The election and capitalist democracy: Left, Right and Center; Electoral circuses or working class struggle?; ME peace, the peace of the grave; The new guard of Russian capitalism; Workers' Full Share or Bosses' Fair Share?
Last
August we witnessed the sick spectacle of the Democratic and Republican
Conventions. Now the ruling class wants us to fulfill our obligation as citizens
and vote. At the root of democracy
is that it is a system designed by capitalist to fit the needs of capitalism.
Democracy cannot be any other way.
No
clearer demonstration of the reality of the electoral system can be found than
at the Republican Party convention in Philadelphia last August.
The
police responded in a brutally heavy-handed manner particularly when not in view
of the television cameras. A coalition of activist groups of capitalism's left
wing organized a protest for which they had a permit.
The city
of Philadelphia intentionally gave them a "free speech zone" that was
too small for the size of the protest. There were reports of protesters being
hog-tied and beaten unconscious and denied medical attention and medication.
Bails for those arrested for civil disobedience type crimes (blocking the
street, disorderly conduct, etc) were set on average from 15,000 dollars to
30,000 dollars. Two protesters had bails set at 1,000,000 dollars. While the
police were literally a step away from just murdering people the forces of the
right of capital were putting on a show. The US military had come out and all
but endorsed the Republican candidate when it has been the accepted custom for
the US military to pretend to be neutral in such matters. Democracy for the
ruling class in the hall and democracy for their citizen-labor units outside the
hall. A similar scene was repeated at the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles.
The
third parties, constituting the third ring of this electoral circus, seek to
draw workers back into the electoral system. Here the third parties have already
failed. They have also failed to even gain a presence in the debates or even a
real foothold among the electorate. The national-chauvinist Pat Buchanan has
managed to split the rightist Reform Party in half. The Greens, on the
center-left of capitalism, must pretend to be in the center while getting the
left to vote for their candidate Ralf Nader, who was not only not allowed to
debate with the two-party pols, but was not even allowed into the hall as a
spectator. This tactic of attempting to restore some electoral legitimacy to the
system is a road leading nowhere. Not only do candidates like Nader serve to
draw those citizens who have lost faith back into the electoral shell game they
serve to give added legitimacy to a system that rules by virtue of its economic
muscle, a system reinforced with violence.
It
is the instinctive response of the left wing of capitalism to advance the belief
that the present situation is out of character for democracy.
They
insist, this ossified shell of the bourgeois left, that it is the right that is
the main threat and culprit behind the actions of the state.
Where
the CPUSA would call this wing of capital the ultra-right, the anarchists would
call it fascist and thus the entire left from anarchist to stalinist alike unite
in fighting against threat that they cannot understand due to their perspective.
This perspective is shared by the entire spectrum of the left almost without
exception, although the details might differ.
Fascism
requires a much greater threat in order to be on the agenda of the
ruling class. It requires a threat from the working class. Historically, fascism
is the direct response of the ruling class in the wake of the failure of the
first attempt at a world revolution. The German Revolution failed, the "Two
Red Years" in Italy never quite made it to the point of revolution, the
short lived Hungarian Soviet Republic fell and in every country where the
working class had been beaten back the response of the ruling class was to go on
the offensive.
Thus
democracy is the most refined form of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Even
within democratic capitalism such refinement is not always convenient when a
potential threat must be dealt with. So a little repression in advance can save
them from having to unleash greater bloodshed later on. The most difficult enemy
for revolutionaries to fight is democracy and thus it is democratic capitalism
that is the greatest enemy of workers today.
By
voting we give the official stamp of approval to a system that exists to
extract wealth from the planet and the vast majority of its' population.
When
workers work together, forming their own world revolutionary party and waging
their own struggles, they reject the vote and fight against the limits imposed
on them by the national bourgeoisie.
ASm
Our
Los Angeles comrades put out the following pamphlet on the presidential
election.
It¹s
the season for yet another electoral circus. The Republican and Democratic
Parties wallow in hundreds of millions of dollars in Corporate and personal
"campaign contributions" from the rich and well-heeled read massive
bribery! By the time these Demopublican political hucksters reach their
crescendo of lies, deceit, and playacting this year, nearly $3 billion will have
been spent nationwide.
