VICTORY TO THE ASTURIAN MINERS!

(Much of the detail of the history of the Asturian miners is taken from Andy Durgan's piece in Socialist Worker)

For somebody of my generation, writing, especially in Wales, about a miners’ strike has a certain shiver to it. Certain associations. Certain memories. I am old enough to remember the successful British miners’ strike of 1972, with its flying pickets, mass picketing and in particular the battle of Saltley gates, (40 yrs ago this yr)  in which the engineering workers of Birmingham joined with miners to close down the coke depot and win the strike. And of course, there was the 1974 strike, which toppled the government of Tory PM Edward Heath.

But I also remember the heroic battles of 1984-85, in which miners battled the Thatcher government but could not get the solidarity from other workers (indeed, from all miners) that they needed to win.

What much of the left did not fully understand then was the extent to which Thatcher’s attacks were a response to the re-onset of economic crisis in the 1970s and were the start of the process of establishing an unregulated, globalised free market economy, preferably with minimal, ineffective trade unions  – what we now call neoliberalism. This was an attempt to overcome the fall in profits which had reasserted itself after the postwar boom of the 50s and 60s .  It was a process which now lies in ruins in the collapse of the banking & economic crisis, but zombie-like, continues to destroy workers’ lives. And it is a process which is now being resisted by the miners of Asturia.

Before I look at the Asturian miners and their history, I want to say one thing: traditions and history have to be built.  There is nothing ready-made about traditions of militancy. I say this because it is possible, especially when looking at the history of the Asturian miners, to stand in awe of them. The miners of South Wales had a similar reputation. It is worth reminding ourselves that in the late 19^th century Welsh miners were regarded as the most backward in Britain from the standpoint of class consciousness and labour organisation.  For two decades they had no effective coalfield trade union presence. The shift towards militancy came in the first decade of the 20^th century. There is nothing automatic about the development of political consciousness. This has to be built by socialists in the process of struggle and resistance.

Having said that, the Asturian miners’ history of struggle and resistance are pretty good. There is a tradition in these communities not only of industrial militancy but of guerrilla activism, partially originating from the struggle against Franco. People may have seen on YouTube the battles with the police which became a daily occurrence for the Asturian strikers this year, with a home-made rocket-launcher used to fire projectiles at the police lines. Many miners are trained in the use of explosives. In the strike of 1934 local unions gathered small arms and launched attacks on the barracks, seizing many of them.

Let’s look at the strike of 1934. By 1934, the Spanish workers’ movement was acutely aware of the threat of fascism. They saw what was happening elsewhere in Europe. It was widely believed that the main right wing party, the Catholic CEDA (Confederation of Rightist Groups), would try to introduce an authoritarian regime through parliament. This had happened in Austria and Germany.When the CEDA entered the government in early October 1934 a revolutionary general strike was called. This became a full-blown insurrection in Asturias.

The miners were at the centre of this movement. This was due to their traditions of struggle, a crisis in the mining industry and the unity of workers’ organisations in the Workers’ Alliances. With other workers, the miners took over the region. They organised militias, transport, the distribution of food and revolutionary justice.

A revolutionary committee based on delegates from the unions and workers’ parties declared that the region was now a Socialist Republic.

For two weeks the miners held out against the army in the mountain valleys and the provincial capital Oviedo. Lightly armed, their main weapon was dynamite thrown or shot from catapults.

The miners were finally defeated by overwhelming force. The failure of the strike meant they were isolated across Spain. They faced appalling repression.

The Army of Africa, under the command of future dictator Francisco Franco, wreaked a terrible revenge, especially in the pit villages.

Over two thousand workers were murdered, many more imprisoned and tortured. Miners’ wives were beaten and raped. But far from being cowed, the experience of the Asturian Commune inspired workers throughout Spain.

With the military coup in July 1936 the slogan of the Asturian miners echoed through the streets as workers resisted: ¡U.H.P! (Unite Proletarian Brothers!). The Civil War would rage on for another three years.

