Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it.    Karl Marx
Economic & Philosophic Science Review
Subscriptions  £20 p.a. [P&P Bulletin Publications, PO Box 50, London SW17 9NL] [Post Office Regd.]
No 1089 May 15 2001                                                                                                                                           25p

Economic storm clouds and US warmongering background completely ignored by bourgeois and fake-'left' parties alike. Pretending that 'democratic votes' are the route to socialism and the way to end capitalist corruption and arms-race tyranny flies in the face of more than 150 years inevitable bitter treachery by every type of 'reformist' promise, none of which can ever succeed. It also overlooks how electorates can be corrupted themselves, an increasing phenomenon in slump and war, and spreading now. A philistine refusal to totally openly embrace Marxist science condemns the entire 'socialist' alternative. Election manifestos (of the SLP, SA, SSP kind) are the problem, not the solution. Allendeism failed the political education test, not the military preparation test. The entire anti-Marxist fake-'left' will go the same way.

The failure of the major bourgeois parties (Labour, Tory, Lib-Dem, Nationalists) to address the real world of imperialist crisis in their soft-sell electoral opportunism, is strangely echoed in the Manifesto of the petty-bourgeois fake-'left' SLP.

Scargillism is inseparable from the tragic casualty of history that is all reformism, - deluding the working class for nearly 200 years that its class-collaborating 'demands' and 'pressure' for 'justice' and 'rights' from the capitalist ruling class (the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, to give it its proper Marxist scientific description) are the way to tame and humanise this world of imperialist exploitation and military domination.

So how come that, after nearly 200 years of powerful trade-unionism and countless reformist governments throughout the West, - the SLP's opening line addresses "the millions throughout Britain who today feel disenfranchised or dispossessed, and whose lives are blighted by helplessness, hopelessness, and despair"???

That true comment on the total pointlessness of all reformist illusions, - frequently officially adopted as 'real socialist demands' on many earlier occasions in labour and trade-union movement history (Scargill is the umpteenth 'left alternative' in the sincerity stakes), - is then underlined in the first three paragraphs of the Manifesto proper:

"Unemployment, poverty,, homelessness, racism, sexism, ageism and all the social evils surrounding us have been caused not just by years of Tory and New Labour government misrule; but by capitalism - a system that creates inequality and injustice.

"No wonder in today's society that many young people cannot even imagine a secure or happy future, and become easy prey to the drug and crime cultures which stem from unemployment, the racist propaganda of the Far Right, and the greed of international racketeers",

etc, etc.

So 200 years of reformism have clearly not only failed to alter one jot the position of the working class (within capitalism) of total alienation and soul-destroying exploitation; but have actually led the working class into feeling more resentful, cynical, and demoralised today than ever before in history, - because of the inevitably increasing social sophistication due to the relentless advance of technology, travel, educational awareness, etc, etc, etc.

As Marxist science explained long ago must happen eventually, today's workers are in such potential hate-filled contradiction with capitalism's demeaning exploitation, humiliating political dictatorship, degenerate culture, warmongering arms-race menace, and corrupt grasping private-ownership domination, that they are ready to explode. They are simply finding the bourgeoisie's class-rule over them no longer tolerable. The whole parliamentary-reformist con trick, tying workers to capitalism, is due to be swept aside along with the hated system itself.

But this being so, how is it that this entire 40-page glossy Manifesto (price £2!!!) does nothing but tediously list, - for the umpteenth time in the last 200 years, - every left-reformist con-trick promise that has ever been already used at election times to keep the working class tied to its bourgeois 'democracy' chains, completely disarmed in the treadmill which is always pretending that "if only the real leftwing socialist message can be put across, then a truly socialist transformation could be brought about in Britain", etc.??????

It does it because Scargillism is inseparable from the 200-year tradition of philistinism which has kept the labour and trade-union movement class-collaborating with British imperialism throughout that time (despite the most brutal record of ruthless colonial domination of all the major powers) in the basically petty-bourgeois compromise spirit of "making reformist progress!" and "getting on", etc.

Scargillism has become outspoken in its rejection of New Labourism (which now openly admits its ideal of class-collaboration with the capitalist system (always previously denied by the reformist movement for 200 years, although always carried out in practice)) but remains as philistinely hostile as ever to the Marxist science of how capitalism can be actually overthrown.

It is this philistinism which is the defining class issue. The sons of toil can be as horny-handed as they like but the essential mentality of trade-unionism (as of its reformist-socialist political wing) is petty bourgeois,(as the ABC of Marxist science fully explained nearly 150 years ago).