The
Corporate monopoly mass media has its own bourgeois agenda. They have
differences in tactics but they have the same essential goals, to strengthen the
hold of pro-capitalist ideas amongst the masses. They promote this electoral
cesspool as the "wonders of democracy". But they hide the fact that
this Œdemocracy¹ is bought and paid for by the ruling class. This is not
workers democracy but capitalist democracy, democracy for the wealthy.
George
W. Bush, Al Gore and their hangers-on go about nickel and diming the
workers. For every dollar the
government, federal, state and local collect, the masses get back about 25 cents
worth in needed services. The lions share is handed over to corporate parasites
in form of war materials, Pentagon spending/contracts, interest to banks on
loans, research for new products and technology that is handed back to
corporations to make fat profit on. Ralph Nader has claimed that this year alone
corporate welfare amounts to nearly $275 Billion.
The
Green Party (Ralph Nader) and the Reform Party (Patrick Buchanan) are also
trying to entice workers back to the voting booths. These parties both use
"Populist" political appeals. Yes, they do denounce the Demopublicans
wallowing in corporate money. They criticize this or that US military assault,
they decry the loss of decent jobs and the huge social insecurity this brings to
US workers. They might even nail some of the most obscenely wealthy moneybags.
But their approach is a 'walk on water' attitude as they claim that they can
work miracles in humanizing, reforming and managing the capitalist system of
waged slavery mission impossible! Worse,
both Nader and Buchanan (left and right -wing populism) are united with the
AFL-CIO trade union apparatus and promote flag-waving US nationalism to line up
the US workers behind the rich owners to compete with US rivals abroad. They
demagogically blame workers in other lands for capital flight, especially
productive capital, and so they cover-up the reasons for capital flight are the
profit interests of capitals accumulation processes themselves, built into all
national capitals in the world economy. Nader and Buchanan call for
protectionist legislation and higher tariffs, all to help US bosses. This
process leads to US competitors retaliating and results in political friction
and trade wars.
As
history shows, this eventually leads to hostile new power blocs emerging and
these blocs may be compelled to escalate today¹s proxy wars into barbaric world
wars where the major powers, armed to the teeth, directly confront their rivals.
The
workers have to be vigilant and organize against these deadly tendencies of
capitalism. Nationalists, left, centrist and right, will find ways to rally
workers away from their real class interests and instead directly around the
bosses flags. Failing that, like Medea Benjamin, US Senate candidate of the
Greens, will try to justify military aggression and plunder for oil, etc, by the
presence of the United Nations (that collective camouflage flag of the bosses)
imprimaturs, resolutions and occupation troops.
This is exactly what the Greens did in the German parliament during
NATO's rain of ruin in Yugoslavia/Kosovo in 1999. (Medea Benjamin interview with
Mary Moore on Adelphia Broadcasting). So much for the 'peace' credentials of the
Green Party.
The
workers interests are hostile to the bosses¹ interests. Workers can effectively
organize politically and economically to fight their class battles. But the
ruling class is slick and has laid down many political and ideological
minefields to keep workers passive, divided. Workers, kept atomized and
chloroformed behind a boss dominated voting booth are impotent. Organizing our
class movements from below based on a policy of class against class, we develop
real power in practice. We can eventually build up an Internationalist Working
Class Party that will unite the class struggles for workers rule, production for
human need, not for sale and profit.
LAWV
The
much proclaimed "peace process" in the Middle East has been tossed
aside for the moment. This process was a part of the imposition of the terms of
the victory of US imperialism after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Having
badly overestimated the abilities of the chosen leader of the Palestinian
bourgeoisie and the puppet Palestinian National Authority to control the rising
anger of Palestinian workers.
On
NBC's "Meet the Press", Madeleine Albright in a typical arrogant tone
stated that, " I think Yasser Arafat obviously is the leader of the
Palestinian people. . . He has been able in the past to control large portions
of this. We expect him to be able to control this."
