Author: Adrian Greeman

Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested.-V.I.Lenin
I.L.W.P. BULLETIN
Weekly newspaper of the International Leninist Workers Party (P&P Bulletin Publications, PO Box 50, London SW17 9NL)((GPO Regd.)   
No 595 Wednesday May 01 1991                                                                                                                   10p 

Betrayal of socialism's leadership philosophy in East Europe can only lead to exploited vacuum 

The feeble primadonna tyranny of Gorbachev repeatedly offering to resign, - and the even more paralysed Central Committee always fearing to accept his resignation, - present a telling picture of the futile 'reformism' of the revisionists.

The incurable constipation and frustration of developments in the Soviet Union, after the abandonment by the bureaucracy of the anti-imperialist struggle, echoes the hopelessness of class-collaborating social-democracy everywhere in the world for all time.

The categoric science of Marxism-Leninism has never been repudiated, nor ever will it be: Either the rule of 'free' monopoly-finance capital (i.e. the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie); or else the rule of the working-class under a party of leadership (the dictatorship of the proletariat).

Either a fully-fledged capitalist system where the only serious dynamic is the relentless monopolisation of economic and political power; Or else the total suppression (or strict curbing within clearly defined lines for a limited period of transitional licence only) of profiteering individualism in order to compulsorily re-educate the whole world in the direction it has to go of communally-owned economic cooperation.

An unresolved mess of 'reforming' projects to persuade the world banks to be kinder to the starving African masses, etc, or to prevent the spirit of individual 'free' enterprise from forever creating and supplying a 'market' for criminal activities, drugs, prostitution, etc, is a pointless waste of time to which world revolutionary proletarian anger will react sharply eventually.

The obscene spiv-like money-grabbing antics of Lech Walesa oiling his way around the imperialist flesh-pots for a handout, plus Gorbachev's primadonna tyranny of continually offering his resignation to a bombed-in Party bureaucracy paralysed with revisionist philistinism, - raise the question of what next?

The problem for world reaction is that the one thing which the collapse of leadership in East Europe can not lead to is any harmonious reintegration of these states into the cutthroat competitive aggression of the imperialist system.

The petty-bourgeois-minded elements in Poland, East Germany, Hungary, the Soviet Union, etc, are bitterly discovering that having carried through the 'anti-Stalinist' liquidationism as bullied and bribed to do by Western financial dominance, by subjective-idealistic philosophical bullying, by the appeal of crude nationalism, by the tyranny of religious domination (over cynical backward minds) from the Vatican, etc, - there is little left to do subsequently except wait to be exploited by monopoly-imperialist investment or takeovers.

This is proving to be a particularly unappetizing prospect everywhere, but especially for the Soviet Union, of course, where the achievements of socialist statehood have played such a history-making role in the 20th century, adding to the sense of loss at last beginning to dawn on workers in East Europe that an albeit 'Stalinist' system previously in operation was nevertheless philosophically oriented towards transforming society through mass participation and planned public enterprises including equal universal welfare.

The only perspective now is for the East European populations to wait for possibly half-a-dozen locally more aggressive and ruthless big-business individualists to try to break into the world monopoly market stitch-up already dominated by the traditionally all-powerful imperialist bourgeoisies.

In general they can only fail to break through.

The pattern of the 20th century's imperialist phase of capitalist 'free market' development is irresistibly towards ever greater degrees of monopolisation.

Paradoxically, of course, it is also true that the greater the level of monopoly power of the mightiest bourgeois-imperialist states, the more vulnerable they have become to internal decay, - and overthrow. But only by each other, - by already even bigger monopolists. (Or else by socialist revolution which is precisely what Soviet opportunism is turning away from.)

The huge Russian empire itself failed to survive the early-century challenges. The British and French empire strengths have been drastically reduced in recent decades from their 19th century pre-eminence. The voices of the Dutch, Belgian Spanish, and Portuguese empires have been virtually stifled completely.

And the whole expectation for inter-imperialist rivalry is now that the very expansion of industrialised capitalist-market trading all round the world is continually throwing up new local and international challenges to the reigning mightiest power or authority.

But the circumstances of this cut-and-thrust rivalry for the top-dog positions in a particular industry, or a particular region, or for overall financial monopoly-capitalist dominance, are those of an increasingly violent warmongering arms race as the century has progressed.

Endless 'healthy' cutthroat competition there may be, to quote the apologists for the unstoppable tendency towards monopolisation.

But precisely because of the extent of monopolisation power, this unquenchable competitiveness has increasingly unalterably resulted in huge vested interests being mighty enough, - and standing to lose enough, - to make desperately belligerent gambles the obvious last resort (and frequently the first resort where obviously weaker rivals are concerned) for trying to avoid 'market failure'.

The great outbreaks of trade-war rivalry this century and towards the end of the 19th century did not take place simply in the market-square. They spilled over inevitably into all-out warmongering aggression to assert a disputed economic ascendancy with the less debatable open military and political domination (WWl).

The creaking Russian empire was already being carved to pieces by the more thrusting German and Austrian empires (before revolution intervened and the proletariat's anti-imperialist struggle chased out all the rival exploitation-seeking monopoly-power contenders).

The financial-imperialist stakes of world leadership grew so vast in the 1920s & 1930s that the resurgent Italian, Japanese, and German monopoly-bourgeois states could only renew a challenge to the privileged positions of Anglo-US and French international mastery by unleashing the greatest sustained destructive war yet in history, - World War II.

Because the older-established imperialist groupings successfully survived this 'upstart' onslaught, the unmistakable tendency since 1945 has been for virtually non-stop worldwide warmongering gendarmerie by US-imperialist-approved powers in more than 200 wars of colonial domination in order to impose the so-called 'free-market' conditions (demanded by monopoly-capitalist interests to preserve their required 'legal framework' for their class and national exploitation.)

Revolutionary workers-states and national liberation movements have of course borne the brunt of this imperialist aggression, but by no means all of it, - and now the pattern is rapidly changing.

