Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways.  The point however is to change it.  Karl Marx
Economic & Philosophic Science Review 
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No 0826 October 31st 1995                                                                                                                               10p 

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No isolation ward big enough to contain contagion of imperialist crisis. Revolution is the only cure.

As the imperialist crisis drives the whole world further into the trade-war arms-racing phase of struggle for monopoly capitalist domination of the world's markets, the attempts to isolate and contain specific milestone developments (like the Barings or Daiwa collapse; or merger-mania among banks, utilities and manufacturing giants; or the aggressive commercial spying, bribery and trade-war threats surrounding the battle for supremacy in the manufacture and export of cars and trucks, fighter aircraft etc.; or military-diplomatic trade-war realignments working their way through under cover of supposed preoccupations about 'peacekeeping' or monetary union etc. etc.) as being just 'temporary regrettable consequences of misguided local policies, quite easily righted' if only the particular New Deal, New Labour or New Right nostrums favoured by the commentator were at once adapted and held to, — sound ever more desperately hollow.

That desperation can be heard between the lines even when it's the traditional Threadneedle Street establishment trying to impress the world with its steady hand on the tiller:

Mr George, addressing the Japanese Federation of Bankers' Associations in Tokyo, set out the principles for the Bank committing public funds to a bank rescue. He said that banks were bound to fail sometimes when short-term deposits were withdrawn because of a loss of confidence.

Mr. George emphasised, however, that the Bank would step in to rescue banks in cases where there was likely to be '‘contagion" in the financial system, leading to other bank collapses. He said the potential for such contagion had increased.

"These days it is not just banks or credit institutions that have the capacity to cause systemic instability - nor is the risk of systemic problems contained within national frontiers," Mr George said.

Global competition had led to the development of new markets, instruments and techniques.

"‘Securities firms and other investment institutions of all kinds sometimes take huge positions in financial markets" he said. "These intermediaries are no more immune from failure than banks are and their counterparties, and investors too, may take fright in an atmosphere of crisis," Mr George said.

He said that such complexity required regulators to co-operate more across national borders, and industry boundaries. But any threat to financial stability was still likely to be transmitted through banks.

Public funds should only be available "to prevent the emergence of a systemic problem, not to prop up an individual bank, no matter what that bank happens to be.

"Where there is systemic risk, you cannot pick and choose, supporting some institutions but not others, because in some sense you judge that some are more 'worthy' than others. The risk of contagion is likely to be the same," he said.

Mr George said the commitment of public funds "can be daunting" but failure to extend support "may ultimately turn out to be even more costly" for the central bank involved.

Whatever Eddie George can tell Japanese bankers about the best way to manage the banking crises ahead (tips on how to isolate 'contagious' bank failures without completely draining the public purse etc.) will barely raise an ironic laugh. Faced like everybody else with the practical task of trying to ride out the uncontrollable degeneracy at the finance capital heart of imperialism under trade-war conditions, Asian bankers will probably be paying a lot more attention to what Leeson has to say about British establishment financial wisdom and rectitude to his Singaporean captors.

But when it's a case of the New Right demanding that European bridges be burned, the welfare state overturned, and Britain's lot be thrown in with America and/or for a bright new low-wage future as an honorary 'Asian Tiger', or conversely when the New Dealers demand that Keynesianism be given another chance, the desperation starts getting a lot closer to the surface:

The new right embraces easily the most right-wing ideological position since the war, a high-risk gamble, but in the current circumstances the least bad option.

The party—creature and ally of the British state throughout its history—has declared war on the very institution that made it. A new iron has entered Conservatism's soul. The liberal, one-nation wing has joined the Redwood/ Portillo right in regarding lower public expenditure not merely as a means of lowering taxes, but of reinventing Britain as an Asian-style success story. The extraordinary growth rates of the "Asian tiger" economies—Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia —are said to have been built upon a small state with minimal public expenditure, light regulation and low taxation. Britain must follow their example.

The minimal state is not just a preoccupation of those who believe in curbing the state’s size for ideological ends: it is seen as the route to prosperity and growth. The redefinition of priorities does not stop there. Britain must reorganise its trade and foreign policy to be less Eurocentric and concentrate on building trade and diplomatic links with these new Asian markets. This requires, as a minimum, a semi-detached relationship with over-regulated Europe. This is the foreign policy position which Malcolm Rifkind announced in Blackpool. A crushing argument is used with doubters: globalisation and competition make any other course impossible.

So compelling is the logic of all this, that if the European Union makes it difficult for Britain to pursue its new destiny of becoming the Hong Kong of Europe, there are a growing number joining the Maastricht rebels in arguing that Britain must leave the Union.

The entire concept rests upon an incorrect theory of Asian success; Asian growth has not turned on low government spending, but rather on high investment and saving ratios, nearly twice as large as anywhere else in the world. Cheap and plentiful investment capital is the most important determinant of growth everywhere, not just in Asia. Low government spending did not deliver such high saving and investment rates; almost everywhere, these result from government action—savings are compulsory and governments ensure that the savings are used for industrial and commercial investment. In South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan and even Singapore the government has gone even further—directly starting industrial enterprises while protecting and sponsoring others.

The assault of Keynesianism on the New Right reveals as much about the assailant as about the victim. Certainly the New Dealers' account of the mangy Imperialist lion trying to get born again as a streetwise tiger is spot on. But they want to have their cake and eat it too, still sneakily looking for inspiration from the very same 'economic miracles' so beloved of the New Right, only drawing opposite conclusions (state intervention, managed trade and investment as the key to revived capitalist fortunes and effective antidotes to free market anarchy), and conveniently washing their hands of the 'excesses' of 'Asian authoritarianism' (in fact just the essence of all bourgeois dictatorship, which the New Dealers want more than anything else to prop up), pretending it is possible to keep a 'human face' on capitalism by settling for more modest growth.

Right now things may indeed be looking pretty miraculous through the boardroom windows of Daewoo, as the push to dominate markets in Asia, Eastern Europe and the West gets faster and harder:

Daewoo, the South Korean industrial conglomerate, yesterday succeeded in its bid to take over the Polish state-owned FSO car maker.

The agreement, to be signed on November 14 in Warsaw, will make Daewoo the second largest car maker in Poland after Fiat of Italy.

Daewoo, the South Korean industrial conglomerate already expanding aggressively into European car manufacturing, is planning the first assault by an east Asian vehicle maker on all sectors of western Europe's commercial vehicle markets, including heavy trucks.

