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 630 Tuesday January 7 1992                                                                                                                      10p 

The sharpening imperialist crisis will not "by itself resolve 'left' confusion

The West's deepening economic mess is enlivening the debate about revisionism's catastrophe in East Europe but will not automatically make it easier to explain exactly why the Third International ultimately failed.

The class-collaborating essence of Stalinism's retreat from Leninist standards of scientifically understanding world revolutionary perspectives is still little grasped.

There is also a widespread inability to foresee just how disastrous capitalism's warmongering dislocation is bound to become. The result is that the dictatorship of the proletariat, - even when (rarely) formally defended, - is still treated more as academic theory rather than as a certain future hope for mankind as a benign longed-for discipline after cut-throat bourgeois market anarchy has plumbed the depths of trade-war degradations.

In one sample of the debate, for example, Slovo of the SACP has been challenged for his "Has Socialism Failed?" retreat from Leninism (dealt with in Bulletins 623, 602, 601, 539, etc) on the grounds that not enough credit has been given to Lenin for being the 'first' to 

"put forth the possibility of inhibiting imperialism's tendency to war", 

- disputing Slovo's pamphlet claim that: 

"The earlier Leninist concept that it is impossible to escape imperialist war requires qualification in the light of changing realities..." 

but from the wrong angle entirely.

And the muddle of this recent would-be American criticism of Slovo for abandoning Leninist teaching on the dictatorship of the proletariat is then increased by the addition of this supposed correction to SACP revisionism: 

"The inevitability of world war no longer-obtained after WWII, not because the nature of imperialism had changed, but because political forces had arisen capable of staying imperialism's war lust, because imperialism could not launch a world war without self-destructing at the same time."

Following this confusion up with a correct attack on Gorbachevism for ludicrously extending this delusion all the way to believing that neocolonialism and exploitation are now extinct and that imperialism is "converging" with socialism in the embrace of "universal human values" - does not clear up the chaos.

The whole idea of preventing world war all the time the imperialist bourgeoisie remains in a powerful position worldwide is complete nonsense from start to finish.

The likelihood of war has nothing whatever to do with the amount of destruction the imperialists might bring down on their own heads by unleashing it.

To suggest this is pure idealism, totally divorced from Marxist materialism.

Neither does imperialism have a "war lust", except to speak in the language of poetic fantasy.

Imperialism has an incurable built-in war requirement as the only possible way it can attempt to resolve impossible trade-war contradictions at the peak of inevitable rivalry for world monopoly-economic domination.

The first imperialist bourgeoisie to deliberately refrain from further acquisitive economic conquest at a certain stage of trade war rivalry will be the first to go under in the struggle.

No ruling class in history ever has or ever could voluntarily give up power (a final conclusive Marxist argument against the Trot philistinism about the USSR degenerating 'because of a new dictatorial ruling caste', when what happened was a workers state bureaucracy which liquidated when all leadership inspiration was destroyed by worldwide defeatist revisionist confusion and the eclipse of Leninism).

So no imperialist bourgeoisie will voluntarily quit the fight for world supremacy, - and any retreats for military reasons will be just that, capitulation to superior armed bullying power.

And the law of uneven development of cut-throat imperialist competition has always guaranteed - and always will - that some rival imperialist gangs at some stage will both be convinced that it is the other side which is the weaker and will be bound to back down if pushed hard enough.

And no weaponry inventions of any kind (which will always be competitively imitated or countered) will ever be able to destroy this imperialist aggressive arrogance which grows out of the very nature of entrepreneurial 'free market' triumphs.

This confused way of trying to 'correct' Slovo relates back all the way to the still-fundamental muddle in the international workers movement about what exactly went wrong with the development of the world socialist revolution on its 1917 foundations.

Elsewhere this latest would-be 'critique' of Slovoism demonstrates this confusion in spectacular fashion with the 'new' conclusion: 

"We have said that answers cannot be found only in the shortcomings of individuals or certain narrow strata. As Engels pointed out, ultimately the responsibility for history must be borne by the people as a whole. The people with all that is admirable in their makeup and in their consciousness, still have serious shortcomings, still lack sufficient maturity, still have not achieved the level of development which the building of socialism requires.

"Responsibility, then, for many of the negative phenomena of socialism, must, therefore, rest on the people's shoulders.............…

Ultimately the power is theirs, the power to struggle against deception and repression, and so the responsibility is theirs."

This is pure reactionary fatalism, and of a particularly debilitating anti-theory kind. 'There is no cure for history's ills but to get a new people', it is claiming, and therefore it implies that whatever struggle might have been put up for correct theoretical party leadership in the Soviet Union and the Third International in the 1920s and 1930s could not have made any difference anyway.

But this, of course, was exactly the anti-Marxist trap fallen into by Trotskyism's "everything is rotten" cynicism as well as by the camp-following "everything is always for the best" philistine complacency of Stalinism.

