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 980 Tuesday Jan 5 1999                                                                                                                                    10p

Ridiculous pretence of 'new direction' for Labour after Mandelson fall. Not even the lifestyle arrogance of imperialism's current office-holding stooges will diminish. Little bits of just desserts here and there from reformist pressure is normal, but it must not confuse the unmistakable revolutionary pattern to all imperialist history. Without correct theory, there can be no correct party-building practice for the international working class. Until anti-communism is defeated, reformist illusions will continue to dominate and confuse the working class. Fake-'left' nonsense on Iraq is inseparable from their sour treachery to the workers states. Imperialist defeat is the only worthwhile perspective.

How will the toppling of Mandelson help prevent the women and children of Iraq from being terrorised and massacred by New Labour/British bombs again next week or in the near future?

It won't.

How will the renewed agitation against the overwhelming male dominance of the leading positions in British big business come to the assistance of Palestinian women and children regularly terrorised and massacred by Zionist imperialist bombs?

It won't.

How will Hillary Clinton's fisticuffs onslaught on Bill do anything for the starving millions in the Third World who are still paying more in debt-repayments to the West than they receive from high-minded Western aid and charity.?

It won't.

The world of 'reformist' struggles and concerns of all kinds will never be able to stop tyranny of this nature from regularly shaming civilisation on a planet dominated by the imperialist economic system.

In fact, the now uncontrollable financial and trade-war crisis, escalating internationally, will mean that such barbarism as the slaughter and/or starvation of innocent millions, worldwide, will relentlessly worsen, building to a climax of degenerate destructiveness.

That is the unmistakable and unchangeable pattern of the entire imperialist epoch, with World Wars I and II in this century (and a thousand other lesser wars too) bloodily confirming that pattern right into the modern era.

Can 'reformism' not change it??

Far from being a solution, 'reformism' is the largest part of the problem, - the grotesque illusion that "democratic pressure and change" can eventually provide a permanent cure for all capitalist society backwardness.

Genuine reform does take place. The general steady advance of civilisation does not come to a halt just because the mode of production & property relations of the capitalist/imperialist epoch specifically degenerates towards insoluble crisis and breakdown.

And reformist agitation overall, - on single issues and everything else, - obviously remains the general starting ground of all anti-imperialist struggle and conscious struggle for a socialist revolution.

What is more, ruling-class society can routinely be observed retreating in the face of democratic pressure, sometimes even before it becomes overwhelming.

And these reforms are a good thing.

The problem however is the FATALLY insidious way in which all of these developments start to sow deep-rooted ideological prejudices, frequently largely unconscious, that reformism is the natural order of things and is the way to solve EVERYTHING.

Utterly IMPOSSIBLE nonsense.

If pushed seriously and determinedly enough, capitalist society will always try to bend, if it can help avert all-out confrontation. But there will always come a point when if it tried to bend any further, the capitalist system itself would no longer be the capitalist system; it would break.

At that point the capitalist system always digs in its heels and deliberately goes for confrontation ON ITS OWN TERMS, AND IN FAVOURABLE CONDITIONS AT ITS OWN MOMENT OF CHOOSING.

This will be graphically seen shortly in Indonesia, for example.

It was seen in Chile, for example, in 1973 with Pinochet's fascist-military coup to halt the reforms which the Allende government was imposing on the capitalist system.

In a partial way, it was seen in Thatcherism and its deliberate decision to crush the 1984-85 miners strike at all costs and to destroy the coal industry in the hope of castrating the working class once and for all.

But the reformist mentality consciously denies the truth of all this. The reformist mentality intentionally rubbishes the Marxist scientific understanding of class
war: - that reformist struggle is the permanent condition of life under capitalism but that its most profound and serious purpose is to train the workers-movement leadership for revolutionary struggle, which will inevitably come.

Single-minded concentration on the changes that reformist pressure can win never limits itself to simply exulting in how capitalist-society backwardness has been pushed out of joint. 

Reform agitation becomes a never-ending way of life.

And this is so not just because capitalist society can obviously never amend its deeply corrupt and unjust economic and social relations sufficiently enough to remotely satisfy reformist agitation.

Reformism as a way of life becomes the essential class and philosophical outlook of entire swathes of petty-bourgeois-minded professional workers and labour aristocracy. They see their unique political and social niche in this kind of literate agitation.

But not only that. Reformism periodically becomes the glamour item inside capitalist politics, - the only way to save the system. And leading 'reformists' have frequently become fêted politicians throughout the imperialist system.

An entire careerist and opportunist mentality breeds effortlessly in such circumstances. A class attitude develops which does not remotely view reformism as merely the preparation of forces for the revolution. 

Exactly the opposite. The 'reformist' mentality evolves which regards all talk of revolution as a catastrophe, as contemptibly criminal. 'Respectable' and 'responsible' become the key notions in what effectively turns into fullscale permanent class-collaboration which garbs itself in however much fake-'left' demagogy thought necessary, but deliberately sets out to undermine all thought and understanding of class war as far and wide as possible. 

Anything seen as rocking the boat of 'sensible class compromise' is soon ostracised as dangerous or cranky extremism, which could "wreck things for everybody".

Often without realising it, 'sincere' reformist agitators imperceptibly start merging their outlook in with that of the bourgeoisie's main thrust of anti-communist propaganda and witch-hunting. 

The non-revolutionary approach to political struggle comfortably blends in with an anti-revolutionary outlook, and both submit easily to counter-revolutionary agitation whenever the situation demands it.

An alternative form of the 'left' demagogy of the 'sincere' reformists is the wide variety of activist outlooks embracing a 'can do' organisational mentality ranging all the way from single-issue extremists to class-war anarchists, including all kinds of workerist attitudes. 

While not necessarily spoiled for revolution by opportunist tendencies, they still scorn the fight for revolutionary theory because of a variety of Cold War legacies, - philistinism easily being Western consumerism's greatest achievement.

The problem with all these types from something like the Mandelson or Pinochet affairs is that once again, the delusion that "reformist pressure can work" gets another shot in the arm.

Sure, Mandelson has been forced out of office by popular resentment against that insolent high-society lifestyle from a supposed servant of the working class of West Hartlepool, and a good thing too.

But other than a pleasing rebuff to a monstrously reactionary opportunist, what else is this scandal supposed to achieve? An end to the high-society lifestyle of the entire New Labour government? No chance. An end to the high-society lifestyle of the entire House of Commons, including all its journalists and other attendants, complacent mini fat-cats luxuriating in the most lavish private club on the Thames in Central London that could ever be imagined, and all the while pretending to 'govern' the country and act as the guardians of its 'democracy', etc, etc??? No chance.

The racketeering will carry on full blast 24 hours a day all round Westminster, - graft & corruption, cash for access, cash for questions, bogus 'revelations' of the club-blackballing kind, mixed up with all the fornicating gossip, etc, etc.

But bringing down the arrogant Mandelson as a step in the right direction?? Not a chance. 

The corrupt-but-backbiting system simply puts up a scapegoat or two (who will all then be looked after subsequently, possibly even more lavishly than before) just to make it look as if 'standards prevail' and 'justice is done', etc, - but then goes on pigging it at the trough exactly the same as before, - or even worse. The pattern of government office under bourgeois rule never varies, whichever party is in power.

The Pinochet 'justice' racket saw even greater outpourings of 'popular liberal-democracy' sentiment, and almost certainly to even less effect ultimately, and feeding even more sinister illusions.

What 'international justice' are they talking about? What criminally misleading nonsense!!

Western imperialism is the great 'free world' butcher of the post-l945 era, not a minor thug like Pinochet who was simply a hired stooge for the CIA counter-revolutionary agency of the American ruling class. 

The CIA, as ordered by Washington (the Nixon-Ford regime) and as condoned by London (the Heath regime) wrote Pinochet's script for him, and supplied all the important material requirements and personnel of the armed coup d'état and its subsequent military-dictatorship regime.

What sort of stupid joke is it to threaten to put Pinochet on trial and then in jail for an anti-communist coup which was entirely the work and the will of the West's 'free world' leaders, and was just one of scores of such counter-revolutions engineered by the world-dominant imperialist system since 1945???

It is a 'reformist' joke, a piece of bleeding-heart liberal nonsense designed entirely to carry on fooling people that there can be 'justice' internationally in the world, and that the small voices of the little people can sometimes cause even the mightiest to fall, etc, etc, etc. What sick insane garbage.

The decadent and semi-comatose British imperialist establishment (and government) has simply got its lines in a twist temporarily and lost the plot a little, that is all. 

It will be a miracle if Pinochet does not end up getting the same VIP treatment to leave again free as a bird (as he was lavishly treated to by New Labour's Foreign Office when he arrived at Heathrow some months ago for his London medical-specialist appointment, - hospitality liberally flowing at the VIP Lounge as ordered by the Defence Department (Pinochet was also in the market for fresh arms orders for his fascist-military dictatorship forces who still pull all the strings in Chile, in spite of the Generalissimo's 'retirement')).

Sick joke No 3 remains the Clinton scandal where the American 'reformist' left (aped by most of the British 'left') refuse to put the boot into this degenerate (exploiting the authority of his office to demand sex from vulnerable minions) on the grounds that his 'reformism' offers better than rightwing Republicans promise, and because Hillary is such a 'reforming' saint, nobly standing by her flawed husband.

What unbelievable gobshite:

JUST when it seemed that Bill and Hillary Clinton had suffered enough humiliation, the online Drudge Report claimed yesterday that she had struck him during a White House fight.

A furious Mrs Clinton was said to have "snapped" and hit Mr Clinton so hard that she left a visible bruise on his face. Secret Service agents had to separate them, it was said.

Matt Drudge has been compared to an 18th-century pamphleteer for the way he rushes unconfirmed gossip on to his website. The difference, of course, is that his message is conveyed to an audience far bigger than the habitués of a London coffee-shop.

His latest revelation comes not from his own inside sources but from those of the National Enquirer, the supermarket tabloid which he says will have a report about the fight in next week's issue. According to this account, the White House became a battleground as the impeachment controversy moved into overdrive. 

Verbal fights between the Clintons escalated until the President was physically assaulted. 

"Keep that bitch away, from me!" Mr Clinton was said to have told one agent. The President was also reported to have been stunned when his wife "lost it" and smacked him. He was hit so hard that he had to put on make-up for several days to cover the red spot.