The "We" is obviously US imperialism and the "this"
refers to Palestinian workers.
Arafat
was the leader appointed during the creation of the PLO by the Egyptian
President Nasser. It was this faction, known as Al Fatah, that imperialism
itself chose to represent the Palestinians. The national aspirations of the
Palestinian bourgeoisie have been dealt blow after blow. This final blow coming
when the PLO supported Iraq in the Gulf War.
After
this final failure the leadership of the PLO was forced to accept whatever
crumbs were offered to it by the US power and its proxy the Israeli state. It
was expected of Arafat not simply to accept the compromises forced on because of
this defeat but to be able to sell it to the Palestinians. US imperialism today
calls for their own Palestinian leaders to impose the American peace on their
workers. The inability of US imperialism to impose this peace is a blow to its
rapacious ambitions.
Out
of a population of 3.6 million Palestinians outside of Israel, Arafat agreed to
allow less than 100,000 return to Israel. Much of the labor in the Israel and in
the Arab states is done by non-citizens thus making Palestinians an important
source of value extorted by the bourgeoisie in this region.
With the unemployment rate at 50% among the Arab non-citizens in Israel
the ground for unrest is always fertile. It is only since the end of the Cold
War and the collapse of an imperialist challenge to US hegemony that the US does
not require the same service provided to it by its proxy power Israel.
We
can forget the idea of "Arab people", in the sense of governments of
Arab countries, uniting against Israel and western imperialism. All the Arab
states neighboring Israel have more to gain by going along with US imperialism
in its objectives. Despite this setback to the imposition of the will of US
imperialism does not mean that US imperialism will impose its terms in a more
violent manner as we saw in the US war on Iraq.
With
the toll of the uprising at over 100 dead and over 2,000 wounded, criticism of
Israel by its Arab neighbors is muted at best. It is in this ground that a more
religious nationalism along the lines of Hamas and the Hizbollah takes root. Of
course Palestine was never more than a protectorate of the British Empire,
literally a slice of land that once belonged to the Ottoman Empire and so the
national aspirations of a divided Arab bourgeoisie to create a state never quite
took root. This left a better prepared US backed Jewish bourgeoisie to build an
Israeli state. That is how new nations are born in the epoch of imperialism,
they are created and supported by the big imperialist powers as a way of
redividing the world. For the first time Egyptian and Syrian police have acted
to quell protests against Israel and the US when at one time both states might
have actually sponsored such protests.
All
along both the left and the right of the Israeli bourgeoisie have been
united. The Israeli ruling class knows that Arafat cannot control Palestinian
workers. Thus the visit of Ariel Sharon to the Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of
the Rock was designed to show that Israel was still in control and by extension
highlight the weakness of the Palestinian bourgeoisie. When the US and Israeli
governments issue calls to Arafat to end the violence they are only making that
much clearer the weakness of the position of the Palestinian bourgeoisie. Arafat
himself is only too willing to be a pawn of any power that offers him money and
power, however limited that power may be, the very history of the PLO
demonstrates this.
When
Ariel Sharon made his visit and was subsequently met with protests, riot police
opened fire killing six people. The Israeli bourgeoisie directly provoked the
current violence. The areas under control of the Palestinian National Authority
are among the most highly policed in the world at some 1:50. The need to keep
the workers here from learning lessons and turning on their masters clearly
worries the bourgeoisie as they scramble to control the situation.
An
uprising by a population of non-citizen workers, who more and more form
the bedrock of Israel's lowest paid labor, really represents a problem for
capitalism to enforce its peace. That there is no national solution to this
conflict is clear. Even when a faction of the international bourgeoisie is
isolated and strangled, as is the Palestinian bourgeoisie, does not make that
faction of capitalism revolutionary. Nowhere is the "right of nations to
self-determination" more clearly bankrupt than in the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip. At the root of this conflict is not national or religious conflict
but rather the cold geopolitical strategy of the bourgeoisie. The working class
in Israel must remain divided in every possible manner for the ruling class to
retain its power. Thus Palestinians, Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews must be
divided against each other and soaked in the most disgusting and reactionary
forms of national and religious chauvinism.