In the last decade, the most savage destructiveness and greatest degree of direct Western imperialist involvement in the incessant warmongering inflicted by bourgeois ideology's exclusivist, idealist and competitive values, - have been in the Falklands, in the Iran-Iraq war, against Panama, and in the Gulf War just finished (in a Middle East cauldron of never-ending warfare which is clearly just beginning to hot up towards its greatest intensity yet since 1945).

Western imperialist domination is not about to let any 'upstart' interests challenge its old-established supremacy.

And any illusion that the blitzing of capitalist Iran, Argentina, Panama, Iraq, etc, is exclusively an ignorable 'Third World problem' is pure insanity.

The most turbulent growing conflict of all is precisely the inter-imperialist trade war which is brewing right through the tortured GATT negotiations which are on the verge of breakdown (see recent Bulletins), and through the even more explosively direct implications of the interest-rate and currency-rate competitiveness (to the background of suicidally-dangerous world banking indebtedness which the GATT cut-throat rivalry is determined to alleviate at someone else's expense.)

The desperate scramble is to find ever-more profitable outlets for the constantly-increasing boomtime capital-accumulation of the 'free-market' (i.e. totally anarchic and uncontrolled) imperialist monopoly-credit finance institutions). But by the very nature of the survival-of-the-fittest monopolisation process, (confirmed in detail by every social observation since capitalism began), this finance capital profiteering becomes concentrated in ever-fewer hands. This ever-increasing uneven distribution of wealth leads periodically to ever-greater imbalances between 'surplus' capital looking to make a better-than-average profit, and entire communities who have neither the work-skill nor the purchasing power to make any investment 'profitable' in strictly market terms.

As a consequence, there is much speculation in vast amounts of very dubious loan investments (bad debts), at the same time as huge areas of the globe which need investment are denied it because of the obvious 'unprofitability' of the circumstances.

Both these conditions are potential unexploded time-bombs for the survival of the capitalist world 'order' (really disorder), and both are currently perplexing the anxious crisis-analysis of bourgeois political economy:

However, the system has become seriously impaired and a cacophony of political events has dramatically altered the global economic agenda.

Over the last 15 years or so, a series of mistakes was made. In the battle to become the biggest and the best bank, prudential practice was thrown to the winds. In the late 1970s and early 1980s banks believed that countries could not go bust. In 1982, when Mexico's debt repayments overwhelmed the country, it became crystal clear that they could.

The banks then looked for new, safer customers. Energy loans were made on the assumption that oil prices would only go up. We now know different. And it was assumed across the globe that there could be nothing safer than bricks and mortar. 

Donald Trump, Geoffrey Bradman and a host of others could testify differently. The consequence has been what is called a flight to quality. What this means is a reluctance of banks to lend - the so called "credit crunch".

This brings us to the changes in the geo-political system. Within Group of Seven (the seven largest market economies), Germany has taken on the task of reunification. In Latin America, the reforms which have been on the agenda since the debt crisis emerged in the early 1980s are just coming on stream. This at a time when eastern Europe is crying out for capital and the Soviet Union demands unimaginable amounts of overseas investment. The Middle East, which for the last 15 years has been a huge provider of capital for all manner of purposes is, post-Gulf war, now going to be a huge consumer of capital.

These global calls on savings will be in addition to those to which already we are accustomed. Brazil, with its recent deal to pay off its arrears to countries and banks, will soon be needing new official and private sector loans as will much of Latin America. Africa continues to languish and efforts are currently underway to raise a further $7 billion in matching funds to back World Bank reforms. And the list goes on.

There can be no special 'harmonious' reintegration of the liquidated workers states into the capitalist free-for-all.

International bourgeois-monopoly domineering never ceases to feel that its own survival is constantly under threat. The cut-throat nature of trade-war rivalry allows no sentiment whatever. And the last thing that exists under capitalism is any spirit of 'free' competition. There is no such thing as a 'free' lunch.

East Europe can either be turned into profitable investment advantage by the Western imperialist monopolies, - or it will be left to rot like vast areas of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Either way, the relations of the monopoly-imperialist bourgeoisie with East European people will continue as one of fundamental exploitation, contradiction, and hostility, just as they are with the population of the entire rest of the world, - and just as they were with East Europe when they were societies trying to build planned socialist economies free from finance-capital domination.

How many isolated sections of the region can be drawn into temporary 'mutually-beneficial' exploitation relations, which can make a viable profit for the Western monopolies, remains to be seen.

But in today's climate of worldwide recession, and expectations of the biggest 'surplus'-capital crash in all imperialist history due at any moment, - the chances of any group of political opportunists being able to pretend the creation of 'successful and profitable' statehood in East Europe under the 'free market' must be slender.

The process of monopolisation cannot be put into reverse. The progress of imperialism as a system of highly successful major powers is as much like a leaky boat as anything, on which there is room for ever fewer survivors, with new candidates for the role of 'redundant deadweight' being turfed out every so often, and scarcely any chance of anyone new climbing aboard.

Germany and Japan have clawed their way back onto the imperialist cruise-line since 1945 by dint of their exceptional historic bourgeois-entrepreneurial aggressiveness and fanatical national self-discipline, and allowed back by US imperialism to help contain communist revolution.

But now they are back on board, the overwhelming all-consuming concern of the Western imperialist powers is 'how do we prevent the Germans and Japanese from taking over the boat and turfing us out?'.

Already, the bourgeois monopolists themselves talk about the all-powerful Group of Seven in fact being just a Group of Three in reality, with Canada just an adjunct of Washington, and France, Italy, and Britain only still afloat because they are needed as Common Market or Trans-Atlantic allies.

How quickly would most tentative East-European finance-capital initiatives be swallowed up in such a shark-infested world of real cut-throat competition, or just sink without trace?

And the very fact that East Europe is not the backward Third World makes any notion of these former socialist societies becoming harmoniously 'exploited for mutual advantage' seem a very dubious prospect. There is no such 'harmony' anywhere else in the world. There is only revolt, civil war, and revolutionary war. Why should East Europe be any different?

Such perspectives again raise the question of what has been gained or lost by the degeneration of the leadership philosophy which made the triumphant building of the socialist states possible in the first place (to the extent to which the impossibility of 'reforming bourgeois-imperialist monopolisation and exploitation processes into 'permanent' class-collaborating 'secure' and 'harmonious' paradise, - and the need to overthrow all of imperialism eventually, when possible, were kept in view after Lenin's death)?