It is criminal anti-Marxism to pretend that dialectical-materialist science is pure determinism. Reality is much more complex. The world cannot be transformed outside the bounds of immediate economic, social, political, and ideological possibilities.

But it cannot be transformed within those boundaries either if a life-or-death struggle for consciousness is not won, led by a Leninist organisation of communist revolutionaries.

The fight for the Bolshevik triumph in the first place in 1917 could seriously have been lost as well as won. It is demented philistinism to dispute this, making a mockery of Marx, Engels, and Lenin's lifelong fight to build a party of revolutionary theory.

A large part of the Leninist contribution to Marxist science of revolutionary historical development lies in having worked out exactly how to build such a party of organised revolutionary consciousness.

The development of the world socialist revolution began to go wrong when its leadership complacently confused itself about how Leninist world revolutionary perspectives were likely to be achieved. (See ILWP Books vols 3,4,5, etc).

Certainly hindsight may claim that the Trotskyite cynical challenge to the Stalin era was "bound to fail" for class reasons despite some correct criticism of Stalinist defeatism.

But it is altogether a different matter to claim that "no challenge to Stalinism could have succeeded because of the conditions of popular understanding".

Just because it did happen that way is no proof at all that it was bound to happen that way. The record simply shows that there was no criticism of the misleadership of the international (on how to deal with Nazism, the Spanish civil war, China, etc) on a level of Leninist criticism of revisionist weaknesses.

And worst of all, of course, this fatalism rules out finding out subsequently - for the education of the present struggle - exactly what did go wrong.

And so damaging was this failure to learn the lessons of Popular Frontism's disastrous counter-revolutionary influence, that an almost identical catastrophe to the Spanish civil war fiasco was played out in Chile from 1970-1973 when the CP-backed Allende-ism turned its back similarly on proletarian dictatorship in favour of "parliamentary democracy" and "anti-fascist coalition", - guaranteeing the triumph of counter-revolution as in Spain.

A similar debacle was repeated in Nicaragua when the revisionist-influenced Sandinistas also turned their back on Leninist proletarian dictatorship science in favour of pragmatic opportunism, and came to grief over their philistine contempt for theory.

Oddly enough, this latest CP challenge to Slovo-ism and Gorbachevism does its best work in openly and courageously championing the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The flaw, however, is in still being too defensive by far about this decisive historical question.

It is not really necessary to apologise for the Bolshevik closure of the Constituent Assembly in 1918 

"because the Socialist Revolutionary Party had renounced its own land-reform programme after having won its elected majority on that basis', 

etc, etc.

The dictatorship of the proletariat, - the actual revolutionary seizure of state power by the working class for the first time in history, - was simply an infinitely more advanced level of human achievement and progress than any kind of ballot-paper opinion poll could ever be.

Nor is it necessary to tiptoe around the question of whether the dictatorship of the proletariat was expressed as the dictatorship by the Bolshevik Party. Of course it was, - inevitably and properly so, as Lenin frequently declared from the rooftops (see ILWP Books vols 3,4,5,6,7,12,13, etc).

Such diffidence and theoretical fence-sitting is deadly dangerous and leads inevitably to such idealist confusion as feebly pleading that: 

"Socialist societies must also find ways to ensure an atmosphere free of intimidation for honest forces seeking to improve socialism, must not only prevent repression, but even moral intimidation, must find ways to ensure an atmosphere permitting of honest and free discussion, and where servility, unimaginativeness and routinism is not rewarded. Of course, this applies not only to socialist societies but to revolutionary parties in capitalist societies."

Pious pleas are not what is needed. Blunt understanding of Stalinism as a petty-bourgeois failure of class consciousness is necessary, - a defeatist retreat from the full difficult challenge of completing the world revolution.

The 'technological revolution' delusion for declaring "world war impossible" is born of similar faintheartedness and philistinism. 

Of course workers' state governments must avoid giving imperialism any unnecessary opportunities for warmongering by skilfully keeping the imperialist camp divided from a united attack by using peaceful coexistence diplomacy as a temporary tactic.

But of course the workers-state governments should also never stop telling the international working class that until the imperialist bourgeoisie is finally overthrown everywhere, there can be no security against capitalist warmongering anywhere on earth.

As for misquoting Engels to blame the masses for the Stalin era's philosophical retreats from the high standards of Leninist scientific leadership, - this is a dreadful lapse.

Engels did indeed declare after the defeats of 1848:

"If then, we have been beaten, we have nothing else to do but to begin again from the beginning."

But in declaring that the causes were 

"not to be sought for in the accidental efforts, talents, faults, errors or treacheries of some of the leaders, but in the general social state and conditions of existence of each of the convulsed nations", 

Engels was emphasising that the notion of 'betrayal' by particular individual leaders, - although it may be true, - was nothing like an adequate explanation for large-scale historic defeats.

Likewise, ascribing the setbacks to the world socialist revolution to the 'cult of the individual of Stalin' was anti-Marxist rubbish.

Nowhere does Engels use the words: 

'Ultimately the responsibility for history must be borne by the people as a whole'. 

He merely says that the relationship of class forces in 1848 was in favour of the counter-revolution because of 

"not the work of single individuals, but spontaneous, irresistible manifestations of national wants and necessities, more or less clearly understood, but very distinctly felt by numerous classes in every country".

He adds that blaming the counter-revolution's successes on 

"betrayal by Mr This or Citizen That" does "not even show how it came to pass that the 'people' allowed themselves to be thus betrayed".

And this is true. A comparable modern statement would ask: "What does the cult of the individual of Stalin explain, - even about the 'people' who subscribed to the cult en masse?".

Personal behaviour - or mass acceptance of it - explains nothing. It is the failure of class philosophy which is at fault.

But never has Marxist science ever excused the leaderships of workers movements from responsibility for what philosophy they have embraced and have been advocating.

And the Stalin era leadership embraced the philosophy of class-collaboration on the fraudulent basis of "no necessary world war on imperialism's part".

The sooner this lethal anti-Marxist nonsense is exposed and destroyed for good, the better.

Class forces rallied behind parts of Western imperialism to create some unfavourable circumstances for world socialist revolution in the 1930s and again in the 1950s and subsequently.

But revisionist-defeatist misunderstandings of those class forces and how they should be dealt with were clear historical disasters and must be exposed as such.

Until the development of revolutionary theory catches up again with constantly evolving reality, there is no possibility that a swing of class forces back in favour of proletarian revolution will be crowned with anything like success.

New 1917s, and 1949s and 1959s and 1975s, etc, will have to be worked for.

Nor is there anything like as much time for this as people might think. How quickly imperialism will be deep into a fascist-slump warmongering crisis is not known.

But it could develop with astonishing rapidity, - such is the ripeness of long-unresolved 'free-market' crises in intolerable international bank debts, trade imbalances, and other destabilising political and economic factors - as the capitalist press itself freely admits: 

'This recession is not like the other ones,' Godley and his colleagues say. 'It is one from which no recovery worth the name is foreseeable, given present policies and the institutional framework within which they are increasingly constrained.'

The Cambridge group urge a three-point policy programme to revive the economy and avoid 'endemic depression and rising unemployment'.

■ A 'substantial' devaluation of sterling while this is still possible (that is, well before the advent of the single European currency).
■ A programme of support for industry, including investment in infrastructure as well as education and training.
■ A large-scale programme of public works 'paid for — if macro-economic conditions require it — by taxes on those fortunate enough still to be in employment'.

The economists are scathing about the Treasury's official economic forecasts, and say: 'The required improvement in export performance is simply not in prospect.' They maintain that 'we start from a uniquely dreadful point in which we still have a significant external deficit near the trough of a recession... This time expansion, if it ever comes, must be driven by net export demand, together with investment, in manufacturing as well as in infrastructure, education and training.'

The Cambridge group also question the Government's claims of a massive investment boom in the 1980s. 'Investment in manufacturing recovered from the 1979-81 debacle so slowly that manufacturing capacity today is hardly higher if at all than it was 12 years ago; moreover manufacturing investment is now falling back again very sharply.'

The rise in 'business investment' during the mid-1980s took place mainly in retail distribution, and financial and other services.

The fact that unemployment is now 1.4 million higher than in 1979 is, say Godley and his colleagues, a natural counterpart to 'the record slow growth rate (1.75 per cent per annum on average)' over the period 1979 to 1991. 'The depressed growth rate should have depressed imports as well, so bringing about an improvement in our current balance of payments. But this is the reverse of what happened.'

Be under no illusion: the disappointment with Thatcherism is set to reach epic levels — and the reaction will be violent.

For the first six months of this year will bring the whole experiment to its climactic end — and probably erode faith in uninhibited free markets for a generation. Mrs Thatcher and her acolytes' attempt to radicalise the British economy was never more than an attempt to reinvent the past, to modernise by going backwards. So, in the wider economy, all that was achieved was an old-fashioned, 19th-century boom — and it is now succeeded by an old-fashioned 19th-century depression.

In the same way that those booms had their frenzied peaks, so the old slumps had their depressed troughs. That is what is now in store. Before the recession has bottomed and we see a true recovers', it looks more and more as though there will have to be what stockbrokers call a sell-off, a mood of absolute bleakness with economic events to match. There will be rumours of, and maybe even the collapse and rescue of an important financial institution. The economy will seem locked in an apparently unending recession, and property values will fall. It will, of course, mark the bottom; but that is not how it will seem.

Yet for the Conservative Party, which played with fire in introducing the destabilising market system, that will only be the start. The continuing recession will dramatise what some of us have always known — that far from relaunching the British economy, the Conservative experiment has impoverished it, and that from broadcasting policy to the reduction of poverty, there is little worth salvaging.

Wherever you look, the results are similarly dismal The social security reforms, for example, which were aimed at producing less dependency and less fraud, have combined with the indexation of social security benefits to prices and not wages, to produce levels of relative mass poverty to rival those of the late 19th century.

Areas where the private sector was meant to take over from the public — whether housing or export credit guarantee insurance — have at best done no worse, at worst have lamentably failed. And where public spending has been squeezed or cut to encourage efficiency, dilapidation and demoralisation are generalised, from British Rail to the health service.

Education, where the doctrine of opting out and choice has been established, to make the operation of markets in schools mimic that in the Stock Exchange, is set to reproduce conditions of quasi-social apartheid. Good schools will "overshoot" upwards and weaker schools downwards — just as prices do in markets.

At work, standards of health and safety have fallen as part of the lifting of controls, unions have been weakened and pay bargaining decentralised. Yet in the biggest fall of GDP this century, average earnings are still growing at 7.5 per cent.

In the City, the interaction of squeezed profit margins and falling property values has exposed the fecklessness of much landing and investment practice. So far the recession has only shaken out the over-borrowed marginal entrepreneurs.

There is more to come.

On pensions, endowment polices and unit-trust charging, the public is discovering that it has been ripped off. Financial deregulation has seen a near-doubling in unit-trust charges, a weakening in the safety and security of pension funds, especially their surpluses, and a colossal increase in the sale of endowment mortgages, which are as near to financial deceit as any form of investment contract sold in the high street.

Portugal, the new president of the European Community, has concluded that — with the final date on which members must agree in principle to liberalise international trade rules only weeks away — a political miracle is needed to save the Uruguay round of the Gatt negotiations from failure. Postponement may be the best that can be achieved in Geneva. Although EC leaders are anxious to play down the threat any failure to complete the Uruguay round over the next few weeks might pose to world trade, they are privately pessimistic about the chances of a compromise with the United States, particularly over agriculture.

"I am very pessimistic and there is no point in disguising this," the Portuguese foreign minister and president of the EC Council of Ministers, Joao de Deus Pinheiro, said here yesterday. "What is on the table as far as agriculture is concerned is simply not acceptable. It is not only France but several other community governments which believe this."

He said the only chance he could see of securing an agreement was if the Gatt secretary general, Arthur Dunkel, made big changes in the compromise paper he prepared just before Christmas. Mr Pinheiro said if no agreement could be readied on February 13 there would be no sense in trying to continue, because of the political impact of the opening of the US presidential race in New Hampshire next month. 'I hope that we can agree to freeze our negotiations until the end of 1992 when the election for the White House and some other political elections are out of the way."

He hoped the Gatt governments would at least agree on a series of interim accords — notably covering textiles — to try to avoid any slide into trade conflict and protectionism in the difficult period before negotiations restarted.

Although there may be a tactical element in this gloomy view, optimism is now in short supply in EC capitals. Apart from the substantial negotiating gap between the EC and the United States over the scale and timetable for reductions in agricultural trade subsidies, major problems remain in other Gatt sectors including financial services, textiles and intellectual property rights.

Mr Pinheiro said he was "very doubtful" whether Mr Dunkel could make sufficiently far-reaching changes to his existing proposals to facilitate at least an outline agreement in Geneva next month.

Foreign, trade and agriculture ministers from the 12 EC countries will meet in Brussels on Friday in a final attempt to reduce the negotiating gulf between the EC and its major Gatt trading partners. They will be told of the enormous economic risks involved in failure at a time when the world economy is in danger of moving into a depression.

The British government, in particular, has stressed in recent months that a Gatt failure would risk escalating trade conflict and that protectionism would quickly "turn a recession into an all-out slump."

And even the inter-imperialist squabbling has hardly departed from its long-running patterns of German and Japanese aggression against the fading hegemony of the older-established colonialist powers, leading to bitter racist recriminations on all sides - as the latest capitalist press coverage shows when compared to some 1961 archive material just released:

AFTER defying strong United Nations and American pressure to hold off from recognising Croatia's independence, Chancellor Helmut Kohl yesterday celebrated as a "great victory" for Germany the European Community decision to recognise Yugoslavia's secessionist republics next month.

While the rest of the EC is to wait until mid-January and then accord recognition if a number of provisos are met, Bonn is to recognise Croatia and Slovenia unconditionally and to announce the opening of diplomatic ties tomorrow.

