Workers' Fightback - French Resistance Movement Shakes Sarkozy

Yesterday, UK Chancellor George Osborne launched unprecedented social cuts, as part of the new Coalition government’s Comprehensive Spending Review. Spending was slashed by an average of 19% across all government departments, and unemployment is expected to rise by around a million as a result. That the cuts had been demanded by the same financial institutions that got a trillion pound bailout from the previous government was underscored by confident predictions that UK PLC would now keep its ‘AAA’ credit rating. Meanwhile millions of working class people in Britain and Northern Ireland are today counting the cost, and worrying about their uncertain futures.

But they need only look across the Channel for an example of determined opposition to government austerity measures. France is currently convulsed by a wave of protests, strikes, blockades and occupations, as President Nicolas Sarkozy seeks to implement two year increases in the state pension age.

One of Osborne’s announcements was that the British state pension age would go up to sixty-six, a rise of six years for women. French workers are angry about having to wait until sixty-two for their pensions, but that is just the tip of the iceberg, and merely the latest reactionary reform introduced or threatened by Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement government. While there have been large numbers at union-organised rallies, a series of rolling strikes has paralysed key industrial sectors, and occupations of oil depots have raised the prospect of bringing the whole country to a standstill.

However, over the last couple of days, Sarkozy’s government has moved to break the blockades, using a mixture of riot police and the assistance of trade union bosses. Depots in Donges, Le Mans, and La Rochelle have been attacked. Workers occupying the depot at Fos, near Marseilles, had already been evicted last Friday, 15^th October, when ten busloads of riot police faced fifteen protesters left behind after the General Confederation of Labour union had called off a temporary blockade. The union’s strategy of merely symbolic occupations was confirmed by their representative in Martigues, who told the WSWS, “The aim of the blockage of the depot was not to hold it ad vitam aeternam [for all time]”.

As the WSWS report continues:

“[...]the CGT does not make the issue of the occupation of an important oil storage site a strategic question for the working class. It gives the impression of being combative, but that is not the case. In fact, the CGT general secretary, Bernard Thibault, has insisted on several occasions that he does not want to block the French economy, and that he is simply looking to renegotiate the attacks on pensions and jobs being carried out by Sarkozy.”

The pension legislation is now expected to pass through the French parliament by the start of next week, and union leaders have signalled they want to wind down the movement against Sarkozy. Like union tops around the world, the French bureaucrats have sought to manage and control the anger over the pension reforms and other issues, calling a series of demonstrations and marches, at which workers and young people have heard similar speeches time and again. However, support for the action remains high, and there is concern in French ruling circles that the anti-Sarkozy movement may have escaped the control of those who would manipulate it for their own ends.

According to the same WSWS article:

“Columnist Michel Noblecourt wrote yesterday in Le Monde: “Running out of steam is not on the program [of the demonstrations]… exiting from the crisis is difficult.” He added that union leaders had previously described the October 19 day of action as a “last gallant fight purely for purposes of honor,” before the cuts passed. However, these plans were thwarted by “radicalization,” that is, by “the unexpected mobilization of high school students and industrial action in the refineries.”

In France, Greece, South Africa, China, and now Great Britain, workers fighting back against ruling class austerity measures face the combined weight of the state, the corporations, the mainstream media and the unions. Only by taking their struggle into their own hands and uniting across oceans can they hope to overturn “savage cuts” in living standards, wherever they may occur.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (12A)

Directed by Oliver Stone
Written by Allan Loeb, Stephen Schiff, Stanley Weiser and Oliver Stone

"Greed - for a lack of a better word - is good." So said Michael Douglas' Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's iconic 1987 film. As he did so, he summed up the ideology promoted by the ultra-rich during the Reagan/Thatcher era. This ideology continued and expanded until the Great Crash of 2008, when the new financial aristocracy's castles were found to be built in the air, and 'the law of gravity asserted itself', to paraphrase Karl Marx. But most of them needn't have worried, because governments around the world bailed them out, and more than likely you are very concerned about your employment prospects and government services as a direct result. 'Investment banker' is now a term of abuse, and Strongbow even had an anti-banker advert on before my screening ("Ooooh, the anger dollar!", in the words of Bill Hicks).

In short, it is no exaggeration to say that the events depicted in this film - the lead-up to the Crash, the Crash itself, and the events immediately following it - are the most historically significant of the century so far. Unfortunately, as so often in the past, Stone has brought controversial moments to the big screen, but he has failed to make much sense of them.

Having done eight years for insider trading, Gekko is now out, and is rebranding himself as something of a doom-monger, warning Wall Street of the disaster coming once the subprime mortgage bubble bursts. He tells a lecture hall of students that catastrophe is inevitable, because financial speculation has become totally divorced from production of goods or useful services. The students laugh, and buy his book, but he is shouting into the void - speculators are unable to see beyond short term profit.

Meanwhile, young trader Jacob Moore (Shia LaBeouf) has just got his first million dollar bonus cheque from fictional investment bank Keller Zabel, so he is also blind to what's coming. But Jacob wants to marry Gecko's estranged daughter Winnie (Carey Mulligan), so he befriends the old stager, and taps into his advice once Keller Zabel goes belly up.