What has been gained or lost by the effective disintegration of the Soviet-led socialist camp?

One 'theory' about this (with two applications) quickly needs knocking on the head, - the Kautskyite theory of 'super-imperialism' being eventually able to successfully harmonise all of the monopoly-bourgeois state interests of the competing powers so that all conflicts are amicably resolved to the permanent detriment of an exploited worldwide proletariat (or to its 'mutually advantageous' exploitation depending on the degree of defeatist petty-bourgeois self-delusion involved in the 'theorising').

An alternative application of this revisionist defeatism is the Trotskyite 'theory' of Washington and Moscow getting together to administer a permanent worldwide counter-revolutionary tyranny.

On any reading of what is happening in the actual imperialist world, and how it is impossible for these monopolisation problems to do anything but continue to be exacerbated, all purely static impressionistic notions of a  'Stalinist counter-revolution' having 'always' been 'doing imperialism's dirty counter-revolutionary work for it', etc, and now freed to 'play this reactionary role even more openly' by Gorbachev's liquidationism, are wholly academic fantasies.

Despite its Stalinist revisionist defects, there were very real contradictions in the past between the Soviet socialist camp (plus the Third World national-liberation struggles) and the interests of Western imperialism, many of them bitterly fought out in lethal warfare, as in Korea, Vietnam, Algeria, Angola, etc.

Sympathetic assistance to Third World revolts against imperialism may now dwindle towards zero, but to fancifully place Moscow alongside Washington in attempting to actually stifle Vietnam, or Cuba, for example, is pure sectarian-idealist bile.

But there seem even bigger obstacles to Soviet Russia becoming a fully fledged co-imperialist power once again, as examined above in the light of actual international domination by the process of monopolisation.

Which leaves a huge question mark over the exact fate of the present USSR territories under worldwide influences, on one side of sharpening inter-imperialist conflict; and on the other of an expanding and deepening revolutionary process whereby an increasing number of state-societies are going to have to find ways of making political and economic progress outside of the imperialist-dominated framework of the bourgeois-individualist 'free market'.

Meanwhile, what more precise conclusions, if any, can be drawn about the losses (or gains) to the anti-imperialist struggle from the disintegration of Leninist leadership philosophy under the pressure of bureaucratic revisionism in Moscow?

In the light of the Gulf War and the continuing embarrassment to Western imperialist policy of the undiminishing avalanche of contradictions and conflicts in the Middle East region all crying out for a solution (but without the remotest chance of getting one from the cut-throat, arms-race-warmongering,

(eg -

ONE OF THE more intriguing liberations in Kuwait City after the allies' glorious victory was a set of documents from the emir's palace. Exactly how the documents were liberated is not clear: but some found their way to Thames TV's This Week programme, and others, even more mysteriously, to the Eye.

The documents are mainly concerned with the emir's biggest worry: his personal security from the wrath and envy of his people. "Security,'' says one top secret report in 1986 from the emir's relative, Fahd Youssef Saoud Al Sabah, who is in overall charge of protecting the Al Sabah family, "is one of God's gifts extended to his followers". But security, the document warned, was under threat from "cowardly deception and treachery, and from dirty hands and satanic souls".

The document's immediate concern was the state of the Amiri Guard brigade, the crack unit which guards the royal family. According to the report, the brigade was riddled with weaknesses which imperilled its efficiency. Chief among these was the patronage employed when appointing officers from the Military Academy. The report blames "influence" used on such appointments, which leads to the rapid promotion of people of little quality. Moreover - and surprising in a land where alcohol consumption is illegal - "a percentage of officers drink alcohol and are of bad reputation."

The state of affairs in the brigade, the report revealed, was a mirror image of Kuwait itself: huge wealth, corruption and privilege at the top and rotten conditions at the bottom. While the self-selected officers got drunk and forsook their duties, the rank and file, who were not even Kuwaiti citizens, were poorly paid and truculent. Ammunition was not checked and "undesirables" had infiltrated the force.

Not very much seems to have been done to implement the report's recommendations until the question of royal security was raised rather more dramatically in 1988. In March that year, the same Fahd Youssef Saoud Al Sabah sent another report, this time labelled "top secret" to the head of military security and intelligence.

"We wish to inform you," he told his father, the emir, "that on Thursday 10th March 1988, at 0200 hours, (a named member of the ruling family) came to the main gate of Dasman Palace and he was in an extraordinary state. He sat in the room allocated for the security of the Palace Guard and started talking about His Highness the Ruling Prince, saying morally unspeakable things, swearing repeatedly and promising to murder his Highness, pointing at a picture of His Highness and at a gun carried by one of the guards who was on duty at the gate."

The report disclosed that this was not "the first time such things have been perpetrated by a member of the ruling family. There has been a similar problem in the past when (another named relative) came to the Palace in an unusual state and was armed with a machine gun and there was a near exchange of fire with a member of the security guards."

No action is recorded about this report. The following year (1989) the harassed security chief found himself writing yet another strongly critical report, this time about the behaviour of top government officials and ministers who accompanied the emir on foreign trips during that year - to Iraq, France and Africa.

The bulk of the report deals with the tireless but apparently unsuccessful efforts of the Amiri Guard to control the drinking of alcohol by top Kuwaiti officials on the visits. Again and again the baggage of these officials was broken into to reveal a large quantity of booze. On one occasion, some bottles were confiscated and the unlucky official sulked in his hotel room and refused to attend meetings for a full day. In Mali, one of the officials went missing. The report says:

"A search was issued for him at the hotel bar, where he usually frequents, where he was indeed found in a state of total inebriation and he was carried by the guards to his room to get his luggage. As a consequence of this action, some problems occurred between him and the Amiri Guards…"

The official responsible for distributing gifts to foreign officials is described in the report as "constantly in a state of drunkenness" all during his trip. Another delegate is criticised for sitting by the swimming pool, surrounded by four African women in their bathing costumes. He was flirting with one, slapping another on the backside in front of all the hotel residents and other delegates - he was publicly drinking alcohol with these women and charging the bill to his hotel room."