A consciously Marxist approach to the great reformist trap the working class now historically finds itself in (which the SLP woodenly acknowledges) would explain to a would-be party of socialist leadership, and its working-class following, that Manifestos as such cannot on their own change workers' thinking under capitalism into clear-cut socialist determination. Not even any number of televised SLP party political broadcasts could achieve this to fulfilment while capitalism still holds sway.

There is only one Marxist science and it clearly explains that the social revolution, ending capitalist-class domination, will take power only when the free-market private-ownership way of anarchically organising the world economy starts holding society's production back from the further progress it otherwise could make if capitalist relationships ruling a country could be replaced by socialist relationships.

In other words, it is when capitalist methods have shot their bolt economically and have started doing more harm than good in terms of market-crash disasters, inter-imperialist trade-war disasters, world slump and mass unemployment disasters, war destruction, environmental catastrophes, etc, etc, that the material conditions of life begin to force human consciousness to start embracing the socialist perspective en masse.

Marx put it this way in London in January 1859 in writing the preface to his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy:

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or -  this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms -  with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto.

From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic - in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production.

No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society. Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show, that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation.

In other words, the working class in 2001 needs to understand that the imperialist system's international economic crisis will soon be taking world development backwards because of market collapses, slump, trade-war destruction, and then shooting war (the sole main pattern of history, periodically, for more than 100 years now, starting with the Franco-Prussian War of 1871).

The glib fake-'left' promises of 'socialism' (SLP, Socialist Alliance, SSP, various CP remnants, and many other Revisionist or Trotskyist brands of anti-communism) cannot rise above being mere opportunist posturing.

The crash of capitalism within the monstrous crisis of US imperialist world-domination is what alone can provide the material basis for the development of mass socialist consciousness, which can only possibly take power within a complete revolutionary upheaval in society.

Scargill's ludicrous glossy-opportunist Manifesto simply ignores the real-world context completely, and doesn't even mention the crisis of US imperialist international domination, or the global economic collapses, creating that crisis.

The anti-catastrophists of the fake 'revolutionary' Socialist Alliance are just as reluctant to commit themselves to solely educationally leading the working class to prepare for nothing but to overthrow a capitalist system, unalterably on its way towards endless turmoil, upheaval, and breakdown.

Both varieties of electoral opportunism prefer to play down or eliminate completely all talk of REVOLUTION.

In endless asides, both camps of fake-'leftism' will mutter about how 'Marxist' or how 'revolutionary' they really are, but both the Alliance and the SLP will avoid like the plague any public proclamation or consistent working-class agitation which is entirely devoted solely to the ONLY worthwhile future facing the working class, - preparing for the REVOLUTIONARY overthrow of the world imperialist system in intolerable crisis.

Just muttering about "we'll see who are the real Marxists and the real revolutionaries in due course", etc, is not just useless and missing the boat completely. It is WORSE than useless. It means that yet again, the working class is to be hopelessly betrayed and demoralised by fake-'lefts' pretending in an election that voting for the 'correct' party and the 'correct' reforms can transform life in Britain without any question at all of revolution, or "any need for all this alarmist hysteria about catastrophes and revolutionary struggle", as the SLP and Socialist Alliance like to dismiss the issue.

In other words, just 'left' reformist promises as usual will suffice.

This is just ludicrous opportunism. It is just a huge LIE.

A good feeling from 'reformist improvement' having been made, is henceforth something that NO ONE is going to experience again, whatever the election results. The capitalist SYSTEM is in crisis, not just the way it is being governed.

And the notion in theory that the SA or the SLP or the SSP programme manifestos COULD make a difference is entirely academic because while capitalism does still rule, it will make absolutely certain that capitalist policies, of one sort or another, still rule as well. All the time that capitalism still controls the economy and society (the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is the only scientifically accurate description of modern politics), it will continue to control what state power is wielded, and who wields it. No socialist transformation has ever been voted into power via parliamentary elections yet in history, despite 200 years of trying, and it will not be happening in the next 200 years either.

Thus the pretence that the SA, the SLP, or the SSP really are going to be voted into office, and then really are going to expropriate the capitalist class and its state establishment in order to put the working class in power and reorganise the whole of the economy and society along socialist lines, - is just the most disgusting lying idiocy ever inflicted on the working class.

This fake-'left' consists entirely of charlatans, creeps, or sad dupes.

And the question of 'armed workers now' does not come into it at this stage of the struggle, despite the ultra-left posturing by some sects in the Alliance trying desperately to prove its 'revolutionary' pretensions where none exist.

The treacherous catastrophe of the Allende socialist alliance in Chile lay in its failure during three years in office to explain to the working class that a 'peaceful, parliamentary' transition to socialism could never work. And it failed to explain that because it lived and breathed the exact opposite in everything it did.

