that the serious inter-imperialist trade-war conflicts which would give valid reasons for stock exchange panic, are stoking up in earnest, - as the 'free' press itself cannot avoid noticing from time to time:

In the two months since the new US treasury secretary, Lloyd Bentsen, travelled to London to attend his first Group of Seven session at Lancaster House, the yen had climbed 11 per cent as a result of a private deal among the seven to encourage a higher yen as a means of choking off Japan’s burgeoning current account surpluses.

The speed and altitude of the yen’s rise, although engineered and approved by the G7, found less favour in Tokyo, where the finance minister, Yoshiri Mori, en route to Washington to attend the spring IMF meetings, declared: "I feel anger at the yen’s sharp appreciation fed by political speculation." This was considered an unusually sharp comment from Japan, which is normally reluctant to be openly critical of the US, especially on the eve of a fresh round of monetary meetings.

The Bentsen Treasury realises that it is no longer sufficient for the US to ignore the global economy. For much of the post-war period the US economy was largely domestic, with just 10 per cent of gross domestic product accounted for by imports and exports. With the globalisation of the international economy, the rise of the Asian Tigers and the new Chinese Economic Area (China, Hong Kong and Taiwan), and the changing structure of multinational corporations, the external sector now represents 25 per cent of GDP. In such circumstances the US ignores economic developments among its trading partners in Europe and Asia at its peril.

FRANCE has reacted with a fit of pique to accusations that its spies will take advantage of the Paris air show to steal secrets from American defence contractors.

Hughes Aircraft, a subsidiary of General Motors, said on Monday it would boycott the prestigious event after warnings from the CIA that the firm would be targeted by the French secret service.

"There has been no spying at Le Bourget for ages," insisted Serge Dassault, chairman of aircraft maker Dassault Aviation and also general commissioner of the show, which will open on June 11. "There is nothing secret at the displays. When there are secrets that deserve being put in a box... they are kept in a box. So I do not see what the Americans have to fear. It’s an argument they use when they don’t want to come."

But since the end of the cold war, western spying agencies have increasingly spread their net and the CIA claim the French routinely spy on American businessmen in France, bugging hotel rooms and copying papers.

The French, in turn, claim the Americans are throwing stones in glass houses. The authoritative Paris daily newspaper, Le Monde, has reported that competition between arms makers is now so so intense that French salesmen who negotiated the sale this year of more than 400 Leclerc tanks to the United Arab Emirates received written death threats from American rivals.

The Leclerc, produced by the state-owned GIA T Industries, was in competition with the US M-l Abrams.

STRAINED relations between America and Japan deteriorated further yesterday after Washington warned it may slap new trade sanctions against Tokyo.

The commerce secretary, Ron Brown, warned the US could not tolerate its $50 billion trade deficit "without taking steps to do something about it."

Separately, the US trade representative, Mickey Kantor, accused Japan of discriminating against American companies in placing government orders. He announced an inquiry to establish whether Japan is complying with an agreement it had made to increase its purchases of American supercomputers.

Mr Kantor said there was "grave US government concern" that Japan may not be living up to the terms of the 1990 pact to end discriminatory practices in government supercomputer contracts.

The two sides, already at odds over President Clinton’s call for a stronger yen, will hold talks on the issue. If the US decides Japan is not complying with the agreement, Washington would launch a formal trade action which could lead to sanctions, Mr Kantor said.

He also renewed the US attack on the European Community for failing to open its market for public sector contracts, and accused Japan of discrimination in public sector purchasing in construction, architectural and engineering services.

Under US trade law, Japan will have 60 days to end its discriminatory practices. If it does not, the US can take action that could lead to sanctions against Japanese imports.
Mr Brown, addressing the European and American chambers of commerce, said he was looking at new methods of measuring Japan’s progress in opening up its markets. 

He said: "We want targets. We want them to be measurable and monitorable."

PEUGEOT SA, the French car giant, yesterday called for a new deal on Japanese car imports into Europe to be renegotiated. It accused the European Commission of being out of touch with the scale of recession in the main EC markets, which could force PSA to axe a further 6,000 jobs in 1993.

Yann Delabriere, PSA’s chief financial officer, attacked the EC Industry Commissioner, Martin Bangemann, for signing a deal which foresees a 6.5 per cent decline in West European car sales this year. "Mr Bangemann is the only one in Europe to have this figure in mind," he said acerbically.

The industry is more glum, predicting a downturn of up to 15 per cent. It suffered a 17 per cent fall in sales in the first quarter, the most dramatic for two decades. Peugeot’s own prediction is that sales will drop between 9 and 10 per cent. For European car makers, desperately trying to hone their operations to compete with Japanese "transplant" operations now beginning to pump out cars in Europe, the new deal is unfair. Peugeot, which saw net income plunge 39 per cent to £400 million last year, has warned that it could again axe 6,000 jobs this year — as it did in 1992. Other established European players including the big US companies, General Motors and Ford, are also stepping up the pressure. "It is a priority for us," said Ford yesterday.

Under a 1991 agreement between Brussels and Tokyo, the European market is set to open gradually to full competition by the end of the decade. But the accord was refined earlier this month to take account of the downturn in the market.

Under the new deal Japanese total imports will fall by 9.4 per cent, but Japanese carmakers will still see their share of the market rise from 11.3 to 12.5 per cent Japanese imports will still rise this year in France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Britain.

The deal takes no account of the transplants.

The European Commission insists there is no reason to panic. "Our prediction of a 6.5 per cent decline in the market this year is a good estimate, but if the drop is much steeper... then we can have another talk with the Japanese", a spokesman said. At any rate, routine trade talks are planned for September, he added.

Mr Bangemann delivered similar assurances to trade officials from EC countries at a meeting in mid-April, after France called for details of the new agreement The Italian government sent a similar letter, which also accused Nissan of targeting the Italian market, but Brussels says it hasn’t received the letter. The commission expects a request for clarification from Spain, too.
Commission officials believe that European industry is taking an overly pessimistic view.

The $50 billion trade deficit of this impending worldwide capitalist crisis are posing some difficult questions in all directions.

The British ruling class is in a desperate plight with its £50 billion deficit but it would be a mistake to interpret the latest hardline threats to the welfare state as being some kind of thick-skinned strength. Fascist menaces are the exact opposite, - the product of appalling bourgeois weakness, - a confession of total bankruptcy and complete inability to carry on ruling with the most effective and insidious weapon capitalism ever devised, - the fraud of 'parliamentary democracy and justice'.