In a forceful summary, the security chief begged the emir to do something drastic to stop the high incidence of drunkenness, gambling, use of prostitutes, fiddling of expenses and the exorbitant use of international telephone calls by delegates on the foreign trips. Above all the emir was implored to give a general security instruction allowing the baggage of top officials to be inspected by the Amiri Guard. As an example of how vital this could be, the report disclosed that on the very luxurious trip to Iraq, President Saddam Hussein had personally given each member of the Kuwaiti delegation a valuable gift - a machine gun each.

As a result of this long report, on 22 October 1989 the director-general of state security in Kuwait, Brigadier Fahd Ahmad Al-Fahd, had a long meeting with the interior minister (who, like all top ministers, is related to the emir). As a result of that meeting, the brigadier travelled to the United States for long and anxious interviews at the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The visit was from 12 to 18 November 1989. On 14 November Brigadier Fahd had a long meeting with the director of the CIA, Judge William Webster. Webster and all his officials emphasised throughout these meetings that they must be kept top secret "in order not to arouse sensibilities among our brothers in the Gulf Co-Operation Council, Iran and Iraq".

The subject for discussion was the unreliability of the Amiri Guard, highlighted by the security reports of bad behaviour and in particular by a serious (but unpublicised) public attack on the emir. The CIA agreed at once to train a new Guard of 128 men specially selected by the Kuwaitis. The men would be flown post haste to the United States and trained there. A special computer system full of information about "extremist Shia groups" would be made available by the CIA to the Kuwaitis. Mr Webster applauded our measurers to combat movements backed by Iran," reported Brigadier Fahd, "and said that the CIA was willing to take joint steps to eliminate points of tension in the Gulf region".

Judge Webster also encouraged the Kuwaitis "to take advantage of the deteriorating economic situation in Iraq to put pressure on that country's government to delineate our common border", reported the Brigadier. He went on: "The CIA gave us its view of appropriate means of pressure." These "appropriate means" were chiefly to do with oil prices. If oil prices could be kept down by the Kuwaitis, the CIA suggested, the pressure on Iraq to settle the border dispute would grow. This proved prophetic. Iraq was so squeezed by the low oil price that it invaded Kuwait and started the Gulf War.

)- 'free market' anarchy which is currently re-equipping every participant with ever-more-deadly new weapons, more rapidly than failures are announced in the US blitzkriegers' lack of success in establishing anything like a 'new world order' or even getting any serious discussions going), - not much has changed.

The huge mythology about what use might have been made of nuclear weapons, or will be made of nuclear weapons in the future, if this or that had not happened, etc,  - remains untested in any direction.

The only use of the atomic bomb so far has been by one imperialist super-power on another, - with the Soviet Union unconsulted.

And the nearest subsequent uses, apparently, were against socialist states (Korea and Vietnam) precisely after the Soviet Union had acquired the 'balancing' nuclear capability of its own.

In all the Western imperialist bullying against other bourgeois-nationalist (capitalist) state powers (for alleged 'terrorism-spreading' or other so-called 'intolerable crimes against international law and order', etc) - such as Iran, Argentina, Lebanon, Panama, Iraq, etc, - the nuclear monopolists failed to use their atomic weapons, - and by no means because of any threat of retaliation by the Soviet Union or China.

Furthermore, if it is argued that when finally up against it and facing a warmongering defeat or a revolutionary crisis, - that the monopoly-imperialist powers would certainly use their nuclear weapons as a last resort, - it can be pointed out that there was never any guarantee that Western imperialism would not finally try the nuclear option even when the presumed threat of Soviet atomic retaliation had always remained a live one.

But what has been lost in terms of disintegrating Soviet encouragement for Third World revolt and socialist revolution?

A lot of valuable aid has certainly been lost, but the crucial question has always been to develop a sufficient grasp of Marxist Leninist theory among those willing to lead a revolutionary struggle, not how many Soviet sanatorium-holiday spots were on offer for party cadres.

The Allende regime received plenty of socialist-camp aid and encouragement. But the Popular Front political advice it got from the old Third International parties proved to be a total disaster. The Nicaraguan Revolution was helped, but no attempt was made to persuade the Sandinistas not to fall for the 'parliamentary democracy' swindle worked by the ClA's subversive propaganda $ billions and armed sabotage destruction to create a 'peace at any price' coalition whose deceitful illusions have now been translated into bitter impoverished reality for the Nicaraguans who are now more strife-torn than ever, - and now face the problem of how will Washington's newly-established control over the government in Managua ever be prised off again.

Other Soviet or socialist camp aid spectacularly never succeeded in helping to win power, and came to nothing, - because of the rotten revisionist political perspectives which accompanied the assistance. 

A variety of class-collaborationist/Popular Front strategies and tactics have seen the Spanish Republic in the 1930s, the Greek communist resistance in the 1940s, and the Palestine Liberation Organisation in the post-1945 period all go down to crushing defeat under the rotten influence of Moscow's insane programme for permanent peaceful coexistence with imperialism (as opposed to Lenin's grasp of this as a purely temporary diplomatic tactic - see ILWP Books vol 4).

So financial and material support in the anti-imperialist struggle is far from everything. Cretinous revisionist politics is a far more decisive ingredient. The Cuban Revolution is one of the best illustrations of the issues involved. The Castro movement not only took power arms-in-hand without any assistance from the Third International. It fought its way to the overthrow of the Washington-stooge Batista dictatorship exactly against the advice and practice of the local Communist Party.

But subsequently the Soviet socialist camp played an important role, as well as the local Communist Party, in helping to consolidate the Castro movement's magnificent revolutionary success, and only the most insane petty-bourgeois Trot sectarianism in the Western imperialist armchairs pretended not to notice (or even deliberately vilified and tried to sabotage) this brilliant achievement of socialist revolution.

Some conclusions are that Soviet socialist-camp aid was always worth appreciating, but that Moscow's ideological revisionist retreat from a Leninist world-revolutionary perspective always needed to be wholeheartedly opposed. And the crucial key to mankind's communist future always lay in the ability of workers locally to build a real party of Leninist revolutionary theory everywhere.