In Asturias the miners once more were at the forefront of this struggle. Badly armed, the Asturian working class held out for 15 months before being overwhelmed by the fascist forces in October 1937.

Once more the mining valleys flowed with blood. But even then the miners did not stop fighting—many fled into the mountains and guerrilla warfare raged well into the 1940s.

After Franco’s victory all trade unions and workers’ organisations were banned. The repression unleashed during the war continued until the late 1940s.

Working class activists were executed, imprisoned and sent to labour camps. The new regime aimed to eliminate all vestiges of a militant workers’ movement.

By the late 1950s a new generation of workers had entered the factories and the mines. Mining in Asturias had reached its peak with 52,000 miners by 1958, compared with barely 4,000 today.

Coal production would soon help fuel Spain’s economic boom after the Stabilisation Plan of 1959 opened the door to foreign investors and tourism.

Over the next 14 years Spain underwent unprecedented growth and was transformed both economically and socially.

Economic development meant that workers flooded into the cities and industries. A new working class emerged relatively unscathed by the horrors of the Civil War.

Throughout the 1960s there would be repeated clashes and strikes as this new working class strove to both improve its conditions and, increasingly, bring about democracy.

The Asturian miners were at the centre of this struggle. In 1962 they carried out one of the most dramatic strikes during the dictatorship.

The strike started on 7 April 1962, at the Nicolasa mine in protest at the sacking of seven miners. It soon spread to involve the rest of the mines. Demands to end a state-imposed wage freeze were also added to the strikers’ demands.

The regime responded with mass arrests, beatings and torture. Strikers were sent forcibly to live hundreds of miles away.

Solidarity was important in sustaining what was an illegal strike. Shopkeepers and small famers provided food. In the neighbouring Basque Country fishermen worked extra hours so they could provide the strikers with fish.

The miners’ struggle proved a spark for other workers for a general protest against the wage freeze. Over the coming weeks this involved 500,000 workers throughout Spain.

The Spanish government declared a state of siege on 4 May. Yet the miners held out. On 24 May the government agreed to the strikers’ demands. On 5 and 6 June the strikes ended with wage increases being granted across industry and agriculture.

The miners’ victory was the first mass workers’ movement to successfully take on Franco’s regime. The strike saw the birth of workers’ commissions elected directly by the workers which bypassed the state-run “unions”.

Such commissions became commonplace. They formed the basis of a new democratic trade union movement that went on to play a central role in the struggle against the dictatorship.

The 1962 strike was difficult to organise at first, because of the dictator’s formidable reputation as a repressor of all forms of protest.

When the Asturian miners began their strikes in April, Franco refused to recognise them. He claimed they were illegal.

The key to victory was how the dispute spread. Miners in the Nicolasa mine declared a strike on 7 April. Miners from Baltasara struck the next day. Then a strike was declared in Polio and a week later the whole Caudal Valley in Asturias was on strike.

On 16 April the strike spread to Turon and then to the Nalon Valley. At this point 60,000 workers were striking. The slogan the strikers chanted was, “General salary raises and solidarity with our comrades”.

Franco responded with brutal repression including detentions and beatings of workers and women. In Franco’s Spain, striking was equal to military rebellion and was punished harshly.

Yet strikers were able to organise effectively. The strike gripped 24 provinces for more than eight weeks.

The Spanish democratic movement stemmed partially from the Asturian mining strikes. The strike wave had given the movement strength, momentum and hope that fascism in Spain could be beaten.

So, to quickly come up to the present day. I can do no better than to quote from Richard Seymour's LENIN'S TOMB blog:

"Spain is one of the "peripheral" economies of the eurozone, exposed to high levels of debt and volatility. Its banks, having expanded during the construction and property booms, are now dangerously weak. Like Greece, Italy and Ireland, it has been subject to waves of austerity, ostensibly to reduce the deficit. €27bn cuts are already planned this year. These cuts, and the conditions they have exacerbated, have already produced a mass insurgency, with the indignados of Puerta del Sol drawing inspiration from Tahrir.