It intends to launch a range of Korean-built trucks, up to and including tractor units for heavy haulage, starting in 1997. This will complement its moves to make cars, lighter trucks and vans in Europe, already set in progress by the purchase of Czech and Polish commercial vehicle makers.

Initial target export areas for the Korean-built trucks are other fast growing countries in South-East Asia.

However, it is intended that these will be quickly followed by eastern Europe, notably Romania, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Poland and the Czech Republic, where Daewoo is already establishing various vehicle manufacturing projects.

West European markets including the UK, are expected to follow before the end of the decade.

The announcement this week that Daewoo is to spend about $250m on taking a 65 per cent stake and the further development of the facilities of Steyr-Daimler-Puch, the troubled Austrian engineering group, is in part another step in the strategy - although there are other things about Steyr attractive to Daewoo, including weapons manufacturing, in which the Korean group is also heavily involved.

But whether deregulation or state intervention is supposed to be the capitalist panacea to which such runaway 'success' is attributable, no stable economic progress can be hoped for in this winner-takes-all battle for markets. If South Korea makes it, then what about Malaysia? And if Malaysia makes it, what about the rest?

The urgent rush to stake market claims is not an expression of vital economic health, but a desperate last inflationary dash for affluence before the credit bubble bursts, as capitalism itself comes close to admitting on occasion:

Seoul’s Ministry of Finance and Economy said South Korean companies must use their domestic capital to finance at least 20 per cent of foreign investments worth $100m (£63.3m) or more, or 10 per cent below that amount.

The new policy reverses a 1992 decision allowing South Korean companies to rely completely on foreign loans to finance overseas investments.

Yesterday’s measures are meant to discourage foreign investments by making them more expensive since South Korean interest rates are 5-6 percentage points higher than in overseas.

Direct foreign investments by South Korean companies grew by 97 per cent to $3.7bn last year, while another $2.47bn was reported for the first eight months of this year.

Borrowings abroad to finance the investments have been climbing, with net foreign debt having risen from $10bn to $14bn during the first quarter of 1995.

South Korean companies have been expanding abroad to avoid possible trade barriers and escape high wages among domestic workers, with the low-cost south-east Asian region attracting the most investment.

Government officials have already begun to express worries about the "hollowing-out" of the industrial base.

Officials have also cited "reckless" competition among the main industrial groups to establish facilities abroad as another reason curbs should be imposed.

Malaysia's main problem is a rapidly expanding current account deficit. In 1994, the deficit was M$11.6bn (£2.9bn) or 6.6 per cent of gross domestic product. This year there are forecasts the deficit could amount to M$18bn, or nearly 10 per cent of GDP, considered a dangerously high figure by several local and foreign economists.

While a large proportion of the deficit is accounted for by capital flows and services costs such as insurance and shipping, the trade deficit has also widened substantially - from :M$0.7bn in the first seven months of 1994 to M$6.9bn in the same period this year.

The government says there is no cause for alarm. "The problem we face is the problem of success," says Mr Anwar. Much of the trade deficit is accounted for by so-called lumpy items such as aircraft. There are also imported goods associated with a multi billion dollar infrastructure building programme.

Government planners insist Malaysia is not going the way of Mexico. The deficit is not being financed by short-term borrowings but long-term capital inflows from abroad. Unlike Mexico, Malaysia has a high domestic savings rate.

However, economists warn that to depend on capital inflows from abroad and not act to narrow the deficit could have serious consequences. The situation is clearly viewed with alarm by many foreign investors. This year they have stayed well away from the Kuala Lumpur stock market, traditionally one of the region’s top performers.

The import of consumer goods and overall consumer spending are rising fast. The streets of Kuala Lumpur are jammed with Mercedes-Benz and BMW cars, driven by the country’s newly wealthy.

Some observers warn that a bubble is about to burst in the overheated property sector, where prices for some housing have gone up by more than 40 per cent in the past year. The construction sector is expected to expand by more than 15 per cent this year.

Bank Negara has repeatedly called for banks to exercise more restraint in lending: however, this has continued to soar, with consumption credit growing by more than 30 per cent over the last year.

It is this reality of accelerating imperialist crisis which gives such an edge of hysteria to every brave new world nostrum that is proposed:

THERE is little point in talking to Britain on European Union reform, a senior foreign affairs strategist in Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s party said yesterday. The best policy was to present it with facts it had no choice but to accept.

Mr Lamers, who has repeatedly called on the British government to abandon its “half-in, half-out attitude” to Europe, said that differences of political opinion between Bonn and London were such that "joint action is hardly possible. Things are difficult, although we’ve tried again and again. At the moment a working group [like the one on France] would make no sense."

If....monetary union were put into effect without consulting London, the British government would have no choice but join the system, "maybe even immediately".

"Some people think [monetary union] is a German idea being foisted on others, but it’s really a major modernisation, a kind of fitness programme for European economies," he said.

PRESIDENT Jacques Chirac of France arrived here last night hoping to persuade increasingly sceptical German leaders that he shares their vision of a federal Europe and is committed to the fiscal rigour needed to join a single European currency by the end of the millennium.

Amid growing German anxiety that France under Mr Chirac is ditching the close partnership essential to the future of the European Union, he and his host, Chancellor Helmut Kohl, were expected to concentrate on seeking a common platform for next year’s inter-governmental conference to chart the EU’s future.

But Paris and Bonn appear divided on the central issues: concerted foreign and security policies; an end to the national veto in EU decision-taking; expansion of the EU to the former communist east; the criteria for a single currency; and common immigration, asylum and anti-crime policies to enable open borders between them.

The main question is whether Mr Chirac, confronted by social unrest at the prospect of austerity policies, will be able to reduce his current budget deficit of 5.6 per cent to the 3 per cent required for EMU membership.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development recently raised doubts of France’s chances of meeting the 3 per cent ceiling, and on Tuesday Germany’s six leading economic think-tanks added their voices to the doubting chorus.

Theo Waigel, the finance minister, said Germany would not only insist on a rigorous application of the EMU terms, but would also demand a further agreement likely to toughen the conditions for a single currency.

A TIDE of nationalism and depression could drive Europe back to the miseries of the 1930s if it abandons economic and monetary union, President Herzog of Germany said yesterday. 

In a speech to the European Parliament, Herr Herzog lamented the doubts and bickering over the EMU project in recent weeks. The only hope for a stable future lay with EMU, he said; ending it would lead to “trade wars, protectionism, the renationalisation of economic policy and deflation if not depression,” he said. “That would be a throwback to the 1930s.”