Another aspect of the material losses from the liquidation of the Soviet socialist camp was the disappearance from the political scene in Europe and the Western world generally of opportunities to compare capitalist crisis chaos with 'the way things are done under socialism', etc, (still a valid propaganda argument, of course, in comparing capitalist countries similar to Cuba, China, etc, and still of enormous significance, of course, in discussing the basic theory of social development as it concerns the whole planet from these examples, but sadly more easily dismissed as 'irrelevant' as far as largescale modern industrialised European countries are concerned).

But there might be reason to have even greater doubts about any decisive, longterm gains from this approach than in weighing up any of the other lost advantages.

For a shallow 'living standards' comparison ended up as being one of Western reaction's best weapons for undermining confidence in the socialist camp, - and inevitably so on reflection.

As the initially artificial resuscitation of West Berlin and West Germany eventually showed, it proved possible in practice for the postwar imperialist credit boom to outlast and outperform East Europe in the shallow commercial indices of Western advertising propaganda's own choosing which revisionist socialist-camp ideology, finally in the form of Gorbachevite pro-market liquidationism, - ultimately capitulated to.

The combination of deliberate US imperialist buildup of German imperialism after 1945 (which eventually became efficiently self-sustaining due to Germany's longtime unrequited bourgeois-monopolist ambitions), plus the non-stop ideological subversion and economic sabotage of the workers states by the entire might of Western imperialism, - finally turned the bombastic-revisionist bravado of Kruschev's Stalinist delusion about 'overtaking imperialism' by achieving greater per-capita sausage production one day, into Gorbachev's fullscale abandonment of the world socialist revolution in favour of 'market' class-collaboration with the West (i.e. total capitulation to imperialist domination and exploitation).

The real value of socialism's achievements in East Europe were always worth pointing to, - and still will be pointed to in retrospect, - as many bitterly rueful East Europeans are now finding out as they experience mass unemployment, real poverty, real homelessness, slums, etc, for the first time, - under capitalism.

But the idea of overthrowing imperialism by example was always a treacherous and dangerous revisionist nonsense, and will not be missed. In the rethinking which must now follow, the Marxist-Leninist understanding of the need to overthrow by revolution the monopoly-imperialist stranglehold on the earth's wealth, & to destroy bourgeois-individualist counter-revolution once and for all, - can only gain ground.

Build Leninism. Spread the ILWP Bulletin. Joe Harper

The fight for political consciousness is the real fight

Fighting management over collective bargaining and redundancies is a worthwhile enough fight in itself but NUJ trade unionism can only ever betray the interests of working people because of its hopeless illusions in the capitalist 'free world' and 'parliamentary democracy'.

Far from explaining the obvious broader economic picture against which this struggle is being conducted, with tens of thousands joining the dole queues every month in Britain, the NUJ leadership goes out of its way to suppress discussion of the capitalist system's slump, trade war and worsening colonial-fascist war turmoil - as if every local dispute was entirely to do with the personal idiosyncrasies of a company's directors, and completely unconnected with the catastrophic threats to civilisation from the West's degenerate slide into 1930s-style Depression, cut-throat trade clashes, and renewed inter-imperialist war (WW3 between blocs led by Japan, Germany and the US).

Even worse, when the NUJ's 'Magazines and Books organiser' wants to kid everyone that the confrontation with employers is 'quite absurd' given the fact that 'in a recession it pays for managers to have good relations with staff to beat the competition' (meaning 'sod anyone else who is losing their job') the shamefaced local NUJ leadership still doesn't feel like warning anybody what a stew of corruption and vicious craft-union collaborationism is 'advising them' in this struggle.

But in reality the NUJ-Acorn House bureaucrats have nothing but treachery and disaster to their name - having squandered journalists' subs on everything from vast payouts to former NUJ bosses to providing aid for anti-communist counter-revolution, like Poland's Solidarnosc, playing its part in producing a foul capitalist government in that country - putting millions on the dole there - and, of course, 'unfortunately' leaving Acorn House with no funds to fight unemployment here...

...and when such Labourite union bosses 'lead' any struggles with management, their incurable reformist outlook means no perspective is offered outside of the limited one of finding a new modus vivendi with the company bosses; and with this deluded scenario in their minds at a time of deepening slump and commercial desperation, pay and job fights are either led to the slaughter (as at Wapping) or are deliberately sold short by union leaders (ambulance strike, nurses etc) out of their anxiety not to destroy their relations with the employers, media, Labour and Tory Establishment (with the risk of ruining their chances of ending up as TUC bosses, Labour MPs, peers, well-paid Fleet Street writers, etc).

And even the great 1984-85 miners strike was still left to peter out because of Scargill's impossible presentation of a solution as being a new 1970s-boom-time 'Plan for Coal' and expecting workers to be inspired by the prospect of a new Labour government - while the Thatcher government was unleashing open police-state civil war measures to crush miners and their families as the 'Enemy Within'.

It is not that employees in this dispute can't possibly win against a management wanting to scrap collective bargaining (and effectively de-recognise the union) - because chaotic and witless management remains eminently capable of even coming second-best to the clapped-out NUJ's antics. But risking your necks behind a nil-perspective of "we'll settle sometime soon and things will get back to normal minus a job or two but with our proud chapel intact' has to be a mug's game.

Not even a SERIOUS fight can be promised by such union leadership when it is so insanely credulous in achieving future happy collaboration with the employing class, - and so constantly likely to get cold feet and capitulate if things start looking too much like a genuine class fight against capitalism. 

By the same token, trade union leadership remains cynically stupid about the potential for bosses to rip all 'staff relations' apart if business demands it. So the NUJ leadership is always likely to be 'shocked and hurt' when the capitalist law, courts and police come down on their heads.

But what else should be expected of the Western 'democratic' system in crisis - which has just brought you the hi-tech fascist massacre of Iraq to punish all Middle Eastern peoples for daring to contemplate nationalist revolt against the colonial powers' "lines in the sand" frontiers (drawn in the 1920s and later to keep the mass Arab populations away from their own region's oil wealth, and instead ensure it was kept in the hands of local feudal rulers like the disgusting 'Emir of Kuwait').