A hated vindictive 'democratic' government (which might survive for a while to hammer working-class living standards due to the utterly class-collaborating futility and fecklessness of the Labour and Liberal 'opposition') can hang on to power but represents a dangerous defeat as far as the real point of bourgeois democracy is concerned, which is to bamboozle and swindle the masses but to get them to regularly vote to be skinned nevertheless.

It is an even greater weakness for the bourgeoisie's survival when an unpopular parliamentary system has to give way to an openly capitalist dictatorship system.

German imperialism's enforced turn to Nazism in the 1930s was in fact not a clever trick to use the 'democratic process' to deprive the masses of democracy but a fatal capitulation to suicidal delusions of a 'short cut' to capitalist 'recovery' success which ended in total disaster just 12 years later unleashing a postwar revolutionary avalanche which did not stop until a third of the planet had turned socialist, (despite the continuing class-collaborating feebleness (with imperialism on a worldwide basis) of the wretched Moscow revisionist leadership.)

It is similarly a weakness, not a hard-nosed strength, of the present Tory government in Britain that on top of threatening to destroy welfare-state living standards for the masses, provoking open rebellion (and of a revolutionary kind, as opposed to the reformist revolts of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s when class-collaborating trade-unionism was trying to resist any reduction in its stake in successful British imperialism, made necessary by that imperialism's declining world role), -- the Cabinet has also decided to brazen things out as far as the collapse of its policy on the Occupied Zone of Ireland is concerned.

Caught red-handed framing group after group of innocent Irish so as at least to be able to victimise someone for the fictional 'terrorist crimes' of the national-liberation struggle, London's decision to 'tough it out' by admitting no individual guilt for the many 'miscarriages of justice' is pure defeatist despair, and not strength at all.

The rigged 'convictions' couldn't stick because the anti-imperialist advance of history itself is making a mockery of the ridiculous pompous hypocrisy of Britain's police-military dictatorship over the last colonised corner of Ireland pretending to stand for 'law and order' in that gerrymandered hellhole, reeking of Rule Britannia bigotry.

But there is no smart and cunning British imperialist strength left at all to turn these 'legal' setbacks into a 'making-a-clean-breast-of it' virtue. That would have required a confident putting of Paisley & Co in their place, and no such confidence exists. It would have required telling an increasingly nervous and resentful British police force that they would have to take the rap for the Guildford Four stitch up, but their Federation conference's ecstatic welcoming of the Old Bailey 'not guilty' verdict, and the Government's acceptance of it, indicates that there is little strength of will to make out a plausible case of 'who was really responsible' for the injustices, but a great amount of blatant relief that the whole sorry mess of failed policies towards the Irish national-liberation struggle can be swept under the carpet yet again for a brief while longer.

It is worth recording just how ludicrous the decaying British imperialist state is making itself look with this renewed bare-faced cover-up:

The innuendo whispered in legal and police circles for the last three years was finally aired. The Establishment still cannot come to terms with the fact that Patrick Armstrong and the rest of the Guildford Four had nothing whatsoever to do with the Guildford and Woolwich pub bombings. 

Prosecution of the police took three-and-a-half years to reach, court, thereby fettering the independent inquiry into the Guildford case set up by the Home Secretary in 1989 and headed by Sir John May. The delay cannot be attributed to the preparation of evidence. The case against the three detectives was argued on two documents alone, the same two documents that lay at the heart of the Appeal Court decision on October 19 1989 to quash the convictions of the Guildford Four secured on confession evidence alone.

The delay served in part to distance present events from that extraordinary day at the Old Bailey when four bemused young people who had spent over half their lives in prison walked free. In the words of Crown QC Roy Amlot that day: "Evidence of great significance has come to light. [It] throws such doubt upon the honesty and integrity of a number of the Surrey officers investigating this case in 1974 that the Crown now feels unable to say that the conviction of any appellant was safe or satisfactory…"

Home Secretary Douglas Hurd told a sombre House of Commons, "There has been a serious miscarriage of justice which has resulted in wrongful imprisonment for many years."

The unexpected quashing of the convictions pre-empted an appeal set for the following January in which other serious points would have been raised: points which the legal establishment and the Government has yet to answer. But it is safe to assume that, if the Crown still believed in the guilt of the Guildford Four, it would not have thrown in the towel.

In his judgment Lord Lane said the entire case against the Guildford Four rested on the integrity of the police. The so-called contemporaneous notes of the interviews with Armstrong were not contemporaneous: "The officers must have been lying." He added: "if they were prepared to tell this sort of lie, then the whole of their evidence became suspect."

The sole evidence against them was their confessions. They alleged officers had beaten and intimidated them at Guildford police station.

Alastair Logan, solicitor for Mr Armstrong and Carole Richardson, said: "The only chance the police had to be acquitted was to put Armstrong and [Gerry] Conlon on trial. That’s what they have done.

"It’s been a nonsense of a criminal trial. It is a con-trick, a dirty lousy con-trick. It is an attempt to re-write history, an attempt to reconvict the Four."

Mr Armstrong, now aged 43, said: "It was a whitewash from start to finish. I sometimes wondered why they even bothered to go through the motions."

"It was an ingenious plan just to blame the Surrey officers for the Guildford convictions. 

That separated them from the bomb squad, who interviewed us over Woolwich, and the RUC. They deliberately chose the grounds for quashing our convictions so awkward questions would never be asked."

He thinks the public must be bewildered by now. "If I were the man in the street, then I suppose I would be thinking, there’s no smoke without fire. But that applies to the police as well. If that evidence was good enough at the Court of Appeal to have our convictions quashed, why is it not good enough to pursue a conviction against doctored evidence?

"But the truth is never going to come out now. All these matters about what evidence was withheld and why, nobody is going to be held to account for that."

Counsel for the police officers had been allowed by Mr Justice Macpherson to make an address to the jury before the prosecution began calling witnesses. They alleged Mr Armstrong, whose interview records were the core of the trial, had "sung like a canary", and was an IRA member.

But the Balcombe Street gang, an IRA unit cornered at a siege in west London after a long mainland bombing campaign, admitted the Guildford and Woolwich bombings after they were arrested in 1975. Government scientists have admitted that forensic evidence to support their claims was suppressed.

A SIMPLE issue faced the Old Bailey jury of six men and six women: could there be an innocent explanation for the existence of a set of typed police notes, with scribbled additions, of an interview with Patrick Armstrong, one of the Guildford Four?

The notes came to light four years ago. Avon and Somerset detectives, re-reading the Guildford convictions of 14 years earlier after the four prisoners had submitted fresh evidence claiming their innocence, discovered them in the archives at Surrey police headquarters.

The papers immediately set alarm bells ringing. The Guildford officers who had questioned Mr Armstrong had presented a handwritten record of the interview to court, said to have been contemporaneously-recorded, which was similar to the typed notes plus additions.

Avon and Somerset police believed the typewritten notes must have preceded the handwritten document When they received unsatisfactory replies from the officers Allan Green, the then Director of Public Prosecutions, was consulted. In October 1989, he announced the prosecution case against the Guildford Four was crushed. Two days later, Roy Amlot QC, for the Crown, rose to his feet before a specially convened Court of Appeal to say why.

As well as the Armstrong notes, Avon and Somerset detectives had discovered Surrey detectives had lied about another interview, with Paul Hill. They had also found a duplicate custody record, corresponding to the timetable of interviews which had been forwarded by the Guildford Four. Neither of those areas was to become the subject of a criminal trial.

Mr Amlot told Lord Lane, the then Lord Chief Justice: "The Crown says that not only did three officers — and not only junior officers — mislead the court, but because of the notes, preparation and statements they gave, clearly they agreed together to present their notes in this fashion."

Lord Lane, quashing the convictions, had no doubts: "The officers must have lied." And, in a reference to the prosecution of the officers, he added: "May we express the hope that nothing will be allowed to stand in the way of the speedy progress of those proceedings."

Although 12 Surrey officers were named in Avon and Somerset’s criminal investigation, only three were charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

Ronald Bartle, the magistrate hearing the committal of the three officers at Bow Street, central London, was to play a key role. After a five-day hearing in June 1991, Mr Bartle dismissed the charges.

The High Court reversed the dismissal in January last year. Lord Justice Neill said, as Mr Bartle had argued, there might be some prejudice because of the time lapse. But "a jury would be perfectly capable of deciding the case on the evidence without regard to what they might have seen or read three years or so earlier".

After a year’s delay to allow the three officers to engage counsel of their choice, the trial finally got underway at the Old Bailey last month.

The defence was, unusually, allowed to outline its case immediately after the prosecution. The officers exercised their right not to go into the witness box.

Kenneth Clarke, the Home Secretary, said: "I hope we can put the whole unhappy episode behind us." Mr Justice Macpherson of Cluny, the trial judge, indicated he thought sleeping dogs should be left to lie. But the trial leaves unanswered an array of questions surrounding the 1974 Guildford and Woolwich pub bombings, which killed seven and injured more than 60.

□ Why did the prosecution withhold two alibi statements which would have proved Gerry Conlon was asleep, more than 30 miles away on the other side of London, at the time of the Guildford bombings?

□ Why was forensic evidence, indicating the Guildford and Woolwich bombings were part of a wave of mainland attacks carried out by the Balcombe Street gang, an IRA unit captured in 1975 after a siege in west London, deliberately altered?

□ Why was Carole Richardson interviewed, when she confessed to the Guildford bombings, soon after receiving an injection of pethidine to help her over barbiturate withdrawal?

□ Who was behind the decision not to charge members of the Balcombe Street siege gang with the Woolwich and Guildford bombings, which they admitted in interviews with, among others, Peter Imbert, later to be the Metropolitan Police commissioner? 

Some of those matters would have been raised at the Guildford Four’s appeal, which had been due to begin early in 1990. Questions would have been levelled concerning, among others, the late Norman Skelhorn, Director of Public Prosecutions at the time of the trial, and the late Lord Havers, who, as Sir Michael Havers, had been prosecuting counsel in their 1975 trial before becoming Attorney General.

But the then DPP, Allan Green, stepped in dramatically in October 1989. The verdicts were quashed, but the Guildford Four’s lawyers say they were never able to tell the full story. The result, they concede, is a lurking doubt about their innocence.

Gareth Peirce, solicitor for Mr Conlon, said: "They were cheated out of a proper appeal.
Had it gone ahead, we had four grounds, any one of which would have been sufficient.

"There was the alibi evidence; the forensic evidence, which demonstrated the gang which had carried out Guildford and Woolwich was operating when the four were already in custody; Lord Roskill’s failure to send the case for retrial after the Balcombe Street people had used their trial to highlight four innocent people were in prison; and then we discovered evidence of widespread falsification of notes."

Sir John May’s inquiry, set up under the former Appeal Court judge on the day the convictions were quashed, would have investigated these issues.

He would have asked why, given the sole evidence against the four was the confessions, there were 180 discrepancies. But Sir John was frustrated over the long delays in bringing the Guildford officers to trial.

He was effectively forced to cut short his public investigation, taking written evidence to allow him to complete a report before the Royal Commission on Justice’s deadline next month.

Where questions remain unanswered, Sir John has asked key figures — understood to include senior Surrey and Metropolitan Police officers, prosecuting counsel and officials from the Home Office and DPP — to give him evidence in private.

He has promised that transcripts of their evidence will be published with the report, to be presented to the Home Secretary by September.

The establishment is being just as ostrich-like over its fortunes in the undeclared war against the Irish national-liberation struggle.

It is going disastrously badly, as it has been from the start because the criminal colonial repression of the north-east comer of Ireland is a farcical historical anachronism which was doomed from the very beginning when an already ailing British imperialism savagely imposed the artificial partition as a last vengeful act of a failed 800-year attempt to make all of Ireland a province of Britain.

Orange fascism has been laughed out of every public opinion court on earth as a fit 'authority' for the gerrymandered occupied bits of Ulster, the most historic heart of Ireland.

Now the British police-military dictatorship remnants of that failed colonisation are still incapable of suppressing Irish independence struggles, in spite of all the incredible watchtower surveillance; walled-in 'republican' ghettoes; Hitlerite no-jury 'courts'; ten years of 'detention-without-trial' concentration camps; murderous' shoot-on-sight' killing gangs run by army and police out of uniform; Gestapo silencing of Sinn Féin spokesmen on radio and television; torture 'interrogation' barracks condemned by the European Court; etc, etc.

The IRA is still blasting Britain and its colony to bits, and Sinn Féin is still winning massive electoral support from the Irish voters.

The Tory government's pretence that 'Britain is keeping a stiff upper lip and going about its business determined not to be disrupted by these pointless bombings', etc, is no display of 'strong will to see the battle against evil through to a successful conclusion' but paralysed weakness to know what to do next.

In spite of the news blackout, the story is still getting out that the City of London, for example, suffered crippling losses from its recent bombings.