The Clintons Incorporated are a huge big-business racket which Democrat Party big money sank huge investments into a long time ago as a potential future Presidential couple. They are both ruthless, grasping, opportunist crooks. 

Personally they hate each other. Their marriage is a total sham. Their domestic scrapping is closer to the ruthless internal discipline of a mafia 'family' demanding accountability for how the 'family business' is being managed, than the ups and downs of a man and wife. 

Hillary, and large parts of the Democratic establishment, are not best pleased at such a fortune-making golden opportunity as 8 years in the White House being frittered away, possibly, by Clinton's arrogant sexual predations. 

The millions of poor Black Americans who have spoken up for a reprieve for a 'good president' are being monstrously duped by the accumulated historical effects of 'reformist' nonsense. 

The Clintons are a wounded big business regime of routine imperialist viciousness (ask the slaughtered innocents of Iraq, Palestine, Khartoum, etc). Their lameness, whatever its causes, should be used to bring them down.

But such is the corrupting influence of reformist illusions of all kinds from all the anti-communist Cold War years that one might even expect men's groups to rush to Clinton's defence now demanding not only a reprieve but asking why feminist hypocrisy is silent about Hillary's violence, etc. 

Such is the confusion created by decades of anti-Marxist Philistinism.

Great 'reformist' breakthroughs are claimed for lifestyles and minority rights within domestic imperialism over the last 30 years. But however welcome such belated dents in capitalist society backwardness, and however encouraging such patterns of civilised progress in general, it must be asked what help has this all been to the sharpness and influence of world anti-imperialist consciousness???

The 'reformist' advances (women-only lists, etc) have seen more than 100 'Blair Babes' elected to the ruling party's parliamentary majority. But not one of them voted against or spoke against the blitzkrieg savagery of New Labour imperialist aggression, slaughtering and terrorising women and children in Iraq.

The 30 years of single-issue activist campaigning for the environment, minority rights, etc, etc, has bravely and ingeniously created 'alternative politics' where nothing else might have been happening at all, and many such elements famously rallied to the miners strike and other heroic struggles in the labour movement.

But the element of anti-imperialist consciousness within all that remains weak, a by-product of universal anti-communist confused thinking. 

There were protests against the renewed blitzing of Iraq. But the destruction and maiming went ahead nevertheless, and the fearful mass torture of embargo starvation continues to keep the Iraq masses diseased and hungry.

And the disastrous collapse of anti-imperialist understanding was underlined by the routine muddle-headedness of much of the 'left' propaganda against the bombing.

Much of this sought 'alternative ways of dealing with Saddam Hussein' and similar nonsense, missing the point of the protest completely. 

It is the arbitrary predatory bullying domination itself in world politics by imperialism which is the threat to civilisation, not the methods they choose by which to impose their will. It is the enforced rule by the most powerful imperialist exploiters which makes the world the explosively unjust and conflict-ridden mess that it is, not the particular type of savagery (blockade starvation or direct blitzkrieg) that is used to batter and intimidate any country which tries to function independently of the American diktat.

The most obscene illogicality of this "get Saddam some other way" supposed 'alternative' to imperialist warmongering is the 'excuse' that Iraq has 'sought to arm itself' in exactly the way that the West has taught the world to do. The even bigger joke, of course, is that Iraq was actually armed up to the eyeballs for years by the West itself when Saddam was acting as a local thug-stooge for American interests against other dominated and intimidated countries in the region (particularly Iran after the ayatollahs' 'revolution' against whom Saddam was armed and financed by the USA for a 10-year war).

As for the charge "but he attacked another country" (Kuwait), Saddam was PAID by the West to attack Iran only a couple of years earlier. And Kuwait is Iraqi territory anyway, ripped out by the Western colonialists earlier this century to create a deliberate stooge sheikhdom to make oil exploitation and military domination of the region easier.

Another fake-'left' protest about the bombing demanded 'welfare not warfare' of the Blair government, leaving itself open to the nonsensical implication that if the Blairites DOUBLED welfare spending tomorrow, then presumably it would be all right to keep on bombing Iraqi women and children to bits.

Such is the rotten philosophy at the heart of all 'left' anti-communism. The pretence is that the concern is for e.g. 'the people of China to get them rank-and-file democracy and real socialism', etc, etc. But the reality is that such anti-communists simply go along with the only actual development, which is world imperialist military and economic domination trying to destroy or weaken by any means possible any country which baulks the imperialist diktat, - Vietnam, Korea, Cuba, Grenada, Nicaragua, Panama, Libya, Serbia, and the non-stop anti-communist offensive against the Soviet Union from 1917 onwards and then the subsequent workers states too.

The real point is that a world is needed where there is no imperialist power at all, where all the monopoly-capitalist imperialist powers (i.e. the Western 'free world') are broken up for good, replaced by workers states. The only issue raised by imperialist blitzing of Iraq is how to achieve the destruction of British and American imperialism out of it.

'Defeat for imperialism' is the obvious starting point, and the only worthwhile slogan. It raises the notion that imperialist 'policy' has nothing in it worldwide but the determination to use its brutal military and economic might to bully everyone else into submission to whatever are the immediate needs of the American ruling class and its allies. 

It is obvious that only the defeat of that imperialist power in some way at some stage is ever really going to change anything.

The ultimate defeat for the American imperialist ruling class can only be administered, of course, by the American working class, and this will happen. But on the way there, it is vital to spread the notion of 'defeat for imperialism' in every way possible.

One of the most remarkable historic setbacks for Western imperialist warmongering came from the defeat of the 'free world' forces in Vietnam, which fuelled anti-war sentiments inside the USA like nothing else before or since, almost halting the American ruling-class establishment in its tracks, and assisting tidal waves of anti-establishment struggle in other directions too. 

There has been a natural cyclical slight ebbing of that anti-imperialist tide since then but with the imperialist system now plunging into deeper and more insoluble economic and political contradictions than ever before, the next series of crises will undoubtedly see the US ruling class in greater turmoil than ever before. 

Grenada and Panama nearly went wrong; Somalia went very badly wrong; the problem of Iraq's revolt is so difficult that it increasingly makes Saddam look like the victor in spite of all the imperialists' murderous blitzing and starvation; and American policy trying to muzzle its mad-dog Zionist-colonialist stooges so as to buy some peace with the Palestinian revolt looks increasingly doomed to what could be a catastrophic and humiliating failure, including a possibly bloodily defeated attempt to actually curb the Zionists which might not succeed.

Then on top of all that come the really BIG issues to which there is no solution at all, - the to-the-death world-trade-war and economic-survival conflict with all the rival financial-imperialist powers who are all heading for catastrophic crash and slump together eventually.

The only way that worldwide inter-imperialist trade wars for international political and financial supremacy have been settled previously in all capitalist history has been by inter-imperialist shooting war, and the insoluble contradictions of this coming conflict will be no exception.
 
The pattern has also been for these wars to become increasingly more devastating, bitter, and widespread as history has advanced, - coinciding with the ever-more-global scale of the capitalist free market which is there to be won, and therefore coinciding with the ever-greater destructiveness required when the crisis of 'surplus' capital (the so-called crisis of over-production when all the would-be imperialist monopoly leaders in their fields of production find that there is no longer room for them all to survive) finally starts spiralling downwards into slump instead of ever-upwards into never-ending boom. 

World War III will not break this pattern of ever-greater savagery, barbarism, and bitterness.

'Defeat for imperialism' then becomes more crucially than ever defeat for one's OWN imperialism, i.e. defeat for one's own ruling class in the conflict.

For only by being defeated in war is the prospect likely to open up for the imperialism-corrupted working class of any major imperialist country to overthrow that country's shamed and humiliated ruling class, - as a mere glimpse was caught sight of in the American establishment's immense political difficulties after Vietnam; as the Russian ruling class was brought down through WWI humiliation; and as the Chinese ruling class was brought down through WWII humiliation; etc.

All this was once routine anti-imperialist understanding, and will become so again. Long retreats from Marxist science into revisionism have happened before to the international workers movement and have been recovered from, as the post-1945 retreat into revisionism is now being recovered from, slowly.

But paramount in all this is the fight for revolutionary theory, consciously organised, - not the fight for immediate workers-movement advances, as obviously crucial as they are for giving the working class a chance to break through en masse, - back towards revolutionary consciousness, learning all the time in practical anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggle. 

Clearly, the developments take place simultaneously, but life itself will increasingly place on the workers party the need for ever-sharper clarification of where the world is going, and how the victory of the working class is to be prepared for.

The EPSR has fought a long lone battle against the dreadful damage inflicted on working-class consciousness by anti-communism and by the failure to challenge it. In a variety of roundabout ways, it is the influences of anti-communism and 'reformism' of various kinds which now try to shut the EPSR up, or try to make it feel responsible for the eruptions of backwardness elsewhere as anti-communists try to defend their positions.

The fight for rational consciousness for the working class and the fight for socialism  (i.e. the fight for Marxism-Leninism) still has a long way to go.
But Marxist-Leninist science is indestructible and undefeatable. The complacent world of reformist manoeuvring can kid itself all it likes about how well it has stitched things up, but the crisis of imperialism will roar on unstoppably nonetheless, posing ever new problems which only Marxist-Leninist revolutionary science will eventually be able to answer.

The eventual aim of the socialist revolution is universal rational consciousness. That means above all else the fight for Marxist-Leninist science.  S.J.

World Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles.)

Speech given by President Fidel Castro Ruz, first secretary of the central committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, at the closing session of the 5th Congress of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, held at the International Conference Center on September 28, 1998, year of the 40th anniversary of the decisive battles of the war of liberation   (extracts).

I want to explain to you that, from the economic point of view, there is a serious, grave international situation. It's there and present and the blame cannot be laid on communism or socialism; it has to be laid, from top to bottom, on capitalism and it's oh-so-famous market economies, on the world order that it has imposed.

I'm going to read you two paragraphs recalling our speech before the World Trade Organization (WTO) there in Geneva. That was on May 18 of this year.

"The United States, moreover, has the unique privilege of emitting the money in which the major part of the reserves of the central banks and commercial bank deposits worldwide is maintained. Being the nation whose citizens save the least, its transnational companies buy up the wealth of the world with the money saved by other nations and with bills they print without the backing in gold established at Bretton Woods unilaterally eliminated in 1971."

"In the midst of so much euphoria, nobody can be certain of the extent to which the U.S. economic system, ruled by the blind laws of the market economy, can prevent the financial balloon from bursting. There are no economic miracles. That is demonstrated. The absurdly inflated prices of equities on the stock exchange of that economy, even though it is doubtless the strongest in the world, cannot be sustained. History has known no exceptions in similar situations. Only that now a major crisis would also be a global one and would bring unthinkable consequences."

Three months and 10 days later, on August 29, 1998, a, British magazine of some standing, The Economist  - conservative, traditional, a defender of the system and of all those theories which are very much in fashion - in an article entitled "As Bad as it Gets?" and with an introductory summary stating: "Depending on your definition, a global recession may already have started," goes on to say, among other things:

"The world economy resembles an aeroplane that has lost two of its four engines, with a third now starting to splutter... The Russian rouble is plunging headlong. Latin America may be the next region to hit trouble. Last but not least, Wall Street continues to wobble...."

A little further on: "If Wall Street does crash - taking with it the world economy - the blame will doubtless be laid on reckless investment in Asia. But the present fragility of America's stock market also has much to do with recklessness at home. Despite its recent falls, Wall Street remains expensive by historical standards - as though investors believed that equities were safer now than they have been for years, which they patently are not."

The problem is that those stock markets have geometrically multiplied their value to fabulous quantities, just like in the months prior to the 1929 crisis. We had asked the comrades from the Institute on the World Economy to compile all the information and make an analysis, and what is happening now on the U.S. stock markets is totally similar to the months prior to the famous crisis of 1929, which produced a recession that lasted for over 10 years. 

It seems like a carbon copy, except that then a crisis had highly serious repercussions, however the current one in a globalized world, would be much graver. Then come other articles, from the same traditional, conservative magazine. We would even like them to send someone to the economists' meeting we're going to have in January, to discuss these issues in depth. 

This article's called: "Heading for meltdown?" It's the September 5 issue and affirms things like the following: "The global crisis continues to deepen. The latest horror, Russia's collapse, may be insignificant judged by that economy's puny weight in the world, but it was nonetheless a turning-point: the sickness that started in Asia is spreading still, claiming victims far beyond its source."

And then under the subtitle "Luck and Judgement": "For the first time since the early 1980s, global slump is a thinkable, even plausible outcome... Indeed in some ways the danger now is greater than it was then" - it's not yet talking of that of 1929; it's talking of an earlier very serious crisis, but one that didn't reach the calamitous consequences of the 1929 one. 

"Much of the world is already deep in recession" - the article continues - "the chances are that the worst is not yet over for many big emerging-market economies, not to mention for a handful of rich-country commodity producers, whose export revenues have crashed." 

That's a phenomenon present at this time that also preceded other crises and preceded the 1929 one, falling prices of basic products. This means, among many other things, coffee cacao, minerals, aluminum, copper zinc nickel - that little bit touches us - nickel is at half the price it had a few years ago, barely recouping its production costs. Of course, the price of oil, another basic commodity of many countries, has fallen noticeably as well. Its producers are undertaking desperate maneuvers to try and raise it.

"Mid-week" - continues the article - "Wall Street stood some 15% lower than at its peak in July. Yet at these prices American equities are still dear. If the market were to fall another 20% say, the shock to American consumers might be enough to bring the country's long expansion to an end. With it would go any hope that the United States could pull the world out of its troubles."

I have only read a few paragraphs.

In the same issue another article appears: "On the Edge," it's entitled. 

It states: "The risks of a deep global recession are increasing." Then it adds: "The world economy has become far more dangerously poised even during the last month, let alone over the past year. At the annual meeting of the Federal-Reserve Bank of Kansas City in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, over the weekend, some central bankers were privately admitting that these are the worst global conditions they have seen in their lifetime."

It goes on to say: "Japan and most of the rest of East Asia is in deep recession. GDP is expected to fall by as much as 15% in Indonesia this year, and by 6-7% in South Korea and Thailand. Russia's government has, in effect, defaulted on its debt; its economic predicament worsens by the day, China may yet respond to the sharp slowdown in its economy by devaluing its exchange rate, and the Hong Kong dollar is under severe pressure. Latin America still teeters on the brink.

"Even some developed economies, such as Britain's and Canada's, are slowing. And Wall Street has fallen sharply from its peak. Indeed, tumbling share prices have wiped almost $4 trillion off the world's financial wealth over the past two months - the equivalent of Japan's GDP."

When did we state our perspective? On May 19; we had stated it beforehand, not in an international forum, but we did so there in front of ministers of the economy or trade of all the countries who are members of the WTO. Of course, euphoria was reigning then. Now it's not just my words on that occasion. The most prestigious defenders of the system are expressing it.

Of course, the United States is very concerned about the crisis extending to Brazil. That's an advantage for the Brazilians and South Americans in general, because the United States sees it as practically the last bastion; almost all the other bastions have fallen, and a crisis in Brazil would have serious consequences for all of Latin America.

What would happen to the New York Stock Exchange? It would be its turn, its time. We suppose that their strategy is to defend themselves in South America and come up with some money to support their finances. Of course, the International Monetary Fund has no funds.

U.8. DOLLAR BILLS AND TREASURY BONDS HAVE BECOME THE WORLD'S CURRENCIES AND RESERVES

Problems in the balance of payments are not important to them; they pay that off with Treasury bonds: It's the only country in the world that has the luxury of a trade deficit of 100-200 billion dollars, and they can buy all the raw materials they want - it's the only country in the world that can do this! - among other reasons, because there is no gold standard, and that country's dollar bills and Treasury bonds have become the currencies and reserves.

When there was a gold standard, anyone with dollar bills could demand the gold those dollars were worth, and some people were taking out that gold. But during the Viet Nam War, the United States lost two thirds of the gold it had accumulated since World War II, and so they suspended the gold standard, that is, the right of someone holding a U.S. dollar bill to demand its value in gold. They were left without an ounce of gold. But the world went on, and it had no alternative but to keep utilizing that paper as a universal instrument of exchange and reserve currency.

What's more, many people deposit their money in U.S. banks. The Japanese are among the ones who have deposited the most money or bought Treasury bonds, which have a fixed interest rate. When shareholders get scared and panic sets in, they sell their stocks and instead of buying gold they buy U.S. Treasury bonds, which traditionally have maintained their value. It has been possible for the United States to do this because of the great advantages resulting from the two world wars in this century, from which they emerged much richer. They participated in the ends of both wars and didn't suffer any material damage; they accumulated great wealth and considerable economic development.

At the end of World War II, the United States was the only industrialized country left intact; Japan barely existed, the USSR was destroyed, England, France, Germany, all the other countries were ruined; there was only one industrialized country that remained wealthy, plus perhaps Sweden, because even in Norway there was destructive war. The United States had hoarded practically all the world's gold; the bills it printed circulated throughout the world because they were worth gold. Later they unilaterally suspended that conversion to gold; it was definitely a trick, a swindle they played on the world.

Immediately afterwards, gold went up a lot. They had artificially kept its price low: when the price was about to go down they bought gold, and when it was going to go up they sold gold from their enormous reserves, to keep it at about 35 dollars an ounce. Later, when they suspended the conversion and oil prices exploded, an ounce of gold went up to over 400 dollars. They were left with about 10 billion in gold, and that gold increased at least ten times in value. 

Later there was no more gold standard, no more limits; what they did was to print up Treasury bonds with a fixed interest for a certain number of years, maintaining the tradition that those bonds constituted the safest investment on the market. Those bonds are the refuge of investors who sell their stocks in periods of uncertainty or panic: they sell, but rather than buying any other stocks, they buy Treasury bonds. As a result, the United States has all the money it needs to offset any budget deficit or balance of payments.

But not now; now with the advances they have made in the economy, they've managed to more or less balance the  budget, but the trade deficit is increasing. They have to turn over enormous sums to pay tor what they import, above what they export. That's the mechanism.

So shareholders have earned nine trillion dollars and have spent what they earned, watching the prices of their stock go up. If you have 100,000 dollars and all of a sudden your shares are worth 200,000, you say: "No problem! Why save?" They buy up everything that strikes their fancy, even yachts and airplanes. As I said, everything favored economic growth, boosted employment, a thousand and one miracles which benefited them exclusively, it was their exclusive privilege. That's why they've bought up so many things, practically the world!

That's why the Europeans want to integrate themselves in order to survive; they want to have a strong currency so they won't be faced with those tricks, so that a part of the central banks' reserves are in euros; the whole world is dependent on the dollar. It's the principal and practically the only reserve currency. They print up the paper, buy things, and a large percentage of those papers are held in the reserves of other countries.

In other words, they've had a tremendously advantageous situation. Shares multiplied in value with all the support of an economy of sustained growth over a relatively prolonged period, with decreasing unemployment. Inflation, which is the other enemy they fear like crazy, did not rise; instead, the prices of products from Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand and all those countries have gone down as their currencies have been devaluated, which helped keep inflation down in the United States. But now Aladdin's lamp is losing its magic power to perform miracles.

I was telling you how the Brazilians were using the interest rate to avoid capital flight and maintain their reserves. But they can't maintain a 50% interest rate for very long. Despite the exceptions I mentioned for agriculture and export lines, because all the working capital in the other industries and services must pay 50% annual interest, and what industry can turn enough profit to pay 50% interest? In other words, it paralyzes the economy. Loans are much more expensive. They halt the panic and capital flight momentarily, everyone goes out and changes their national currency for dollars, because there is free exchange, they can change it and take the dollars out of the country. 

But that mechanism is a terrible two-edged sword, because it paralyzes development and creates an untenable situation. They can't maintain it for very long. They've been defending themselves with those mechanisms to avoid losing the last bit of foreign exchange.

In the month of August Brazil lost thousands, I think it was between 10 and 15 billion dollars' from its reserves, just in the month of August and the first few days of September. They had managed to accumulate those reserves, not without sacrifices and, in part, through privatization of state enterprises. There was a telephone company that they sold for 18 billion dollars. That was a major piece of income, but it was lost in a few days of defending the national currency from speculation, and they have had to adopt new and harsh measures. The Brazilians are struggling, they're defending their currency, but there's no doubt that they're going to need assistance from abroad. How much will it be? No one knows for sure.

They offered Mexico as much as 50 billion - being a next-door neighbor of the United States was an advantage in this case. But when the crisis reached Southeast Asia and South Korea, their favorite financial agencies were left without funds, and they're terrorized by this wildfire.

I think they'll make an effort. It's very clear that Latin America is a very good bastion where they can defend themselves, so that the flames don't rage across their own land.

Unlike the stock markets in Latin America, those in the United States have a great economic influence, because colossal amounts of money are invested in them. I already told you that in the last four years there were nine trillion dollars earned on the U.S. stock markets, although they have to start subtracting.

I already informed you of the article which states that if all the stock markets' losses were put together, the world had lost almost four trillion dollars in only two months, that is, not only the United States. Part of it corresponds to the United States, since the value of their stocks had gone down from their highest point to one in which - according to the last of those articles I mentioned - the loss was 17%. Is that clear?

Pardon me for going into such detail, because I'm trying to explain about these mechanisms and how a collapse could take place.

So they're putting out flames now. As for Russia, I think they have given up on trying to put out the flame in Russia, which is very serious given the implications, including political ones. I think they're going to try to dig in their heels, in the hopes that a disaster like the one in Southeast Asia will not take place in Brazil and South America. Because if it does, the wildfire will certainly reach the United States, and what happened in 1982, or even worse, what happened in 1929 could happen again, despite their International Monetary Fund, their World Bank and all the tricks they have invented.     

To tell the truth, the great experience of 1929 and the recession that lasted 10 years led many to believe that capitalism had ended in that epoch, during which time the domestic product dropped to 30% and unemployment was incredibly high.

They have to think seriously about the consequences within the United States for that 50% of U.S. citizens who have their social security money and their savings invested in stocks, if the stocks dropped to half or one third of their value.

That had never occurred. At the time of the great crisis in 1929, the number of citizens holding stock was very small, and nonetheless, the effect was disastrous.  

What would happen now, when half of the people in that country and the ones with the most wealth invest in the stock market? Those who live under bridges don't own any stocks. (LAUGHTER) They're owned by the large transnationals, the big factories, the middle classes, many professionals, the workers with the most income. Anyone who has something, who sees that the market has been rising like foam - and that's where the danger is - have invested in it, and they're running into these problems which are typical of capitalist society, typical of the market economy. No one controls that.

There's a whole bunch of people talking about the need for the state to regulate this in some way, or to regulate operations, the capital that enters for a short time and is then taken out. That runs counter to neoliberalism, against everything they've been doing and preaching, and nevertheless the prohibition of short-term capital movements is being proposed more and more forcefully, along with other ways of regulating the absolute freedom that finance capital enjoys today.   
          
There's the prime minister of Malaysia, who also visited us. He's been concerned about this for a long time, and he has just prohibited free exchange, he took a series of measures and is stubbornly defending his country's economy, which has been reduced by the devastating blow it received. He told me that all the work and wealth accumulated over 40 years could be lost in two weeks.

NO EUROPEAN COUNTRY ON ITS OWN CAN ESCAPE FROM THAT ENORMOUS POWER ACCUMULATED BY THE UNITED STATES

All countries are exposed to this. None is exempt. That's why Europe is uniting. No European country on its own can escape from that enormous power accumulated by the United States. The Europeans are after a market of hundreds of millions of people. The United States has a domestic market of no less than 270 million, a large market; a smaller country may have a market of 10 million people, even if it's highly industrialized. They're all joining together in Europe, 15 countries in the European Union, creating a market of over 300 million or 400 million people. They hope to incorporate more countries in the future, to save themselves from the monster, but the monster, it could be said, is fatally injured. It is an unsustainable system which is nearing that crisis, as I have explained here.

They still have hopes, maneuvering capacity, and they have been inventing formulas since the crisis of 1929, to keep something similar from happening again. There was a crisis that was not as serious in 1982, but what's coming now, given the conditions I have pointed out, could be much worse. 

Furthermore, they are not united within the United States. The government has advisors and acts with a little more skill defending the empire's economic interests, but others are at war with the government, depending on the majority they have in the Senate and the House, and they haven't approved the fast track with which they want to tie the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean to the interests of the empire. They're putting up a lot of resistance to the idea of increasing the IMF's funds a little, but even if they give it the 15 or 18 billion dollars that are being asked for - I think they've already given three billion - that's just a drop in the bucket that couldn't even attempt to save Russia. 

So they're digging into the last bastion they have: South America. But it could be that even now the problems could keep growing and getting worse, because it's a congenital disease of the system.   

World Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

Persecuted Irish in the Occupied Zone only want the disbandment of the colonialist RUC police.

SINN FÉIN has launched an 'RUC WATCH' initiative. Six-County Chairperson Fra McCann said the initiative was set to monitor, record and take appropriate political action "challenging RUC violations against the nationalist community".

In a bid to influence the Patten Commission, the RUC is engaged in a highly-political, high-profile charm offensive across the Six Counties, said McCann, while largely unreported actions by the RUC which constitute gross human rights violations against nationalists are occurring daily.

"The RUC Watch initiative is your opportunity to place on record the facts about the RUC," said McCann.

The initiative comes at a time when the British government is under increasing pressure to disband the RUC. Scrutiny of the British government's record of human rights violations by the United Nations Committee Against Torture last week focused heavily upon the actions of the RUC. 

At the hearing the British were questioned about RUC brutality during interrogations, specifically the case of Davy Adams, the number of deaths in RUC custody, the lack of safeguards during interrogation at RUC centres like Castlereagh, human rights violations arising out of the use of emergency legislation and the deployment of plastic bullets. At the very core of the United Nations' criticism is the RUC.

"This UN report, like scores of others by Human Rights agencies over the past 30 years, has condemned the behaviour of the RUC, as well as the approach of the British government to the use of torture and of plastic bullets," said Gerry Adams. "It is further evidence of the logic of Sinn Féin's demand that the RUC be disbanded."

Clare Reilly of the United Campaign Against Plastic Bullets commenting on the UN report, reiterated the call to disband the RUC. Describing the deaths and injuries inflicted by the use of plastic bullets as "the reality of lethal weapons in the hands of a sectarian force", the UCAPB spokesperson said: "The RUC must be disbanded, plastic bullets withdrawn and a new unarmed police service established which reflects the makeup of the entire community."

In the last six months, since the signing of the Good Friday Document An Phoblacht has reported over 300 incidents within the nationalist community in which the RUC has been guilty of violating basic human rights. These violations have included almost 50 incidents of harassment against peaceful demonstrators, with a further four full scale orchestrated attacks on peaceful protests, over 70 incidents of harassment, intimidation and assault, over 30 serious injuries, including eight plastic bullet injuries, 16 cases where the RUC failed to intervene during sectarian attacks, 36 of intimidation during recruitment approaches, over 30 house raids and 70 arbitrary arrests.

"This represents the tip of the iceberg," says Fra McCann. "In the past nationalist communities have survived by absorbing rather than highlighting harassment by the RUC which occurs on a daily basis throughout all aspects of people's lives, at work, at home, on the way to school, during peaceful protests. If the hopes of the Irish people engendered by ¦the Good Friday Agreement are to be realised, the actions of the RUC must be placed on public record. I would urge everyone whose rights are violated by the RUC to contact Sinn Féin's 'RUC WATCH' initiative to register their complaint."

World Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

THE very public wrangle at the heart of the West Belfast community precipitated by the Donegal Celtic football club's initial decision to go ahead with a soccer match against the RUC has left all sides of the argument saddened and hurt.

Even many of their most vociferous critics recognised the club's predicament. It is not unreasonable for a club to wish to compete within a prestigious league to the best of its abilities and the talents of the club's young team. Built in one of the most economically deprived communities in Western Europe, the prospect of accessing funds on the back of agreeing to play a match with the RUC, was understandably persuasive.

The club never wanted to play the RUC; members hoped to go through the competition without being drawn against them. In the event Donegal Celtic was faced with the very decision it had wished to avoid. Their team was tipped to win the Steel and Sons Cup, a substantial lottery grant was waiting in the wings. No wonder the club's management was tempted to turn their faces away from the reality of life in West Belfast. If only they could momentarily forget the pain and suffering inflicted on this community by the RUC. If Sinn Féin could speak to its political opponents in Stormont, why couldn't Donegal Celtic kick a football around with the RUC? What about reconciliation? What about the Good Friday Agreement?

On Sunday 8 November members of the club met to vote on the decision whether or not to play with the RUC. The meeting lasted less than 20 minutes. There was no debate. 108 voted yes, 79 voted no, with one abstention. Everyone was treated to three free pints in the bar.

"We did not want the game to go ahead because we support the RUC, it was because we support football and don't believe politics and sport should mix," said club Secretary Brian McCartney. Those who claimed a dichotomy between sport and politics had won the day but their argument was unsustainable and everybody really knew it. A community at the apex of 30 years of struggle, West Belfast is a highly-politicised community.

Founded in Lenadoon in 1970, Donegal Celtic grew, root and branch, out of that community's experiences of marginalisation, demonisation and conflict. When the club tried to turn its face away from the relatives of Julie Livingstone, Seamus Duffy and all the other victims of RUC brutality it was turning away from itself. The contradictions cut to the very heart of the club, down to the very team itself. One player, whose father was shot dead by the RUC, initially supported the club's decision, only to find himself at odds with the rest of his family. Other families were also divided by the decision. Players were divided, the club members were divided, the club was at odds with many in their own community.

Intense lobbying by Relatives for Justice, backed by elected representatives in Sinn Féin, and with the possibility of a damaging boycott looming on the horizon, Donegal Celtic faced the reality they had been trying to deny for weeks.

On Thursday 12 November, just two days before the match against the RUC, club officials announced they had withdrawn their team from the fixture. In a statement announcing their withdrawal, the committee admitted that their original decision had "become a source of controversy and division [which] obviously caused annoyance and upset to a great many people especially within our own local community and patrons. This controversy has taken its toll on committee members, the team management and especially the players who have been, against their will, thrown into the eye of the storm."

But the storm wasn't over yet. "Play RUC and we'll shoot you" ran the Newsletter front page, "Donegal Celtic players were told they would be kneecapped if they didn't bow to IRA demands." 

Sinn Féin was "enforcing cultural apartheid", using "bully-boy tactics", Ian Paisley accused the IRA of blackmail, David Ervine called Sinn Féin fascists and RUC Chief Ronnie Flanagan hinted at intimidation. "IRA forced players to cancel game," ran the Sunday Tribune, "Donegal Celtic players ready to claim IRA intimidation to cancel RUC match".

"The Game's Up," concluded the Sunday Times: "Republican strong arm tactics..." and so it went on. As the media indulged in a furious anti-republican diatribe, one thing was clear, it had been political all along.