Certain scenes have emotional impact, such as when the numbers turn red and the panic sets in. Stone borrows graphics techniques from a billion 'cool' movies, so things split and slide all over the place, to reasonably good effect. Douglas and LaBeouf are excellent, with the latter showing he has a decent future in more serious roles, should he want it.

But there are major problems. The love story between Jacob and Winnie is pushed way too far into the foreground. Even as a love story, it's uninspired, but it's just damn irritating when the future - my future and yours - hangs in the balance. I found myself trying to look behind the young couple, to check if anything significant was happening.

Perhaps more importantly, Stone reduces the inevitably chaotic workings of the capitalist system to the behaviour of reckless individuals, rather than explaining them by those individuals, in their particular social setting. Gekko - and presumably through him Oliver Stone - even has a go at "everyone", indicting you and me as well as the banksters for the crisis. Apparently, we all lived beyond our means. Well yes, some of us had our means extremely curtailed over the space of a few decades, particularly by people in fancy suits. Contrary to what David Cameron says, we are not "all in this together". Despite everything in this film, the rich are still getting richer, and the poor are still getting poorer. The elastic can only be stretched so far before it snaps back.

The Iron Heel

Jack London

Do you find Nineteen Eighty-Four a bit light on economics? Do you see the super-abundance of Brave New World irrelevant in this new age of austerity? Well unlike those two, you won’t see Jack London's 1908 dystopia on any school syllabus. Yes, that is partly because it doesn’t serve the ideological needs of the ruling class. Quite frankly though, it’s just not that well written. But Orwell read it, and it influenced him as he prepared to write his classic portrait of a totalitarian regime. And there are plenty of other reasons why this disjointed effort is still of interest.

I was first turned on to reading Jack London a few years back, when a friend recommended his Martin Eden – the story of a poverty-stricken labourer’s disillusioning struggle to elevate himself into the upper class by sheer hard work and determination. I had heard of his famous children’s adventures – The Call Of The Wild and White Fang, but I’d never been particularly interested in them. Since then I have been thoroughly impressed by both, plus John Barleycorn, London’s ‘alcoholic memoir’, and The People Of The Abyss, his account of life amongst the poorest of the poor.

This novel purports to be a summary of a would-be revolutionist’s memoir, written during an epic guerrilla struggle against “the oligarch” class informally known as “the Iron Heel”. The insurrectionist in question is one Avis Everhard, the widow of executed Socialist leader Ernest. In this at the very least the work is extraordinary, as it was extremely unusual for a man to write in a woman’s ‘voice’ at the time.

The first few chapters are grindingly didactic – London has the character of Ernest Everhard making long, densely philosophical speeches to assembled groups of elite capitalists, bishops and small business owners. He reveals to the capitalists the brutality of their system, and the bankruptcy of their philosophy. He upbraids the bishops for building metaphysical castles in the sky and floating away from a sober consideration of real conditions. He chastises the small businessmen for condemning profit-making when they are losers, and praising it when they are winners. In all of this, I would argue that Everhard/London are ‘correct’. Yet it is the stifling and occasionally arrogant ‘correctness’ of these passages which makes it entirely unsuitable for fiction, so London presents us with a strangled polemic. Cause of death: too much telling and not enough showing.

Importantly though, even this ‘correctness’ has definite limits. In the small business speech, London “the great intellectual hero of socialism” Karl Marx, and specifically his theory of surplus value. But whereas surplus value was Marx’s term for the value added by a labourer during a working day over and above their wage compensation, it becomes something quite different in this version. For London, apparently, ‘surplus value’ was some kind of unsolvable problem rooted in international trade, and one that would surely bring the capitalist system to its knees.

At this point, London apparently abandons materialism altogether, and the most of the rest is a chaotic and confusing mass of guerrilla warfare anecdotes, which are compellingly described in of themselves, but far too late in the book to start seriously caring about the characters, or the fate of the revolution. As the story culminates in the description of a failed Chicago coup, and in colossal slaughter, London’s materialist becomes a kind of ultra-left, idealist figure. The Everhards show absolute disdain for the great mass of society, whose supposedly unfocused rage betrays a certain fear of the mob in the author. The “savage beasts” of the lower working class were to be pitied for sure, but they were not capable of organising themselves, and were merely cattle to be herded by far-sighted leaders. In short, London was writing the vanguard theory of revolution, long before the Bolsheviks brought it to bitter fruition in Russia.

Indeed, perhaps The Iron Heel is most successful in its dismal ‘predictions’. What we know as World War One comes a year ‘early’, but Germany is correctly identified as a principal belligerent. The major theme of the novel – the rise and rule of “the oligarchy” – can be seen as a perceptive appraisal of how – under threat from a mutinous working class – the rich would dispense with the pretence of democracy and their “reply shall be couched in terms of lead”. At such a time, seeking power through elections would be pointless, even if it were desirable. London described fascism, before Mussolini and co. developed the idea and put it into practice.