Fully a month after the latest blast on Bishopsgate, no less than 21 acres of prime City money-making territory is still walled off behind an 8-foot high iron fence, needing a pass to get inside. Snippets in the capitalist press this week reveal part of the story which the D-notice censors do not want told:

Edward Henty, a News of the World photographer, was killed and 44 injured in last month’s bombing. Up to 20,000 City employees were displaced and by this week only a handful had returned to work in the immediate vicinity.

Rear Admiral Rowe and the 35 staff at Leathersellers Company are among the few City workers who have returned to their offices since April 24 — the second time in a year that the premises at St Helens Place have suffered bomb damage. Most buildings nearby are shrouded in scaffolding, while less than 100 yards away, work continues at the epicentre of the explosion on repairing a severed sewer. The smell can be excruciating.

The influx of workers on to the neighbouring building sites created a serious problem for female staff, said office worker Fiona Barras. "Things got so bad we made an official complaint."

But male executives have had problems too, Mr Marler added. Meeting clients is difficult when the local wine bar is a pile of rubble and "you feel a complete and utter twit going on the Tube with your hard hat".

The scale of devastation, disruption, and losses from this, from the previous City bombs, and from four new town-centre blasts in the past week must be close to beyond the government's insurance scheme capacity to bear (in view of the £50 billion deficit already), plus politically making the Tory Cabinet and British imperialist state look fools.

The monstrous suppression of the Stalker inquiry (which exposed the shoot-on-sight killing system) is proof that this
'tough-it-out' attitude is just paralysed weakness bearing an enormous cost, and not strength at all.

The attempted frame-up of Manchester's deputy chief constable, one of the country's leading policemen, did great damage to the British establishment's reputation with the middle class, and will continue to do such damage for a long while to come, in fact until the monopoly imperialist bourgeoisie's overthrow.

And this colossal price was paid because the Tory hierarchy could not find a way of arranging for a few scapegoats from the colonial establishment to 'take the punishment' (early retirement, sideways promotion, elevation to the House of Lords, etc) for the illegalities Stalker discovered.

The same is happening now over the crippling spate of bombings. 

Under pressure from most 'free-world' capitals, London has long since accepted the need for a snail's pace withdrawal from its last colony. But so decadently weak is British imperialism now that it cannot find a way to oblige the colonial establishment in the Occupied Zone of Ireland to accept this final retreat.

Hence the paralysed stupefaction as the remnants of British imperialism are bombed towards ever more ruinous financial deficits.

Capitalism's international crisis is imposing awkward questions in other political directions too.

A subsequent discussion in this week's Bulletin raises some complex issues in the South African revolution.

The consistency of the ILWP's attitude to SACP revisionism has been queried now that the 'Two Tactics' comparison is inviting workers to condemn the ANC's negotiating line as a disastrous sell-out.

But there is no inconsistency. This struggle for Leninism took the view, and still takes it, that the Soviet workers state, the socialist camp, and the remnants of the Third International always remained an encroachment upon imperialist domination of the planet even when Moscow's revisionist philosophy (constantly attacked since the ILWP's first statements) regularly spelled out class compromise defeats for the proletariat instead of further revolutionary advances (see ILWP Books vols 1 to 17).

This attitude had nothing in common with petty-bourgeois Trotskyite cynicism which has always at heart simply mindlessly condemned all the achievements and experiences of the workers states since the 1920s under the ivory-tower banner of "everything is rotten", - the rank subjectivism of pure anti-communism.

The achievements, struggles, and setbacks of the revolutions in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba Vietnam, and the socialist-oriented national liberation struggles, etc remain the only perspective-alternative to the degradations of inter-imperialist World Wars I, II, and III (due shortly) and the endless colonial wars, - and remain the true essence of 20th century human history, not the invention of fibre optics or the microchip, (as important as they are in their own way.)

Trotskyite cynicism has simply sat in its socialist armchair (while sending young recruits out into the rain to sell papers) and ridiculed all this.

But while defending the gains of the workers states and the support they received in the Third International, the struggle for Leninism has also made the sharpest possible challenges to revisionist treachery at many crises in Third International decay, both before and after Moscow's final liquidationist collapse, while never throwing the baby of workers-state achievements (and their international defence) out with the bathwater of anti-communism.

Revisionism and anti-communism in the ANC/SACP politics has been comprehensively denounced by the ILWP for years.

But Trotskyite cynicism, PAC nationalism, and dissident sniping by like-minded ANC/SACP renegades has also been denounced, such as the RCG-loving Kitsons who were happy to share platforms with all kinds of anti-communist tendencies such as Solidarnosc supporters in the West.

The only valid criticism of the Soviet camp is Leninist criticism. That directed against ANC/SACP revisionism is now moving onto a higher level because the South African revolutionary crisis is rapidly approaching qualitatively new peaks.

Crucially important new lessons must now be learned by the masses as the class-contradictions of the world capitalist crisis take over from the more leisurely confrontation of the South African national-liberation struggle as the driving force in the conflict there.

The ANC/SACP has always been wrong to postpone socialism's perspectives in their agitation and negotiations (however far the distance seemed in the past to their practical realisation), and is now in danger of catastrophically betraying the South African proletariat and socialist movement by continuing to see only half-hearted bourgeois-democratic reforms as a way forward out of South African (and world) imperialism's rapidly escalating economic crisis.

The ANC/SACP for the moment remain the mass-movement leadership, and could still figure in progressive developments to come, but in the current rapidly-changing situation, the paramount need is for Leninist understanding. Likening ANC attitudes to middle-class liberal-democrat attitudes as demolished in 'Two Tactics' is a way of emphasising the gulf between Bolshevism and the ANC/SACP's current political line. Build Leninism. Joe Harper

Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested. VI Lenin
South West Bulletin
[P&P Bulletin Publications (South West), BOX 32, 82 Colstom St., Bristol BS1 5BB]
No.20 Friday May 21 1993

P&P South West Bulletin. If you would like more information about the South West Bulletin or the ILWP, please contact PO Box 50, London SW 17 9NL

U.S leadership crisis deepens. All out trade war looms closer.

The increasing U.S desperation to secure a world trade agreement to its advantage, against its Japanese and European rivals, and the diplomatic manoeuverings to "crush the French opposition" over agriculture, "pressure" the Germans over interest rates, and use U.S "clout" to "bring the Japanese into line" over "opening up their domestic market" etc. is further evidence of preparations for a full-scale trade war, rather than the "optimistic signs" for a "peaceful expansion of the world economy" as dreamed of by the bourgeois apologists for imperialist exploitation.

The latest U.S leadership set-back in the Balkans is further confirmation that the imperialist leadership of the world is in total crisis over insoluble economic and trade war contradictions.

