War and Resistance

War and Resistance is a translation of the Swedish book Draksdd, originally published in 2004. It offers a Marxist analysis of the most important wars of the past hundred years; examines the role of UN, civil disobedience and many other failed attempts to stop war. And as a contrast explains why other forms of resistance to war have been successful. The book starts in Scandinavia at the beginning of the 20th century, goes through the two world wars, including resistance in concentration camps, then goes on to the conflicts in the Indian sub-continent, the Middle East, Vietnam and East Timor, and ends with contemporary wars in ex- Yugoslavia, Africa and Iraq. Contrary to expectations after the collapse of Stalinism in 1989 this subject remains as relevant as ever, most recently in the light of renewed imperialist intervention in Libya. We will regularly publish chapters from the book, starting with the introduction today. The authors of the book are Kerstin Alfredsson, Jonathan Clyne, and Lena Ericson Hijer, all longstanding activists within the Swedish Labour Movement. They would appreciate any comments about the book. Write to bretorp@gmail.com.

Introduction
Over the weekend of the 15 and 16 February 2003, people gathered all over the world to try to stop the war against Iraq. It was the largest array of coordinated demonstrations ever seen. According to the BBC between six and ten million people took part in protests in up to sixty countries; other estimates range from eight million to thirty million. The biggest demonstrations were in countries where the government backed the war.i According to the most conservative estimates over 100 000 people took part in New York, 750 000 in London (the largest demonstration ever seen in the British capital) and 660 000 protested in Madrid. Some 650 000 gathered in Rome (although the Guinness Book of Records lists it as the biggest anti-war rally ever, with three million participants). In Sweden, with its relatively small population, demonstrations were held in at least 36 places. And so on. The massive protests cut right through the politicians talk. Young people, workers and pensioners around the world were going out to protest against American imperialism. Suddenly, it could be seen that while governments squabbled with each other, many people were totally united against the war. Their message was crystal clear: This is not our war! The breadth of the opposition to the war was also shown in opinion polls. In Germany 81% were against the war and in France 66%. In Britain, Blair could only count on the backing of 10% unless the UN approved the invasion, which it didnt. In Russia, only 12% were in favour of the war, with or without the UN.ii The main reason for the size of the demonstrations was neither the fact that information can be rapidly passed around the globe via the Internet, nor because Iraq was the target. Anger
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was being released that had been bottled up for decades against widening gaps in society, against the reckless actions of the US government, against everything people had had to put up with since the arrival of the New World Order. This is what the protests drew their strength from, and they began to acquire solidity when union leaders called sympathy strikes. In spite of this, Iraq was attacked. The mass protests had not prevented the war. Did the protests achieve anything at all? Anything that will be of importance in the future? Yes! They did. One result was that a whole generation of young people were politicised and joined the struggle for a better society. Also, it became clear that national borders are no obstacle when people share a common cause. Moreover, the anti-war movement succeeded in pressurising a number of governments. In Turkey, traditionally a reliable ally of the US, over 90% opposed the war. The Turkish Parliament turned down a request from the US to land troops in Turkey as a prelude to invading Iraq from the north. In Sweden, the late foreign minister Anna Lindh had to change her tune. At first she opposed anti-war demonstrations she claimed that they strengthened Saddam Hussein but on 15 February she came to speak at one. Spanish anti-war sentiments played an important role during the popular revolt that brought down the right-wing government of Aznar. One of the first things the newly elected socialist government did was to withdraw the troops from Iraq. Of the big powers in the UN Security Council, only Blairs government in Britain gave its full support to Bush. And Blair had to pay a political price for his loyalty. At one with the protest movement, 121 Labour MPs voted against him on the war issue in March 2003. Foreign Secretary Robin Cook was the first of several ministers to resign, creating a sensation. Cook delivered a tough resignation speech, opposing the war. Of paramount importance was the fact that Blair also encountered strong resistance from the unions. The left-wing candidate, Tony Woodley, was elected secretary general of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU), one of the largest unions in the country, in June 2003. He, and other union leaders, talked about the unions moving in and recapturing the Labour Party. After that the situation got worse for Blair. Among other things, there was a spate of resignations in protest against Blair remaining party leader. Widespread opposition to the war was not an insignificant reason for Blair resigning before he could fulfil his ambition to serve a full third term. The demonstrations had another important effect. They put pressure on fundamentalist leaders of the Muslim world. According to the fundamentalists, the principal conflict in the world is between Muslims and infidels, i.e. between Muslims on the one side and Christians and Jews on the other side. Their propaganda has been nourished by Bushs talk of a crusade, the fanatical anti-Islamic stance of especially the American right, and Harvard professor Samuel Huntingdons theories that the world is divided into civilisations the Christian West and the Islamic East which are essentially incompatible with one another.iii Although Muslim fundamentalists express a hatred of US imperialism that is shared by many other Muslims, there is no real popular support for a jihad, a holy war. The earlier Western protests against the war in Afghanistan caused a stir in Muslim countries. The demonstrations of 15 February 2003 provided further overwhelming evidence that the fundamentalists were
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wrong. Here were millions of people in Christian countries demonstrating against a war against a Muslim country. How could these people be viewed as enemies? When fundamentalists in Pakistan tried to gather a million people to march against the Iraq war on 10 March 2003, they failed, despite deep-seated opposition to the war. As Lal Khan Editor of Asian Marxist Review explained: they were at least 950 000 shortPeople were against American imperialism but they saw that the fundamentalists theories were wrong, so they refused to join their demonstration.iv Sunday 15 February was a historic day. But questions of vital importance remained. If such giant demonstrations could not stop the US what can? And, what are the causes of war? To answer these questions we delved into the history of the major wars of the twentieth century. The deeper we dug, the more we discovered facts that were not generally known about war and resistance. Therefore we decided to turn this book into an alternative historical narrative of the events spanning almost 100 years, from 1905 to 2003. It not only tells the story of those who decided upon war, but also of those who fought back. i http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15,_2003_anti-war_protest ii Pew Research Centre, 22 January 2003 iii http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_P._Huntington#The_Clash_of_Civilizations iv Lal Khan: Speech in Barcelona, July 2003

1. How to prevent war

No more deluded by reaction On tyrants only well make war The soldiers too will take strike action Theyll break ranks and fight no more. And if those cannibals keep trying To sacrifice us to their pride They soon shall hear the bullets flying Well shoot the generals on our own side. The forgotten verse of The Internationale, 1870 It would be a mistake to think that our rulers have a light-hearted attitude towards going to war. Almost any war, with the probable exception of the USA in 1983 invading Grenada with a population of less than 90 000 is to a certain extent a gamble. So many factors are involved. Nobody can ever be certain of winning. Even if one wins, the costs of maintaining peace afterwards can be prohibitive, as the Americans are discovering in Iraq. Win or lose, the prewar status quo is unlikely to return. War destroys much. In addition, war can easily turn a top dog into an underdog. Therefore there is usually a long build-up before a war. The bourgeoisie debate things among themselves, weighing the pros against the cons. Different layers within the ruling class test each others strengths and weaknesses. The armaments industry would obviously be more in favour of war, whereas those capitalists who mainly sell to consumers at home would be more inclined to peace. However, once things gel and agreement is reached by discussion or force, ranks close and preparation for war begins. The bourgeoisie then uses its money, its control over media and if necessary (and possible) the police and the courts in an attempt to bring public opinion into line. At that point it becomes very difficult to stop a war, unless the continuation of war preparations, or the war itself, threatens the rule of the ruling class. The protests against the war in Iraq were organised by a loose-knit network of groups and organisations that posed no direct threat to those in power in the US. The American administration could afford to ignore them. Almost a hundred years earlier, in 1905, the Swedish Labour Movement managed to stop a war. They had the organised strength that made the Swedish ruling class understand that they had more to lose than they could gain by invading Norway. Their methods would work today. The 1905 union crisis Sweden and Norway had been joined in a union since 1814, but it was never popular among Norwegians. Before that, Norway had been in a union with Denmark. The Danes, however, following their defeat in the Napoleonic War, were obliged to relinquish Norway to Sweden. By force of arms, the Swedish monarchy made Norway accept this, though the Swedish king was to have a less influential role there than at home. Later the rift between the two countries deepened.

Addressing a rally on May 1 1895, Hjalmar Branting, who was later to become Swedens first Social Democratic Prime Minister, raged against the warmongers who were preparing to go to war to stop Norwegian independence. He called the press propaganda criminal incitement to fratricide, adding that even if this terrible prospect should become reality and Swedish riflemen are given the order to march westwards, such a move would render all normal regulations and obligations null and void. In such circumstances, someone among the general populace may be tempted to try and prevent of his own accord, by means of a single bullet, the order to fire tens of thousands of bullets whose aim is to maim and slaughter friends and brothers. Branting was put on trial for lese-majesty (criminal disrespect of royalty), and delivered a crushing speech in his own defence, denying all the accusations, arguing that it was not he who was guilty of criminal actions but those who were disseminating war propaganda. On a split verdict, the Town Court sentenced him to three months imprisonment. The Appeals Court was equally split but confirmed the sentence, and finally the Supreme Court reduced it to a fine of 500 crowns. By 1905 the situation between Sweden and Norway was precarious. In February of that year, Swedens Social Democrats held a party congress. Among the invited guests were representatives of the Norwegian Labour Party, who spoke in favour of workers unity and advocated dissolving the union between the two countries. This time, Branting, who had been elected Swedens first Social Democratic MP shortly after his trial, opposed such a course. He argued that the principal task was to stave off the Russian peril, meaning Tsarist imperialism.2 But the Norwegians speeches were met with a storm of applause from the delegates, and Branting had to yield. Kata Dahlstrm, a member of the Partys executive, made an oft-quoted speech affirming the right of Norway to independence: Let the Union go. The bridge uniting the workers of our two countries will never break down. The congress adopted a statement in support of Norwegian self-determination. The Swedish party and its Norwegian counterpart agreed to do all in their power to prevent war. On June 7, 1905, the Norwegian parliament, the Storting, declared the dissolution of the Union. In Sweden, the right-wing press launched a storm of propaganda. The Swedish nobility and officer corps wanted to march west and teach the Norwegians a lesson. In all the better taverns, there was a strong air of patriotism, fuelled by an evening of punsch3 and endless renderings of the national anthem, writes Zeth Hglund, a leader of Swedens Young Social Democrats at the time, in the first volume of his memoirs. Zeth Hglund or Zta, as he was generally known in the Labour Movement, was himself to play a key role in later events. A Swedish Labour Movement historian paints a similar picture of rampant warmongering: The Crown Prince, subsequently King Gustav V, was reported by a Stockholm correspondent writing in the provincial press, to have said that a war against Norway would be a picnic. The king was visited by officers, clergymen and others pressing for war. The political right demanded that the order to mobilise be issued.4 Response of the Labour Movement In 1905 there was no talk of firing a single bullet without orders, as Branting had put it in 1895. The working class had grown in strength and was confident of its ability to stop the war through collective action. Throughout the country, the Social Democrats held meetings and demonstrations in defence of peace. The party district of Skne, which had 20 000 members,
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sent a message from its conference to the Norwegian Labour Party expressing its warmest support for the Norwegian peoples struggle for independence. The newspaper Arbetet wrote that Swedish workers would rather make common cause with Norway and crush the tyrants in Sweden than serve the interests of the Swedish upper class.5 Most active of all were Swedens Young Social Democrats, who held their first congress on 11-13 June, in the middle of the crisis. On its opening day, the meeting condemned the pro-war campaign and organised a demonstration during the lunch break. Zta, in consultation with others, wrote a manifesto Down Weapons! - adopted unanimously by the congress. The Young Social Democrats then sang the Norwegian national anthem, Ja, vi elsker, and called for three cheers for the workers union that could never be broken. Zta, as the author of Down Weapons!, was later tried for incitement to mutiny and disobedience. Despite the protests of the Labour Movement, he was sentenced to eight months imprisonment, which was later reduced to six months by an appeals court. Still suffering badly from a serious fever, he served his sentence at Malm Prison between Midsummer Eve and Christmas Eve 1906. The manifesto offered a clear strategy. It began by declaring that the workers of Sweden would never take up arms against Norway. It also urged Swedens young workers to refuse to report for military duty should they receive call-up papers. If weapons were to be directed at anyone, it was not at the Norwegians. The manifesto further declared that the workers of Sweden are prepared to down tools throughout the land in order to prevent war. The threat of war was to be met by a refusal to serve in the military and by a general strike. The manifesto ended by calling for mass meetings to be held all over the country. In both Sweden and Norway, the manifesto was printed in the newspapers of the Labour Movement and distributed in the form of 100 000 leaflets. Its effect was sensational. The threats to refuse military duty and stage a general strike came at a time of severe classconflict. The general strike of 1902 in support of universal suffrage was fresh in memory, and the period since the autumn of 1904 had been full of conflicts. Strikes and demonstrations were legion. Both the LO (Trade Union Confederation) and government agencies spoke of a state of war. In January, a great wave of strikes in Russia 1905 also aroused enthusiasm and gave the anti-war movement hope. When a peaceful demonstration of 140 000 people in St Petersburg was met by a rain of bullets from the Tsarist regime, protest meetings and demonstrations were held all over Sweden. In the atmosphere that prevailed at the time, the strategy put forward by the Young Social Democrats was clearly not to be dismissed as a collection of empty phrases. Had the military gone into Norway, there would have been a mutiny, and a Swedish revolution would not have been far away. On June 20, King Oscar II spoke from the throne to an extraordinary session of the Riksdag, the Swedish parliament. He made clear that Sweden would refrain from meeting injustice with force. The Labour Movement had won! There was no war with Norway. International struggle, international organisation The actions of the Scandinavian Labour Movement during the Union crisis set an example for the international Labour Movement. But it was also the result of being part of an international organisation the Second (Socialist) International. Ever since Karl Marx and Friedrich
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Engels were asked by members of the first international workers organisation the League of the Just to formulate a programme, the Communist Manifesto, workers international unity had been at the centre of the Movement. The Manifesto ends with the famous lines: The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite!6 These were not just empty phrases to be repeated in solemn speeches but the core strategy of the whole Labour Movement right up to the First World War. The League of the Just, later renamed the Communist League, was eventually dissolved. In 1864 the International Working Mens Association, the organisation now known as the First International, was formed. Karl Marx wrote the Internationals first policy declaration. It soon became apparent that the First International had to formulate a policy on war. In the 19th century one war followed another as the ruling classes in various countries fought one another for power and influence and control of land. People were tired of the constant grind of war. They understood that they were the ones paying for war, through harsh taxation and being looted. Offering individual resistance was out of the question. When the call came, one had no alternative but to report for duty. To refuse was to go to prison or risk being executed. Once the workers began organising, however, they could act together. When the First International was founded, Germany and France were locked in fierce opposition. The 1868 congress in Brussels adopted a statement calling for a peoples strike to prevent the conflict sliding into war. As yet, however, the working class had no mass party to represent it, and the International proved too small to organise a general strike. War broke out between France and Germany in 1870. When France capitulated in 1871, Germanys Social Democrats staged demonstrations in support of a just peace for the French Republic, and declared their opposition to the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. The partys Central Committee was promptly arrested and charged with treason. All Labour MPs in the North German Assembly heeded the urgings of the International and voted against the issuing of war credits (i.e. the state borrowing money to finance armaments), but they were too few to get their way. After the fall of the Paris Commune in 1871, the members of the International were subjected to extreme persecution internationally. The congress they held in The Hague in 1872 was their last. Despite the closing down of the First International, the Communist Manifesto and the Internationals policy declaration from 1864 continued to guide Europes socialists. When Swedens Social Democratic Workers Party was founded it did not adopt a party programme of its own until eight years after its founding congress. As one of their leaders stated, they were in no hurry as they already had the Communist Manifesto. The Marxist current became the most pervasive in the movement. During the twenty years before the International could re-establish itself, national labour parties were launched in many European countries. In 1889, the Second International opened its Constituent Congress in Paris. The organisations that had belonged to the First International had been small and somewhat before their time.
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The Second International, however, was a mass organisation of active political struggle from the outset. A practical expression of this shift in emphasis was the decision taken in 1890 at its first congress, to organise a worldwide demonstration in support of the eight-hour working day. In honour of the Chicago workers, the demonstration took place on 1 May 1890 and became such a powerful symbol of the international workers struggle that it was decided to hold rallies every year on that day.7 As early as the turn of the century, Marxists realised that a world war was imminent. The world was being speedily carved up by competing imperialist powers. There was a virtually unbroken chain of bloody conflicts between Italy and France in North Africa, between France and Britain in Egypt, between Britain and Russia in Central Asia, between Spain and the US in the Caribbean and the Pacific, between Russia and Japan in East Asia, between Japan and Britain in China, and between the US and Japan in the Pacific. Germany was a newcomer among the great powers. Its economy had grown rapidly, but the country wielded little influence outside its own borders. This was something the German ruling class intended to change. Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Russian Revolution in 1917, writes ironically: From the standpoint of bourgeois justice and national freedom (), Germany would be absolutely right as against England and France, for she has been done out of colonies, her enemies are oppressing an immeasurably larger number of nations than she is.8 At the initiative of Rosa Luxemburg, one of the foremost leaders of both the German and the international Labour Movement, the 1900 Congress of the International in Paris adopted a resolution denouncing militarism and colonialism. In 1904, war broke out between Russia and Japan. In the middle of this war, the International held its Amsterdam congress. To the cheers of those present, Plekhanov and Katayma, the leaders of the Russian and Japanese delegations, shook hands to demonstrate the international unity of the Labour Movement. Before 1914, the Internationals spearheaded the Labour Movements fight for peace and for a socialist revolution. It was there, not nationally, that activists developed demands and strategy for the struggle. There were lively discussions and clashes between Marxist and more reformist currents (and earlier anarchists), but all agreed to fight side by side for an eight-hour working day, supporting one another when strikes were called, and joining to oppose war. Todays Socialist International is a descendent of the Second International. It is a group of labour organisations from different countries who have joined together to fight for a better society. It has statutes, congresses and programmes. But the Socialist International of today has neither the power nor the ambition to intervene in world events. Ordinary party members seldom get to hear of the organisations meetings, or let alone what is discussed there. The Swedish Labour Movements effort to stop war in 1905 was not something that they had thought up all by themselves. It was a policy that had been discussed and worked out for decades in the international Labour Movement. And the Swedish Labour Movement succeeded, although it was significantly smaller in 1905 than the Labour Movement in any developed country (and even many third world countries) today.

What gives workers organisations such a potentially unique strength? Firstly, workers have strong common interests. Most workers have no alternative but to stand together if they are to improve their living conditions. Few can escape from drudgery through other means. This is a solid base for solidarity, nationally and internationally. Secondly, despite working for competing companies, there can be no competition between people on the same assembly line, or between workers within any work-place for that matter. The very conditions of life during the eight or more hours at work per day have to be based on cooperation, if things are not going to get into a great mess. This also creates the possibility of an understanding of the power of the collective. Finally, only the organised working class have the power to stop production. Even a small section of the organised working class, such as train drivers, power-plant workers or even a few computer operators, can bring the whole of society to a standstill. These are the reasons why workers have the strength to intervene in history, if they have the will to do so. These fundamental facts have not changed to the present day. In fact, the working class is much stronger and better organised today. And due to globalisation the fate of workers in all countries is bound together even closer. All the experience of the last century confirms that workers united revolutionary struggle is the only way to end war. In subsequent chapters we shall see that there are many alternatives, but all of them end in failure whether it be supporting ones own ruling class or just cooperating with its progressive members and democratic allies; taking sides on the basis of ones own religion or ethnic origin; supporting the League of Nations or the United Nations; or Gandhis pacifist methods. Before or during all the major wars of the 20th century, there has always been the possibility of a successful working class struggle for peace. However, ever since the First World War the leadership of the Labour Movement has chosen to block that path. _________________________________ 1 During the Second World War this verse was censored in Sweden. See Wikipedia on The Internationale 2 Knut Bckstrm: Arbetarrrelsen i Sverige, 1971 3 A traditional Swedish liquor based on arrack 4 ibid 5 ibid 6 Proletarian means someone who has no property, often referred to simply as a worker. 7 Rosa Luxemburg: What Are the Origins of May Day? 1894 8 V. I. Lenin: Socialism and war, 1915

2. The First World War: The Labour Movement is Betrayed

The global historical appeal of the Communist Manifesto undergoes a fundamental revision and, as amended by Kautsky, now reads: proletarians of all countries, unite in peace-time and cut each others throats in war!1 Rosa Luxemburg 1915

During the past decades, it has almost been taken for granted that labour leaders such as Tony Blair can be the closest allies to imperialist leaders such as George Bush. In 1914, at the crucial moment when the First World War broke out, it came as a complete shock to almost everybody when the leadership of the different national sections of the Second International sided with their own bourgeoisie, and helped pit worker against worker. Ever since, the anti-war movement has been forced to fight on two fronts at the same time against war and against its own leaders. However, the betrayal in 1914 was no accident. There were material causes to it. The background As tensions between the great powers increased at the beginning of the 20th century, the international Labour Movement re-doubled its effort to present a strategy for peace. At the Internationals Stuttgart Congress in 1907, a new peace resolution was adopted unanimously and enthusiastically. It was based on a proposal from the German Social Democrat Bebel, but given a tougher wording by Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, a leader of the German Social Democrats. They also inserted an amendment that Social Democrats should utilise the crisis created by the war to hasten the overthrow of the bourgeoisie.2 And thereby end war once and for all. The resolution was re-adopted at the next congress in 1910. The Labour Movement was not alone in hoping that the International would secure peace. In 1912, an Extraordinary Congress of the International met in Basel, Switzerland. The nonsocialist government of the canton expressed the hope that the Congress would succeed in creating peace. The Swiss Church placed the great Mnster Cathedral at the disposal of the International. Some 545 delegates assembled. Everyone, both those who spoke at the meeting and those who described their experiences afterwards Viktor Adler from Austria, Peter Troelstra from Holland, Jean Jaurs from France, Fredrik Borgbjerg from Denmark and many others talked about how the workers
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were no longer an unenlightened mass without a will of their own. They would no longer let themselves be exploited by warmongers. If they were to die, it would be in defence of freedom, in a revolutionary uprising against militarism and capitalism. Yet within a matter of a week in 1914 the whole strategy collapsed like a house of cards. On June 28 1914, the Crown Prince and Princess of the Austrian empire were murdered by Serbian nationalists. Almost a month later, Austria gave Serbia an ultimatum, citing the shooting in Sarajevo. The Austrian terms were such that Serbia would be unable to consent to them all. War with Serbia meant a war with Russia, as the two countries were allies. This in turn would pull Russias traditional enemy and Austrias ally Germany into the war. And so on, until all the major powers were at war. Initially, the Social Democratic press in Germany remained faithful to the Internationals ideals. They wrote that the ultimatum was obviously a provocation, and that Austria wanted war. The labour press denounced the move and declared that Social Democrats were totally opposed to Germany entering the war. Then, on July 25, Austria declared war on Serbia, and a few days later Russia began to mobilise. In this atmosphere, the Executive Committee of the International held a meeting in Brussels on July 27 and 28 to discuss the Social Democratic position. This was when some in the Internationals leadership began to waver. The Austrian Social Democrat Viktor Adler declared that it was pointless for the Labour Movement to take any kind of action. He was worried that we run the danger of destroying thirty years of work without any political result if the Austrians organised against the war. And he wondered is it not dangerous to encourage Serbia from inside our own country? 3 Tragically, six days later the Serbian socialist MP Dragisa Lapevi, probably unaware of Adlers speech, argued in Parliament against war credits and expressed his confidence that the Serbian and Austrian Socialists would take a common stand against war.4 The two socialist MPs in the Serbian Parliament were the only Socialist deputies in belligerent countries, apart from Russian, to vote against war credits. In early August, the German government sought the approval of the Reichstag for the issuing of war credits. The Social Democratic parliamentary group held a vote on what position to take. Of the 111 members of the German Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD), only fifteen were prepared to abide by the strategy of the International and vote against the war credits. A day later, these dissenters bowed to the majority, and a unanimous parliamentary group subsequently voted in favour. After that vote there was no turning back, world war became inevitable. When Lenin and LeonTrotsky, the other main leader of the Russian Revolution, read about this, they thought the newspaper that stated this was a forgery, published to provoke war. The turnaround had come as bolt from the blue to them, as it had to many others. The Social Democrats in the Reichstag had not been duped into adopting a new stance on the war issue. The power game being played out in Europe was openly described in the White Book (official report) that the government presented to the Reichstag and to which the Social
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Democratic parliamentary group had full access. It showed that the German government had pushed Austria into presenting Serbia with an ultimatum. And they were fully aware that Austrias conduct towards Serbia would lead to war. On the day the White Book was published, the German government also informed the Social Democratic parliamentary group that the German army was poised to march into Belgium. A country that obviously had nothing to do with the assassination of the Austrian Crown Prince. To the general public the German government presented its war of aggression as a case of self-defence. The threat was Russian tyranny. The government claimed it had to protect German independence. Rosa Luxemburg was not surprised at this. Throughout history, she noted, governments had claimed they were waging war to protect their country. This legend is as inextricably a part of the game of war as powder and lead. The game is old. Only that the Social Democratic Party could play it is new. 5 Frances leading socialist and anti-militarist, Jean Jaurs, was murdered in Paris soon after returning home from the ECs July meeting in Brussels. When the news came that the German Social Democrats had retreated from their position, the French and Belgian Social Democrats also voted to grant their respective governments war credits. Eventually, almost all of Europe was involved, and the US eventually joined the fighting as well. The outbreak of the First World War spelled the end of the 2nd International. Privileges How could this have happened so quickly and unexpectedly? The carving up of the world into colonial empires during the decades leading up to the First World War led to a long period of relatively rapid economic growth in Europe. The Labour Movement was able to take advantage of this. Political and social reforms were achieved through struggle. A layer of the working class raised its living standards, above all the more skilled and educated workers. Previously they had been in the forefront of the class struggle. For them the class struggle lost some of its sharpness, and they reduced their pressure on the leadership. The organisations and publications of the Labour Movement grew strong during the economic upturn. The very success of the Labour Movement meant that it began to attract individuals from classes other than the working class. Some genuinely wanted to further the emancipation of the working class, but others just saw it as a means to further their own careers. Most party members were skilled workers and craftsmen. Slightly less than 15% of the members were unskilled workers. Almost 10% of the members of the German Social Democratic Party were self-employed.6 This gave the leadership even more leeway to pursue pro-capitalist policies. However, the most important reason for the change in policies of the leadership was that the movement was soon in a position to offer some of its members employment and official posts. By 1914 the German Labour Movement employed 4010 officials, most of them on salaries considerably above the workers wages.7 In addition, the advent of parliamentarism gave the upper echelons of the Labour Movement access to a lifestyle very different from that of an ordinary worker. The unelected officials together with the elected leadership made up the bureaucracy of the Labour Movement a privileged caste that acted more and more

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independently of those they represented. This was expressed ideologically in the attempts by Eduard Bernstein, a leading German social democrat, to revise Marxism. He was criticised for this by Karl Kautsky, the ideological leader of the German Social Democratic Party and the Second International. For this Kautsky was internationally respected. When Rosa Luxemburg, who worked closely with Kautsky, attempted to point out that he was in fact quite timid when it came to the practical struggle, Lenin thought she was exaggerating. When the First World War broke out, Kautsky used his authority to stop the anti-war movement. While almost all of the leadership of the Second International had continued to pay lip service to Marxism, most of them had reduced Marxism to an empty shell. When things came to a head, because of the outbreak of war, these leaders hesitated barely a moment before siding with the capitalists. These bureaucrats would have been placed in a difficult position if they opposed the war. Under the strategy developed by the International transforming the anti-war struggle into a struggle against the capitalist system as a whole they would quite likely have been accused of treason and imprisoned. There had been plenty of evidence of that in previous struggles. The Social Democratic leaders in Germany, Austria, France and many other countries were no longer prepared to expose themselves to such risks. Instead they abandoned the struggle. In many countries, the Social Democratic leaders declared a party truce (the suspension of all party activities) and collaborated with royalist rulers and bourgeois governments. They pledged to put the class struggle on hold for the duration of the war. They may have been promised or hoped to gain reforms and a greater say in political affairs in exchange for siding with the government. However, deprivation and death was all workers got out of the war. The International was paralysed by its own leaders. There were no congresses held where members could pass judgement on the policies of their leaders or remove them. All the resolutions that spelled out what the leadership should do where turned on their head by a leadership that had no democratic mandate to do so at all. The only mandate they received was from the bourgeoisie in their own country. The bourgeoisie and the media wasted no time in elevating the bureaucracy of the Labour Movement to heroes of the nation. The leadership lapped it all up. There was no way that the working class could rid of its old leadership and create a new leadership, in the course of the few days which the betrayal took. Due to the betrayal, patriotism was able to celebrate triumphs when the war broke out in 1914. The normal pattern of life was disrupted and people gathered at mass meetings to demonstrate their support for the nations government. Many volunteered for service at the front, and people stood at the side of the road and cheered when the soldiers marched off. The factory workers and farm labourers who sallied forth were not out to seize colonies, but a war naturally means that if you choose not to defend yourself you run the risk of your country being occupied by a hostile foreign power. The working class in Germany had secured more extensive democratic rights than the workers of any other country, and had no wish to be exposed to a Tsarist dictatorship. French workers were of similar mind. They had no wish to be hounded by Prussian Junkers (the German landowning nobility). For a time, the forces unleashed at the outbreak of war wiped out internationalism.