Croatia reacted with guarded enthusiasm to the EC decision, which formally spells an end to the post-war Yugoslav federation. But the Serbian government and opposition responded furiously, warning that the Serb-Croat war would intensify and spread beyond the main combat areas of Croatia.

Bonn's vehement support for Croatian independence was strongly opposed by the United States, Britain, and the UN on the grounds that it would impede rather than promote a negotiated settlement of the Serb-Croat conflict and lead to increased fighting.

Washington reacted coolly yesterday to the recognition plans, but said that the EC's postponement of definitive decisions until January would allow more time for mediation efforts.

However, at the Dresden congress of Dr Kohl's Christian Democratic Union yesterday, the chancellor got a prolonged standing ovation after he announced his cabinet's intentions. The EC decision was "a big foreign policy success" for the federal government, he said. Bonn's resolve in pushing the recognition move through the EC is seen by many as signalling the emergence of an assertive Germany in central Europe, a country prepared to flex political muscle to match its economic might.

British officials made plain that the "compromise" decision — at a meeting they described as "extremely difficult and often bad-tempered" — was the only alternative to splitting the EC. Bonn, they said, threatened to lead a group of four countries in announcing immediate recognition of Croatia and Slovenia.

The "compromise" means that Croatia, Slovenia, and any of the four other Yugoslav republics wanting to be recognised will have to pass a "good conduct" test on observance of minority rights and democratic principles, and abjure the forcible redrawing of borders.

Lord Carrington, chairman of the EC peace conference on Yugoslavia who also sought to resist the German pressure, said everyone would "have to wait and see" whether recognition would promote or hinder peace.

Bonn's announcement will acknowledge Croatian sovereignty over all of its territory, one-third of which is now in the control of the Serbs and the Yugoslav army.

The Serb-controlled region of Krajina in south-western Croatia will tomorrow proclaim itself a "republic" and a federal unit of the rump Yugoslavia. The proclamation could be endorsed by the Serbian parliament, triggering a further messy dispute over territory and status.

De Gaulle, Macmillan noted, "wants the recognition of France as a Great Power, at least equal to Britain. He suspects the Anglo-Saxons".

"German policy," Macmillan said,"is short-sighted and selfish... sooner or later — I hope sooner — we and the Americans must start to frighten and bully them on their trade and monetary policies."

He added: "Germans in particular never yield to the force of argument, but only to the argument of force." He contemplated a "lurking danger" of German neutralism in exchange for reunification.

While Macmillan was musing about the Germans, his Foreign Secretary, Lord Home, told the Defence Secretary, Harold Watkinson, that he was concerned about Britain's relations with Bonn. "We want their support over Sixes and Sevens; we shall have to talk to them about our balance of payments...while we are trying to do this, prominent people here and a good part of the press will no doubt continue to be rude about the Germans. This makes it all the more important that our official attitude should be as friendly as possible."

The overriding issue in British entry to the EEC was political. A cabinet minute of April 26, 1961 remarked: "The countries of the Common Market, if left to develop alone under French leadership, would grow into a separate political force in Europe... Eventually it might mean that the Six would come to exercise greater influence than the United Kingdom, both with the United States and possibly with some of the independent countries of the Commonwealth. This development was therefore a threat to the political position of the United Kingdom as a world power. It would be consistent with our traditional policy to seek to prevent the concentration of undue strength in a single politic unit on the continent of Europe. Politically, our interests would be better served by working for a wider European association in which we could play a prominent part."

The minute noted that the surrender of national sovereignty would require careful thought. A report by the Foreign Office said: "Continental opinion would not think that we were in earnest in establishing a new relationship with the Six unless we were prepared to abandon a significant degree of sovereignty."
Under the majority voting system, Britain would be "committing itself to the possibility of a range of indefinite obligations over a wide field of action within the economic and social spheres". The report could have been written last month before the Maastricht summit So, perhaps, could a note to Macmillan by Sir Pierson Dixon, the ambassador to Paris: "We shall become more and more Europeans... provided that it is confederal and not federal in character..."

THE United States should draw up a plan for targeting nuclear and non-nuclear weapons at "every reasonable adversary" round the globe, a panel of present and former Pentagon officials has concluded in a report requested by the US nuclear targeting director.

The report, requested by General Lee Butler of the air force, says that further cuts may eventually be warranted, but that the American arsenal should remain larger than the total number of French, British and Chinese nuclear arms.

US weapons would no longer be targeted by a so-called single integrated operational plan (Siop), which contains myriad options for detonating nuclear warheads on former Soviet territory.
Instead, five separate plans emphasising strikes against "every reasonable adversary" around the world with either nuclear or non-nuclear weapons should be adopted, the report states.

But nuclear weapons would still have to be aimed at former Soviet republics as "insurance in the event that the post-Soviet experiment in democracy and freedom prevails", the report says. "Successor authorities in the former USSR may not be our cold war enemies, but neither are they our reliable, stable allies or friends," it adds.

Several of the report's conclusions will be controversial. For example, the authors say maintaining a substantial US nuclear arsenal will help deter Germany and Japan from developing nuclear weapons.

They also predict that US strategic nuclear arms could help deter chemical and nuclear weapons proliferation or hostile actions in the Third World, where countries previously have not been targeted by long-range US nuclear weapons.

A former US secretary of defence, Robert McNamara, said the report appeared to him to be "weakly constructed and weakly argued" in suggesting that nuclear arms are needed to deter conventional military action by the world's lesser powers, when modern American conventional arms can overwhelm most opponents.

The panel did not list potential target nations. But a briefing by its chairman, Thomas Reed, a secretary of the air force under President Reagan, said US arms could deter aggression against states such as Israel and Taiwan; seizure of critical raw materials, such as oil; or foreign domination of a part of outer space. — Washington Post.

Imperialism is in a warmongering trade-war mess because of the incurable nature of the 'free—market' profiteering and cut-throat competition, allied to the endless colonial arms-race and the insoluble pollution of the international bank-credit markets by mountains of relative 'surplus' capital.

The bourgeois press itself cynically admits what uncontrollable chaos this anarchic brew invariably produces:

Afghanistan's opium crop threatens to flood Europe and to a lesser extent the United States with over 200 additional tons of its derivative, heroin, forcing prices down. 

The continued war in Afghanistan and lawlessness in the rural areas are blamed by diplomats and drug eradication officials for the boost in production.

The UN figures contrast starkly with those issued by the Americans, who estimate Afghan poppy production to be only 450 tons. Local experts scoff at such estimates saying that the US, a supporter of the Afghan guerrillas, is embarrassed to talk about the mojahedin's role in trafficking, opium cultivation, and heroin manufacture. Already a third of Pakistan's heroin laboratories have moved into Afghanistan. Most are said to be situated in Nangrahar and Helmund, two areas controlled by the mojahedin.

For the past 12 years, the mojahedin have been supported both militarily and politically by the US, Britain, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. The US has agreed with Moscow to end its arms supplies to the guerrillas on January 1, but narcotics agents are worried that the decision, although welcome, will persuade mojahedin commanders to increase opium production further to raise revenue.

In the last two years, as the war against Kabul has wound down, many of them have become drug traffickers rather than heroic fighters against communism.
The UN has proposed a five-point formula for peace, but UN officials are worried that many commanders will simply resist peace efforts because of the power it may give to a central authority.

Aid organisations say they are powerless to do anything to stop the traffic.

"These people are armed to the teeth and you cannot go in there and lecture them to stop growing," he said.

Drug destabilisation is the 'free' world bourgeoisie's last hope for preventing new 1917s as the insoluble capitalist economic crisis deepens. It is a vain desperate hope. Sane and conscious material needs will organise a vast majority of the international proletariat back towards communist revolution before much longer.

And the fight for revolutionary theory will ensure that spontaneous organisations will quickly give way to deliberate Marxist-Leninist scientific preparation for eliminating the imperialist bourgeoisie from world domination once and for all. Build Leninism. Spread the ILWP Bulletin.
Jack Bradshaw

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

US tyranny over Panama

THE ONCE populous streets of El Chorrillo, a neighborhood which was the quintessence of the capital, and of which its residents used to say: "this is more Panamanian than Panama," are today overrun with grass and garbage. The former residents of the place, now war refugees as a result of the U.S. invasion,1989 December 20, continue to live in inhuman conditions in the hangars of former Albrook Field military base, under the control of the Southern Command.

Relatives of the dead and disappeared search even in distant parts of the country, in mass graves which are now being discovered, and most of them return empty-handed. No one knows the whereabouts of thousands and thousands of people. The cruel night of December 20, 1989, still endures in the memory of this country of hardly more than two million inhabitants.

The popular mobilizations, the activities of the relatives of the dead and disappeared the protests by unions, the permanent actions of the war refugees, compounded by growing international solidarity, and the investigation of the invasion by a committee headed by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark — all these forces have become a deadweight for the Bush administration.

All this makes the actions of the United Nations in the case of Iraq more serious, if one compares them with the illegality of the invasion of Panama and the subsequent occupation of the country by U.S. troops, which control all local politics and conduct raids and detentions, without objections from any international organization.

Almost a year after the invasion, the whereabouts of thousands of people were still unknown, and the discovery of mass graves indicates that the official statistics published by the Bush administration were false. In the beginning they spoke of around 300 Panamanian soldiers and 200 civilians dead — 557 altogether. But on the second day of the invasion almost 1000 corpses passed through just one hospital, so how can Washington try to hide this reality? The U.S. Episcopal Conference spoke of more than 3000 dead. Human rights organizations said more than 5000. Official figures noted 6000 wounded. But now it is clear that the total is much higher, without considering the psychological damage done to the population, especially to the children.

The main institution affected was the Panamanian Defense Forces, which suffered irreversible damage to most of its barracks in the capital and in Colón. The central headquarters in El Chorrillo was devastated and looted by the U.S. troops. The U.S. army appropriated at least 39 armored vehicles, 36 aircraft, seven boats, 8440 weapons on one side and some 76 000 on the other. It was a plundering which cost the country dearly. "We estimate the value of the arms which we captured at about 60,000 dollars. Many of them were bought with drug trafficking money and donated by communist countries. We took everything out of here, small tanks, machine guns. I don't think it's good that Panama sees these arms as their resources. We had to spend a lot of money to undertake this operation, and I don't think there is any legal recourse to pay for these arms. We took these arms for the good of Panama, and I don't think it is nice, I don't think it is good politically in the eyes of the United States to demand that we pay for these arms." Such was the response of General Marc Cisneros, published in the Panamanian daily La Prensa, in June 1990, when asked if his government was going to pay for the arms they had confiscated.

According to the General Accounting Office (GAO), a report to Congress established that the invasion of Panama had cost 163.6 million dollars.

If we look at the cost to Panama, beyond the thousands of dead, we can evaluate the true situation of the country. The Center for Economic Studies of the Panama Chamber of Commerce released a poll on December 27 and 28, just hours after the invasion; the 1147 commercial and industrial businesses which participated revealed that they had lost 90 percent of their inventories and ten percent of their fixed assets. The more than 2000 commercial establishments suffered losses, in some cases irreversible, after the U.S. army destroyed the model prison, letting loose nearly a thousand criminals and allowing them to sack the city.

The destruction of housing in the El Chorrillo neighborhood, which was literally demolished, as was San Miguelito and other places, adds up to more than 200 million dollars. Public sector vehicles and installations were sacked and destroyed. In Colón the Cristóbal, Las Minas Bay and Coco Solo docks were devastated and 1,100 containers were looted.

Postal and telegraph structures suffered damages amounting to 400,000 dollars, and U.S. troops robbed the Museum of the Panamanian People of archaeological pieces, as well as the National Culture Institute, with more than three million dollars in losses. The government radio station, Radio Nacional, was destroyed, causing great damage to the Contraloría building, where it was located. In the first days of January, the businesses affected estimated that they would not be able to pay more than 4.5 billion dollars in monthly salaries. The Social Security Administration did not receive its contributions, totaling 500 000 dollars. Other losses noted include estimates that state organizations will be short 30 million dollars of their usual receipts in the first few months.

A conservative estimate places the amount that Panama lost due to the invasion at two billion dollars. However, the insurance companies state that "acts of war" are not covered by their policies, and the Pentagon refuses to pay reparations.

U.S. lawyer David Kiyonaga, who together with his brother John has filed suits on behalf of affected Panamanian families, recently appeared on "60 Minutes," the most popular television news show in the United States. In this appearance, he observed that if a compensation program is begun, the numbers of people affected would be discovered, and then we would see exactly what the invasion cost in human Jives, in financial losses, and the U.S. government doesn't want to take responsibility for that because the invasion was a public relations success for President Bush. So, of course, it's not convenient for him now to change his image.

The leader of the war refugees, Rafael Olivardia, said recently in an interview with Celia Sanjur, editor of the Panamanian magazine Diálogo Social, that "our predicament is not the result of an accident, nor of a natural disaster, but of war. Because of this we are war refugees. Refugees and dependent, we in El Chorrillo didn't ask for this war — who asked for it?" There are at least eight improvised refugee centers in the capital: in the Albrook hangars, in the old Ancón Theater, in the Santa Ana pensión, in the Ministry of Housing barracks, in Casa de Piedra and other places. At Albrook, they live in plastic cubicles 1.2 meters high, one next to the other, with the tin roof of the hangar. "It's like a prison in a huge tunnel," said one refugee. The overcrowding has caused huge problems, one of which was a meningitis epidemic among the children, which was covered up by the authorities.

In the field of human rights abuses, the opening up of the mass graves demonstrated that summary executions had been carried out by the invading troops and these were strongly denounced by the population. The evidence of tank tracks on the bodies of the wounded and the dead, signs of torture, the seizing of record books from the hospitals to conceal the number of wounded and dead prove that the invasion was an action that not only violated international law, but all the human rights of the Panamanian population.

Press organs and radio stations have been closed down, with protests by union organizations. The more than 4000 accusations widely publicized by government radios have no juridical basis, but they fertilize the terrain for political persecution. As the United States announced in its plans, the Panamanian Defense Forces were totally destroyed, with a persecution campaign against all nationalized structures in the country, including the theft of the ashes of Omar Torrijos, and other no less despicable actions. The United States is now trying to impose a mutual legal support law which, in plain language, will allow the United States to take over the justice system in Panama, which had been the case until 1968, when Panamanians were brought to U.S. prisons for certain crimes supposedly committed in their own country.

Considering the situation, one has to ask why the United Nations hasn't behaved in this case as it did in Iraq, where it asked for indemnization for Kuwait. •

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

Monopoly imperialist conflict will dominate the planet 

WHAT JAPAN was unable to obtain in the past by force of arms it is now getting by peaceful means, which are apparently more difficult for its rivals to deal with.

Until the 19th century Japan was virtually isolated from the outside world, especially from the mid-17th century onward. Helping to keep it that way was the fact that it is an island, difficult to reach, and has a difficult script and language. The Mongols were unable to conquer the island and the Japanese unable to reach the mainland. In the first decades of this century Japan began its military conquests in Manchuria, which then spread all over East Asia and as far south as Indonesia.

Japan had been achieving the expansion of its capital and the takeover of new markets through the use of force, a method which U.S. atomic bombs halted at the end of World War II. Since then it has been proceeding through peaceful means with greater efficiency, savings, investments, research and growing productivity aided by good administrative techniques.

The main weapon that the Japanese have now is to have transformed their country through the most spectacular economic development of the postwar period.

Their trade and investments are now growing in East Asia in the same territory they captured during the war, with the exception of a few countries.

But this time they have also taken positions within U.S. territory itself, and that country has gone from military victor to a fearful and defeatist economic rival. The Japanese started with trade and gradually achieved big surpluses. They systematically displaced the United States from markets it had traditionally dominated. Their companies grew until Japan had the largest percentage among those with world standing of any country, including nine of the ten largest banks. Japan is now the foreign country that buys the most real estate in the United States: it also buys a third of all the U.S. Treasury bonds, for which several brokerage houses have been set up.

Its latest offensive is the growing expansion of surplus capital in foreign markets — chiefly the United States, the EEC and countries of East Asia — which threatens to surpass any developed country.

Direct Japanese investments have mainly been in the United States, always in line with its trade strategy. Later the large trade surplus produced a great abundance of dollars, which in turn led to another expansion boosted by the favorable exchange rate.

During the '60s Japan began flooding the world markets with top-quality, low-cost and innovative consumer goods, especially in the United States, which, in the postwar period became its main trading partner. Its investments, then still modest, were intended to facilitate exports, but then it moved into joint ventures with the host country. As the surplus brought in more money, Japan bought more factories, and financial and banking services and real estate.

The protectionism with which the United States reacted led Japan to produce within that country, just as the coming all-European market for the EEC has meant a growing presence within those countries.

In recent years their direct investments have led to mergers and purchases.

The exchange rate between the dollar and the yen and the greater profitability of U.S. stocks led them to regularly purchase about a third of all U.S. Treasury bonds, although this rate has declined lately.

Following the devaluation of the dollar in the 1985 agreements, there was a spectacular increase in direct Japanese investments in the United States. They doubled in 1988. Half of Japan's total investments are in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the largest rate of growth in foreign investments during the '80s was from Japan.

These investments have aroused a big uproar in the United States, reviving old prejudices that date back to the attack on Pearl Harbor, with chauvinistic backlashes resulting from the purchases of Rockefeller Center and the Sears Tower. What is really behind all this is the unacknowledged fear of being surpassed by Japan while other investors within the United States — the British, for example, who are still the largest, and the Dutch, who were recently displaced from the second spot by the Japanese — were not viewed as such a threat.

However, the Japanese have been in keeping with the world investment trend, with the bulk of the money going to the United States.

While the United States is still the world's leading investor, the growth of other countries' economic, activities in its territory has resulted in a negative investment flow in recent years. In contrast, the spectacular growth of Japanese investments abroad is far greater than the small amount of money other countries have invested in Japan. Of all the developed countries that are big investors, Japan is the one with the least foreign investment on its own soil. In sum, while the United States has a negative investment flow, Japan's is positive.

Therefore, direct Japanese investments in the Third World are down; Africa, Oceania, and the Middle East were never of keen interest to the Japanese. In Latin America they focus mainly on the Pacific coast and on some textile industries along the Mexican border, as well as on Brazil, where about a million people of Japanese origin live in the São Paulo area. The ships registered in Panama constitute Japan's third largest investment in a single country, after the United States and Indonesia.

In East Asia as of 1985 they have increased investments sixfold, chiefly in Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, and to a lesser extent in the Philippines and Singapore.

Japan is still not the largest investor in the world, but expectations are that it will surpass the United States by the year 2000.

Unless the United States manages to restructure the world economy as extensively as it did by dropping atomic bombs on Japan, it doesn't seem likely that the threatening Japanese advance on the economic pillars of U.S. hegemony can be stopped. •