After many blustering threats of air-strikes (which still can't be ruled out) and armed intervention etc. and pontification about the "moral issue of our time" and "Fascism on the march", the U.S leadership has now declared that it is a "European problem" after all.

It has thereby undermined its own "world leadership" and its own "clout" in the trade negotiations, and at the same time exposed where the main tensions lie, between the major imperialist rivals themselves.

The U.N security council is now unwilling to even meet, so scared are they of further exposing their divisions, and further undermining their own ruling class confidence:

THE rancorous international differences over how to respond to the Balkan crisis worsened yesterday when Washington signalled a retreat from becoming embroiled in a "European problem" and a United Nations Security Council meeting of foreign ministers was called off to avoid exposing further the participants’ lack of consensus on Bosnia.

After weeks of talking up the merits of limited air strikes by United States planes against Bosnian Serb positions and calling for arms to be channelled to Bosnian government forces, but failing to gain West European backing for such moves, the US administration made clear it was now distancing itself from a spearhead role in trying to settle the Bosnian conflict.

"We will not act alone in taking actions in the former Yugoslavia," Mr Christopher told the House of Representatives’ foreign affairs committee.
	
"At heart this is a European problem."

The real U.S interest in the Balkans, as the following extract from U.S bourgeois opinion illustrates, is in demonstrating world leadership - which they have completely failed to do - so that they can 'call all the shots' in Tokyo:

Why should America take a stand in the Balkans? Moralists say the answer is easy: the Serb campaign of "ethnic cleansing" of Bosnian Muslims amounts to a new form of genocide, and challenges the world to make good on its pledges of "never again." 

Realists say it’s a tougher call: American interests aren’t really at stake, since Serbs don’t threaten U.S. territory and Bosnian oil doesn’t fuel American cars. But are the two standards really at odds? Doesn’t the United States have a larger national interest in offering global leadership and reminding the world that it can act as a force for good? Americans derive tangible benefits from the perception that we’re a country that stands for more than its own petty self-interest; it enhances our authority to call for free trade in Tokyo, or to help dictate the economic future of the Third World and former Soviet bloc. Yet we can’t enjoy the benefits of that role without bearing the costs. To be seen as standing for a higher good, we have to be willing to fight for a higher good.

Our stature as the last true superpower also demands that we be prepared to use force not only in our own defense but in defense of international law and democratic values. After the Gulf war, Panama and Grenada, no one could doubt our ability to do just that. But there must have been doubts about this particular president’s will to send Americans into combat. A product of the Vietnam era who never served in uniform, avoided the draft and has clashed publicly with the Pentagon brass—would he be able to play commander in chief convincingly? The Kaddafis and Saddams of the world were watching and might have drawn ominous conclusions if they judged he couldn’t. All the more reason that having threatened the use of U.S. force, Clinton has to make good if the Serbs don’t comply. This isn’t another campaign promise on which Clinton can fudge and waffle, without worrisome consequences for American credibility.

The 'cold war' imperialist agenda of trying to ensure the final break up of the old Yugoslav socialist federation, and its workers state ideology of inter-ethnic co-operation is rapidly being over-taken by the new 'hot war' inter-imperialist economic trade war rivalry.

The increasing contempt with which rival-challenging imperialist powers will regard U.S leadership and dominance will further escalate the tensions, as their confidence in challenging U.S leadership grows, on more and more fronts.

These challenges in themselves will add to the panic and paralysis in the U.S administration, undermined as it already is by its completely out-of-control national debt problems, now forecast to be increased by another trillion dollars by 1997 if Clinton’s 5 year budget plan gets through.

It is this growing world imperialist crisis which is undermining all bourgeois self-confidence and belief in the 'system', and it is this crisis which has to be addressed in order to make sense of the widespread bureaucratic chaos and confusion now afflicting ever larger areas of imperialist society.

Such is the depth of middle class unease at the way society is going, that even such establishment sources as BBC's Panorama is reporting that the slump exploitation of workers is now going 'too far', as anti-trade union legislation, speed-ups, contract changes, mass sackings and fascist management styles are all making themselves felt, and the postwar reformist consensus is ripped up.

The following extract from the capitalist press, expressing "a teacher's opinion" shows how fundamental questions about the whole direction of society are being raised - albeit unconsciously - and underlines how only a comprehensive Leninist explanation of society can challenge the reactionary confusion being thrown up, as well as supporting the anti-establishment challenge at the same times:

Formerly enthusiastic classroom teachers are being turned into robots who view students simply like a factory assembly line where the parts of the curriculum are moulded into them at a fixed time in a fixed order.

The analogy is apt. As a strategy of control known more commonly as scientific management, the present reform of teaching in Britain’s state education sector has less to do with raising standards than it has to do with de-professionalising teaching and political expedience.

First proposed by an American, Frederick Winslow Taylor, in 1895, scientific management was believed to herald a reign of technocrats who would oversee "a conflict-free, high consumption utopia based on mass production".

Taylor’s basic approach was to apply to manual operations the principles that machine designers had learned to apply to the work of a tool during the early part of the 19th century. By breaking a task down into its component parts, and then re-arranging and re-integrating those parts in the most "efficient" way, his method had one overwhelming advantage over the straightforward division of labour. It empowered management. For the first-time, managers knew not only what each worker should do, but how it should be done, and how long the task should take. Sound familiar?

Taylor developed his ideas after studying labourers loading pig-iron. After careful observation, he was able to issue precise instructions to workers on how to increase the daily load of coal per man from 16 tons to 59 tons, and the loading of bricks from 120 to 350 per man per hour. The steel works was consequently able to reduce its work-force from 500 to 140 and the company reaped huge financial benefits. Taylor’s ideas were adopted in many factories in the USA and in Britain, and spread to Russia.

To Lenin, scientific management was not exclusively a capitalist’s dream, but had an application in socialist production also. Lenin chose to ignore the fact that Taylor’s whole approach involved treating workers as if they were no more than unfeeling machines. In fact, their lack of initiative, or creative spark, was actually a pre-condition for the efficient implementation of his ideas.

The subordination of human activity to the constraints of the clock and the assembly line entered into our culture and are now manifested in a far more sophisticated and complex way in the 1988 Education Reform Act, where the process of teaching, not manual labour, was institutionalised.

Fragmentation of the profession, by reducing education to strictly delineated, standardised components that any "technician" can deliver, not only places control for education with those who devise the components and their assessment, but will eventually enable management to keep wages down. Not only are nonconformist staff easily replaced, but the whole process of curriculum standardisation moves the education "industry" one step closer to automation. Robots may seem a little far-fetched, but interactive national curriculum computer programmes for each attainment target, key stage, and standard assessment task must seem a most attractive proposition for the beleagured Secretary of State for Education. Computers don’t have unions.