A foretaste of that fate could be found in the trade war between Japan and the United States, he added. “Please ask people in your constituencies whether they want us to play with fire in this way,” he begged MEPs.

The hysterical shift in tone between optimistic pep talks about "fitness programmes” and dire warnings about the imminent consequences of failure is characteristic. The harder the bourgeoisie try to put on a brave face about the future capitalism offers, the less convincing they sound.

Whether it's Helmut Kohl talking up the prospects of European monetary union, or Clare Short blethering about 'the next Labour government', the tale of good times ahead is coupled with ever gloomier warnings of the calamities to follow if the 'right path' is not stuck to.

Kohl pretends that, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Europe is unprecedentedly well-equipped to overcome all the rivalries and conflicts of the past and achieve harmonious development. "European unity is the other side of the coin of German reunification", he puffs, staking his political career on making a go of it.

But in the same breath he warns that getting EMU now is a matter of war or peace, and that delay will ruin further efforts at European unity for a very long time, hinting darkly that failure will unleash horrors supposedly consigned to an unrepeatable past.

Yet how can both these things be true? How is it supposed that the countries of Europe, 'freed from the divisions imposed by the communist yoke', are both better prepared than ever before to sink their differences and plough a common furrow, and at one and the same time closer to falling out in a bigger way than in the last half century?

The truth is that it was never the 'iron curtain' which kept dividing Europe, but capitalism. It was imperialist crisis which divided Europe, driving resurgent German, Italian and Japanese imperialism up against the anglo-saxon status quo in WW2. It was US imperialism which imposed Cold War division on Europe after the war.

And it is renewed imperialist crisis now which has brought trade and currency antagonisms back to dominate world bourgeois politics.

Once again, German imperialist survival in the coming period depends on its ability to expand its influence to the domination of markets at the expense of all rivals. Doing this via the convenient 'ultra imperialist' fiction of a 'democratic' common currency, common defence structures, dissolving national boundaries etc, has obvious attractions for the German bourgeoisie. But whatever the diplomatic form angled for by Kohl and the CDU, the class-historical imperative for capitalist Germany can only ever be towards the unrivalled sway of German imperialism, over France and the rest of the European bloc, and ultimately over the USA and the world market as a whole:

However far-fetched such ambitions must still seem at this early stage, no other approach ultimately makes any sense for Germany, or any other of the key imperialist players, as the crisis of overproduction worsens. And it is German leadership's awareness of this, and not simply the routine carrot-and-stick arrogance of Kohl's diplomatic style, which forces out the underlying hysterical self-contradiction. Effectively: 'Europe no longer has any reason to be divided, and is moving towards mature convergence... But if Europe doesn't get itself united now, it will tear itself to pieces for ever'. The implicit plea for everyone else to 'save Germany from repeating its own history' (by the 'simple' expedient of voluntarily according German imperialist influence the priority in Europe which uneven world capitalist development has made inevitable) sounds more like a threat than merely a 'never again' restraining awareness of 'national guilt' (as the moralists on all sides like to portray it).

Meanwhile, the attempts by New Labour's born-again red-baiters to kickstart public opinion in Britain into a mood of 'patriotic' moral crusading (as its own contribution to stoking up chauvinist enthusiasm for the bruising trade-war sorting out to come) are marked by levels of hysterical inconsistency much like Kohl's, as in this New Statesman outburst from Clare Short:

There are two nightmares. The first is that Labour loses the next election. This looks increasingly unlikely, but is not impossible. If it did happen, Labour would cease to be a party of national power, and the values for which we stand would be deeply undermined. The second nightmare is a one-term government. This would constitute a deep political failure. It is difficult to predict where this would leave us. But history teaches us that if times are hard and the democratic left fails, fascist forces usually flourish.

Thus we are approaching a seminal moment for the history of the British left.

I am not sure that those who sit around moaning about Tony Blair have really faced what is at stake.

If the lefties have all been kicked out of the party, leaving the 'democratic left' to flourish under the benign gaze of Blairism, and if (as is repeatedly claimed) New Labour speaks for the majority of people in 'new', 'young' Britain, then why on earth should an early electoral setback of either kind prove such a "deep political failure", turning bright dawn to darkest fascist night? Such a deep-running social movement as New Labour is claimed to be could surely weather a few "hard times" — after all, it's only a matter of months since New Labour was invented.

The truth is that neither Short, nor any of the yuppie clique running the corpse of the Labour party now the holy reformist ghost has departed, believe a word of all that optimistic guff. All that now unites these spivs and opportunists is the cynical calculation that, if they stay lucky, follow the right PR advice, and wave the Union Jack hard enough, they might just be able to hit a winning streak at the electoral lottery before the inherited party machine simply collapses beneath them out of sheer historical pointlessness.

That's why for Short and the rest it feels like now or never. With all the reformist bridges burning behind them, they so far have nothing under their feet except a lot of hot air (endless Berlusconi-style hype, a swelling but largely invisible paper-membership, and some temporary opinion poll success won largely on the back of an unbroken string of Tory own-goals), all of which might yet leak away even BEFORE these frauds ever find themselves in power.

Because it is not some vague "hard times" which are breathing down everyone's necks, but the clear return of the kind of world crisis associated with the twentieth century's last two periods of imperialist war and communist revolution. What forced Labour to purge itself of every phony lefty and trot still deluded enough to go looking there for socialism was not just some arbitrary rightwing barminess on the part of Kinnock, Smith and Blair. Still less was it, as the appalling liar Short pretends, some triumphant resurgence of the "democratic left".

The purging of Labour on behalf of the bourgeois ruling class was part and parcel of the waning of the postwar reformist politics associated with the boom and welfare capitalism, and the waxing of the fascist slump politics made necessary by the growth of imperialist crisis. Now New Labour has got a limited span in which to demonstrate to the satisfaction of its class masters that it really is the best contender for the job of mobilizing public opinion behind the 'new' politics required in the dawning period of fascist warmongering slump.

It is not surprising that the note of do-or-die hysteria should be sounding so stridently in Short's New Statesman outburst:

My own conclusion, after very many years of activism in the left spaces of the party, is that the Trotskyist entryism has been massively destructive for the left.

There are many who have not faced up to this. My view is that if the democratic left fails to draw the line between itself and the Trotskyist tradition, it will continue to fail to bring its potential strength, creativity and conviction to the Labour Party.