However, the latest spending squeeze, which includes 63% cuts to coal subsidies resulting in thousands of job losses, has provoked furious and desperate resistance by the miners of Asturias. The cutback came just as the government spent billions rescuing the banks. So, toward the end of May, approximately 8,000 miners went on strike, indefinitely. The main square of the Asturian capital, Oveido, was occupied by workers using the same tactic as the indignados.

This is not to say that the miners are simply following the indignados. As one of their most widely seen banners put it: "No Estamos Indignados, Estamos Hasta Los Cojones" ("We Are Not Indignant, We Are Pissed Off To Our Balls").

The conservative government is anxious not to be seen to capitulate, or even negotiate. Aside from anything else, its political credibility with European lenders partially derives from its ability to contain domestic revolt. This is a dynamic being repeated across the EU, and it raises the stakes considerably in such struggles. Governments are bunkering down, and preparing for protracted battles, banking on the likelihood that union leaderships are not equal to such prolonged warfare. This hasn't worked in Asturias despite the key unions being allied to the Socialists, who are in favour of austerity.

The government's position is weak. Its crisis already compounded by the chaos in Spanish banks, it looks feeble after returning from EU negotiations with a bailout package which it claimed had "no strings attached", only for Germany to repudiate this claim. The reality is that the bailout of Spanish banks is making another sovereign debt crisis more likely – in an economy five times the size of Greece. As such, the battle with the miners is being conducted on shaky ground, and could easily fall apart. This is another factor that is common across Europe – the weakness and uncertainty of our rulers, which is exposed at the first sign of a real challenge."

The strategy of pushing through as many cuts as possible, to hit trade union organization and where possible to restructure the public sector and the ‘social wage’ – the welfare states which were set up in so many countries after World War Two as a buttress against revolution – is being carried through by governments across Europe. We in the UK are caught up in this struggle – the ‘struggle of our lives’ as it has been called more than once, against a weak, unpopular and bungling government, whose Chancellor, as daily more bad economic news arrives, is especially vulnerable.

In Spain Opposition to attacks on jobs and conditions is growing. Public sector unions have called on others to join them for a two-day general strike in September. Government workers marched through the Spanish capital Madrid on Monday of this week while striking against the cuts.

Opposition to attacks on jobs and conditions in Spain is growing. Public sector unions have called on others to join them for a two-day general strike in September.

The Spanish economy has contracted by one percent in the past year, new figures revealed on Monday.

Workers, unemployed people and students have been organising demonstrations, road blocks and sit-ins almost daily. The government announced over £50 billion in cuts last month.

A coordinated eurozone bailout of Spain’s economy looks increasingly likely. But there is also deep confusion about when and how this could happen.

Spain’s borrowing rate started to drop on Monday of this week as a bailout began to look more probable. But the problem for Europe’s ruling classes is that the bailouts aren’t working.

Billions have been pumped into the Greek economy, coupled with ferocious austerity measures. Yet things have only got worse. In these desperate attempts to save their system, the politicians and the bosses have no ideas beyond “make the poor pay”. As the crisis deepens, and as governments seem increasingly unable to control their events, resistance will grow. 

Our main focus in the UK is to build our own resistance, focusing in particular on the TUC demo on 20 Oct, and to turn it into the sort of ‘Day of Rage’ that the TUC leadership would run a mile from. We need to be arguing to use the demo to launch a programme of strike action: bear in mind that in early November we are likely to see mass strikes by teachers, civil service workers and others. We need to be arguing to turn this into a general public sector strike. Bear in mind also that on Wednesday 21 November a national student demo is planned.

We need to use the Asturian miners’ strike as an example of how to resist, how to build in a way that gives the rank & file some power, how to try to create the spark that will detonate a wider explosion and spread resistance in the only way that can win.

SO, WE'RE AGREED ABOUT THE CUTS THEN...

 Swansea South Wales Evening Post for June 13  carried an editorial which, in the context of cuts to the police, called for us to ‘accept as reality…substantial cuts in public spending,’ they were ‘inevitable’ and there could be ‘no ifs or buts about the need for cuts.’ What follows is the email I sent their letters page.

Your editorial on June 13^th – ‘Cutbacks part of today’s reality’ – presented an opinion as if it were an objective fact. In fact ‘substantial cuts in public sector spending’ are NOT inevitable. You might have found one poll that thought this – there have been other polls that showed the opposite. Public sector cuts are being promoted by a certain sector of the political elite around the Cameron/Clegg coalition, and given full backing by the media.  This opinion has little resonance among the vast majority of public sector workers and union members, counted in the millions nationwide.

You would do well to remember that many of these live in Swansea. In fact, public sector workers represent a huge 31.76 % of the total workforce. The position of Swansea Trades Council is one of complete opposition to the cuts, as was that of the 2,000 people, both public and private sector workers, who marched through Swansea on 30^th November last year. The ‘there is no alternative’ brigade pretends that what is really a set of political decisions is an inevitable fact. Many of us feel it is not an inevitable fact, and on 20 October we will be taking to the streets in our hundreds of thousands to join the Trades Union Congress march calling for a different economic strategy.

What would be an alternative? Well, the government could take its taxation of the rich and of the big companies seriously for a start. Although these are times of austerity for ordinary people, there seems to be no squeeze on the bosses of Britain’s biggest companies. Chief executives of FTSE 100 firms pocketed an average of £4.8 million each last year. More than a quarter of them took a pay rise of over 41 percent. Simply taxing at the levels Thatcher did in the 1980s would raise billions. Neither would this be electorally unpopular – the vast majority of people would like to see something done about the scandal of fat cat pay. In addition, the hugely expensive white elephant of Trident replacement could be abandoned, and the equally profligate, pointless and unpopular occupation of Afghanistan could be brought to an end as well. These swallow up billions each year.

The real problem at the moment is not the budget deficit. Britain had a much larger deficit at the end of the second world war and went on to build the NHS and the welfare state. The real problems globally are unemployment and lack of growth: this has been recognised by Obama in the US, and the recent elections in France and Greece reflect this. Increasing numbers of people doubt that austerity is working, or indeed can work. They fear that it will do just the opposite – it will destroy national economies.

In truth, as economists like Paul Krugman and commentators like the Guardian’s Larry Elliott will tell you, if you take an axe to the public sector you will deepen the recession. There is no Chinese Wall between the public and private sectors, especially after successive waves of privatisation. Cuts to the public sector are already having a chilling effect on the private sector. For example, education cuts mean schools abandon building programmes, which drives construction firms out of business and throws construction workers on the dole.

Then there is the effect on consumers and on tax revenues. In your editorial you point out the dangers of “tax revenues…falling at their fastest since 1923”. Exactly. What sort of impact will throwing millions of public sector workers out of work have?  Massive amounts of revenue will vanish to be replaced by greater payouts in unemployment benefit. Remember - the vast majority of UK cuts – 94% - are still to come. Is this a serious strategy  for achieving economic stability? Many see it as a suicidal programme which will put both the UK’s and the world economy into a ‘death spiral’ that will make the 1930s look like a tea party.

But of course none of this matters, because the Conservatives in the UK and the right-wing Republicans in the US have their own agenda. If you read Naomi Kline’s ‘The Shock Doctrine’ you will see how far-right economic fundamentalists have since the 1970s used successive economic crises to remodel society to benefit the rich and powerful. This is precisely what is happening now: Cameron and Osborne are intent on ‘shrinking the state’, getting rid of the NHS and handing the public sector over to their rich chums. That is why their plans make no economic sense. And that is why public sector cuts are not inevitable. 

FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS & THE JUBILEE

It’s been a week in which many people seemed to be intent on sabotaging their own best interests. Like US workers in 2004 voting for a president who would savage their health and welfare and give huge tax cuts to the super-rich, it seemed the masses either didn’t know what was good for them, or else were masochistically bent on their own self-destruction.