Even
Israeli workers are squeezed. Jobs once guaranteed to them are no longer
assured, the expression of this is found in militant Israeli national chauvinism
that will not hesitate to kill anyone that gets in its way. The precarious
position of the Arab citizens of Israel places them on the second rung from the
bottom of the class ladder, torn between making common cause with the
Palestinian non-citizens and faithfully holding on to their limited status
within the Israeli state. The Palestinians are prey to a more hopeless religious
nationalism in the wake of the failure of the Arab nationalism of the PLO,
disaffection with Arafat and the peace process. The real enemy of the vast
majority people in Israel is the system that exploits the labor of the 50% of
Palestinians in the occupied territories who are not unemployed and use the
other half to keep wages at the starvation level. Ultimately workers in this
region if they wish for a real peace must understand that other workers are not
their enemies, that the peace of the bourgeoisie is the peace of the grave.
ASm
As
the old Kruschev era housing blocks crumble it is something of an irony
that the most prized apartments in St. Petersburg today are those built during
Stalin's reign. The economic straits that Russian capitalism finds itself in
today have not changed greatly even though the Russian economic collapse of
1997-1998 appears to have eased somewhat. The war in Chechnya continues unabated
and draft dodging is at such crisis levels that the Putin's government has
announced that it will call up fewer young workers to serve in armed forces as
many will avoid serving anyway. This stops well short of creating a
"professional" army of highly trained mercenaries. The only way out
for workers in Russia, as elsewhere, is reclaim their identity as a class, to
reclaim their own forms of struggle (as opposed to the trade unions and
elections offered to them by the ruling class) and ultimately to build their own
revolutionary party.
The
Russian bourgeoisie is forced by geopolitical circumstance to maintain
some 50,000 troops in Chechnya. The results of the spring call up of draftees
succeeded in getting only a fraction of young workers into obligatory military
service. Only thirteen percent of those called actually signed up. Most manage
to avoid military service by getting medical deferments, education deferments or
by obtaining permission to do some alternate form of service. In lieu of
creating a regular professional army, as in any other bourgeois state, the Putin
government has decided simply to limit the numbers actually called up and to
reduce the size of the armed forces by some 350,000 out of 1.2 million. Then at
least they will be spared some of the embarrassment of millions evading military
service. The current Russian defense budget stands at about 5.1 billion US
dollars, in comparison with a US military budget of about 290 billion dollars.
Highlighting the inability maintain a huge military apparatus, the collapse of
the submarine Kursk shows just how much trouble the Russian bourgeoisie is faced
with in an environment where it is becoming all the more necessary to appear to
be strong in the face of competing imperialist powers.
The
external competition with the Imperialist powers of the west is behind
the conflict in Chechnya. It is the powers of the west that are each competing
to gain a foothold in Central Asia. Azerbaijan's government has recently agreed
to start shipping Caspian Oil via the Baku-Novorossisk pipeline. It is this oil
that is to be shipped over the Black Sea to Turkey and then to the west. Russian
tariffs are regarded as being too high by the west. It is the US that seeks to build a pipeline from Baku to
Ceyhan through over a thousand miles of mountainous earthquake prone terrain.
The main ally of the US in the region is Turkey, which the US sees as playing
the role of a stabilizing mini-power. One
of the desires of US imperialism is that Kazakhstan will be a major source for
the petroleum needed to justify the building of such a pipeline. So far the US
finds the countries like Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan difficult to deal with and
not completely freed from the influence of competing powers.
Russian
imperialism must maintain influence over these regions by any means necessary
even if it means the intentional destabilizing of the entire region if not just
to keep out its predatory rivals.
The
standard of living of the working class is appalling, despite the economic
growth currently enjoyed by the ruling parasites and despite the building boom
that can be seen in major cities like Saint Petersburg.
Between
1991-1998 average monthly wages dropped from about $120 US dollars to about $42
dollars. Average pensions, the "reward" for a lifetime of service to
the bourgeoisie, fell from $54 dollars per month to about $18 dollars per month.
Health care has been cut to the bone and with it access to affordable medicine.
Tuberculosis doubled in the few years between 1994 to 1999. Drinking water is
unsafe everywhere. The sick irony is that in such an environment when the
bourgeoisie is extracting every last drop of wealth from its subject class of
citizen-workers, national chauvinism thrives. There is still not a functioning
system of taxation, which in any case would require a tax base.
If
a society can be judged by the state of its prisons, it certainly reflects
rather poorly on both Russia and the US, the two countries that have the largest
per capita prison populations in the world. In Russia a prisoner is afforded an
average living space of 60 square centimeters.
About
half of the prisoners in Russia are in for theft, one half of those are in for
stealing necessities like food. The Putin government proposes a series of
overhauls to the state punishment apparatus. Such proposed reforms include
limiting pre-trial detentions to less than a year.
The
Putin government has also proposed further reforms to the country's labor code.
The new labor code would cut paid maternity leave in half. It would also
give management the right to introduce part-time labor in the place of full-time
labor without notification. It
would make it easier to fire workers for "revealing company secrets",
meaning anything from sharing information about wages and salaries to the
contents of labor contracts. This new code would also make it easier for
employers to resort to temporary labor in allowing short-term work contracts
with anyone, for any length of time to be renewed indefinitely. The obvious
object of these reforms is to further restructure the standards under which the
working class is legally allowed to labor by the ruling class. One of the major
targets of this labor code will radically alter the relationship that the unions
have with the bourgeoisie bringing the unions more into line with unions in the
west. Ultimately the unions will accept this new role which is to be much less
integral in the management of business enterprises than it was in the past. The
ruling class has to alter the role of the unions because the needs of the
Russian bourgeoisie have changed. Despite the noises made about "human
rights violations" in Chechnya by the governments of the west the US and
the World Bank are in full support of this continuing restructuring of the
working class in Russia and has made loans available to carry out these reforms.
A
bomb went off in a Moscow subway underpass this last August. The tragedy
was made worse by the sheer number of people packed into such a small area that
was already packed with kiosks selling piles of worthless junk. Such vending of
junk is lauded as "entrepreneurial activity" by the cheerleaders of
capital but it merely underlines the growth of the "black economy"
where, instead of producing useful goods, workers find themselves selling
worthless junk in the street. It is a scene that is repeated everywhere, from
Bogota to Moscow to Mexico City, anywhere that the crisis of capitalism is
breaking out into the open. It does not signify the destruction of the working
class but rather its forced removal towards the bottom end of the distribution
side of the economy.
Competition
between factions of the bourgeoisie within Russia is fierce, to
put it mildly. This is so dramatically illustrated by the events at Moscow's
most important vodka distillery where factions of the management divided the
factory into two armed camps this summer. This not an aberration, this is how
the bourgeoisie reacts in time of severe crisis.
It is
the election of the Yeltsin clique's own chosen successor, Putin, that indicates
just how desperate the bourgeoisie is in the face of the challenge posed to
their rule and their remaining imperialist power that the "man of
action" would be placed into the seat of power.
Workers
are not simply passive players in this tragedy, they have attempted
to act in their own defense and assert their own unique interests. Their
defensive struggles will always be hamstrung by unions and political organisms
of the "left hand" of capitalism that serve as antigens aiding in the
success and survival of the rule of the bourgeoisie. It is these political
organisms that claim to be defending workers. Some of these organisms appeal to
nationalism. Others disarm workers politically by putting only the emphasis on
economic struggle in the workplace while dismissing any talk of even attempting
to work towards the creation of a revolutionary party. Thus politically
strangled on the one side workers are disarmed on the other.
The
ideology of capitalism proclaims the belief that markets will always reach their
equilibrium, that supply will meet demand and that prices will rise and fall
accordingly. Few more startling
contradictions to this ideology can be seen in the severe problems in the supply
of energy.
United
Energy Systems is owed more than $5 billion US dollars. This is compounded in
part by the inability or unwillingness of the state to collect taxes. The crisis
exists at a time when the demand for electricity is increasing and yet the
availability of electrical power is decreasing and workers are left to deal with
blackouts. Ultimately the big
energy monopoly will be stripped of its assets and split up into smaller
formations that will be no more able to provide electricity than the United
Energy Systems monopoly.
It
is the weight of bourgeois ideology that forces workers to accept as necessary
and inevitable the constant attacks on their wages and living standards by a
ruling class that robs them of their very identity as a class. Nationalism,
elections and unions are the main obstacles to an organized response by workers.
Workers have no country. Elections are but referendums meant to get a stamp of
approval from the worker-citizens before the rulers pursue the course of action
they most desire. Unions are the tools of the ruling class to control workers to
vent their anger in the most harmless and legal way possible. There are openings
for a new revolutionary response that exist in this situation. In many ways
workers in Russia are still more combative than their counterparts in the west. Revolutionaries can find a way to exploit this weak link in
armor of capitalism.
ASm
Recent
strikes by LA County workers put forward the slogan of a "fair share"
and our Los Angeles comrades put out this pamphlet in response to this union
slogan.
The
mass struggles of LA County workers should be supported. The workers have again
stood up and are fighting overwork, lousy pay, deteriorating health care
benefits, and no funding for child care. The Demopublican LA County Board of
Supervisors have plenty of money for corporate contractors who give them
political "campaign
contributions" read bribery! They look the other way on millions in
contractor overbillings. They have plenty of funds to pay huge interest payments
to big banks. They grant themselves $15,000 year pay increases! But now they
claim they cannot grant the workers a measly 5% per year pay increase for the
next 3 years, an 'increase' that will not even keep up with inflation and taxes!
They say they will never fund needed childcare.
Is
getting back $1.00 for every $4.50 of the value on average your labor power
creates a "Fair Share"? "Fair Share" means that our ruling
class might be able to afford if it does not cut too deeply into its profit
rates. To our bosses, our "Fair
Share" is based on the capitalist owners¹ needs to rob and exploit the
whole working class. "Fair Share" means settling for the crumbs our
masters throw down. It means we get to work harder and get poorer.
Should we not fight for a Full Share since we workers produce all of the
wealth of society? The struggle
again proves County Board Democrats Zev Yaroslavsky and Gloria Molina are just as tightfisted and anti-worker as the
Republicans like Mike Antonovich! The
lie that liberal Democrats are "Friends of Labor" is clearly exposed.
The Democrats just held their convention here in LA. Did they give a hoot about
the struggles of LA's workers? No, like the Republicans they were busy gathering
satchels full of cash from rich corporate donors. They left us with millions in
bills to be paid from needed city funds so they could party it up! The
County Supervisors say they must keep expenses under control. What this
really means is workers livelihoods must continue to deteriorate so the bosses
can get more of our wealth to maximize profits and be competitive.
In the
jungle laws of capitalist world economy, the rich, with the help of national and
state governments, must accumulate profits at a sufficient rate to continue
expansion and crush their rivals, at home and abroad.
This is
what the bosses¹ "Democracy" really looks like! In
this era the unions now all accept the capitalist system of waged slavery. They
bargain not on the need to seriously challenge legal robbery by capitalism, but
more or less on the basis of what the ruling class can afford. The workers
created ALL the wealth of society. We should not rest until we all have the best
health care, childcare, schools, workplaces, healthy environment and actual
collective control and planning of the wealth production and distribution in
society. Technology and a productive base already exist to create abundance for
all. But under capitalist wage slavery, we are told to accept a small fraction
of what we deserve. The result is that we work harder and get poorer.
The
workers have shown the potential of collective mass action. We can go beyond Œdefensive¹
struggles which only slow down our rulers attacks on our livelihoods. We can
spread the struggle to the widest layers of workers. We can choose our own
strike committees. We have the power to build for a general strike that will
force the powers-that-be to retreat.
We could
build a real labor movement that inscribes on our banners, "Not a Fair
Share of waged slavery for a fair days work, but Abolition of the wages
system!" In other words, a struggle for workers rules with production for
human needs and not for sale and profits.
LAWV