Author: Internationalist Perspective

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ES ASÍ COMO SE VE LA DEMOCRACIA

ES ASÍ COMO SE VE LA DEMOCRACIA

Quedan varias preguntas después de estas elecciones. Como por ejemplo: El nuevo presidente de los Estados Unidos ?Es un psicópata o un sociópata?

Sea cual fuere el diagnóstico correcto, no se puede negar que estas elecciones dan testimonio de un considerable aumento del descontento, del desasosiego y la inquietud en un amplio sector de la población norteamericana. Trump ganó, añadiendo a los votos tradicionalmente republicanos, muchos votos de la clase trabajadora blanca, que en elecciones anteriores había votado por Obama o no había votado. Pero no exageremos su atracción: sólo un cuarto del electorado votó por él; sus oponentes tuvieron, de hecho, por lo menos un millón de votos más pero, como se sabe, él ganó en el Colegio Electoral. ”Es así como se ve la democracia”, como gritaban quienes protestaban ( con ironía involuntaria) en las calles de Estados Unidos, mientras que ellos eran perseguidos por los protectores armados del Estado democrático.

Hay buenas razones para el descontento, el desasosiego y la inquietud de la clase trabajadora en Estados Unidos. A raíz de la agudización de la competencia en el mercado laboral global y la imparable marcha de la automatización, más y más gente no sabe si va a tener un trabajo el día de mañana y en que condiciones.  

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EL MUNDO COMO LO VEMOS NOSOTROS: PUNTOS DE REFERENCIA

INTRODUCCIÓN

Desde su inicio, Perspectiva Internacionalista (PI), ha sostenido la importancia de la teoría revolucionaria porque, en nuestra opinión, la revolución comunista sólo puede ser un acto conciente de transformación social, no algo en lo que la clase obrera tropieza inconscientemente, conducida automáticamente por crisis y calamidades.  Pero nosotros también creemos que la teoría revolucionaria no es un producto acabado, que no es un programa preexistente que simplemente debe ser asimilado y aplicado.  Ambas ideas erróneas estaban y están presentes en la Izquierda Comunista tradicional, la corriente política dentro de la cual nuestro grupo tiene su origen.  Nosotros nos seguimos identificando con la Izquierda Comunista, con su lucha contra la degeneración de la Segunda y Tercera Internacionales, con su defensa inquebrantable de las posiciones revolucionarias incluso en el peor de los tiempos.  Ahora bien, algunos de ellos llegaron a creer que la teoría es irrelevante porque la clase trabajadora simplemente va a estar obligada por las condiciones económicas, a abolir el capitalismo, mientras que otros afirmaban que la teoría revolucionaria esta´esencialmente acabada y simplemente necesita ser absorbida por la clase. Es esta última visión la que condujo a una escisión en 1985 entre quienes formarían PI y la organización de la cual éramos parte entonces, la Corriente Comunista Internacional (CCI).  

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Antifa? No Thanks

Recent comments on the Intsdiscnet-list on “Fascists March on Berkeley” (4/27/17) raise that issue with which those committed to the struggle against capitalism have grappled since the 1930’s: anti-fascism.

Historically Antifa or anti-fascism within the worker’s movement became the clarion call of Stalinism, and then the veritable basis of the Grand Alliance between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill to, yes, crush the Axis powers, and – yes – to divide the world between American imperialism, American capitalism and its British partner, and the no less imperialist ambitions of Stalinist Russia. The logic of Anti-fascism was played out on the streets of Barcelona and Madrid in 1936-37, even before the outbreak of World War Two as the Stalinists crushed the working class of Spain even before Franco and the fascists could then finish the job. Anti-Fascism then became the ideological basis for the mobilization of the working class for the second inter-imperialist war, first for its no-strike pledges in Britain and the U.S., and then for sending the sons of the working class in Britain and the U.S. to die for their national capital, for the demands of Anglo-American imperialism and its alliance with Stalin. Anti-fascism, then, was historically the ideological basis of capitalism’s response to the great depression and its accompanying sharpening of inter-imperialist antagonisms.  