So what’s the point in giving The Iron Heel a go now, more than a hundred years after it was written? After all, it’s really not a great read, and I’ve already revealed the ways in which in predicted the horrors of the twentieth century. Perhaps because the trajectory of the early twenty-first century seems to have such striking similarities to that of London’s time. A now global class of “savage beasts” is confronted with the question that was not resolved last time around. A group of oligarchs – today a financial aristocracy – is savagely attacking living standards, and gorging itself on the ever-growing profits squeezed from the rest of humanity. With a certain historical inevitability, state repression is drastically on the increase, and tensions between rival powers are coming to the surface. The iron heel of the jack boot will soon be stamping once more, and it is our generation’s task to put a stop to it, by overturning the conditions that give it motion.

The Death of Bunny Munro

Nick Cave

However much he meant to – and he is quite literally on record as being an avid listener of Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour – legendary Australian songwriter Nick Cave has written a novel for the feminist (or feminist ally) in all of us. Meanwhile, devotees of Cave’s music will delight at this literary outing for his “lower” Grinderman persona, and the plentiful Bad Seeds-style flourishes of purple prose.

The eponymous anti-hero is a self-styled “cocksman”, whose career flogging beauty treatments is just another way to put himself in the homes of many, many women in the Brighton area. When his abandoned and exasperated wife commits suicide (“she had a medical condition”), Bunny must take care of nine-year-old Bunny Junior. This would be difficult enough if his life wasn’t careening out of control, he wasn’t desperately trying to have sex with almost every woman he meets, and he wasn’t apparently destined for an encounter with an even more menacing horny devil.

The language use is wonderful, and Bunny’s relationship with his son is drawn with great skill and subtlety. But the particular strength of the novel is its rendering of Bunny’s thought processes, and their basis in his biology (to a small extent), his upbringing (to a larger extent), and the patriarchal onslaught of the mass media (to the maximum extent). His mind is a chaotic whirl of Kylie videos, underwear adverts, and the image oh so carefully designed for Avril Lavigne. As a result, any woman who isn’t immediately won over by Bunny’s dubious charms is clearly a “bitch” or a “rug muncher”.

Cave brilliantly portrays a society on the edge, while illustrating the crucial difference between fancying some women and believing one has an inalienable right to possess every woman. The death of the salesman is obviously flagged-up by the title, but it’s the manner of his demise that’s the most intriguing. Just when you might be forgiven for finding the central character a bit one dimensional, his ending rounds him off in fitting style.

Workers' Fightback - South African Strikers Keep Up The Struggle

The recent South African public sector general strike represents the high water mark of working class resistance since the global financial crisis began in 2007. Although it has now been sold out by the Confederation of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), worker anger is still on the boil, and could yet pose a direct challenge to the South African elite.

The three week action was brought to an end by COSATU bureaucrats on 6th September, just at the point when private sector solidarity actions were being considered. They then presented their membership with a pay ‘deal’ of 7.5 per cent – just half a per cent higher than the government was offering before the strike, and one per cent short of the strikers’ demands.

If the deal is passed, public sector workers will be out of pocket after a campaign in which they have been vilified by the press, denounced by the African National Congress (ANC) leadership, and faced water cannon, rubber bullets and stun grenades from police. While the strike was on, COSATU general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi dusted off his most militant rhetoric, denouncing the luxurious lifestyles of President Jacob Zuma and his ANC colleagues. But behind the scenes, Vavi and his team were conducting negotiations with what he had labelled the government “predator society”, and stitching up a rotten deal.

There are initial signs that the union rank and file is extremely unhappy, and could break with the leadership when the twenty-one day ‘consultation’ period comes to an end. “Unions were shocked by the manner of the rejections”, one local official told reporters, “the mandate was unambiguous, it was a no”. Meanwhile union leaders were chased out of a Johannesburg meeting, when members reacted angrily to the proposals.

The Johannesburg scenes were reminiscent of those at the Indianapolis GM stamping plant last month. This is because although union leaders can sometimes offer militant rhetoric, when it comes to the crunch their interests force them to bow before the demands of international finance and the state, and the mask falls. With class tensions rising, the ‘crunches’ are now coming thick and fast.

A similar objective relationship between bureaucracy and rank and file exists in the UK, where this week’s Trades Union Congress conference saw some of the most apparently angry attacks on the sitting government since the times of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government. It could hardly be otherwise, since public sector spending cuts of around 25 per cent are being openly discussed, as the coalition government tries to make the working class pay for the bank bailouts.

However, when push comes to shove, the UK union leaders’ rhetoric will be shown to be as hollow as those in South Africa, Indianapolis, Greece, and all over the world. If this historic assault on working class living standards is to be beaten, a democratic rank and file movement must be born, equipped with a perspective based on international solidarity and workers’ control.

Spectre Of Communism Haunts Chinese Elite

With the US empire in terminal decline, China has become essential to the globally integrated capitalist economy. It is now the world’s second largest economy, having officially overtaken its neighbour Japan, with a gross domestic product of over a trillion US dollars in the second quarter of 2010. It has long enjoyed gargantuan economic growth, and even weathered the storm of the global economic crisis up to this point. But its status as “sweatshop of the world” now seems extremely vulnerable to both internal and external shocks, and a period of huge social upheaval is on the horizon.