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Nevertheless, enthusiasm for the war was at most superficial. The ordinary soldiers view of the enemy was very different from that taken by the officers. Stuck in trenches that were often no more than 50-100 metres from enemy lines, they soon realised that the soldiers in the opposing trenches were suffering in the same way as they were. A British soldier described the situation: We hated their guts when they killed any of our friends; then we really did dislike them intensely. But otherwise we joked about them and I think they joked about us. And we thought, well, poor so-and-sos, theyre in the same kind of muck as we are.8 Another soldier, Andrew Todd, a telegrapher with the Royal Engineers, described in a letter home how a live-and-let-live attitude had developed at the front: Perhaps it will surprise you to learn that the soldiers in both lines of trenches have become very pally with each other. The trenches are only 60 yards9 apart at one place, and every morning about breakfast time one of the soldiers sticks a board in the air. As soon as this board goes up all firing ceases, and men from either side draw their water and rations. All through the breakfast hour, and so long as this board is up, silence reigns supreme, but whenever the board comes down the first unlucky devil who shows even so much as a hand gets a bullet through it.10 On Christmas Eve 1914, many German soldiers stuck Christmas trees on top of the trenches. The entire German line was lit by candles placed on trees. At first, many British soldiers suspected it was a trick, but soon the celebrations turned into fraternising. Soldiers shouted Christmas greetings to one another across the divide, and the enemies sang Christmas carols to one another. After a while, soldiers began leaving their trenches to gather together in no mans land. It was usually the Germans who took the initiative. This was probably because prior to the war the German Labour Movement had had a clearer internationalist ideology than its British counterpart. An unofficial truce developed, particularly along the southern section of the Ypres Salient in Belgium, but also in other parts of the Western Front.11 In some places, the truce lasted until midnight on Christmas Day, while in others it lasted through to New Years Day. We shook hands, wished each other a Merry Xmas, and were soon conversing as if we had known each other for years. We were in front of their wire entanglements and surrounded by Germans Fritz and I in the centre talking, and Fritz occasionally translating to his friends what I was saying. We stood inside the circle like street-corner orators. Soon most of our company (A Company), hearing that I and some others had gone out, followed us. () What a sight little groups of Germans and British extending almost the length of our front! Out in the darkness we could hear laughter and see lighted matches, a German lighting a Scotchmans cigarette and vice versa, exchanging cigarettes and souvenirs. Where they couldnt talk the language they were making themselves understood by signs, and everyone seemed to be getting on nicely. Here we were laughing and chatting to men whom only a few hours before we were trying to kill!12. An important reason for the truce was that both sides wanted to collect and bury their dead, whose rotting corpses littered the land between the lines. In a few cases, they even held joint funeral services. Perhaps the most astonishing instance was a soccer game played in the middle of no mans
14

land between the Bedfordshire Regiment and German soldiers. The Germans were leading 32 when the game had to be called off because the ball had been punctured by a barbed wire entanglement. Such demonstrations of brotherhood were not at all to the liking of the officers. Strict instructions were issued banning all further socialising with the enemy, and the following Christmas the officers ordered artillery bombardments to be stepped up to keep the soldiers in the trenches.13 The Christmas truce in 1914 showed that the patriotic hysteria which prevailed at that early stage could have been overcome had the Labour Movements leaders come out strongly against the war. As they did not, four years of totally meaningless suffering and death ensued. As the warring parties were equally matched in military terms, the Western Front was quickly locked in a war of attrition. The soldiers lay in muddy trenches, shooting at the enemy trenches opposite for month after month and year after year. From time to time, the generals sought to achieve a breakthrough by sending their men over the top, and they occasionally succeeded in shifting the front a few kilometres at a terrible cost in human life. Two of the best-known battles were those at Verdun and at the Somme in 1916. The latter lasted for four months and the two sides lost a total of one million men.14 To break the deadlock, more and more divisions were brought up. By 1917, four million allies were ranged against two and a half million Germans on the Western Front. New weapons were introduced as well gas, flame-throwers and tanks. But no decisive breakthrough could be achieved. In all, an estimated eight and a half million people lost their lives as a direct result of military activity in the First World War. Some 21 million were wounded and seven million were reported captured or missing.
Countries Total mobilized Died in combat Injured Imprisoned or missing Total affected Total affected as % of total mobilized

and other war-related causes Entente powers Russia France British 12 000 000 1 700 000 8 410 000 8 904 467 1 357 800 908 371 4 950 000 4 266 000 2 090 212 2 500 000 537 000 191 652 9 150 000 6 160 800 3 190 235

76.3 76.3 35.8

15

Empire Italy USA Japan Romania Serbia Belgium Greece Portugal 5 615 000 4 355 000 800 000 750 000 707 343 267 000 230 000 100 000 650 000 126 000 300 907 335 706 45 000 13 716 5 000 7 222 3 000 947 000 234 300 3 120 000 133 148 44 686 21 000 13 751 10 000 600 000 4 500 1 80 000 152 958 34 659 1 000 12 318 7 000 2 197 000 364 800 210 535 706 331 106 93 061 17 000 33 291 20 000 39.1 8.2 0.2 71.4 46.8 34.9 11.7 33.3 40.0

Montenegro 50 000 Total Central powers Germany AustriaHungary Turkey Bulgaria Total All 2 850 000 1 200 000

42 188 810 5 152 115

12 831 004 4 121 090

22 104 209 52.3

11 000 000 1 773 700 7 800 000 1 200 000

4 216 058 3 620 000

1 152 800 2 200 000

7 142 558 7 020 000

64.9 90.0

325 000 87 500

400 000 152 390 8 388 448

250 000 27 029 3 629 829

975 000 266 919

34.2 22.2

22 850 000 3 386 200 65 038 810 8 538 315

15 404 477 67.4 37 508 686 57.6

21 219 452 7 750 919

Source: www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWdeaths.htm

The treachery of the Social Democratic leaders in 1914 was a turning point for the international Labour Movement, which divides thereafter into two distinct ideological tendencies reformism and revolutionary Marxism. The present leadership of the Swedish Social Democratic Party claims that the break in the international Labour Movement between revolutionaries and reformists occurred in 1917, because of the undemocratic Russian Revolution. This assertion does not correspond to the facts. The Second International split because many of its leaders supported the butchery of the First World War and others continued to stand for the policies democratically decided upon in congress after congress. The Russian Revolution was simply the fulfilment of plans drawn up by the International and its organisations.
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___________________________________________________________________________ _______ 1 Rosa Luxemburg: Rebuilding the International, 1915 2 V. I.Lenin: The International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart, 1907 3 Documents: 1907-1916: Lenins Struggle for a Revolutionary International 4 ibid 5 Rosa Luxemburg: The Crisis of Social Democracy, 1916 6 Gregory Zinoviev: The Social roots of the Split, 1916 7 ibid 8 Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton: Christmas Truce 23, 1984, quoted in Jennifer Rosenberg: Peace in No Mans Land, Christmas 1914 (http://history1900s.about.com/library/weekly/aa122100a.htm) 9 Approximately fifty-five metres 10Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton: Christmas Truce 23, 1984, quoted in Jennifer Rosenberg: Peace in No Mans Land, Christmas 1914 (http://history1900s.about.com/library/weekly/aa122100a.htm) 11 www.firstworldwar.com/features/christmastruce.htm 12 Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton: Christmas Truce 23 13 www.firstworldwar.com/features/christmastruce.htm 14 Bra Bckers lexikon

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3. The First World War: Resistance rises from the ashes

The new International is rising up, as logical as a law of nature, with its leaders if they follow us, without its leaders if they hesitate, against its leaders if they oppose us.1 Stormklockan, the organ of the Swedish Young Social Democrats 1909-1917 The outset of the First World War was a massive defeat for the international Labour Movement. Its leaders joined up with the capitalists, the Second International dissolved, parliamentary democracy was severely curtailed, and millions of young men were plunged into a blood bath. Yet regardless of all these difficulties the anti-war movement came to life again. A new beginning In March 1915, socialists from countries at war with each other gathered for the first time since the collapse of the Second International. Clara Zetkin, a leader of the German Social Democratic Party, had organised several international womens conferences for the Second International. Now she convened a conference at Berne in Switzerland. Twenty-nine women activists from Germany, England, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Russia met in secret in Switzerland. The elected leadership of the Second International, the International Socialist Bureau or ISB, was hostile, and the German and French party leadership forbade its members to attend. The Conference Manifesto was widely distributed. 200 000 copies circulated illegally in Germany.2 A month later young socialists met. A conference was held, despite the opposition of the official leadership of the Socialist Youth International, of youth delegates from nine different national youth organisations. The conference voted to re-establish the Socialist Youth International and set up a secretariat in Zurich. The Liebknecht fund was launched to pay for the work, and a quarterly magazine Jugend-Internationale was published. The Youth International organised the first international day of protest in October 1915. The next important step, in September 1915, was a conference convened in Zimmerwald, a small Swiss village. The initiative was taken by the leadership of the Italian Socialist Party. At first they tried to convince the ISB to organise it, but the ISB would not be budged. It was attended by official representatives from parties and party factions. Delegates from Britain and some from France were unable to attend because their governments stopped them from
18

leaving the country. In contrast to the giant rallies that had taken place before the war, only scattered remnants of the International attended the Swiss meeting. The conference adopted two policy statements. One was a manifesto written by Leon Trotsky, urging the workers of Europe to end the truce in the class struggle and oppose government war credits. The Manifesto called for peace without any annexation of territory, based on self-determination for all. The Manifesto was adopted unanimously, but there was a group of delegates who considered it insufficient. They called themselves the Zimmerwald Left and consisted of Vladimir Lenin and Gregory Zinoviev representing the Russian Social Democrats, Karl Radek representing the Poles, Paul Winter the Latvians, and Ture Nerman and Zta Hglund for the youth organisations in Norway and Sweden. They issued a statement that they voted for the Manifesto because they saw it as a call to struggle and because we want to march forward in this struggle arm in arm with the other sections of the International. However, they added that they considered that the Manifesto should have contained a condemnation of all the social democratic leaders who supported the war. Nor did they think the Manifesto explained clearly enough the methods that should be used to fight war. Few people attended the Zimmerwald conference, and those who did were not totally in agreement. Yet they managed to draw up a set of fundamental guidelines for the continuation of the struggle, and several of those present would in time play a key role in their respective countries. The ideas that emerged from Zimmerwald provided the basis for a mass struggle against the war, not least in Sweden, Russia, and Germany. The anti-war struggle in Sweden In the years prior to the First World War, the Swedish monarchy, right-wing parties and military had been urging for the country to rearm. In 1910, the right-wing government initiated negotiations with the German government regarding a Swedish-German military pact against Russia. This drive for rearmament came to be known as activism. The campaign sought an active foreign policy or, as it was phrased later, courageous backing of the German side.3 Besides agitating in the press and at meetings, the campaign consisted of fund-raising events to help finance the building of armoured ships. It enjoyed the support of King Gustav V and of his German-born queen, Victoria. Activism culminated in a peasants rally in Stockholm on 6 February 1914, attended by 30 000 peasants and others from different parts of Sweden. They demanded that Swedens defence be strengthened immediately, in view of the tense world situation. The King appeared in the palace courtyard to declare his support for the demonstrators. The Swedish Labour Movement had learnt from the events of 1905, and reacted swiftly. Two days later, the Stockholm branch of the Social Democratic Party organised a workers rally in response to the peasants rally. Despite the cold grey weather, some 50 000 people marched to the government offices to demand that military spending be cut and to protest against the monarchy. The police identified the Social Democratic mayor of the city as one of those who had cried Long live the republic! For this, he was taken to court and fined 100 crowns. The sum was collected in 1 re coins (one hundredth of a crown) at meetings around the country. Among the workers, there was a fighting spirit and a belief in victory, wrote Zta Hglund,
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describing the period immediately after the march. The Social Democrats launched a huge campaign against the rearmament propaganda and the royal coup. During the Easter weekend alone, the Young Social Democrats held 400 meetings to protest against militarism. The halls were packed and discussion usually continued far into the night.4 But as war approached, the leaders of the Labour Movement came under increasing pressure to fall in behind the nation, i.e. the bourgeoisie. On the day war broke out, Hjalmar Branting, leader of the Social Democratic Party, addressed an election meeting. There, and in a telegram he later dispatched to the rightist government then in power, he declared that in the face of war, the domestic social quarrels of each and every nation, however severe they may be as a result of class divisions, must for the moment be of secondary consideration. Just like fellow bureaucrats across the continent, he was offering a party truce to the bourgeoisie. However, Branting could go no further than that. The struggle of workers, and the strong and experienced opposition in his party, again blocked the Swedish governments intention to go to war. So a compromise was made. There was a truce, Branting remained party leader, and Sweden stayed neutral. This was the origin of Swedish neutrality, a policy that all governments were forced to pursue at least officially for the rest of the century. However, the matter was not settled once and for all. The right-wing parties continued to press for Swedish participation in the war, and the Labour Movement continued to resist. Early in 1916, there were rumours that a general mobilisation was planned. In response, the Miners Union discussed going on strike and refusing the call-up. There were calls within the Labour Movement for the Social Democrats to convene an extra congress to discuss what action to take. The Young Social Democrats wrote to the party executive requesting this. After several months without a reply, they tired of waiting and called a workers peace congress themselves. They invited all organisations that supported workers action against warmongers to attend. At about the same time, an article published in Stormklockan, the paper of the Young Socialists, caused a major stir. Erik Hedn, one of the most respected Social Democratic journalists of the day, wrote under the heading Time for a general strike. We either act now or go to war!5 The invitation to the workers peace congress and the article in Stormklockan drew criticism from the Social Democratic party executive. They threatened the organisers with expulsion from the party. A members meeting of the Stockholm branch was held to discuss the situation, attended by 600 people. On one side stood Branting and on the other Erik Hedn and Zeth Hglund. Hedn won a slight majority for his proposal that the meeting issue a statement regretting that the party executive had failed to call a peace congress and expressing sympathy for the Young Social Democrats initiative in doing so. The meeting also urged the party executive and the national secretariat to convene an extra congress without further ado. The workers peace conference organised by the Young Social Democrats was held in Stockholm in March 1916. It was well attended, not only by its own supporters but also by local party branches, trade unions and temperance lodges. The 265 delegates represented organisations with a total of 40 000 members. A manifesto was adopted calling on the Labour Movement to respond to the plans for war with its own plans for mass extra-parliamentary actions. Two days after the congress ended, charges of treason were brought against Hglund, Hedn and Ivan Oljelund. The inclusion of Oljelund in these proceedings was remarkable as
20

he had been the only delegate at the congress to oppose a general strike! The trial was a farce. But lack of evidence did not prevent the court from sentencing the accused to imprisonment and the forfeiture of their civil rights. Once again, those who had fought for peace were forced to go to jail for their views. Zeth Hglund faced not only three years imprisonment, but loss of his seat in Parliament. Protests poured in from at home and abroad. On appeal, Hedn was found not guilty, while Hglunds and Oljelunds prison sentences were reduced to 12 months and eight months respectively. While Hglund was in jail, Branting took the opportunity of sacking him as a full-time official for the party. Russia: revolution stops war In Russia, the world war immediately sparked off protests. In many parts of Russia, workers went on strike on mobilisation day. Both the Bolshevik and Menshevik Social Democratic6 deputies voted in the Duma (Russian parliament) against funding the war effort. The Bolsheviks also waged a campaign in factories and elsewhere, which led to the entire Bolshevik parliamentary group being deported to Siberia. Nonetheless, the Bolsheviks continued to fight against the war, and they strove to bring down the government. They got widespread support. The heavy cost of the war was felt throughout Russian society. As the war progressed, food became increasingly scarce. In early 1917, protests grew in strength and a number of strikes broke out. On March 8 (February 28 under the old Russian calendar), the women of Petrograd took to the streets, demanding bread and peace. Women working at the citys textile factories went on strike, carrying other groups of workers with them. Within a few days, the movement had led to a general strike. On March 11, the Tsar ordered the military to open fire on demonstrators and 40 people were killed. The same evening, one of the citys military garrisons mutinied in protest at the decision to attack the workers. The following morning, the mutiny spread throughout the regiment. When other regiments were brought in to quell the uprising, they joined the mutineers. As in the revolutionary period of 1905, Soviets (workers councils) were set up. The Soviets were both local and regional in character. Workers, soldiers, and peasants elected representatives to them. The movement spread across the country and the Tsar had no option but to resign. This became known as the February Revolution. Before abdicating, the Tsar appointed Prince Lvov to head the government, the Council of Ministers. He was soon replaced by Alexander Kerensky. Neither was willing to end the war. Instead, a major offensive was launched in the summer of 1917. This triggered spontaneous uprisings against the government in Petrograd and Moscow, but as the revolts were confined to the cities, the government was able to suppress them. After that defeat, the movement lost impetus for a while. The power of the Soviets was weakened and the Bolshevik Party, which had been legalised at the time of the February revolution, was once against outlawed. However, the movement soon regained strength. Peasants began to seize the property of landowners. Faith in the unelected provisional government diminished. Many began to place greater trust in the governing bodies they themselves built up. In August, there were 600

21

Soviets in the country, representing 23 million voters.7 By October there were 900 Soviets.8 Many regiments declared that they would no longer take orders from the government but would answer only to the Soviets. In practice, this meant that the revolution had been successfully completed as power now lay with the elected Soviets. When the Second PanRussian Congress of the Soviets was held on 5 November. 9 the Bolsheviks were in a majority. Of the 650 delegates attending the congress, 390 supported the Bolsheviki.10 The storming and occupation of the Winter Palace (commonly referred to as the October Revolution) on the night from 6 to 7 November was not much of a storming at all. There was hardly any opposition. More people died during the making of Eisensteins classic film about the revolution, October, than in the actual revolution. The fall of the Winter Palace merely swept away one of the vestiges of power of the old regime. When this was announced at the Second Congress, a decree was adopted transferring all power to the Soviets of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants Deputies. After the October Revolution, the socialist government immediately began honouring its promises. It was well aware that attempts would be made to bring down the new regime, and believed that if peasants were given their land, workers were given control of their factories, oppressed nationalities were given self-determination, and everybody peace, the revolution would be better equipped to stave off counter-revolutionary attacks. On November 28 1917, the Bolshevik-led government negotiated a truce along the entire Eastern Front, and in early December peace talks with Germany began in Brest-Litovsk. The main opposition parties, the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries, argued strongly in favour of continuing the war. They justified this by referring to Russias obligations towards her old allies on the Western Front (Britain, France and others), and patriotism: Germany and the other Central Powers were occupying large areas of western Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic States. Prior to the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks had unanimously agreed that if the working class took control of Russia, all the warring parties were to be offered a just peace without any annexation of territory or payment of war damages. Should the imperialist powers refuse to accept this, the Bolsheviks would defend the socialist state while at the same time advocating and supporting revolt against the imperialist powers. They argued that this line would most benefit the struggle for international socialism. Most of the Bolshevik leaders continued to pursue this line after the October Revolution. However, when Germany refused to agree to a just peace, Lenin realised that the Russian army was no longer in a condition to continue the war. Soldiers, who were often peasants, hurried home to make sure they would not be left out when the Churchs and the landowners property was parcelled out. The land-reform decree had hastened the disintegration of the army. As Lenin saw it, a separate peace with the German generals, even if it were achieved on extremely unfavourable terms, would hasten the socialist revolution in Germany and the rest of Europe. In particular, it would ensure that a valuable example was set: in the East, a

22

socialist Soviet state in peace, and in the West, two imperialist blocs locked in bloody war. There was, of course, a risk that an end to hostilities on the Eastern Front would make it easier for Germany to wage war on the Western Front, thus encouraging chauvinism in Germany. Stalin and Zinoviev, who supported Lenins call for an immediate peace, argued that the Russian revolution was worth saving even if such a move delayed the German revolution. Lenin was forced to dissociate himself openly and categorically from this line of thinking. He retorted that the German revolution was more important than the Russian, as a revolution in an advanced capitalist state would be of much greater benefit to the working class of the world.11 Trotsky took a position midway between Lenin and those that wanted to wage a revolutionary war. His position became known as neither war nor peace. He argued that the Russian soldiers should simply lay down their arms and leave the front; without the Soviet government signing a humiliating peace agreement. This would show the workers of the world that Russia had peaceful intentions and was unwilling to sign an unjust pact. In fact, this policy was adopted by the Bolsheviks for a brief period. But when the German troops continued to advance eastwards despite the refusal of the Russian troops to fight, Trotsky sided with Lenin. The international Labour Movement, he thought, would understand that the Russian government had no alternative. At a meeting of the Bolsheviks party executive, Lenins line was approved by the narrowest of margins. On 3 March, the government signed an agreement with Germany and the Central Powers on less favourable terms than those originally offered by the Germans. Russia was to pay war damages of 300 million gold roubles and was also to concede an area of land equivalent to a quarter of its pre-war territory. Southern Russia and Ukraine, both of which had also been drawn into the revolution and had active workers councils, were taken over by Germany.12 The Russian Bolsheviks showed that the congress decision of the International could be followed. They carried out a socialist revolution and they brought the war to an end. However, the programme of the International was a programme for the international Labour Movement as a whole. The Bolsheviks alone could only partially implement it. Although they made peace, they were unable to push through the just peace they wanted. For that they needed the help of the other leaders of the Second International. German resistance to the war In Germany, resistance to the war was organised by left Social Democrats led by Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Clara Zetkin and Franz Mehring. At first, they were isolated and under severe pressure. When the first vote for war credits was to be taken in the German Parliament, Liebknecht opposed it at a meeting of the partys parliamentary group, but bowed to the party whip and voted in favour on 4 August, 1914. Subsequently, having been criticised by a group of industrial workers with leading positions in the Stuttgart party organisation he acknowledged that he had been deeply shaken and that you are quite right in criticising me for voting for credits. When the German government again asked the Reichstag for more money to finance the war effort, Karl Liebknecht was the only MP to vote against.13 In his speech to the Reichstag, he called for a swift peace without further territorial conquest.