One or two sects within the Alliance in Britain, advocating arms for workers as a mere piece of 'revolutionary' tokenism (when it has no chance of even becoming Alliance policy, let alone elected Alliance government policy) at the same time as the entire SA stance on the hustings is that 'left' reformist pressure can and will transform Britain into a socialist society, - is just irresponsible petty-bourgeois posturing.

What is required is a massive non-stop educational-organisational struggle throughout the country to prepare for the complete social revolution, without which the country can only sink ever deeper into capitalist-imperialist slump-barbarism.

It is this POLITICAL preparation for what lies ahead which will account for 99% of the difficulties and hard work in store.

Given that POLITICAL preparation, an organised workers party of conscious revolutionary theory will have no trouble in coping with every challenge which comes its way, including armed challenges, – as the Bolshevik Party effortlessly proved in just a few short months in 1917, taking the power and disarming the entire armed authority of the mighty Tsarist militarist state within a space of literally days and weeks, in spite of having virtually no guerrilla-war experience to speak of previously.

It is equally pointless for these posturing fake-'lefts' to all pretend that they will "get round to these questions when the time comes". This is exactly what Allende endlessly parroted, - and his many Revisionist and Trot admirers all round the world.

But the whole point is that the time is NOW, - and not even now, but YESTERDAY in some senses. Allendeism was doomed because of the Revisionist nonsenses from the 1920s and 1930s onwards that it had already fed and matured on. Because of its past corrupted Revisionist mis-education (applicable at the time to virtually the entire international labour movement), it was never going to arrive at any Marxist revolutionary understanding of its predicament, promising a socialist transformation via a bourgeois parliament and state.

The Alliance in Britain is equally already doomed before it starts, crawling as it is with every kind of past sectarian anti-communist prejudice and anti-Marxist ignorance imaginable, providing Labour imperialism with endless fake-'left' covers (of various entryist and non-entryist varieties); backing all sorts of neo-fascist revolts against the influence of the Soviet workers state (the Pilsudski-ite Solidarnosc, financed and organised by CIA-Vatican conspiracy, which has put Poland back under German imperialist influence, wiping out all its planned workers-state gains; the feudal Mojaheddin, - armed, organised, and financed by the CIA and Pakistani reaction, which sparked off a catastrophic chain of events culminating in the pre-feudal tribalism of the Taliban, wiping out on the way every schooling, health service, economic, and social emancipation advance that the original 1978 Afghan Revolution had introduced; etc, etc, etc); giving long credibility to the 'official' nonsense of the communist movement's anti-revolutionary Revisionist gibberish of the 'peaceful road to socialism', etc; or alternatively forever backing the anti-Marxist garbage from the Trots of helping imperialist non-stop massive-subversion to overthrow the likes of Castro and other Revisionist-hampered workers states in order to 'achieve' the wholly imaginary and fictional 'political revolution', etc, masking the actual counter-revolutionary class nature of all such anti-Soviet renegacy; etc, etc,.etc.

From such a chaotic swamp of reactionary opportunism, nothing but even more treacherous opportunism could possibly emerge, especially when from the start these bandwagon electoral careerists deliberately opted never to try sorting out (because it would be impossible) their combined ideological mess.

And so it has proved with the SA's resolute refusal to ever discuss the real world consistently, and therefore its permanent inability to ever seriously start leading workers in meaningful class-war struggle, all neatly confirmed in its idiotic electoral stance of utterly pointless "left" reformist promises, and the total ignoring of the real-world crisis of the imperialist system and of the fully revolutionary process which this will draw the entire international working class into in due course.

The inability to change this confused and reactionary paralysis is more likely to increase rather than decrease, judging by a current exchange between two of the more posturing 'revolutionary' sects within the bogus 'Alliance', (Weekly Worker 383).

The SWP has again ruled out an SA party because factional strife would be uncontainable, given the absence of a common programme and a common understanding of history, so "stick to as much united-front activity as possible". The CPGB counters by pretending that Lenin built the Bolshevik Party precisely via such factional strife and had no wider or deeper common understanding with his comrades than that there should be an 'accepted' programme of joint struggle, but no requirement to reach 'agreement' on the programme, etc.

Although correct on a mere technicality, this nutty academic approach can only compound the already monstrous ideological swampiness-by-its-own-volition, dragging Lenin's name in by this ludicrously artificial means, and kidding the Alliance that it is on its way to Bolshevism.

Firstly, the whole purpose of Lenin's life was to gloriously demonstrate that the endless battle to work out a CORRECT revolutionary-theoretical outline of all the international class war struggles ahead was the only possible agitational education that could organise the party successfully building world socialism. Without a CORRECT Marxist analysis of all the processes of imperialist-world crisis, the working class would never be able to transform itself into the temporary new ruling class and thereby transform the world into an equally-shared socialist one of peace and prosperity for all.

Without crucially learning from mistakes and moving on from them, the revolutionary party would stagnate into lifeless dogma.

That factional ARGUMENT was the lifeblood of developing party theory (in order to take it into practice to clarify it as correct understanding or not, one way or the other), was true. That forming permanent FACTIONS (which never needed to agree with each other) was 'the Bolshevik way', is scandalously false. The CPGB is lying. Of course there are countless examples of the Bolshevik Party sensibly carrying disagreements within it in the course of letting further developments clarify where a better understanding lay; but once a major disagreement about which way forward was established, and Leninism became convinced that there was no more room for doubt or argument, or that there was no more time for the party to limp on only half agreed about what was the right thing to do, - then Leninism would act utterly ruthlessly to move things on.

Individuals could always be invited back on board if they made their peace with Leninism. Wrong and discarded ideas were firmly left behind.

With the huge growth of the party after the revolution, it finally became necessary for Leninism to ban the existence of formal FACTIONS, at the 10th Bolshevik Congress, but not to ban factional ARGUMENT, of course, - a nonsense which crept in under Stalinist Revisionism. (The claim that Stalin's degeneration inevitably flowed out of Lenin's mistake in banning formal party factions is a grotesque non sequitur, slandering the whole historical spirit of Marxism-Leninism (which drove history forward by getting things right, - proven right by subsequent developments, but then accepted as adding towards an absolutely true grasp of civilisation's way ahead; which did not then bother to hang around for very long compromising with incorrect understandings). Stalin just got things wrong, and the whole world movement accepted his incorrect understandings, not just those in the USSR or the socialist camp whose disagreement was not heard sufficiently well or at all).

Marxism's revolutionary understanding split from anarchism's revolutionary understanding very early on, and there is no point in re-uniting with anarchists to paralyse a would-be revolutionary movement in order to have the same arguments out again and again, holding the party back. There are so many complete ideological contradictions and so much total reactionary nonsense festering inside the Socialist Alliance that any serious-minded revolutionaries would only say; 'there is no point in starting from [here'. (- word missing and infilled – ed).] 

Events have already proved it. The SA Manifesto is a 'left reformist' nonsense, damagingly disarming of the working class by perpetuating ludicrous illusions. 

Even worse was the outcome of the one world event that the Alliance pitched into; the NATO blitzkrieg to destroy the Serbia remnants of the Yugoslav workers state, shamefully misled by the crooked Revisionist opportunist Milosevic.

The anti-communist Trots were on vintage traditional form, helping the worldwide cover up (of the fascist-aggressive essence of the blitzkrieg by the 'free world' finest) by utterly confusing which is the main enemy of civilisation, Western imperialism heading in panic towards insoluble trade-war crisis, and threatening military obliteration for anyone or anything which stands in its way; - or the age-old territorial squabbling between conflicting and insoluble (under capitalism) self-determination-rights posturings in the region, (which were deliberately being stirred up by the Western imperialists under their equally traditional divide-and-rule tactics, which are graphically recognised historically precisely as 'Balkanisation' tactics.)

What could be clearer????

Needless to say, the Trot 'Alliance' paid lip-service to anti-NATO protesting, but poured its real venom into hysterically promoting the totally obscure 'self-determination rights' of the Albanian minority in Serbia's Kosovo region, completely falling for all the monstrous Goebbels-level propaganda stunts engineering by the CIA against the Serbs to manipulate world opinion so as to facilitate the pre-arranged blitzkrieg on Serbia. A manufactured exodus, a faked village 'massacre' at Recak, faked 'starvation-concentration camps', faked 'rape camps', faked 'war criminals', etc, etc, etc, all from the Goebbels school of propaganda to cover-up imperialist aggression, using the willing Albanian drugs and white-slave mafia as the organiser of the stooge Albanian props, and rewarding them with their own gangster territory (currently trying to break up Macedonia in the same way that Serbia was broken up), - continuing the broader imperialist policy of first breaking up Yugoslavia by bribing the descendants of Croatian fascism (traditional German imperialist allies in Nazi times) to foment 'self-determination' uproar; and then fomenting the Bosnian Muslims (also traditional German imperialist allies, especially under the Nazis) to do the same trick.

Self-determination??? In the middle of that stinking hellhole of imperialist-intrigue and mafia-corruption skulduggery???????

The whole mess is an obscene joke, and will get much much worse, just like Afghanistan, - thanks in part to the Trot 'Socialist Alliance' helping CIA propaganda to pull the wool over Western working-class eyes.

The time for the SLP to get things right was yesterday, too. It is too late now, and there is no way that a basic philistine ideological inability to recognise, now, the crucial role of the approaching world imperialist crisis and its attendant revolutionary lessons, can be overcome "when the time comes".

The time was yesterday on this ridiculous 'left reformist' Manifesto, and it was yesterday on the Balkans question too, - ludicrously backing the farcical Revisionist Milosevic remnants as the Scargillites did, thus playing into the hands of imperialist aggression by undermining potential working-class resistance to it from the other side of the wretched national-chauvinist squabbling (on the ruins of the once-socialist Yugoslav Federation, wrecked by Milosevic party Revisionism).

The internal contradictions of this SLP document are quite farcical. Having established the total failure of 200 years of 'left' reformist illusions that 'socialism' could be built just by 'voting for integrity', Scargill then goes on to laud the SLP’s "principles and policies firmly rooted in the Socialist values of our forebears who fought to build a better world", - but failed completely, of course, - because their 'left reformist' methods, faithfully regurgitated by the SLP now, - are a total hoax.

Countless times under modern capitalism, since Marx first explained that the revolutionary break-up of capitalism in crisis was the only way that the humiliations and torment of exploitation and injustice under the imperialist system could end, the working class has been promised by 'socialist forebears with principles and integrity' that "these policies are essential if we are to deal with the immediate problems".

Scargill repeats exactly these words now, - the exact same phrase, - adding the promise that "in the longer term, Socialist measures are needed".

It is an utter fraud, pretending that capitalist crisis problems can be cured now, under capitalism, and that if the SLP is entrusted with this task by the electorate, then it will win the voters confidence to go on to Socialism next.

This is living in fairyland, or it is a scenario possibly even too stupid for that description. As well as frustrating and alienating the working class, the degeneration of capitalist society also has the potential to partly corrupt the electorate as well, as happened extensively in the 1920s and 1930s, with New World order fascist appeasement everywhere. The same phenomenon is emerging again today. The demented imperialist-fundamentalist Bush mindlessness has taken office in the USA (see last week's Review); getting prepared for holy warmongering crusades in all directions. Berlusconi's existing economic monopoly-dictatorship in Italy is now trying to exploit supreme political authority as well as control of a vast media and big-business empire, allied to the even more openly fascistic outlook of Bossi’s Northern League chauvinist extremism.

And Blair's New Labour is as close to another Labour front-bencher's gimmick in the 1930s (called the New Party, the Mosleyites) as anything else to erupt in frustration out of traditional "socialist" class-collaboration in a challenging period of imperialist crisis.

And the Blairites have won some negative popularity via propaganda gimmicks, a few economic tit-bits, and some stunts, all so far succeeding in the one pointless temporary aim of getting B1airism re-elected, and projecting all the bad feelings people are having (about society going wrong) onto everything but Blairism.

This endless, daft, and meaningless public-relations racket cannot go on for ever just spinning bullshit; and the world imperialist economic crisis is shortly poised to turn very much nastier and more serious. Do not be a bit surprised if this Blairite pro-imperialist propaganda gimmickry starts to take on a distinctly clearer Goebbelsian tinge at that point.

And yet this is all about to be voted for again, it is assumed. And we are assured that this is all right and proper, exactly as things should be done. That is what 'democratic elections' are for, apparently. 

This is certainly what the SLP’s delusions will leave workers thinking. "Just vote for us, and you won’t have any problems" is the clear message.

The rightwing extremist tones of the Cold-Warmongering Bush mafia just 'elected' ("so that's all right, then") in the USA, does not get one single mention in the SLP Manifesto, although it has already been in office for four months, alarming world opinion. So much for Scargill's grip on reality.

And although it is the working class that is presumably being addressed, there is not a single line of discussion throughout this Manifesto on the alarming betrayal of traditional working-class 'socialist' aspirations by New Labour (deluded aspirations always, but aspirations the vast majority of workers are still voting 'Labour' for), - clearly described as now openly supporting "privatisation, the 'free market', and capitalism", but without one word of analysis for the meaning or significance of this remarkable historical phenomenon.

Similarly, although now telling the working class to no longer fall for the TUC/Labour 'reform' posturing, Scargill has nothing to say to explain to workers why he spent most of his life acting precisely the role of 'left' decoy around the TUC and the Labour Party to exactly keep the working class’s hopes in Labour lingering on, and on, and on, and on, etc; and equally nothing to say on the deeper historical significance of what so belatedly caused Scargill's dramatic re-positioning.

For such a major turning point for the whole working class, is it really sufficient for this Manifesto to imply merely that "along came this bloke Blair, changed everything, and so 100 years of class identification with Labour now goes out the window", - just like that?

And still no word yet on the international dimensions of this phenomenon, which equally must still puzzle workers, and a deep historical explanation of which would not do them any harm at all, - namely the self-liquidation by Revisionist bureaucrats in Moscow 10 years ago, particularly appropriate to come from Scargill who was much like a Revisionist bureaucrat himself in the British mirror-image (around the TUC, CPGB, and "left"-Labour circles)of the Moscow phenomenon.

This say-nothing SLP stance even breathes contempt for the working class identical to that disastrous wretched Revisionist tradition.

The long lists of detailed 'reforms' are an even bigger insult to the workers in these industries and services who will know what needs doing at least as well as, if not better than, the Scargill mafia clique.

What fake-'lefts' with identical lists have always refused to do is explain how such desirable transformations are ever going to be brought about, always telling the lie that "a vote for us will do the trick". The SLP repeats that lie now.

Like all 'left reformist pressure' past, present, and future, the SLP has instantly become part of the problem of capitalist 'democracy' (which is allowed to play a role only for as long as it can continue to divert workers’ attention from real-world imperialist crisis and revolution as the way to end it). It is no part of the solution. Build Leninism.  
EPSR

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

Cuba still outstrips the USA in spite of the lethal imperialist blockade.

Cuba has managed to reduce its infant mortality rate to 6.4 per 1000 live births.

The infant mortality rate is one of the indicators taken into account in measuring the social and economic development of a country.

In this regard, Cuba has been included for many years in the list of countries belonging to what is known as the First World, given that in those countries euphemistically referred to as developing nations, the overall rate of infant mortality is 64 per 1000 live births.

The figures were announced at a press conference given by Dr. Luis Cordova, deputy minister of public health, who specified that last year 150,675 Cubans were born, out of whom 966 died (104 fewer than in 1998, when the infant mortality rate was 7.1).

He added that some provinces attained rates lower than 6.4. These include Villa Clara (4.8), Matanzas and Sancti Spiritus (5.3 each) and Cienfuegos (5.9).

A total of 99.99% of Cuban babies are born in hospitals and all minors are given 13 vaccines against preventable diseases.

Nine diseases, including German measles (Cuba was the first country in the world to achieve this), polio, diphtheria, measles, mumps and neonatal tetanus, have been eradicated on the island.  

Dr. Cordova pointed out that the reduction in the infant mortality rate has been achieved, for example, with the help of sex education programs for adolescents and young people which have reduced the number of teenage pregnancies.

Likewise, ongoing medical attention is available for pregnant women as soon as the pregnancy is confirmed, including monthly doctor's visits and foetal testing which detect life-threatening malformations.

In addition, there are 240 maternity homes throughout Cuba open to pregnant women who live far from hospitals or are at risk.

In the case of Cuba, the infant mortality rate attained should be considered even more remarkable, given the severity of the 40-year economic blockade, together with the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union, which exacerbated the scarcity of materials, medication and equipment.

U.S. CHALLENGED TO MATCH  CUBA'S INFANT MORTALITY RATE

WASHINGTON (PL).  A reader of The New York Times challenged the U.S. government to achieve infant mortality rates similar to those in Cuba.

David Berrigan made reference to an article published in the December 29 edition of that newspaper concerning the mortality rate for children in Cuba, and noted that it did not mention figures for the United States.

In the Letters to the Editor section, Berrigan, a resident of Albany, California, drew attention to the fact that the rate of infant mortality in his country was 7.2 per 1000 live births in 1997.

Nevertheless, he added that in Cuba, a poor country, infant mortality in 1999 was estimated to be 6.4 per 1000 live births, below the 1998 figure of 7.1.

Berrigan asked why the United States, supposedly the most prosperous nation in the world, cannot perform better than Cuba in this respect.

He added that the answer may be found in the United States' failure to develop a national health insurance program and in inadequate spending for preventive medicine.

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

	Injustice and racist illegality

"BLAMING THE VICTIM" has been the common resort of the guilty in rationalising and distorting the horror of the crime itself.

Hence, the latest eruption of confrontations between the Israeli occupation army and civilian Palestinian protestors became the playing field for the full force of the Israeli "spin machine" in a most deliberate, concentrated, and racist exercise of deception and dehumanisation directed against a whole people.

The most basic form of deception is in fabricating a false symmetry between occupier and occupied, between oppressor and victim. The "violence" of the powerful Israeli occupation army using live ammunition, tanks and helicopter gun ships is (at best) equated with the "violence" of Palestinian civilians protesting their victimisation and continued loss of rights, lands, and lives.

In addition, the Palestinians are called upon to be docile, to stop the "violence", to end the "siege" of Israel -- as though the strongest army in the region is being "threatened" by the unarmed people's rejection of its occupation and brutality. The obvious and simple solution, of course, is to withdraw the army and end the occupation.

This, ironically, is accompanied by a devaluation of Palestinian rights and lives by translating our objective weakness into a diminution of rights whereby the powerful determines the parameters of "justice" for the weak.

The whole presentation constantly exhibits the "white man's burden" syndrome. Palestinians should be "grateful" for whatever "generous offer" Israel chooses to "grant" them, regardless of the glaring injustice and illegality of the Israeli negotiating stance.

Both the extreme right and extreme left in Israel (as well as the US) have adopted this condescending, patronising approach to peace --  Barak had gone the "farthest" in "offering" the Palestinians almost 90% of their lands with some "responsibilities" in Jerusalem, and those "ungrateful" Palestinians are being "intransigent" and hard line.

Having compromised ourselves down to 22% of historical Palestine, we are now being asked to be party to Israel's illegal annexation of Jerusalem and its settlement policies - i.e. an unholy partnership for the violation of international law and the relevant UN resolutions.

Should we be unwilling to self-negate, to refuse the role of good little natives, and to continue rejecting the Israeli unilateral version of "peace" that "offers" us a subservient statelet of isolated Bantustans under Israel's apartheid system, then we will be pounded into submission.

After all, if pressure and threat and political arm-twisting do not work, sheer naked military aggression can produce the desired results since "Arabs understand only the language of violence".

Instant scare tactics or panic politics come into play with such labels as the "terrorist" or "dictatorial" or "violent" Palestinians, while depicting the reality of the Palestinian human will to resist subjugation and oppression as proof of such misrepresentations.

A catch 22 situation is clearly visible: Arafat must "control" his people (nation of sheep?) and "order" them to calm down and accept their enslavement and repression by the Israelis, otherwise he is no longer a "peace partner" and cannot be considered a "leader."

At the same time, Israel cannot deal with Arafat or the Palestinians because they are inherently "undemocratic" and therefore have nothing in common with such "civilised" democracies as Israel and the US.

In parallel, other readymade labels and stereotypical epithets are easily pulled out as a convenient branding exercise to reduce the humanity of the Palestinians.

The historical and familiar slurs used by Israeli officials and public figures (including cockroaches, two-legged vermin, dogs) have been expanded to include "snakes" and  "crocodiles".

The reduction of our humanity to a series of abstractions is nowhere as sinister as in the numerical game. Palestinian victims of Israeli live fire are daily given as "x" numbers killed and "y" numbers wounded. Their names, identities, dashed hopes, and shattered dreams are nowhere mentioned. Absent too are the grief and anguish of their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and other loved ones who will have to live with that tragic loss.

The visual documentation of the cold-blooded murder of the child Muhammad al-Durra shattered the complacency of  those who had been comfortable with the anonymity of the Palestinians and the invisibility of their suffering. Even then, the Israeli propaganda machine tried to distort the truth, even in the face of irrefutable evidence.

First, it was said that he was killed by Palestinian "gunmen". Then, he was "caught in the crossfire". The worst version was in the cynical depiction of the child Muhammad as a "troublemaker" or a "mischievous" child who brought it upon himself as though the proper response to a child living his childhood is deliberate death. The last accusation involved a question: "What was he doing there?" The real question should have been "what was the Israeli Army doing there" in the heart of Palestinian Gaza shooting at, civilians including a child and his father who had been caught red-handed attempting to indulge in the "provocative" act of shopping together.

Note the difference, however, when two Israeli under-cover agents, belonging to the notorious Israeli death squads were killed by Palestinian protestors.

No Palestinian attempted to justify the act. Rather orders were issued to investigate and arrest those responsible. After all, there should be such a thing as the rule of law and due process.

Instead, Israel moved its tanks and armies even closer to tighten the siege and strangulation of Palestinian towns, villages and refugee camps.

Then it brought in its Apache helicopter gun ships and shelled Palestinian cities and towns in a most senseless and cruel form of collective punishment.

Its version of events presented the Israeli agents as reservists who had mistakenly "strayed" into Ramallah and then were "lynched" by the mob. References to "slaughter" and "blood thirst" and "savagery" became the prevalent verbal currency.