China is currently a few decades into its ‘industrial revolution’, which is similar to those undergone by European states a couple of centuries ago. However, there are a couple of important differences. Firstly, the nation is of course playing host to far more technologically advanced production than the Britain of the 1800s. Secondly, the sheer scale of China as a land mass, and the size of the new Chinese proletariat – estimated to be around 400 million and steadily growing – means that it dwarfs that of any other country. International capital now relies on Chinese workers to manufacture a large percentage of its electronics, cars, and clothing at super-exploitative pay rates.

But this summer there have been encouraging signs that this enormous proletariat is starting to feel its objective strength. In June, a wave of suicides at the Foxconn plant at Shenzhen provoked riots amongst workers, who stopped making iPhones for Apple in miserable conditions, and started chanting “capitalists kill people”, while brandishing photos of the company’s CEO. The company responded by announcing wage rises and improved conditions, though these soon proved to be illusory, and the China Times reported that many workers are now even worse off than before, thanks to changes in the pay structure.

Workers at the Denso car parts factory in southern China seem to have enjoyed more success, brought about by their two day strike over the quality of breakfasts. But perhaps the pivotal standoff of the upsurge was at the Honda Lock plant in Zhongshan, which followed hard on the heels of another apparently victorious Honda strike in Foshan. While the exact numbers are unclear – they are quite possibly being suppressed by authorities – Honda Lock workers seem to have won a raise of at least 100 yuan, which is around one tenth of their previous wage.

Zhongshan workers faced down management threats and riot police on their way to the victory. But perhaps more interesting than this was the structure of their ad hoc organization. Feeling unrepresented by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions – which openly acts as an arm of the Communist Party dictatorship – they took collective decisions and elected recallable delegates to set out their demands. So in Western terms, this summer’s Chinese strikes have very definitely been ‘wildcats’ – taken independently of the trade union bureaucracy, which has been identified as a class enemy. “The official union leaders are useless and support management”, as one Foshan striker told the Financial Times.

A China Newsweek profile of the man identified as the Foshan strike ‘leader’ paints a portrait that could easily apply to tens of millions of young Chinese workers. Aged just twenty-four, Tan Ziqing left his family’s small farm six years ago, and takes home 1,300 yuan a month (about £120). Apart from his living expenses, he sends the bulk of his wages back to his family in Hunan province. “Living almost like a monk”, his only entertainment was online chat. More educated than many, Tan researched previous working class struggles, such as the abortive Chinese revolution of the 1920s. He decided that independent working class action was required at the Honda factory.

Tan initiated the strike with a co-worker on 17th May, and the news spread quickly, via text messages. Having decided that a management concession of 55 yuan per month was not enough, the workers resumed their strike on the 23rd. They rallied on the factory’s basketball court and sang the Internationale.

Despite the Communist Party’s attempts to censor the internet, the strikes generated a lot of chat on various online forums. The mainly young workers at factories owned by Honda and Foxconn are part of the peak internet-using demographic in China, so many young people would have sympathized with their plight. Commenting on the Foxconn suicides, one worker claimed that that people like them faced only three possibilities: “revolution, suicide, or dragging on”. There is also much condemnation of the official “yellow unions” whose bureaucrats enjoy “mansions, US dollars, fine wine and beautiful women”, while young workers “labour endlessly like robots in a bird cage for a minimum wage”. A blogger urged workers to: “Rise up, those who do not want to be slaves… the rights of the workers all over the world were won by workers’ strikes, bloodsheds and sacrifices! Not granted from the conscience of the capitalists.”

Even though these strikes have been relatively isolated, fears are now being expressed in financial circles that they may just mark the beginning. Indeed, Bloomberg’s columnist William Pesek made the slightly tongue in cheek remark that “If these factory strikes continue, China may have to go communist.” He then posed the vital question: “...will workers demand a true communism, not just one that abhors Google?”

From our perspective, this is all very encouraging, but what does it say about the possibilities of reinvigorated rank-and-file struggle closer to home? Of course, there are obvious differences to the class struggle in the West, but there are also important similarities. Perhaps the most interesting comparison to be made is in the respective compositions of the official trade unions.

The relationship between the Chinese “yellow unions” and the company bosses could hardly be more blatant. For example, the Foxconn ACFTU president, Chen Peng, is also a senior manager of the company! But when Western trade union leaderships actively seek to disorientate workers and strangle their struggles in the name of ‘social partnership’, their class position is almost the same relative to the workforce. To give a Western comparison, Obama has given the United Auto Workers union a stake in General Motors and Chrysler, the leadership literally does have a seat at corporate board meetings, and directly profits from increased exploitation. As an illustration of this, the UAW bureaucrats are currently trying to force through wage cuts of almost 50% at an Indianapolis stamping plant.