23

In the spring of 1915, the German Left started a new newspaper, Die Internationale, in which Rosa Luxemburg wrote an editorial calling for the reconstruction of the International. The government immediately banned the newspaper, and charges of treason were brought against Luxemburg, Zetkin and Mehring. Rosa Luxemburg was already serving a prison sentence at the time, having been convicted before the war for inciting people to refuse the call-up. In December 1915, a score of Social Democratic MPs voted against further war credits. In January 1916, the supporters of Die Internationale founded a left faction in the German Social Democratic Party the Spartacus League. On Mayday the Spartacists headed a demonstration of 10 000 in Berlin. Karl Liebknecht spoke on the theme Down with the war. Down with the Government. He was immediately arrested and sentenced to two and a half years in prison. Widespread protests followed. In Berlin, 55 000 workers from the citys ammunition factories came out on strike. In other places, too, strikes and demonstrations were organised. Thousands of workers were imprisoned or sent off to war, or both. Consequently, socialist propaganda reached the soldiers at the front as well.14 As the anti-war movement spread, the chauvinist leadership of the German Social Democratic Party, SPD, felt more and more threatened. So it expelled everybody who voiced any opposition. In April 1917 those expelled formed the Independent Social Democratic Party (Unabhngige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or USPD). Even old Social Democratic leaders such as Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky, who had become more critical of the war as popular support for it faded, joined the USPD. Rosa Luxemburgs and Karl Liebknechts Spartacists operated as an independent revolutionary group within the USPD. The leadership of the old SPD a party that while diminishing in size was still larger than the USPD was led by careerists such as Friedrich Ebert and Philip Scheidemann. Ebert was a monarchist and detested the revolution like the plague. In his appeals to party officials he urged them to show loyalty to the fatherland. 15 The German war machine had been in steady decline since the United States entered the war. It was also becoming increasingly difficult to maintain supply lines to both fronts. In July 1917, a majority in the German Reichstag called for an unconditional peace. The government manoeuvred the resolution off the agenda and the war continued. The Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917 effectively led to the withdrawal of Russia from the War, but the defeat of Germany on the Western Front remained a certainty. By 1918, German troops were forced to retreat in large numbers, and the General Staff also called for peace negotiations. Kaiser Wilhelms Chancellor still refused. Mutiny and uprising A wave of unrest swept the country. At the end of October, sailors in Kiel mutinied when their ship was ordered out on a suicide mission. The sailors disarmed their officers and returned to port, where 580 of them were jailed. The response was immediate: 40 000 sailors and dock workers protested and a general strike developed. Soon, a council of workers and soldiers was in control of the entire city.16 From Kiel, the uprising spread to Hamburg, Lbeck, Munich and many more cities. As in Russia in 1905 and 1917, democratic councils of workers and soldiers emerged in the course of the struggle. On 7 November 1918, the Council of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants in
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Munich announced that it had taken control. They appealed to the citizens of Munich: We ask all of you to help, so that the inevitable transition may be effected quickly, easily and peacefully. In this age of meaningless rampant murder, we abhor all bloodshed. Every human life should be sacred. Stay calm and help us build up the new world. Socialist fratricide will no more be seen in Bavaria. The working masses will be united once again on the revolutionary base now established. Long live the Bavarian Republic! Long live peace! Long live the creative work of all people!17 On 9 November, the revolt reached the capital, Berlin. The Chancellor of the Reich announced his resignation and the abdication of the Kaiser. The Kaiser fled the country. Two days later Germany signed an armistice. Again, just like in Russia and in Sweden, it was the working class that stopped the warmongers. However, unlike in Russia, the revolution was not carried through to its conclusion. For another four years revolution and counter-revolution swayed back and forth. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were arrested by Freikorps officers and murdered.18 Many years later it emerged that Scheidemann, via the SPDs own secret police, Section 14, had put a bounty of 100 000 marks on their heads.19 The leaders that replaced them were not up to the task of leading the revolution to victory. The failure of the German Revolution meant that the road to another World War was open. ___________________________________________________________________________ 1 Zeth Hglund: Frn Branting till Lenin, 1953 2 Documents 1907 -1916: Lenins Struggle for a Revolutionary International 3 Knut Bckstrm: Arbetarrrelsen i Sverige, del 2, 1971 4 Zeth Hglund: Frn Branting till Lenin, 1953 5 Ibid. 6 Since 1903, the Russian Social Democratic Party had been split into two factions the Bolsheviks (the word means majority) and the Mensheviks (minority). In 1912, they split permanently into two parties, both of which called themselves social democratic. As all social democratic parties were forbidden by the Czar, they appeared in the Duma under other names. 7 Leon Trotsky: The History of the Russian Revolution, 1988 8 Charles Bettelheim: Class Struggles in the USSR, 1976. 9 23 October under the old Russian calendar 10 In Bolshevism, Alan Woods give an exact breakdown of who supported the forming of a Bolshevik government. 300 belonged to the Bolshevik Party. The remaining 90 either belonged to the left-wing of either the Social-Revolutionaries or the Mensheviks. 11 Alan Woods and Ted Grant: Lenin and Trotsky: What They Really Stood For, 2000

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12 Isaac Deutscher: The Prophet Armed, 1973 13 Documents: 1907-1916: Lenins Struggle for a Revolutionary International 14 Introduction by Bo Gustafsson to the 1971 Swedish edition of Rosa Luxemburgs book, The Crisis of Social Democracy 15 ibid 16 Rob Sewell: Germany: 1918-1923, from Revolution to Counter-Revolution, 1988 17 1918-19. Ein Lesebuch, 1979 18 Under the protection and command of the social democratic minister Noske, private armies were set up, as well as special legions of unemployed officers and soldiers the Freikorps to crush the revolution. 19 Paul Frlich: Rosa Luxemburg, 1939

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4. The Second World War: Hitlers rise to power could have been prevented

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. English proverb Faced with the deadly threat of Nazism, the Labour Movement had to decide how to proceed. Would it be best to seek to unite all, including the bourgeois parties, who were critical of Hitler at the expense of the Movements own policies? Or would it be better to pursue independent policies that above all united the working class against capitalism and its representatives? The Social Democratic leaders chose the first alternative and gave way to the bourgeois parties in all respects. The outcome was a disastrous defeat and eventually the Second World War and the Holocaust. The seeds are sown Nazisms road to power began in the early 1920s, in the midst of the chaos that followed the First World War and the defeat of the German working class in the Revolution of 1918-23. The First World War had been a miscalculation on the part of the German ruling class. They had counted on strengthening their influence in the world and acquiring further colonies. Instead, they were forced to hand over extensive territories. The biggest winner was their greatest rival, France, who took back Alsace and Lorraine, and also assumed administrative control of the Saar region for 15 years. The Saar coalmines were taken over by French companies. Under the terms of the peace treaty at Versailles, Germany had to admit full responsibility for the war and pay reparations totalling 132 billion gold marks, a huge sum of money at the time. In 1922, when the government of the Weimar Republic1 declared that it was unable to meet the payments, France also occupied the countrys industrial centre, the Ruhr region. In response, the government instructed its citizens to offer passive resistance. To compensate striking workers and company owners who closed down their factories, the government printed banknotes. The presses hummed night and day. When a currency reform was finally introduced in November 1923, the exchange rate was one new mark for a trillion (1 000 000 000 000) old ones.2 Inflation wiped out the savings of small depositors. The rich had fixed assets such as real estate, but those who had kept their money in the bank, above all the middle class, were ruined. The extreme right was still smarting over the ignominy of Versailles and the illusion that Germany had lost the war because it had been betrayed by a fifth column. United in its hatred of all working-class organisations, they made a number of attempts to seize power. As yet there was little popular support for fascism.
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Following the currency reform, the economy stabilised for a few years, but at the end of the twenties a new crisis developed. Unemployment began to soar. In January 1929, almost 3 million Germans were out of work. By January 1932 the figure had risen to over 6 million. Poverty and desperation wracked the country. Politics became deeply polarised. The Communist Party (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, KPD), which had been set up in 1919, attracted many new supporters in the late 1920s. On the right, Hitlers Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP) suddenly emerged as the leading force. Its growth was spectacular. From having won only 2.5% of the vote at the 1928 elections, it became the second largest party in the Reichstag in 1930, after polling more than 18%. Leading industrialists invest in Hitler After some hesitation, many of the leading German capitalists especially the owners of heavy industry decided to back Hitlers party. Their aim was to break up all working-class organisations, notably the Communist Party and the trade unions. Hitler had the ground troops for such a project. In the early 1920s, he had begun to build up a private army of Storm Troopers (Sturm Abteilung, SA), helped by a German army major, Ernst Rhm. These troops were largely drawn from the ranks of the Freikorps. Rhm also contributed money from a political fund available to the Germany army.3 In 1925, the storm troopers were joined by the SS (Schutzstaffel), Hitlers personal bodyguards. The principal task of the SA and the SS was to use force to attack meetings and demonstrations organised by political opponents. Many of the SA and SS lived in barracks and wore uniforms. The SA wore grey jackets, brown shirts (a whole consignment had been purchased from the German army, which had originally planned to use them in Africa), armbands with a swastika, peaked caps and marching boots. Keeping tens of thousands of men in food and clothing was a costly affair. Factory owners had the money. The leading capitalists of the day had initially viewed Hitler with scepticism. His rhetoric was primarily nationalistic, but was also directed against big business. The party called, among other things, for a redistribution of wealth, and put up posters showing a Nazi worker about to crush international high finance. In 1927, the prominent industrial magnate Emil Kirdorf, had a meeting with Hitler and outlined his misgivings. 4 Hitler assured him that the anti-capitalist messages were only intended as a means of gaining working-class support, and would not lead to any action. Kirdorf then proposed that Hitler write a pamphlet which could be privately distributed among the leaders of industry, describing the Nazis actual plans for the economy. The result was The Road to Resurgence, in which Hitler gave assurances that he supported private enterprise and was opposed to any real transformation of Germanys economic and social structure. Kirdoff circulated the pamphlet among his powerful friends. As a result, they were delighted. Huge sums of money were pumped into the Nazi Party, the SA and the SS. Hitler spoke later of the astoundingly successful campaign of 1930, and asked his listeners to consider what it means when thousands of speakers each have a car at their disposal and can hold 100 000 meetings a year.5 Among those who contributed funds were Krupp (Germanys largest arms industry), United Steelworks, the chemicals giant IG Farben, the head of the Bavarian Industrial Federation, the piano-manufacturer Bechstein, the Flick steel trust, the head of the German Employers Federation, von Borsig, and the head of the Ruhr coal syndicate, Kirdorf. The latter, inci28

dentally, decided that all businesses affiliated to the syndicate were to pay 5 pfennig to the Nazi Party treasury for every ton of coal they sold. The coal and steel magnate Fritz Thyssen later admitted that he had personally given Hitler a million marks. He had also brought together Hitler and the captains of industry in the Rhein-Westphalen region. Thyssen was one of the very few leaders of German big business to oppose Hitler later on, and he fled the country in 1939.6 Media magnate Alfred Hugenberg was head of the Deutschnationale Volkspartei, the DNVP, another conservative nationalist party. This party had traditionally represented big business. In 1928 he decided to throw in his lot with Hitler, to give the bourgeoisie greater strength. His support was a tremendous asset. Hugenberg owned three publishing houses, controlled 500-600 newspapers and magazines, and also had a controlling share in a news agency that supplied half of the countrys press with news and features. Seven banks and a number of paper manufacturers were also under his control.7 The business leaders who invested in Hitler got excellent returns. When he became Chancellor (Prime Minister), independent trade unions were forbidden. Wages were settled at company level. Workers collective sickness and unemployment benefit funds were abolished, and the money transferred to private insurance companies. Company profits soared from 6.6 billion marks in 1933, the year before Hitler took power, to 15 billion marks in 1938.8 There was indeed a redistribution of wealth in the country but from the poor to the rich. The capitalists share of the gross national product increased over the same period from 17.4 to 26.6 per cent.9 A common misconception is that Hitler brought the economy under state control. On the contrary, even in 1942, in the middle of the war, the Flick group was allowed to buy one of the armys factories, Machinenfabrik Donauwrth GmbH, for a pittance.10 Failure of the Social Democratic leadership Germany did not pass from a fully-fledged democracy to a Nazi dictatorship overnight. There was an extended process over several years whereby the Nazis pushed the countrys bourgeois politicians into stifling democracy and the leaders of the Social Democratic Party helped smoothe the transition to dictatorship. The Weimar Republic was never a model bourgeois democracy, born as it was on the ashes of the German revolution of 1918-1919. Under the new constitution, signed by the social democratic President Ebert in August 1919, the President was elected for seven years and had extensive powers. He could dissolve the Reichstag whenever he wished and issue emergency decrees suspending the constitution. This meant that if he considered the republic was threatened, he could declare a national emergency and pass laws without parliamentary approval. The Social Democratic leadership helped draw up this constitution. In 1928, the Social Democrats and several bourgeois parties (including Hugenbergs DNVP ) formed a coalition government, but it collapsed in 1930. The new constitution was then used against the Social Democrats and the parliamentary majority. President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Heinrich Brning, a conservative from the Catholic Centre Party, as the new Chancellor. When Brning failed to secure parliamentary approval for his tough austerity policies, von Hindenburg approved emergency decrees to bypass the Reichstag majority. However, in the end Brning was forced to call fresh elections. At this poll, in September 1930, the Nazis became the second largest party in the Reichstag,
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while the Communist vote increased from 3.5 million (in 1928) to 4.6 million. Faced with this situation, and despite the fact that they were the largest party in the country, the Social Democratic leadership decided to tolerate a new minority government, led by the man they had just thrown out of office, Heinrich Brning. As under the previous coalition government, people who had voted for the SPDs policies had to put up with conservative policies instead. The SPD representatives in the Reichstag now opposed all calls for a vote of no confidence against Brning.11 They thereby ensured that he was able to continue as Chancellor and rule the country despite having only a third of the Reichstag behind him. In 1931, the Social Democratic party executive expelled all MPs who had opposed the Brning regime.12 As the Nazis influence increased, the SPD leadership moved further to the right. At the presidential election of March 1932, the SPD did not enter a candidate of its own. Instead, it supported the president in office, the former imperial field-marshal von Hindenburg. This was the same man who, in 1916-18, had headed the Third Supreme Command, a belligerent cabal that in effect ran Germany as a military-industrial dictatorship.13 Von Hindenburg (18.1 million votes in the first round) won over Hitler (11.3 million) and the KPD candidate Thlmann (5 million). He failed, however, to live up to the expectations of the SPD leadership. It had long been known that the Nazis were making plans to seize power. After the presidential election of 1932, several regional governments urged the Brning government to ban the SA and the SS. He in fact did so, by emergency decree. In May of this year, however, Brning angered von Hindenburg when he sought to cancel government subsidies to the big landowners (the Junkers) and introduce a limited land reform programme. Brning was forced to resign. Von Hindenburg appointed a new government dubbed the Cabinet of Barons and made Franz von Papen Chancellor. The new regime immediately revoked the ban on the SA and the SS. These grew rapidly. Within one year they increased from 100 000 to 300 000 members. Under the Treaty of Versailles the official German army was limited to 100 000 men. In the summer of 1932, the streets became a battlefield. In Prussia alone, more than 200 people were killed in June and July. When parliamentary elections were held on 31 July 1932, the Nazis won almost 40% of the vote and became the largest party in the country. Von Papen offered Hitler the post of Vice Chancellor, but he declined. He had his sights set on higher things. Hitler becomes Chancellor A number of government crises ensued. Von Papen was forced to resign, following a vote of no confidence in the Reichstag, and fresh elections were scheduled for 6 November. This time round, Hitlers steady rise to power was checked. The Nazis were still the largest party, but they lost two million votes and fell back to 33%. The Communists, meanwhile, rose to a record 17%, while the Social Democrats polled just over 20%. Thus, in 1932, the KPD and the SPD together still had more electoral support than the Nazis. Hitler never won a majority. Despite this setback for the Nazi Party, in January 1933, von Hindenburg the president whose candidacy had the support of the Social Democrats appointed Hitler Chancellor of the Reich. He did so reluctantly, at the urging of his closest advisers. A petition from leading industrialists concerned at the growth of the Communist Party also urged him to appoint Hitler as Chancellor.14 In the end he agreed that Hitler should head a bourgeois coalition
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cabinet. Thus Hitler was legally commissioned to form an administration. In February 1933, someone burnt down the Reichstag. (Most people believe it was the Nazis themselves.) Hitler immediately blamed the outrage on the Communists. The following day, he drew up a new emergency decree that was promptly signed by von Hindenburg. It revoked the constitutional laws guaranteeing freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and other democratic rights. The same evening, thousands of Social Democratic and Communist supporters were arrested. Some were physically assaulted, some were beaten to death on the spot. During the days that followed, provisional facilities were built to accommodate all the detainees: the first concentration camps. Soon the workers parties officials, premises and newspaper offices were attacked. It was in this atmosphere that what would prove to be the last parliamentary election campaign of the Weimar Republic was held. Only the Nazis and their allies were allowed to distribute political propaganda. Hitlers future minister of propaganda, Goebbels, wrote in his diary: To carry on the fight we can call on all the resources of the state. Radio and press are at our disposal. We shall stage a masterpiece of propaganda. And this time, naturally, there is no lack of money. 15 On election day, the men of the police auxiliary, a police force formed by the Nazi leader Hermann Goering and drawn from the SS and SA, stood outside most of the polling stations and urged people to vote for the Nazis. Nevertheless, Hitler only managed to win 43.9% of the overall vote on 5 March 1933. A majority of the electorate still preferred other parties. But what did that matter when all the bourgeois party leaders were backing Hitler? On 23 March, Hitler asked the Reichstag to grant him dictatorial powers. The MPs consented, by an overwhelming majority of 441 to 84. All the bourgeois parties, including those with whom the SPD had allied itself to block Hitler, voted in favour. Only the SPD voted against (the KPD members were either in prison or had fled). Nevertheless, the party agreed to support Hitlers foreign policy16 and the reorganisation of the trade unions along the lines of the Italian model.17 In Italy, the existing unions had been banned and replaced by trade corporations that were supposed to represent both the workers and the employers. In reality, this was a system designed to give the state and the employers control over the countrys wage-earners. Not surprisingly, wages were cut following this reorganisation.18 The Social Democratic Party leaders willingness to compromise had turned into capitulation before the Nazis. There was an inherent logic in the behaviour of the SPD leaders. They saw themselves as honest brokers, rather than leaders of a struggle. When workers demanded higher wages or political reforms, the SPD leadership thought that their role was to sit down with capitalists or their political representatives and negotiate a compromise. In exchange for social peace, some of the workers demands were conceded. When the economy was going ahead, that strategy brought some beneficial results for workers, at least when it was backed up with a real threat of strikes and protests. However, when economic development was slow or negative, the capitalists took the initiative and broke the truce themselves. They demanded larger and larger cutbacks, so the whole social democratic strategy backfired. The SPD leadership had no idea of how to organise an outright struggle against the deterioration of workers conditions. Instead, they thought that through negotiations, they could prevent the capitalists

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getting everything they wanted. The further to the right the bourgeois parties moved, the further the Social Democratic leadership moved with them. Having brought down the conservative anti-democratic Brning government, the SPD parliamentary group proceeded to guarantee Brnings survival as the head of a minority regime. And when the Nazis finally sought to abolish all democratic rights the SPD agreed to restrictions, as long as they were less draconian. What could the Labour Movement have done instead? The Labour Movement should have confronted the SA and the SS. The Movement had many more people at their disposal than the Nazis had. They should have arranged for armed guards to protect the meetings, the demonstrations and the people who were threatened. The Labour Movement could have struck back when the SA and the SS began terrorising workers and Jews. If the SA and the SS had met determined and unified resistance before 1933, they would have been weakened and demoralised. The course chosen by the leadership of the SPD made such an outcome impossible. The SPD leadership was unpardonably passive in its attitude to the SA and the SS. A network of ex-servicemen (Reichsbanner Schwarz Rot Gold) was created specifically to defend the republic and the constitution against right-wing extremists, and could call on 3 million members. Four-fifths of its members were Social Democrats.19 Also, following the 1930 elections, a more militant force was set up within the defence system, known as the Schufo (Schutzformation). It comprised 400 000 members, many of whom had been soldiers in the First World War.20 At this time the Schufo easily outnumbered the SA and SS, and also had greater military experience. The SA troopers recruited in the late 1920s largely comprised unemployed young men without any experience of war. But the SPD leadership declined to make use of this force. The Schufo took some part in the street fighting, but never offered organised resistance on a nationwide basis. To the last, the SPD leaders vainly hoped that the state administration, which had for the most part protected and supported the Nazis armed units, would disarm them. On 5 March 1933, leaders of the Reichbanner divisions in the major cities travelled to Berlin requesting orders to go into action. They were told by the SPD leadership: Keep calm! Above all, no bloodshed! 21 Nor did the Social Democratic leadership offer a political way out of the crisis. They collaborated with bourgeois parties both in the government and in presidential elections. Hence, when unemployment rose to 44% and countless farmers and members of the petite bourgeoisie were left destitute, they felt that the SPD was partly to blame. The Nazis, on the other hand, could present themselves as a genuine alternative. Hitler claimed he opposed big business, and because he never accepted any government post until he was able to take power himself, he was never seen as being part of the establishment. The Nazis were able to gather support among peasants, the ruined middle class and the unemployed. These sections of the population had originally looked to the Labour Movement to represent them, but had been let down. The Labour Movement should have set out to win them back. The only way to do that would have been for the social democratic leadership to have decisively broken with bourgeois parties and presented a clear alternative to capitalist

32

disaster. Time after time the leadership had shown that they were not prepared to do that. The unions were disabled by their Social Democratic leaders, who instructed them to stay out of politics. They were supposed to limit themselves to defending the immediate economic interests of the workers, whatever the regime. Incredibly, on 1 May 1933, after Hitler had become Chancellor, most of the Social Democratic union leaders decided to cancel the demonstrations they had planned. Instead, they urged their members to take part in the national worker rallies that Hitler and his regime organised on that day. They had thereby sent out a clear message to their supporters: We do not intend to fight these people with every means at our disposal. If you want to fight them, youll have to do it without us. On the following day, 2 May 1933, the Nazis attacked the unprepared unions. Premises were occupied, funds were seized, organisations dissolved and their leaders arrested. Many were taken to the newly-established concentration camps.22 The Communist Party splits the movement While the Social Democratic Party had lost ground from 1928 onwards, the German Communist Party (KPD) grew in strength. At the elections in November 1932, there was not much between the two parties. The KPD received almost 6 million votes, compared to 7.2 million for the SPD. The KPD was part of the Third International, the Comintern, which had been founded after the Russian revolution, and the party attracted many workers who were hoping to build a better society. But the KPD made the insane mistake of branding social democracy as the twin of fascism, and thus split the Labour Movement. This was another important factor in Hitlers success. To understand why the KPD behaved as it did, we must look at what happened in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. When the revolution triumphed in Russia, the country was the most under-developed in Europe. The great majority of the population were peasants, and most could neither read nor write. A civil war broke out in which the anti-government forces were backed by many foreign armies, including British, French, American, Canadian, Australian, Japanese, Italian, Romanian, Greek, Serbian, Polish, Chinese, and other troops. A blockade was imposed and everything possible was done to bring down the new regime. They failed, as the vast majority of Russians approved of the land distribution programme and the new governments other reforms. The capitalists and the big landowners were unable to regain control of the economy, but the Soviet Union degenerated in political terms. The Bolsheviks, who dominated the new government, held that the success of socialism in Russia was dependent on the revolution spreading to the industrialised countries, so that help could be enlisted in that quarter. But the German revolution fell through. This, together with scarcity and poverty, war and exhaustion, meant that a bureaucracy was able to wrest political power from the working class in Russia. To a great extent, this bureaucracy was comprised of people who had never been socialists, among them many who had worked in the old Czarist administration. They now joined the Communist Party and set out to reclaim their privileged positions, this time under a new regime. These officials and careerists were headed by Joseph Stalin. In return for their loyalty, Stalin offered people nice homes, better goods in their own shops and holidays by the Black Sea. Socialist democracy was replaced by a monstrous

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dictatorship. This dictatorship was not a logical consequence of the revolution but a terrible defeat for it. Hundreds of thousands of revolutionaries were purged, sent to labour camps and murdered. The reign of terror that developed in the 1930s, involving the widespread use of informers, show trials, concentration camps and mass killings, was indescribable. All leading Bolsheviks that Stalin considered a threat to his position were ousted and subsequently forfeited their lives. Lenin had become seriously ill as early as May 1922 and left the political arena after suffering a second stroke in March 1923. Before he died in January 1924, he warned people about Stalin. Leon Trotsky who had been head of the key Petrograd Soviet in both 1905 and 1917, a minister of the first socialist government and the architect of the Red Armys defeat of the counter-revolutionary forces was the person who took up the ideological battle against Stalin. He was thrown out of the party, banished from the country and finally murdered by a supporter of Stalin in Mexico in 1940. In order to subdue the working class, and begin to exterminate almost the entire generation of Bolsheviks that had participated in the October Revolution, Stalin enlisted the support of the peasants, above all of the rich peasants (known as kulaks), and of the petite bourgeoisie. In return, he saw to it that their conditions improved. After a few years, however, they had become strong enough to pose a threat to Stalin himself. The situation came to a head in 1928 when the peasants refused to deliver their crops to the cities. Industrial development had been neglected, so the peasants had nothing to buy for the money they earned from their produce. At a stroke, Stalin changed course. Industrialisation was now to proceed with all haste, while the kulaks land was taken from them and they were forced to work in collectives. Stalin rediscovered the rhetoric of the revolution, and used it as part of the campaign against the kulaks. This rhetoric also had an international dimension. Stalin decided that the workers struggle worldwide had entered a third period. The first had been the wave of revolutionary struggle that had occurred in the wake of the First World War; the second had been the period of stabilisation that followed; and a new phase had now started during which the workers should immediately fight for power, regardless of whether they were ready or not. The policies of the KPD, like those of other Communist parties, were controlled by Moscow, so the German Communists prepared to do battle. On the direct orders of Stalin and those around him, they singled out the Social Democrats or the Social Fascists, as they called them as the chief enemy. It was, after all, the SPD and not the Nazis who held government office in Germany until 1933. Like the SPD, the KPD had a military force at its disposal. It was called the Red Front (Rotfront), and numbered around 100 000 men. On occasion, these Communist militia attacked Social Democratic workers (sometimes together with Nazis). Incredibly, in 1931 the KPD came out in support of a regional referendum called by the Nazis. The referendum was directed against the Social Democratic regional government in Prussia. The KPDs handling of the situation was disastrous, and totally at odds with the policy advocated by the Comintern during the early years of its existence. Under the Cominterns original policy, the fledgling Communist parties were to seek a united front with the Social Democratic parties on specific issues where they could work together. The actions of the KPD in 1931 destroyed

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any possibility of a united front against the Nazis. The working class did not support Hitler The leaders of both the SPD and the KPD thought Nazism was only a temporary phenomenon that would fade away before long. The Communist leadership argued that the victory of Nazism would expose the true character of capitalism and lead to a proletarian revolution. They failed to realise that a total ban on all freedom of organisation, of expression and of the press would leave the working class completely defenceless. It made collective resistance impossible for years to come. The Social Democratic leadership, like many among the liberal bourgeoisie, believed that the Nazis could be persuaded to settle down and pursue a more normal political course after a period in power. The Nazis never won the endorsement of the working class, although some workers in small businesses in rural areas supported them. In his book on the 1933 election, Stefan Svensson comments: The Labour Movement is largely immune to Nazi propaganda. The opposite is the case among the bourgeois parties.23 The attempts by the Nazis to set up their own union organisations with the aid of both threats and financial backing from German industry did not bear fruit until long after Hitlers rise to power. In the union elections to factory committees in 1933, the Nazi union organisation, the NSBO, won only 3% of the votes, despite the fact that Hitler was already Chancellor.24 Among the workers, there was a solid potential for anti-fascist struggle. A report from the International Left Opposition (a group of Communists, including Trotsky, that opposed Stalin) in Germany in September 1932 noted: In many places, actual united fronts are to be found. In the street fighting the Communists now run to the aid of the embattled Reichsbanner troops and Socialists, and vice versa. Through the formation of these united fronts in the streets, the Nazis have been repulsed. Indeed, the street fighting has shown that the Nazis are at a disadvantage as their uniform gives them away and they are young people unused to military tactics, while the Socialists and Communists can fire from under cover and their ranks contain multitudes of trained and tested soldiers.25 The leaders of the German Labour Movement both the KPD and the SPD could have acted to stop Hitler, but they refused to join forces to fight Nazism, and were passive. The SPD leadership had made the mistake of trusting the state to deal with the Nazis, while the KPD leadership complied with Stalins directives and did not view the Nazis as a genuine threat. The leaders of the German Labour Movement were not prepared to let the working class wage an independent struggle, with its own methods and policies, against Hitler. And so the working class had to capitulate without having had the possibility of offering any substantial resistance. This is the worst kind of defeat. If one fights and loses, one can at least learn from ones mistakes and move on. If one fails to engage the enemy, there is noth ing one can learn and no way forward. Labour Movement leaders internationally made exactly the same mistakes when they fought against the Nazis invading armies as their German colleagues had done when they had faced Nazi thugs in Germany. They bowed down to the bourgeoisie and to Stalin. They accepted their own bourgeoi sies or Stalins goals and methods for fighting Hitler. This was to prove as disastrous for the working class internationally, as it had been for the working class in Germany.

