Author: Internationalist Perspective

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“Hide and Bide”

or

Did China really rise without trace?

At the 2017 Chinese Communist Party congress, Xi Jinping openly broke with Deng Xiaoping’s 1990 maxim for the Chinese Communist Party: “Hide your strength and bide your time.”    According to Xi, China was now in a “period of strategic opportunity.”   This may have been a reference to Trump’s recent election to the US presidency and the UK Brexit decision weakening the European Union.   The term had been used by previous Chinese leaders at times when the US was particularly distracted by other matters.   At any rate, Xi said that it was “time for [China] to take centre stage in the world.”

The nearly five years since have seen overt Chinese and American antagonisms magnify considerably.   The situation is important for several reasons:  materially, because it constitutes a major component of the power framework within which humanity lives, and theoretically, because the development of China over recent decades gives us an opportunity to assess how well our analyses have dealt with the reality of capitalist economic development historically.

The comrades who left the ICC in 1985 and formed IP at the time defended the ICC’s economic analysis of capitalism, the key element of which was that the current epoch of decadent capitalism was putting a brake on the development of the productive forces.    

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Mac Intosh

Nuestro compañero, Mac Intosh, murió el 27 de agosto. Su repentina muerte nos ha conmocionado profundamente. Él ha sido un pilar de Perspectiva Internacionalista desde nuestra fundación en 1985; se lo echa mucho de menos como querido amigo y compañero.

Ante todo y siempre, Mac Intosh fue un militante, un marxista revolucionario para quien la participación en la lucha de clases era todo; hizo muchas contribuciones teóricas valiosas en la vida política del movimiento comunista de izquierda, todas con la perspectiva de fortalecer la participación de los revolucionarios en la lucha de clases.

Sus primeras experiencias políticas fueron moldeadas por el inicio de la Guerra Fría en su adolescencia. Luego fue animado por las crecientes manifestaciones contra la Guerra de Vietnam y, lo más importante, por el auge de la lucha de clases en Europa en 1968 y los años siguientes. Estas orientaciones intelectuales y emocionales le permitieron denunciar tanto a los grandes imperialismos de la Guerra Fría como a los movimientos de liberación nacional que habían surgido en América del Sur, Asia y África y sus ideólogos en Europa Occidental y América del Norte. También lo prepararon para saludar con entusiasmo el auge de la lucha de clases de la clase obrera industrial en Europa, que anunciaba una nueva etapa de conflictos de clases después de décadas de reacción.  

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Mac Intosh

Our comrade, Mac Intosh, died on 27 August. His sudden death has shocked us profoundly. He has been a mainstay of Internationalist Perspective since our founding in 1985; he will be sorely missed as a dear friend and comrade.

First and always, Mac Intosh was a militant, a revolutionary Marxist for whom participation in the class struggle was all; he made many valuable theoretical contributions to the political life of the left communist movement – all with the perspective of strengthening the participation of revolutionaries in the class struggle.

His early political experiences were shaped by the onset of the Cold War in his late teens. He was then animated by the growing demonstrations against the Vietnam War and, most importantly, by the upsurge in class struggle in Europe in 1968 and the years following. These intellectual and emotional leanings enabled him to denounce both of the major imperialisms in the Cold War and the national liberation movements that had grown in South America, Asia and Africa and their ideologues in Western Europe and North America. They also prepared him to greet enthusiastically the upsurge of class struggle among the industrial working class of Europe which heralded a new era of class conflict following the decades of reaction.  

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MAC INTOSH

Nous avons la tristesse d’annoncer à nos lecteurs le décès de notre camarade Mac Intosh , le 27 août, a après une très courte maladie.

Sa mort inattendue nous a choqués. Nous écrirons plus sur lui et avons l’intention de préparer une collection éditée de ses écrits.

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MAC INTOSH

Lamentamos tener que informar a nuestros lectores la muerte de nuestro compañero Mac Intosh el 27 de agosto después de una enfermedad muy breve.

Su muerte súbita nos ha conmocionado.  Escribiremos más sobre él próximamente y tenemos la intención de preparar la edición de una colección de sus escritos.

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Mac Intosh

We are sad to inform our readers of the death of our comrade Mac Intosh on 27 August after a very short illness.

His unexpected death has shocked us.   We shall write more about him and intend to prepare an edited collection of his writings.

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Angry Workers Editorial on the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Below is an editorial published by our comrades in Angry Workers about the latest eruption of conflict between Israel and Palestine. While we obviously condemn the brutal occupation and the conditions imposed on the people in Gaza, we remain critical of all nationalist movements. As the article makes clear, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas organizations are no heroes and hostile to proletarian class interests.