In 21^st century Britain, at a time when austerity is the watchword, when the government is launching a programme of cuts, and money is hard to come by, a million people can, it seems, be persuaded that a clutch of inbred aristocrats are so ‘special’ that they will turn out in the rain to cheer them, and, presumably, the millions we spend each year to keep them in luxury. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, in the state of Wisconsin, where last year thousands of trade unionists launched mass protests against the removal of collective bargaining rights, Governor Scott Walker won the vote in a recall election that has given the green light for huge attacks on the US trade union movement.

Although the latter is clearly the more serious of the two events, I want to spend a minute on the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations. These sort of events are always particularly irksome if you are a republican or anti-monarchist. The whole mass media goes into hyperbole mode, insisting that ‘the whole nation’ is as one in supporting, nay, adoring the monarch, leaving aside the fact that millions do not.

Even if we look at it in geographical terms, the ‘nation’ is far from being ‘one’. The BBC’s Scotland correspondent James Cook asked: ‘Is Scotland’s Jubilee Flagging?’  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-18317092  concluding that large swathes of Scotland, ‘show no visible enthusiasm for the Windsors’.

Although this is a subjective observation, in West Wales too, driving through Llanelli and Swansea on Saturday, I saw very little of either civic or domestic bunting (the latter being a rough rule of thumb for public support). It is not just that the wider support for socialistic ideas down here tends towards the anti-monarchist, but Welsh nationalists, too, resent the fact that an English aristocrat calls himself ‘the Prince of Wales.’ Although this is not to say there is no support for the Queen down here (there clearly is) it is to say that there is less of it than in the English heartlands, and that what there is, is more nuanced, more questioning, much more conditional. The BBC tends to relate even the weather forecast primarily to the South East of England, and this demographic bias, as a matter of course, over-estimates the depth and breadth of popular support for the royal family. In fact the wall-to-wall 24-hour over-the-top BBC coverage was a turn-off to many, as we shall see.

Nonetheless, the adoration directed at the British royals is extraordinary. On one level those sane adults who indulge it must be aware it is based upon a delusional, irrational notion – namely, that one particular blood line of aristocrats is, by virtue of its DNA, special, even godlike. That an institution based upon such a preposterous idea should have survived into the 21^st century is a testament to the power of PR, spin and marketing, but something more than that sustains it.

The royal family fulfils an important unifying function for the British establishment and ruling class. Otherwise it would have vanished long ago. Its message is that national identity is supremely important, that it unites us before a woman who is above class, above the dirty games of political parties and elections. In some obscure way she represents us, she symbolises our history. Untroubled by the ebb and flow of electoral politics, she is a constant, with whom we identify as mother of the nation.

And funnily enough, as politicians themselves sink in popular esteem, being now regarded as a species somewhat below the bedbug, so the Queen becomes more transcendent. As politics becomes ever more debased and corrupt, so she shines ever brighter above the sorry mess. Bread and circuses was the formula which kept the ancient Roman masses quiescent: enough food to keep people from rioting, and the distraction of spectacle. And in London in the 21^st century we have processions and military aircraft and a barge made of gold. The royals fulfil a symbolic function, certainly, but that is not to say they have no power. The only thing lacking is bread for the people. But then as the food parcel returns the diversion of the extravaganza becomes even more important.  

This is 21^st century Britain, and symbols can cut both ways. Circuses are particularly welcome in hard times. But as the rich and the poor sectors of society polarise ever more violently, hard times have a funny way of finding their way into the spectacle, like grave worms bursting through a whited sepulchure.  As the royals were warmly tucked up in bed after the Jubilee celebrations, 30 ‘jobseekers’ – the patronising name of successive governments for unemployed people – and another 50, on apprentice wages, were dumped in the middle of London in the pouring rain to work as stewards for the Jubilee river pageant. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/04/jubilee-pageant-unemployed?intcmp=239  The appalling details of their employment by Close Protection UK, who told them to sleep under London Bridge, gave them no changing rooms, no access to toilets for 24 hours, and all for no pay, caused widespread revulsion. The government had to issue denials but the juxtaposition of hugely expensive royal celebrations alongside unemployed people on slave labour sickened many.

So, despite the best efforts of the BBC to present the Jubilee as a transcendent act of collective worship, the fly in the ointment’s scaly legs waved and distracted attention. Tom Watson – deputy chair of the Labour Party – felt emboldened enough to dismiss the celebrations as a ‘show of opulence by state elites’, eliciting an immediate shit storm from the Tory media. At the same time Ed Miliband decided now was the time to stake his claim for patriotism, averring , in a widely trailed speech, that politicians should ‘talk more about Englishness.’ Why they should he did not make clear. While it is understandable that the Scots and the Welsh should wish to stress their identity to stop their distinctive minority culture being swallowed up under an English dominated monoculture, it is less clear that the English need or want to do this.

The backlash even struck those breathless, shiny monarchy-lovers at the BBC. Their relentless coverage, together with the banal and platitudinous commentaries, was too much for some. There were 3000 complaints. The modern BBC audience obviously wants to be entertained, for god’s sake, and these days is not prepared to just watch a flotilla, even a royal flotilla, floating around for hours to a badly-prepared and inane voiceover.

However, at times when in other countries large gatherings of people on the streets are usually accompanied by tear gas and police batons, the fact is that in Britain large crowds turned out waving union flags for the Queen. In the Guardian Jonathan Haidt tried to explain a similar tendency,  http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jun/05/why-working-class-people-vote-conservative, claiming that the propensity of blue-collar voters to ally themselves with the political right, against their own material interests, is a global phenomenon . I thought of the recent vote in Wisconsin in favour of retaining Governor Walker, opening the door to a wave of attacks on US trade unions. In both these cases – the UK’s Jubilee and the recall vote in the US, large numbers of working-class people have been induced to identify with a person and a cause that not only does not advance their interests but may actually harm them.

There are obvious differences between the two cases, and the events are so heavily mediated that interpretation of either cannot be clear and simple. Reasons for voting in a particular way are usually complex, as are reasons for standing in the rain waving a little Union Jack. However, my main objection to Haidt’s explanation is that he sees the whole thing in terms of individual psychology, in this case to do with the fact that conservatives apparently have a ‘broader moral palate’ than leftists. Exactly what this insight means and how we use it are not made clear.  

Actually, the notion of the working-class Tory would not have been surprising to Marx. Workers accepting, even voting for reactionary ideas is not some new phenomenon. Notions of alienation and false consciousness go back to Hegel . One of the basic propositions of Marxism is that it is not ideas that shape the state of society, but the state of society that shapes ideas. The generally-held notions in society reflect the way society is organised. For example, in feudal times the rigid division between lords and serfs was accepted as natural and inevitable, as ‘ordained by God.”’ Modern capitalist society is founded on the profit motive – so this is thought of as ‘natural.’ Such ideas do more than simply reflect society : they justify it and the current class divisions embedded in it. “The ruling ideas of any age,” as Marx said, “will be the ideas of the ruling class.”

Anybody looking at modern society will see the dynamic of this process. The ruling class controls the channels for the formation and dissemination of ideas, the education system and mass media: its ideas are dominant here. But this is more than a ‘conspiracy’ to ‘brainwash’ workers: capitalist ideas seem to make sense because they reflect the world as we experience it. Businesses are run for profit, society is divided up into classes: believing that these things are ‘natural’ and ‘true’ seems common sense. So there is nothing surprising about the working-class Tory. If capitalist ideology didn’t dominate workers’ thinking in this way capitalism couldn’t survive at all. It is by no means the case that if people are oppressed and exploited, they automatically develop socialist ideas. The spread of socialist ideas on a mass scale must have a material base.

In the same way as capitalist ideas dominate workers’ thinking because they reflect their daily experience, so the spread of socialist ideas will reflect changes in that daily experience. For example, the recent huge growth in support for the left wing Syriza coalition in Greece did not come about because they found new and better ways of propagandising their political ideas, or that they suddenly discovered the internet. It happened because the dramatic changes in Greek society meant that their ideas came to resonate with the lived experience of masses of people. Things that had previously sounded outlandish became instead ‘common sense’.

It is not intensity or depth of suffering that creates revolutionary and socialist ideas, but rather the experience of fighting against that suffering. It is when levels of struggle are high that workers are most likely to develop confidence in their ability to change society, and to see that alternatives to capitalism are possible. Capitalism, by its tendency to crisis, continuously precipitates periods of intense class conflict, so that workers are forced to fight.  This is the sort of period we have entered now. Two years ago, commentators were remarking that the political left had ‘shot its bolt’: that at the time after the banking collapse, when socialist ideas should have grown rapidly, the bankers and the governments had won the argument. As usual, they thought that ideas were formed in the abstract, not in the actual process of conflict and resistance itself.

Ideas, whether of deference to royalty, or of collective contention through trade union action, can change quickly as conditions within society change. The Egyptian masses’ ideas about society and how it should be constituted changed rapidly as the huge crowds that assembled in Tahrir Square began to feel their power.  In the Greek general strikes workers’ ability to run their own enterprises came forward as an alternative to what was on offer. In the UK the biggest strikes since 1926 have given workers a glimpse of how to resist the biggest attacks on their living standards for generations.

The revolts of millions worldwide against austerity have, after decades, put revolution back on the agenda. Revolution sees millions of people stand up for the first time and take control of their society. It is necessary, said Marx, “not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.”  It is through struggle that we change society but also come to change ourselves.

CRISIS ACROSS EUROPE – THE NECESSITY FOR A LEFT POLITICS

Two things are quite noticeable looking back over the past year or so: first, that the global nature of the unrest is beginning to have a powerful impact upon the way resistance develops in individual countries. Secondly, that the crisis has gone through three distinct phases, morphing from a banking crisis into an economic crisis and now into a social and political one.

It is unnecessary to search for very complicated reasons for the wave of unrest.  As John Molyneux says in his blog: “The explanation for this global tidal wave of revolt is essentially very simple. The international capitalist system is in profound crisis and the 1%, the ruling class, everywhere is trying to make the rest of us pay for it and in place after place people are fighting back. From Tahrir to Oakland

 We are feeding on the inspiration of each other’s resistance. Confidence is rising and for the first time in a generation revolution is back on the agenda.” Now, as in the other revolutionary waves of 1848, 1917 and 1968, waves of revolt are spreading out from the fault lines of capitalism as new generations of workers and the poor learn not only that they can, but that they must resist.

The importance of the international nature of the rebellions lie in the fact that ‘feeding on the inspiration of each other’s resistance’ becomes a global experience. In many ways it is much easier to see a particular society clearly from the outside than from within the webs of mystification and social conditioning that adhere to you when you are born into a particular culture. To see people in other countries fighting oppression in the same way as you are is empowering. The new social media and technologies, while not the cause of the rebellions, clearly assist this process, enabling film, photos, news and information to be sent worldwide at the click of a mouse.

This also legitimises the resistance. Each state’s ruling class portrays resistance to its rule as either criminal or useless. Strikers are constantly told their actions are selfish or ineffective. In London, students are still being dragged through the courts after the fees protests of 2010. The protesting student Alfie Meadows, despite being seriously injured by police and enduring hours of life-saving brain surgery, was charged with ‘serious disorder’ and still awaits sentencing. As I write this, the Spanish government is declaring the camps of the ‘indignatos’ illegal and is preparing a crackdown. This criminisation is easy for the authorities in ‘normal’ times, when protestors are a minority, and can be stereotyped by the media as criminals or weirdos. But when mass protest becomes widespread such views are challenged. The impact of such global waves of protest gives people a quite different perspective on the dialectic of resistance.

The involvement of masses of people in the struggle exposes the dynamics of the system and makes it easier for ordinary people to see the way in which the crisis is used by the ruling class in all countries, further enriching the bankers and the super-rich while enforcing austerity on workers and the poor. The danger for governments is that large numbers of people will now begin to see how the same conditions exist everywhere, and how the reactions of our rulers is the same. Many begin to understand they are not in conflict just with their local regimes, but with a total unjust and violent system. The question of radical change then comes on the agenda.

This is why the divisive ideology of nationalism, with its splitting up of a global workforce into national units pitted in competition one with the other, is so important to our rulers, and why it is constantly reinforced. If people can be persuaded that their real interests can only be served through adherence to a particular national identity, which is threatened by other national identities, then their allegiances can be manipulated. Look at the constant debate about British identity and how immigration, Islam or multiculturalism destroy it. Look at the nationalistic jamboree of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, or at the Olympics, where the flag-waving has turned east London into a militarised zone patrolled by jet fighters and missiles.

While great opportunities are now opening up internationally for the far left, as with Syriza in Greece and the Left Front in France, there are also dangers from the right. Once capitalists feel there is a real danger of an ‘expropriation of the expropriators’, fascism can be brought back into vogue as a bulwark against socialist revolution. During the 1930s the economic crisis created conditions in which German capitalist concerns were prepared to get into bed with the nazis. Under the impact of severe economic crisis such a movement can attract support. People’s anger can make them look for scapegoats: in the past, European Jewry; today, asylum seekers, immigrants, Roma, travellers, Muslims…

In the UK at the moment the fascist British National Party is in terminal decline, with financial problems, splits and declining membership. This is due in large part to the work of Unite Against Fascism and other organisations in opposing them and the English Defence League whenever they attempted to march or organise. However, they are not going to go away. It is worth remembering that although the BNP crashed, hard line anti-immigration parties like the UK Independence Party saw an increase in support in the May elections.

Elsewhere in Europe, however, things are more worrying, with the Golden Dawn in Greece operating very much as open neo-nazis, and in France Marine Le Pen winning a large share of the vote. Nationalism is used constantly by modern capitalism to wrap people in the national flag and tie them into a phoney notion of a unified nation which elides class divisions. Fascism feeds off a virulent notion of this ‘national identity’ which it uses to turn against immigrants and ‘outsiders’. As economic crisis polarises society, so the politics of hate can gain a foothold.

This is why a left politics which can explain things in class terms is so important. Writing for al-Jazeera, the Athenian journalist Matthaios Tsimitakis points out that the success of Syriza is extraordinary, ”..not only because of the historical significance of having a radical left party leading the conversation, but because it managed to bypass attempts to polarise the political agenda around such issues as illegal immigration, national security and social order, instead bringing to the forefront the issues of economic justice and social coherence.”

While ideas can unlock one’s mind, it is the process of active resistance and rebellion which is really key. It is through the ‘self-activity of the masses’ that ordinary people begin to shake off the ‘muck of ages’, the sense of futility and powerlessness which affects so many under capitalism. People change themselves, rediscover and recreate themselves, through the process of rebellion against oppressive conditions. It is through making revolutionary change that people make themselves ‘fit to rule’. This is what we heard from the voices of the Paris Communards of 1871. This is what we heard from the Bolshevik soldiers and sailors of 1917 Petrograd. And this is what we saw on the faces of the masses in Tahrir Square, Cairo, after the toppling of the dictator Mubarak.

We are living in dangerous times. Lenin said there were years in which nothing seemed to happen, and then times in which years seemed to be crammed into hours. The last couple of years have been like that. We have seen a banking crisis become an economic crisis and now a major global political and social crisis. We have seen revolutions in the Middle East and now the growth of European left parties that are beginning to lead a battle against austerity. The old social democratic parties cannot do this because they are for austerity too. British Labourites like Ed Balls talk in terms of ‘growth’ and ‘fixing ‘our’ economy.’ This ignores the fact that crises  and recessions are part of the global capitalist system. There is no ‘normal’ growth we can all get back to.

The stakes are very high. We have to build the resistance and organise for a socialist alternative or face disaster. Yet I cannot help feeling we are lucky to be living in times like these.