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1 The republic that replaced the German empire took its name from the town where the members of the Reichstag assembled Weimar,. 2 Catalogue of the Stockholm exhibition Deutschland, Deutschland, 1979 3 www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERroehm.htm 4 www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERkirdorf.htm 5 Daniel Guerin: Fascism and Big Business, 1973 6 Frank Hirschfeldt: Catalogue of the Stockholm exhibition, Deutschland, Deutschland, 1979 7 ibid 8 Charles Bettelheim: LEconomie allemande sous le nazisme, 1946 9 Franz Neumann: Behemoth: The structure and practice of national socialism, 1963 10 Klaus Drobisch: Monopole und Staat in Deutschland, 1966 11 Stefan Svensson: Tyskland en spegling av Europa, 1992 12 Foreword by Lars Lundstrm to the 1983 Swedish edition of Leo Trotskys The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany 13 http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/F/firstworldwar/index_glossary.html 14 www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERnazi.htm 15 Daniel Guerin: Fascism and Big Business, 1973 16 Catalogue of the Stockholm exhibition, Deutschland, Deutschland, part 1,1979, 17 Foreword by Lars Lundstrm to the 1983 Swedish edition of Leo Trotskys The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany 18 Karl-Olof Andersson: Europa i 1900-talets spegel, 2003 19 http://www.zum.de/psm/ns/haupt_wider.php 20 www.weltchronik.de/kalenderblatt/all/0224SHRT.HTM 21 Fascism and Big Business, 1973 22 Frank Hirschfeldt: Catalogue of the Stockholm exhibition, Deutschland, Deutschland, 1979
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23 Stefan Svensson: Germany: A Reflection of Europe 24 Daniel Guerin: Fascism and Big Business, 1973 25 www.weisbord.org/TwoEight.htm

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5. The Second World War: Allies with different objectives

Dear Madam, Sir, Miss or Mr and Mrs Daneeka. Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father or brother was killed, wounded or reported missing in action. Joseph Heller: Catch-22, 1961 To most workers around the world thought the Second World War was a justifiable war. In contrast to attitudes before the First World War, many supported war on Hitlers Germany. But the leadership of the workers parties lacked an independent program for working class action against Hitlers armies. This lead to a dangerous delay in the fight back, and once the struggle begun workers had to fight with one hand tied behind their backs. The story is the same throughout the world. What they wanted After Hitlers victory in Germany Nazi armies fanned out over Europe. The Second World War was a fact. And for once it looked as if the imperialists of Britain, France and the US had common interests with Stalin and the international Labour movement. But this was an illusion that proved extremely costly to workers. For the capitalists of Germany, Britain, Italy, the US, Japan and other countries, the war was about the redistribution of global markets and defeating the Soviet Union. Just like World War I. In practice, they also engaged in a parallel war against the working class in a number of countries, in order to prevent any move towards socialism. Removing a dictatorial regime in one or another country was of secondary importance. Right up to 1939 the US, Britain, France and Sweden continued to trade with Germany and have political dealings with the German regime. The leaders of the allied countries were not particularly negative to Hitlers dictatorship. The former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George (a Liberal) visited Germany in September 1936. He returned with glowing accounts of Nazi Germany and Hitler: It is a happier Germany. I saw it everywhere and Englishmen I met during my trip and who knew Germany well were very impressed with the change. One man has accomplished this miracle. He is a born leader of men. A magnetic, dynamic personality with a single-minded purpose, a resolute will and a dauntless heart.1 Germany was allowed to occupy Austria and Czechoslovakia. It was not until Germany began to seriously threaten the balance of power in Europe by invading Poland that Britain and France declared war on Germany. 2 Even then, the US remained neutral. For the Stalinist bureaucrats, who only became directly involved when Germany invaded in 1941, the Second World War was a matter of defending their privileges and extending them further. They viewed the workers of the various countries as pawns that could be sacrificed when it suited them. For workers the Second World War was not only a battle between opposing imperialist
38

powers. For them the war against Hitler was also a fight to defend the organisations of the working class and the democratic rights they had won after decades of struggle. In countries that were occupied by the Nazis, all such advances were eradicated. Moreover, the Soviet Union still enjoyed the sympathy of much of the international Labour Movement, despite Stalins dictatorship. This was clear from the rise in Communist Party membership in many countries. Many of those who had experienced the depression saw the Soviet Union, with its remarkable economic growth, as a viable alternative. They did not want to see it destroyed by Hitler. The leadership of social democratic parties and Stalin were reluctant to fight Hitler Hitler occupied large areas of Europe without encountering much resistance. Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium all surrendered within weeks of being attacked. The capitalists in these countries did not object to cooperating with the German Nazis, as long as they let them get on with business as usual. In France, the government preferred to hand over Paris to the Nazis, after very little fighting. In 1939, the French Army had 900 000 regular soldiers. It had another 5 million men who had been trained and could be called-up in time of war. They were hardly used.3 Probably the memory of the Paris Commune, when workers who had been armed to fight Germany had taken power in Paris, stopped the French Government from a mass mobilisation of its forces. On 10 July 1940, the National Assembly met and decided by 570 votes to 80 (with 20 abstentions) to hand over all power to Marshal Philippe Ptain. He established a Nazi puppet government, known as the Vichy regime. Many Socialist MPs were among those who voted against the move, but the great majority followed in the footsteps of the bourgeois parties and voted in favour.4 The European Communist parties did not resist Hitler either. This was due to the grotesque non-aggression pact that Hitler and Stalin signed in 1939. Stalin agreed to it because of his severe domestic problems. He saw threats to his position everywhere, and most of all he feared his own officers in the Red Army, who had defeated both domestic and foreign enemies, and were regarded by many as heroes. Also, it was Trotsky, Stalins principal rival, who had built up the Red Army. Stalin was foolishly convinced that he was going to be the victim of a plot led by Mikhail Tukhachevsky and seven other military leaders. The evidence consisted of false documents supplied by Reinhardt Heydrich, head of the Gestapo and the Nazi secret police. In 1937, therefore, Stalin executed Tukhachevsky and 35 000 other experienced officers of the Red Army, just when they were needed most.5 Among those eliminated in the purge were three of the armys five marshals, eight admirals out of nine, 50 corps commanders out of 57, 154 divisional commanders (generals) out of 186, and all eleven deputy ministers of defence.6 After his drastic purge of the Red Army, war was the last thing Stalin wanted. He seems to have believed that the pact with Hitler would protect his country, or at least delay any assault. To the very last, Stalin refused to credit the reports from his own intelligence service that an attack by Germany was imminent.7 Instead of following in the footsteps of the bourgeoisie and Stalin, the leaders of the Socialist Parties and Communist Parties should have openly prepared for an armed struggle. If the bourgeoisie had opposed the arming of the population, they would have had popular support for expropriating the bourgeoisie. Then, they would have had a solid base from which to appeal to the German soldiers to join them in the fight against Hitler. With a similar tactic the
39

Bolsheviks managed to defeat the combined might of all invading armies after the Russian revolution. This was not such a farfetched perspective considering that in 1936 Leon Blum of the Socialist Party became the first avowed Marxist to be elected Prime Minister of France. In Belgium, Social Democrats were in the Government until 1937. In Denmark and Norway, the Social Democratic Parties were in power before Hitler invaded. However, none of the leaders were prepared to put forward such an alternative. Soviet workers pay the highest price In June 1941, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. By that time, he had virtually all the resources of Europe at his disposal. Stalin was completely unprepared. Not wishing to provoke Hitler, he had refused to mobilise. During the first few days of the attack Red Army units were even ordered not to return fire. Before anyone responded, 2 000 Soviet planes had been destroyed.8 With war thrust upon them, Stalin and his regime could no longer compromise. Unlike the bourgeoisie in occupied Western Europe, the regime could not co-exist with Nazism. At first, the Red Army could offer little resistance to the German army, but after a while the advantages of a planned economy over a market economy bureaucratic distortions notwithstanding became clear. The Soviet Union dismantled all the factories in the path of the advancing Germans and reassembled them in safety on the other side of the Ural Mountains. Between July and November 1941, no less than 1 523 factories were shifted in this way, 1 360 of which were described as large-scale.9 At the same time, crops were burnt and the German army was restricted by extremely long supply lines. The entire Soviet population was mobilised against Hitler. The turning point came at Stalingrad, where fighting raged from August 1942 to February 1943. The defenders fought street by street, building by building. Some 100 000 German soldiers were killed before the Red Army launched one of the mightiest counter-attacks in history. In just three months, it pushed the Germans back more than 300 kilometres. The Battle of Kursk the greatest tank battle in the history of modern warfare broke the backbone of the German army. During this decisive struggle, neither the US nor Britain were prepared to join the fighting in Europe to any great extent. They were content to rain bombs on German cities and towns. US Vice President Harry S. Truman outlined the American strategy: If we see that Germany is winning the war, we should help Russia, but if Russia is winning, we should help Germany. Let them kill each other as much as they want. Although I dont wish to see Hitler triumph under any circumstances.10 Only in North Africa did the British army engage the Germans directly. They wanted their colonies for themselves. But a look at the places where Germany had positioned its military forces, shows that fighting was limited there compared to the Eastern front. Where the German divisions were in June of each year
Countries 1941 1942 1943 1944

40

USSR France & Benelux Norway & Finland Balkans Italy Denmark

34 38

171 27

179 42

157 56

13

16

16

16

7 0 1

8 0 1 3

17 0 2 0

20 22 3 0

North Africa 2

www.angelfire.com/ct/ww2europe/stats.html In a triumphant advance, the Red Army had by March 1944 recaptured all Soviet territory, and begun to move into Poland. The D-day landings in Normandy did not take place until after this, on 6 June 1944. Any further delay in opening a western front against Germany would have allowed the Soviet army to press on all the way to the English Channel. Soviet losses were huge. Some 13.6 million Soviet soldiers and 7 million civilians died in the Second World War more than ten per cent of the population. This can be compared with the loss of 326 000 British soldiers and 62 000 British civilians (less than one per cent of the population), and the loss of 500 000 US soldiers. Almost no American civilians died. Many Soviet lives could have been spared. Many died because the Soviet Union was ruled by an incompetent dictatorship that beheaded the army before the war began. And the Soviet bureaucracy made no attempt to appeal to German soldiers; on the contrary they put forward propaganda dehumanizing the German population, thus driving them back into Hitlers embrace. However, a large part of the responsibility for the casualties lies with the leaders of the Labour Movement in Western Europe that left the Soviet Union to fight almost alone against Hitlers massive resources. Italian workers fight for a socialist society In Italy, despite being obstructed by their leadership and the allies, the working class showed how a successful war could be waged against Hitler. They combined the struggle against Hitler with the struggle for a new society. Like Germany, Italy had experienced a revolutionary period following the First World War. But the working class was much weaker than in Germany and after it was defeated, the Italian Fascists were able to seize power in 1922. Benito Mussolini became the new head of government. He was backed in Italy by the same social forces that later backed Hitler in Germany. During Mussolinis dictatorship, Italy built a powerful military machine. In the mid-1930s, the Berlin-Rome Axis pact was established, and when the Second World War broke out, Fascist Italy sided with Hitler. As the war progressed, the Italian working class
41

began to offer resistance. In March 1943, a spontaneous strike broke out at the Rasetti factory in Turin, and spread later to the giant Fiat Mirafiori factory. The work stopped in protest over working conditions. Further strikes followed in Turin and northern Italy, until some 100 000 strikers were taking part. This was the first instance of collective organised resistance against fascism in Italy. In April, the employers and the government were forced to grant concessions.11 The strike represented the culmination of years of growing discontent. Lack of enthusiasm for the war was reflected in a series of military setbacks. These defeats, in which thousands of Italian soldiers surrendered without a fight, gave rise to the enduring myth of the cowardly Italian soldier. But why should Italian soldiers fight in poor countries such as Ethiopia, Somalia, Libya and Albania for Mussolini and the Italian capitalists dream of an empire? Aided by a political movement with ties to the Sicilian Mafia, American and British troops landed easily in Sicily in July 1943.12 The Allies cooperated with the Mafia because it represented an alternative power centre in southern Italy, outside Mussolinis control. At the end of July 1943, Mussolini was deposed following a coup organised by Field Marshal Badoglio and the Italian king, who had initially supported Mussolinis bid for power. Badoglio had previously commanded the Italian forces that had sought to colonise Ethiopia, and had since then been known as the Butcher of Ethiopia. When the leaders of the coup surrendered to the Allies, Germany immediately stepped in and occupied most of Italy. Badoglio and the king fled Rome, establishing their base further south as the Allies Italian government. From Sicily, the Allies fought their way up through the country and, after the local population had risen up and thrown out the German army, captured Naples in October 1943. In March 1944, a new series of strikes broke out. In the Milan region alone, some 300 000 workers downed tools. These strikes were directed specifically at the Nazis. The workers demanded immediate peace and an end to the manufacture of war supplies for Germany. The stoppages spread to the textile factories of Venice, Bologna and Florence, where mainly lowpaid women worked. In June, when the Nazis tried to dismantle machinery for removal to Germany, the Fiat workers went on strike again and succeeded in thwarting the plan. Farm workers, meanwhile, refused to send grain to the German forces of occupation. When the Allies entered Rome on 5 June 1944, they met little German resistance. The Germans did not defend Rome. Defeat at the hands of the workers of Rome was imminent. The Allies were worried at the prospect of a popular revolt, so they bombarded Rome with leaflets before liberating it. The leaflets read: Citizens of Rome, this is not the time for demonstrations. Obey these directions and continue your regular work. Rome is yours! Your job is to save the city, ours is to destroy the enemy.13 The Communist Party played a leading role in the Italian resistance. In Florence, the Allies had arrived too late to stop an uprising. It had broken out at the beginning of August 1944, and thus the partisans were able to appoint their own governor of the region a move that was not at all popular among the Allies. The events in Florence set alarm bells ringing in Allied circles, and during the bitter winter of 1944-45 the resistance movement was given almost no support. The partisans nevertheless fought on, and no Nazi troops dared enter working-class areas in the major cities in Northern Italy.
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During the spring of 1945, the third and largest wave of strikes swept Northern Italy, involving over a million workers. In Turin, a general strike broke out in April. Factories were occupied. This was the starting signal for uprisings in Genoa and Milan. In Genoa, the workers took 9 000 German soldiers prisoner and forced them to surrender to the partisans not to the Allies. By 1 May, the whole of Northern Italy had been liberated, not just from Nazi oppression, but also from the rule of the employers.14 The people had even managed to protect the Italian factories from being destroyed by the Nazis. Committees deeply rooted in the working class emerged throughout the region and took over the reins of local government. They assumed control both of the public sector and of industrial production. Fascists were ejected from the state administration and from many private companies.15 As a rule, the factory workers pursued their struggle unarmed. But hundreds of thousands of Italians (actively supported by at least as many more) took part in armed guerrilla actions against German and Italian fascists. Some 100 000 partisans and their civilian supporters died in the fighting. The Allies contribution to the struggle in northern Italy consisted of the RAF (the British Royal Air Force) carrying out large-scale bombing raids on Milan, Turin, Bologna and other cities in the region. Working-class areas in particular were targeted. In other words, the Allies bombed those people who were at the forefront of the local anti-fascist struggle. While they did drop some supplies to the partisans, so as not to appear too one-sided, these consisted only of a few weapons and chocolate. The supplies were mainly channelled to the smallest and non-communist part of the resistance movement. Had they contributed weapons and other kinds of support to the popular uprising, the whole of Italy would have been liberated with the loss of far fewer lives. But in that case it might all have ended in a socialist revolution, and this was something neither the Allies nor the leadership of the Italian Communist Party wanted to see. They prevented such a development. 60% of the partisans were Garibaldini, i.e. Communist members of the underground. Towards the end of the war, the Communist Party also gained considerable support in the factories. Up to then, it had not been able to control the struggle. Palmiro Togliatti, head of the Italian party, returned from Moscow in March 1944 with strict instructions from Stalin not to carry out a socialist revolution in Italy. Accordingly, the Communist Party gave its backing to the reactionary Badoglio government and shelved its demand for the establishment of a republic. After the war, the party joined a coalition government with the Christian Democrats, but was eventually ejected, when they had tamed the revolutionary movement. For many years thereafter, Italy had to suffer a government of Mafia-backed Christian Democrats. War on the Greek people In Greece, the resistance against the Nazis was even more successful, but British troops, abetted by Stalin, stopped the movement violently. Before the war Greece had been within the British sphere of influence. In early 1941, the British government had persuaded the Greek king to let British troops into the country. However, when the Nazi army invaded in April of that year, they defeated the combined British and Greek forces in a couple of months. The British soldiers were rapidly evacuated,
43

and the fight against the occupying troops was left to the partisans. The Greek people suffered tremendous hardship. The invaders confiscated the summer harvest to feed the 300 000 occupying troops from Germany, Italy and Bulgaria. During the winter of 1941-42, more than 200 000 Greeks died of starvation, but the resistance movement grew. People in rural areas gave the guerrilla fighters shelter, despite barbarous acts of vengeance by the Nazis. In 1943, unarmed workers demonstrated in Athens against sending people to labour camps in Germany. At least ten Greeks were shot dead and some 100 badly wounded. But the demonstrators won the day Germany thereafter refrained from recruiting forced labour in Greece.16 Churchill did not wish to provide support to a mass movement in which socialist ideas were prominent. In April 1943, he issued instructions that only royalist resistance groups were to be supplied with weapons and information by British agents.17 It was only due to the surrender of the Italian army in 1943 that the Greek Liberation Army (Ellinikos Lakos Apeleftherotikos Stratos, ELAS) got access to large supplies of arms. Throughout the war, the British government provided massive funding in a bid to build up guerrilla groups that slandered and attacked ELAS. Despite this, ELAS tried to cooperate with the Allies. They provided the bulk of the force that blew up the strategic Gorgopotamos railway bridge. This cut the German supply lines through Greece and caused problems for Hitlers campaign in North Africa. During the months when the British and the Americans were planning their landing in southern Italy, ELAS also carried out a series of sabotage actions in order to distract the attention of the German and Italian forces. ELAS was the armed wing of the National Liberation Front (Ethniko Apeleftherotiko Metopo, EAM). This was a broad organisation, dominated by the Communist Party. In liberated areas, they opened schools and medical centres, available to all. They even appointed a provisional government (Politiki Epitropi Ethikis Apeleftherosis, PEEA) based in the mountains. The PEEAs relief organisation provided food to the starving. Peoples courts were set up to administer justice, and the administration was both efficient and relatively free from corruption.18 EAM refused to recognise the Greek king. The king had fled to Cairo with his right-wing government when the country was invaded. When news of the provisional government reached the Greek troops in Egypt in April 1944, they mutinied against the exile government and demanded that the PEEA be recognised. The mutiny was put down by the British. By the autumn of 1944, up to two million Greeks out of a total population of seven million had joined the EAM.19 ELAS had more than 77 500 members in its standing army, plus 50 000 reservists and 6 000 members of a national militia.20 When they expelled the German army from Greece in October 1944, EAM/ELAS were in control of virtually the entire country except Athens and Salonika.21 In effect, the Greek people had taken power. EAM/ELAS would doubtless have succeeded in throwing out the British, too, if it had not been for the actions of Stalin, and thereby of the Greek Communist Party. In October 1944, Churchill and Stalin met in Moscow to decide how Europe should be divided up. It was there that Greeces fate was settled. In his memoirs, Churchill revealed how the conversation had developed. So far as Britain and Russia are concerned, he had told Stalin, How would it
44

do for you to have 90% predominance in Rumania, for us to have 90% of the say in Greece and go 50-50 about Yugoslavia? He handed a half sheet of paper with these figures scribbled on it to Stalin, who ticked it and handed it back to Churchill. It was all settled, writes Churchill, in no more time than it takes to set down. The British leader was anxious that the exchange might be thought rather cynical and offered to burn the paper. No, you keep it, replied Stalin.22 The British government sent its troops back into Greece, this time to crush ELAS. The British forces released fascist prisoners from jail and armed them. Security forces and gangs who had been on the side of the Nazis right up to their withdrawal were offered new uniforms and given new tasks by British General Robert Scobie, commander of the Allied forces in Greece. The leaders of the Communist Party became entangled in a series of agreements with the British, and tried to persuade the working class to accept them, probably on the orders of Stalin. The party began by joining a coalition under George Papandreou, a puppet of the British. But this regime did not last long. When Scobie demanded that the guerrilla fighters hand in their arms, while allowing Nazi collaborators and royalist companies the freedom to roam the streets and threaten people with their weapons, the government collapsed. The EAM and PEEA ministers resigned. A general strike and demonstrations were scheduled for the beginning December 1944 to protest at Scobies dictatorial actions. When the streets of Athens were filled with demonstrators shouting Not another occupation! and Rule by the people!, strategically positioned police gunmen opened fire.23 The following day, full-scale war broke out between the British military forces and EAM sympathisers in Athens. Churchill sent firm instructions to General Scobie: Do not hesitate to act as if you were in a conquered city where a local rebellion is in progress We have to hold and dominate Athens. It would be a great thing for you to succeed in this without bloodshed if possible, but also with bloodshed if necessary. The fighting lasted for 33 days. The leaders of the Communist Party forbade ELAS fighters living in the mountains to go to Athens, whereas Churchill sent in strong reinforcements.24 The British used both machine guns and bombs to quell the revolution. In a speech in Parliament, Churchill made it clear that he understood what was at stake: It was a struggle to prevent a hideous massacre in the centre of Athens, in which all forms of government would have been swept away and naked triumphant Trotskyism installedI think Trotskyists is a better definition of the Greek Communists and of certain other sects than the normal word, and it has the advantage of being equally hated in Russia (Laughter and cheers).25 Over 11,000 people died and large areas of Athens were destroyed.26 Even Churchill was amazed that Stalin adhered strictly and faithfully to our agreement of October, and during all the long weeks of fighting the Communists in the streets of Athens not one word of reproach came from Pravda or Izvestia.27 The Greek Communist Party continued to collaborate with the occupying power, and in February 1945 its leaders signed the fateful Varkiza agreement under which the guerrilla movement was to be disarmed. The decision was taken against the wishes of the ELAS leadership. Photographs show the partisans weeping as they handed over their weapons, and they had good reason for doing so. The government (now led by an army general) had promised democracy, a purge of collaborators and a general amnesty, but what followed was a reign of terror. When those who had been active in EAM/ELAS could no longer defend themselves, fascist gangs systematically sought them out to take revenge. The army and
45

gendarmerie, too, which had been largely built up by right-wing activists and Nazi supporters, dealt mercilessly with left-wing sympathisers of all shades. Many guerrilla fighters were murdered, while others were forced to flee back to the mountains. By the summer of 1945, some 50 000 people from the Greek resistance were being held in prison camps that resembled concentration camps. To the last, Captain Aris (Aris Velouchiotis), the founder and leader of ELAS, hoped that the Communist Party would change its mind. This never happened. Instead, the Communist Party publicly disowned Aris and revoked his party membership. Not wishing to split the movement, Aris and his closest aide saw no alternative but to commit suicide. In post-war Britain, the Labour Party was returned to power, but this did not help the Greek Left. During the war, the Labour Party leadership had collaborated with Churchills Conservatives, and the new government declared that it intended to pursue the same policy with regard to Greece as its predecessor. Despite the disarmament drive, a full-scale guerrilla war broke out anew in 1946. The partisan movement rose again as the Democratic Army, but this time under much tougher conditions. With economic and military aid from Britain, the Greek government built up its own army. Nevertheless, by 1947 large areas of Greece were once again in the hands of the Communists. The British government now felt its support of the Greek regime was too costly. So it turned to the US for help. The American president, Truman, immediately responded by proclaiming the Truman Doctrine, stating that the US would fight Communism wherever it appears in the world. This marked the beginning of the Cold War and, as a result, colossal sums of money were poured into Greek government coffers during the civil war. A joint Greek-American command was set up, roads were built for military use, and tanks and fighter jets were purchased. New methods and weapons including napalm were tried out on the recalcitrant Greeks. The leaders of the Communist Party, meanwhile, demanded that the Democratic Army switch from guerrilla tactics to conventional warfare. This caused disastrous losses. The end of the Greek partisan resistance movement finally came with the conflict between Stalin and the Yugoslav leader, Tito. The Greek partisans had had a sanctuary in Yugoslavia from which they could make raids into Greece. But in 1949, Tito formally closed the border to Greece, as the Greek Communist Party leadership insisted on remaining loyal to Stalin. In the years 1940 to 1950 Greece lost a tenth of its population through war and starvation.28 700 000 people out of a total of seven million. Another 700 000 fled the country.29 After the war, the Communist Party was outlawed. Widespread persecution, imprisonment and executions continued for years. Slaughter of civilians in Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki During the First World War, almost the only ones to die as a direct result of the hostilities were combatants. At the beginning of the Second World War, too, bombing targets were largely military radar stations, aircraft factories and airports. But this approach was to change dramatically.

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As anti-aircraft fire became effective, a large number of planes were lost. So in September 1940 the German Luftwaffe (air force) began carrying out large-scale bombing raids on British cities at night, although this meant less precision. The number of civilians killed in German raids grew rapidly. It was this air campaign against British urban centres that was known as the blitz. The British RAF eventually replied in kind. In 1940, Charles Portal was put in charge of organising British bombing raids. Together with his successor, Arthur Bomber Harris, he escalated the bombing to encompass whole cities. In March 1942, he ordered his planes to attack Lbeck. More than half of the city was destroyed. For the bombing of Cologne, at the end of May 1942, the RAF assembled all the planes at its disposal, numbering over a thousand. The British bombing campaign against Germany culminated on the night of 13 February 1945 when the RAF attacked Dresden, a picturesque medieval city in Eastern Germany known as the Florence of Northern Europe. This was followed by two nights of bombing by the US Air Force. There were no war industries in Dresden and the city was of no military significance. Also, it was undefended at the time as no anti-aircraft guns were stationed there. A few months earlier, in October 1944, a detailed report on Dresden as a potential bombing target had been produced. It concluded: Compared to other towns of its size, Dresden is an unattractive blitz target.30 The population, which in normal circumstances totalled around 600 000, had almost doubled in 1945 as a result of the influx of people fleeing from the advancing Red Army. The British air force rained thousands of incendiary bombs on Dresden. The bombing was so intense that individual fires joined up and the city was engulfed by a firestorm. The temperature in the city centre has been estimated at 1 000 degrees Centigrade. Huge amounts of air were sucked into this inferno and created an artificial tornado. People were dragged into the firestorm by the wind. Those who hid in cellars were suffocated as the air was sucked out by the firestorm, or they died from the heat. At least 35 000 people were killed in that raid. (Some sources put the death toll as high as 100 000).31 In Dresden, few battle-hardened soldiers lost their lives. Most of the dead were children, women and the elderly, and wounded soldiers. The railway station was left standing the only target of any military value. The bombing of Dresden is sometimes depicted as an act of revenge for the bombing and destruction of Coventry by the Luftwaffe. But only 380 people died there. The aim of the bombing raids was to demoralise the German people and punish them for the deeds of the Nazis. This is how Churchill described the bombing strategy in a speech on 22 June 1941: We shall bomb Germany by day as well as night in ever increasing measure, casting upon them month by month a heavier discharge of bombs, and making the German people taste and gulp each month a sharper dose of the miseries they have showered upon mankind.32 With that attitude Churchill, aided by his coalition partners from the Labour Party, undermined all possibilities of appealing to German workers to rise against Hitler. British bombers killed an estimated 600 000 civilians and destroyed or severely damaged six million homes during the entire course of the war. The Luftwaffe killed just over 62 000 British civilians.