While no one would condone the killing of the soldiers, it is important, however, to deal with the real facts and the context:

Ramallah, as a city, under total Israeli military siege, was closed off to all movement in or out of the city. Only one entrance was open, entirely under the control of multiple Israeli military checkpoints. Thus to "stray" into Ramallah would require deliberate and repeated attempts requiring tenacity, persistence, and even guile.

The two Israeli agents were clearly infiltrated and planted into the midst of a protest march in the heart of the city. The occasion was the funeral of a Palestinian man, Issam Joudeh Hamad, from the village of Umm Safa, who had been abducted by Israeli settlers and tortured to death in a most grisly manner.

Gruesome footage and photographs of the body, plus the testimony of the doctors who had examined it, were not repeatedly displayed before the eyes of the world for the sake of scoring points or dehumanising the Israelis.

Some Arab stations informed me that the images were so horrific that they refrained from using them.

Most of the people participating in the march (in the besieged Palestinian city of Ramallah) knew the victim, and some had seen the body. The two undercover Israeli agents that had infiltrated the march were recognised by the Palestinians as members of the "Death Squads" that had been responsible for assassinations and provocations.

Despite the fact that the Palestinian police tried to protect them, the two were killed before the cameras.

This immediately became an instant justification for branding all Palestinians as murderers, and for the most systematic, venomous, hate campaign in recent history. It was also used as a justification for the Israeli aerial attacks on Ramallah and other Palestinian cities.

In his moving appeal to his compatriots not to exploit this incident to justify existing racism and hatred, Israeli poet Yitzhak Laor documents several lynchings of Palestinians by Israeli Army and security forces. In all cases the perpetrators were never punished, and no moral outrage was expressed by the Israeli public, let alone a shelling of Israeli cities!

The same applies to the Israeli settler reign of terror that targets Palestinians in their own homes and towns, with full Israeli military protection and collusion.

Presented as helpless "Israeli civilians" surrounded by "hostile" Palestinians, the sinister and lethal nature of settler violence, as armed extremists on the rampage, is often ignored. The illegality of Israeli settlements, the fundamentalist extremist character of the armed settlers, and the horrific acts of abduction, torture, killing and just random violence that are committed with impunity rarely get a mention.

Throughout all this, the Palestinians continue to be blamed.

The most blatantly racist slur is the Israeli theft of our humanity as parents. In an attempt to rob us of our most basic feelings for our children, we are accused of "sending [our] children out to die" for the sake of "scoring media points".

The horror is further compounded by the total and unquestioning equanimity with which such a grand national slur is repeated by Israelis of all parties, with no critical distance or even awareness of the enormity of such a racist charge.

When Palestinian children became targets for Israeli snipers and other army violence, the Ministry of Education had no option but to close down the schools temporarily in order to minimise the students' exposure on the way to and from school.

That was immediately latched on by the Israeli spin machine as proof that we closed down the schools in order to "release" our children to go out and "riot", thereby obstructing the free path of Israeli bullets.

The safety of home and parents' attempts at protecting their children are not even considered.

Actually, the 18-month-old baby girl, Sara Abdel-Athim Hassan, was shot in the back seat of her father's car, while other child victims were killed in or around their own homes. Mu'ayyad al-lawarish, 12 years old, was shot in the garden of his own home.  

Most children were shot in the head or upper part of the body, mainly with high-velocity bullets. The most common targets of rubber-coated steel bullets were the eyes of children.

A shoot-to-kill (or permanently impair) policy has been in force by the Israeli Army - claiming the lives of more than 405 Palestinians [Over 450 since this article was written. Ed.] and wounding more than 8,000 (many of whom with permanent injuries).

Israeli officials claim that they had exercised "restraint."

Of course they can do worse - they can commit genocide or complete the ethnic cleansing begun in 1948.

Still, it is Israeli "security" that is at stake. Israel's powerful army of occupation cowers in fear at the Palestinian people's cry for justice and freedom. 

The Palestinian people have no need for security on their own land or in their own homes since they have been thoroughly dehumanised by their oppressor as to deserve whatever happens to them.

Worse than being "nonexistent" (as in the myth of the "land without a people for a people without a land" - which even Shimon Peres now seems to espouse), in the minds of the official Israeli narrative, we now seem to be existent on a lower plain as sub-human species, bereft of the most elemental qualities and rights that guide the conscience and moral values of humanity as a whole.

All this is for the sake of alleviating the guilt and responsibility of the real culprit.

Apologists for the Israeli occupation must find an alternative address to be blamed for the horror inflicted on the Palestinians  ---  so who better than the victims themselves?"