We wholeheartedly agree with the Angry Workers’ conclusion that the only way out of this mess is through an internationalist convergence of working class struggles.

José

Over the last two weeks, the Israeli state has launched devastating aerial attacks on Gaza, and Hamas have fired over 3,000 rockets towards Israel. The dead now number 13 from Israel (including 1 child and two migrant workers from Thailand) and 248 in the Palestinian territory (including 66 children) with a further 1,900 wounded. Everywhere, the bourgeoisie and middle classes, along with their representatives in the press and state, have wept over the mounting corpses in the hopes that their crocodile tears will wash away the evidence of their complicity in this barbarism. It is crucial that the working class, both in the Middle East and the world over, sees through this pantomime.  

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1° DE MAYO: MEMORIA Y PERSPECTIVAS

Con motivo del Primero de Mayo el grupo, con sede en Argentina, “La Oveja Negra”, elabora un balance de las luchas pasadas contra el capitalismo y encuentra una perspectiva de futuro en las luchas actuales.    

 

Una nueva conmemoración de las jornadas de mayo de 1886 nos encuentra para recordar, compartir, conmovernos, inspirarnos, debatir, reflexionar y agitar.

Nos encontramos otro 1° de mayo en la lucha anticapitalista por la cual hace tantísimos años fueron ejecutados a manos del Estado cinco compañeros y otros tres condenados a cadena perpetua, conocidos luego como los “mártires de Chicago”.

La lucha anticapitalista es tan necesaria como ayer para quienes sufrimos el Capital en carne propia: en cada jornada laboral, sea dentro o fuera de donde vivimos, con o sin salario, con o sin horario fijo, cada vez que buscamos trabajo, cuando padecemos las carencias, cada vez que nos relacionamos con otros seres humanos mediados por el dinero que todo lo cosifica.

Desde hace siglos el proletariado libra combates; sin embargo, aquellas jornadas de mayo en Chicago eran parte de una lucha en la cual proletarios y proletarias se organizaban con una perspectiva emancipatoria. George Engel, tipógrafo y anarquista ahorcado en 1887 lo expresaba de esta manera: «Yo no combato individualmente a los capitalistas; combato el sistema que da el privilegio.  

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First of May: Memory and Perspectives

At the occasion of May First, the Argentina-based group La Oveja Negra (‘The Black Sheep’) draws up a balance sheet of past struggles against capitalism and finds a perspective of the future in the present ones.

A new commemoration of May Day, 1886, allows us to remember, share, inspire, debate, reflect and agitate.

We commemorate another anti-capitalist May Day struggle many years ago for which five comrades were executed at the hands of the State and another three sentenced to life imprisonment, later known as the “Chicago Martyrs”.

The anti-capitalist struggle is as necessary today as yesterday for those of us who suffer the consequences of Capitalism in our everyday life: every working day, whether inside or outside of where we live, with or without wages, with or without fixed hours, every time we look for work we suffer the deficiencies, every time our relations with other human beings are mediated by money which turns them into relations between things.

For centuries the proletariat has been waging battles; however, those May days in Chicago were part of a struggle for which proletarians organized with an emancipatory perspective. George Engel, a typographer and anarchist hanged in 1887, expressed it this way: “I do not fight the capitalists individually; I fight the system that gives rise to privilege.  

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A SIGH OF RELIEF?

Half of America breathed a sigh of relief when power was finally transferred from, the would be autocrat Donald J. Trump, to the less colorful but entirely predictable Joe Biden. The Biden half believe his ascension represents a return to rationality, to social justice, to the standards of comportment expected of a liberal democracy, indeed, to civility itself. This half of America hopes we can end this chapter of American history and return to normal. But, what of the other half, the half for whom normal is not working, the millions who voted for Trump? Where will they go, what will they do, how will their anger be manifest? Will “Trumpism” turn into a proto-fascist movement as many fear? Are the conditions ripe for such a movement? It would seem so. Trumpism seems to share some important features with historical fascism:

  • The adoration of a strong leader (Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Peron etc.)
  • The fear and hostility towards an outsider group (Jews, immigrants, Muslims)
  • Nostalgia for and identity with a mythical past (MAGA, Pax Romana, Aryan civilization, the old South, etc.)
  • An obsession with guns and the second amendment (Black Shirts, Proud Boys, militarization of civil society, militias)
  • A belief in conspiracies (The Elders of Zion, Q-anon, communist subversion etc.)
  

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