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After Dresden, however, Churchill felt it was time to end this type of warfare. Ordering an end to the attacks, he explained: It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, should be reviewed.33 Whatever one may think about Churchill, he at least called things by their proper name something that Blair and Bush carefully avoid doing. In the war against Japan, the US followed Britains example. In a recent interview, former US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara talked about his experiences in the Second World War: I was at Guam in March 1945 when my unit killed 83 000 civilians in one night by firebombing them with our B-29s. We burnt them to death. This was the first of 67 firebombing raids. An awful lot of people died. General Curtis LeMay, who led the operation, said: If we lose this war, were going to be put on trial as war criminals.34 Finally, atomic bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Over 200 000 people died. Sixty years on, many people in Japan are still suffering from the damage that the bombs caused. In military terms, it was a totally meaningless act. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of US forces at the time, was opposed to the bombings: Japan was at that very moment seeking some way to surrender with minimum loss of face. It was not necessary to hit them with that awful thing.35 While Eisenhower was a skilled general, he did not fully understand the interests of capitalism. The atom bomb was needed to terrorise the countrys inhabitants and pave the way for US dominance of Japan after the war. More important, it was a warning to Stalin and the Soviet Union. James Byrne, who was US Secretary of State when the decision to drop the atom bombs was taken, had told Truman that in his view, the atom bomb could put us in a position where we could dictate the post-war terms ourselves. He was referring specifically to US terms vis--vis the Soviet Union. Nuclear physicist Leo Szilard describes a meeting he had with Byrne: Mr Byrne did not argue that it was necessary to use the bomb against the cities of Japan in order to win the war. . . Mr. Byrnes . . . view [was] that our possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable in Europe.36 Britain and the USA: An alternative approach Parts of the British and American Labour Movement advocated a policy that would have connected to the revolutionary resistance in Europe, and if implemented would have reduced the cost of fighting Hitler considerably. Right in the middle of the war, when all citizens were under heavy pressure to back the war effort, these Marxists urged the working class to fight Hitler on their own terms. They called attention to the strong anti-Nazi stance of the workers and showed how this might serve as a basis for democratic struggle. In November 1942, Ted Grant, leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party and later ideological leader of the International Marxist Tendency, described their policy in an article in the British journal Socialist Appeal: The British workers want to see a real end made to Hitlerism of all varieties and to the domination of one nation by another. They want to win the peoples of Europe to their side in a common struggle against these evils They want a genuine international united strategy that will enable these tasks to be performed and bring about a truly democratic and lasting peace. But while imperialism sits in the saddle there can be no such thing. These aims can only become a reality that is transferred from the realm of words to that of
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deeds, when the workers take effective measures against imperialism. Such measures would necessarily include the granting of immediate freedom to India and the colonies, the nationalisation under workers control of the banks and all heavy industry and the armaments industry; the election of officers by the soldiers and the merging of the armed forces into the armed people. Only when such measures have been taken would Britains war be transformed into one genuinely being fought for national liberation and in defence of the Soviet Union. Only a government of the workers can take such measures. Only a workers government can lay the basis for a genuine united strategy of a global nature. For the only force that cuts across national frontiers and continental barriers is the common interest of the working masses against capitalism.37 However, the leaders of the Labour Party were not interested. They sat in the war time coalition cabinet lead by Churchill. They denied help to the Italian and Greek resistance movements. They supported the violent crushing of the Greek revolution. And not least they supported terror bombings against the workers of Germany and Japan. Unlike during the First World War, Marxist policies were too weak to influence the course of the war. They had been ground down by Stalinism, fascism and reformism. All attempts to appease or adapt to the policies of bourgeois parties or movements however democratic they claim to be proved disastrous. Different sources offer widely differing estimates of the number of people that died in the Second World War. The table below claims that 52 million people died. Whatever the exact amount, there can be no doubt that it was a war with an unprecedented amount of casualties. Nazism could have been overcome without the loss of so many lives if labour leaders had put forward an independent policy, basing themselves on an international working class struggle against Hitler and for socialism. After the war, when there was a chance to express oneself openly, the working class showed what they felt the war had been about against fascism and for a new society. A wave of revolutionary fervour swept Europe. Communist and Socialist parties came to power in places like France and Italy. In Britain, Churchill the war hero was thrown out, and Labour came to power with the biggest majority and the most radical programme in its history. In the US, too, the workers were radicalised and the greatest wave of strikes the country had ever seen got under way. At the centre of the strikes were the car workers at General Motors. American soldiers were also drawn into the massive wave of protests. Many of them had gone into the army to fight fascism. When the US administration sought to use the soldiers in 1945 as occupying troops in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and the Philippines, it encountered tough resistance. The soldiers found the governments plans unacceptable and launched a protest movement based on the demand, Bring Us Home!38 Generals were jeered, members of Congress were flooded with protest letters (10 000 a day just from wives and girlfriends who wanted their men back), and the soldiers set up special committees that organised meetings, demonstrations and strikes. In January 1946, the soldiers committee in Manila represented 139 000 soldiers in the Philippines who demanded to be sent home. Their demands were officially supported by the big American labour organisations, the AFL and the CIO. Due to the sabotage of labour leaders, the ideas that could provide the soundest base to resistance against Hitler, before he came to power and once he had come to power, were not used. In the concentration camps, socialist ideas were the only ideas that could inspire an effective resistance to Nazism.
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1 http://www.history-of-the-holocaust.org/LIBARC/ARCHIVE/Chapters/Stabiliz/ Foreign/LloydGeo.html 2 Australia and New Zealand declared war on Germany at the same time. 3 http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2wwfrenchA.htm 4 www3.uakron.edu/hfrance/reviews/caron.html 5 www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUStukhachevsky.htm 6 Karl-Olof Andersson: Europa i 1900-talets spegel, 2003 7 Leopold Trepper: The Great Game, 1977 8 Lesley Thompson, Resistance and revolution in Europe in World War II 9 Ted Grant: Russia from revolution to counterrevolution, 1997 10 New York Times, 24 June 1941 11 Gareth Jenkins: The forgotten fighters, 1995 12 Dr. Toscano: Sicily and its struggle for independence, 2003 13 www.army.mil/cmh-pg/brochures/romar/72-20.htm 14 Gareth Jenkins: The forgotten fighters, 1995 15 Michael Kelly: The Italian Resistance in Historical Transition, 2003 16 Kostis Papakongos: Kapetan Aris, 1975 17 Timothy Boatswain, Colin Nicolson: Historisk guide till Grekland, 2000 18 ibid 19 www.greenleft.org.au/back/1995/198/198p25.htm. See also Konstantinos Tsoulalas: The Greek Tragedy 20 Till vapen! Till vapen! Krnika ver det nationella motstndet, Athens 1964. Cited as a source in Kostis Papakongos: Kapetan Aris,1975 21 Encyclopeadia Britannica 22 Winston Churchill: Triumph and Tragedy, 1953
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23 Timothy Boatswain, Colin Nicolson: Historisk guide till Grekland, 2000 and Kostis Papakongos: Kapetan Aris, 1975 24 Timothy Boatswain, Colin Nicolson: Historisk guide till Grekland, 2000 25 Quoted in Ted Grant: British Labour betrayed Greek Workers, 1945 26 Historisk guide till Grekland, 2000, 27 Winston Churchill: Triumph and Tragedy, 1953 28 Encyclopaedia Britannica 29 IISS (International Institute for Strategic Studies) 30 www.learningcurve.pro.gov.uk/heroesvillains/churchill/churchill_1.htm 31 www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWdresden.htm 32 www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWarea.htm 33 ibid 34 Dagens Nyheter, 25 januari, 2004 35 Dwight Eisenhower: Mandate For Change, 1963 36 Leo Szilard: A Personal History of the Atomic Bomb, 1949 37 Ted Grant: History of British Trotskyism, 2002 38 Art Preis: Labours Giant Step 20 years of the CIO, 1964

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6. The Second World War: The holocaust the war within the war

If a person has no hope of staying alive, he at least does not want to die in vain.1 Tadeusz Patzer, concentration camp survivor As analysed in the previous chapter, the Second World War was mainly caused by the struggle between imperialists for the redistribution of markets, and their desire to defeat the Soviet Union. However, within this war the German Nazi Government waged a war against Jews, Roma, and many other undesirables. The causes of this war are even more shrouded in darkness than the causes of the Second World War. In general the Holocaust is defined as a one off evil event standing outside of history and bearing no relationship to what was before or came after. This is false. What is equally false is the widespread myth that there was no resistance in the concentration camps. The creation of concentration camps and the subsequent Holocaust did create the worst possible conditions for fighting back. But, given those circumstances, what is remarkable is not the lack of resistance, but that the resistance was a large as it was. Racist ideology Nazism is usually presented as an evil ideology completely alien to all other ideologies. And thus it is easy to conclude that Nazism has nothing to do with British, French or American imperialism. But many aspects of Nazi ideology were familiar features in the developed capitalist countries. Nationalism was its main ideological basis. In imperialist states, nationalism meant placing the values and interests of ones own nation above those of other nations. This presupposed that the common values and interests within a nation were greater than those between people internationally. Precisely what these values and interests were was unclear. They were usually associated with flags, accounts of heroic battles in the past, language, and the national character. Towards the end of the 19th century, as the working class grew, organised and began to challenge those in power, the bourgeois state needed an ideology that could reduce social tensions, something which could give the impression that all classes shared a common interest. In pre-capitalist societies, this role had been occupied by religion. Nationalism took its place. This, in turn, was combined with racism. Hitler consciously put forward the division of humanity into races as an ideological alternative to the Marxist view that society was divided into classes.2 The Nazis were not alone in mixing nationalism with racism. The brutal oppression practised
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by all imperialist powers in the colonies required some form of justification, and the solution was to view those being oppressed as inferior creatures. This was combined with a quasiscientific notion of genetics that gave birth to a new form of racism. In ancient Rome, the Romans were of course considered superior to their slaves, who generally came from conquered territories. But a slave could become a Roman if he was freed by his master, and a Roman could become a slave. In the film Gladiator, Russell Crowe falls from his position as one of Romes most successful generals to that of a slave. In medieval times, the Jews were victims of widespread discrimination, but persecution usually ceased if they converted. Often, the Jews were forced to do precisely that. Modern racism makes no such allowance. A person from an inferior race has the wrong genes, and that cannot be changed. The inevitable conclusion is that the superior race must be cleansed from such alien elements. The first law permitting compulsory sterilisation was introduced in Indiana (United States) in 1907. In time, seventeen other American states followed Indianas example, and in 1926 this was sanctioned by the US Supreme Court. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes expressed the opinion of the court as follows: It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind 3 It is not so strange, therefore, that in 2000 a study concluded that The comparative histories of the eugenical sterilization campaigns in the United States and Nazi Germany reveal important similarities of motivation, intent, and strategy4 In Sweden, too, such ideas took root among the bourgeoisie. Nor was the right wing of the Social Democratic Party immune to the spirit of the times. In 1935 the Social Democratic government introduced a sterilisation law, despite the opposition of the left in the Swedish Labour Movement. Between 1935 and 1976, some 63 000 people underwent compulsory sterilisation in Sweden, many of them Roma or travellers. Only Nazi Germany sterilised a larger number of people.5 Nazi racism was directed primarily at the Jews. Anti-Semitism was not unique to Nazism. Hitler was an admirer of the American car manufacturer Henry Ford, and the feeling was mutual up to the entry of the US into the Second World War. One of Fords newspapers had, as early as 1920, published a series of anti-Semitic articles headed The International Jew: The Worlds Foremost Problem.6 Hitler and Ford agreed on the myth that 75% of all Communists were Jews.7 Anti-Semitism was widespread, also in Britain. The British Nazis, organised in the British Union of Fascists (BUF) and led by Sir Oswald Mosley, 6th Baronet, had 40 000 members at their peak in the 1930s. The party had many supporters in the upper echelons of British society. King Edward VIII was one of them. Hitler intended to use him as a puppet monarch in Britain, if Germany had won the war.8 Hitler adopted ideas that were already widespread and combined them with socialist rhetoric in order to enlist the sympathy of poorer sections of the community. The Aryan race was described as superior, and the Jews were made scapegoats. They were blamed for all the misfortunes suffered by the German people. A kind of mysticism was also added to the brew. Forcing the Jews out

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Initially, the Nazis wanted Jews to emigrate from Germany. They tried to achieve this by isolating and tyrannising the Jewish community. By legislative means, they forced successive categories of Jews out of public life, confiscating their property and imposing special pass laws that separated Jews from the rest of the population. For Jews themselves, however, the problem was not only getting out of Germany but getting into other countries. Major obstacles were put in their way. Sweden was among the countries that wanted to stop Jews at its borders, and together with Switzerland was responsible for making their escape more difficult. It was at the initiative of these two neutral states that the Germans began stamping the letter J into the passports of Jews in October 1938 so that foreign customs officials could immediately identify and stop them at the border.9 9 November 1939, Crystal Night, more than six and a half years after Hitler seized power, marked the first wholesale destruction of Jewish shops and synagogues, and the murder and mass deportation of Jewish citizens began. Some 30 000 Jews were sent to the concentration camp at the village of Dachau, a few kilometres from Munich. It was the first sizeable group of Jews to be sent there simply for being Jewish.10 The pogrom-like acts of violence were largely carried out by SA and SS groups. These were not uncontrolled, spontaneous attacks by ordinary citizens. The lack of popular enthusiasm shown on Crystal Night convinced the Nazis and other anti-Semites in the German administration that Jews would have to be forced out in a more organised, planned way. 11 The majority of Germanys 500 000 Jews fled. 170 000 German Jews were killed later.12 Once Hitler had occupied Eastern Europe, millions of Jews were under Nazi control. In July 1940, there was talk of driving the Jews out of Europe by shipping them to the island of Madagascar.13 This line of approach was not unlike the plans put forward by the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, concerning the way the EU should deal with asylum applicants. He suggested they be sent to special zones in Albania, Moldavia or possibly Morocco. 14 Oliver Letwin, home affairs spokesman of the opposition Tory Party, thought that asylum seekers should be dispatched to an island far, far away. Blairs plan foundered when Greek government spokesman Panos Beglitis declared that Europe must remain a democratic area that grants political asylum and does not have concentration camps. Hitler abandoned his Madagascar project in late 1940. In the autumn of 1941, he closed German borders to all Jewish emigration. 15 The ideological predecessors to the Holocaust The French diplomat Joseph Arthur Graf von Gobineau is believed to have been the first person to seek to openly justify the extermination of the Jews. He argued that the Aryan race, the creator of civilisation, should not allow itself to be stained by Jews and others.16 The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche has also been blamed for inspiring Nazi anti-Semitism. But Gobineau had yet to write his essay and Nietzsche was only six years old when the great British liberal philosopher Herbert Spencer wrote that imperialism had done civilisation a service by clearing the earth of inferior races of men. Civilised states in pursuit of the great scheme of human happiness were justified in exterminating the lower orders that stood in the way of this goal. 17 Spencers liberalism and emphasis on the freedom of the individual only applied to selected parts of the human race. Spencer was by no means alone in his views. This kind of thinking was widespread in Britain

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in the 19th century. These ideas were a reflection of what was going on in the colonies.18 The Tasmanians were the first nation of people to suffer total extermination. Tasmania is an island roughly the size of Ireland. In 1803, the first colonisers arrived, and within a year the massacres had begun. As in the case of the North American Indians, it was not the massacres by themselves that led to the demise of the Tasmanians. The killings were just a prelude to the seizing of their land, the annihilation of all the kangaroos on the island, and the import of thousands of sheep owned, of course, by the invaders. With their livelihoods gone, many islanders succumbed to disease. In 1829, the British government representatives decided to gather together the remaining Tasmanians in a form of ghetto (or reserve, as it was called) on the barren west coast of the island. 5 000 soldiers, 45 metres apart, combed the islands to make sure no Tasmanians were hiding from the administration. Of the 2 000 natives who had welcomed the first whites when they stepped ashore, only 300 remained. Many of these quickly became alcoholics, and the women gave birth to fewer and fewer children (a normal reaction at times of crisis, even in modern industrialised states.) When Darwin visited the island in 1859 just 56 years after the arrival of the white colonisers all the men had already died. The last Tasmanian woman, Truganina, went to her grave in 1876. Wherever colonial powers have gone, they have left only scattered groups of people and shattered social structures in their wake. Whole native communities have been wiped out in the name of civilisation and racial superiority. When Hitler attacked Jews, he was treading a well-worn path. What the imperialist powers had been engaged in for decades in the colonies, he tried to achieve in a matter of a few years in Europe. Other colonial regimes had implemented their genocides far away from home. This was not only for geographical reasons. Public opinion, not least the Labour Movement, would not have tolerated genocides if they could have got first-hand information. Germany only had room to expand next door, and was able to do so because the Labour Movement had been completely smashed in Germany. Colonial expansion The Holocaust was part of the Nazis Urge to go East (Drang nach Osten) strategy to create more Living space (Lebensraum) for German people. This reactionary dream was born at the end of the 19th century. Britain, and to some extent France, had made conquests throughout Africa and Asia. All that was left for Germany to conquer were the underdeveloped states of Eastern Europe. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote that Germany and Britain would share the world between them. He was appreciative of the British, particularly of their aristocracy. After the war, Gnther Blumentritt, the general in charge of the German forces in France, described how Hitler reacted when he heard that France had capitulated in June 1940: Hitler was in very good humour, he admitted that the course of the campaign had been a definite miracle, and gave us his opinion that the war would be finished in six weeks. After that he wished to conclude a reasonable peace with France, and then the way would be free for an agreement with Britain. He then astonished us by speaking with admiration of the British Empire, of the necessity for its existence, and of the civilisation that Britain had brought into the world. He remarked, with a shrug of the shoulders, that the creation of its Empire had been achieved by means that were often harsh, but where there is planing, the shavings fly. He compared the British Empire with the Catholic Church saying they were both essential elements of stability in the world. He said that all he wanted from Britain was
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that she should acknowledge Germanys position on the Continent. 19 Hitlers drive for Lebensraum was directed principally at the Soviet Union. He wrote in Mein Kampf that he was particularly interested in the fertile territory of Ukraine, and wished to develop a colony similar to the imperial society created by the British in India: What India was for England, the territories of Russia will be for us The German colonists ought to live on handsome, spacious farms. The German services will be lodged in marvellous buildings, the governors in palaces The Germans this is essential will have to constitute amongst themselves a closed society, like a fortress The least of our stable-lads will be superior to any native. 20 This type of society survived in South Africa a country shaped by British imperialists right up to the mid-1990s. Having completed the occupation of Eastern Europe, the Nazis and their local supporters began launching pogroms. Thousands of Jews were killed. But it was not until January 1942, in the middle of the Second World War, at the notorious Wansee conference, that the Final Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe became official policy the Holocaust.21 Three years earlier, the Nazis had begun the policy of gassing incapacitated citizens, the physically disabled and the mentally retarded, using carbon monoxide in specially-equipped vans in Poland. Soon afterwards, Action T4 was launched, directed at the same groups in Germany. At least 120 000 people fell victim to what the Nazis termed mercy killings in this way. The methods were subsequently refined and applied in extermination camps. The first concentration camp was established in the village of Dachau. By the end of 1933, some 150 000 political prisoners (Communists, Social Democrats and union activists) were already held in concentration camps.22 Originally they were called re-education centres. Later they were renamed concentration camps, as they concentrated the enemy into a confined space. The Spaniards had invented this type of labour camp in Cuba, but the Nazis were inspired by the British use of them in South Africa during the Boer War. Hitler also dispatched beggars, prostitutes, homosexuals, alcoholics, religious fundamentalists and the disabled to the camps. In the early stages, some of the inmates were tortured, but the only ones who were killed were those who sought to escape and those classed as incurably insane.23 There were plenty of concentration camps in Germany, and the death toll in them was of course high: conditions were far from humane. But the extinction camps (Vernichtungslager) where the main aim was systematically to gas people were all but one situated in Poland (the only exception was a small camp in Byelorussia). As people arrived at these camps over half were selected to die at once. Most of the rest were worked to death. These death camps were built after mass shootings became more and more difficult to implement. Rudolf Hss, the commandant of Auschwitz, wrote after the war that many of the task forces (Einsatzkommandos) involved in the mass murders went mad or committed suicide, unable to endure wading through blood any longer.24 Extermination camps were a way of de-personalising the mass killings and conducting them more efficiently. In Belzec they could kill 15 000 people a day, in Sobibor 20 000, in Treblinka and Majdanek 25 000. In Auschwitz, a giant hall was built where 2 000 people could be killed in just three minutes. Of the approximately six million Jews who died in the Holocaust, half were Poles (85% of all
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Polish Jews were murdered) and a quarter were from German-occupied territory in the Soviet Union. The others came from the smaller Jewish communities throughout the rest of Germancontrolled Europe. The extermination was thorough there too. 90% of Latvian and Lithuanian Jews,25 as well as 75% of all Dutch Jews perished.26 Bearing in mind the Nazis anti-Semitic ideology, it was only logical that the Jews should be the main group of people to make room for German colonisers. Jews were of such an inferior order in Nazi eyes that they were classed as a non-race, i.e. they had no place among human beings. In fact, however, all people in the East were considered inferior. Nazis ranked Russians only just above Jews, and the other Slavic people close to Russians. The Auschwitz gas chambers were built in May 1940 to put Soviet prisoners of war to death. It was not until the spring of 1942 that attention was focused on Jews. In all, 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war died of starvation, cold or disease, or were shot by firing squad or gassed to death 57% of all Soviet prisoners. Only 3.5% of US and British prisoners of war died in captivity.27 As many nonJewish as Jewish Poles, three million, ended up in the death camps. Like sheep? The myth about the Second World War has three parts. Firstly, that the Allies fought the Second World War for freedom and to save the Jews. Secondly, that the Holocaust can only be explained by metaphysical terms such as evil. And finally there is the notion that many, especially Jews, were lead like sheep to the slaughter. Kazimiera Ingdahl, professor of Slavic language at Stockholm University, writing a review of a recently published book about anti-Semitism in Poland, connects to this idea. Referring to the concentration camps in Poland, he writes that Poles saw with their own eyes the persecutions, the violence and the murders, they heard with their own ears the silent lamentation of people condemned to death, with their own sense of smell they smelt the sweetly smoke that puffed out of the crematoria.28 But somehow, according to him, they managed to completely miss the extensive resistance that went on in the concentration camps. How is it possible that heroic acts in the midst of one of mankinds darkest experiences are barely mentioned in the history books? Resistance was far from easy, especially in the extermination camps, and even at its height resistance involved only a minority of concentration camp inmates. But that makes the resistance even more significant, not less. The first pre-condition for resistance was to avoid demoralisation in conditions that were deliberately designed to completely degrade and de-humanize. Immediately upon arriving at the camps prisoners were systematically beaten and had their name removed and replaced with a number. There were no rules other than complete obedience. Anybody in charge had the right to beat any prisoner to death at any time. Food was at starvation level. A struggle to gain privileges, or even survival, at the expense of ones fellow inmates was actively encouraged. In order to combat this brutalisation it was necessary to create activities that kept people together. Political study circles, prayers, and schools for the children, all played a role in
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upholding peoples humanity. Radio receivers (and a few transmitters) were stolen, paid for by bribes to the guards, or put together from scrap. They played an important role in keeping contact with the outside world and maintaining hope. They were even used, when the execution of a particular group was planned, to get the British army to warn via the BBC that if that was to happen there would be severe repercussions. Prisoners working in the infirmary could save lives by for example exchanging the identities of living people with those who had already been murdered. The resistance even developed methods of removing the identification numbers that at a later stage were tattooed onto the arms of inmates in the death camps. Documents were forged to help people to escape so that they could inform the world about what was going on in concentration camps. Acts of sabotage were undertaken. When the old crematorium at Dachau could no longer handle the increased demand, construction begun on a new larger one with several ovens and a gas chamber. A detail of inmates headed by a mason inmate received the following instruction from him: Comrades, the gas chamber through which all of us may be intended to march must never be finished! Work slowly? No, sabotage wherever you can! The cement did not bond properly, the foundation turned out to be too weak, and the mortar in the brickwork crumbled so that whole sections had to be torn down and rebuilt.29 In practically all camps where inmates were forced to work on arms production there were many acts of sabotage. These ranged from the simple misplacing of the right size screws to advanced technical solutions to damage the manufacture of arms while allowing them to pass inspection. At Auschwitz the production at the German Armaments Plant declined by 50% within a few months, when systematic sabotage begun. In January 1943, Hitler ordered every tenth inmate to be shot in factories where production defects were suspected of being caused by sabotage. 30 Some of the most spectacular sabotage was undertaken at Dora, a subsidiary camp to Buchenwald, where the V-rockets were produced. Reports have filtered through of Russians urinating on transformers and other sensitive parts of rockets. A Pole and a Frenchmen put a powder into the oil for the missiles. Electric wires were torn. Rheostates removed. Of the 11 300 first generation V-1 rockets launched one-fifth failed at start. The second generation V-2 rockets fared no better. Only half of the 10 800 fired reached their targets. The rest fell apart in the start area, exploded in the air or fell into the North Sea. To counter-act the sabotage the SS developed a network of agents in the plant. All in all 300 to 400 inmates were tortured and executed.31 The moral effect upon the prisoners of sabotage was at least as important as the difficulties it caused the Nazis. Sabotage is like wine was a phrase used frequently by Polish female inmates to express the elation felt among prisoners after a successful sabotage.32 Uprisings There were also direct confrontations with the SS guarding the camps. Before entering the gas chambers, disguised as showers, the intended victims were given bread and told that they had to get cleaned. This was to encourage them to go peacefully, but despite this there are many examples of people refusing to enter peacefully and even of attacks on the guards.
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When 1700 Hungarian Jews were to be exterminated at Auschwitz in October 1943, one third of them rebelled in the dressing rooms before being herded into the gas chambers were the others already had been killed. A handful of SS men were disarmed and one of them killed. After a wild shootout, the rebels were let out one by one and shot.33 At Mauthausen (not an extermination camp) in Austria almost 500 took part in an attempted breakout. They attacked the guards with wooden shoes and fire extinguishers and carried out tables and rags to protect themselves when they climbed over the electric fence. 419 managed to get out, despite being shot at by the guards, their reduced strength and their unfamiliarity with the surrounding area. 17 survived.34 At Auschwitz, 300 men, mainly Hungarian and Greek Jews, working on a special detail in the crematories and gas chambers knew that they would eventually be executed for being privy to secrets. They prepared themselves. Jewish women, who worked in a factory, smuggled explosives and other chemicals to them. They attacked the SS men, blew up the crematorium and cut the wire fence with pliers with insulated handles. The inmates at another crematorium also disarmed their SS guards and killed them. The uprising was set off prematurely and therefore did not get as far as planned. The inmates at two other crematoriums were unable to join them and the gasoline that was stored to burn down the barracks was not used. There were no survivors of this uprising, but three SS junior squad leaders had been killed (the first Nazis to be killed at Auschwitz) and twelve others wounded. The crematorium could not be used again.35 An even larger uprising took place at Treblinka in 1942. But the biggest and most successful rebellion was at the extermination camp Sobidor in October, 1943. A couple of weeks before the uprising a group of Russian Jews who had served as officers in the Red Army had arrived. They immediately attracted the respect of others, not least one of them Aleksander Pecherskii. He distinguished himself by turning down rewards of bread, margarine and cigarettes offered to him by the SS for his fast work. He was approached by a fellow inmate who called upon him to flee. However, he turned this down saying that there would be bloody reprisals on those left behind, and that ways had to be found to help as many as possible to escape. When he was asked why Russian partisans did not liberate the camp, he replied: Our work cannot be done for us by other.36 After that, the already existing underground resistance group offered him the leadership. An international structure was established to prepare the uprising. Under the disguise of a Yom Kippur celebration in one of the barracks where almost all of the 500 to 600 inmates gathered, a general discussion about the uprising was held. Tasks were assigned to various subgroups. Everything was carefully planned. After the uprising and breakout the Lublin police drew up a balance sheet: On Oct. 14, 1943, ca. 5 P.M., rebellion of the Jews in the SS camp Sobibor, 40 km north of Chelm. They overpowered the guards, took possession of the arsenal, and after a gun battle with the other camp personnel they fled in an unknown direction9 SS men killed, 1 SS man missing1 SS man woundedtwo foreign guards shot. Around 300 Jew escaped, the others were shot or are in the camp. Troops, police and the Wehrmacht were immediately notified and secured the camp around 1 A.M. The area south and southwest of the camp is being combed by the SS and the Wehrmacht.37