And, of course, its 'glorious' follow-up: the 'throwing band aids and bits of bread to the suffering natives' routine to show the West's big heart - never mind that ALL the entire region's tortuous national politics and oppression under stooge regimes or vicious local opportunists is directly attributable to Western imperialism's determination to keep the Arabs and others divided and ruled (with the colonial borders, the feudal kingdoms, the pro-Western tyrants, and the Zionist occupation of Palestine all kept going by Western string-pulling, endless CIA interference, and now a monstrous display of colonial-fascist firepower).

And Labour's role in this barbaric destructiveness for the sake of the oil companies and Western neocolonial domination was to back it to the hilt (notwithstanding Benn & Co's cowardly 'left' criticisms that are never intended to break with the Labour Establishment - or give any support to revolutionary struggle).

But all this remains a closed book to the NUJ leadership, at local or national TUC level. NUJ leaflets are being put out urging journalists to "write to their MPs' - feeding all the most stale illusions in 'parliamentary fairness' and 'human rights' precisely at a time when imperialism has been blowing people's brains out on a mass scale under these very watchwords, and with the media barons and lesser entrepreneurs slamming into the threat of any industrial action with maximum hypocrisy about their 'right to manage' and the Labour Party swearing blind how 'safe' capitalist exploitation is in their hands.

NUJ reformism is psychotically brainwashed with anti-communism to the extent that they snarl against proletarian dictatorship's 'lack of a free press' even when the Western media monopolies are putting the boot into them.

What 'press freedom' and 'professional journalistic ethics' are these liars talking about? The same 'free press' dictatorship from middle-class careerism and self-censorship that puts out the fascist tabloids every day and the equally vicious 'quality papers' and TV-which ALL supported 'our boys' in the Gulf carnage, ALL support the NATO/ Western/free world' system (whatever they sometimes disclose about the non-stop US-financed death squads in Latin America, Africa, South-east Asia, etc) and with ALL of them ready to support 'British culture' against 'foreigners', 'immigrants', 'subversives' or "working-class wreckers'.

Honest journalists are being led up the garden path by these reformist illusions, both in terms of what constitutes truthful work, and in terms of the immediate and growing dangers they face from the worsening economic crisis.

The latest vicious stunts against immigrants in the gutter press tells the real story. The slump is getting so bad and Britain's competitive position so weak within the capitalist scheme of things that whipped-up chauvinist diversions against 'foreigners', - deliberately setting up the conditions for all-out trade war, mass unemployment and fascist warmongering, - are now the permanent order of the day.

NUJ opportunism pretends that the odd and futile gesture towards 'race relations and fairness' will cure this fascist filth and insists there's no cause for even THINKING harder about the slump, past history and its consequences.

'Left' opportunism from Labour 'militants', Trot or CP types backs this rubbish up with its hatred of Marxist theory, and by being even more bilious in its hostility to proletarian dictatorship in Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, China, etc, and the Soviet Union (under the appalling misleadership of the Western-loving, anti-Leninist Gorbachev).

Anyone with any confidence in the hopeless NUJ/NGA/Sogat media union leadership should consider how the dull-witted Brenda Dean & Co managed to lose everyone's jobs at Wapping, and how every individual dispute has been left by these reformists to fight alone - as in the Stockport Messenger dispute, - because they always insist on treating every struggle as a one-off affair (leaving every worker prey to the notion that it could just be a one-off difficulty because of the arrival of new technology, a particularly hard-nosed boss, or a particularly 'greedy' union).

No 'unity' of workers can be seriously won this way. Sometime, somewhere the real fight has to start against the capitalist system as a whole. Only Leninist science can ever lead this fight. Chris Barratt

Letters

Second thoughts cannot save the British ruling class

The leaked Tory thinktank "Carlton Manifesto" urging constraints on state funding for religious schools reveals the lengths to which despair is pushing some sections of the ruling class.

Christian nonsense reheated daily at statutorily-imposed school assemblies can be expected to remain the order of the day. But the half-hearted nature of the bourgeois project in Britain (relative, e.g., to the secular & republican road taken by the French bourgeoisie) will continue to irk some of the feeble latterday Bonapartes, judging from the "Carlton" outpouring.

The prospect of spiking daft plans for separatist Islamic schools might help sweeten the secular pill for racist defenders of "Christian culture and the English way of life" for whom the attack on God-on-the-rates would otherwise be unpalatable.

But the urge to shove the shamans away from such a vital area of state activity as educational funding smells of more than just another racist trick. It reflects deep bourgeois unease when confronted with growing evidence of its own historical failure as a class, driving some sections back into a ludicrously belated attempt to remake history and regain the "modernizing" initiative.

This is the same impulse which drove Tebbit to make his rude remarks about Prince Charles needing a proper job, threw a spanner into relations between PM and monarch in the Thatcher years, and showed up again last week in squirming government hostility to the Prince's rancorous mumbling against current educational policy.

But the cowardly trade-offs British capitalism made with the monarchy and the church three hundred years ago are returning now to haunt its deathbed. However farcical become the antics of Prince Hal and the Charismatic Carey, the bourgeoisie remain locked with these medieval institutions in a deadman's embrace.

The "Carlton Manifesto" also puts the cat among Labour's pigeons. After retreating from earlier disapproving noises about denominational funding (scared of offending too much against backward religious prejudices, and not wanting to lose the chance of useful deals with local mullahs to safeguard Asian votes), Labour finds its educational policy outflanked by open reactionaries, who interestingly combine their secular funding proposals with calls to expand nursery and post-1 6 provision, raise teachers' salaries etc. If such a clear-cut policy were ever to become a reality, what chance would Labour's "opposition" policy - limited to feeble anti-cuts campaigning, combined with a foot-dragging semi-acquiescence with Tory initiatives on national curriculum, tests, etc - stand?

What stands in the way of the ruling class's chosen Tory regime is not in any case the joke Labour opposition, but the devastating consequences in Britain of the imperialist crisis. 

It is that which prompts the desperate self-criticism and wishful thinking of the "Carlton Manifesto"; it is also that which daily saps the confidence of the ruling class in its ability to carry through any such decisive measures in any field of policy.

This mood of paralysis, enclave plans notwithstanding, remains the most striking characteristic of Major's tenure to-date; the "Manifesto" is significant to the extent that it may give some clue about the kind of thinking around those ruling circles who are desperate and arrogant enough to offer a bourgeois lead out of the mess.

For the bourgeoisie, the choice seems to be more chaos and paralysis or a faltering stumble in the direction of national government and/or fascist rule.

For the proletariat, another choice remains: the revolutionary overthrow of bourgeois dictatorship. Build the ILWP.
Dominic Hull

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

Extracts from recent Castro speeches

"Now there is much talk of neoliberalism," he added, "with all the consequences which we can already see in the field of health. Liberalism is in fashion in everything: in the privatization of everything, even the streets!" He pointed out that there are Latin American countries that have privatized streets, parks, with a brutal tendency toward privatization and the search for solutions through the market economy.

"We have had the market economy since the days of Christopher Columbus," he recalled. "We have had the market economy for centuries and," he asked, "what has been the result? What did colonialism, the direct offspring of capitalism, leave us? Nothing!

"Well," he continued, "actually we know what it left us: four billion hungry people. That's what capitalism, colonialism and the market economy left us!"

Fidel indicated that in this situation, in this moment of ideological crisis, it is very important to struggle. "What are we waiting for, for everything to be swept up in the wave of neoliberalism? This will pass, of course this will pass! And people are going to learn in the flesh - not in a book - and they are already learning what neoliberalism is. What is it going to sanctify, the debts, the interests, unequal terms of trade, pillage?

"Latin America today is exporting more capital in one year than all the gold and silver extracted over three centuries,- Fidel stated.

We are among the few whose stomach turns at the thought of capitalism, because those who know what capitalism is, those who know the truth can't feel anything but repugnance and nausea toward that system.

Yesterday, when we opened the health conference here, we saw this in the data and the figures. It is very clear that the capitalist system is worthless, since it can't even guarantee employment to its own population, or health care or an adequate education. It is unable to protect its youth from being corrupted by drugs, gambling and a host of other vices.

So what exactly has capitalism given to the world? Four billion starving human beings who constitute a volcano that will eventually erupt and no one knows when, how or where. This is what capitalism has accomplished in four centuries: horrifying poverty for a large portion of mankind. It has poisoned the seas and the air; and with its squandering of fuel and natural resources it has produced an ecological catastrophe of unknown consequences.

Now imagine a society based on the belief that every individual should have a car. Imagine every person in China with a car. (LAUGHTER) I want you to visualize that for a minute. Think of every person in India with a car. Afterwards the only thing left to ask will be, how many days will the oil last? That fuel is already so expensive.  Applied to the Third World as a societal model, it is a nonsensical, crazy concept. If the rest of the world lived like the consumer societies, the oil supplies wouldn't last for a year, and the pollution caused would make survival on earth impossible.

Capitalism has no future as a model of what a society should be; it's a grave error from start to finish. It is unjust from start to finish; it is the rule of egoism, it's the law of the jungle and there are still idiots around who believe they're going to solve problems through capitalism. (APPLAUSE)

There are fools who don't know that in order to build capitalism you need not only capital, but also capitalists and they have none. When it comes to exploiting people, capitalists are champions. Who can compete with them? This is all a gigantic folly.
But amidst this universal craziness we have to be serene and wise; amidst this universal insanity we have to be level-headed and lucidly evaluate what must be done. Because of this I am saying that our population has special responsibilities.

I recall I was left with two men at dawn on December 3 - there were three of us and we had two rifles, one had very few bullets left and I had a cartridge belt with some 80 rounds. There wasn't anybody else around - we saw no one around - and a terrible persecution was unleashed by the army to liquidate the isolated fighters one by one. That's how it happened - most of the Granma expedition members who died were assassinated, after being captured in those places because of thirst, hunger, unfamiliarity with the terrain. They were captured in different ways, all except for three groups which were able to continue: the group of three, Raul's group and the group comprising Che, Almeida and other comrades.

Actually, the number of rifles in the hands of those of us who managed to regroup was very small, about seven more or less, and we decided to continue with our struggle.

To those who wondered whether or not the Revolution was possible; or who said that an army was needed to fight against another, or I don't know how many million men or how many thousands of weapons, our answer was to renew the struggle with seven rifles, those carried by Raul's group and my group. 

The third group had agreed to the conditions laid down by some peasants, to take them first unarmed across enemy lines and bring the weapons later, because they were completely unfamiliar with the place, and those weapons were lost. And so that group, with extremely valuable comrades in it, was unarmed. But with just seven rifles, we said: "Yes, our ideas are just, our strategy is correct, our concept is correct, so we're going to fight in the mountains and we're going to liquidate Batista's army." 1 think all this is very important because it shows what man can do when confronted with the sophisticated weapons theory.

When we began our fight with just seven rifles, Batista had scores of tanks, hundreds of armored vehicles, thousands of trucks, scores of planes, hundreds of guns, thousands of machine guns, all sorts of automatic weapons and 70,000 to 80,000 men. And all we had were our seven little rifles. Later, we recovered some of the weapons that had been left behind when we were dispersed. And we decided to continue our struggle because we were convinced that it was just, that we were right, that our tactic was correct. Yet of course we had to have strong convictions: the sort of convictions we ask of revolutionaries, the sort of convictions we ask of our communist youth, the sort of convictions we ask of our Party members, the sort of convictions we ask of all young people and students.

It's clear that there are battles that may be even tougher than military battles and the United States is hoping that perhaps it won't even have to invade the country, that the difficulties arising or that may arise, which are more serious, as a result of the collapse of the socialist camp or as a result of the problems existing in the USSR the United States is hoping that the consequences of this situation will cause insurmountable economic difficulties for the Revolution.

The United States is dreaming that these problems will bring back capitalism to Cuba; it is dreaming that all our land will again become private property, that our factories will become private property, that our means of production will become private property.

It is dreaming that perhaps our capital and our cities will once again be teeming with brothels, gambling dens, casinos, barefoot children, beggars. It dreams that perhaps the nation can grow used to having thousands or millions of jobless people. It can see the country filled again with illiterates, without schools, without technological institutes, without the health system which is now considered one of the best in the world. 

