Written by Ben Morken

The dust still has not to settled after the stormy start to this year’s parliamentary year. The extraordinary events of 12 February and in the days which followed it, have thrown South Africa into a maelstrom of political crisis, which is at bottom a reflection of the crisis of the capitalist system.

The opening of parliament is an occasion for the president to give his annual State of the Nation Address (SONA). It is traditionally an ostentatious affair presided over by the country’s political elite. In one of the most unequal countries in the world, with devastating levels of poverty and unemployment, the masses are mocked annually with red carpet events, photo opportunities, elaborate banquets and the associated pomp and ceremony.

However, the tumultuous events at this year’s SONA (See videos) were unlike anything ever seen before. The facts of what happened at this year’s event are known to every South African. Armed security personnel rushed into parliament and violently evicted elected members of parliament of the Economic Freedom Fighters for daring to ask questions to president Zuma concerning the Nkandla scandal. In the melee which followed, a female EFF MP was seriously assaulted and allegedly had her jaw broken. The viciousness of the assault was captured by journalists and MPs in the assembly after the television feed was re-directed away from it. It was later revealed that some of those ‘’security’’ personnel, who were dressed as waiters or bartenders, were actually members of special police units who had undergone specialised training in ‘’manhandling’’ techniques prior to the event. City Press reported that as part of this ‘’training’’, pictures of members of parliament were used as target practice. This proves that this was a well calculated and deliberate attempt to provoke a confrontation which would give the presiding officers the excuse to evict the EFF members.

The violent evictions, as disturbing as they were, were only part of an extraordinary series of events of the day. The immediate cause was the Nkandla scandal in which taxpayer’s money was used to ‘’upgrade’’ the private residence of Zuma. This controversy is hanging like a storm cloud over the head of the president. This scandal has developed a logic of its own and is now a deep crisis involving the president, his administration and parliament. Since the turbulent events of 21 August 2014 in which the Economic Freedom Fighters radically campaigned in parliament that Zuma must ‘’pay back the money’’, the president has avoided returning to the National Assembly to answer questions regarding this or any other matter.

The threat by the EFF to ask the president about the Nkandla debacle at the SONA, an unprecedented scenario, sent the entire administration into panic. The securocrats implemented and oversaw the most elaborate and draconian ‘’security’’ measures in the history of this event. In the afternoon before the SONA, opposition supporters from different parties were confronted, assaulted with water cannons and even arrested in the streets around the parliamentary precinct. But in their overzealousness, the measures backfired. Two hours before the scheduled start to Zuma’s speech, journalists inside the House protested that there was a device which jammed mobile phone signals. In their haste, the securocrats did not think that the blocking of the signal would interfere with electronic devices in the chambers and that this would mean that Zuma’s speech would not be carried by large sections of the media. Therefore, it was actually they who initially disrupted Zuma’s speech and not the EFF! The signals were only restored after opposition MPs raised the matter at the start of the joint sitting of the House, to the visible embarrassment of many officials. Some witnesses saw deputy president, Ramaphosa scrambling a note and handing it over to state security minister, David Mahlobo. Whatever was written in that note had an effect because 10 minutes later the Speaker announced the cell phone signal had been restored and Zuma could begin his speech which was then interrupted by the EFF.

The first thing that has to be pointed out here is the irony which is implicit in this situation as far as the leaders of the ruling party are concerned. The ANC built its entire historical legacy on the struggle and attainment of democratic rights. But it is now clear that in the moment of crisis, some sections of the leadership are wholly prepared to throw these rights, together with the liberal constitution, out of the window. The right to assembly was curtailed in the immediate surroundings of the parliamentary precinct. The right to free speech and free reporting was undermined with the blocking of cell phone signals and armed police entering the chambers of the National Assembly and removing MPs for the dreaded crime of asking uncomfortable questions.

As Marxists we condemn any attempt to curtail elementary democratic rights in the strongest terms possible and we defend all the democratic rights which were fought for and won through the heroic sacrifices of the working class and which were so wilfully trampled upon on 12 February. We do not fight for these demands in the abstract, but with a realisation that in this society these democratic rights are the best tools which enable the working class to fight for the complete overthrow of capitalism.

If we look deeper into the nature of the reaction of different figures inside the ANC to the events, a very interesting picture emerges. In the days following the SONA, the situation escalated even further when some leaders, such as the national chairperson, Mbete (who is also the Speaker of the National Assembly), launched a full scale attack on the EFF and especially against Julius Malema. Initially, her outrageous and dehumanising comments were defended by the party via the national spokesperson. But later the picture drastically changed when ANC secretary-general, Gwede Mantashe stepped into the fray with a very conciliatory and diplomatic statement. ‘’The events that took place last week during the State of the Nation Address call on all of us to step back and reflect and ask the question, what needs to be done? Whatever our differences are, we must keep the interest of our country above everything we do’’, he said. He also condemned the jamming of cell phone signals.

After Mantashe laid down the party line, the entire posture of the ANC leadership changed. In unprecedented scenes, Mbete issued an unexpected and unprecedented public apology to Julius Malema for the derogatory name calling, which Malema promptly accepted. This little episode and the intervention by Ramaphosa in getting the signal unscrambled shows that a section of the bourgeoisie linked to the ANC leadership is very concerned about the situation. They understand on the one hand that the EFF, which openly defends a revolutionary programme, is a threat to their system. However, they also realise that they risk undermining the legitimacy of this same system – with revolutionary consequences – if they go too far in curbing formal democratic rights.

Parliamentary upheaval

Under capitalism, the fundamental role of parliament is to manage the common affairs of the capitalists, deal with secondary issues and give the masses a pretence of ‘’democracy’’, while the actual big decisions are taken in the boardrooms of the banks and other multinational corporations. In the final analysis parliamentary bourgeois democracy serves the interests of the bourgeois. However, as we can see in the case of the EFF, parliament also provides a good opportunity to expose the rotten system, and to gain the ear of the masses.

The great merit of the EFF has been that it has exposed the true nature of liberal bourgeois democracy which is incompatible with radical policies. The rules of parliament were never designed for such policies and therefore the ANC leadership and other established political parties had no idea how to respond to the militant stance of the EFF MPs.

This is one of the reasons why the EFF has made such an immediate impact. While the established bourgeois political parties are careful to ‘’play within the rules’’ and thereby only oppose the ruling party in a superficial manner, the EFF has not been afraid to use parliament to expose the rottenness of South African capitalism and the impotence of its democracy. This also explains their surge in popularity amongst the masses, many of whom felt that they finally had a voice in parliament.

The EFF has thoroughly exposed how the ruling party uses its parliamentary majority to hide its corruption. By putting this pressure on the ANC it has practically been paralysed and put in a position of being unable to use its 60 percent majority to steamroll the opposition as it did in the past. Here we have a party of 6 percent which has shown total disdain for the established bourgeois rules and conventions and has been able to shake up the system and is continuing to set the public discourse. The Nkandla scandal is a case in point.

But having done so, the question is, what next? How does the EFF move forward from here? Parliamentary struggle is important because it gives the party a very public platform. But as important as it is, it is only one arena of struggle. What is striking about the South African political landscape is how well the working class is constituted into very militant trade unions. A successful struggle against capitalism is unthinkable without the central role of the unions. After the SONA events many union leaders have come out against the EFF. Unfortunately, this suggests that the EFF have not carried out the necessary patient work of winning over the ranks of the trade unions with a revolutionary programme linked with the overthrow of the system. This now needs to be top priority for the Fighters.

Also, the working masses are not only looking to parliament for a solution to their daily plight. They are actively participating in mass protest movements from the grassroots level up. These protests have engulfed the country over the last decade. The levels of so-called ‘’service delivery protests’’ have never been higher. It is true that EFF leaders have given support to some of these protests. But what is needed is a full-scale campaign to connect all these struggles on a national level. This is an undertaking which the party committed itself to at its first national congress. What is now needed is action! In particular it is important seek to align this in a constructive way to the NUMSA-initiated United Front which is already heavily involved in this process.

Lastly, it is important to have a correct approach to the ranks of the ANC and the Tripartite Alliance. In spite of the undoubted progress of the EFF, it is in and around the ANC and Alliance that the bulk of the potential revolutionary masses are still organised. There are numerous examples across the country where many of the big struggles are actually led by ANC and Alliance members. It is therefore one thing to criticise the bankrupt leadership, but the ranks are a different matter altogether. If the EFF does not have a friendly attitude to these ranks and clearly differentiates between them and the leaders of the ANC, this will only serve to set up unnecessary barriers. What is needed is to fight for the daily demands of the masses and link them together in a revolutionary programme which aims to abolish capitalism.

A crisis of the entire system

The SONA events of 2015 confirm that the crisis of capitalism now also manifests itself as a crisis of the political system. In South Africa over the last two decades, the bourgeois have been able to rule on the basis of parliamentary democracy. This was ultimately achieved through the revolutionary struggle of the working class against the Apartheid regime. During and after the democratic transition, the ruling class, together with the ANC tops, were able to stabilize the situation on the basis of a relative upswing in the economy, which initially allowed them to give some concessions, alleviating some of the most intolerable pressures on the working class. But this upswing was brought to a crashing halt after the 2008 crisis. And with the return of the crisis came the return of the rip-roaring class struggle of the last decade which has made South Africa the ‘’protest capital of the world’’. Ultimately, this is what is behind the volatile political situation.

The political crisis manifests itself also in the bourgeois state institutions. Very few are not affected. Parliament is in crisis, as we have seen. There are almost daily revelations of serious and deep seated problems in institutions like the National Prosecuting Authority, the revenue service, the Special Investigative unit, the police, the intelligence services, the priority crime investigative unit (also known as the Hawks), and many more. Contrary to president Zuma’s assertion, the institutions are not very strong. They are in crisis, which explains the turbulent political situation.

In the last analysis, the turbulence on the political front is a manifestation of the crisis of capitalism. The attainment of bourgeois democratic rights was a by-product of the revolutionary struggles of the working class. Under the threat of being overthrown, the bourgeoisie conceded significant democratic rights to the working class majority. But they kept ownership and control of the means of production, thereby ensuring they remain the ruling class of society. In the process they also co-opted a small number of blacks into their ranks who are now doing their bidding on the political front. However significant the attainment of democratic rights were, this did not lessen the continued domination and rule of the bourgeois class. Today, however, when the democratic institutions are being used to highlight the plight of the masses and the decay of the rulers, the ruling class does not think twice about taking away the most fundamental democratic rights.

In South Africa today, 26 million people out of a population of 52 million live in extreme poverty. Two men, Johann Rupert and Nicky Oppenheimer own more wealth than the bottom 26 million. The Gini Coefficient which measures inequality stands at 0.77 which is amongst the highest in the world. This means that income inequality is today wider than what it was under apartheid. In actual material terms, South Africa does not ‘’belong to all who live in it’’ as the constitution famously claims. The land, the banks, industry, mines and other monopoly industries belong to the Ruperts, Wieses, Oppenheimers, Bekkers, Glasenbergs, Ackermans, Ramaphosas and Motsepes. The unemployment rate has been hovering around the 25 percent mark for the last decade. Real youth unemployment stands at more than 60 percent. Many people are homeless.

What we are confronted with here is an organic crisis of capitalism. These are all devastating indictments against the capitalist system and the ruling elite and it shows the real state of the nation. Confronted with these facts, it is therefore not surprising that that the political situation is so volatile.

Six years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, global capitalism is in its biggest ever crisis. This has affected every region on Earth. Now further storm clouds are gathering on the horizon. Today Greece is in the midst a profound crisis. This is also true of Nigeria, Venezuela, Pakistan and Egypt. The global situation has deeply impacted on South Africa which is already suffering from an acute crisis. But there is a revolutionary way out. The monopolies and the main productive resources must be taken into state ownership under workers’ control and management. Only this will ensure that the basic needs of the masses are met.

On 12 February, the revolutionary South African proletariat were observing the events in parliament in record numbers. Ratings for the SONA went through the roof. The working class were watching, listening, observing and were drawing lessons. The objective conditions have never been more favourable to build a genuine Marxist current which will grow with the revolution and point the way forward to the genuine liberation of the masses, namely the socialist transformation of society. Genuine majority rule will be achieved only on the basis of a revolution led by the working class, armed with a conscious revolutionary socialist programme and the attainment of a democratic workers’ state.

Written by D.D de Bruyn

The number of civic protests in South Africa has skyrocketed to new record highs. New figures which were released by the Civic Protest Barometer of the University of the Western Cape on 19 February 2015 show that the number of protests by communities, so-called ‘’service delivery’’ protests, more than doubled between 2007 and 2014. The researchers also show that 2014 was the year with the highest number of these protests on record.

The report states that between 2012 and 2014, Gauteng had more protests than any other province. Between 1 April and 10 May 2013 Gauteng was hit with an astonishing 560 protests according to the provincial police. Since 2007 Gauteng’s share of protests had been rising more rapidly than any other province. Cape Town was the most protest-prone municipality, with 84 protests last year, followed by Johannesburg, eThekwini, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni. These five municipalities accounted for half of all protests recorded.

Commenting on the figures, the report states: “Issues relating to municipal services and the administration of municipalities were cited more often as the cause of protests than all other grievances put together. In addition the barometer tests one hypothesis about the causes of protests, namely that it signals a ‘rebellion of the poor’, against the empirical data.”

These protests are now truly part of daily life in the country. This is especially true in the decade after 2004 which has been characterized by escalation of popular protests and increased militancy reminiscent of the anti-apartheid struggle days. Intelligence service company Municipal IQ recently showed that South Africa had almost one protest every second day in 2014 with Gauteng being the most protest-ridden province. Furthermore, by January 2013 the data shows that service delivery protests in 2012 accounted for 30 percent of protests recorded since 2004. Between 2008 and 2013 approximately 3000 protests took place.

Most of the recorded protests took place in the informal settlements or poor urban areas in the country’s biggest metro areas such as Cape Town, Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni. Poor or non-existent delivery of services, such as housing, electricity, water and sanitation, are at the top of grievances of most communities. Another reason for the explosion of public protest is rooted in very high levels of youth unemployment. Out of these protests, a large number of grassroots organisations have emerged like Operation Khanyisa, Abahlali baseMjondolo, No Land! No House! No Vote!, and the Ses’kona Peoples Rights Movement.

2015 has already started with a series of high profile protests like in Malamulele and Mohlakeng. What this shows is that the working class and poor communities are looking to radical solutions to the unbearable conditions under capitalism. But these protests also reveal the lack of a revolutionary leadership with a programme, as we have seen in Malamulele where the grievances were channeled into impotent demands for a separate municipality. But the struggle against poverty, unemployment and the lack of housing will not be solved by attempts to isolate the community, but rather to combine the demands of all the protesting communities under a revolutionary programme which is linked to the revolutionary socialist transformation of our society.

Occupations mark the beginning of a new wave of Dutch student struggle

Written by Zowi Milanowi

The student struggle has flared up in Amsterdam. In a period of a few weeks, two university buildings have been occupied. At the moment of writing, the building of the executive board of the University of Amsterdam (UvA), the famous Maagdenhuis, is being occupied by students. Their struggle is against the “efficiency-oriented” top-down management, for which the profit motive is more important than the interests of students and lecturers.

The movement is based around a manifesto called the New University. This manifesto demands an end to the current top-down model of university management, in which the members of the executive boards are appointed by so-called supervisory boards, in turn composed of people appointed by the Ministry of Education. Many members of the executive boards in effect had no relationship with academia and come from business management positions, where they have learned to think in terms of “efficiency” – in other words: “how can we maximise profits”. The New University wants to replace this model with a democratic model, where students and professors elect the university board.

The manifesto doesn’t stop here. It also calls for an end to the current model for allocating funds, and for an end to temporary contracts for university staff (around half of university staff are on “flexible” contracts). In practice, the current efficiency-based allocation model means that only those studies that benefit “the market” merit funds from the university. The effects of this can be seen in the latest plans of the UvA, according to which the humanities faculty will be downsized and several “unprofitable” language studies will be discontinued. At the same time, other faculties have been given so much money that they don’t know what to do with it, spending it on marketing in order to compete with other universities. So much for efficiency! In late 2014 these developments led to the Humanities Rally movement, which mobilised the humanities students and lecturers through demonstrations and general assemblies.

This problem is not limited to the UvA. In the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, there have been plans to shut down the faculty of philosophy. Indeed, the university named after the humanist philosopher Erasmus will have no philosophy faculty if the plans continue. One wonders what the author of “The Praise of Folly” would say if he were alive today!

Occupation of the Bungehuis

The occupation of the Bungehuis on 13th February was an important step forward. There have been other short occupations of university buildings over the years as well, but this was the first to present a manifesto which clearly expressed the students’ and lecturers’ demands. The occupation was popular among the students, and within a few days more than 100 university professors had declared their support. The occupied building was used for all kinds of workshops and discussion groups with students and professors, while decisions were made democratically through general assemblies.

It is no accident that the occupation took place at the Bungehuis. The management is planning to sell this old university building to a real estate company, Aedes Real Estate, who will wish to turn it into a “Soho House”: an extremely expensive club and hotel which would attract the “creative class” to Amsterdam – in reality, the international super-rich. Amsterdam has become increasingly expensive in the last years, especially the city centre, and the university’s management is contributing to this trend through real estate speculation.

The reaction of the executive board only inflamed the situation. They were only willing to “engage in dialogue” on condition that the students immediately leave the building. They were even threatening the occupiers with fines of €100,000 per day! Their excuse was that the students were obstructing the university staff on their way to work. In reality, the researchers could reach their rooms without trouble; in fact, many of them supported the students’ demands. When the local broadcaster AT5 was willing to give a platform for dialogue between the executive board and the students, the executive board refused. They went to court and on February 19th the judge ruled in a summary procedure that the occupiers had to leave, or would be fined €1,000 per day. The fines for the first days were paid by donations from sympathising organisations.

This conduct led to a hatred of the executive board, especially its chairman Louise Gunning, who has become a symbol of the arrogant, neoliberal and authoritarian way that the university is being managed. Incidentally she is also on the company board of Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, where the same management tactics and flexible contracts are used to exploit the workforce. The arrogance of Gunning and the board have even led many bourgeois commentators to criticise the way the conflict was handled, as the sympathy for the occupation was only growing. Support was given by the Socialist Party, trade unions representing the staff of various universities, the general education union and the main union federation FNV, as well as many student groups and professors. Solidarity also came from the airport workers of Schiphol Airport, who have also experienced Gunning’s methods. Solidarity extended internationally as well, with the famous left-wing professors Noam Chomsky and Judith Butler declaring their support, as well as student organisations in other countries, and even the Turkish metalworkers’ union Birlesik Metal-Is.

The mayor of Amsterdam tried to mediate, but as the talks failed the building was evicted on February 24th by the police, with a crowd outside in solidarity blocking the road to delay the police reinforcements. In total, 47 students were arrested, and were cheered as heroes as they were put into police vans. The Bungehuis was evicted, but the movement was far from finished.

Occupation of the Maagdenhuis

The eviction of the Bungehuis did not administratively “solve” the problem for the UvA executive board. On the contrary, it only reinforced the image of an undemocratic, outdated executive board, which does not care about its students. The next day, a solidarity demonstration was called, with about a thousand students and sympathisers attending. The demonstration through the centre of Amsterdam ended in front of the Maagdenhuis, the building where the UvA executive board is located. This is a historical location. In 1969 it was occupied for four days by the student movement, which in fact also demanded more democratisation and participation of the students in the executive board. Since then this building has been occupied shortly for a few times, in order to protest against policies from the executive board or the national government.

As the demonstration reached the Maagdenhuis, and nobody from the executive board was even willing to show their faces, there came increasing calls from the crowd to occupy the Maagdenhuis. The mood was really in favour. At every student demonstration that ends in front of the building, or passes along it, one usually finds a small group of radicals that try to persuade others to occupy the building. These attempts normally fail, as these small groups do not connect to the mood. However, this time the mood was different. At a certain moment people started to climb the steps of the building and shouting slogans, which was well received by the rest. The security guards tried to block it, but were forced to let more and more people on the stairs. After a while, the crowd forced their way in and the guards were powerless. The police outside could not intervene as well, so they had to accept it. The local broadcaster AT5 went along inside, and the first general assembly of the occupying students could be followed through alive online stream.

The Maagdenhuis was visited soon by Louise Gunning. Her message was that dialogue was possible, but only if the students immediately leave “her building”. This tactic was used before with regard to the Bungehuis and immediately was rejected. Of course the students were in for dialogue with the executive board, but only in the Maagdenhuis itself. She also said that the students should go to the ministry of education in The Hague, as it was them who were behind all the problems. While it is certainly true that the national government is responsible for the framework in which all these problems arise and the battle is a national one, it was the UvA executive itself which was responsible for most of the worst policies. When a student asked Gunning if they could count on her support if they went to The Hague, she refused to answer that question and it was clear that she was playing games with the students. After the rejection by the students of her plans, the UvA executive sued the students again.

Meanwhile the Maagdenhuis is run like the Bungehuis before, with many discussions, workshops, film screenings, and talks with public figures who sympathise with the students. The comedian Freek de Jonge, who was present at the original occupation in 1969, visited the building, and also Emile Roemer, leader of the Socialist Party in the parliament. This all makes it harder to portray the students as a small group of violent radicals who use force to push their will on the majority. In fact, the opposite is the case and the occupation has been peaceful. For example, at the general assembly it was decided that the security guards were permitted to stay in the building, that they were free to take whatever they wanted from the food and drink donations, and that they even could participate in the assembly if they wanted.

The latest developments are that the university executive has offered the students a concession, in the form of one student representative at the board. This was rightly rejected, as the representative would only have a minimal amount of decision power as a minority, and the executive would try to frame him or her as a “partner” in the decision-making process.

Instead of giving in, the right step has been taken to extend this struggle to the national plane. On Sunday 1st March, the Maagdenhuis has been visited by representatives and groups from other universities, to hold a national assembly about extending the movement nationwide. As it is unsure how long the building will be occupied, this was the right step to make.

The struggle has only just begun

The occupations in Amsterdam have put the problems of the students in the spotlights. It’s now time to bring this movement on a national level. An initiative similar to the Humanities Rally has been started in Rotterdam, and New University branches have been set up at the VU University (the other university in Amsterdam) and the university of Groningen (RUG). The conference on 1st March has been a big step forward as well, as it was attended by students from Groningen, Nijmegen, Leiden, Rotterdam, Maastricht, Wageningen, Utrecht and Delft who share the positions of the New University. Further branches have been set up now in Leiden and Maastricht. Professors from the two universities in Amsterdam will meet with trade union representatives this coming Thursday, to discuss strike actions against the flexible contracts.

It is clear from all this that the struggle has only just begun. The consciousness of an important layer of students and professors has leaped forward. The demands of the movement are on a high level. Its orientation towards a collaboration with the labour movement is very positive. In fact these student struggles could have an electrifying effect on the broader labour movement itself too, as the trade union leadership in the last months has carefully expressed that it would be necessary to have a more confrontational approach towards the bosses and the government, after years of holding back the movement according to a “social agreement” with the bosses.

The official student unions have played a shameful role, tail-ending the movement. In recent years, the national student union LSVB has played the role of a consultative partner of the government and the political parties, always trying to seek allies in certain political parties, MPs or senate members in order to make backroom deals or block proposals, instead of mobilising the students and seeking allies in the labour movement. In 2011, when students mobilised against a plan to give €3,000 penalties for students that studied “too long”, the student union gave students the illusion that liberal party D66 was their ally, while the party only wanted to reject this plan in order to implement other cuts in student funding. When this austerity plan finally was abolished as result of a deal between the government and centre-left opposition parties, it was only the case in order to pass a different “reform” in which the student grants would be replaced by loans. The “friends of the students”, D66, GreenLeft and the Labour Party, all agreed with this. The LSVB mobilised the students only in late 2014, after the proposal had passed parliament, through a top-down last-minute call to action without mobilisations from below. Instead of the union raising the level of the students, the students had to find out themselves the hard way how they were being betrayed by their “friends”. The bottom-up mobilisations of the Humanities Rally and New University are a big step forward in comparison with how the national demonstrations against cuts in higher education from the government have been mobilised. It is now necessary to bring these methods of mobilisation to a national level.

Perspectives

The increasing encroachment of capitalist management techniques into higher education is no accident. Neither is it simply the result of neoliberal ideology being dominant. These management techniques represent an increased effort to adapt as many students possible to the whims of the “free market”. The current crisis of Dutch capitalism has meant that the government and big business have been seeking to adjust the “output” of universities to the demands of the labour market. Although youth unemployment is about 15% now, some high tech industries are short of personnel. The result is that universities and government allocate more money for certain “profitable” studies, while the “unprofitable” ones need to fuse in order to survive. Meanwhile, through the replacement of the student grants by a national loan system, the government seeks to discourage young people from picking studies with less job opportunities, an austerity measure that especially hits the working class and lower middle class students. This shows that the efficiency-based management techniques and the national austerity measures are two sides of the same coin. While the New University focuses on democratic control and the fight against capitalist management, there should be discussions about broadening the movement by including demands like the abolishment of tuition fees and the loan system.

What we are witnessing is a reawakening of the student movement. The calls to end capitalist management and install democratic control are important demands. The solidarity from the university personnel and the orientation towards seeking an alliance with the labour movement, are important steps forward. In fact, this is quite different from 1969, when there was a mood of hostility towards the professors, who were generally conservative and would never view themselves as part of the labour movement. Now it is clear, with all the flexible contracts, that they are part of the working class and suffering from the same exploitation as other workers. If they go on strike, this could be the beginning of a new wave of labour struggles as well.

It’s time to continue the struggle by linking it with general student issues like the abolishment of tuition fees and the loan system. As Socialist Party leader Emile Roemer correctly said, this struggle for more democratic control should not be limited to the universities, but should take place at all layers of society. However, real democratic control is not simply a matter of electoral mechanisms. It can only be genuinely possible when the capitalist class loses its control over the economy and the state. In that sense, the struggle for a democratic university can only be part of a broader struggle, the struggle for a democratic socialist society.

Written by Guy Howie
17 February 2015

This week revelations on BBC’s Panorama have sparked an explosive scandal: HSBC, the UK’s largest – and the world’s second largest – bank, has been caught facilitating industrial-scale tax evasion, committed by some of its wealthiest clients. Thousands of leaked bank account files obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the BBC, The Guardian and others show that between 2005 and 2007 the bank’s Swiss arm colluded with clients to conceal money and whole bank accounts from their respective domestic tax authorities, whilst also marketing aggressive tax avoidance schemes for its wealthiest customers. The accounts involved were worth an estimated $119bn.

In addition, the Swiss subsidiary has been found to have offered its services to so-called “high risk” clients (i.e. criminals), such as international arms traffickers, those connected with blood diamonds and bribery, and those with links to the toppled dictatorships of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia. It offered unconditional non-disclosure of its clients’ activities to national authorities, even though some of them had a track records of corruption and the bank had clear evidence that many accounts were undeclared to tax authorities.

High profile public figures are now facing tax-dodging allegations in connection with HSBC in Switzerland, including: King Abdullah II of Jordan, members of the Saudi, Bahrain and Omani royal families; musicians David Bowie, Tina Turner and Phil Collins; actors Christian Slater, Joan Collins and John Malkovich; several Formula One drivers, tennis player Marat Safin, model Elle MacPherson; and numerous business moguls, the late Australian media tycoon Kerry Packer among them. Three of the Saudi clients were also members of what US intelligence called the “Golden Chain”, a list of twenty names with close ties to former Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Yet another banking disgrace

This story has caused an international news sensation and generated outrage from the British public; but it does not come as a surprise. HSBC’s criminal accounting in Switzerland is just the latest in the long line of repugnant banking crimes which have been uncovered since ordinary British taxpayers saved the banks in 2008.

HSBC itself has a precedent in the last three years. In July 2012, it was revealed that the bank’s US subsidiary had helped Mexican drug cartels, along with organisations and states on UN blacklists, to launder billions of dollars. $7bn had moved between the Mexico and US divisions of HSBC, while the bank’s staff themselves admitted that the majority was from drug-trafficking. In fact, HSBC’s anti-money laundering director testified that he thought “60% to 70% of laundered proceeds in Mexico” had gone through the bank! It was already being discussed in the US senate two-and-a-half years ago that HSBC was facilitating corrupt practices through its accounts, in particular in relation to criminal cartels and pariah states. The result? A $1.9bn slap on the wrist (amounting to less than 0.1% of the HSBC’s total assets) and the resignation of the bank’s head of compliance – no further action.

Meanwhile, in Britain, the Libor scandal broke in 2012, implicating a cartel of banks in the fraudulent manipulation of the average interest rate of London banks – a practice which the Financial Times claimed had been happening since 1991. And, in November last year, five of the world’s biggest banks – JP Morgan Chase, UBS, Citigroup, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and, once again, HSBC – were collectively fined $4.25bn by US, British and Swiss authorities for fixing foreign exchange rates. The scandal compelled Channel 4 Economics Editor Paul Mason to lament, as he stood outside RBS’ London headquarters, “Why do we have to keep coming [back here]?” The British banking system – along with rest of the capitalist establishment – seems embroiled in a never-ending series of scandals. In this case, again, no one was charged with any offence.

In fact, in the case of the current HSBC scandal, the French authorities intercepted the files in question from the IT expert who leaked them seven years ago, and they were passed onto the British government in 2010. In the five years since, only one out of the 1,100 wealthy British tax fraudsters has been charged! HSBC has never been prosecuted!

What is more, Hervé Falciani, the former HSBC employee who hacked customer accounts to leak these files, claimed this week: “This is only the tip of the iceberg. There’s more than [the thousands of pages] the journalists have. Several million transactions (between banks) are also in the documents I transmitted.

These figures could give an idea of what lies at the bottom of the iceberg.” Several hundred times what has been reported this week could be what lies at the bottom of this scandal. And this is only for one bank – one of the many which have been implicated in criminal activity over the last decade.
What this relatively small amount of evidence points to is the collusion of the global banking system, big business, wealthy individuals and the British government, among other governments and states, in the practice of money laundering and tax evasion on a colossal scale, beyond the wildest imaginations of the majority who are not part of this super-rich elite.

Government of the bankers, by the bankers, for the bankers

David Cameron would do well to recycle his campaign slogan from the last general election: “We’re all in it together.” This time maybe it wouldn’t ring so hollow; it would be very clear what he means. It is easy for most people to see that the Tory government, the banks and big business are all in it together, as they always have been. The Independent reported last week that 27 of the richest 59 hedge fund managers in Britain had donated a combined £19m to the Conservative Party, including £10m since 2010. These incredibly wealthy businessmen are essentially buying their say in the government’s policies, including their right to evade millions of pounds in taxes each year.

We have already seen this Tory government’s propensity for hiring criminals, as well as its ability to play down or cover up crimes in which it could be implicated, with the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. Andy Coulson was editor of the News of the World until 2007, when he resigned amidst allegations of phone-hacking engulfed him before Cameron duly appointed him Downing Street Director of Communications. He has now been released early from prison after being convicted of phone-hacking, Downing Street’s fall guy as only thirteen others of the 104 arrested on suspicion of being involved in that highly-organised criminal operation were convicted. The rest got off scot-free, including David Cameron’s personal friend Rebekah Brooks.

Similarly, not only has this government failed to bring the perpetrators of this HSBC scandal to justice, but they employed as a Trade Minister the man who was Executive Chairman of HSBC Group from 2006 until 2010, for a whole eighteen months during the period the scandalous evidence was recorded. Lord Green, who was appointed a Tory life peer in 2010 and acted as Minister of State and Investment for two government departments between 2011 and 2013, has refused to make a statement since the scandal broke this week. He previously came under scrutiny when he was part of the government as the money laundering scandal involving HSBC’s US and Mexico subsidiaries broke in 2012. At the time he said that he “shared” in the “regret” that the bank professed to have, whilst also affirming how “proud” he was of his banking career.

Likewise, leading cabinet ministers have been thoroughly unrepentant this week over the government negligence involved in the scandal and the employment of Green. The Prime Minister himself jumped to Green’s defence on Monday, describing him as “an excellent Trade Minister”. He spent Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions shirking any blame the government deserved for having known about the scandal for five years and managing to keep the whole thing quiet whilst avoiding the prosecution of any of their wealthy friends.

And why would any of them repent? The line was drawn from the very beginning: this is the government of the financiers and big business, not of the people. Turning a blind eye as billions of pounds are swindled from the public purse is what these politicians are there to do; it is how they earn their £13m a year in private donations to the Tory party and cushy board positions after they retire from public life.

Indeed, in 2011 the government negotiated a deal with Switzerland apparently meant to “tackle offshore tax evasion”, which included immunity from prosecution for HSBC bankers. The man who brokered this deal, Dave Hartnett, at the time Permanent Secretary for Tax at HMRC, later stepped down from his post after being accused of making “sweetheart deals” with multinational firms, giving them huge tax cuts. In January 2013, he was then given a job as a special advisor at HSBC!

For workers’ control of the banks and big business!

Even if bank bosses are not fully aware that super-rich Saudis with direct links to Al-Qaeda or Mexican drug cartels have been laundering money through their accounts, or that more than $100bn went missing from tax revenues around the world in just three years, which is highly dubious, their negligence is born out of the system – a system that their friends in the Tory Party are there to defend. Their insatiable drive for profit, for broadening the quantity of assets at their disposal, the number of fingers they have in the number of pies, makes all other concerns incomparably secondary. HSBC bosses didn’t care who their Swiss bank was catering for, as long as the flow of capital was greater and they were getting richer. This is a symptom of the disease of capitalism: regulation can never be a priority where there are profits to be made.

Ed Miliband is right to draw attention to the Tories’ close ties with big business and the banking sector; Labour MPs are right to put questions about Lord Green to the Prime Minister. But if these things are to beyond the pantomime charades typical of Parliament then there must be calls for the nationalisation of the banks under democratic workers’ control. It has already been established that the ground swell of public opinion in Britain is in favour of re-nationalising rail and energy companies.

In the wake of these latest galling revelations there has never been a better opportunity to place this opinion on a concrete basis: to demand that the banks and their assets become property of the people; that account books are opened to the general public, and those found to have broken the law are brought to justice; and that the vast sums of wealth currently being withheld by these private institutions and individuals be taken into public ownership and reinvested in a better society for the majority to whom these scandals are completely alien and repulsive.

Against the revision of history – the South African working class overthrew the apartheid regime, not De Klerk!

By Ben Morken

2 February 2015

25 years ago, on 2 February 1990  President FW de Klerk, the apartheid regime’s last president announced that  Nelson Mandela would be released and that  the African National Congress (ANC), Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), the South African Communist Party (SACP) and other liberation movements would  be unbanned.
Ever since then there has been a calculated and deliberate campaign in bourgeois public opinion, the corporate media, and the ruling elites to mystify and distort the events which surrounded its overthrow . This attempt to rewrite history has been intensified recently.  The truth about who was ultimately responsible for the overthrow of the grotesque regime is often hidden behind a thick veil of distortions and falsehoods. At a time when the South African working class are looking for  radical solutions it is necessary to combat all these attempts to obliterate the memory of the heroic  struggles of the working class.
The conventional view is that the regime was overthrown thanks to the visionary leadership of  by F.W. de Klerk. A second myth is that the collapse of apartheid was due to international sanctions that were imposed on the regime. Both of these claims are false.
Mass mobilisations
The real events which forced the Apartheid regime to start its negotiations were the dramatic mass mobilisations of the black proletariat which took speed in the mid 80’s. The emergence of an organized, revolutionary working class shook the regime to its very foundations.
The movement of the working class with its strikes, demonstrations and programme of ”rolling mass actions ” continued to grow right up to 1994. And behind it the working class drew the revolutionary masses and all the oppressed layers of society. For vast parts of the movement this was not a solely democratic movement, but a movement towards Socialism.
In this process, there were several occasions where the mobilizations would reach such a critical point (for example the mass movement that suspended the capitalist state to near paralysis following the assassination of former SACP leader Chris Hani), that it threatened the whole future existence of Capitalism in South Africa. In fact, the most intelligent section of the regime realized as early as the late 1970′s that Apartheid will have to be abolished eventually in order to save the foundations of capitalism as a whole. US imperialism came to similar conclusions in the mid-1980′s. Seeing that the revolutionary masses had the potential to overthrow capitalism, US imperialism betrayed the hard line ruling faction of P.W. Botha in favour of the ” reformist ” wing of the regime under F.W. de Klerk. The stubbornness of Botha to complete negotiations with the liberation movements is what led to US imperialists to imposing some cosmetic sanctions on the apartheid regime in order to hedge their bets should the regime be overthrown.
”The insurrectionary movement of the 1984-6, although based mainly on the youth, and eventually contained by the government, had a profound effect on all the classes. It brought the ruling class face to face with the dire threat before their system in the form of a mass revolution by the black working class. It revealed conclusively that the experiment of the “tricameral constitution” had failed, and faced the ruling class with the need to consider much more radical measures to try to contain the black working class and avert revolution.” (Inqaba ya basebenzi,issue no.28 Jan 1990).
The regime panicks
So serious was the situation for the government that the president of the time, P.W Botha offered the conditional release from prison of Nelson Mandela in January 1985, on the condition that he renounces “violence” and “violent protests”. Of course, what he meant was to stop the government from being overthrown in revolution.
This forced the regime to impose the first state of emergency on 25 July 1985. The Marxist journal explained what this meant for the movement:  ” The ferocity of the state’s reaction under the Emergency was an indication of the seriousness with which they regarded the situation. But as Inqaba had predicted, the Emergency itself had solved nothing. It clamped the lid down on the boiling revolt, but could not put out the fire of discontent underneath. It could not reverse the objective process that capitalism and apartheid had set in motion.
“But the longer the Emergency remained in force, the more its impotence became apparent. It failed to keep the lid on the black working class. It ensured the thorough discrediting of and collapse of Botha’s reform programme. A sense of paralysis gripped the government, preparing the conditions for Botha’s removal from office.”
The most important development for the working class was the formation of a labour federation that united the many unions under one umbrella organisation. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) was launched on 1 December 1985 at the height of the struggle of against apartheid. As a federation it brought together many of the unions formed after the wave of strikes at the beginning of 1973 which marked a renewal of the trade union activity after a lull of of more than a decade.
COSATU
The impact of the launch of Cosatu was felt by the regime almost immediately. The workers embarked on what would later be called ‘rolling mass action’. In January 1986 alone 185 000 man-days were lost to industrial action. By the end of March, the figure rose to 550 000, a huge increase on the 450 000 total for 1984. Strikes took place at Impala Platinum in Bophuthatswana, Anglo American’s Bank Colliery, at various mines in the Witbank/Middleburg area, in Pretoria (Pick n Pay), in Namaqualand (De Beers), Blyvooruitzicht in Carletonville, and on the East Rand (Hagie Rand).Many mine workers were killed by police and mining companies’ private armies, who tried to prevent workers from holding meetings. These killings often resulted in strike action. Strikes took place in many sectors, including manufacturing and service sector. Workers flocked to join Cosatu, and the federation’s membership surged in the few months after its launch.
May 1 1986 marked the 100th anniversary of International Labour Day, commonly referred to as May Day. The newly formed Cosatu now demanded that May Day be recognised as a public holiday, and called for a stayaway.On May Day 1986, more than 1,5-million workers observed the call, joined by many thousands that included school pupils, students, taxi drivers, hawkers, shopkeepers, domestic workers, self employed and unemployed people. Rallies were held in all the major cities, even though many of these were banned in advance by the state.
The media acknowledged that the majority of South Africa’s workers had unilaterally declared May Day a public holiday, and Premier Foods became the first large employer to declare 1 May and 16 June as paid holidays. Following this, many other companies bowed to the inevitable and recognised May day as a public holiday.

The general unrest and the strike waves was so intense that the regime, out of pure desperation, declared a second state of emergency and launched a vicious campaign of detentions and crackdowns in June 1986. Panic-stricken, the regime even deployed the military to barricade Cosatu’s headquarters in Johannesburg and monitored movements in and out of the building. But the workers also retaliated. Hundreds went on strike to protest against the detentions. When five NUM regional leaders were arrested in Kimberly, 2000 workers at four mines went on strike, one of many such incidents.
The best example is the movement in 1989. On 26 July 1989 the Mass Democratic Movement, Cosatu and the United Democratic Front call for a National Defiance Campaign. The response was overwhelming throughout the country. White facilities were invaded, and banned organisation declared themselves ‘unbanned’ initiating a period of open and mass defiance of apartheid laws. Again, the apparent fearsome regime was powerless to prevent this. In mid-September, mass marches took place in Cape Town Johannesburg and Pretoria, with marchers openly flying the ANC flag which was until then still a banned organisation. In smaller cities such as Uitenhage in the Eastern Cape, a huge march seemed to dwarf those of the larger centres. This revolutionary mass movement struck terror in the very heart of the regime. Seeing that the game was up, the government of FW de Klerk now decided to commit itself fully to negotiations and by October all the Rivonia Trialists were released from prison, except Nelson Mandela, who was released on 11 February 1990.
These, and countless other examples emphatically show the true protagonists in the fight to overthrow the apartheid regime was the heroic masses of working people.
Let us be  clear: the overthrow of the Apartheid regime was not due to the negotiating skills of the leadership of the liberation movement, the sacrifices of De Klerk, the so-called ” armed struggle “, or the sanctions that were imposed by the imperialists. Apartheid was overthrown by the actions of the revolutionary masses in struggle. Every single democratic demand -the right to strike, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and the right to vote, etc. was won by the struggles of the proletarian masses.

Today South African capitalism staggers on at appalling cost to the working class only because it has not been overthrown.
To free itself from exploitation and solve the problems facing mankind, the working class has to take the productive forces of the country into common ownership and, linking up internationally, organise a planned economy, under workers’ democratic control and management. In this way all the vast resources of the earth, all the modern technique created by science and labour, can be put to use—not for the private profit of a few, but to meet the needs of all.

DR Congo: tensions boil over into mass student protests against Kabila

By Ben Morken

29 January 2015

Over the last couple of days Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, had been rocked by a series of protests against the weak, reactionary and corrupt government of Joseph Kabila. Through mass mobilisations,  the mainly student movement have dispelled as empty any notion of  democratic credentials of the Kabila regime and have once and for all exposed its true dictatorial nature.
The immediate cause for the demonstrations were an attempt by Kabila to artificially extend his stay in office past the 2016 deadline. According the 2006 constitution, the president is barred from occupying office for more than two 5-year terms. Kabila’s second term end in 2016. Initially the ruling coalition were in favour of  amending the constitution to change term limits which would have allowed Kabila to run for office again. But under enormous pressure,  they have since backed off from using that strategy and then tried a new approach. Subsequently,the regime  wanted to amend the electoral act under the pretext of conducting a census in order to compile a voters roll.

 
But this is a complete farce. First of all, they have had 14 years to do this but have waited until the term in office for Kabila is fast expiring. Secondly, the regime, together with the United Nations mission in the DRC, known by the acronym MONUSCU, are planning a major military offensive against Rwandan FDLR rebels in the east of the country. The DRC is a massive backward country almost two-thirds the size of Western Europe. To conduct a census here with its very poor infrastructure is an enormous undertaking in the best of situations. The last time a census was held was in 1984.

 
Some reports suggests that a census under these conditions could take as long as four years to complete. To do so in a war zone would be almost impossible. Another UN body, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has warned that attacks on the FDLR would affect hundreds of thousands of people. It is for this these reasons that Kabila had delayed signing the authorization letter to give the go-ahead for the military action despite the fact that the ultimatum to the rebels to disarm had already past on 2 January and military action should have been launched already. His calculations were clear: get the electoral amendment act through parliament first and then launch military action against an enemy which has been deeply integrated into the local population for the past 20 years, thereby causing a protected fight and impossible conditions for a census.  If the regime had been successful, it would have effectively meant that  Kabila would have extended his stay in office by up to 3 years or more. In effect, this would have amounted to nothing else than a coup through legal means. The problem for him is that everybody in the streets of Kinshasa can see through this farce.

 
Mass protests
On Monday 19 January 2014, police fired tear gas grenades and clashed with thousands of   students and youth activists at the University of Kinshasa (UNIKIN) who were protesting against amendments to the electoral act. Over the previous weekend the lower house of parliament voted in favour of the amendment-act and passed it to the senate for ‘’debate’’. This infuriated thousands of UNIKIN students who took to the streets and the third largest party in parliament, the Union for the Congolese Nation (UNC) called for the ‘’mass occupation of parliament.’’

 
A massive brawl erupted in the city centre between demonstrators and security forces. The  Grand Market, the central market in the city, was the scene of a fierce battle between police and protesters who defended themselves with stones, bottles and other projectiles. In the district of Lemba, police opened fire with live ammunition on protesters. Soon, protests spread throughout the city. Plumes of black smoke from burning tyres were billowing into the air where army helicopters were patrolling. On the campus of UNIKIN buses were set alight. Four kilometers from there,  protesters blocked the roads with burning tires and makeshift barricades. Near parliament, all gatherings were attacked by tear gas grenades and live fire by police and presidential guard soldiers. The area around the Palais du Peuple (National Assembly) were completely cordoned off by hundreds of police and soldiers.

 
A student from the Higher Institute of Applied Techniques (ISTA) described the shooting to death of one of his classmates: ‘’When we were marching toward the Palais de Peuple, the police blocked the road so we couldn’t pass. They started dispersing us by firing live bullets into the crowd. That was one of our friends was hit and died. The Republican Guard then came and took his body away. We were all angry and started throwing rocks. Then the police and the Republican Guard really started firing at us so we all started to flee.’’

 
Schools were deserted throughout the city. The police also barricaded the offices of the UNC and its leader, Vital Kamerhe who was once an ally of Kabila,  were not allowed to leave the offices.

 
Thousands of kilometers away, in the eastern city of Goma, there were also reports of clashes between security forces and protesters. Tear gas were fired and Reuters reported that at least two people were hit with live ammunition. There were also demonstrations and protests in Bukavu, in South Kivu province.
On Tuesday, 20 January, protests erupted for a second day. The regime cut off mobile internet services in Kinshasa and blocked text messaging. South Africa’s mobile telecommunication giant, Vodacom confirmed that they acted under instruction from the government.  The streets of the capital were patrolled by heavily armed soldiers and police. At the University of Kinshasa and in the southern part of the city students were mobilising massively. Clashes erupted in Ngaba in the south of the city. Massive crowds also occupied the road to the airport, causing mass disruption of flights. Air France latter cancelled all flights to Kinshasa. ‘’We won’t stop until they have withdrawn this law,’’ one student said. We are tired of kabila. He has to go!’’,  another one added. Protests also erupted in of Bukavu on Tuesday. Also on Tuesday, youths destroyed a government building in Ngaba and made off with police weapons.

 
By Wednesday, 21 January, the death toll in the third consecutive day of protests had reached 42 people according to a report by Reuters – almost three times the number given by the government. Gunfire rang out at the Kinshasa University where protesting students were shouting ‘’Kabila get out!’’. Here we can clearly see how, in the space of three days and under the hammer blows of events, the demands which have started as a rejection of a piece of legislation, have been transformed into a rejection of the regime.

 
In another neighbourhood, youths destroyed a police vehicle after they were attacked by police. Security forces again clashed with protesters in Matete and Limite neighbourhoods. In the district of Ndjili, a police mobile unit was destroyed by students who were chanting slogans against the notorious Kinshasa police chief, General Celestin Kanyama. There were also witness reports that the presidential guard opened fire in a ward of Mama Yemo hospital in Kinshasa and injured 3 people.

 
Demonstrations were held in cities and towns across the country, including Bukavu, Bunia, Uvira, Lubumbashi and Mbandaka as the momentum of the protests shifted to the east of the country dramatically.  In Goma a mass demonstration erupted to demand the release of 12 protesters who were arrested on Tuesday. According to several witnesses on the site, protesters barricaded roads and were followed by a severe crackdown by the security forces who carried out arbitrary arrests of students and high school students. In the neighbouring city of Bukavu students erected barricades on the national highway that leads from Independence square to the Higher Institute of Medical Services in the city centre. The police attacked the protest with tear gas and the protesters responded by attacking and ransacking the police station.

 
For the entire week banks, schools and many businesses were closed in Kinshasa. The only area of the city which had not been hit by the protests is the Gombe district where Kabila has his residence and where most government offices and embassies are located. In this posh neighbourhood, which is like an entire world compared to squalor the rest of the city, things seemed pretty calm and restive.

 
Kabila clinging to power
Kabila was installed as president by army generals and corrupt politicians after his father, Laurent Kabila was assassinated in 2001. In two successive elections in 2006 and 2011 he was returned to office in elections which were characterized by open vote rigging and heavy fraud.

 
The current situation can be traced back to September 2014 when rumours began to circulate in Kinshasa that Kabila was looking for ways to extend his stay in office. These rumours soon became fact when Kabila loyalists began campaigning for another term in office.  On 14 September 2014 already  there were  clashes in Kinshasa, although on a smaller scale than now. Then, in December 2014 Kabila announced the formation of a new government clearly in an attempt at broadening his political base ahead of the current constitutional crisis. Through bribery he brought members from two opposition parties into his government including Evariste Boshab of the People’s Party for the Reconstruction and Democracy who has subsequently been agitating openly for a constitutional amendment to allow Kabila to stand for a third term.
Capitalist nightmare
In one of those instances of irony in which history is so full of, these protests coincided with the 54th anniversary of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the country’s anti-colonial hero and first prime minister. At the same time that the weak capitalist leaders were paying lip service to Lumumba while being in the pocket of Chinese and American capitalists, the student movement has completely unmasked the true nature of these people. The central government is particularly weak and is being kept in place through a network of deals, arrangements, patronage, bribery and corruption involving local tribal leaders, regional powers and ultimately the big (and not so big) imperial powers of China, America, Australia and South Africa.
It is these powers, not Kabila, which  ultimately decides the fate of the millions of Congolese. Sometimes these same powers cooperate when the benefit is mutual. But for the most part there are all kind of struggles and power politics involved  including using rival armed groups as proxies for the continued looting of this mineral rich country. In fact it is completely incorrect to speak of the ‘’sovereign integrity’’ of this tragic land.  After 55 years of nominal ‘’independence’’, the country is much more under the jackboot of imperialism than ever before.

 
The demand for democratic rights in itself is of course reason enough for popular uprisings. Over the last year the manipulation of the law to keep unpopular leaders in office have been the trigger for mass movements and even revolutions in many African countries, particularly in the west of the continent. The DRC is no exception. Similar conditions create similar results.  But these protests are in the last analysis a direct result of the dire living conditions of the masses. In the scattered reports which have come out of the protests there are numerous reports of economic demands like employment and an end to poverty in a potential rich country.

 
But despite its natural resources, the country remains one of the poorest in the world. According to the World Bank, the country has more than 80 million hectares of arable land and over 1100 minerals and precious metals. But  decades of brutal dictatorship under Mobutu and systematic looting of its resources by rival imperialist groups have plunged the country into an abyss of abject poverty and backwardness. The country rank at second to last on the UN’s Development Index. The per capita income of US$220 is among the lowest in the world. More than 2 million people are internally displaced after years of wars and destruction and sexual violence rates are the highest in the world. To add insult to injury, after the 2008 world economic meltdown, the regime and the World Bank imposed a ‘’restrictive monetary policy’’ and ‘’fiscal discipline’’, i.e., vicious austerity measures on people who are already living in the dire poverty. In this way, the poorest people in the world had to pay for the crisis of capitalism.

Role of the students
The students have been the main force behind the protests. The epicenter of the protests is the University of Kinshasa, followed by other universities in Goma and Bukavu. In a country where the trade union movement is very weak due to the enormous backwardness of the country and decades of brutal repression by the Mobutu regime, the universities are very important places to organize against the regime.

 
But the movement of the students lack a clear revolutionary programme based on the interests of the students, workers, poor peasants and other oppressed layers in society. The result is that some reactionary, tribal, pre-capitalist and capitalist figures of the opposition can attach themselves to the movement for their own selfish interests. For example, three days into the protests, all of a sudden some reactionary figures and organisations like Étienne Tshisekedi (who is in Brussels!), the European Union, the US State Department and other opposition members of the regime began to speak out against the regime and were hypocritically calling for an end to ‘’violence’’ and the respect for the ‘’rule of law’’. In fact, it is no longer in the interests of Western Imperialism for Kabila to extend his stay in office since he has been openly leaning towards China over the last period. Therefore the danger is  that in the absence of a revolutionary programme, progressive movements such as this can easily be taken hijacked by reactionary elements.

 
The regime buckles under pressure
Despite all the hardships, killings, mass arrests and attacks by the police and the army which took taking place, the regime still could not put an end to the protests. This points firstly to the weakness of the government and secondly, that the masses had lost their fear for the Kabila regime. This was confirmed on Wednesday when the government showed signs of strain. The interior minister suddenly said that the controversial bill was only a ‘’draft’’ and were subject to change. There was briefly rumours that top generals were about to ditch Kabila, but this was quickly denied.
In the heat of the events massive cracks began to emerge in the regime. There have been significant splits  including opposition from Kabila’s home province of  the mineral rich Katanga province where the governor, Moise Katumbi have distanced himself from Kabila. He also faced dissent from within his ruling coalition where powerful figures like Kengo wa Dondo and Christophe Lutundula  also  distanced themselves from the changes to the electoral act.

 
On Thursday, the streets of Kinshasa were calmer and internet access were available, although there were still clashes in Goma. The senate, which were meeting to discuss the controversial bill, decided to postpone voting on it until Friday, 23 January.

 
Then, in a dramatic turn of events on Friday, under the threat of a countrywide popular uprising, the Senate buckled under pressure and amended the electoral bill by dropping the controversial  clause 8 which would have required a census to be held before the elections in 2016. ‘’We have discarded the census and identification so that we can move towards good elections in peace and so we can respect the constitutional timetable and our laws. We have listened to the streets. That is why the vote today is a historic vote’’, said senate president Leon Kengo in a live televised address. He also conceded that the previous clause would have ‘’exceeded the time frame prescribed by the constitution’’. Furthermore, the senate enshrined constitutional voting period of 2016 into law.   The senate process now requires the compilation of a voters’ roll based on the collection of geographic data. A census will now be held after the elections.

 
These turn of events are a major blow for Kabila and shows the weakness of the regime. It is also an outright victory for the protesters. The Congolese people, led by the heroic students are making their voices heard loud and clear. The biggest conquest is that the masses have experienced their strength. This movement in the heart of central Africa has joined the inspiring revolutionary movements in West Africa which have shaken the region to its core. This is ultimately the way to go for the Congolese revolution. On its own, and within the artificial boundaries of the DRC there no solution for the plight of the people of DR Congo. Genuine emancipation from imperialism, hunger, homelessness and poverty can only come through socialist revolution which is linked in a regional and ultimately on a continent-wide basis. The major problems of the people of Africa can only begin to be solved on the basis of an All African Union of Socialist Republics which is linked to the global overthrow of capitalism

 

South Africa: Malema exposes government corruption in parliament

By Ben Morken

28 September 2014

The 5th parliamentary term has been unlike any of the  others in the last 20 years of bourgeois democratic rule. In the four months since the elections in May,  parliament has suddenly become a real focal point of attention.

The public galleries of the “House” have been packed to capacity. The front pages of newspapers have been dominated by news from parliament. The parliamentary satellite television channel has seen a dramatic rise in viewership.  Images and videos  emanating from the  chambers have gone viral. South Africans are eagerly following the debates and news from parliament. And they can’t get enough!  But  what is the meaning of all this?  What lies behind the dramatic and intense  public interest in parliament?

Dramatic entrance

The  last time such an interest was shown for parliamentary proceedings was during the 1994 transitional period when the ANC won the elections and Nelson Mandela became president. But  this time is completely different. Gone is the celebratory mood of the Mandela era.

The catalyst behind the current  focus on parliament  has been the Economic Freedom Fighters. The EFF was launched just six months prior to the general elections in May. Nevertheless, it managed to get more than one million votes and become the third largest party behind the ANC and the Democratic Alliance.

In the subsequent four months  the party, which is led by Julius Malema, has been at the centre of focus and debate. No other opposition party in the last two decades has made such a sudden and dramatic entrance onto the political arena.

Radical approach

The first talking-point was the EFF MPs’ signature attire of red mineworkers’  and domestic workers’ uniforms, red berets, hardhats and gumboots. This immediately distinguished them from the formal fashion-house attire of all other parties’ MPs.

When the time came for EFF to finally make their parliamentary debut, newsrooms around the country came to a standstill.

Malema’s  20-minute reply to the president’s speech,  was carried live on television. The EFF leader, who is  known for not mincing his words, nor for pulling any punches, immediately launched a stinging criticism on Zuma’s presidency.

“Mr President, you tried to speak about radical socio-economic changes in your speech last night but nothing you said was radical; instead we heard a repetition of what has been said before… What is so radical about the Expanded Public Works Programme? What is radical about buying stolen land? Maybe we must give you a few tips on what is radical economic transformation,” Malema said.

“You must be prepared, if you want to advance this agenda of radical economic transformation, to expropriate stolen land without compensation, to nationalise the mines, the banks and other strategic sectors of the economy. You and your party should stop playing semantics, especially when it relates to radical economic agenda, because you lack courage and you have sold out the revolution,” he said.

Malema hit out at President Zuma about unemployment. “You promised jobs before and you repeatedly failed to create jobs. This is your legacy – you have doubled unemployment.”

His speech caused raucous in the House. There were numerous altercations between Malema and opposition MPs during his 20-minute speech. On one occasion the chairperson of the National Council of Provinces who was presiding over the session, warned the fiery EFF leader not to refer to factional battles in the ANC.

Malema responded stubbornly: “No! You are not going to tell me, Chair, how I must debate. I can’t be told what to say.”

The chairperson, a leading ANC member, became  visibly agitated and  warned: “Honourable Malema, I won’t have the house degenerating into this. Please debate the State of the Nation Address.”

“No chair, I don’t agree with that because you can’t tell me how I must debate,” Malema replied.

On another occasion during his speech, Malema refused to retract a statement which blamed the government for the Marikana killings of mineworkers by police in August 2012. “The ANC government massacred the people in Marikana. Those people [police] were representing the ANC. I will not withdraw my statement,” he said.

The chairperson, clearly covering for the ruling party, demanded the following day that Malema retract his statement on the spurious grounds that it was ‘against the rules’ and ‘unparliamentary.’

“The statement made by honourable Malema suggests that the government, which is made up of members of this House, deliberately decided to massacre people. This does not only impute improper motive but also accused them of murder,” the chairperson said. She again demanded that he withdraw the statement.

Malema naturally refused. “If the police reduces crime, you say the ANC has reduced crime. But when we say the ANC kills people, then we are told that we can’t,” he said.

When he again refused to withdraw the statement, the chairperson told him to leave the House. With this, the entire EFF caucus staged a dramatic walkout, singing and chanting their way into the corridor.

Parliamentary upheaval

By  now parliament was firmly in the limelight. In the offices, on the shop floor, in the media, in taxis and on buses, parliament was the number one topic of conversation. Terms like  “decorum”, “points of order” and “unparliamentary” became part of discussions of working class people. But this was only the beginning.

Over the past three months interest in what is happening in parliament has grown to unheard-of levels. Gone are the days when people only had a casual interest in it or it being a place where middle-aged MPs took a nap during proceedings. There was even a joke going around when the actors of the most-watched TV soap opera in the country went on strike, that the high drama and tension in parliament was an adequate substitute.

This was the new order of things in parliament. The EFF was now the source of heated discussion and robust debate. Malema made his intentions clear from the start.

“I’m not here for rules of Parliament. I’m here for a revolution,” he told journalists at Parliament. “We are not going to sit back and allow a situation where a revolution is undermined in the name of rules.”

The EFF leader said his party would not follow parliamentary rules “created by colonialists and imperialists”, referring to the British parliamentary system.

Things did not tone down from this. On the contrary! There were even bigger upheavals ahead. The biggest so far were the events of 21 August  which were unprecedented in the history of parliament.

It was questions-and-answers time where MPs could directly ask questions to the executive, starting with the president himself. As usual, there was huge public interest in the session. Coverage in the media was once again widespread.

When the  turn of the EFF came, Malema turned to the  “Nkandla scandal”, which involved R246 million of taxpayers’ money for the building of Zuma’s massive palace in Kwa-Zulu Natal. This is one of a string of scandals blighting Zuma’s presidency. Situated in one of the poorest areas of South Africa it is a clear reflection of South African society which is one of the most unequal societies in the world. Even worse is Zuma’s arrogance when he tried to justify this open theft by claiming that the government funded visitors’ centre, cattle kraal, chicken run, swimming pool and amphitheatre were all built for security purposes.

The government ombudsman, known as the Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela, has already found that there were serious instances of misconduct around this issue and made a finding that Zuma and his family enormously benefited from the “upgrades”. She found  that he should pay back some of the money involved in the project.

Since the Public Protector made the findings and recommendations, Zuma, who is by law obliged to reply to the report, has done everything in his power to delay, frustrate, obstruct and avoid the issue. In the process he has deliberately avoided even the most basic bourgeois legal requirements. The latest attempt to avoid responsibility includes blaming the architect for the spiralling costs!

When Malema asked Zuma the question about this, naturally there was again massive public interest.

An ANC MP immediately jumped to Zuma’s defence:  “Point of order,” he said.

But Malema was having none of it and cut him off immediately. “This thing of point of order is what you  hide behind, because every time a report is brought you say point of order,” he said.

Zuma then responded that the Nkandla issue had been dealt with and, amazingly, that the minister of police was to decide on the issue!

But the EFF were not impressed with the answer. “When are you paying the money because the public protector has instructed you to pay the money? We want the date,” Malema asked in his supplementary question. “I am asking because you have not provided an answer,” he said.

“You failed to meet the 14 days deadline set by the Public Protector and now when you respond, you tell us about the police who must decide who will pay. We are not leaving here before we get an answer. When are you going to pay the money because the Public Protector recommended that the President must pay it back.”

By that time there was upheaval in the public gallery. There was spontaneous cheering and clapping of hands. Chaos erupted. One EFF MP after the other demanded that the president answer the question. The ANC MPs and the Speaker were desperately covering the president.

EFF chief whip, Floyd Shivambu engaged in a shouting match with National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete who were now throwing the EFF members out. “We are not leaving,” Shivambu replied.

“Why are we being thrown out? Nkandla money must be paid,” another  EFF MP said.

“I’m calling security and suspending the house for a few minutes,” Mbete said, waving her finger like an angry headmaster and clearly losing control of the situation in her attempt to shield Zuma.  As the House was suspended, EFF MPs refused to go and instead staged a sit-in and began chanting  “pay back the money!”

There was pandemonium. Suddenly heavily armed riot police appeared. There was talk of them physically removing the EFF MPs from the National Assembly. Again, this would have been completely illegal.

ANC members then tried to storm the House but were prevented from doing so by police. In the chambers, the audio and visual feed were cut off and journalists were asked to vacate the House. They refused and continued tweeting from inside. Finally, after nearly two hours, EFF MPs arrived from the chambers, singing. Immediately scuffles broke out and police had to separate EFF and ANC MPs.

News about the events in parliament were carried live all over radio and television. Radio stations were inundated by people  calling in to give their opinions, largely in favour of the EFF.  Social media was abuzz.  The hashtag  #Paybackthemoney was trending on Twitter. This is now a slogan every South African is familiar with.

Shortly after this the House was reconvened, only to be suspended again. Subsequently, a committee was appointed to “investigate the conduct” of the EFF which now face a 15-day suspension from parliament.

These events are still reverberating throughout the country. Parliament is no longer the same. There is a new normality and intense public interest.

Horror without end  

The political instability and the rise of the EFF are clear reflections of the situation on the ground. The masses are living intolerable  lives and they are looking for radical solutions to their problems.

Poverty, unemployment, a dysfunctional school system, high food prices and homelessness are weighing like an albatross around the necks of millions of young people. And it is getting worse!

The latest official statistics, which are an understatement, show that youth unemployment has increased. The unemployment rate among youth aged 15 to 34 increased from 32.7 percent to 36.1 percent between 2008 and 2014, according to the official statistics agency StatsSA. The real figure is more than 50 percent. Among the unemployed, more than 70 percent are between the ages of 15 and 29.

The majority of these people live in the townships outside the big cities which provide fertile ground for dissatisfaction. The townships around the country are seething with discontent. They have been the scenes of some of the biggest protests over the last period.

Amongst the working class the situation is not much better. The Latest reports clearly show  that many working class people are drowning in debt. According to the National Credit Regulator’s 2012/2013 annual credit report, personal debt in the country – spread across an active population of just over 20 million people –  comes to a staggering R1.4 trillion ($140 billion).

Out of every R100 of wages earned, only R22 are spent on basic necessities like food, transport, electricity and water. The rest is spent on servicing debt.

It means that working class people are incurring more and more debt just to get by. This is the reason behind the bailout of the smaller banks, such as African Bank and the financial troubles behind Ellerines and the JD Group. People are struggling to buy food or even to pay their debts.

South Africa is one of the most unequal societies in the world. It has some of the world’s largest mineral reserves. The infrastructure is comparable to the most advanced capitalist countries. The country is potentially one of the richest on Earth. Yet, side by side with this fabulous wealth is the most grinding poverty and deprivation.

This is one of the reasons which explains its explosive national character.

A logical extension

What is currently happening in parliament is only an extension of what has been happening outside of it.

The masses are disgusted by the corrupt former leaders of the liberation movement. While the majority are desperately trying to make ends meet these gentlemen have amassed obscene wealth through outright theft of public funds.

When Malema asked the simple question to Zuma, “When are you going to pay back the money”, he was merely asking a question which emanated from large sections of society – ANC supporters included – who are suffering from the devastating effects of capitalism.

When the EFF staged that protest in parliament on 21 August, singing, chanting, demanding answers – and not getting any – and the police was called in response, it only was only an extension of what is happening on an almost daily basis in the townships and in wider society. This is why so many people are interested in the affairs of parliament. They feel for the first time in years that someone is expressing their aspirations there.

The EFF has, in a short period of one year, made a huge impact on South African politics.  Through radical speeches and by boldly posing issues such as nationalisation on the table, it has aroused great interest from broad layers of society. Many in the ANC leadership know this. This is why they have failed to engage the EFF directly on these issues. Rather, some in the ANC and SACP have attempted to deflect attention away from the most important issues by  creating a storm around things like decorum and the EFF’s attire.

This campaign was particularly severe in Gauteng where EFF members  were  effectively banned from the provincial legislature for wearing their red uniforms. This is of course a disgrace and the Fighters were correct to protest against this. But in doing so, it is important to realize that these layers inside the ANC are very comfortable having  discussions along those lines –  even if they are very heated ones – since it will obfuscate the burning issues of the day.

More than anything, the current events have thrown the spotlight on the bourgeois parliamentary system. The masses are looking to their so-called “representatives” for answers and solutions to their plight. They observe and follow the debates, desperately looking for a way out. Experience will teach them that the big decisions that impact their lives are not made in parliament, but rather, in the boardrooms of the banks, mining houses and the giant companies which dominate the South African economy.

It is clear that the top leadership of the ANC is completely committed to capitalism. In the process of implementing pro-capitalist measures, they are only disgracing themselves. This is one of the salient contradictions of our time. The more capitalism reveals its complete and utter bankruptcy, the more the leadership of the mass organisations embrace this rotten system. But one should never confuse the leaders with the ranks of the movement. The EFF itself did not fall from the skies. It is the product of dissatisfaction with the right-wing turn of the ANC tops.

There is an enormous distance that has opened up between the top leaders and rank-and-file. Sooner or later this contradiction will play itself out – with potential revolutionary consequences. It is necessary to understand this and therefore have a correct attitude toward the ranks of the ANC.

Practical action and a correct programme needed

It is necessary to take these heated discussions which are raging in parliament to their logical practical conclusions! For instance, mining companies like Anglo American have announced plans to lay off thousands of workers in order to shore up profitability. It is necessary for the EFF to use the parliamentary platform to denounce this. But even this is not enough. It is also imperative to launch an active campaign outside of parliament and to struggle to win the unions to a revolutionary programme and to carry this programme out in practice. If the company persists in its attempts, it should be nationalised immediately without compensating the capitalist fat-cats.

Then there is also the issue of the programme of nationalisation. Nationalisation in itself does not mean socialism. It is only its legal premise. It is necessary to have a programme of expropriating the bourgeoisie completely.  For example, the programme of the EFF calls for 60 percent ownership in the hands of the state. This means a big part of the economy would be left under capitalist control.

But such a scenario would make a disastrous situation even worse. It would, to a large extent, distort the normal functioning of the market system and combine this with the worst vices of bureaucratic state control. All of this would eventually lead to enormous waste, mismanagement, sabotage, flight of capital, disinvestment, hoarding, speculation etc. The only solution,  from a socialist point of view, is to nationalise the entire commanding heights of the economy without compensating the capitalists, under democratic workers’ control and management.

It is clear that there is a great ferment in society. The masses are restless and are looking for ideas, solutions and answers. They will go through all kinds of experiences in the process and will put all parties and tendencies to the test.

In the current juncture where the ANC leadership has implemented capitalist policies and has promised to implement even more of these measures in the  form of the National Development Plan, in the situation where the entire top leadership of South African Communist Party has joined government and are implementing these policies, where NUMSA’s  proposed Movement for Socialism is still a work-in-progress and where there is not yet a mass Marxist tendency in the workers’ movement, the EFF has stepped into the vacuum. These events in parliament clearly reveal the yearning desire among the masses for revolutionary and radical change. It reveals the very favourable conditions in which the ideas and methods of revolutionary Marxism can make an enormous impact.

Six years after Lehman Brothers’ collapse – another stage in the crisis of capitalism

Written by Rob Sewell

Tuesday 16 September 2014

Signor Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, has tried to call up spirits from the deep like the Shakespearean characters Glendower and Hotspur. “I will take whatever it takes”, he said a few years ago. Such spirits were supposed to save the euro and restore growth. However, while the euro has stabilised, temporarily, the European crisis has certainly deepened. This time it is threatening to plunge the European Union into the nightmare of a Japanese-style deflation.

Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;

But will they come when do call for them?

(Shakespeare, Henry IV, Pat 1)

Most bourgeois economists believe that capitalist wellbeing depends upon “confidence”, as if a few fine words from Draghi will put things right. But even the FT had to soberly admit that “Perceptions are important, but you cannot conjure an economic recovery by summoning the confidence fairy.” (FT, 21/8/14) Draghi has become the boy who cried wolf; “the recovery is on track”, he repeats. But nobody believes him anymore, including his recent end-of-August elite audience at Jackson Hole [where since 1978 the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has hosted its annual economic policy symposium, becoming somewhat of a “Davos” for world bankers].

Six years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the world crisis continues to haunt large sectors of the globe, especially its weakest links. Europe is in deep crisis. China is in grave difficulties, as is Japan, whose economy fell by 6.8% in the last quarter, while growth in the BRICS has plunged. The United States is crawling along at less than 2% growth, with recent euphoria disappointed by last month’s jobs figures.

There are clear objective reasons for this continuing crisis. Mountainous debts, mass unemployment, sharp falls in demand, austerity and falling investment, all serve to drive economic activity downwards. European GDP is still lower than in 2008. All of this reflects the present impasse of the capitalist system. Even bourgeois economists, most notably Lawrence Summers, have coined the phrase “secular stagnation” to describe the situation. This means we are facing decades of stagnation. “We might remain in a low growth, low inflation environment for a long time”, states Fergus McCormick, senior vice-president of DBRS. (FT, 5/9/14) This is what Marxists call a protracted organic crisis of capitalism.

Added to this are serious geo-political tensions everywhere which, according to Joe Kaeser, chief executive of Siemens, pose “serious risks” for Europe’s growth this year and next. It shows how combustible politics is intertwined with economics. Ukraine’s crisis means that as much as $19bn additional international finance will be needed to face a contraction of 6.5% this year, having agreed an earlier $17bn loan. German industry is expecting a 20-25% drop in exports to Russia over the course of the year.

Bourgeois economists define a recession as two consecutive quarters of declining output. However, this narrow definition fails to describe the real character of the present protracted crisis. Some have therefore attempted to adjust their definitions to take a broader view. They have warned that the signs of a shallow recovery in the Eurozone since early 2013 were insufficient to announce the end of the double-dip recession that started in the third quarter of 2011. They state correctly that the economy could go into reverse, or that stagnation could become the new, dismal normal of the Eurozone.

The second quarter’s figures for the Eurozone were shocking, showing that the economy had come to a shuddering halt. The German economy failed to grow between April and June and investment is falling. Italy had fallen into recession for the third time since 2008. France was stagnant, meaning that none of the eurozone’s biggest economies registered any growth whatsoever. The FT explained that “This is not a recovery, not even a fragile one. Nor is it a return to recession. It is a continuation of stagnation.” They go on to explain that none of the measures proposed – repairing the credit system, reform of state expenditure and taxation, more flexible labour markets – will liberate the Eurozone from stagnation. “The acute, pressing problem is aggregate demand”, it says. (FT, 21/8/14)

The ECB stepped in to cut interest rates again to negative levels. People have to pay to keep their money in the bank! These measures have now reached their limits. The ECB also plans to buy big quantities of packages of sliced and diced loans, commonly known as “toxic sludge”, (remember US sub-prime loans?) which is a vain hope of increasing bank lending. Such measures will have little or no effect. The only thing left is Quantitative Easing, as in the US, Japan and Britain. But the Germans are against and they are the ones who decide. In any case, QE would not work and could make things even worse. “It is exactly this type of ‘zombie lending’ that has curbed growth in Japan for more than a decade”, writes Michael Heise, chief economist of Allianz. (FT, 4/9/14)

Even an editorial in the Financial Times was forced to admit that “Given the malaise into which the Eurozone has fallen, it is now questionable to what extent monetary measures alone can sustain demand.” (FT, 5/9/14) They have run out of options. Given the contradictions whatever they do will be wrong. Eventually, in desperation they will be forced to try QE, but this will not save them. “Europe’s problems are structural, and QE will not fix them”, states Philipp Hildebrand, former chairman of the governing board of the Swiss National Bank.

Capitalism is cutting away the branch on which it rests. It is forced by the very logic of the system to attack the working class everywhere, cutting real wages, thus cutting the market. For the OECD countries as a whole – namely all the main capitalist countries – real wages have been stagnant between 2010 and 2013. In other countries, like Greece, Ireland, Slovenia and Spain (plus Britain), real wages have fallen by between 2% and 5% a year on average. In the US, between 1979 and 2012, real wages were flat for middle-income workers, but fell for the bottom 20%. Between 2010 and 2013, US median family income fell by 5%.

The idea of the Keynesians that simply increased wages will solve the problem misses the essential point that capitalist production is driven by profit. To increase wages will only serve to cut into profits, further pushing down investment and deepening the crisis. The whole of capitalism is in a vicious circle from which there is no escape.

“Any further reduction of wages being counter-productive because then we would run into a vicious circle of deflation, lower consumption and lower investment”, states Stefano Scarpetta, director of employment at the OECD. The only problem is that we are already in such a vicious circle. How else can you describe the situation?

“The ultimate reason for all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses, in the face of the drive of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as if only the absolute consumption capacity of society set a limit to them,” explained Marx. (Capital, Vol.3, p.615)

Capitalism overcomes this overproduction crisis in two ways: destroying the productive forces and finding new markets. Capitalism also creates its own market through ploughing back the surplus extracted from the unpaid labour of the working class. But today investment is falling as demand dries up, further exacerbating the crisis, as we can see. Artificially low interest rates have kept certain sectors alive, which would have otherwise gone to the wall, producing “zombie capitalism”, half alive and half dead.

The capitalist system is in a vicious circle. Austerity was supposed to bring public sector debt under control. Yet debt-to-GDP ratios have actually risen as a result. With stagnation and deflation in sight – the inflation rate in the Eurozone has now fallen again in August to 0.3% – this will get worse.

Unemployment continues to ravage the lives of millions of families, with no respite in sight. Almost 45 million people were out of work in the OECD countries, 11.5 million more than just before the crisis. Spain’s unemployment remains at 24.5%. Youth unemployment is 60% in Greece, 50% in Spain and 40% in Italy.

The present protracted crisis is a striking confirmation of the correctness and farsightedness of the analysis of the Communist Manifesto – a classic capitalist crisis of overproduction.

“It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trail, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previous created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity – the epidemic of overproduction. Society finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of destruction, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce.”

The pessimism of the bourgeoisie is summed up by Wolfgang Munchau in the Financial Times, when after reviewing all the options to fix the European economy – Keynesian, Monetarist, Structuralist – he concludes “carpet bombing would be a much safer bet”! (8/9/14)

In the past, the world economy was driven by large increases in world trade, year on year. But world trade no longer plays that role. Factors promoting “globalisation” have gone into reverse. Five years into a technical “recovery” since the summer of 2009, world trade has gone into the doldrums. The World Trade Organisation has been constantly predicting an upturn. For this year (2014) it predicted world trade would expand by 4.7%. This is wildly over-optimistic, and shows they base their predictions more on astrology than on economic reality! According to the more sober Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, a government think tank that collates data from all around the world, world trade grew by just 1% in the second quarter after contracting by 0.6% in the first three months.

This is extremely serious for the prospects of capitalism. It is a reflection of the fact that the system has reached its limits. Globalisation is waning and there is a danger of it going into reverse. The collapse of the world trade talks is an indication of the contradictions on a world scale. Protectionism has been growing in all kinds of ways, reflected in the heading in the recent Financial Times called “The World is Marching back from Globalisation” (FT, 5/9/14). The article points to the sanctions against Russia and the banning of food imports by Russia in retaliation. “The open trading system is fragmenting”, states the article. “The collapse of the Doha round spoke to the demise of global free-trade agreements. The advanced economies are looking instead to regional coalitions and deals – the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Pact. The emerging economies are building south-south relationships. Frustrated by a failure to rebalance the International Monetary Fund, the Brics nations are setting up their own financial institutions.”

This has enormous significance, given that the lease of life given to capitalism over the last 30 years was globalization, i.e., development of the world market. Once again, it shows that capitalism has exhausted itself and is incapable of developing the productive forces in any meaningful way. In the final analysis, as Marx explained, this failure to develop the productive forces, determines the fate of the socio-economic system.

Additional complications facing world capitalism are the dangers facing the Chinese economy, which provided the powerhouse for previous global economic expansion. For a long time, China has been plagued by overproduction in a whole number of sectors, but has kept going on the basis of credit and a housing boom. Construction and real estate account for 13% of Chinese GDP, as well as being the backbone for the country’s fixed investment. A crisis in this sector would pose the greatest threat for the global economy.

Official figures for July show that 64 of 70 cities surveyed were experiencing falling house prices, the biggest monthly proportion of declines since records began in 2005. Investors are pulling back and floor space sold in July tumbled 16.3% year on year, down sharply from June. In other words, we have over-production in property. Everything is pointing to a crash, which Beijing seems incapable of preventing. The growth of the economy will be cut across by such a slump, having an immediate knock-on effect on the fragile world economy.

While the government controlled the credit issued by the banks, the growth of shadow banking has cut across this, creating enormous volatility. Five years into one of the biggest credit booms in history, Chinese banks are bracing themselves for a wave of bad debt linked to the property crisis. Signs of stress have already emerged, with a near collapse this year of a shadow bank. As word spread that a Rmb3bn trust product called “China Credit Equals Gold #1” was on the verge of defaulting, investors began to draw out their cash. A mysterious buyer bailed out the product in the nick of time. Today, shadow banks, essentially unregulated, account for a quarter of all financial transactions. It is the sub-prime mortgage scandal all over again but with Chinese characteristics.

On top of this, China’s manufacturing industry slowed significantly in August, a further sign of weakness in the world’s second-largest economy. The Chinese economy has been slowing for several years, but the sharp slowdown in the property market has led to fears of the industrial slowdown being even worse. The Chinese authorities have managed to keep things afloat for a number of years, but with internal and external pressures bearing in on the economy, one shock could drive the economy down, leading to a new slump internationally.

The capitalist system is presently being affected by a whole series of contradictions that threaten its future. These fundamental problems are a reflection not of any cyclical factors, but arise from a fundamental malaise within the capitalist system. It means that the system has reached its limits. It can no longer develop the productive forces to any extent. While in the 1930s, the capitalist system found a way out through world war, which physically destroyed the productive forces and laid the basis for new markets, such a scenario is not possible in the present epoch. Nuclear war, the only character world war could take, would destroy the planet many times over. With this road blocked, it means that the contradictions will be further internalized and will open up an intensified class struggle everywhere.

Lenin once said that capitalism was horror without end. The present epoch constitutes a protracted death agony of capitalism with its local wars, mass unemployment and collapsing living standards. One thing is clear, after six years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, there is no way out for the working class on this basis. Only with the abolition of capitalism and the introduction of socialist economic planning internationally can we put an end to this nightmare and guarantee a future of wealth and prosperity for humanity.

 

The Bankruptcy of Individual Terrorism

By Leon Trotsky (1909)
23 July 2014

For a whole month, the attention of everyone who was able to read and reflect at all, both in Russia and throughout the world, has been focused on Azef. His ‘case’ is known to one and all from the legal newspapers and from accounts of the Duma debates over the demand raised by Duma deputies for an interpellation about Azef.

Now Azef has had time to recede into the background. His name appears less and less frequently in the newspapers. However, before once and for all leaving Azef to the garbage heap of history, we think it necessary to sum up the main political lessons – not as regards the machinations of the Azef types per se, but with regard to terrorism as a whole, and to the attitude held toward it by the main political parties in the country.

Individual terror as a method for political revolution is our Russian ‘national’ contribution.

Of course, the killing of ‘tyrants’ is almost as old as the institution of ‘tyranny’ itself; and poets of all centuries have composed more than a few hymns in honour of the liberating dagger.

But systematic terror, taking as its task the elimination of satrap after satrap, minister after minister, monarch after monarch – ‘Sashka after Sashka’ (a diminutive referring to the two tsars Alexander II and III), as an 1880s Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will) member familiarly formulated the programme for terror – this kind of terror, adjusting itself to absolutism’s bureaucratic hierarchy and creating its own revolutionary bureaucracy, is the product of the unique creative powers of the Russian intelligentsia.

Of course, there must be deep-seated reasons for this – and we should seek them, first, in the nature of the Russian autocracy and, second, in the nature of the Russian intelligentsia.

Before the very idea of destroying absolutism by mechanical means could acquire popularity, the state apparatus had to be seen as a purely external organ of coercion, having no roots in the social organisation itself. And this is precisely how the Russian autocracy appeared to the revolutionary intelligentsia.

Historical basis of Russian terrorism

This illusion had its own historical basis. Tsarism took shape under the pressure of the more culturally advanced states of the West. In order to hold its own in competition, it had to bleed the popular masses dry, and in doing so it cut the economic ground from under the feet of even the most privileged classes. And these classes were not able to raise themselves to the high political level attained by the privileged classes in the West.

To this, in the nineteenth century, was added the powerful pressure of the European stock exchange. The greater the sums it loaned to the tsarist regime, the less tsarism depended directly upon the economic relations within the country.

By means of European capital, it armed itself with European military technology, and it thus grew into a “self-sufficient”(in a relative sense, of course) organisation, elevating itself above all classes of society.

Such a situation could naturally give rise to the idea of blasting this extraneous superstructure into the air with dynamite.

The intelligentsia had developed under the direct and immediate pressure of the West; like their enemy, the state, they rushed ahead of the country’s level of economic development – the state, technologically; the intelligentsia, ideologically.

Whereas in the older bourgeois societies of Europe revolutionary ideas developed more or less parallel with the development of the broad revolutionary forces, in Russia the intelligentsia gained access to the ready-made cultural and political ideas of the West and had their thinking revolutionised before the economic development of the country had given birth to serious revolutionary classes from which they could get support.

Outdated by history

Under these conditions, nothing remained for the intelligentsia but to multiply their revolutionary enthusiasm by the explosive force of nitro-glycerin. So arose the classical terrorism of Narodnaya Volya.

The terror of the Social Revolutionaries was by and large a product of those same historical factors: the “self-sufficient”despotism of the Russian state, on the one hand, and the “self-sufficient”Russian revolutionary intelligentsia on the other.

But two decades did not go by without having some effect, and by the time the terrorists of the second wave appear, they do so as epigones, marked with the stamp “outdated by history.”

The epoch of capitalist “Sturm und Drang”(storm and stress) of the 1880s and 1890s produced and consolidated a large industrial proletariat, making serious inroads into the economic isolation of the countryside and linking it more closely with the factory and the city.

Behind the Narodnaya Volya, there really was no revolutionary class. The Social Revolutionaries simply did not want to see the revolutionary proletariat; at least they were not able to appreciate its full historical significance.

Of course, one can easily collect a dozen odd quotations from Social Revolutionary literature stating that they pose terror not instead of the mass struggle but together with it. But these quotations bear witness only to the struggle the ideologists of terror have had to conduct against the Marxists – the theoreticians of mass struggle.

But this does not change matters. By its very essence terrorist work demands such concentrated energy for “the great moment,” such an overestimation of the significance of individual heroism, and finally, such a “hermetic” conspiracy, that – if not logically, then psychologically – it totally excludes agitational and organisational work among the masses.

For terrorists, in the entire field of politics there exist only two central focuses: the government and the Combat Organisation. “The government is ready to temporarily reconcile itself to the existence of all other currents,” Gershuni (a founder of the Combat Organisation of the SRs) wrote to his comrades at a time when he was facing the death sentence, “but it has decided to direct all its blows towards crushing the Social Revolutionary Party.”

“I sincerely trust,”said Kalayev (another SR terrorist) writing at a similar moment, “that our generation, headed by the Combat Organisation, will do away with the autocracy.”

Everything that is outside the framework of terror is only the setting for the struggle; at best, an auxiliary means. In the blinding flash of exploding bombs, the contours of political parties and the dividing lines of the class struggle disappear without a trace.

And we hear the voice of that greatest of romantics and the best practitioner of the new terrorism, Gershuni, urging his comrades to “avoid a break with not only the ranks of the revolutionaries, but even a break with the opposition parties in general.”

The logic of terrorism

“Not instead of the masses, but together with them.” However, terrorism is too “absolute” a form of struggle to be content with a limited and subordinate role in the party.

Engendered by the absence of a revolutionary class, regenerated later by a lack of confidence in the revolutionary masses, terrorism can maintain itself only by exploiting the weakness and disorganisation of the masses, minimising their conquests, and exaggerating their defeats.

“They see that it is impossible, given the nature of modern armaments, for the popular masses to use pitchforks and cudgels – those age-old weapons of the people – to destroy the Bastilles of modern times,”defence attorney Zhdanov said of the terrorists during the trial of Kalyaev.

“After January 9 (the ‘Bloody Sunday’ massacre, which marked the start of the 1905 revolution), they saw very well what was involved; and they answered the machine gun and rapid-firing rifle with the revolver and the bomb; such are the barricades of the twentieth century.”

The revolvers of individual heroes instead of the people’s cudgels and pitchforks; bombs instead of barricades – that is the real formula of terrorism.

And no matter what sort of subordinate role terror is relegated to by the “synthetic” theoreticians of the party, it always occupies a special place of honour in fact. And the Combat Organisation, which the official party hierarchy places under the Central Committee, inevitably turns out to be above it, above the party and all its work – until cruel fate places it under the police department.

And that is precisely why the collapse of the Combat Organisation as a result of a police conspiracy inevitably means the political collapse of the party as well.

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