The nascent Chinese uprising illustrates the truth in Sheila Cohen’s March article. In ‘Workers’ Councils: the Red Mole of Revolution’, she asked why workers’ councils spring up ‘spontaneously’ in very different geographic and historic cases. “The answer is simple”, she remarked, “because the form is simple; the form is constructed from the requirements of the situation, not plucked from thin air.” Workers in Chinese sweatshops have now formed workers’ councils, just as – for instance – the non-unionized Vestas workers effectively did on the Isle of Wight last year, as countless workers have over the last one hundred and fifty years. When the avenues for advancement through top-down ‘representation’ have been exhausted, bottom-up, collective decision-making and delegation is the only alternative that fits.

The Chinese economy is under increasing strain. In the wake of the global crash two years ago, the Communist Party government flooded the market with a more than a trillion dollars of loans. But that money has now run out, and with less demand coming from the recession and cutbacks hit West, Chinese manufacture for export is about to crash. It seems likely that a tidal wave of resistance will result, making this summer’s revolts look like a trickle. The repercussions for the global economy would be unprecedented, and the idea of workers’ councils could well spread beyond China. To paraphrase the old Chinese proverb, we may live in interesting times.

This article was also published in The Commune.

Workers' Fightback - Indianapolis and South Africa Wage Battles

Workers at the Indianapolis General Motors plant are on collision course with the company, the political and media establishment, and the bosses of their United Auto Workers union, after UAW bureaucrats were shouted down and driven out of a meeting last week. Dramatic footage of this confrontation can be viewed here.

All union mandarins are tied to the employers by their defence of the profit system, and their opposition to workers' control. Since the economic crisis began in 2007, union leaders around the world have helped employers impose the burden on the backs of their own membership. But UAW chiefs directly profit from increased exploitation, thanks to Obama's restructuring of the industry. In May 2009, they signed up for a 17.5% stake in GM, and these profits find their way into the pockets of union executives. For example, Mike Grimes, the Assistant Director who fled the Indianapolis meeting raked in $132,155 last year. The union also owns a luxury golf course, which is primarily used by tops, as was pointed out by one angry Indianapolis worker:

"The UAW is doing this because they own stock in GM, and they want to keep their business coming in. Once they finish the deal, they’ll build another 100-million-dollar golf course with our strike fund."

The bureaucrats' aim is to slash wages by almost fifty per cent - from $29 an hour to $15.50 - before GM sell the plant to former Wall Street speculator J.D. Norman. Local 23 explicitly rejected the plan by an overwhelming 384 votes to 22 in May, but Grimes and others were trying to re-open the contract before they were thrown out.

The workers at the stamping plant toil in often hellish conditions, with floor level temperatures reaching 48 degrees centigrade in summer. It is common for people to pass out from heat exhaustion, and there is a lack of drinkable water.

"I'd like the see a UAW official do what we do every day; to avoid the molten metal and walk on the oily floors,” said Carla. "I invite anyone who thinks we make too much money to shadow me for a day; this plant is a hellhole. There are cockroaches everywhere and half the bathrooms don’t work."

According to the 'logic' of capitalist globalization, workers have no choice but to compete with their class brothers and sisters around the world, by constantly accepting ever worse pay and conditions. In the wake of the Indianapolis meeting, this is the line that has been trotted about by UAW executives, the mayor of Indianapolis, and semi-fascist national pundit Rush Limbaugh. But this 'logic' can only be pushed so far; at a certain point the rate of exploitation becomes intolerable, and working people fight back.

The Indianapolis GM workers have shown their unwillingness to have their rate of exploitation almost doubled, but this raises the vital question: what is their alternative to the capitalist ‘race to the bottom’? The only other possibility is workers' control, and if they are to have a chance of achieving this, the stampers need to make a broad appeal to car and other workers in the United States around the world. This appeal must be made independently of the union hierarchy, who will do anything they can to strangle the rebellion.

One million public sector workers demanding a living wage in South Africa face the same challenge, following the start of an open-ended general strike last Wednesday. President Jacob Zuma and his African National Congress government are offering a 7% increase, while the strikers’ demand stands at 8.6%, plus another 200 rand per month in housing allowance. For the moment, the Congress of South African Trade Unions leaders are talking tough, but behind the scenes they will be working with the government. Since the ANC came to power under Nelson Mandela in the 1990s, COSATU have been an enthusiastic partner in forcing through privatizations, spending and wage cuts.

Introduction to Philosophy In Pubs

The Nerve Centre, Old Rapid Hardware Paint Shop, Renshaw Street (18th August 2010)

The "second Enlightenment" took a step forward at the Nerve Centre on Wednesday, as a dozen Liverpool philosophers got together to discuss life, the universe, and everything.

The session was much more free-wheeling than a typical Philosophy In Pubs enquiry, which zeroes in on a particular subject that is then dissected over a couple of hours and a couple of pints. But this was clearly the intention of facilitator Rob Lewis, who led us through an intriguing maze of topics with a light touch, introducing newcomers to the world of PIPs.

The concept is simple enough: "to allow people a space to express and discuss their ideas and thoughts, and to learn from each other in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere". But the possibilities opened up by such a set-up seem endless, and the opportunity is precious precisely because it seems so rare in early twenty-first century society. But why is this? Well, I have my ideas, but maybe there’s an enquiry in it...

The afternoon began when Rob read from a prepared document, explaining what PIPs is, and why he believes it is important. The meeting then broke up into smaller groups for more intimate chats, before each small gathering reported back to the assembled philosophers.