Not surprisingly Taylorism met with strong opposition from the US unions at the turn of the century.

Today’s teachers are objecting not just to the time and motion experts who have decreed that they must increase their output to allow for the delivery and testing of an overly prescriptive, reactionary curriculum - they are objecting belatedly to the loss of autonomy and professional judgement that such reforms represent. Teachers must be taught to know their place.

Taylor’s principals were adopted by Albert Speer in his economic organisation of the Third Reich, with a few adaptations. Scientific management techniques were used to run military production, forced labour and racial genetics programmes including genocide.

British off-the-cuff innovation, eccentricity, enthusiasm, creative genius, doggedness and sheer hard work proved more flexible to the task of war. Those same qualities need to be cherished now, in order to achieve the sort of flexible, inspired teaching that our children need in preparation for the unpredictable world of the new millennium.

Whilst teachers are absolutely correct in asserting that current government chaos over educational reform, currently reflected in the testing fiasco, is doing nothing to 'raise standards' and that a large element of the whole reform programme is to do with the introduction of 'scientific management' (the curriculum, the tests, appraisal and the back-door introduction of performance related pay, point in this direction - it is nevertheless absurd to then draw the conclusion that scientific management, in itself, is what is wrong. The whole of imperialism is shot to pieces with contradictions at every level, and it is increasingly incapable of managing anything, 'scientifically' or otherwise. The current education chaos is proof of this.

What is wrong is that 'Scientific' management is in the hands of the wrong class.

Under capitalism, 'scientific' management means increased exploitation of workers through increased productivity. Under workers control (the dictatorship of the proletariat) it meant increased productivity with increased benefits for all in society, not just the tiny handful of millionaires who profit under capitalism.

Lenin was absolutely clear about what the world's first workers state was taking from 'Taylorism'. To claim that Lenin "chose to ignore" that, under capitalism, 'Taylorism' was exploitative, is simply anti-communist ignorance, which is easily answered by reading what Lenin actually said:

The Immediate tasks of the Soviet government. March 1918);

The more class-conscious vanguard of the Russian proletariat has already set itself the task of raising labour discipline. For example, both the Central Committee of the Metalworkers’ Union and the Central Council of Trade Unions have begun to draft the necessary measures and decrees.105 This work must be supported and pushed ahead with all speed. We must raise the question of piece-work106 and apply and test it in practice; we must raise the question of applying much of what is scientific and progressive in the Taylor system; we must make wages correspond to the total amount of goods turned out, or to the amount of work done by the railways, the water transport system, etc., etc.

The Russian is a bad worker compared with people in advanced countries. It could not be otherwise under the tsarist regime and in view of the persistence of the hangover from serfdom. The task that the Soviet government must set the people in all its scope is—learn to work. The Taylor system, the last word of capitalism in this respect, like all capitalist progress, is a combination of the refined brutality of bourgeois exploitation and a number of the greatest scientific achievements in the field of analysing mechanical motions during work, the elimination of superfluous and awkward motions, the elaboration of correct methods of work, the introduction of the best system of accounting and control, etc. The Soviet Republic must at all costs adopt all that is valuable in the achievements of science and technology in this field. The possibility of building socialism depends exactly upon our success in combining the Soviet power and the Soviet organisation of administration with the up-to-date achievements of capitalism. We must organise in Russia the study and teaching of the Taylor system and systematically try it out and adapt it to our own ends. At the same time, in working to raise the productivity of labour, we must take into account the specific features of the transition period from capitalism to socialism, which, on the one hand, require that the foundations be laid of the socialist organisation of competition, and, on the other hand, require the use of compulsion, so that the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat shall not be desecrated by the practice of a lily-livered proletarian government.

The ridiculous chauvinism about the " Great British qualities of off-the-cuffness" etc. merely proves again how spontaneous middle class protest against government chaos cannot, in itself, rise above the most backward crap. British "off-the-cuff" innovation led to humiliating defeats like Dunkirk. Soviet proletarian dictatorship tore the guts out of Nazi fascism in the greatest military victory in human history.

There is nothing to defend in previous education reforms, and there is nothing to recommend in the latest government reforms, in that they have all led to, and are a part of the current chaotic farce.

Only by fighting to put all phenomena into a world historic class struggle context, and by constantly re-evaluating everything in the light of current events, can the correct understanding of the crisis in imperialism be reached.
Build Marxist-Leninist science. Build the ILWP. D Watts

Discussion.

Last week's South West bulletin compared the approach Lenin made to the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia in 1905 with the current revolutionary crisis in South Africa.

The following extracts from Lenin's pamphlet 'Two tactics of social-democracy in the S-D revolution' can be read substituting, (albeit crudely, and bearing in mind the historical differences), the current South African regime for the Czarist autocracy, the ANC/SACP for the constitutional democrats' position, and the PAC/Trotskyite ultra-left for the New-Iskra position.

The Leninist revolutionary position needs to be put.

D. Watts

At the present revolutionary juncture the question of the convocation of a popular constituent assembly is on the order of the day. Opinions are divided as to how this question should be solved. Three political trends are taking shape. The tsarist government admits the necessity of convening representatives of the people, but under no circumstances does it want to permit their assembly to be popular and constituent. It seems willing to agree, if we are to believe the newspaper reports on the work of the Bulygin Commission,7 to a consultative assembly, which is to be elected without freedom of agitation, and by a system of restrictive qualifications or one that is restricted to certain social estates. Since it is led by the Social-Democratic Party, the revolutionary proletariat demands complete transfer of power to a constituent assembly, and for this purpose strives to achieve not only universal suffrage and complete freedom to conduct agitation, but also the immediate overthrow of the tsarist government and its replacement by a provisional revolutionary government. Finally, the liberal bourgeoisie, expressing its wishes through the leaders of the so-called "Constitutional-Democratic Party",8 does not demand the overthrow of the tsarist government, nor does it advance the slogan of a provisional government, or insist on real guarantees that the elections will be absolutely free and fair and that the assembly of representatives will be genuinely popular and genuinely constituent. As a matter of fact, the liberal bourgeoisie, the only serious social support of the Osvobozhdeniye trend, is striving to effect as peaceful a deal as possible between the tsar and the revolutionary people, a deal, moreover, that would give a maximum of power to itself, the bourgeoisie, and a minimum to the revolutionary people—the proletariat and the peasantry.