The left has had enormous difficulty in understanding the entryist movements. This is because the left has always been libertarian and has needed the freedom of democratic debate. It is also because the Trotskyist tradition is deeply dishonest. It is a movement born out of a tradition that organised for revolution in a repressive and authoritarian state and therefore believed it to be completely honourable to lie about one's political analysis.

Thus we have members whose first loyalty is or was to Militant, Socialist Organiser or the International Marxist Group or its successors, who have an organised political project but who will not tell the rest of us what they are thinking. Thus we have motions and composites that talk about the things we care about most - the welfare state, the minimum wage, public services, etc - that use our language of passionate commitment, but make demands that they know cannot be realised. This is the classical "transitional demand” that wins support because it aspires to things we want, but is designed to expose the limits of reformism and thus win us all to a revolutionary perspective. The problem with this is that the left always wants to support the most radical demands. And thus the left, well beyond the Trotskyist entryists, keeps lining up behind impossible demands that cannot be delivered in practice. The consequence is that the whole left becomes mired in a dishonest politics.

On top of this, there is a special culture associated with the Trotskyist movements. They see themselves constantly as purer than anyone else and they denounce with bitterness and venom those who do not agree with them. All those in positions of leadership throughout the Labour Party and trade union movement are sneered at for not being proper socialists, or for lacking in principle or necessary courage. And thus this tradition brings to our meetings and culture a habit of nastiness which makes life very difficult for those who do not follow "the line” and also makes us very unattractive to the outside world.

Some may imagine that this analysis is exaggerated, but in the case of Socialist Organiser, the Labour National Executive committee saw copies of its organising documents. They were completely cynical and manipulative. They spelled out that Socialist Organiser was a Leninist vanguardist movement, in the party but not of the party. The documents even went on to suggest that new members could be found by targeting lonely students, creating dependence by helping them with their work or social life, and making sure that Socialist Organiser became indispensable to the student before politics were mentioned.

Given the developments in the former Soviet Union, it is surprising that these sects are as strong and resilient as they are. One would have thought they would feel the need to pause for thought. Perhaps they are doing so. We wouldn’t know because they don't share their true views with us. Perhaps they feel even more certain because they always did argue that the revolution was betrayed.

The anti-communist subjective idealist Trots can be left to defend themselves against the born-again red-baiting sophists of New Labour. The 'leader' cult around Blair, and the obsessive bureaucratic imposition of the FORMS of discipline (in the absence of any profound motivating leadership understanding, and therefore of any rational disciplined solidarity), are at least as barmy as anything attempted around Healy, Slaughter or Furedi etc, (all much worse than even the most grotesque personality cult distortions in the Stalinist wing of revisionism). Both born-again New Labour and the former 'revolutionary' entryists are equally at home preying on the insecure and the dim, exactly as Short describes. The Blairites and the Trots richly deserve each other.

But what really lies behind this tirade (against an enemy which always loathed proletarian dictatorship worse than capitalism, and which in any case has long since picked up its leaflets and shuffled off) is the lurking fear that the crisis of imperialism is in actual fact NOT about to roll back at the command of the smarmy Canutes now running Labour, and the accompanying dim recognition of the communist revolutionary content which every such crisis has proved to have contained within it since the beginning of modern capitalism.

When it comes right down to it, the hatred is not primarily aroused by the Trots at all.

After all, Short and her ilk rubbed along uneventfully enough with this rival variety of fake-"left" bourgeois idealism for years.

What REALLY goads on the fear and loathing is the dawning realization that the epoch of wars and revolutions, which was supposed to have been declared forever over with the demise of the Soviet Union, is just cranking up all over again, and less controllably than ever before. It is this rankling doubt about the solidity of the 'post-Soviet' new order (in which Short's new shadow cabinet perch hopes to be translated into a blue-chip stake in a solid bourgeois future) which sets even the slightest lefty gesture towards the mildest protest politics completely beyond the pale, and makes any mention at all of revolution, from however impeccably anti-Soviet a source it comes, a complete anathema.

The joke is that, having spent all those years looking for clever new ways to misrepresent and undermine the proletarian dictatorship achievements of the Soviet socialist camp, the Trots are now being shunned by the Blair cultists — for having been part of a tradition whose historical connections with the Bolshevik revolution are enough to make them dangerously suspect! Never mind that those relations were from the start characterized by treachery and opportunism on the side of Trotskyism. Just having anything to do with the history of wars and revolutions is enough to damn them: guilt by association.

The Trots (long since departed or run to Labourite seed) are just the whipping boys for what is really biting these frauds: the unresolved historical significance of the Soviet Union.

The deliberate ambiguity of the crack about the Trots' revolt against a "repressive and authoritarian state" (Tsarist autocracy? or Leninist proletarian dictatorship? They failed to overthrow either...) shows what's really on her mind: the spectre of over seventy years of planned socialist existence in the USSR, not a dead-end nor an instant 'betrayal', but an indelible historic proletarian achievement laying down a permanent marker for all future communist advance.

And as for lefty posturing around "impossible demands", what ELSE did MAINSTREAM Labour reformism EVER do for all those years? It is the mainstream demands for equality of educational opportunity for all, decent housing for all, social justice for all, quality healthcare for all, proper jobs for all, UNDER CAPITALISM (in the full knowledge that the anarchy of free market existence makes the stable universal achievement of such basic democratic goals a complete impossibility so long as bourgeois dictatorship remains un-overthrown) which SET the dishonest agenda which the Trots followed, one careful step to the 'left'. The dishonesty is all on the side of reformism (and of course the Trot fleas who hopped off it when the old dog died, leaving the yuppies in sole possession, the 'demands' safely etherealized into Blair's vague "passion for education" or Short's mock-sincere "language of passionate commitment").

Helping to kick her democratically elected 'sister' Liz Davies off the gravy train, and publicly recanting her own earlier left posturing, seem to have done the job, getting Short the transport post in the shadow cabinet. (Though she still has to watch her step, it seems, judging from the frosty reception for her supposed liberalism over drug policy.)

Actually RUNNING a capitalist transport system, or capitalist schooling, or capitalist arms production, or capitalist anything else in the fascist slump crisis ahead is going to prove a lot more difficult however, whichever bourgeois gang holds the reins, organized behind whatever shade of bourgeois political philosophy.

In its warmongering overproduction crisis, imperialism is doomed to draw into decisive revolutionary action the very proletarian forces whose exploitation alone has made modern capitalist development possible. All further social advance now lies through the overthrow of imperialist rule and the imposition of proletarian dictatorship.