Such was the variety of ideas thrown up, it took us until twenty minutes before the end to decide what to have an enquiry about. Of course, by then it was too late, but that didn't really seem to matter. Discussions about the need for and the usefulness of philosophy, the nature of democracy, and "selling-out" all briefly flowered. By far the youngest philosopher - who was on a summer break from primary school - even suggested questions that kept Descartes preoccupied for several years!

At the end, it was clear that everybody had enjoyed themselves, exercising the parts of the brain that most pastimes don't reach. And yet - fun though it is - the PIPs experience is about so much more than having an interesting debate. It is about self-improvement - individual and collective. It's about developing a critical perspective. It's about arming yourself with philosophical tools to take on the "battle of life". And as was repeatedly mentioned at the introductory session, it is needed more in these times of economic and social crisis than it ever was before.

Philosophy In Pubs will be holding several more enquiries at the Nerve Centre, and they frequently hold others in venues around the city and beyond. See the Nerve and Philosophy In Pubs websites for details.

Workers' Fightback - Greek Trucks and US Starbucks

The combined weight of the Greek army, riot police force, media and trade union leadership was mobilised last week, to stop a strike by truckers. The action took place as 'centre-left' Prime Minister Giorgos Papandreou continues to implement European Union and International Monetary Fund diktats. With Greece being seen as a testing-ground for repressing the entire working class of Europe, this episode comes as a stark warning to the rest of us.

From the perspective of the European and international financial elites, Papandreou has been doing an excellent job over the last several months. A report by the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy recently found that his government is on target to force through real wage cuts of between twenty and thirty per cent in 2010, by a combination of attacks on salaries, big rises in VAT, and rising inflation.

Though the bosses of private and public sector unions (ADEDY and GSEE respectively) have called a ritualised series of one day general strikes and protests, the truckers' action has posed the biggest threat so far to Papandreou. By holding out for six days, the 33,000 drivers brought the economy to near standstill during the peak tourist season.

On the strike's third day, the government effectively conscripted the truckers into the army, instantly making the strike illegal. But they refused to restart work, and five hundred fought riot police in an attempt to storm the Transport Ministry. The army was then brought in, and began supplying fuel to economically critical sectors. At this stage, truckers union president Georgios Tzortzatos began concerted efforts to shut down the strike, despite no demands having been met, telling drivers that they "had to consider the difficulties their actions have caused for society at large".

Strikes are powerful precisely because of the disruption they cause to profit-making business of usual, but the union bureaucrat offered to call it off, conditional on the government withdrawing the army. This was agreed, and on Sunday a narrow majority of strikers voted to end their brave action.

Abandoned by their own union, isolated from the rest of the working class (neither GSEE or ADEDY had called any solidarity action), and threatened with five years imprisonment, it is small wonder that the majority decided to give up the fight. But the consequences will be catastrophic.

The dispute was over the 'liberalisation' of the trucker licensing system. Under the old system, drivers bought trucker licenses from the state, for between €100,000 and €200,000. The licenses could then be resold on retirement from the profession. Deprived of this pension nest egg, many now face bankruptcy.

This social tragedy claimed a victim in the days leading up to the strike, when a sixty-seven year old, debt-ridden trucker took his life, hanging himself on a bridge over a motorway. Indeed, the Greek suicide rate has nearly tripled this year, according to suicide helpline Klimaka.

Furthermore, confident in the knowledge that trade union bureaucracies will help them if disputes get out of hand, the Greek state must now turn its attentions to lawyers, notaries, pharmacists, architects, civil engineers and accountants, according to the EU/IMF prescription. If these groups are to have a chance of surviving the onslaught, they must break with the bureaucracy and reach out to working people around Greece and throughout Europe.

One group of workers who won't have a union bureaucracy to worry about are the baristas of the 15th and Douglas Starbucks, in Omaha, New England. Together, they have formed an Industrial Workers of the World branch in response to recessionary attacks from bosses. As staff shut down the cafe on Thursday morning, shift supervisor Sasha McCoy declared:

"We are being squeezed, and we can't take it any more. Since the recession began, Starbucks executives have ruthlessly gutted our standard of living. They doubled the cost of our health insurance, reduced staffing levels, cut our hours, all while demanding more work from us. Starbucks is now more than profitable again. It's time for management to give back what they took from us."

As Phil Dickens recently commented: "Rank-and-file workers are the trade union movement, not those at the top who offer fine words and gesture politics. If the fight against the cuts is to have any success, we need to take it back from the bureaucrats. Otherwise, what the mainstream media is calling an "autumn of discontent" will amount to nothing more than pissing in the wind."

Ruling Class Embarrassed By Ian Tomlinson Charade

"You have the right not to be killed. Murder is a crime! Unless it is done by a policeman..." - The Clash, 'Know Your Rights'

For the ruling class, the embarrassment caused by the transparent cover-up of Ian Tomlinson's police killing was a necessary evil. The alternative was far worse - a very public examination of policing tactics at a time of drastic cutbacks.

But before the storm blows over, the matter is in the media spotlight, and the following facts are incontrovertible:

• Ian Tomlinson died after being struck and pushed to the ground by PC Simon Harwood.
• Photos show that Tomlinson had two prior encounters with police that evening.
• Witnesses claim there had been two police prior assaults on Tomlinson, before he was pushed to the ground during the third encounter.
  
• In the wake of Tomlinson's death, the official Metropolitan Police story was that there had been no physical contact between him and police officers that night.
  
• This was shown to be false when members of public submitted their own footage, proving the opposite.
• Dr. Freddy Patel conducted the first autopsy, and concluded that Tomlinson died of a heart attack, something that would officially absolve the police from culpability.
  
• At the request of Tomlinson's family, Dr. Nat Cary conducted a second autopsy, and concluded that Tomlinson died from an abdominal haemorrhage, which is usually caused by trauma.
• The findings of a third autopsy were consistent with those of the second.
• Dr. Patel has been suspended by the Home Office, and is under investigation for allegedly conducting four other autopsies incompetently.

The Crown Prosecution Service's decision not to take Harwood to court therefore appears to fly in the face of the evidence. Reasonably, it would be for the jury to decide how much weight to grant Dr. Patel's claims, but the CPS ruled that:

"As the sole medical expert who conducted the first post mortem, Dr. Patel would have to be called at trial as a prosecution witness as to the primary facts. As a result, the CPS would simply not be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Mr. Tomlinson’s death was caused by PC ‘A’ [Harwood] pushing him to the ground."

This establishment trick has taken place in plain sight of anyone interested enough to keep up with the story. In the words of George Monbiot, "This is a moment in which the pomp and majesty of the law falls away to reveal a squalid little stitch-up."

Of course, for many of us, the law has never really had any "pomp and majesty". Quite apart from the repression meted out to the poor, young, and non-white, anyone who has been on a large-scale protest knows that the kind of treatment Ian Tomlinson received was actually nothing exceptional. It was doubtless just one of many similar cases on the day of the G-20 protests. Indeed, Sergeant Delroy Smellie attacked protester Nicola Fisher at the summit demonstrations, before being cleared by Westminster Magistrates this April, on the basis that it was "reasonable" for Smellie to assume that Fisher was holding a weapon. In fact, she was holding an open carton of orange juice. Explicitly non-violent Climate Campers also found themselves getting baton-charged and trampled.

If a black-clad, mask-wearing demonstrator had been killed, it would have been much easier for the mass media. They would have been painted as an outsider, and their character as well as their body would have been assassinated. This was what happened with Carlo Guiliani, who was killed at the 2001 Genoa protests. But Tomlinson was not even protesting. He was a 'normal' passer-by on his way home from his selling newspapers. The most unusual thing about him was the number of children now left fatherless by the killing - nine.

Once again, the idea that police neutrally uphold democratically-decided laws has been exposed as a fiction, and politicians are worried. Former Transport Minister Sadiq Khan told the Question Time audience: "The problem is that for policing to work, it's got to be done by consent, and the police need to have the confidence of the public for us to have an effective police."

Similarly, Diane Abbott, the supposedly 'left' candidate for the Labour leadership, fretted that: "I now find it very difficult to see how a breakdown in the relationship between the public and our police forces will be avoided."

Such a breakdown is well underway, and necessary. As anti-police activists Fitwatch commented on the Tomlinson charade:

"It’s time to wake up – these institutions do not exist to protect us but to subjugate us. [...] What is the use of having rights if the state determines when and where we can exercise them? We are given the right to protest when we’re no threat, but refused the right to even assemble when it’s most critical."

Photojournalist Marc Vallée - himself a victim of police brutality - observed that:

"The chilling thing is that for anyone who is thinking about protesting against the enforced transfer of billions of pounds from the public sector to the private sector due to the Con-Dem government's austerity measures will encounter the same police units, training, leadership, methodology and intelligence-lead policing."

At a time when enormous cuts threaten the living standards of millions in the UK and billions around the world, this is a harsh but vital lesson in the brutal reality of the capitalist state.

A Communist Case Against Boycotting Israel

In issue 15 of The Commune, Greg Brown made his case for supporting the boycott of Israeli goods, as well as the campaign for divestment and sanctions against the Zionist state. I decided to take up the challenge and sketch a counter-argument, partly because I'd long felt 'instinctively' opposed to it, and wanted to work out exactly why.

After pondering the comrade's article for a while, I realised the fundamental reason I'm not in Greg's camp on this one. For me, an essential part of being a communist is the belief that working class unity is the only way to finally overcome the special oppressions suffered by many around the world. Women are generally more oppressed than men, for example, and dark skinned people are generally more oppressed than light skinned people, but patriarchal and racist structures are the products of material conditions - i.e. they exist because they benefit the ruling class. The character of gender oppression has changed as ruling classes has adapted to economic changes, and the same can be said of race oppression.