It has the absurd and crazy idea that our country return to the past - to a past of injustice, inequality, racial and sexual discrimination. It dreams that women can again become a sort of property in the heart of a society of classes. It is dreaming about those absurd things which perhaps the overwhelming majority of you never knew but nevertheless understand, sense, see.

In the rest of the capitalist world it tries to seduce the peoples with its absurd consumer societies, in places where the riches stolen for centuries from the Third World accumulated. Capitalism hasn't created anything but sterile luxury and an incredible waste of the earth's natural resources, in order to create super-rich societies where, incidentally, not everybody is rich and there are many homeless people, beggars and a lot of other evils.

What capitalism has brought into the world during centuries of colonialism, neocolonialism and exploitation are four billion human beings living in poverty, four billion human beings! Every day 40,000 children die who could have been saved.

The worst kind of atrocities, the worst kind of humiliations, the worst kind of injustices, the worst kind of abuses, unhappiness, suffering, that's what capitalism has brought into the world. In addition, it has poisoned the seas, the rivers, the atmosphere.

I don't know what kind of capitalist or socialist experiences some people not precisely from the Third World lived through; but a Third World country like Cuba, which lived through all that, a country like ours which lived through centuries of colonialism, which lived through decades of U.S. domination, during which they committed in our country all sorts of abuses - once some U.S. sailors even desecrated the sacred statue of José Martí in Havana's Central Park, in what was one more expression of their insolence and arrogance and at a time when they weren't as unilaterally powerful as they are today; a country like ours, which lived through so much horror, will never resign itself to that past; a people like ours who learned the meaning of freedom, who for the first time in history learned the meaning of independence, who for the first time in history knew the meaning of national dignity and honor, will never go back to capitalism, will never go back to being a U.S. possession and colony. (APPLAUSE)

That's what you are expressing on a day like today in a rally like this - that idea that there won't be a return to the past, that idea that the United States will never again become the master of our sacred nation! (APPLAUSE) That's why we must be ready to meet all the difficulties and make all the sacrifices.

No one can imagine all the efforts the Party is making so that our people will suffer as little as possible from the consequences of this special period, so that we won't be without food, so that we won't be without medicines, so that we won't be without the essential things; the efforts made by the country every day, every hour, every minute.

No one can imagine the difficulties we must confront and how the country has managed to get around those difficulties so that no one is thrown into the street, so that no one is left without an income, so that no child is left without a school, so that not a sick man or woman is left without a doctor.

I'm absolutely certain that no other country in the world could have confronted the difficulties as we are confronting them, but we must be prepared to confront even greater difficulties. Yes! And we ought to tell the United States: stop your illusions, stop day-dreaming, for if we are brave enough to die and shed our blood, we'll also have the courage to endure all the material suffering that may be necessary to save the Revolution; we'll have the courage to endure the shortages that may be necessary to save the Revolution! (APPLAUSE)

Capitalism and imperialism have nothing to offer to revolutionary peoples.

You are already witnessing what those countries which used to call themselves socialist are now going through: millions of unemployed, inequality, injustice. They were offered miracles and thought that by the next day they would be living better than the bourgeoisie in Paris, and what they got instead is the other side of the coin.

Capitalism and imperialism have nothing to offer the peoples but humiliation, inequality, exploitation, the law of the jungle; and we don't want inequality, we don't want exploitation, we don't want the law of the jungle, we want man to be the brother of man rather than the predator of man. (APPLAUSE)

That is why our fighting spirit, our willingness to sacrifice, our heroism must be an integral one.

Today we still have many things available and we're making big efforts, getting ready for the moment when more things may be in short supply; what to do if we should have less fuel. And we're training hundreds of thousands of oxen, in case it should become necessary to plow the land and prepare the land with oxen if we don't have enough fuel for the tractors. We're distributing hundreds of thousands of bicycles among the population and if we have time, we'll distribute millions, so that people can ride to work on a bike. In other words, we're getting ready for greater difficulties.

That's why the principle of "I am the nation, I am the Revolution, I am the dignity of the country, I am the honor of the country," or "I am the honor of the country, I am the army of the country," must be applied in all aspects, including economic aspects. We have a very great responsibility resting on our shoulders, we have a very important page of history to write, and that page can only be written with the will to fight and the will to win.

The most just ideas in the history of mankind are today flown in our banners. Our position is the most dignified that can be taken at this moment in the world.

The difficult times will pass! Truth will win out! The peoples will fight! The billions of human beings leading increasingly worse lives will become increasingly more aware and will fight increasingly harder! The peoples are our main allies nowadays.

Occasionally, we have been asked by visiting journalists whether we are alone. I explain to them that we've never seen so much solidarity from the peoples, that we've never seen so much admiration from the peoples. The fact that our small country resisted the U.S. blockade, resisted U.S. threats when the USSR didn't have any problems and when the socialist camp existed in Europe, was quite a feat; but the fact that our country exists, that our Revolution continues at a time when the socialist camp in Eastern Europe has collapsed and when the USSR has enormous problems, this is indeed an unparalleled page in the history of mankind, this is indeed the proof of a revolutionary people, of a courageous people! (APPLAUSE) And the peoples of Latin America, the peoples all over the world admire such courage, admire such bravery, admire such heroism, admire the greatness of the Cuban people. And we'll not only endure the special period but will also develop and move ahead. 

Now we are indeed showing the world the stuff Cubans are made of! For quite a long time we were slandered, they claimed we weren't even independent but rather a satellite of the Soviet Union and now they have come to realize, without any doubt, that we're a satellite to principles, a satellite to ideas, a satellite to an ideal which is like a sun of justice around which we are revolving and will always revolve.

History has given us the chance to prove how independent we are; history has given us the right to proclaim we are today the most independent country on earth. If you don't think so, look at what is going on in the United Nations, how big and small powers are reacting to the manipulations of the government of the United States and how there is one country which knows how to say, "No!" a country which says "No!" and saying "No!" to the empire today is one of the most glorious actions ever carried out.

Because all of that, my answer to some journalist who asked me if we were alone was: "Yes, we are alone, but at the top!"