Such is the political situation at the present time. Such are the three main political trends, corresponding to the three main social forces in contemporary Russia. We have already shown on more than one occasion in Proletary (Nos. 3, 4, 5)* how the Osvobozhdeniye group use pseudo-democratic phrases to cover up their half-hearted, or, to put it more bluntly and plainly, their treacherous, perfidious policy towards the revolution. Let us now see how the Social-Democrats appraise the tasks of the moment. Excellent material for this is provided by the two resolutions quite recently adopted by the Third Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party and by the "Conference" of the Party’s break-away section. The question as to which of these resolutions appraises the political situation more correctly and defines the tactics of the revolutionary proletariat more correctly is of enormous importance, and every Social-Democrat who is anxious to perform his duties intelligently as propagandist, agitator, and organiser, must study this question with the closest attention disregarding all irrelevant considerations.

By the Party’s tactics we mean the Party’s political conduct, or the character, direction, and methods of its political activity. Tactical resolutions are adopted by Party congresses in order to accurately define the political conduct of the Party as a whole with regard to new tasks or in view of a new political situation. Such a new situation has been created by the revolution that has started in Russia, i.e., the complete, decisive, and open break between the overwhelming majority of the people and the tsarist government. The new question concerns the practical methods of convening a genuinely popular and a genuinely constituent assembly (the theoretical question concerning such an assembly was officially settled by Social-Democracy long ago, before all other parties, in its Party programme).

Since the people have broken with the government and the masses realise the necessity of setting up a new order, the party which set itself the object of overthrowing the government must necessarily consider what government should replace the old, deposed government. There arises a new question concerning a provisional revolutionary government. To give a complete answer to this question the party of the class-conscious proletariat must clarify: 1) the significance of a provisional revolutionary government in the revolution now in progress and in the entire struggle of the proletariat in general; 2) its attitude towards a provisional revolutionary government; 3) the precise conditions of Social-Democratic participation in this government; 4) the conditions under which pressure is to be brought to bear on this government from below, i.e., in the event of there being no Social-Democrats in it. Only when all these questions have been clarified, will the political conduct of the party in this sphere be principled, clear, and firm.

Let us now consider how the resolution of the Third Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party answers these questions. The following is the full text of the resolution:

"Resolution on a Provisional Revolutionary Government "
Whereas:
1) both the direct interests of the proletariat and those of its struggle for the ultimate aims of socialism require the fullest possible measure of political freedom, and, consequently, the replacement of the autocratic form of government by the democratic republic;
2) the establishment of a democratic republic in Russia is possible only as a result of a victorious popular insurrection whose organ will be a provisional revolutionary government, which alone will be capable of securing complete freedom of agitation during the election campaign and of convening a constituent assembly that will really express the will of the people, an assembly elected on the basis of universal and equal suffrage, direct elections and secret ballot;
3) under the present social and economic order this democratic revolution in Russia will not weaken but strengthen the domination of the bourgeoisie which at a certain juncture will inevitably go to any length to take away from the Russian proletariat as many of the gains of the revolutionary period as possible:
"Therefore the Third Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party resolves:
a) that it is necessary to spread among the working class a concrete idea of the most probable course of the revolution, and of the necessity, at a certain moment in the revolution, for the appearance of a provisional revolutionary government, from which the proletariat will demand the realisation of all the immediate political and economic demands of our programme (the minimum programme);
b) that subject to the alignment of forces and other factors which cannot be exactly predetermined, representatives of our Party may participate in the provisional revolutionary government for the purpose of waging a relentless struggle against all counter-revolutionary attempts and of defending the independent interests of the working class;
c) that an indispensable condition for such participation is strict control of its representatives by the Party, and the constant safeguarding of the independence of Social-Democracy which strives for the complete socialist revolution, and, consequently, is irreconcilably opposed to all the bourgeois parties;
d) that irrespective of whether participation of Social-Democrats in the provisional revolutionary government is possible or not, we must propagate among the broadest sections of the proletariat the idea that the armed proletariat, led by the Social-Democratic Party, must bring to bear constant pressure on the provisional government for the purpose of defending, consolidating, and extending the gains of the revolution.".....

Of what significance is a provisional revolutionary government in the present revolution and in the general struggle of the proletariat? The resolution of the Congress explains this by pointing at the very outset to the need for the "fullest possible measure of political liberty", both from the standpoint of the immediate interests of the proletariat and from the standpoint of the "final aims of socialism". And complete political liberty requires that the tsarist autocracy be replaced by a democratic republic, as our Party programme has already recognised. The stress the Congress resolution lays on the slogan of a democratic republic is necessary both as a matter of logic and in point of principle, for it is precisely complete liberty that the proletariat, as the foremost champion of democracy, is striving to attain. Moreover, it is all the more advisable to stress this at the present time, because right now the monarchists, namely, the so-called Constitutional-"Democratic" or the Osvobozhdeniye Party in our country, are flying the flag of "democracy".

To establish a republic it is absolutely necessary to have an assembly of people’s representatives, which must be a popular (i.e., elected on the basis of universal and equal suffrage, direct elections, and secret ballot), and constituent assembly. That is exactly what is recognised further on in the Congress resolution. However the resolution does not stop at that. To establish a new order "that will really express the will of the people" it is not enough to term a representative assembly a constituent assembly. Such an assembly must have the authority and power to "constitute". Conscious of this the Congress resolution does not confine itself to the formal slogan of a "constituent assembly", but adds the material conditions which alone will enable such an assembly to carry out its task properly. This specification of the conditions enabling an assembly that is constituent in name to become one in fact is imperatively necessary, for, as we have more than once pointed out, the liberal bourgeoisie, as represented by the Constitutional-Monarchist Party, is deliberately distorting the slogan of a popular constituent assembly, and reducing it to a hollow phrase.

The Congress resolution states that a provisional revolutionary government alone, and one, moreover, that will be the organ of a victorious popular insurrection, can secure full freedom to conduct an election campaign and convene an assembly that will really express the will of the people.

Is this thesis correct? Whoever took it into his head to dispute it would have to assert that it is possible for the tsarist government not to side with reaction, that it is capable of being neutral during the elections, that it will see to it that the will of the people really finds expression. Such assertions are so absurd that no one would venture to defend them openly; but they are being surreptitiously smuggled in under liberal colours, by our Osvobozhdeniye gentry. Somebody must convene the constituent assembly; somebody must guarantee the freedom and fairness of the elections; somebody must invest such an assembly with full power and authority. Only a revolutionary government, which is the organ of the insurrection, can desire this in all sincerity, and be capable of doing all that is required to achieve this. The tsarist government will inevitably oppose it. A liberal government which has come to terms with the tsar and which does not rely in full on the popular uprising, cannot sincerely desire this, and could not accomplish it, even if it most sincerely desired to. Therefore, the Congress resolution gives the only correct and entirely consistent democratic slogan.

But an appraisal of a provisional revolutionary government’s significance would be incomplete and wrong if the class nature of the democratic revolution were lost sight of. The resolution, therefore, adds that a revolution will strengthen the rule of the bourgeoisie. This is inevitable under the present, i.e., capitalist, social and economic, system. And the strengthening of the bourgeoisie’s rule over a proletariat that has secured some measure of political liberty must inevitably lead to a desperate struggle between them for power, must lead to desperate attempts on the part of the bourgeoisie "to take away from the proletariat the gains of the revolutionary period". Therefore, the proletariat, which is in the van of the struggle for democracy and heads that struggle, must not for a single moment forget the new antagonisms inherent in bourgeois democracy, or the new struggle.

Thus, the section of the resolution which we have just reviewed fully appraises the significance of a provisional revolutionary government both in its relation to the struggle for freedom and for a republic, in its relation to a constituent assembly, and in its relation to the democratic revolution which clears the ground for a new class struggle.

The next question is that of the proletariat’s attitude in general towards a provisional revolutionary government. The Congress resolution answers this first of all by directly advising the Party to spread among the working class the conviction that a provisional revolutionary government is necessary. The working class must be made aware of this necessity. Whereas the "democratic" bourgeoisie keeps in the background the question of the overthrow of the tsarist government, we must bring it to the fore and insist on the need for a provisional revolutionary government. Moreover, we must outline for such a government a programme of action that will conform with the objective conditions of the present period and with the aims of proletarian democracy. This programme is the entire minimum programme of our Party, the programme of the immediate political and economic reforms which, on the one hand, can be fully realised on the basis of the existing social and economic relationships and, on the other hand, are requisite for the next step forward, for the achievement of socialism.

Thus, the resolution clearly defines the nature and the purpose of a provisional revolutionary government. In origin and basic character such a government must be the organ of a popular uprising. Its formal purpose must be to serve as an instrument for convening a national constituent assembly. The content of its activities must be the implementation of the minimum programme of proletarian democracy, the only programme capable of safeguarding the interests of a people that has risen in revolt against the autocracy.

It might be argued that a provisional government, being only provisional, cannot carry out a constructive programme that has not yet received the approval of the entire people. Such an argument would merely be the sophistry of reactionaries and "absolutists". To refrain from carrying out a constructive programme means tolerating the existence of the feudal regime of a corrupt autocracy. Such a regime could be tolerated only by a government of traitors to the cause of the revolution, but not by a government that is the organ of a popular insurrection. It would be mockery for anyone to propose that we should refrain from exercising freedom of assembly pending the confirmation of such freedom by a constituent assembly, on the plea that the constituent assembly might not confirm freedom of assembly. It is equal mockery to object to the immediate execution of the minimum programme by a provisional revolutionary government.

Finally, we will note that the resolution, by making implementation of the minimum programme the provisional revolutionary government’s task, eliminates the absurd and semi-anarchist ideas of giving immediate effect to the maximum programme, and the conquest of power for a socialist revolution. The degree of Russia’s economic development (an objective condition), and the degree of class-consciousness and organisation of the broad masses of the proletariat (a subjective condition inseparably bound up with, the objective condition) make the immediate and complete emancipation of the working class impossible. Only the most ignorant people can close their eyes to the bourgeois nature of the democratic revolution which is now taking place; only the most naive optimists can forget how little as yet the masses of the workers are informed about the aims of socialism and the methods of achieving it. We are all convinced that the emancipation of the working classes must be won by the working classes themselves; a socialist revolution is out of the question unless the masses become class-conscious and organised, trained, and educated in an open class struggle against the entire bourgeoisie. Replying to the anarchists’ objections that we are putting off the socialist revolution, we say: we are not putting it off, but are taking the first step towards it in the only possible way, along the only correct path, namely, the path of a democratic republic. Whoever wants to reach socialism by any other path than that of political democracy, will inevitably arrive at conclusions that are absurd and reactionary both in the economic and the political sense. If any workers ask us at the appropriate moment why we should not go ahead and carry out our maximum programme we shall answer by pointing out how far from socialism the masses of the democratically-minded people still are, how undeveloped class antagonisms still are, and how unorganised the proletarians still are. Organise hundreds of thousands of workers all over Russia; get the millions to sympathise with our programme! Try to do this without confining yourselves to high-sounding but hollow anarchist phrases—and you will see at once that achievement of this organisation and the spread of this socialist enlightenment depend on the fullest possible achievement of democratic transformations.

Let us continue. Once the significance of a provisional revolutionary government and the attitude of the proletariat towards it have been made clear, the following question arises: is it permissible for us to participate in such a government (action from above) and, if so, under what conditions? What should be our action from below? The resolution supplies precise answers to both these questions. It emphatically declares that it is permissible in principle for Social-Democrats to participate in a provisional revolutionary government (during the period of a democratic revolution, the period of struggle for a republic). By this declaration we once and for all dissociate ourselves both from the anarchists, who answer this question in the negative in principle, and from the tail-enders in Social-Democracy (like Martynov and the new-Iskra supporters), who have tried to frighten us with the prospect of a situation in which it might prove necessary for us to participate in such a government. By this declaration the Third Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party irrevocably rejected the new-Iskra idea that the participation of Social-Democrats in a provisional revolutionary government would be a variety of Millerandism,' that it is impermissible in principle, as sanctifying the bourgeois order, etc..…

In the final analysis force alone settles the great problems of political liberty and the class struggle, and it is our business to prepare and organise this force and to employ it actively, not only for defence but also for attack. The long reign of political reaction in Europe, which has lasted almost uninterruptedly since the days of the Paris Commune, has made us too greatly accustomed to the idea that action can proceed only "from below", has too greatly inured us to seeing only defensive struggles. We have now undoubtedly entered a new era— a period of political upheavals and revolutions has begun. In a period such as that which Russia is now passing through, it is impermissible to confine ourselves to old, stereotyped formulas. We must propagate the idea of action from above, must prepare for the most energetic, offensive action, and must study the conditions for and forms of such action. The Congress resolution brings two of these conditions into the forefront: one refers to the formal aspect of Social-Democratic participation in a provisional revolutionary government (strict control by the Party over its representatives), the other, to the nature of such participation (without for an instant losing sight of the aim of effecting a complete socialist revolution).