What about this concrete example then, the genocidal treatment meted out to Palestinians in what was once their homeland? Supporters of a boycott want us to use our power as consumers to make the special oppression of Palestinians less profitable for the Israeli ruling class, by refusing to buy products originating in the occupied territories. It is presumed that this consumer pressure could reach a kind of critical mass, at which point the Israeli authorities would make significant concessions, or perhaps the state of Israel itself would collapse. Generations of Palestinians would be able to return to the place they call home, without fear of economic blockades and bombardment. Peace - and maybe even prosperity - would reign. I have many problems with this premise, and I will try to explain what they are in the rest of this article.

'Why just Israel?' is an important question. Certainly, the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the economic blockade of Gaza are examples of vile, disgusting brutality, which were highlighted by the murderous attacks on the Gaza aid flotilla. But there are countless other examples of vile, disgusting brutality going on around the world. Such brutality is built into the capitalist system - in a sense it is the basis of all economic growth. So why not boycott China, where so many of the products we consume are now made, in horrific sweatshop conditions? Why not boycott mobile phones and computers, because they contain coltan, which is mined in civil war-torn areas of Congo? For that matter, why not boycott the USA, which currently runs the world's biggest empire, and provides massive aid to Israel?

Perhaps you might think I am overstating this case, but in my view, boycotts take us down the road to the lifestylist ghetto, which is streets away from where communism can be built. This is because we tend to isolate ourselves when we make boycotting things a big part of our politics. To boycott is to withdraw into one's self, not to meaningfully engage with others who could be our allies. It is a passive call for a nicer capitalism, and so a call the powers that be can generally tolerate.

Let's return to the USA's support of Israel - which runs into the billions of dollars per year in purely financial terms, not including the diplomatic support at the United Nations and elsewhere. This truly special relationship dates back to President Truman, who described Israeli statehood as “an embodiment of the great ideals of our civilization”. He backed the first forced expulsion of Palestinians because the United States capitalist class needed - and still needs - a powerful guard dog in the Middle East, to stand in watch over oil, gas and trade routes. If there were to be a massive boycott of Israeli goods, the USA government would surely step in to fill the gap, rather than risk losing its valuable partner.

The example of the South Africa is often raised in relation to the Israel boycott question, though the comparison doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. As we all know, the apartheid system did eventually fall after a relatively widespread western boycott, but correlation does not necessarily equal causation, and it certainly doesn't in this case. It would be foolish to claim that the cultural and economic boycott played no role in the white elite's decision to free Nelson Mandela and allow blacks an equal vote. But it would be even more wrongheaded to claim - as 1970s student campaigner turned Labour Cabinet member Peter Hain frequently does - that the boycott won the day, almost on behalf of the black population. This seems like an inverted 'white man's burden' philosophy.

There were other important factors. A series of uprisings by the impoverished black working class put great pressure on the apartheid government from 1985 onwards. But hypothetically, the white leaders might have been able to ride this out if they'd retained the support of the international financial institutions. However, in the brave new era of hyper-globalisation, the South African system was seen as being too nepotistic. Apartheid was now an anachronism, and finally even the United States imposed sanctions.

Concessions had to be made if South African capitalism was to be saved, and so they were. Black working people had won the right to vote for the party of frustrated black business - the African National Congress, whose leaders gained riches for implementing International Monetary Fund diktats. Today, the divisions are arguably bigger than in F.W. de Klerk's day, but drawn firmly along class lines (see my April article, Terre'Blanche, ‘Black Boers’ and Class War).

So perhaps the absolute best that boycott supporters can hope for is to play a small role in Hamas gaining power, and wielding it in a poverty-stricken country, within whatever boundaries it could conquer. And even this surely depends on a withdrawal of support for Israel from the USA and European Union, a situation that seems far less likely in the strategically vital Middle East than it was in South Africa.

I find Greg's suggestion that Israeli workers who support the occupation are "worthy of contempt" to be deeply troubling. Contempt - if we are to make use of it all - must be held in reserve for parasitical rulers who steal and trick their way to ever greater riches, and not a misled section of their victims. To suggest otherwise seems like the worst kind of ultra-leftism, and Greg writes off millions of toilers in a purer-than-thou passage that doesn't even try to examine why they would hold such beliefs.

And so why would they? Well, there are many reasons why workers from a given nation might support domination of others, not least of which is the wall-to-wall, cradle-to-grave propaganda system which exists everywhere in some form or another. In North Korea and Northern Ireland, Israel and Ipswich, the schooling system and media conflate the interests of 'the nation' - actually the interests of the ruling elite - with the interests of the population as a whole.

In one paragraph, Greg correctly asserts that: "We must not believe that seeing the working class as the class of potential revolution means a cult of the worker...Our attitude should be critical." However, in the very next, he claims that the backing of Palestinian trade unions for the boycott means we should also support it. No reformist trade unions - not even Palestinian ones - will call for true proletarian internationalism, because to do so is to call for their own irrelevance. But as communists, that must be our call.

The Israeli working class is yet to make an independent intervention into the economy, but when it does, we must unhesitatingly act in solidarity with it, no matter what attitudes individuals take to the occupation of Palestine. Active solidarity is the only way that racist ideologies will be broken down, because it’s the only force that will show them up for what they are - tools of the ruling class. Though the slogan may sometimes seem trite, only when workers of all nations unite will we be able to transcend the barbaric horror of capitalism.