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The World As We See It: Reference Points

Introduction

From its start, Internationalist Perspective (IP) has believed in the importance of revolutionary theory, because, in our view, the communist revolution can only be a conscious act of social transformation, not something the working class stumbles into unconsciously, driven automatically by crisis and calamity. But we also believed that revolutionary theory is not a finished product, that it is not a pre-existing program that has to be merely assimilated and applied. Both misconceptions were and are present in the traditional Communist Left, the political current within which our group originated. We still identify with the Communist Left, with its fight against the degeneration of the Second and Third Internationals, with its unwavering defense of revolutionary positions even in the worst of times. However, some came to believe that theory is irrelevant because the working class will simply be compelled by economic conditions to overthrow capitalism, while others claimed that revolutionary theory is essentially finished and merely needs to be absorbed by the class. It was this latter view which in 1985 led to a split between those who would form IP and the organization they were then a part of, the Internationalist Communist Current (ICC). In that year, the ICC adopted the position that “class consciousness” was different from “consciousness of the class”, that Marxist theory embodied the first, and that it would require an ever larger army of militants to spread the first into the second.  

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The Global Pressure Cooker

In Pontecorvo’s film Queimada, set in the 1830s, the agent provocateur, Sir William Walker, points out that a decade can show the contradictions of a century. Fast forward almost 200 years. It only took a few days into 2016, the strains of Auld Lang Syne having barely faded away, to highlight the contradictions of the whole capitalist system today. Once a decade was needed, now only a few days; the acceleration of forces and events is palpable. Indeed, although the various aspects of life under capitalism have always been linked – and those always highlighted in times of crisis – today’s expressions of crisis can move from one domain to another to expose a quite astonishing interconnectedness and immediacy as the past few weeks since the start of this year show.

This article aims to put some perspectives on the acceleration of events. One can always point to the underlying crisis of capitalism – its crisis of value – but this crisis never expresses itself without the decisions and actions of classes and groups, and the vicissitudes of events. It is on these behaviours that this article focusses. In a few pages it is impossible to review the whole world situation so I have selected a few key issues to concentrate on.  

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The Economy in the Transition to a Communist Society

A Critique of the theses of the GIK and “labor coupons” (Excerpts from an exchange with Kees)

Kees, you write:

“The problem that I see is the following: as we are not in a situation of ‘abundance’ but in a situation of ‘scarcity’ there will inevitably be ‘exchange’ (or else total arbitrariness) based on some kind of calculation. The only possibility would seem to be take labor time as the basis of the calculation.”

The link between scarcity and exchange is something that also seems to me to be very important. Exchange and its main instrument, money, are an extremely effective means to ensure the circulation of goods in conditions of scarcity and a developed division of labor, as history has amply demonstrated. Too often we believe that it suffices to declare money “abolished” for it to disappear.

We cannot do away with money without eliminating the necessity for exchange. The Argentine experience of 2001, the “Movement for a social money” shows how, in a situation of scarcity, if the “official” money disappears, other forms of money reappear “spontaneously” as a product of the need to exchange in order to survive. Cigarettes were used as commodity-money during the Second World War by prisoners, and still are today in prisons in the United States.  

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Rojava in the Vortex of Inter-Imperialist Antagonisms

Over the past several years Rojava or Western Kurdistan, legally a part of Syria, has been seen by many anarchists, libertarians, and even Marxists as the locus of a social revolution, one that demands solidarity on the part of revolutionaries, all the more so as it has been the object of brutal military assaults, first from Daesch (the Islamic State), and now from Erdogan’s Turkey. Inasmuch as the Middle-East today is literally on fire, the scene of vicious ethnic and religious cleansing, and bloody battles between rival imperialist states and armies, it is important to determine whether we are seeing a mortal threat to capital, an anti-capitalist commune OR an inter-imperialist bloodbath in which the population has been mobilized to serve the interests of capitalism.

For the past several years, as Syria has collapsed into civil war fueled by the intervention of imperialist states (Iran, Turkey, Russia and the US), Rojava has been under the control of the PYD and its fighters (the YPG), the Syrian offshoot of the PKK (The Kurdistan Workers Party \[sic.\]), led by Abdullah Öcalan. Originally a Marxist-Leninist, now in Turkish incarceration, Öcalan has had a prison conversion, and under the influence of the writings of the American libertarian, Murray Bookchin, has reinvented himself as a partisan of “communalism” and “Democratic Confederalism.”  

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Down With These Flags

llons enfants de la patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé…

(“Let’s go, children of the fatherland, the day of glory has arrived…”)

The opening of the ‘Marseillaise, the French national anthem

The following text is a statement IP put out after the terrorist attacks in Paris last november. It was widely shared on social media and internet lists. We received some criticism, in particular of the claim that ISIS is a capitalist enterprise and “not a religious movement”. Indeed, it would be more correct to state that it is both. Both aspects coexist within ISIS and use each other. As a capitalist state ISIS uses religious fervor for the purpose of capital accumulation, and as a religious movement, ISIS uses the instruments of the state to advance its fanatical religious goals. Those two aspects fit together smoothly, united by the common goal of conquest, although lately tensions have been reported between factions focused on consolidating ISIS’s management of its territory and factions that want to expand the global ‘Jihad’, regardless the consequences. It remains to be seen how that plays out. The role that religion plays today in capturing the rage of some of the most marginalized proletarians is not something that we have foreseen.  

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This is What Democracy Looks Like

A few questions linger after these elections. Such as: is the new US president a psychopath or is he a sociopath?

Whatever the correct diagnosis may be, it can’t be denied that his election testifies to a considerable increase of discontent, disaffection and anxiety in a broad swath of the American population. Trump won, by adding to the traditional Republican votes, those of many in the white working class, who in previous elections voted for Obama or not at all. Let’s not exaggerate his appeal: only a quarter of the eligible voters voted for him; his opponent in fact got at least a million votes more than him but, as you know, he won in the Electoral College. ‘That’s what democracy looks like’, as protesters (unintentionally ironically) shout in American streets, while they’re being chased by the armed protectors of the democratic state.

There are good reasons for discontent, disaffection and anxiety in the American working class. Because of the sharp competition on the global labor market and the unstoppable march of automation, more and more people are unsure whether they will have a job tomorrow, and in what conditions. Hidden unemployment is rampant. The gap between rich and poor grows.  

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Inter-Imperialist Antagonisms in the Age of Trump

Capitalist states, whether they are defending local or regional economic and politico-military interests or seeking global hegemony, must constantly evaluate and re-evaluate their strategic interests, their alliances, and the threats that they confront.

For American imperialism, in the waning days of World War Two, before the atomic bombs led to Japan’s surrender, it seemed apparent that while Stalinist Russia was militarily essential if Germany and Japan were to be defeated, the outcome of the war raised the prospect that Russia might dominate large parts of both Europe and Asia, and thereby become a threat to the putative global hegemony of the U.S. The occupation of the Eastern half of Europe by Russia, and the danger that with powerful Stalinist parties in Italy and France too, the Western half might be brought into the orbit of Moscow, whether by elections or conquest, as well as the conviction that Mao was a puppet of Moscow, and that his “revolution” in China would extend Russian domination to much of Asia in the face of weak and declining European colonial powers, led Washington to adopt a strategy of containment of Russia, that included the Marshall plan, the formation of NATO, and two land wars in Asia (Korea and Vietnam) before the strategy of American imperialism was dramatically changed in the early ‘70’s by Kissinger and Nixon, with a Sino-American alliance that ultimately led to the collapse of the “Soviet Union” in the early ‘90’s.  

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