The International Crisis and
our trade unions
A contribution to a Communist Party conference
on the economic crisis
Earlier this year I spent some time in
In
Thus, international trade union activity is becoming
more clearly significant to rank and file workers as they become aware that we
are all facing the same issues. But
growing awareness is not enough. How do we fight at home, and in the
international arena to successfully confront these generalised attacks?
You may have heard me say before that the Chinese do not
have a single character for ‘crisis’, but rather two: ‘dangerous opportunity’. If we see the capitalist crisis as that,
presenting us with a situation beset with dangers but one which is absolutely
full of fantastic opportunity too, then it underlines the need
for analysis, for clarity and for
developing a way forward. Otherwise we are
going to stagger from one position to another, from one campaign to another - and
the times are too dangerous for that. We
have to be absolutely clear about what we are doing, and why.
The international crisis has resulted in something
very positive for us. It has discredited the claims of ‘neoliberalism’, that
the market can successfully determine everything – though, without a doubt,
capitalists, their politicians and the state will want to return to this lie. Normal
service, they hope, will be resumed as soon as possible.
But, as the very politicians who have peddled the lies
of neoliberalism – many of the New Labour breed - have had to use all the
resources of the state to ‘intervene’ in the crisis, ordinary people who might
have thought there was some credibility to the notion of ‘the free market
solution’ become disillusioned in the true and best meaning of the word. Our
role is to ensure that such disillusionment does not result in demoralisation
and cynicism, but rather in a conviction that “Another world is possible” – if
we organise and fight for it.
There is nothing new in the state standing four-square
for capitalism, and making workers pay for its crises.
Marx wrote in Manifesto
of the Communist Party in 1848, “The executive of the modern state is but a
committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”
Lenin was writing about state monopoly capitalism in
1917. “The question of the state is now acquiring particular
importance both in theory and in practical politics. The imperialist war has
immensely accelerated and intensified the process of transformation of monopoly
capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism. The monstrous oppression of the
working people by the state, which is merging more and more with the
all-powerful capitalist associations, is becoming increasingly monstrous.”
Preface to the
First Edition of “The State & Revolution”
And understanding the strategic political
implication of the “merging” of the capitalist state with capitalist monopolies
led communists to work for, and offer leadership to, broad anti-monopolist
alliances as a critical step in the development of the working class struggle
for socialism.
But the role of the state as direct defender and
prop of the capitalist monopolies remains the “big secret” of capitalism –
though it is a secret very poorly kept. Every worker can glimpse it whenever
they are attacked, and see it clearly when they are in struggle against those
attacks.
But still the state is presented as “mediator”, as
independent of the class struggle, rather than as the instrument of class rule.
And the most enthusiastic peddlers of this lie are in the leadership of the
Labour Party – who are best placed to know just how big a lie it is. As a result, many workers who see the truth still
shrug their shoulders and believe that it must ever be so. How do we break that
resignation, nationally and internationally?
‘Neoliberalism’, the false premise that the market
can determine everything, is simply a mask for the ugly face of the state in this
highest stage of capitalism… and that mask has clearly slipped at this time of
financial meltdown, coinciding with a deep economic crisis.
But the ruling class still have their political rules
and structures intact. And those structures are ‘globalised’ in the further
development of imperialism – most fundamentally and immediately for us in the
European Union.
The EU is dishonestly promoted by some within our
trade union movement as an example of international co-operation, with
potential for workers’ internationalism to be expressed within it – the ever elusive
‘social model’. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just as the British
state defends capitalism and prepares to make workers pay for its crises, so
the European Union plays the same role across its member states. There can be
no ‘social model’ in this aggressively capitalist club.
Others perceiving the fundamentally anti-worker nature
of the European Union mistakenly see it as a ‘foreign enemy’, a new imperialist
power imposing its will on poor old
What lies at the basis of the problems for us, and the
perceived, at least short-term, salvation for capitalism, is the promotion of
the ‘free movement of capital, goods and labour’. The Czech President, the Guardian pundits, Gordon Brown and his quisling party, John Monks
of the ETUC, the Tories, leaders of our own TUC and many, many more apologists
for capitalism are all rushing to the defence of the ‘free movement of labour’,
or as we should recognise it, the forced movement
of labour. The movement of populations
around the world is just the internationalisation, if you like, of Tebbit’s
diktat, “Get on your bike and look for work.”
That is what it is about.
So the fantastic and heroic action initially taken by
the Lindsey refinery workers and taken up by many others is spot on. We should have an absolute right to work in our
own country, though that doesn’t mean that the solution is in expelling other
workers. The Lindsey workers sent the racists packing when they turned up with
their anti-worker slogans.
Anyone who tries to say that those fighting for their
right to work here are racist is making mischief. They have either jumped to a conclusion or
are deliberately trying to mislead people.
If employers choose to bring people from other parts of the world, or if
people from other parts of the world choose to come, that in no way denies workers
the right to work in their own country. A
misplaced distortion of ‘internationalism’ – often put forward by naïve
ultra-leftists - must not be allowed to be invoked to undermine
class struggle in any one nation.
This is something we need to take up and universalise,
through motions to trade union conferences, through the Left Wing Programme, through the People’s Charter: We need to fight for an absolute right to work and
an absolute right to a home - for all workers, at home and abroad. That’s
internationalism in action.
Whenever we put our unions at the heart of the
community with such simple demands - whether nationally, through trades
councils, or whatever – we get a tremendous response. If we fail in this the BNP will take
advantage: we know that they are doing it now, they are on the streets, with a
simplistic, racist, xenophobic message.
That is a very dangerous side of the current opportunity,
that people will look at the BNP and find what they see as an easy
answer.
There isn’t an easy answer to capitalism but it is a
relatively straightforward proposition to say, “If capitalism can’t provide you
with the right to work in your own country, and the right to a home, then what
really is the benefit of that system to you?”
Too many trade unions have got used to ‘dealing with’
redundancies, rather than fighting for jobs.
The immediate response is often: “What is the best deal we can get out
of this for our members?” These are critical
questions of a capitalist world view and a socialist world view - a bosses’
response and a workers’ response - that we have to tackle. We can’t allow the trade union movement to
set its sights so low - that the best we can hope for is that people take their
redundancy pay and disappear quietly.
Internationally, we need to tackle this issue of the
free movement of labour, because it runs completely counter to the question of how
to achieve a political and economic system that meets the needs of its people. It
turns workers into imports and exports. There is nothing “free” about the
forced movement of millions of workers around
We need to make, maintain and build on direct contacts
bilaterally with our sister unions in other EU member states, and through our
international union organisations. The Party has a role in this too, meeting
with our fraternal Parties in common cause. The task is to “globalise” the
battle for jobs, and to mobilise against the “free movement of labour”.
But how do we make such international endeavours a
reality? In fact internationalism begins at home. Most organised rank and file
workers are not in a position to work directly with workers and unions
throughout
We need a new unemployed workers’ movement. My branch of the Party is meeting with the Indian
Workers Association and the director of the Unemployed Workers Centre, to look
at what we can start to do in our trades councils, pulling people together, in
order both to support the new move towards a genuine fight for jobs and to
bring out the political lessons about the nature of a society which cannot
guarantee full employment. Capitalists
are determined to promote competition between workers, and their system
provides essential instability for workers throughout
I come back to where I started.