The ILWP's job is to struggle to explain that to all comers, and first of all to itself. Help build it.  DH [Hull]

Royal circus even sinks right off the Elstree scale for low farce. British Establishment goes catatonic. And letting the CIA's Abstract Expressionist cat out of the bag will hardly save the rest of imperialism going the same way.

The scalded-cat reaction of the British bourgeois media shows how humiliated the ruling-class feels over its head-of-state being made such a fool of by a French-Canadian disc jockey.

If the revealed naïve dim-wittedness of Buckingham Palace was really only a matter of "bad taste by a foreign telephone hoaxer", then the press, radio, and television would not have needed to go into such contortions to try to salvage some royal and national pride.

The fantastic lengths to which broadcast and newspaper commentaries went to try to avoid the Queen looking the silly nerd that she is only confirmed the enormity of the Establishment's embarrassment.

If what this greasy-collared pop-radio oik had perpetrated was so "trivial", then why was it necessary for half-a-dozen of Fleet Street's biggest guns to get into the gutter themselves to try to hoax the Radio DJ back, thus infinitely extending and guaranteeing his international celebrity status?

The reason is that the British monarchy, like British imperialism itself, is so naff and enfeebled that any half-wit can now ridicule it successfully, - because the emperor really does have no clothes.

The comedian Pierre Brassard and the trick he has played have to come in for all this pompous indignation in a vain attempt to prove at the 11th hour that Britain's "hereditary monarchy" as the supposed "revered head of state" is not what the disc jockey has revealed it to be, - a cringe-making joke of an institution.

It is the whole notion of the "Royal family traditions" and the "Constitutional monarchy" which is in bad taste, not the exposure of it yet again as a useless folly run by unengaging and talentless simpletons, weakly trying to distract attention from the class-ridden racket that British society is.

The Queen and company are supposed to come across as modern-minded, democratically-motivated unstinting servants of Britain and British interests, doing an "unmatchable job" as the "neutral" and "uncriticisable" head-of-state to which "all classes and every manner of person can relate".

In the real world, this monarchical nonsense is as damaging a liability as any state power could subject itself to in its most bizarre and delinquent fantasies.

What is the British ruling class up to in struggling on with this monstrous burden towards ever-more-certain chaos and recrimination?

The insane calculation must be that British imperialism really can make a come-back in the international pecking order of political and economic power, and the daft hope must be that keeping on with the sad "land of hope and glory" traditions is the best bet for keeping the loyalty of the working class in what will be some very rough times ahead.

But all that is happening in truth is just paralysed self-delusion by the imperial bucketload.

Historically, British imperialist power can obviously have no chance at all of reviving.

World imperialist power itself is on its last legs as the United States of America, Germany and Japan battle it out for economic and political supremacy in what can only end as a catastrophic trade war and devastating slump, followed inevitably by renewed fascist warmongering. Ageing and ailing British imperialist economic performance in this final armageddon will be like a paper kite in a hurricane.

In terms of propaganda control, continuing to promote the Royal charade for inspiring state-loyalty in slump-hit workers after a century of cruel class-biased betrayal of one promise after another to ordinary people to make a "land fit for heroes to live in", etc, would seem to be not the smartest or most imaginative move even in the best of times. If the worst of times return, which is a 100% certainty when this longest-ever worldwide 'free-market' boom degenerates into the greatest capitalist slump in history, then fobbing the proletariat off with appeals to be "loyal to our Royal family", etc, is likely to become the crassest and most explosive provocation that can be imagined. Revolutionary upheavals are sparked off in such ways.

The British ruling class is addle-brained beyond recall. Only the most despairing fantasists could think they might be able to persuade the nation in radio commentaries that really it was the Queen who had put one over on the uncouth DJ by "smartly" beginning to see through his ruse, and beginning to show some "amused, well-bred disdain for this intrusion", etc.

The transcript conveys no such message but reveals naïve credulity at Buckingham Palace almost beyond belief.

If the Queen is not in charge of the British head-of-state's own contribution to Britain's foreign policy (which presumably even all good bourgeois would hope is so), then why was the call not immediately referred to the Foreign Office or Downing Street?

If the Queen is in charge of her own say in Britain's foreign affairs, as head of state, - then even God would not be able to Save the Queen or anything else.

This conversation is on the level of a certified imbecile talking to Monty Python's dead-parrot salesman. The command of important state negotiations and diplomatic acumen in the English language is nonexistent. In French, it is so farcical that one still finds it hard to believe that such things can happen. Once more the well-worn cliché must be re-stated: This real-life event was so absurd that even the wildest satirical comedy could not remotely hope to make up such laughable nonsense.

This embarrassed ill-informed politeness, - talking about crucial Canadian affairs of state to its supposed prime minister as though to a distant neighbour in a laundrette about some vaguely heard-about bereavement or other bad news, - must break some kind of record for philistine inanity.

As for the whopper about "the family going well", there would be laundrettes in the High Streets of Britain that would go out of business with such poor-spirited customers. What does she mean "going well"? They're a bleeding disaster.

"They are going off everywhere" the Queen adds. And to less purpose, and at greater useless expense than words can describe, exactly the response provoked by Her Majesty's chat-up line "See you in Auckland". At least they established, with some difficulty, that this was in New Zealand. But the brain clouds over at trying to imagine some point for such attendance at a Commonwealth Prime Ministers Conference.

And the world will never know what Brassard had in view when he suggested the Queen just put on a hat to be in fancy costume for Hallowe'en. "Good" replies the Queen. 'Good grief', will be most people's response.

Apart from all this, what has happened to the Constitutional Monarchy's famed 'impartiality' between parties? What if Quebec wanted to be separate French Canadians but still in the Commonwealth? How would the Palace interference in the referendum result look then? Grounds for leaving the Commonwealth? Nice one, Ma'am.

Only the utter fatuousness of British Establishment shenanigans anyway, defuses this particular faux pas. Who cares at all, any more?

Even on Ireland, on its own doorstep, British imperialism's word is no longer the one which counts as far as the final colonial surrender to the Irish national-liberation struggle is concerned. Washington is doing the real negotiating with Dublin and Sinn Féin.

London's latest capitulation to the inevitable ultimate withdrawal from colonial control and the dismantling formally at last of the non-existent monstrous bastard statelet of 'Northern Ireland' and the hated Partition, has been Mayhew's rushed legislation virtually giving a timetable for all further prisoner-of-war releases ("convicted terrorists") over the coming few years.

Once again, this is the longstanding snail's-pace withdrawal at work, concealing at all costs any victory for IRA/Sinn Féin in the national-liberation struggle in order to try to appease any remaining fascist-colonial resistance among the diehard British colonist community ("Ulster Unionists") to the reunification of Ireland.(See ILWP Books vol 8).

The timetable for prisoner release is not quite the triumphant immediate release of all political prisoners that the nationalists would have wanted, but it does look like yet another important piece in the jigsaw puzzle being assembled by British imperialist weakness and defeat, Irish nationalist intransigence, and concerned holding of the ring by the USA in order to save imperialism from more damaging publicity about rotten colonialism, and to suit huge financial lobbying interests around the Clinton presidency to try to ensure re-election next year by assuring Irish-extraction voters of a Washington-brokered peace treaty for Ireland.

At the same time, and in the same direction, the requirement for would-be barristers in 'Northern Ireland' to swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen is being quietly discontinued in line with Ireland's eventual reunification.

The disintegration of the old 'Ulster Unionist' camp continues apace, meanwhile, the latest break-up being the disenfranchisement of the Orange Order colonial-religious freemasonry from automatic participation in UUP decision-making, against the bitter resistance of the notorious Orange sash-wearers.

Thirty years ago, before the latest upsurge of the Irish national-liberation struggle began to put renewed pressure on the doomed British colony, there was just one 'Ulster Unionist' community, with one united UUP party in which the Orange Order fanatics were securely bedded. Now there are at least six 'Unionist' parties or factions, endlessly squabbling with each other over the decline of their colonial fate and their 'No surrender forever' British community; relegation of the Orange Order fanatics to the background; and endless accusations against each other of even further retreats in the pipeline.

At any time now, fresh negotiating concessions will quietly be slipped out by British imperialism, - under continuing US and Irish nationalist pressure, and with just a few timid squeaks from remaining 'Ulster Unionist' intransigence, - towards dropping London’s empty propaganda posturing about "the need for IRA weapons decommissioning before Sinn Féin can be granted fullscale negotiating rights" at the definitive Ireland reunification and peace settlement.

Not that US imperialism, pulling the rug from under its oldest rival ("ally"), is smoothly in control of the 'free world' system as might appear. No one is. The system is soon to be totally out of any control as the relentless money-market chaos and currency crises eventually culminate in the complete collapse of the dollar or some other vital currency.

Capitalism's fundamental contradiction keeps on inevitably worsening, - bank-debt based monopoly-imperialist expansion building up huge, relatively-'surplus' trade-war rivalry positions, which must put the leading powers at each others throats and drive the super-exploited and slump-hit masses towards revolution all over the world (see lead story).

The real feelings of 'unity' in the bogus 'New world order' were betrayed by German imperialist Chancellor Kohl's contemptuous refusal to attend the 50th anniversary jamboree of the United Nations where the all-powerful Deutschmark is denied a permanent seat on the Security Council (as is the equally important Japanese Yen) because of the old-established but clearly decadent Anglo-US-French imperialist stitch-up.

The US imperialists are currently pre-occupied with internal back-stabbing in preparation for next year's presidential-election bloodletting over whose monopoly-capitalist coalition gets to wield supreme political office for the subsequent four years, - the manic and arbitrary 'peace settlements' being imposed everywhere by American imperialist influence being part of the Clinton coalition's posturing to 'look strong internationally', etc.

The real progress of the imperialist 'New world order' requires a far different measuring-stick.

The latest revelations of the CIA's astonishing role in turning bourgeois ideology on to Abstract Expressionist painting postwar as a counter to the powerful appeal of Soviet realist art in music, the cinema, drama, the visual arts, and everything else, demonstrates how little things are what they seem in the West.

The pretence by the CIA apologists is that the idiot daubings of Jackson Pollock & Co were "proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the USA, devoted to the freedom of expression and intellectual achievement without any rigid barriers as to what you must write, do, say, paint, etc" as was supposedly the situation in the Soviet Union and the socialist camp.

But the only real understanding there can be of this utter anarchy, - since no one has yet been able to say what is the point or meaning of any particular Pollock paint-splashing, apart from as wallpaper design, - is that the CIA's real aim was to deny art any meaning at all as the only way to prevent pro-imperialist works being laughed out of the court of world public opinion by the obviously preferable and more humane pro-socialist works. Just try, for instance, doing a sympathetic painting of US pilots dropping napalm to match against a sympathetic painting of Vietnamese peasant families suffering that napalm. There can be no hiding fascist art, and so better to have no art at all, or pretend that the only good modern virile art is completely abstract meaningless art.

The sympathetic capitalist press does its best with this smelly story but the stench of cynical philistine hypocrisy and decadence is difficult to conceal:

FOR DECADES in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.

The existence of this policy, rumoured and disputed for many years, has now been confirmed for the first time by former CIA officials. Unknown to the artists, the new American art was secretly promoted under a policy known as the 'long leash' -arrangements similar in some ways to the indirect CIA backing of the journal Encounter, edited by Stephen Spender.

The decision to include culture and art in the US Cold War arsenal was taken as soon as the CIA was founded in 1947. Dismayed at the appeal communism still had for many intellectuals and artists in the West, the new agency set up a division, the Propaganda Assets Inventory, which at its peak could influence more than 800 newspapers, magazines and public information organisations. They joked that it was like a jukebox: when the CIA pushed a button it could hear whichever tune it wanted playing across the world.

The next key step came in 1950, when the International Organisations Division (IOD) was set up under Tom Braden. It was this office which subsidised the animated version of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, which sponsored American jazz artists, opera recitals, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s international touring programme. Its agents were placed in the film industry, in publishing houses, even as travel writers for the celebrated Fodor guides. And, we now know, it promoted America's anarchic avant-garde movement, Abstract Expressionism.

Until now there has been no first-hand evidence to prove that this connection was made, but for the first time a former case officer, Donald Jameson, has broken the silence. Yes, he says, the agency saw Abstract Expressionism as an opportunity, and yes, it ran with it.

To pursue its underground interest in America's lefty avant-garde, the CIA had to be sure its patronage could not be discovered. "Matters of this sort could only have been done at two or three removes," Mr Jameson explained, "so that there wouldn’t be any question of having to clear Jackson Pollock, for example, or do anything that would involve these people in the organisation. And it couldn’t have been any closer, because most of them were people who had very little respect for the government, in particular, and certainly none for the CIA. If you had to use people who considered themselves one way or another to be closer to Moscow than to Washington, well, so much the better perhaps." This was the "long leash". The centrepiece of the CIA campaign became the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a vast jamboree of intellectuals, writers, historians, poets, and artists which was set up with CIA funds in 1950 and run by a CIA agent. It was the beach-head from which culture could be defended against the attacks of Moscow and its “fellow travellers” in the West. At its height, it had offices in 35 countries and published more than two dozen magazines, including Encounter.

The Congress for Cultural Freedom also gave the CIA the ideal front to promote its covert interest in Abstract Expressionism. It would be the official sponsor of touring exhibitions; its magazines would provide useful platforms for critics favourable to the new American painting: and no one, the artists included, would be any the wiser.

This organisation put together several exhibitions of Abstract Expressionism during the 1950s. One of the most significant, The New American Painting visited every big European city in 1958-59. Other influential shows included Modem Art in the United States (1955) and Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century (1952).

Because Abstract Expressionism was expensive to move around and exhibit, millionaires and museums were called into play. Pre-eminent among these was Nelson Rockefeller, whose mother had co-founded the Museum of Modem Art in New York. As president of what he called "Mummy's museum", Rockefeller was one of the biggest backers of Abstract Expressionism (which he called "free enterprise painting"). His museum was contracted to the Congress for Cultural Freedom to organise and curate most of its important art shows.

The museum was also linked to the CIA by several other bridges. William Palev, the president of CBS broadcasting and a founding father of the CIA, sat on the members’ board of the museum’s International Programme. John Hay Whitney, who had served in the agency's wartime predecessor, the OSS, was its chairman. And Tom Braden, first chief of the CIA’s International Organisations Division, was executive secretary of the museum in 1949.

Now in his eighties, Mr Braden lives in Woodbridge, Virginia, in a house packed with Abstract Expressionist works and guarded by enormous Alsatians. He explained the purpose of the IOD.

"We wanted to unite all the people who were writers, who were musicians, who were artists, to demonstrate that the West and the United States was devoted to freedom of expression and to intellectual achievement, without any rigid barriers as to what you must write, and what you must say. and what you must do, and what you must paint, which was what was going on in the Soviet Union. I think it was the most important division that the agency had, and I think that it played an enormous role in the Cold War."

He confirmed that his division had acted secretly because of the public hostility to the avant-garde: "It was very difficult to get Congress to go along with some of the things we wanted to do - send art abroad, send symphonies abroad, publish magazines abroad. That’s one of the reasons it had to be done covertly. It had to be a secret. In order to encourage openness we had to be secret."

The real point, of course, is that normal human understanding had to be perverted. What the Soviet Union and socialism stood for was what mankind had always aspired to. What US imperialist reaction stood for was contemptibly rotten. By perverting human understanding, good could be made to look bad, and black be made to look white. It was for this reason that the US imperialist establishment felt so slimy in promoting garbage, which is why it was done in secret. If there was any sense at all behind this totally vacuous "freedom of expression", then why would its 'democratic' promoters want to hide their connection with it at all costs?

And once the relentless reactionary decadence of bourgeois society's general historical path has corrupted human understanding to a sufficient extent (with the deliberate, lavish assistance from the CIA's bottomless coffers), then the endless fadism and fetishism thereafter will be largely self-promoting for a while, - for as long, probably, as the mindless boom delusions last. Despicable anarchic philosophy and taste rules for now. Let's see how things develop as soon as this imminent worldwide slump gets a grip.

The CIA's achievements in ideologically polluting the planet will, of course, also run into contradictions of their own 'free development' much as the Royal circus, used for mind-numbing its British subjects, must eventually provoke a revolutionary backlash once the stupidity has gone too far.

The attempted manipulation of political events in the former Soviet Union is getting into serious difficulty already, for example. Trying to prevent Yeltsin coming across on the international news services as a doomed laughing stock is now such a hopeless task for the CIA that even such dubious alternatives as General Lebed are being thought about as possible replacements.

A major concern is the likely return as parliament's biggest party of some former Communists and Agrarian allies, albeit now even more safely revisionist/reformist than ever. Washington may even have to start contemplating deals there to try to forestall a real revolutionary revival in Russia.

Communists are back in office across much of East Europe already, - harmlessly enough so far. But the former Soviet Union itself will be a much trickier affair, as the West itself admits, understanding the tremendous historical impact of 70 years of highly successful planned socialism.

The capitalist press itself continues to give a flavour of some of the profound social significance for former Soviet citizens of those dramatic transformations:

"Last weekend all of us were loading beet on to lorries. You know you can survive on the land only if you work collectively," said Irma, a woman dressed neatly and sensibly. This was no Soviet propaganda film, yet it was called The Collective Farm in the Name of Lenin.

Four years ago, the best and the brightest began leaving the farm to strike out on their own in the Brave New World of private farming. The chairman of the collective, Vassily Starodubstev, one of the leaders of the failed August 1991 coup, was languishing in prison. From the moment Boris Yeltsin — then a hero for reform and democracy — stepped down from his tank, the collective was in trouble. They were crippled by tax "inspections".

Today, bankrupt private farmers are hammering on the gates of the collective to be let back in, and Mr Starodubstev is once again behind his immense bank of phones, doing business. Big business.

Mr Starodubstev, the farm's dynamo, vets everything personally. He has been called everything from a Soviet dinosaur to a feudal baron. But for the 1,500 workers in the collective, he is admiringly known as "the Boss".

Statistics trip off his tongue: "From a collective that had to beg for its living — O.8 tons of grain and 6 tons of from each hectare; 1,600 litres from each cow — we now get yields of 5 tons of grain, 40 tons of beet per hectare and each cow produces 6,000 litres of milk a year, results which can be compared to any Western farm."

A portrait of Lenin beams down behind him, but Mr Starodubstev has always been a rebel. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, he was among the first to press for agrarian reform and more market freedom. His enemies were local party bureaucrats.

"I am often asked why I fought against the democrats, when I fought for so many years against the odious communists... I was struggling and I am struggling against the same people. Those who destroyed the party were not communists, they were functionaries. They were the most dangerous, and they managed to seize power."

Today Mr Starodubstev is running third on the party list of the Agrarians, set to storm back into national politics. The Agrarians and the Communists (he is a member of both) are on track to become the largest single faction in the new parliament.

The collective gives free nursery education, free housing and free medical treatment, pays for maternity leave, and subsidises milk, bread and electricity. It is the comforting hand of the lost Soviet state.

Outside, a crocodile chain of kindergarten children, their books stowed neatly in knapsacks, was marshalled across the empty main street. The street lights worked. The swimming pool and sauna were clean.

"You know, I can keep my front door open. But walk two steps out of here to Sokolniki" said Lena Yermakova, pointing to the town just across the road, "and everything is devastation." She was exaggerating, but to members of the collective, it seemed as though they inhabited an oasis.

Russians are fond of telling German visitors: "You gave us Marx, but kept the capital." But here was a place that appeared to have kept both. In common with other Russian farmers, the collective found the market hard going, unable to make money on staple produce. Milk, butter, even meat were undercut by foreign imports, which Russian farmers claimed were being "dumped" (they used the English word) on the market Their predicament was worsened by a state policy of freeing prices for industrial goods while maintaining low state prices for agricultural goods.

The effect was devastating. As the price of fuel spiralled, productivity slumped. The collective realised it had to diversify. It bought a bankrupt alcohol distillery and turned it round. It started a fur farm, turning thousands of Arctic foxes and minks into pelts for hats and coats. Recently it bought 50 machine tools, and somewhere on the vast estate six Greeks were hard at work training the kolkhozniki to use them to make fur coats.

RUSSIA'S invisible cities, communities of hundreds of thousands whose existence was a secret shared by the Kremlin and American spy satellites for 30 years, were declared open for investment yesterday. But the citizens of the 10 closed towns which build the country's nuclear weapons have grown to like living behind barbed wire.

"Virtually every one of the towns has carried out a poll on taking down the checkpoints and the wire, but because of the instability in the country and the rise in crime most people said they'd rather keep the restrictions," said Vladimir Dmitrevich, a resident of Zelenogorsk for 34 years. Although the atomic communities are no longer the pampered intellectual hothouses of Soviet times, he said, life was still relatively comfortable. And in Zelenogorsk the buses run on time. To the minute.

"It's probably be best to keep it closed from the law and order point of view," said Galina Kolygaeva, export manager for a textile factory in the closed town of Zelenogorsk. at the opening of the first Closed Cities Fair in Moscow. "If the city was open you could get criminal organisations coming in. We don't have that now."

Almost 700,000 people live in towns like Zelenogorsk in Siberia, formerly Krasnoyarsk-26. They are not marked on maps, but have become known and been given pretty names such as Zelenogorsk (Town of the Green Hills) and Lesnoy (Forested).

The most irksome travel restrictions on residents have been lifted — virtually all can now go abroad, for instance. Although friends and family still need permission to visit, only strangers and foreigners have problems getting access and, keen as they are for foreign investment, the nuclear workers are happy to keep it that way.

Clearly Starodubstev is acting with entrepreneurial spirit in ways which the bureaucratic revisionist leadership of the USSR would have been too small-minded to cope with and which would obviously have made waves. But Starodubstev is correctly clear that he remains a Communist, and the social aims of Communism, which he continues to partially implement, are of course in no way incompatible with any amount of entrepreneurial initiatives which raise productivity while not making impossible society's ultimate communist evolution.

If Duma leadership is captured by the Zhuganov coalition in December's fraudulent 'parliamentary' elections (from which Yeltsin is currently banning different 'liberal' parties under some obscure 'law' about supporting-signatures), an initial mere tinkering with existing 'reforms' is likely.

But with the world-dominant imperialist crisis (see lead story) in the process of opening civil-war vistas even in France, as the capitalist press is admitting - 

Increasingly, a picture is emerging of a country whose disaffected youth are at war with the status quo of their living conditions, including unemployment rates which reach 50 per cent in the worst areas.

Jean Espitalier, a police sociologist studying suburban violence in the Paris region, said: "We are dealing with young people who have nothing to lose. Some — and it is hard to quantify them — have a cause such as fundamentalism, and others have entered a crime spiral linked to drugs or petty delinquence."

In contrast to the interior ministry clampdown. President Jacques Chirac told French television viewers last Thursday: "We must first of all try to create an economy, work, employment [in the suburbs]. Little by little, public order will install itself."

The first signs were visible of the virtual state of emergency the French government is imposing on 1,300 troubled suburbs where 6 million people live.

After a week of clashes between youths and police throughout France, the interior ministry launched a new security plan yesterday. The children of Villepinte, on All Saints' holidays, were grappling with an addition to their vocabulary: the "fusil Flash Balls".

"It is a gun which fires rubber bullets." Five hundred of them are being distributed to police forces, along with bulletproof vests for constant use, faster and more unmarked cars and 2,500 military reinforcements.

But only yards away, a burnt-out Peugeot 104 was standing in the bus lay-by, as much as to say: Welcome to Fontaine Mallet — the Villepinte zone where police walk in fear. On Sunday, six youths threw stones and bricks at police officers. Yesterday morning, six were arrested, carrying a box packed with empty bottles, rags and white spirit — ingredients for Molotov cocktails.

Violence has been flaring on French housing estates since the beginning of last week, when youths smashed up several trams in Strasbourg. The authorities responded by posting soldiers armed with machine-guns in every carriage — a move inspired by the "Vigipirate" anti-terrorist plan in which troops have been sent to tourist areas.

Last weekend there was rioting in five Parisian suburbs. including the notorious Mantes-la-Jolie where a policeman was wounded in a shoot-out after his colleagues carried out an identity check on five youths.

In Villepinte, feelings were running high among a group of young men lining the entrance to one of the area's six-storey blocks of flats. "We've heard that the policeman in Marnes was ambushed. That's not good. But the guy who did it will get at least 20 years, whereas a cop who shoots a young guy just gets transferred" one said.

Police unions have given a mixed welcome to the security plan announced on Sunday by Jean-Louis Debré, the interior minister. The union representing most plainclothes police has welcomed it, whereas spokesmen for uniformed officers are sceptical.

Jacky Vallet, secretary-general for the Fedération Autonome les Syndicats de Police, most of whose members wear uniform, said: "These measures are just aimed at the effects of suburban problems, not the deeper causes such as drugs and a thriving parallel economy."

He said the clampdown could be perceived as provocation at a time when it is becoming increasingly unclear who is "the enemy" — a term used by Mr Depré in reference to measures taken against alleged fundamentalist groups.

But the riots in the past week appear unrelated to terrorist activity or even to overt racial tension.

Then what will rickety Russia's fate be when the slump really starts to bite? Build Leninism. JH