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At a trial at Hagen in 1965, the prosecutors got the addresses of 32 survivors. Three others had died after the war. They estimated that 50 to 60 of the inmates had escaped certain death thanks to the uprising.38 Removed from history It is an extraordinary fact, that the resistance in the concentration camps is practically unknown to most people. Why are all the horrendous details of the beatings, the gas chambers, the gruesome medical experiments explained in great detail, but the resistance is passed by? Where are the major Hollywood releases about the sabotage and uprisings? The plain truth is that the people who fought back are doubly victims. Not only were they the victims of the Nazis, they were also the victims of the Cold War. Most of them were Communists. And therefore by definition incapable of heroism. Individual communists were not more heroic than non-communists. Although there were some outstanding individuals among the communists, there were also individuals who betrayed their fellow inmates to the SS for an extra piece of bread. However, most communists had a moral advantage. The shock of being transformed from being regarded as solid citizens to being treated as non-human beings was not as great. For communists the struggle in the concentration camps was a continuation of the struggle that they had waged against the capitalist system for years. Under far worse conditions, yes, but nonetheless basically the same struggle. They also had the advantage of being used to disciplined collective struggle. But these were not the main reason why their resistance was greater and more effective. The point was that the way the camps were organised meant that it was the communists who had the greatest possibility of organising resistance. As the police report above about Sobibor shows, the numbers of guards at the camps were not many in proportion to the number of prisoners. Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, had consciously created another system to maintain control over the camps the playing out of different nationalities against each other. He established a kind of system of prisoners self-rule, based upon one nationality getting privileges for ruling over others. There was a hierarchy with Jews and Roma at the bottom and Germans, Austrians and Scandinavians at the top. And at the very top were the German common criminals murderers, thieves, and rapists. They were put in charge of each block of barracks and had absolute power over the inmates living there. At least in the beginning. As the number and size of concentration camps grew, German political prisoners and people from other nationalities could also become block leaders. Towards the end of the war there were even some Jewish ones. Any effective resistance had to cut across this system and organise along internationalist lines. Polish officers were also a group that provided some resistance in the concentration camps, but their nationalism and anti-Semitism effectively made any joint activities very difficult. Jehovahs Witnesses were singled out for persecution by Hitler and many ended up in concentration camps. Their anti-war stance and refusal to serve in the army was completely incompatible with Nazi ideology. And many did courageously resist the Nazis. But their willingness to die rather than to have anything to do with war was counter-acted by their cult of obedience. They refused to escape and therefore needed no guards. As they were industrious they were often given service positions in the homes of the SS and even in the home of Auschwitz commandant Hss. He commented that they were strange creatures and
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that one served an SS leader and anticipated his every wish, but as a matter of principle she refused to clean uniforms, caps, boots, and anything connected with the military; in fact, she never even touched such things.39 The basic glue of all the biggest and most long lasting underground organisations, such as Combat Group Auschwitz, were all based on working class internationalism. In the Auschwitz and Sobibor uprisings a key role was played by the international veterans of the Spanish Civil War. Their internationalist credentials had already been proven in battle. Working class internationalism also made it possible for the resistance to build bridges to the civilian population working in and around the camps. One participant comes to the conclusion that among the civilians they came in contact with the best contacts werethe plainest people in such offices, like boiler-room attendants, craftsmen, and cleaning crews.40 One survivor commented wryly that international Jewish solidarity, depicted under the catch word world Jewry and described as very dangerous in Nazi propaganda, was nothing but a myth.41 Many Jews did become completely demoralised. As one from the Auschwitz resistance put it: Something could be done only with those who had once had some contact with the workers movement.42 Before the Second World War many Jews had participated in the Labour Movements throughout Europe. Many of the leaders in the German, Russian, Polish, and French Labour Movements were Jewish. When the ghettoes were established by the Nazis throughout Eastern Europe as a first step towards the Holocaust, these fighting traditions were upheld. The uprising of the Warsaw ghetto is well known, perhaps because it inspired the Warsaw uprising that followed. But it is less known that fighters of ZOB (ydowska Organizacja Bojowa, Jewish Fighting Organisation), the biggest resistance organisation, were in the main socialists. In the midst of the uprising they gathered on the 1st of May to sing the Internationale. This does not appear in films about the uprising such as The Pianist. Nor is it known that there was resistance of one form or another in almost all of the 356 ghettoes. However, there was also another trend among Jews a nationalist bourgeois one. Many Jewish leaders in the ghettoes tried to make deals with the Nazis and told people to stay calm. These leaders hoped that they could get the Nazis to agree to get rid of some Jews by sending them to Palestine, never mind the rest. As late as 1943, while the Jews of Europe were being exterminated in their millions, the U.S. Congress proposed to set up a commission to study the problem. Rabbi Stephen Wise, who was the principal American spokesperson for Zionism, came to Washington to testify against the rescue bill because it would divert attention from the colonization of Palestine. This is the same Rabbi Wise who, in 1938, in his capacity as leader of the American Jewish Congress, wrote a letter in which he opposed any change in U.S. immigration laws which would enable Jews to find refuge. He stated: It may interest you to know that some weeks ago the representatives of all the leading Jewish organizations met in conference It was decided that no Jewish organization would, at this time, sponsor a bill which would in any way alter the immigration laws.43

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No wonder it was left to those with a conscious faith in the struggle of the international working class to wage the only possible struggle in the ghettos and concentration camps against the Nazis. _________________________________________________ 1 Quoted in Against all hope by Hermann Langbein, 1994 2 Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf, 1925 3 Hywel Probert in the New Statesman, 15 April 2002 4 Dr Andre Sofair and Dr Lauris Kaldjian: Yale Bulletin, 18 February 2000, http:// www.yale.edu/opa/v28.n21/story10.html 5 Svenska Dagbladet, 6 July 2003 6 www.us-israel.org/jsource/anti-semitism/ford.html 7 www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERantisemitism.htm 8 www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/MONedwardVIII.htm 9 www2.amnesty.se/mcveigh.nsf/tt30?OpenPage 10 www.levandehistoria.se/infowebb/1921/utskrift1921_1945.html 11 Zygmunt Bauman: Auschwitz och det moderna samhllet, 1994 12 www.levandehistoria.se/infowebb/1921/utskrift1921_1945.html 13 ibid 14 Guardian, 11 October 2003 15 http://history.acusd.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/holocaust.html 16 Joseph Gobineau: The Inequality of Human Races, 1857 17 Herbert Spencer: Social Statistics, 1850 18 Sven Lindquist: Utrota varenda jvel, 1992 19 www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERblumentritt.htm 20 www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSbarbarossa.htm21 www.levandehistoria.se/infowebb/1921/utskrift1921_1945.html
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22 http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERconcentration.htm 23 www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERconcentration.htm 24 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_camp 25 Catalogue of the Stockholm exhibition, Deutschland, Deutschland, 1979 26 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Netherlands 27 Sven Lindqvist: Utrota varenda jvel, 1992 28 Svenska Dagbladet: 23 April, 2008 29 Sepp Plieseis: Vom Ebro zum Dachstein. 1946 30 Herman Langbein: Against all hope. 1994. 31 ibid 32 ibid 33 ibid 34 ibid 35 ibid 36 ibid 37 ibid 38 ibid 39 ibid 40 ibid 41 Sim Kessel: Perdu Auschwitz, 1970 42 Report of the Communist Party Group of the Jawiszowice Concentration Camp quoted in Herman Langbein: Against all hope. 1994. Jawiszowice was a satellite camp to Auschwitz. 43 http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/antisemitism/holocaust/index.cfm

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7. The Cold War and National Liberation Wars 1945 1989: The post war wars

We walked to the brink and we looked it in the face. John Foster Dulles, US Secretary of State, 1953-19591 I am Fidel Castro and we have come to liberate Cuba. Fidel Castro on meeting the first peasant after landing with Granma on Cuba in 19562 After the Second World War, a new global situation developed. Germany and Japan lay in ruins. France and Britain had been on the decline as great powers for some time. Although they were formally speaking on the winning side, they emerged severely weakened. For the US, things were different. American factories and infrastructure were intact and running at full speed. The US government was able to dictate the terms for world trade, and the dollar was the global currency. In 1950, the US alone accounted for 40% of global GDP (Gross Domestic Product).3 Finally, after two world wars, a depression and numerous minor wars, the imperialist system had arrived at a relatively stable global division of power. However, this did not mean the end of wars. Just new types of wars and new struggles against war. With the US so dominant after the Second World War, trade barriers that did not suit them were steadily dismantled and world trade became the engine that hauled capitalism into a new expansive age. Due to working-class pressure, the rise in trade was accompanied by an increase in state intervention in the economy, and capitalism grew faster than ever. This rapid growth meant that profits also grew. The capitalists, anxious to avoid strikes and other disruptions, agreed to share some of it. Wages were raised. Welfare states began to develop, at least in Europe, where the labour movement was strong. For the time being (and only partially), capitalism had overcome what Marx had defined as the two intrinsic barriers to capitalist development the nation-state and private property. The United States all-powerful position in the capitalist world was a stabilizing factor, as it kept the other imperialist nations in check. A counterweight existed to curb the arrogance and autocratic behaviour that inevitably result from such strength. This was provided by the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe (the Baltic States, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and East-Germany), where capitalism had been abolished and which were under Soviet domination. The bureaucratic elite that ruled the Soviet Union had no need to expand once they had consolidated their spheres of influence. They were mainly interested in preserving the status quo (peace and quiet, no change). The atom bomb had changed the international situation, no
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individual capitalist could be sure of surviving a nuclear war. The outcome was MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). The two great powers divided the world into two equally matched power blocs. Relative calm prevailed in many parts of the world, but below the surface there were simmering tensions and frequent conflicts between the US and the Soviet Union. This was known as the Cold War, as it never heated to open warfare between the superpowers. Basically, it was a trial of strength between two opposed social systems on a global scale: capitalism versus the planned economy. These differences were never settled. On the contrary, they led to wars by proxy and a monstrous arms race that devoured enormous sums of money. Many people feared the worst on numerous occasions; at the time of the Cuba crisis in 1962 there was a dramatic confrontation between Moscow and Washington, but that eventually came to nothing. None the less, the situation was tense. Workers who had suffered two world wars did not want a third global conflict. And during the economic upswing that followed the Second World War, the working class grew dramatically in strength. Many former peasants and small businessmen were employed in industry. In Germany, for instance, the proportion of farmers and peasants declined from around 40% of the population prior to the Second World War to just 2% by the 1980s. Countless small firms were put out of business by the major corporations. The working class rapidly became more organized, and as a result Labour Parties were voted into office in many parts of Europe. Calls for disarmament and for an end to nuclear proliferation won increasing support. Big demonstrations were held in favour of nuclear disarmament in the late fifties and early sixties. National wars of liberation While relative stability reigned in the industrialized countries, the same could not be said of the poor countries of the world. Colonization led to the development of national consciousness in these regions, which in turn led to revolts. The countries of Latin America became independent as early as the 19th century, but ended up in the shadow of the increasingly powerful United States. Colonies elsewhere were swept by a storm of popular uprisings after the Second World War. Hundreds of millions of oppressed people fought for national sovereignty and social justice in China, India, Indochina, and Africa. And they won. Many third world countries paid a heavy price for their independence. In a later chapter we take up the indescribable brutality with which the struggle for independence in East Timor was met (and the deceitful role the United Nations played in that conflict). But imperialist aggression was not only encountered during the actual struggle, but also, and often more so, after independence. Imperialists insinuated the tried and tested method of divide and rule into the very foundations of many newly independent states. This created the hotspots of international conflict that still exist to this day, for example the wars between India and Pakistan and the conflicts in the Middle East. Both are taken up in the following chapters. But even in those countries that succeeded in establishing reasonable stable and coherent nation states their problems were far from over. Packing British or French generals off home, taking control of the administration and hoisting your own flag is one thing; it is quite another to compete on a capitalist basis with highly developed countries. In practice, freedom for the
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former colonies was the freedom to be exploited by the same imperialist companies as before independence. So in many places the fight for national and social liberation continued. Leaders such as Gamal Nasser in Egypt, Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, Jawaharlal Nehru in India, Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana and Ali Bhutto in Pakistan all called themselves socialists and nationalised some sectors of the economy. When the term Third World appeared in the 1950s, it was used specifically to describe developing countries that remained outside the power blocs, and therefore had some room to manoeuvre between the US and the Soviet Union. In countries such as China, Cuba and Angola, the movement went much further. There, an army of peasants and students, a guerrilla movement, overcame the old order of rich landowners and capitalists. In other places, such as Syria, Ethiopia and Afghanistan, where the working class was very weak, groups of officers seized power and abolished capitalism. They were the only group with sufficient cohesion to act against the disintegration of society. None of these movements were under democratic control and they actively opposed the organisations of the working class. They were inspired by the successes of the Soviet Union, and later China, and established regimes that were very similar to the one in the Soviet Union. However, when small impoverished countries declared themselves socialist, it was not at the initiative of the Soviet Union. The bureaucrats in Moscow, as noted, wanted nothing to upset the prevailing world order, and leftist revolts meant conflicts with the Western powers. Once the revolts began, the Soviet leaders did provide support, albeit reluctantly. After all, such developments did strengthen their countrys position in the world. The Soviet Union dominated its allies politically and militarily, but it is wrong to suggest that it pursued imperialist policies. Except for the immediate post-war period, it did not exploit its satellite states economically. On the contrary, it subsidized them for years, and living standards were generally higher in the countries of Eastern Europe than in the Soviet Union. Soviet oil was sold to the East European states at greatly reduced prices, and goods were purchased from members of the COMECON (the East European equivalent of the EU) at prices above those charged in the world market. Cuba alone received subsidies worth a million US dollars a day from the 1960s up until the collapse of the Soviet Union.4 The new Stalinist regimes in the Third World introduced reforms in such areas as healthcare and education, so they were popular. The Revolutionary Council that seized power in Afghanistan in 1978, for instance, wrote off small farmers and leaseholders debts to loan sharks and big landowners, and redistributed land to poor peasants. The Council also banned the patriarchal tradition of selling young women as brides, and launched a literacy campaign for men and women. The imperialist powers were worried by the spread of Soviet type states throughout the world. The US responded by intervening militarily, on 40 occasions since the Second World War.5 Among the best known interventions were the Vietnam War, the CIA-sponsored coup in Chile in 1973 and American involvement in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Apart from numerous military interventions, a common US tactic was to build up and sponsor fundamentalist groups. For the American Government, the ruling principle was my enemys enemy is my friend. This was first applied in the 1950s when Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal and appeared to be bringing Egypt under the wing of the Soviet Union. The US subsequently applied the same tactics against all leftist governments that came to power
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in Muslim countries. In Afghanistan, in particular, the fundamentalists were supplied with huge amounts of weapons and money by the US and by reactionary Arab states. This funding was channelled primarily through the CIA and the Pakistani security service, the ISI. In the spirit of the US administration, the film Rambo III portrayed the fundamentalists as freedom fighters. The US turned a blind eye to the fundamentalist opium fields, as long as they conducted their Jihad (holy war) against the leftist government and the Soviet Union. Where US backed right-wing dictators were in power, such as Zia ul-Haq in Pakistan, fundamentalists armed gangs were allowed to attack labour demonstrations, meetings and activists. Imperialist manoeuvres and wars against countries that, despite their lack of democracy, were lifting millions of people out of poverty and disease inspired big anti-imperialist movements in the advanced countries. The fight against the Vietnam War was in the centre of this movement. It is taken up in a later chapter. It was a unique period in world history and therefore the movement against the war was uniquely successful. ____________________ 1 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,861876-2,00.html 2 Sebastian Balfour: Castro, 2000 3 National Bureau for Economic Research, March 1977 4 Ted Grant: Russia from Revolution to Counter-Revolution, 1997 5 www.adbusters.org/magazine/39/interventions

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8. The Partition of India in 1947: Gandhi's Method

Why not do it the Gandhi way? He defeated the British Empire and he had no weapons! Michael Moore in Bowling for Columbine After the Second World War, Britain was forced to cede independence to many colonies, including India. However, contrary to how Indian independence is usually presented it was not a peaceful affair inspired by Gandhis ideas of non-violent resistance. If it really had been Gandhi and his methods that had defeated the British Empire, there would be an alternative to the working classs collective and democratically organised struggle for peace. But Gandhi gave India neither independence nor peace. Earning ones rights Gandhi first became involved in politics in South Africa and it was there his ideas evolved. He had studied in Britain, but after taking his law degree had found it difficult to get employment in India. Therefore he took a job as a representative of wealthy Indians living under British rule in Natal.1 In South Africa, Gandhi saw that Indians were treated as second class citizens, even if they had money. The turning point in his life came when he was ejected from a first-class train carriage because of his ethnic origin. Gandhi saw the injustice around him, but his response was to try and make the Indians good members of the Empire. In his view, this was the way to show that they deserved to be treated as equals. They were to conduct themselves properly, observe cleanliness, and learn good English. When the Boer War (1899-1901) broke out between the British colonial forces and the Dutch settlers, the Boers, Gandhi urged the Indians to support the British.2 Gandhi himself organised an ambulance brigade and volunteered as a medical orderly together with more than a thousand other Indians. He later wrote: I felt that, if I demanded rights as a British citizen, it was also my duty, as such, to participate in the defence of the British Empire.3 Gandhi adopted the same approach in response to the Zulu uprising of 1906, when the Zulus revolted against the colonial regimes taxation of their huts. The tax was a way of forcing the Africans to work for the British for cash. The rebels were surrounded and 500 of them were mown down by machine-gun fire. Crops and homes were burnt for good measure.4 Describing the event, Gandhi would write: This was not war, but a manhunt. Although he and his fleet of ambulance workers also treated wounded Zulus, they remained faithful to the
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government side. Gandhi himself was temporarily awarded the rank of staff sergeant and given a uniform by the government to encourage the recruitment of more Indians as ambulance workers. The Indian volunteers later received medals for their efforts but no civil rights. On the contrary, laws were introduced in Transvaal the following year under which all Indians had to register with the authorities, supply fingerprints and carry passports with them at all times. Those who refused were no longer entitled to live in Transvaal. Non-violence as a method After having been deceived by the regime on a number of occasions, Gandhi realised that displays of loyalty would not bring about change. Instead, he began organising the burning of passports and other forms of civil disobedience. Indian businessmen traded without a licence, and Indians crossed the border into Transvaal without permission. It was during this period that the satyagraha (truth-force) method, or passive resistance, began to be used systematically. Gandhis basic tenet was that one should not subject ones opponents to violence or hatred. His followers should set an example and confront brutality without hitting back, and in that way eventually persuade their opponents that they were in the wrong and cause them to change. The idea was the vindication of truth not by infliction of suffering on the opponent but on ones self.5 Gandhi also described this approach in the following terms: The real road to ultimate happiness lies in going to jail and undergoing suffering there in the interest of ones own country and religion.6 Over a number of years, he and his supporters were jailed time and again, and hundreds were deported to India. But no laws were changed. In 1913, the South African leader, General Smuts, once again reneged on his promises.7 He had pledged, for instance, to abolish a special tax imposed on Indian contract workers at the end of their term of labour. In practice, this tax forced them to either sign a new contract or leave the country. In addition, a judge ruled that only Christian marriages were to be considered legal, which meant Indian wives were officially regarded as mistresses without rights. However, the same year, the struggle took a completely new turn. Indian miners came out on strike in protest at the hated tax on contract workers. Suddenly, the protests were no longer a matter of Indians (mainly businessmen) violating the passport laws here and there and being jailed. Coal production in Newcastle was brought to a halt. The mine-owners turned off both the electricity and the water supply to the workers barracks. For a socialist, the obvious thing to do in such circumstances would have been to provide and mobilise financial support to ensure that the strike spread and grew stronger, and to try and establish unions in the mines. But such an approach was alien to Gandhi, and according to his autobiography his friends from the trader class were not prepared to help. They had business relations with the mine owners. So, instead, Gandhi told the workers to sell their household goods and join him on a pilgrims march to Johannesburg. Their destination was Tolstoy Farm, where Gandhi and his supporters lived. The mineworkers wives and children went along as well, and the march amassed 2 000 people in all. (Gandhi sometimes refers to 4 000 5000 people, which suggests that others joined along the way). Gandhi did not intend them reaching the farm. He wanted to see them safely deposited in jail. He even wrote to the government asking it to be kind enough to arrest us where we
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stood. His plan was to turn the workers mass struggle into an act of civil disobedience: to cross a border, go to jail and then see if the government lost heart. 8 After a 13-day march, when the workers had almost reached Tolstoy Farm, the authorities struck. Troops rounded up the strikers and marched them to special trains commandeered to take them back to Newcastle. Gandhi was already in jail, but he had previously instructed the workers to accept whatever befell them without resistance. He had transferred the leadership of the movement to one of his friends, Polak. The workers, however, were not totally amenable. They demanded that Gandhi be summoned to the railway station and agree in person to their being arrested by the government. Gandhi did not like the idea. The workers were told that imprisonment was their goal and that they should appreciate the governments action. The workers climbed aboard the trains. They were immediately taken back to the mines, which had now been enclosed by barbed wire and turned into prisons. The mine-owners European staff had been appointed prison guards and they ordered the workers to return to work. When the strikers refused, they were whipped and kicked. The march and its brutal conclusion cost a number of lives, including those of two babies.9 Gandhi wanted to call off the workers struggle at this point. But against his will, and despite mounted police opening fire on the mineworkers, the strike spread to Indian workers on the sugar plantations, on the railways, in factories and in offices. Gandhi wrote afterwards: I had warned my co-workers against allowing any more labourers to go on strikeBut when the floodgates are opened, there is no checking the universal deluge. The labourers everywhere struck work of their own accord, and volunteers also posted themselves in various places to look after them.10 After the Great March of 1913, General Smuts appointed a commission to review the position of the Indian community in South Africa. Gandhi argued that the Indians themselves should be allowed at least one representative on the commission. When Smuts refused, Gandhi prepared to go to jail once again and urged a group of Indians to begin a protest march on Durban. But the march never came about. Gandhi explains why in his memoirs: Just at this time there was a great strike of European employees of the Union railways, which made the position of Government extremely delicateBut I declared that the Indians could not assist the railway strikers, as they were not out to harass the government, their struggle being entirely different and differently conceived.11 Instead of trying to establish ties with the striking white workers, Gandhi once again took the governments side. Smuts had no qualms about using force against the white workers. He declared a state of emergency in a bid to smash the strike. When the railwaymens union, the Transvaal Federation of Trades, responded by calling a general strike, Smuts brought in an army, arrested nine union leaders and deported them to Britain.12 Gandhis strategy made things difficult not only for the black population, but also for white workers engaged in active struggle. Gandhi later notes that British friends in South Africa applauded his decision and Lord Ampthill had sent him a telegram wishing him luck. Victory In the end, the government backed down and a short time later passed the Indian Relief Act.13 Under this law, the three-pound tax was abolished, Indian marriages became legal,
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the immigration laws were eased and those who had taken part in the conflict were pardoned. It was a remarkable victory that gave hope and inspiration to many people labouring under the colonial yoke far beyond the borders of South Africa. But why did the government concede defeat? Gandhi himself suggests that it was the chivalry of the Indians towards the government and his own correspondence with General Smuts that were the decisive factors.14 He also notes that the violence aroused such widespread indignation in India that Lord Harding, the British Viceroy, spoke out against the South African government and its laws. A more obvious explanation for the retreat of the South African government is that it was severely shaken by the Indian and white strikes, which had come at a time when the blacks, too, had begun to organise nationally, across tribal boundaries. The ANC (African National Congress) was founded in 1912, and in 1913 black women in the Orange Free State launched protests against the rule whereby they had to pay for their passports every month. In June 1913, both white and black miners went on strike. When 13 000 African workers downed tools, the strike leaders were jailed and troops were brought in to force the strikers back to work.15 When Gandhi met General Smuts after the Great March, he observed that the South African leader was extremely troubled by the strikes, and more docile than ever. Smuts himself declared that the government needed a breathing space, and Gandhi was happy to grant it one. The survival of the South African regime, which guaranteed white privilege, was contingent on its ability to divide the working class along racial lines. The troubles that broke out in 1913 posed a threat to the entire structure. If the workers struggle had been linked across colour lines, things would have turned out very differently. Even the white union, the Transvaal Federation of Trades, acted in solidarity with the striking Indian workers in 1913 despite the fact that it officially sanctioned segregation between whites and blacks. The union issued a statement expressing sympathy for the Asians in their struggle and demanded that no white man should act as a strike-breaker.16 The protest actions organised by Gandhis movement might have encouraged the blacks in their struggle, but the fact that Gandhi refused to cooperate with white, black or coloured workers helped the government. The regime took the opportunity to cement a split in the working class by granting certain rights to Indians alone.17 At the same time, things were made considerably more difficult for the blacks. A law was passed under which the white minority about a fifth of the population was to control over 90% of all land.18 The Native Land Act decreed that the black population could not own land outside special reserves. Blacks were thrown out of their homes and deprived of their livelihoods. They then had no choice but to register as labourers in mines, industries and plantations. A somewhat higher status for Indians had been achieved at the expense of the majority of the population. The First World War In 1914, Gandhi called off the satyagraha campaign and left South Africa. He travelled first to Britain, where he arrived two days after the outbreak of the First World War. Once again, he demonstrated his loyalty to the British colonial power. When Indians argued that this was the right moment to fight for their rights, Gandhi protested: I thought that Englands need should not be turned into our opportunity, and that it was more becoming and far-sighted not to press our demands while the war lasted.19 Instead, he urged Indians living in Britain to
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join the war effort! He felt it was completely wrong to refuse to serve out of anger and illwill or ignorance and weakness. For the third time, he began to organise an ambulance brigade, but he also urged those who did not believe in ahimsa (non-violence) to take up arms to help Britain. He wrote to Lord Crewe to inform him that he and his compatriots were at the service of the Empire. Many of Gandhis supporters found this difficult to swallow. When asked later to explain his stance, he offered different explanations at different times. In 1920, he wrote: When the choice is between cowardice and violence, I would strongly recommend violence.20 In 1925, he wrote: By enlisting men for ambulance work in South Africa and in England, and recruits for field service in India, I helped not the cause of war, but I helped the institution called the British Empire in whose ultimate beneficial character I then believed () life is not a single line; it is a bundle of duties very often conflicting. In 1928, he stated that one of the motives was to promote the cause of Indian self-rule by serving the Empires statesmen. Whichever explanation was closest to the truth, the result was that Gandhi was now asking his supporters to kill and die for the sake of their oppressors. Gandhi himself fell ill and returned to India. Colonialism in India India was a British colony for 200 years. Colonial India was larger than modern India. In those days, neither Pakistan nor Bangladesh were independent. The British merchants who first arrived there were drawn by spices, sugar, silk and cotton. They traded these commodities for British goods. Via their business dealings, the merchants eventually became involved in local politics and conflicts, and in 1757 a British force defeated a rebellious domestic army for the first time. This marked the beginning of Britains empire-building in India. For India, colonisation meant the suppression of the countrys own economic development. The British industrial barons did not want competition, so they closed down most of the Indian textile industry as well as other forms of local manufacture. In the 19th century, food was exported to Britain, even when Indians were starving. The main purpose of the infrastructure built by the British, especially the railways, was to facilitate the plunder of the countrys natural resources. The British considered themselves naturally superior to the natives, but were nevertheless keen to gain the loyalty of the Indian upper class. The sons of the elite were sent to the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford to absorb the ideology, economics and lifestyles of their masters. This education had a profound impact. Besides Gandhi, people like Jawaharlal Nehru (later to become Indias first prime minister) and Muhammad Ali Jinnah (the future leader of Pakistan) attended these institutions. There was resistance to British rule in India throughout the colonial period, although it took different forms. Peasant uprisings, strikes and army revolts occurred time and again. The British rulers were obviously anxious to channel these protests into manageable forms. Consequently, a political party, the Indian National Congress, was set up in 1885 by a worthy British civil servant, Octavian Hume.21 From the outset, this became the party of the Indian upper class, both Hindus and Muslims. It
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supported the British in the First World War, and remained silent when young Indians who revolted against colonial rule were sentenced to be hanged. As the Congress Party received substantial economic support from the owners of industry, it condemned a strike by textile workers in Bombay in the 1920s. Gandhi adopted both the party line and the party itself. He declared that no-one should expect him to undertake a fight that must end in anarchy and red ruin.22 When the Viceroy, Britains chief representative in India, in 1917 sought his support for the war, Gandhi complied. At the outbreak of the First World War, Gandhi had only appealed to Indians living in Britain to enter the war as volunteers on the side of the British Empire. He now urged Indian men at home to do so too. Just as before, he felt that Indians should prove themselves worthy of political rights. Once again, this strategy failed to work. Indians died in Mesopotamia and in the ghastly trenches on the Western Front in Europe, but nothing improved in India. Instead, the emergency powers introduced during the war remained in place once it was over. The Rowlatt Act provided for the arrest and detention without trial of people suspected of anti-government activities. Not until after the war did Gandhi begin openly resisting the British government. In April 1917, in protest at the countrys unfair laws, he proclaimed a hartal, i.e. a day of fasting and prayer during which no-one was to work. Shops were to close and workers were to strike. The decision was never discussed in the Congress Party. Gandhi explained later that it had been reached after discussion with some friends. The day of protest met with an enthusiastic response. But the police intervened and provoked violence and rioting, and Gandhi called off the action. He condemned those who had fought the police, and as recompense for the protestors having gone too far, he announced that he himself would fast for 74 hours. He urged others to fast for 24 hours. Gandhi later described the protest as a blunder of Himalayan proportions. He said he had come to realise that you must show respectful obedience for the laws of the state, if you want to practise civil disobedience. The protestors had failed in this. When he tried to mobilise voluntary instructors who were to educate the general public in this aspect of satyagraha, he got no response at all.23 Shortly after Gandhi called off his campaign, British brutality in India reached new heights. In the Sikhs holy city of Amritsar, a mass meeting was held on 13 April 1919 attended by thousands of men, women and children. As the meeting was illegal under colonial law, the British commander on the spot, General Dyer, took action. Without warning, he gave his soldiers orders to open fire on the crowd. People were surrounded by buildings and had no means of escape. The shooting continued for ten minutes, leaving 379 people dead on the ground and more than 1 200 wounded.24 (According to a commission set up by the Congress Party, the death toll was 1 000.) The massacre sent shock waves through India. Hatred and fury at colonial rule flared anew. Even Gandhi lost respect for the British system. He returned the war medals he had been awarded in South Africa, and wrote a letter of protest to the Viceroy. But he still hoped to awaken the British conscience, and became an increasingly dedicated advocate of non-violence. Throughout the 1920s, Gandhis movement continued to waver back and forth. To combat poverty in rural areas, Gandhi organised a boycott of imported fabrics and burned them in public. But when the protests got out of hand, and a number of police were killed, the campaign was called off. The Salt March In 1929, Gandhi organised a march in protest at a British government decision to introduce a
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tax on salt. He urged people to defy the British and fetch their salt directly from the sea. Mass arrests ensued, and at least a hundred people were killed by the police. The protest against the tax was, of course, justified, but once again unarmed Gandhi followers were exposed to actions that caused loss of life. When 2 500 demonstrators marched on the salt works at Dharasana, they were met by police armed with lathis, heavy staffs with iron bands. The demonstrators walked towards the police lines and wave after wave of them were struck down without resistance. The incident is depicted in Richard Attenboroughs film, Gandhi, and it is truly sickening to watch. The crack of the staffs against unprotected heads. The men going down like ninepins and being dragged away with fractured skulls. Two men died and 320 were injured.25This episode illustrates Gandhis methods. All who dare oppose brutal oppression must of course expect injury and perhaps even loss of life. Oppression is maintained by violence. But when you decide to enter into battle, surely it is best to do so when you can reasonably hope to win? If people who rise up show enough strength and determination, the armed forces of those in power will begin to hesitate, split up and eventually join the struggle themselves. This is also a way of minimising the violence and the injuries inflicted on people. Gandhi had a different aim. In essence, his method was to let innocent people be injured or killed without offering resistance. Such a strategy, however, meant that the police or soldiers who act on the power holders behalf are given no chance to revolt. The police at the Dharasana salt works were also Indians. Clubbing down fellow-countrymen who were protesting against injustices that they, too, suffered from was doubtless repulsive to them. Gandhis tactic left them with no choice, however. There was no fighting resistance movement for them to join. The police could not even tell their superiors they had been overpowered and had thus been unable to use force against the demonstrators. Refusing to obey orders would have been tantamount to suicide. Consequently, the death of demonstrators was unavoidable. One-sided Gandhis non-violent approach was strangely one-sided. It afflicted those who turned to Gandhi in the hope that he would lead them in their struggle, and it spared those in power. Gandhi was not even prepared to use violence against Hitlers monstrous Nazi regime. In 1940, he appealed to the British people in the following terms: If these gentlemen (Hitler and Mussolini editors note) choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourself, man, woman and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them.26 Gandhi called this method non-violent non-collaboration. Violence, then, was not to be used against colonial oppressors or capitalist exploiters. But in the case of soldiers and police, they were not allowed to practice non-violence, at least not without permission, according to Gandhi. In 1922, when Hindu soldiers from the Garhwal Rifles bravely refused to open fire against an anti-imperialist demonstration staged by Muslims in Peshawar Gandhi condemned their behaviour! He explained: When a soldier refuses to fire then he is guilty of betraying his oath. I can never advise soldiers to defy the orders of officers because, if tomorrow I form a government, I will have to use the same soldiers and officers.27 Gandhi shows here that he identifies with those who usually give the orders, not with those
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who are expected to obey. He wants to represent all Indians, but when he has to choose sides, he aligns himself with the ruling class. When Gandhi founded the Natal Indian Congress in South Africa in 1894, it was principally an organisation for well-off Indian merchants. The uneducated contract workers could not afford to pay the membership fee. The fee was three pounds the same sum as the hated tax that the contract workers laboured under.28 During the Great March of 1913, Gandhi showed an open distrust in the workers: Well-known and intelligent volunteers were required to look after these obscure and uneducated men, and were very forthcoming.29 On another occasion, Gandhi wrote that capitalists are often greedy, but when labour comes to fully realise its strength I know it can become more tyrannical than capital. The millowners will have to work on the terms dictated by labour, if the latter could command intelligence of the former. It is clear, however, that labour will never attain to that intelligence.The capitalists do not fight on the strength of money alone. They do possess intelligence and tact.30 In 1922, Gandhi warned against political strikes, despite the fact that it was precisely such a strike that first brought him fame in South Africa in 1913. Gandhi admired British civilisation. He had no wish to defeat the British Empire or its economic system. He mixed freely with representatives of the British ruling class. For example, he joined the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, in drawing up what was known as the IrwinGandhi Pact. Under this agreement, the campaign of civil disobedience was to be terminated in exchange for the British allowing salt to be freely produced in India. The mass movement How, then, did India manage to win independence in 1947, and why was the country partitioned? Films and books about Gandhi seldom mention the fact that other powerful forces were also on the move at this time. One indication of this was the enthusiasm aroused in India by the Russian revolution, and the setting up of a Communist Party, the CPI, in the 1920s. Despite the fact that the party was outlawed most of the time and severely repressed, and also committed a number of errors under the influence of Moscow, it was widely supported. In 1938 it mobilised 50 000 workers in Calcutta in support of a demand for a Workers Socialist Republic. In the same year, more than half a million impoverished peasants registered to attend a CPI rural conference.31 When the Second World War broke out in 1939, the CPI organised anti-war demonstrations and a one-day protest strike under the slogan: Long live freedom in India! Many Communist workers were imprisoned for agitating. Meanwhile, the Congress Party was becoming polarised, and a number of leftist groups were aligning themselves more closely with the CPI. Among those who called for a more aggressive struggle against the British was Dr Subhas Bose. In 1939, he defeated Gandhi in a vote to decide who was to head the Congress Party. This marked a radicalisation of the movement. It was followed, however, by Stalins about-turn and the alliance between Stalin and Churchill. In 1942, the Communists were instructed to cooperate with British democracy, whereupon the CPI called off its anti-imperialist agitation. This led to conflict and confusion within the ranks, and sowed division in the broad-based left that had just begun to take shape.

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The Communist Party leadership was suddenly on good terms with the British rulers. The party was legalised and its leaders released from prison. They now sought to stop strikes, prevent soldiers from deserting and prevent young people from demonstrating. For years, the CPI was completely isolated from the mass movement. Instead, popular power was channelled into the Congress Party. Its leaders took a stronger stand, and in August 1942 Gandhi delivered his Quit India! speech, calling on the British to abandon India altogether. A new wave of revolt swept the country. Gandhi and thousands of others were imprisoned. Many were whipped, tortured or hanged for their audacity, while the reputation of the Congress Party grew apace. Gandhi was released after a few months. He was ill, and the Viceroy was afraid that the protests would be even greater if he were to die in jail. After the war, a new situation developed. The British Empire had been weakened. Powerful leftist currents were making headway in both Europe and the US. In Britain, the Labour Party came to power. And in India, too, the resistance movement found new strength. The revolution of 1946 1946 was a year of revolution in India.32 First, a mass movement forced the British to release a group of political prisoners. One was a Hindu, one a Sikh and one a Muslim. A mutiny then followed among soldiers and officers of the British army in India, and finally a series of general strikes. The most ambitious of these revolts was an uprising in Bombay by sailors of the British Indian Navy.33 The rebellion began with a strike on 18 February aboard the battleship HMS Talwaar anchored in Bombay harbour. The following day, the strikers contacted naval personnel on land. Together, they took over naval vehicles, hoisted red flags on them and began patrolling the city. They also invited the people of the city to join their struggle. By the evening of the following day, a growing number of naval personnel had joined. The Union Jacks on the Royal Indian Navy ships in the harbour were torn down and replaced by red flags and flags representing the parties fighting for Indian independence. After just two days, news of the revolt had spread far afield, both by word of mouth and via a radio station taken over by the rebels that broadcast revolutionary songs and poetry round the clock. The revolt eventually spread to 74 ships, 20 fleets and 22 naval units in various places along the coast, including Calcutta, Karachi, Madras and Cochin. Two days after the revolt had begun only ten ships and two naval stations were not in complete revolt. Earlier a strike committee had been formally set up, with a Muslim as president and a Sikh as vice-president. The choice of leaders was designed to avert religious division. On the third day of revolt, British elite troops opened fire on the sailors in Bombay as they were leaving their barracks. At a stroke, a peaceful uprising was turned into an armed confrontation. Over the next few days, several hundred sailors and workers lost their lives. The factory workers who had joined the sailors revolt were also subjected to brutal attacks by the British. To defend their comrades in the cities, sailors of the Narba fleet announced over loudspeakers that they would destroy the British military bases by shelling them if the British troops dared to attack. The British government was badly shaken. Sir Claude Auchinleck, commander-in-chief of the British armed services in India, wrote in a telegram to London that if you do not promise
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them independence within three days, they will take it by force. Prime Minister Clement Atlee (Labour) demanded that the uprising be smashed, while in India itself, Sardar Vallabhbai Patel of the Congress Party immediately came out in support of the British. Isolated and betrayed by their national leadership, the strike committee saw no alternative but to surrender. They hoisted black flags to signal their defeat. At its final meeting, however, the strike committee had adopted a resolution describing the action: We, the workers in uniform, shall never forget this. We also know that you, our proletarian brothers and sisters, shall never forget this. The coming generations, learning their lesson, shall accomplish what we have not been able to achieve. Long live the working masses. Long live the revolution.34 The struggle continued. In Bombay, a general strike paralysed the entire city and barricades were built to prevent the passage of police and troops. Over a three-day period, more than 400 people were killed in street fighting. In March, the police were among those who took part in a wave of strikes that swept through major cities. In May, workers of the NorthWestern Railway downed tools, and in July more than 100 000 postal workers came out on strike. Industrial workers throughout the Indian subcontinent joined in. In this movement, Hindus and Muslims fought side by side. They revolted together in the army, they built barricades, they organised demonstrations and they hoisted red flags everywhere. Bloody partition The British government knew that the era of direct colonial rule in India was over. How were they to salvage their economic interests and maintain their domination of the country? The answer was not clear. Several accounts of Indian history give the impression that it was Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the Muslim League that were entirely to blame for what followed the partition of India. But that was not the case. Over time, a rift that had developed between the Muslim and Hindu elites gradually widened. It was not a religious conflict neither the Muslim leader, Jinnah, nor the Hindu representative Jawaharlal Nehru were particularly religious but a struggle for power. Back in 1906, the Muslim bourgeoisie had built up a political organisation of their own, the Muslim League, that was to protect their interests against the Hindu majority. At first, this did not prevent leading Muslims from becoming involved with the Congress Party. In the 1930s, however, some elements in the Muslim League began talking about an independent Muslim state. Such a solution would enable Muslims to avoid having to compete for power and markets with the Hindus; they would automatically become the ruling clique in a future Pakistan. For a long time, however, these ideas were considered unrealistic. In virtually every village, Hindus and Muslims lived alongside one another. But during the Second World War, the Congress Party and the Muslim League went separate ways. The Muslim League continued to collaborate with the British, and the idea of setting up an independent Pakistan began to be taken seriously, especially by Jinnah. In May 1946, a British delegation sent to India presented the Cabinet Mission Plan. Under this plan, India was to remain a single entity, but the central government would only be responsible for defence matters, foreign policy and communications. For the rest, the country would be divided into three zones, of which the Muslims would totally dominate one and have a slight majority in another. The Hindus would totally dominate the third zone. The plan was designed to satisfy the Muslims and reassure them that they would not be neglected as a minority. After three days of discussion, Jinnah and the Muslim League Council agreed to the
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proposal. Jinnah was not happy with it, but felt it was the best the Muslims could hope for. Accordingly, he withdrew the demand for partition. The Councils decision was unanimous. Later the plan was also adopted by the Congress Working Party and subsequently by the AllIndia Congress Committee (AICC). This, however, was not the end of the story. At about the same time, a power struggle developed in the Congress Party when Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad was to step down as president. Jawaharlal Nehru emerged as the victor. Three days after the meeting of the AICC, on 10 July 1947, Nehru held a press conference at which questions were asked as to whether the Congress Party had accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan in every detail. Nehrus answer astonished everyone. He stated that the Congress Party would enter the Constituent Assembly completely unfettered by agreements and free to meet all situations as they arise. The party, he added later, considered itself free to change or modify the Cabinet Mission Plan as it thought best. This statement left the fragile agreement in tatters. For Jinnah, it was a slap in the face. The Congress Partys stance, he declared, meant that the minorities in India would be left at the mercy of the majority. The small-mindedness of the elites, both Muslim and Hindu, enabled the new British Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, to decide that India needed to be divided. It was Mountbatten himself, as the representative of the Empire, who wielded the knife. Mountbatten as Viceroy was given the difficult task of phasing out the British Empire in India. He performed this task with considerable diplomatic skill, and the Hindu and Muslim leaders accepted partition of the country, albeit reluctantly.35 It was a classic tactic: divide and rule. Bearing in mind how intimately he and his wife, Lady Edwina, fraternised with Nehru in particular (but also with Gandhi), it seems likely that he had more than one finger in the pie when the Cabinet Mission Plan was toppled. The result was two new states based on religious affiliation: India (Hinduism) and Pakistan (Islam).36 Not even the future rulers of these new states knew in advance where the borders were to run. Gandhi was initially against the partition of India. But there was only one way to oppose partition and that was by supporting the workers struggle for a socialist India. Given his background, Gandhi could never countenance such a move. He therefore had no choice but to accept the terrible alternative of partition. Congress Party leader Maulana Abul Azad wrote: When I met Gandhi again, I had the greatest shock of my life to find that he had changed. He was still not openly in favour of Partition but he no longer spoke so vehemently against it. What surprised and shocked me even more was that he began to repeat the arguments which Sardar Patel (a leader of the Congress Party that advocated partition editors comment) had already used. For over two hours I pleaded with him, but could make no impression on him.37 The independence and ensuing partition of India brought about the greatest wave of forced resettlement in modern history, some 12-16 million. Around a million people lost their lives. The whole situation changed. People lost hope of a new and better society. Suddenly, millions no longer belonged where they had always lived and worked, simply because they did not share the same religious faith as the majority. Muslims became hostages in India and Hindus hostages in Pakistan. This created a tremendous amount of anger and frustration. The relative harmony in which Muslims and Hindus had lived down through the ages was suddenly shattered. The scenes that occurred when different religious groups confronted one
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another were terrible. In Lahore, the gutters ran with blood. People had their hands and feet chopped off or their eyes poked out. One police officer described Lahore as a city in the throes of committing suicide. In utter panic, people fled from their homes to railway stations, which became so overcrowded that many were crushed beneath the wheels when the trains rolled in. Another outcome of partition was that Kashmir where the population is three quarters Muslims was split in two and largely came under Indian jurisdiction. Since then, the Kashmir conflict has been a flashpoint in the wars between India and Pakistan in 1948, 1965 and 1971. More than 40 000 people have died in confrontations in the region since 1989. In 1999, the two armies clashed at Kargil in Kashmir, but under strong pressure from Washington the Pakistani forces pulled back. The last time things hotted up was in 2002. More than a million soldiers were mobilised along the border between India and Pakistan, and any kind of incident or skirmish might have triggered all-out war. The conflict in Kashmir came before the UN Security Council for the first time in 1948, when two resolutions calling for a referendum were adopted. The idea was that the people of Kashmir themselves should decide who they wanted to be ruled by. Over half a century has passed since then, and further resolutions have been adopted, but none of them have been implemented. The wounds inflicted by partition have yet to heal. Like boils, they burst time and again, unleashing violence and destruction. The ruling classes and the state in India and Pakistan have used the issue to deflect popular discontent in their own countries. Army leaders for their part have used Kashmir as a means of justifying huge military budgets paid for by impoverished peoples. Both India and Pakistan are military giants today, and both have nuclear weapons. At the end of the 1990s, former CIA chief William Casey described the region as the most dangerous in the world. A nuclear war in the area cannot be ruled out. This is the dead end of Gandhis road to peace. _________________ 1 At that time, South Africa was divided into four states. Cape Province and Natal were British colonies, while Transvaal and the Orange Free State were controlled by the Boers, i.e. colonial settlers with Dutch roots. 2 The British army triumphed and annexed Transvaal and the Orange Free State as well. 3 Mohandas Gandhi: Gandhis Autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth 4 Ernst Harsh: Sydafrika, vit makt svart revolt, 1985 5 Michael Nicholson: Mahatma Gandhi, 1987 6 ibid. 7 The South African Union had been established in 1910, uniting the four states and turning them into provinces.

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8 Mohandas Gandhi: Satyagraha in South Africa, Second Edition 1950 9 K. Chetty: Gandhi Mahatma in the making 1893-1914, 1996 10 Mohandas Gandhi: Satyagraha in South Africa 11 ibid 12 A. Lerumo: Fifty Fighting Years, The South African Communist Party 1921-1971, 1987 13 Act No. 22 of 1914 14 Mohandas Gandhi: Satyagraha in South Africa, 1950 15 Ernst Harsh: Sydafrika, vit makt svart revolt, 1985 16 A. Lerumo: Fifty Fighting Years, 1987, p.28 17 Ernst Harsh: Sydafrika, vit makt svart revolt, 1985. Later, when the apartheid system was fully in place, the Indians became a racial category in their own right, midway between the whites and the blacks. The Indians and the coloureds had slightly more extensive rights than the blacks. They did not have to carry passports, they could find better jobs and they were allowed to engage in certain kinds of business activities. 18 Ernst Harsh: Sydafrika, vit makt svart revolt, 1985. The blacks were originally allocated 7.3% of the land surface. This was later raised to just over 13%. 19 Mohandas Gandhi: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, 1948 20 Mohandas Gandhi: For Pacifists, 1981 21 Lal Khan: Partition, Can It Be Undone? 2nd edition, 2003 22 ibid. 23 Mohandas Gandhi: The Story of My Experiments with Truth 24 Michael Nicholson: Mahatma Gandhi, 1987 25 ibid 26 Ed. Homer Jackson: The Ghandi Reader, 1956 27 Lal Khan: Partition Can it be undone? 2nd edition, 2003 28 K Chetty: Gandhi Mahatma in the making 1893-1914, 1996 (http://scnc.udw.ac.za/doc/ TEXTS/kc/kctext.html)
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29 Mohandas Gandhi: Satyagraha in South Africa, 1950 30 Ed. Homer Jackson: The Ghandi Reader, 1956 31 Lal Khan: Partition, Can it be Undone? 2nd edition, 2003 32 Missionary E. Stanley Jones, too, notes that India in 1946 was ripe for revolution. Mahatma Gandhi, 1948 33 Lal Khan: Partition, Can it be Undone? 2nd edition, 2003

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9. The War in Palestine in 1949 (and 1956, 1967, 1973) The insoluble conflict

It takes a whole night to make a day Javed Shaheen Pakistani poet The Arab people have for centuries shared a common language, religion, culture and history. They lived in a territory that extended from Iraq in the east to Mauritania in the west. During medieval times their rulers were strong rivals to many European powers. But after that they went into a period of decline and were occupied by the Ottoman Empire, centred on Turkey, and later Britain, France, Italy and Spain. To stop a new powerful Arab nation emerging has always been a top priority of imperialism. For a long time they have skilfully used the game of divide and rule as means to this end. Various leaders in the region have played along with this, hoping thereby to maintain themselves in power. This lead to one war after the other. But despite this, every once in a while, unity has been forged between workers of different religions and nationalities. Divide and rule When Turkey allied itself with Germany in the First World War, the British promised the Arabs independence as a means of gaining their support against Germany. In October 1915, Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, wrote to the Sherif (Emir) of Mecca, Husayn ibn Ali, declaring that Great Britain is prepared to recognise and support the independence of the Arabs in the regions within the limits demanded by the Sherif of Mecca.1 In June 1916, Husayn led an Arab uprising and, together with the British, marched north to throw the Ottoman forces out of Trans-Jordan, Palestine and Syria. The British forces were led by T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia. But the British had no intention of allowing a strong Arab nation to develop. Even before Husayns rebellion, they had reached a secret understanding with France and Russia. The Sykes-Picot Agreement, as it was known as, was made public by the Soviet government after the Russian revolution.2 Drawing lines on a map, the three big powers divided up the Arab region into spheres of interest.

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Areas roughly equivalent to present-day Lebanon and Syria were to belong to France. Jordan and Iraq fell to Britain, and Palestine was to be jointly administered by the British, French and Russians. The Agreement also allowed a limited autonomy for Arabs in some parts of the region, but Husayn inb Alis plans for an independent Arab nation were never even considered. The British also sought the support of Jewish leaders in the First World War. After the successful Arab uprising against the Ottoman rulers, Lord Balfour, the British home secretary, wrote a letter to Lord Rothschild, leader of the Jewish community in Britain. In this letter, the so called Balfour Declaration, he wrote that Britain would do its best to facilitate the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. Most Jews, however, were not interested in settling in Palestine at this time. In 1914, 660 000 of the 800 000 Palestinian population were Muslims, a tenth were Christians, and less than a tenth were Jews.3 After the First World War, the League of Nations implemented the Sykes-Picot Agreement in all but name, apart from giving Palestine entirely to the British in 1920. Arab uprisings against this continued more or less throughout the period between the two world wars, causing Britain and France to relinquish direct control of the region little by little, but not before they had found dependable monarchs (often imported) in whose hands they could safely place the reins of power. In 1922 they let Egypt go, in 1932 Iraq and Saudi Arabia, in 1943 Lebanon, in 1946 Jordan and Syria, in 1967 South Yemen, and as recently as 1971, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. This enabled them to sow division between Arabs. In practice, the French and British continued to control most of the Middle East until the end of the Second World War, when the US emerged as the leading power. One of the conditions of the British mandate from the League of Nations was that a homeland was to be created for the Jews. Despite this and the Balfour Declaration the British government did little to honour this pledge. As early as 1921, Winston Churchill, then minister for colonial affairs, issued a White Book which declared that Jews would never be allowed political supremacy in Palestine (nor Arabs, either, for that matter). United struggle Arab and Jewish leaders had conflicting national interests, yet Arab and Jewish workers often joined together in their struggle to win better terms from the colonial administration and private employers. One example is the conflict at the Nesher quarry and cement factory in the mid-1920s. When the factory was being built in 1924-25, Jews working there were paid 20 piasters an hour and worked an eight-hour day. The 80 Egyptians employed at the site were paid only 10 piasters an hour and had to work for nine or ten hours a day. When the Jewish workers went on strike, demanding 25 piasters an hour, recognition of their trade union and other improvements, they asked for and received the support of the Egyptian workers. After a two-month strike, most of the Jewish workers demands were met, but the Jewish owner fired the Egyptians. The Jewish workers then voted 170 to 30 to stay out until the Egyptians had been reinstated. However, the Jewish trade union confederation Histadrut (which denied Arabs full membership until 1959) pressured the Jewish workers into returning to work. The Egyptians were sent back to Egypt. Jewish leaders were not the only ones to oppose all forms of joint
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struggle. The Arab leadership was equally anxious. Nonetheless, in the decades up until the partition of Palestine, joint actions were also staged by Jewish and Arab bakery workers, railway workers, bus and taxi drivers, dock workers, oil workers and others.4 In the 1920s, Communist parties often played a crucial part in bringing Jews and Arabs together. Leopold Trepper, himself a Jew, and later to become a Soviet master spy in Hitlers Germany, describes how in his memoirs.5 The party, originally dominated by Jews, founded an organisation called Unity (Ichud in Hebrew, Itachat in Arabic). Its programme was very simple. Fight to open up Histadrut (the Israeli trade union confederation) to

Arab workers and create an international trade union. Create opportunities for contact between Jews and Arabs, especially by means of cultural events.

Unity was an immediate success. Towards the end of 1925, it had branches in Jerusalem, Haifa and Tel Aviv and in farming villages where Arab and Jewish labourers worked side by side. The branches multiplied in number. In late 1926, the movement held its first national conference, attended by over a hundred delegates, of which forty were Arabs. The influence that the movement began to exert on the kibbutzs worried the Histadrut leaders, who failed to understand how Jews and Arabs could wage a joint struggle. Unity was persecuted by the British occupying power, and opposed by Zionist organisations and reactionary Arabs. Trepper himself was constantly in and out of prison. But it was Stalin, not domestic repression, which destroyed the movement. Everywhere, Stalinist bureaucrats were replacing Marxist internationalism with their own narrow nationalist policies. The Comintern (the Communist International) adopted a resolution in 1928 calling for the Arabisation of the Palestine Communist Party. This was in line with the theory of socialism in one country, which meant that each nation was to pursue its own struggle. Accordingly, Stalin dissolved the Comintern in 1943. More British deception In 1936, Arab opposition to the British occupation escalated, resulting in what has been described as the first Intifada. In April, a general strike developed into a full-scale uprising. The Arab leadership just managed to bring the movement under control. In October the strike ended. The British government responded with brutal repression. Among its tactics was one that has become highly popular with the present Israeli government the demolition of Arab housing. The British government then set up the Peel Commission to determine how to gain control of the situation in Palestine. In 1937, the commission proposed dividing the country into a Jewish part (involving the forced resettlement of a quarter of a million Arabs), an Arab part, and an area that the British would continue to rule themselves. The Arabs refused to accept the Peel plan, and local uprisings continued until 1939. In that year, the British government changed its mind once again about the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. In another White Book, it offered Palestine the prospect of
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independence in ten years time. This was partly due to the mass struggle of the Arab people, but also because Britain once again wanted the support of the Arabs in the fight against Hitler. Jewish support in the war was taken for granted. The British declared that they would retain power in Palestine until such time as the Arabs were ripe for independence. The 1939 White Book was incompatible with the mandate issued to the British by the League of Nations, and was denounced by the Leagues Permanent Mandates Commission. But the big powers were now preparing to settle their differences with war, and the League of Nations had become an anachronism. During the Second World War the British government stopped Jewish emigration to Palestine, sometimes with catastrophic results. The Struma, a scarcely seaworthy ship, overcrowded with approximately 790 Rumanian Jews fleeing from Nazi persecution, arrived in Istanbul in December 1941. The Turkish authorities did not allow the refugees ashore and asked the British if the ship could be allowed to sail to Palestine. Churchills government refused. The pro-German authorities in Bulgaria would not let the ship return to their country. A two-month stalemate was ended when the Turkish authorities towed the ship out to sea without a proper engine, a sail or an anchor. After a night adrift on the open sea, the Struma sank, following an explosion. A Soviet submarine may have torpedoed the ship by mistake. Only one person survived. 6 An upswing for Zionism Despite such tactics, the British imperialists failed in their bid to stop the flow of Jews to Palestine. During the Great Depression of the 1930s the US imposed tougher restrictions to halt the flow of immigrants, and with the German Nazis trying to annihilate the Jewish people altogether, many Jews considered resettlement in Palestine the only safe alternative. Some Zionists organised themselves into guerrilla groups such as Irgun and Stern, and in pursuit of a Jewish state launched a violent campaign against both the British and the Arabs. Under Menachim Begin, who later became prime minister, Irgun was responsible for the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, where the British military HQ was located. Some 90 people died. Nor did Irgun and Stern hesitate to use terror tactics against the Arab population. In November 1947, they began driving Arabs out of towns where the population was mainly Jewish. Five months later, Irgun terrorists entered the village of Deir Yassin west of Jerusalem and slaughtered at least 150 people, mostly women and children. The Stern group was responsible for the murder of Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte, the UNs emissary in the region. One of the Stern leaders was Yitzhak Shamir, who later succeeded Begin as Israeli premier. Many Jews in Palestine were against both the practices and the aims of the two gangs. The leftist Zionist organisation Hashomer Hatzair (and a number of liberal Zionists) wanted to establish an independent secular Palestine. More workers unity After the Second World War, people revolted throughout the world against tyranny and colonialism. In Palestine, too, the struggle exploded. In April 1946, a major strike was launched in Palestine that developed into the largest manifestation of solidarity between

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Jewish and Arab workers ever seen in the country. Jewish and Arab postal, telephone and telegraph workers initiated the strike and rapidly extracted far-reaching concessions. However, against the recommendations of the union leadership they overwhelmingly turned the offer down. Then Jewish and Arab railway workers also came out on strike. A united struggle of all railway and postal workers was unprecedented, even middle and lower level white-collar government employees took part in the strike. Less than a week after the first postal workers had come out, around 23 000 government employees were on strike. Tens of thousands of workers employed at British military bases, along with the petroleum workers in and near Haifa, considered joining the strike.7 This could have been the final nail in the coffin of the colonial administration. However, the movement was quashed through the joint efforts of the Histradut leadership, right-wing Zionists, Arab nationalists, and PAWS (Palestinian Arab Workers Society) conservative wing. Consciously or unconsciously, their actions paved the way for the bloody partitioning of Palestine. Immediately after the strike ended, there was an upsurge in violence between Arabs and Jews. Independence and Israel becomes the US most trusted ally in the Middle East To escape the mess they had created, the British raised the Palestine question in the newlyformed United Nations. The UNs Special Committee for Palestine voted 33 to 13 in favour of splitting Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab part. Ten countries abstained from voting, among them Britain. In practice, therefore, Israel was created against Britains will. On 14 May 1948, the state of Israel officially came into being. Encouraged and armed by the British, Arab states around Israel launched a war against the embryonic Jewish state. The Jordanian army was equipped and trained by the British and was led by a British officer, John Bagot Glubb. British Royal Air Force planes took part in the war. On 7 January 1949, the Israelis shot down four RAF planes.8 The British refused to comply with UN recommendations and open the countrys ports to Jews. They maintained their blockade of the Mediterranean to prevent reinforcements from reaching Israel. Initially, the American administration also backed British policy in the region. The Americans imposed an arms embargo on the new Jewish state and maintained it throughout the early stages of the war between Israel and the Arab states. Saudi Arabia was the United States largest and most important ally in the Middle East. That was where the oil was, then as now. The Americans had strongly backed the al-Saud family when it seized power in Saudi Arabia and proclaimed independence in 1932. The American elite, however, were split on the issue. Some sympathised with the Israelis, and they were backed by others who viewed support for the Jewish state as a way of reducing Britains influence in the Middle East and thereby strengthening Americas position in the region. When a truce was declared, the US lifted its embargo. Despite British military assistance, the Arab states were soundly defeated in the war. Israel seized more territories than had been allotted to it in the 1947 UN resolution to divide Palestine. By way of revenge, Jews who had long been living in Arab countries were brutally

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driven out. Arab Jews became an underclass in Israel. For many years it was claimed that the Soviet Union supported the Palestinian cause from the outset, but this is not true. The Soviet Union voted for the creation of the state of Israel. After the Second World War, the Stalinist regime found itself at odds with its former allies and cast around for support elsewhere. As Britain was against the establishment of Israel, the Stalinist bureaucrats saw the creation of the Jewish state as a blow to British aspirations in the region. Accordingly, they sent weapons to Jews in Palestine via Czechoslovakia. Later, the roles were reversed. In the 1950s, Egypt seemed to be planning to abolish capitalism. When Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956, Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt. The Soviet Union supported Egypt against Israel. The Americans were totally against the invasion of Egypt, as it risked damaging their oil dealings in the region. President Eisenhower threatened a boycott unless Israel withdrew its troops from Sinai. In the end Israel complied. However, in the 60s the US shifted its stance more firmly in favour of Israel. In Syria, capitalism and feudalism were abolished following a military coup in 1963. Iraq also began to shift towards the Soviet sphere. Saudi Arabia was a highly unstable, despotic state in which slavery was not formally abolished until the 1960s. Revolution threatened the whole region. The US concluded that Israel was the state that would be its most reliable ally in the Middle East. Israel was granted special privileges. The US providing it with the largest per capita amount of aid for civilian purposes ever granted to any country. Israel has received seventeen times as much money per head of population as other countries received under the Marshall Plan for post-war reconstruction in Europe. In addition, Jews outside Israel donate huge amounts to the Israeli economy every year. In contrast to most poor countries, Israel has been permitted substantial trade restrictions on imports. At the same time, it has benefited from favourable export terms, particularly for exports to the US, which was its principal trading partner for many years. In contrast to most poor countries, Israel could therefore develop into an industrialized country. Palestinian resistance begins The PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) was founded in 1964 at the initiative of Egypts President Nasser. It is an umbrella body for a wide range of organisations. The largest of these is al-Fatah, which has links to the Socialist International. Some of the other groups used to call themselves Marxist. The PLO has never had a cohesive ideology, apart from its earlier objective of crushing the state of Israel. Prior to 1967, the PLO had little support among Palestinians. It was not until after the Six-Day War in 1967, when many Palestinians came under Israeli occupation, that the PLO gained mass support. The PLO began its struggle with a guerrilla war, inspired by Vietnam and Cuba. Their base were the refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon that grew up when many Arabs were driven out of Israel in 1948 and 1967. But the situation differed considerably from Vietnam or prerevolutionary Cuba. The PLO attacked a state that enjoyed the support of most of the population. There were no mountains or jungles for the guerrillas to hide in. Only open
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ground lay between the refugee camps and the guerrillas targets in Israel. Guerrilla war had no chance of succeeding. The PLOs reliance on guerrilla warfare, and later diplomacy, also made it economically and militarily dependent on the Soviet Union and reactionary Arab states. All the dictatorial Arab governments in the countries surrounding Israel treated the Palestinians badly seeing them merely as a means of diverting the struggle against their own regimes into a struggle against Israel. The PLO soon fell out with the Jordanian king. He found the presence of another armed force in his territory unacceptable. It represented a threat to his despotic rule. In September 1970, Black September, he launched his armed attack against the PLO. Many Palestinians died, all were disarmed, and the PLO was thrown out of Jordan. The PLO headquarters ended up in Tunis. Driven out of Jordan, defeated by Israel in Lebanon, isolated from the Palestinian people, their leader Yasser Arafat survived on handouts. The Intifada This was not the end of the struggle. On the contrary, it was the beginning of the real struggle. In December 1987, the Intifada began. The PLOs terrorist activities had caused most Palestinians to become passive. Why do anything when there were heroes doing things for you? It was enough to cheer them on. But once the PLO was defeated the majority of Palestinians began to take control over their own fate. The Palestinians were spurred to action by the terrible situation they found themselves in (and still find themselves in). All Palestinians in the occupied territories, apart from a small middle-class, lived in abject poverty. Millions were stuck in giant refugee camps. Those who did not live in the refugee camps were not much better off, usually occupying tumbledown houses with no sanitation. Unemployment was very high and poverty appalling. On top of all this, the Palestinians had no legal rights whatsoever and were brutally repressed by the Israeli army. They had to put up with confiscation of their land, the destruction of homes belonging to the families of suspected terrorists, arrests without trial for up to twelve months (and subject to extension), and curfews of up to 40 days duration. It was the Palestinians themselves who financed the oppression. Two and a half times more was sucked out of the occupied areas in the form of taxes than was returned in the form of public investments. The tax authorities collected tax under military escort. The Intifada was very different from the guerrilla warfare that had preceded it. It mainly took the form of large demonstrations and throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. Between 1968 and 1975 there was an average of 350 violent incidents a year in Israel/Palestine. During the first six months of the Intifada, there were 42 355 such incidents. The Intifada was an uprising that involved the entire population and was organised from the bottom up, without any interference from the PLO. Neighbourhood committees were set up to organise the protests and began to develop along democratic lines. Women were brought into the struggle. When the Palestinian economy collapsed under pressure from the Israelis, the neighbourhood committees began organising community services such as food supply, education and he88

althcare. It was the start of a revolutionary movement. Israel responded by raising the level of oppression. In 1988, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (who was later awarded the Nobel peace prize) ordered Israeli troops to break demonstrators bones.9 Amnesty International reported that medical staff in prisons often found themselves in conflict with medical ethics.10 Torture was even sanctioned under Israeli law, which is unique for a supposedly democratic country. Since 1987, Israelis are allowed to exert physical and psychological pressure against Palestinian detainees.11 The Israeli violence failed to deter the Palestinians. Instead, it strengthened their resolve, and cemented a Palestinian national consciousness. Previously Arabs living in Palestine had seen themselves more as a part of the Arab nation than as specifically Palestinians. The Intifada created major problems for the Israeli regime. For the first time since the partition of Palestine after the Second World War, Palestinian protests found a big response among Jews. Three years (for men) or two years (for women) of military service in the occupied territories during which the soldiers were exposed to the hatred of the entire population, stone-throwing young Palestinians, and having to regularly beat and shoot civilians took its toll. During and after the Intifada, tens of thousands of Israelis left the country on completion of their military service to try and find peace of mind in countries such as Thailand, Japan and the US. The Israeli peace movement experienced an upswing and organised mass demonstrations that drew crowds of between 50 000 and 100 000, in a country of little more than four million people. Senior military officers also expressed strong doubts about the possibility of a military solution to the conflicts on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. They saw how the whole army was being demoralised. The ground was prepared for the two movements to link up. But it never happened. Because on what program should they have fused? Dividing the area into a Palestinian state and a Jewish state? Or creating a secular state in which Palestinians and Jews have equal rights? Neither were, or are, a realistic alternative. Two states? As a result of the Intifada an agreement was reached in 1993 providing for a transitional period of Palestinian self-rule on the West Bank and Gaza. This was an extremely limited form of autonomy, and there has been no transition to independence. In fact, since then the possibility of achieving Palestinian independence has receded. Israel did initially agree to provide a certain amount of weapons to a Palestinian police force in the autonomous areas, as long as the police was controlled by people that had allied themselves with Israel. However, they will never be prepared to accept the presence of anything that could be a threat. Consequently, the Israeli army intervenes time and again in Palestine. Nor does Palestine stand a chance economically. There is scarcely a Palestinian economy worth speaking of. About a third comes from foreign sources (foreign aid, Palestinian guest workers in other countries, etc.) and a third from exports to Israel. Palestine is an economic dwarf compared with Israel. Israel has a population almost twice the size of Palestine and a GDP almost forty times as large.12

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To get their economy moving, the Palestinians need help. The US is not going to provide it, and nor are the other rich countries. Olive oil is not as attractive as crude oil. Also, capitalism is currently undergoing a phase of economic decline, mass unemployment and crisis in the rich countries as well. In the absence of economic progress, poverty will continue and with it popular revolt. And further Israeli interventions. Then there is the crucial problem of water. Many of Israels freshwater reserves are in Palestinian territory. Of the West Banks water, 86% goes to Israel, ten per cent to the Jewish settlers and just four per cent to the Palestinians. The water is already beginning to dry up. As a result, saltwater is entering the wells. On the West Bank, Palestinians have to buy 70% of their water from the Israelis, at a high price. In the Gaza Strip, a million Palestinians have to share 55 million cubic meters of water while 7 000 Jewish settlers have 20 million cubic metres at their disposal.13Israel would never accept an independent Palestinian state taking control over the water in Palestinian territories. There is also the problem of the many Palestinian refugees. Jews are automatically entitled to settle in Israel, but Israel has always refused Palestinians the same right. The UN refugee organisation UNRWA has more than three and a half million Palestinian refugees on its books. A third of them are in UNRWA camps.14 Israel is not going to accept them coming to live in an independent Palestinian state as this would mean that Palestine had a larger population than Israel. Finally, there are 1.4 million Palestinians living in Israel itself. On what side of the border should they live if two truly independent states were established? During the latest uprising many Palestinian Israelis begun to take a more active part in the protests. Not surprisingly, the Israeli government views Palestinians holding Israeli citizenship with suspicion. Many have lost their jobs and been denied access to higher education. A Palestinian state would give the Israeli government an excuse and an opportunity to throw them out. In all probability, the two-state solution would lead to a bloody wave of ethnic cleansing. Secular state? The PLOs earlier call for a secular state with equal rights for Jews and Palestinians is also doomed to failure. It is no surprise that the PLO has now abandoned the idea. Israel is even less likely to accept a state in which Jews are in a minority than to agree to a separate Palestinian state with a population larger than Israels own. Also, the Israelis had good reason to view the PLOs secular state with suspicion. A closer look at the proposal shows that it would mean a majority of the Jews being thrown out of Palestine. The PLO Covenant from 1969 states: The Palestinians are those Arab nationals who, until 1947, normally resided in Palestine regardless of whether they were evicted from it or have stayed there. Anyone born, after that date, of a Palestinian father whether inside Palestine or outside it is also a Palestinian. But in Article 6, it states: The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians. This means that the millions who arrived after 1947 could not become Palestinian citizens. Where would they go? And how would they be convinced that they have to leave Palestine?

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Jews and Palestinians cannot be brought together in a secular state unless the fundamental social and economic problems of the area are solved. Tensions are too great. That is why virtually everyone is seeking a way out by dividing the country. But a genuine two-state solution could cause a major disaster. There is no practical solution to the problem within the framework of the capitalist system. The solution is a set-up that may appear abstract or theoretical today. The only kind of unity that is possible in the Middle East is working class unity across all national, ethnic and religious boundaries. Only the working classes share a common interest. Beneath all the prejudice, disappointment and fear, this truth remains. Suspicion and hatred can be overcome through joint struggle against a common enemy and for a socialist future. There is no alternative if the goal is peace and prosperity. All tyrannical regimes in the region must be overthrown. Only the working class has the strength to accomplish this, and its strength has grown in the half-century that has passed since the state of Israel came into being. Today, the majority of Jews and Palestinians in the region are no longer peasants and farmers but workers. Marxists in the 1920s, convinced of the need for a joint struggle for socialism, found ways of uniting Jews and Arabs. They simply followed the example of the Russian Bolsheviks. Before 1917, Russia was a country wracked by anti-Jewish pogroms. But in October of that year the Russian working class massively supported the Bolsheviks, half of whose central committee members were of Jewish origin. If the workers used their strength to establish a socialist federation throughout the Middle East, with self-determination for all national and ethnic groups, the regions economic problems could be solved. Turkey uses only a small part of its water reserves. In pursuit of a better society for all, people could share Turkeys water, Israels technological expertise, the sheiks riches, the oil, and all the money that would otherwise be wasted on weapons. The problem is not a lack of resources but who owns them and how they are used. A region torn apart by imperialism has to be reunited. _____________________________ 1 From Great Britain. Parliamentary Papers, 1939, Misc. No. 3 2 Ronald Stockton: Teaching the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1993 3 Justin McCarthy: Population of Palestine, 1990 4 Yossi Schwarz: Arab-Jewish Workers Joint Struggles Prior to the Partition of Palestine, June 2003. See www.marxist.com/MiddleEast/arab_jewish_struggles1.html 5 The Great Game, 1975 6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struma 7 www.marxist.com/MiddleEast/arab_jewish_struggles2.html 8 Mitchell Bard: The war of 1948, 2003

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9 www.cnn.com/WORLD/9511/rabin/profile/ 10 Amnesty International Country Report: Under Constant Medical Supervision, 1996 11 ibid 12 CIA World Fact Book 13 Evert Svensson: Vgen till Palestina, t folk och ett stycke jord, 2002 14 www.shaml.org/resources/facts/palestinian_refugees_fact_sheet.htm

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10. The Vietnam War: The American Nightmare

We should declare war on North Vietnam. . . . We could pave the whole country and put parking strips on it, and still be home by Christmas.1 Ronald Reagan, US President 1981-89, in a statement in October 1965. I aint got no quarrel with them Viet Cong. No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.2 Muhammed Ali, on why he refused the draft.

In Vietnam the mighty US army suffered its one and only major defeat, so far. How was this possible? Was it the guerrilla war in Vietnam combined with student struggle in the US that was responsible? This is commonly how it is presented, but in reality it was the struggle of the American working class that decided the issue. The US comes to Vietnam Vietnam became a French colony in middle of the nineteenth century. During the Second World War Vietnam was occupied by Japan. After a crushing defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, France was forced to pull out of Vietnam, ending a century of colonial rule. The Vietnamese Communist Party led by Ho Chi Minh was poised to take control of the country. China and the Soviet Union probably feared that such a setback would be too hard to swallow for imperialism and might upset the Cold War balance of terror between the great powers. Instead of letting the French army pull out, they insisted on a settlement that would compel Ho Chi Minh to withdraw his troops to North Vietnam, and leaving the French occupying the south. France would continue to administer the southern part of the country until a general election in 1956, and the victor at that poll would then rule the entire country. The US president at the time, Dwight Eisenhower, said later that he believed Ho Chi Minh
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would have won 80 per cent of the vote.3 So, a general election was never called. Ngo Ding Diem, a Vietnamese living in the US, was flown to Vietnam and installed in office instead. By injecting massive political, economic and military support, the US created a new state in South Vietnam. This state then began to attack both the opposition in the south and North Vietnam.4 The American government did not want another country to leave its sphere of influence. Moreover, traditional imperialist interests played a part. The conservative newspaper U.S. News and World Report carried an article headed Why the US is risking war in Indochina. It explained: One of the worlds richest areas is open to the winner in Indochina. Thats behind the growing U.S. concern tin, rubber, rice, key strategic raw materials are what the war is really all about. The U.S. sees it as a place to hold at any cost.5 The war was also about the export of capital, i.e. the exploitation of cheap labour. This is how the influential magazine Business Week expressed it in 1963: Late in the 1940s and with increasing speed all through the 1950s and up to the present (in) industry after industry, U.S. companies found that their overseas earnings were soaring, and that their return on investment was frequently much higher than in the U.S.6 In South Vietnam, the Communist Party organised a guerrilla army, the NLF (National Liberation Front), to fight Diem and the US. Due to the extensive support from the population, particularly in rural areas, the guerrillas were able to carry out rapid attacks and then vanish back into the jungle. Increasingly, the Americans response was to terrorise the population in order to get at the guerrillas. By 1967, killing entire families had become an integral part of the CIAs campaign in South Vietnam.7 Operation Rolling Thunder and the Tet Offensive As the South Vietnamese government proved incapable of defeating the guerrillas, the US was drawn deeper into the war. American military intervention in Vietnam began in 1963. In August of that year, US President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the bombing of North Vietnam. Six months later, Operation Rolling Thunder got under way. In that campaign alone which lasted for five years more bombs were dropped on North Vietnam than were used throughout the Second World War. This corresponds to about 150 kilos of bombs for every man, woman and child in Vietnam.8 Two million Vietnamese and 50 000 American soldiers were to die in this war. The trees across 10% of the countrys surface were defoliated with the help of toxins, primarily Agent Orange, in a bid to get at the guerrillas, who used the jungle as cover.9 The number of American soldiers in Vietnam rose from 23,300 in 1963 to 184 000 in 1966. In January 1969, their number peaked at 542 000. Despite this, the US was unable to subdue the country. And on the night of 31 January 1968, the North Vietnamese army and the NLF launched the Tet Offensive. The guerrillas broke the truce they had promised to observe during the Vietnamese New Year celebrations, and stormed into more than 100 cities and towns, having first launched a diversionary attack in Khesan province. One of their targets was the South Vietnamese capital, Saigon. The Americans were caught by surprise by the Tet Offensive, and the NLF even managed to take over the US embassy in the capital. They had accumulated weapons, ammunition and explosives at a secret location in preparation for the attack. In the middle of the night, a group
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of guerrilla soldiers drove up to the embassy in a taxi. Within minutes they had shot the Marines on guard and taken control of the building. The guerrillas also stormed the headquarters of the US and the South Vietnamese armies, as well as the giant US army base at Bienhoa, north of Saigon airport. Fourteen guerrilla soldiers attacked the leading radio station in Saigon. After having controlled it for 18 hours, they blew themselves and the entire building into the air. The NLF also made a half-hearted attempt to stage an uprising in urban areas. The response was very limited. The size and range of the Offensive astounded the American generals. One of them said later the pattern of attack on the map resembled a pinball game, with lights flashing for each raid. Without doubt, this was one of the most daring and remarkable campaigns in military history. The North Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap had begun preparations for it in 1967 when he realised that the war had reached a military deadlock. In military terms, the Tet Offensive was not a success. The NLF lost over 50 000 fighters, as compared to 6 000 Americans and South Vietnamese. The NLF also lost almost its entire command structure in South Vietnam. Within days, the guerrillas had been driven out of most of the positions they had captured. The Tet Offensive was both the high point of guerrilla activity and the beginning of the NLFs marginalisation in the continuing war. It was the regular North Vietnamese army that took over most of the fighting in the south after the Tet Offensive. The Offensive nonetheless represented a vital turning point in other respects. It had a strong impact on working-class opinion back in the US and internationally. For the first time, Americans were affected by the crucial role television can play in a major war. Fifty million viewers saw the devastation caused by war. The US administration could no longer present it as a nice, clean operation that would soon be over. Then, when news of the Song My massacre (in the small village of My Lai) began to leak out in the media, opposition to the war grew dramatically. The Song My massacre At dawn on 16 March 1968, a group of American soldiers moved into My Lai. Between 450 and 500 people, mainly old men, women and children, were slain: Those Vietnamese who were not killed on the spot were being shepherded by the first platoon to a large drainage ditch at the eastern end of the hamlet. After Grzesik left, Meadlo and a few others gathered seven or eight villagers in one hut and were preparing to toss in a hand grenade when an order came to take them to the ditch. There he found Calley, along with a dozen other first platoon members, and perhaps seventy-five Vietnamese, mostly women, old men and children. Calley then turned his attention back to the crowd of Vietnamese and issued an order: Push all those people in the ditch. Three or four GIs complied. Calley struck a woman with a rifle as he pushed her down. Stanley remembered that some of the civilians kept trying to get out. Some made it to the top. . . . Calley began the shooting and ordered Meadlo to join in. Meadlo told about it later: So we pushed our seven to eight people in with the big bunch of them. And so I began shooting them all. So did Mitchell, Calley I guess I shot maybe twenty-five or twenty people in the ditch . . . men, women and children. And babies. Some of the GIs switched from automatic fire to singleshot to conserve ammunition. Herbert Carter watched the mothers grabbing their kids and
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the kids grabbing their mothers. I didnt know what to do. () Some GIs. . . didnt hesitate to use their bayonets. Nineteen-year-old Nguyen Thi Ngoc Tuyet watched a baby trying to open her slain mothers blouse to nurse. A soldier shot the infant while it was struggling with the blouse, and the slashed at it with his bayonet. Tuyet also said she saw another baby hacked to death by GIs wielding their bayonets. Le Tong, a twentyeight-year-old rice farmer, reported seeing one woman raped after GIs killed her children. