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Month: June 2023

Mass Strikes, Class and Trade Unions Struggle – Part 2

The trade union bureaucracy and the rank and file


14/06/2023

To understand the limits to the action, we need to consider the nature of the unions from a Marxist perspective. Unions are not homogenous organisations. In any sufficiently stable capitalist society, they tend to develop a layer of officials outside of the workplace. These form the basis for a union bureaucracy whose social function is to negotiate the terms of exploitation of workers.

As Rosa Luxemburg pointed out over a century ago: “The specialisation of professional activity as trade union leaders, as well as the naturally restricted horizon which is bound up with disconnected economic struggles in a peaceful period, leads only too easily to bureaucratism and a certain narrowness of outlook.” The bureaucracy’s is not directly subject to the pressure of either capital or rank-and-file workers. Its key social function is to negotiate, to strike deals, indeed its power reflects its ability to do so. This is reinforced by the material conditions of the bureaucracy. If workers are sacked or face a pay cut, the bureaucrat does not lose their job or pay.

To the extent that workers move into struggle, they tend to experience the bureaucracy as a conservative force. That is not say that it is purely conservative. To exist at all, the bureaucracy must give some expression to discontent among union members, and it must protect the capacity of the union bureaucracy to negotiate with employers. But the bureaucracy generally seeks to keep any confrontation emerging from this within tight limits. Actual class struggle, driven from below, can become an unwanted interruption to negotiation, and a potential threat to union funds.

The hold of the bureaucracy is reinforced by the increasingly harsh legal framework for industrial action in many countries. It is also reinforced by defeats that reduce the self-confidence of rank-and-file workers, such as those experienced by workers in Britain from the late 1970s onwards. The big victories for the British working class, in the period around the First World War and in 1968- 1974, largely took the form of unofficial action driven by networks of rank-and-file union representatives (generally known as “shop stewards”) based in the workplace.

Of course, the situation is rarely as simple as a thin crust of conservative officials and a seething mass of radicalised rank-and-file workers. There are more conservative or passive workers among the union’s membership. That is why electronic surveys of members are today a preferred tool of union bureaucracies: they individualise members, giving equal weight to those scabbing on industrial action as to those organising and driving it. Conversely, Marxists prefer votes on picket lines or at union mass meetings, occasions that involve the collective mobilisation of members.

The bureaucracy will often seek to win active support for their approach among the union rank and file. For left-wing sections of the bureaucracy, Jane McAlevey’s work on trade union organising is particularly attractive in doing so. In the UCU, arguments drawn from her work have been widely used to undermine more radical strategies. For instance, Grady recently promoted an interview in which McAlevey claims that, before you can organise a strike, you must already have 90 percent of workers in support through a prior process of organisation. If this argument, for so-called “supermajority strikes” is taken literally, it is a very poor one. There have been plenty of successful strikes in Britain with far less support than this. Few ballots even approach a 90 percent turnout, let alone winning support for strikes from 90 percent of those eligible to vote, particularly in national disputes.

In a similar vein, the UCU’s general secretary at one stage argued that, rather than taking strike action, we should engage in a process of organisation, so that, at some point in the future, we could have sufficient union density to mobilise effectively. However, it is hard to see why people would be won to the union on the back of a devastating defeat on pay. That is not, historically, how unions have grown or deepened their organisational roots: they expand through successful struggle, rather than “organising” in the abstract. Of course, such action needs to have some chance of success, but in the kind of approach advocated by McAlevey the bar is set far too high, and it neglects the potential for groups of workers stopping short of a so-called “supermajority” can fight and win, inspiring others to start to organise.

It has been pointed out that McAlevey’s work, which contains many sensible points about organising that would be uncontentious for Marxists, is misused by the union bureaucracy. If so, she surely has some responsibility to challenge such misrepresentation from those to whom she offers her services as a consultant. Moreover, it is a theoretical limitation in her own account that licenses the use to which the work is put. Specifically, while she is rightly scathing about the drive towards partnership between unions and employers, and critical of “oligarchic” and antidemocratic tendencies in the unions, the problem of the union bureaucracy in general plays no role in her work. This allows an approach whereby the problem of bad bureaucracy is solved by better bureaucracy.

This matters because, while there are indeed important tensions within the union bureaucracy, the fault-line dividing the bureaucracy as a whole from the rank and file is of more fundamental importance. This point is harder to see at moments in which workers are relatively passive, but it becomes clearer as workers move into struggle.

So, it does matter that RMT leader Lynch publicly lambasts the government and employers, as this can increase the confidence among workers to fight. Yet this rhetorical radicalism has not yet translated into a breakthrough in the rail industry. Grady was herself elected as part of a reaction against her more right-wing predecessor in the UCU, Sally Hunt, but has reverted to markedly similar practices as union leader. Conversely, unions were able to win major victories in the early 1970s under right-wing union leaders but could suffer terrible defeats in the late 1970s and in the early 1980s under more left-wing leaders. For instance, one of the greatest victories for coal miners in Britain took place in the 1972 strike, under Joe Gormley, later Baron Gormley, who was, at the time holding secret meetings with the Conservative prime minister, and who passed information about radicals in his own union to the police. Coal miners suffered their greatest defeat in the 1984-85 strike under the left-wing firebrand Arthur Scargill.

McAlevey often uses the example of the split between the CIO and the much more conservative AFL unions in the US in the 1930s. Again, the different between them was significant. However, the split in the bureaucracy that allowed the formation of the CIO was a response to a series of militant class confrontations in 1934, driven by rank-and-file workers, often with the help of anti-Stalinist socialist militants. The CIO leaders did organise in a more militant manner than their counterparts in the AFL and did use strikes to build their unions. However, by the late 1930s, CIO leader John L Lewis, would seek to rein in the wave of action, telling bosses: “a CIO contract is adequate protection for any employer against sit-ins, lie-downs or any other kind of strike”[See John Newsinger, Fighting Back: The American Working Class in the 1930s (Bookmarks).]

This criticism of the role of the bureaucracy as a whole should not be confused with a passive, sectarian approach to unions or even their leaders. Marxists often seek to involve union leaders in joint activity and campaigns, to encourage them to mobilise their members to fight fascism or impose imperialist wars. However, it is profound mistake to believe that revolutionaries who are drawn into the union bureaucracy, or sell their services to it, are immune from the pressures inherent in these roles. As Marx puts it: “It is not consciousness of [people] that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” Marxists require an organisational alternative to reliance on the vacillating union bureaucracy.

The rank-and-file

That alternative must start from the potential of the union rank and file. The self-confidence of the rank and file stands in inverse relation to the power of the bureaucracy. In some earlier periods this was far higher than it is in most contexts today. As Tony Cliff wrote:

“Between the two wars and after the Second World War, the major unions were headed by right-wing leaders… However, the fact that they collaborated with employers and the state did not bring them into actual conflict with the rank and file in the majority of cases… Usually, management retreated under the duress of a short-lived strike, that is, before the trade union bureaucracy managed to intervene and discipline the workers… In many cases, a central element in the tactics of the militant was to win the strike before trade union headquarters heard about it”.

Sometimes this can take organised form. Historically, rank-and-file organisations emerged at high points in workers’ struggle, seeking to hold the bureaucracy to account and to act independently when necessary. Their approach was summed up well in the first leaflet issued in 1915 in Glasgow by one such organisation, the Clyde Workers’ Committee: “We will support the officials just so long as they rightly represent the workers, but we will act independently immediately they misrepresent them… [W]e claim to represent the true feeling of the workers. We can act immediately according to the merits of the case and the desire of the rank and file.”

Where such organisation exists, a rank-and-file strategy becomes possible, in which Marxists seek to weave these organisations into a coherent rank-and-file movement. Marxists are in a prime position to contribute to these efforts because we reject the logic of capitalist society and aspire to lead revolutionary change driven by workers. As such we can offer a counterpressure to the tendency of rank-and-file organisation to succumb to reformist pressures. In the past this has tended to be expressed through sectionalism—ie promoting the interests of one group of workers against others—or through the organisation subordinating itself to left sections of the bureaucracy.

In many countries today we remain a long way from the creation of a rank-and-file movement. Rank and file workers in Britain typically lack the confidence to act independently of the bureaucracy. There have been some instances of unofficial action—for instance a wave of strikes on oil and gas rigs in the North Sea last year and walkouts at Amazon depots. At the time being, though, most action consists, and will continue to consist, of large-scale official strikes under the leadership of the bureaucracy.

Nonetheless, as strike action develops, the tension between rank-and-file workers and the bureaucracy tends to grow—as is happening at present. As noted above, in the UCU there has been some counter-pressure to the attempts to shut down and limit the action, sometimes successful. Marxists have played an important role in galvanising this resistance. Although UCU is hardly the most significant union, in terms of its size or social weight, it is seeing some of the most intense and persistent debate. In less developed form, though, the discontent is expressed elsewhere. In the RCN, the main nursing union, an attempt to shut down their struggle was overcome by a huge vote—driven by networks of activists within the union who rejected the deal. A similar process has taken place in the postal service, where the leadership of the CWU presented a dreadful deal to members, claiming it as a success—before cancelling the ballot amid considerable unease within the rank and file.

While we cannot skip stages of development and leap to a rank-and-file movement, we can, in such instances, aspire to use the officially sanctioned action to build embryonic networks of rank-and-file militants, to politicise them, and to coordinate these efforts between unions.

The role of Marxists

Creating these embryonic networks requires that we do two things.

First, winning rank and file workers to our position means not simply that we build struggles when they are rising. We must also expose the limitations of the union leaders and the union bureaucracy, criticising them when they try to shut down struggles or push through poor deals. When they sell workers out, we should say so. We must explain to workers why struggles fail, why one-day strikes are not sufficient, and so on. Otherwise, the only conclusion workers can draw is cynicism about their fellow union members. Marxists do not always win the argument. Often, if there is no sense that a real fight is possible, union members will accept a poor deal. But it remains right to argue that more could be achieved through collective struggle. Even if we begin as a minority on this point, workers can learn from their experience—as they are beginning to do in Britain.

Second, Marxists must connect these efforts to build an embryonic rank and file with our wider politics—involving struggle against every aspect of capitalism and the oppression it brings about. This is clear from the example of France, where the colossal strike movement has not removed the threat posed by the far right, exemplified by Marine Le Pen and her Rassemblement National. Similarly in Britain, the uptick in strike action comes alongside renewed efforts to scapegoat refugees crossing the English Channel in small boats. Taking up such political arguments is not a distraction from the economic struggle; it is a crucial element in defending the overall interests of workers.

This is the second part of a speech Joseph should have given at the Marxismuss conference in Berlin before he was unfortunately taken ill. Reproduced with permission. You can read part 1 here.

Wolt Protest

Wolt Owes us Money and Rights


Dear Wolt, stop breaking the law and pay workers now!

The delivery riders at Wolt and Wolt fleet are outraged that for 6 months you have not paid any wages to more than 100 of us. Countless Wolt Fleet workers continue to receive hourly wages below the minimum wage of €12. Directly hired riders don’t receive enough hours according to the contract.

We demand that Wolt:

  • immediately pay back all the Wolt Fleet riders whose wages were stolen. In full and with interest.
  • provide at least the minimum contractual hours to directly  hired Wolt riders.

 

Dear Wolt workers

  • We will gather hundreds of signatures from Wolt riders
  • Your name will NEVER be revealed to Wolt, only your signature
  • The name and phone number is for us workers to keep in contact.

Why make a petition?

  • This is the only way to pressure Wolt into taking us seriously. They’re more scared of us acting collectively than they are of paying the workers their stolen wages. It’s cheaper for them than the media finding out!
  • On that note, the media will pay attention if they see that hundreds of workers have signed and stood next to a photo. This will raise public awareness.

Does it work?

  • Seeing examples helps you believe it! Hundreds of workers in similar photos have signed their petitions, showed them to management and the media, and were able to win their demands. This includes workers here in Berlin.

Next steps

  • We will invite you to take a photo next to the petition.
  • You can cover your face with a helmet to stay anonymous if you wish.
  • Bring your Wolt bag!

 

Dear Supporters – Join the Protest on Monday 19th June

Wolt workers are staging a protest on Monday 19th June at Kottbusser Tor. Over 100 workers are still without pay since six months! 🤬 This will be a standing protest will be at Kotti outside Rossmann. The purpose is to get media attention for workers’ rights. It will create pressure before Emre’s case hearing.

We want to  show Wolt that we are organising, not just mobilising, and to demand payment of stolen wages now.

Please wear a blue t-shirt (any shade of blue works!). Everyone who has a Wolt bike should bring it and park it by the protest.

If you don’t want to be photographed with your face, wear an FFP2 mask. Free masks (with slogans) will be available to anyone who needs them.

Food will be provided by Kotti and Ko at the Gecekonda at Kotbusser Tor. Theater X will have a performance at the end of the protest.

Mass Strikes, Class and Trade Unions Struggle

A brief attempt to analyse the current strike wave in Europe from a Marxist perspective


13/06/2023

UCU Strike

The current strike wave across Europe is part of a revival in workers’ confidence and workers’ struggle. There have, in recent months, been important strikes in Germany and in Portugal; Britain is witnessing its most sustained wave of strike action since the late 1980s, and France is experiencing perhaps its highest level of workers’ struggle since 1968. On May Day this year, over two million people protested on the French streets as part of the movement against the government’s attack on pension rights. On the 7 March, there was something close to a general strike—with most rail services and much of the public transport network stopped, schools shut down and striking energy workers blockading refineries.

Strikes are a basic expression of the collective self-activity of the working class. For Karl Marx, unions could, at their best, be organising centres for the working-class struggle, “schools of socialism” as he put it in an 1869 speech to German workers, in which workers train themselves in the fight against capital. However, unions are also complex organisations, often with powerful bureaucratic tendencies that can act as a brake on struggle. This article offers a brief attempt to analyse the strike wave we are seeing from a Marxist perspective, focusing on the struggles in Britain, where my own activity is focused, exploring the tensions within the unions.

Drivers of the strike wave

There are always specific causes of strike action. In France, the trigger has been attempted pensions reform. However, we also see common drivers in instance of action. First, there has been a lengthy build-up of discontent due to wage stagnation and growing inequality. In Britain wage growth has stalled during the past decade and a half of Conservative rule with many jobs becoming more precarious.

Second, there is the more recent impact of Covid-19. The pandemic highlighted the central role workers play in the functioning of capitalist societies. Many workers expected to receive some recognition or reward for their sacrifices once lockdowns ended. They received none. Some important strikes in Britain involve workers whose labour was key to sustaining society during the pandemic, including health workers, schoolteachers, Amazon depot workers, dock workers, rail workers and postal workers.

Third, there is of course the immediate issue of the cost-of-living crisis. In the case of Britain, any worker who received a pay rise below about 15 percent over the past year experienced a real-terms pay cut. Some workers in the private sector were able to blunt the impact of inflation a little by securing pay rises, often without strike action, but in the public sector, and other workforces covered by national pay bargaining, things have been far worse. Whatever the specificities of the various disputes in Britain, inflation and pressure on pay has been the major driving force.

The halting British strike wave

The wave of action in the UK began with a rail workers’ strikes in summer 2022. Rail workers are a relatively small but well-organised and powerful group. The leader of the RMT rail workers’ union, Mick Lynch, quickly became a celebrity figure on the left, arguing a basic class politics in the face of a series of patronising TV and radio interviews.

Soon the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) also began to take action, in both telecommunications and the postal service. The CWU also played a central role in launching Enough is Enough—a broader campaign over the cost of living. With other unions, in education, the civil service and health, joining the strike movement in the autumn and winter, there were big Enough is Enough rallies in many cities. However, just as these groups appeared to be developing a base of support, there was an effort by those running the campaign nationally to clamp down on groups that appeared too radical or diverged from its preferred approach. The project was strangled by the union bureaucracy and now plays little role in most areas of the country.

The pattern of national strikes has also revealed important limitations. They have largely taken the form of episodic actions, lasting a single day or, in a few cases, a few days at a time. On the rail network this could have some impact. Similarly, in schools, which, as well as providing education, are also sources of free day-care, allowing many parents to work, there is a significant economic and social impact when strikes take place. However, in neither of these cases have the episodic strikes been sufficient to achieve major victories.

In other areas—such as the postal service or in the universities—short strikes are even less effective. Managers can easily plan around these actions. In the universities, my own union, the University and College Union (UCU), has undertaken an unusual amount of strike action in recent years. Most of our action has consisted of multi-day strikes. However, these mobilisations have not proved terribly effective and, as each day of action involves a loss of a day’s pay, this can breed cynicism among some union members, despite the efforts of activists maintain enthusiasm. In the civil service, the stop-start pattern of strikes has allowed the PCS and other unions to obtain talks with the government, but it is unlikely that any offer will come close to what members desire.

Even in France the pattern is for unions to call “days of action”, rather than indefinite strikes, despite two-thirds of workers there saying they would support indefinite action.

Escalation

In Britain, as in France, there have been calls from a section of the union membership for escalation. Arguments for escalation have taken two forms: the coordination of strikes across unions and the extension of specific strikes to prolonged or even all-out action. While both forms of escalation are welcome, on occasion the former has been counterposed to the latter, with some union leaders showing enthusiasm for coordination without mapping out a strategy that can win their own dispute.

The push for coordination is at least an improvement on the approach of some union leaders, such as those from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), who have resisted joint strike action. This appears to reflect the belief that health workers enjoy such a high level of popular support that they can secure special deals from the government. The leadership of the National Education Union (NEU), which organises in schools, has, by contrast, been among the keenest on coordination. The NEU placed itself at the centre of a couple of important days of coordinated action in 2023, where half a million, and then close to a million, workers struck together. There were large joint union rallies in many towns and cities, forming a welcome celebration of working-class resistance.

However, less progress has been made on the more important form of escalation—extending the action. The power of this tactic is seen in some of the local disputes in recent months, driven by groups of workers with a more militant approach. For instance, 580 dock workers on Merseyside recently won pay rises ranging from 14.3 to 18.5 percent after five weeks of action. Some 250 bus drivers in Hull won 20 percent after four weeks or continuous strikes. Criminal barristers won a 15 percent increase to their fees after calling all-out indefinite strike action, with a large minority seeking to hold out for a bigger settlement when the deal was put to members.

This approach—prolonged, hard-hitting action—has not been replicated nationally. The executive of my own union, the UCU, did vote to move to all-out strike action across the universities (ie action with no designated end point). Again, this reflects the extent to which the UCU has taken strike action in the past few years. In this context, the UCU has developed an unusual degree of internal debate and a militant minority prepared to challenge the union leadership—and, to some extent, that is reflected on the union’s executive. However, in this case, the UCU’s general secretary, Jo Grady, managed to overturn the executive’s approach. This involved her making an appeal to more conservative layers within the union, through an electronic survey of members, publishing an alternative plan for action, which was sent to every member directly, and holding a branch delegates’ meeting, based on a discussion of confused and often leading questions. Through such manoeuvres Grady and her supporters managed to convince enough members of the executive to retreat on their plan for all-out action.

The UCU executive instead agreed to 18 strike days over two months but the opportunity to break the pattern of episodic action among unions at a national level was sadly lost. Moreover, in mid-February, UCU leaders “paused” strikes—without consulting members, the executive or even the union’s elected negotiators—announcing a “two-week period of calm” and retrospectively seeking support through another e-ballot. There were also attempts to persuade members to accept a lousy deal over pay, which would have amounted to a 15 percent pay cut over two years, which members rejected when balloted.

Poor pay deals have, though, become the norm. Typically, these are two-year deals—offering workers a couple more percent on their 2022-23 pay deal and around 5 percent for 2023-24. These are often presented to members as a victory, or at least “the best we can get”, even though they fall well below what would have been possible with a more determined programme of strike action. Strikes are continuing in some parts of the rail services, and among doctors and nurses within the National Health Service. Other groups such as post workers, university workers and teachers remain in dispute, and others groups, for instance in local government, are balloting to take action.

However, many groups of workers have grudgingly accepted poor deals to end their disputes. Episodic strike action is clearly not leading to breakthroughs that can reverse this pattern.

This is the first part of a speech Joseph should have given at the Marxismuss conference in Berlin before he was unfortunately taken ill. Reproduced with permission. Part 2 will be published on theleftberlin.com tomorrow.

From the hot autumn to the spring of uncertainty

The urgent need for peace in Ukraine


12/06/2023

More than a year has passed since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. During all this time, German public opinion and most political parties have shown absolute support for Vladimir Zelensky’s government. This includes the shipment of weapons worth €2.2 billion in 2022 alone, ten successive packages of economic sanctions on Russian imports and the reception of more than one million Ukrainian refugees. [1] However, this policy has begun to show its first signs of exhaustion. Very slowly and from different political perspectives, diplomatic negotiations are emerging as necessary.

That the war is an expression of inter-imperialist interests, was already expressed by the Latin American Bloc from the very start. If we return to the subject today, it is not to congratulate ourselves for the wisdom of our political intuition, nor to offer an exhaustive review of the causes and development of the confrontation. Instead, it is an ideological reading of the geopolitical conflict and the current situation in Germany formed in the heat of the political praxis of a popular and migrant organisation in the very heart of the empire. We are trying to contribute some elements to the debate between the German and European Left which we can use to develop a concrete line of action.

The German government at the crossroads

Only a week after the outbreak of war, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) authorised an extraordinary budget of 100 billion euros for the German army. He is now under great political pressure, facing a profound upheaval. Social democracy’s cultivation of international relations with the East dates back to the “new Eastern policy” [neue Ostpolitik] of Willy Brandt (SPD) in the 1970s. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rapprochement with the Kremlin was deepened by  former chancellor Angela Merkel and Putin’s personal friend Gerhard Schröder, Manuela Schwesig through her support for the Nord-Stream-Pipeline. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, president of the republic [Bundespräsident] and foreign minister during the last Merkel government, coined the slogan ‘intertwining and integration’ and played a key role.

 

Scholz has to manoeuvre through a process of profound geopolitical reconfiguration, both inside and outside the SPD, with a military conflict a thousand kilometres away from Brandenburg Gate. But it is not only US economic interests in bringing liquid gas into Europe and NATO’s geopolitical ambitions that are dragging Germany towards the war front. The image of a perplexed and vacillating chancellor that has managed to establish itself in public opinion is also due to the internal pressure on Scholz resulting from the political and economic interests of the liberals (FDP) and the Green party (Die Grüne). It is above all the members of the latter, the clumsy heirs of a pacifist and environmentalist legacy, who are the most fervent supporters of arms exports and the implementation of economic sanctions against the Russian economy. “We are fighting a war against Russia!” exclaimed foreign minister Annalena Baerbock in her fury at the European Council conference in Strasbourg on 24 January, causing an international scandal that forced her own ministry to make it clear to Russia and the rest of the world that Germany was not in fact at war with them!

Scholz has to manoeuvre through a profound geographical reconfiguration following a military conflict a thousand kilometres away from the Brandenburg Gate. This reconfiguration is taking place both inside and outside the SPD. it is not only US economic interests in bringing liquid gas into Europe and NATO’s geopolitical ambitions that are dragging Germany towards the war front. The political interests of the liberals (FDP) and the Green party (die Grünen) have created internal pressure which has created the image of a perplexed and vacillating chancellor. The latter are the most fervent supporters of arms exports and economic sanctions against the Russian economy. “We are fighting a war against Russia!” exclaimed foreign minister Annalena Baerbock on 24 January.

The German government and Europe see a geopolitical confrontation in which the main imperial blocs (the US, Europe and China) vie for global hegemony.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), states states  that European arms imports increased by 47% over the previous five years. Despite a global fall of 5%. The systematic increase in the region’s military spending was long before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. European companies and their governments envisage a scenario of armed confrontation with Europe at the centre.

In 2022, the Middle East became the leading region for arms imports, accounting for 32% of the world total [2]. Since 2011, the confrontation in Syria between allies of the West and those of Russia completely destroyed the country. On the export side, the top five countries remain the United States (40%), Russia (16%), France (11%), China (5%) and Germany (4%). The map of weapons flows matches the collision of interests between the world’s major powers. NATO and Europe were arming and preparing for a conflict like the one Ukraine, Western governments were not surprised.

That Baerbock’s statement betrays the Greens’ (Die Grüne) support for economic sanctions against Russia. These have mainly harmed workers in both the EU and Russia. They consist of interrupting natural gas and oil imports,  making fuels more expensive, which impacts food prices and heating costs.  The Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, found that inflation caused a real wage loss of 4.7% in 2022. Finance minister Robert Habeck (Die Grüne), recently introduced a bill to ban all gas and oil-fired heaters by 2024. Supposedly to encourage the transition to “renewable” energies. But these alternatives to Russian gas  (Colombian coal or Bolivian lithium) also have disastrous environmental consequences. Habeck’s law means enormous costs in infrastructure and housing refurbishment, which falls on the shoulders of workers or the public coffers.

The German Left and the spring of uncertainty

Last year, the slogans “the hot autumn” [heißer Herbst] and “the winter of rage” [Wutwinter] became very popular slogans. heralding a winter full of demonstrations and social struggles. Despite alliances formed by left-wing groups and some important trade union strikes such as those of Ver.di (public services) and EVG (transport and railways), the government implemented successfully subsidy packages worth 95 billion euros and managed, to contain the social outburst from the economic crisis. [3]

Diplomatic negotiations in Ukraine is becoming recognised by some political actors and journalists who question the hegemony of the warmongering discourse. One dissident voice was Sahra Wagenknecht (Die Linke), with Alice Schwarzer. Their manifesto for peace, called to mobilise broad sectors of society and different civil initiatives to become a movement for peace [Friedensbewegung]. Another call for an armistice came from the historian Peter Brandt, signed by historical figures from the SPD and trade unions. Now various progressive media outlets publish opinion pieces critical of the indiscriminate delivery of weapons and the prolongation of the conflict. Why has it taken so long for these voices to speak out? Why has the German left been paralysed by the outbreak of war within Europe’s borders?

From the start, progressive and left-wing groups presented the armed conflict as an imperialist advance on an independent country. They promoted unconditional and widespread support for the attacked country in the name of free self-determination of peoples and against Russian imperial interests. However, it is not entirely legitimate to compare the current struggle of that nation with the classic examples of countries (mainly in Africa or Asia) confronting European imperial powers for their autonomy during the 20th century. To adopt the classical analysis of the self-determination of peoples, of Lenin, to speak of a war of liberation in the case of Ukraine we should argue against both NATO forces and Russian interests. [4]

Moreover some progressive sectors ignore the chronological events. Prior to the Russian invasion – NATO and Western elites supported conservative and neo-fascist groups, parties and governments in Ukraine. During the 2014 ‘Euromaiden’, far-right political and paramilitary groups showed extensive and public links with Western powers and their institutions. Western countries financed, organised and supported neo-fascist sectors to conclude agreements with the EU and the IMF, distancing Ukraine from Russia. This catapulted  Swoboda and Right Sector to fame, and began armed conflict persisting to today. The current conflict in Ukraine is not comparable to wars of liberation such as those in Vietnam or Cuba. The main difference in these cases is the existence of a hegemonic aggressor, the USA, and of populist and leftist forces fighting to break this colonial domination.

In this context, Trotsky’s words before the Zimmerwald Conference are strangely contemporary and alert us to the historical continuity of concessions and capitulations on the part of progressivism: “The capitalists of all countries, who mint with the blood of the peoples the red coin of war profits, claim that the war will serve for the defence of the fatherland, of democracy and of the liberation of the oppressed peoples. They are lying… What will result from the war will be new chains and new burdens, and it is the proletariat of all countries, victors or vanquished, that will have to bear them.”

Those who promote the advance of Ukrainian troops as a way of defending the right of peoples to freedom and democracy, deliberately hide the neo-conservative and neo-liberal character of the Zelensky government and the previous semi-colonial status of Ukraine.

We should not be surprised by this warmongering discourse of some sectors of the European left and progressivism, as it manifests an unfortunate historical continuity. Remember that in 1914 Russian social democratic parties approved and promoted the war efforts that triggered the First World War. At the end of it, there were tens of millions of dead bodies, and the first workers’ state in the world was torn between a warlike position and one that sought peace at all costs. Lenin as head of the Soviet government, resolved this tension in favour of peace, arguing that continuing an imperialist war would only delay the possibility of improving conditions for the working class sectors of the countries involved in the conflict. His position was rejected by of large sectors of the left both within and outside his party. However, time proved that it was precisely peace that enabled the survival of the Soviet Republic, and the beginning of revolutionary processes in Germany and Europe. The history of the 20th Century would have been completely different without opposing the worst warring confrontation of mankind, not on ethical stances but as the basis for the reconstruction of the popular forces to revolution.

However, today we are told that to defend a “revolutionary” standpoint we must impose peace by force, that we must go all the way to Moscow to banish roots of the oligarchic danger. Again the fable of a clash of antagonistic civilisations, again the fable that the greatest danger to democracy is to be found in the Kremlin. We have learned little from the successes and failures of the past and the saddest thing of all is that the argument put forward by these sectors is very similar to that of revolution by conquest, which Stalin and his allies used to impose puppet governments in all the Eastern countries where the Red Army advanced after the Second World War.

The situation reached its paroxysm when some extra-parliamentary leftists supported sending arms to Ukraine in the hope that they would reach revolutionary groups, favouring a popular rebellion. They wanted a version 2.0 of the Kurdish experience in Rojava with weapons from the US. In the case of Ukraine,  at the beginning of the war small groups of militias independent of the state were armed and organised with the aim of defending the main cities and especially Kiev from the advance of the Russian army. The hope was that these militias would contribute to a revolutionary movement opposed to the Zelensky regime. But the conflict showed that these militias are completely irrelevant. After the end of the siege of Kiev these groups were disbanded or incorporated into regular state forces or official paramilitary groups.

The only forces benefiting from Western arms deliveries and funding are the official Ukrainian army, under the orders of a neo-conservative government; and far-right groups allied to the government – the Azov battalion and Kraken regiment. The latter gained international fame  as key players in the repression  after 2014, being accused of committing war crimes against the civilian population in the low-intensity confrontation against the pro-Russian separatist provinces in the Donbas.

To believe that weapons alone can contribute to political change in Ukraine is to overlook the absence of the key factor represented by the organisations of the left as the only possible protagonists of a real social transformation.

For all these reasons, those on the left who advocate a military victory for the Ukrainian government or the Russian government are mistaken. A military victory for Putin would condemn Ukraine to the status of a Russian semi-colony. If Zelensky’s government is maintained, Ukraine would be reduced to the status of a US protectorate. There is no progressive outcome if the war continues.

At present the war front has been virtually stabilised, despite minor advances and setbacks, for more than six months now. The Russian army and its shareholders know that a defeat in the Donbas could mean extending the war within Russia’s borders that could delegitimise the  Russian government. Zelensky and the Ukrainian bourgeoisie know that the funding from Western resources, will only come with continued war success. Finally, NATO, the great director of the play, has nothing to lose.

In the absence of an immediate possibility of a cessation of hostilities, we stress the geopolitical value of the Latin American countries’ homogeneous rejection of the German government’s request to contribute to the supply of armaments. After Scholz’s recent tour of Latin American, a wedge in the geopolitical conflict needs to be shored up by political work from below demanding an immediate cessation of hostilities, the recovery of the territories annexed by Russia and a policy of disarmament by the NATO powers.

It is along these lines that we welcome the peace initiatives in Germany mentioned above. This is not because we agree more or less with any of the protagonists but because these experiences require us to generalise the social ruptures where we can work closely with the sectors most affected by the inflationary crisis unleased by the war – most notably wage earners and migrants – and to bring them together in a popular movement.

After a prolonged winter in which German government subsidies contained social rage, spring has arrived in Berlin. New energies are making their way through the jungle of warmongering, pragmatism and political follow-through. Now it is time to move forward. After mass demonstrations for May Day in many German cities, new energies are emerging in opposition to the jungle of warmongering, pragmatism and political follow-through. Now it is time to move forward to ensure that this warm spring awakening turns into a summer of burning certainties among German and migrant left-wing groups. The need for peace in Ukraine is a fundamental condition for true internationalist political praxis.

Footnotes

[1] The budget for equipment and armaments to be sent to the Ukrainian front in 2023 amounts to 2.4 billion Euros. Germany exports more war supplies than France and Great Britain combined and is second only, of course, to the United States. The extensive and detailed list of military supplies can be found here.

[2] At the national level, the main arms importers are Qatar (10% of the total), India (9%) and Ukraine (8%), followed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (7% each) and Pakistan (5%).

[3] Industry and the business sectors have been the main beneficiaries of subsidies. Public spending on these measures is expected to amount to 200 billion Euros

[4] In the discussion with Polish militants and especially in the face of Rosa Luxemburg’s arguments, Lenin argued that advocating national self-determination was a slogan that should appear in the programmes of social democratic parties. It was not a revolutionary slogan in itself. However, the formation of an autonomous bourgeois national state implied better conditions for the development of the revolutionary struggle than remaining under the imperialist mantle. In 1917, during the Brest-Litovsk negotiations, the Bolshevik delegation, led by Trostky, defended a similar position in the cases of Poland and the Ukraine vis-à-vis the German and Austro-Hungarian empires. There it was argued that defending the right to self-determination did not mean accepting the autonomy of these countries under the tutelage of the German-Austrian power.

This article first appeared in Spanish in a longer version on the Website of the Bloque Latinamericano in May 2023. Reproduced with permission

The rise and fall (and rise and fall) of the Egyptian Left – Part 3

The1990s and early 2000s: Palestine provides a spark for the Egyptian Left


10/06/2023

Editor’s Note: Phil Butland and Helena Zohdi recently interviewed Hossam el-Hamalawy about the history of the Egyptian Left. You can read Part 1 of the Interview here and Part 2 here.

Hi again Hossam. At the end of our last interview, the Soviet Union was collapsing while the Left in Egypt – as elsewhere – was in disarray. This was also the time where you personally became more politicized, drawn toward Arab nationalism. Describe this time for our readers.

The mid-1990s were a tough time for all Egyptian activists. Between 1991 and 1992, President Hosni Mubarak and his government clamped down again on social movements while starting a number of economic reforms amid a severe debt crisis, guided by an IMF-imposed structural adjustment program (ERSAP), the details of which were hotly debated at the time. It is important to note that often, “wars on terror” go hand in hand with neoliberal reforms. Egypt is no exception in this regard.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union was collapsing and there was plenty of propaganda about the end of history and a clash of civilizations, the need for a “third way” separate from socialism and capitalism, such as New Labour in Great Britain. Also, right-wing parties were on the rise everywhere.

I was raised in a highly political family environment, and I did read a lot. I considered myself to be left-leaning politically, but I wasn’t really sure what that meant. In this context, I started looking for political alternatives. As the Egyptian Left at that time was in bad shape, in my searching I came across the Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists.

Tell us a bit about what drew you to this particular group.

During the 1980s, the Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists were mainly Marxist study circles made up of radical Egyptian students, and Palestinian students who were studying in Egypt. While they critiqued the policies of the Soviet Union, they weren’t sure about alternatives. The group then came across the theory of state capitalism, which helped to provide answers about Nasserism, as well as the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was a chance for the group to start picking up disillusioned young Communists. But like I said, these were tough times to be an activist. In the 1990s, right-wing politics prevailed. I started university in 1995 in this context, looking for political alternatives. By sheer coincidence I came across the Revolutionary Socialists and I joined the group in 1998, during my third year at school.

We were a tiny, marginalized group amid an ocean of reactionary politics. The government was pushing right-wing ideas and capitalism as the way forward, combined with the privatization of the public sector. There was one expression at the time, the “socialism of poverty,” which was coined by Sadat and that was spread later on by Mubarak’s regime. Whenever we stood in front of the University campus, people would accuse us of being lunatics or aliens, completely removed from reality.

People who held right-wing ideas used to confront us, mostly with the question, “When was the last time Egyptians had a revolution?” Our opponents would say, “Our country has always been used to being ruled by a pharaoh and by the whip. Do you really think Egyptians would ever rebel against Mubarak?”

These positions were colonialist-inspired ideas, a mentality that the British or other Western powers would typically spread in colonized nations amid people of color. After a while, these ideas would become internalized, used by post-colonial ruling elites. These right-wing ideas were accompanied by a third set of right-wing ideas – those of Islamism, which were strongest at the time.

So we’ve reached the early 2000s, where things really begin to change. The second intifada in Palestine has begun, as well as the second Gulf War with the invasion of Iraq. At the same time in Egypt, textile workers in Mahalla have renewed industrial actions. What did these events mean for the broader Egyptian Left?

The start of the second Palestinian intifada was in 2000, and this changed the rules of activism on the ground in Egypt. Before 2000, while I was in university, as I’ve said, right-wing ideas prevailed and industrial actions were almost unheard of. Many experienced labor organizers were simply laid off through early buyouts.

So, there was no street activism. To hold a protest in public was suicidal. There was still a space to organize on university campuses, but you could not even whisper Hosni Mubarak’s name. At best, you could chant against the regime, you could denounce the government, you could denounce ministers. But once you started chanting against Mubarak, that’s when you knew you were in deep trouble.

In some instances, even before the security forces got to you, the students themselves would attack you – because they were afraid and didn’t want trouble. There were a number of times in the 1990s and early 2000s when our socialist group would meet before protests as organizers, and other student organizers – mainly nationalists and independents – would tell me, “No, you’re not going to speak at the protest because you’re the one who always insists on denouncing Mubarak. We just want to talk about Palestine.”

The intifada did change everything. It triggered mass protests in Egypt, the size and extent of which had not been since 1977. They started on the university campuses and soon extended to students in high school – even children in kindergarten were going on protests.

So students and children were protesting, but what about the rest of society? Where is the working class in this moment?

At this time the professional syndicates also became active. To clarify for your readers, in Egypt there are trade unions, mainly for blue-collar workers and civil servants. Professional syndicates in contrast unionize the middle-class professions, like doctors, pharmacists, lawyers and journalists.

While trade unions since 1957 had been bureaucratized and dominated by the state, within the professional syndicates there was some room to maneuver politically. And dissidents too could find a foothold within these syndicates. These groups would host space for forums and public talks, and solidarity actions with the Palestinians.

And so protests would start with a message of solidarity with the Palestinians, and slogans against the United States and Israel. But soon, the protests would be besieged by the police. And once the police arrive, that’s when the focus of the demonstration pivots toward domestic dissent. Why are the police coming to our peaceful protest? Why isn’t our government doing enough to help the Palestinians? Why doesn’t the government want to close down the Israeli Embassy? Why do we even have this peace treaty with Israel?

And then protestors would start generalizing about the domestic situation even more. The same government that doesn’t want to help the Palestinians, and is sending our troops to squash our peaceful dissent, is also providing us with poor education and housing.

These 2000 protests took the regime by surprise and the reaction was ruthless. It was from these protests where my first experience of being detained and tortured at the hands of the state security police occurred, in October 2000. I was interrogated and tortured for roughly four days.

Because of the brutal repression on behalf of the regime, the protest wave subsided. But actions were re-ignited in March 2002, following Operation Defensive Shield, put into motion by Israel’s Ariel Sharon as he sent Israeli tanks into West Bank cities. That’s when you had the Battle of Jenin and other infamous massacres. Once again, another wave of protests within Egypt erupted.

This was also when the so-called Cairo University intifada took place, in the neighborhoods surrounding Cairo University in Giza. Running battles with security services lasted for two days.

This was the first time that I heard explicit, anti-Mubarak slogans chanted and then repeated by thousands of people. Most famously was, “Hosni Mubarak is just like Sharon. He’s the same color. He’s the same figure.” Again, these protests were ruthlessly repressed, with more arrests, including my second.

Protests ignited once again with the Iraq war in March 2003. When the United States, Great Britain and their allies invaded Iraq, protest erupted and Tahrir Square in Cairo was taken over for two days as activists fought with the security services.

Protestors set banners of the ruling National Democratic Party on fire. They set posters of Hosni Mubarak on fire, and chanted against him. Security forces responded with tear gas. This was the first time that I saw those colored water cannons, and they were being used against us.

This was my third arrest, and I wasn’t alone, as the regime rounded up hundreds of activists. They were arresting activists en masse, so much so that there was no room for us to be detained. The prison truck I was in drove to a number of police stations in Cairo, asking if they had room. The crackdown was massive.

All the mobilizations between 2000 and 2003 had been triggered mainly by events in Palestine and in Iraq. They created for the Egyptian Left, for our group, the room for move and to revive Egyptian street politics.

So at this point it looks like the Egyptian Left has a new lease on life. Where did the movement go from here?

In 2004, we witnessed the rise of the “Kefaya” movement for change. Kefaya is Arabic for “enough.” It was an umbrella organization that included Revolutionary Socialists and other groups, mainly secular opposition parties. Very few Islamists were involved, however, mainly from the Islamist-leaning Labor Party. The Muslim Brotherhood was not part of Kefaya at the time. Until 2011, in fact, the Muslim Brotherhood did not push back publicly against Mubarak.

Kefaya introduced the slogan, “No extension of Mubarak’s rule! No succession!” which meant no political succession for Mubarak’s son, Gamal. Kefaya mobilized anti-Mubarak protests for two years. But the movement was led mainly by middle-class professionals, like pharmacists, engineers, doctors, university graduates, students and artists. Kefaya never really found a foothold with the working class.

But the brilliance of Kefaya and its outreach strategy was the use of visual elements to inspire protest. We activists watched closely to figure out why Egyptians took to the streets in 2000. We realized it was because the satellite television station Al-Jazeera was broadcasting video of the protests in Palestine to every single Egyptian home, every night. Satellite dishes may have been expensive in the beginning, but they began to get cheaper and available to more homes. And each house would also share connections, too.

So, these powerful images were on Egyptian screens all the time, and this inspired people to act. In contrast, our protests never really exceeded a handful of protesters. They were usually about 20 protesters, 100, maybe 500. On a very good day, we could get 1,000 in downtown Cairo.

We managed to mobilize 5,000 once, but this was a special moment in September 2005 during the presidential elections. Mubarak wanted to show a good image to Western nations, so state repression at this time was muted. This was an exceptional moment.

But we made sure that for later protests, we would liaise with Al-Jazeera and other satellite TV stations, and with newly established private newspapers, to guarantee coverage – which meant that our small protest would be aired to millions of Egyptians.

We are planning to publish Parts 4 and 5 of this interviewo on theleftberlin.com on Saturday 17th June and Saturday 24th June.

You can subscribe to Hossam’s blog on contemporary Egyptian politics here.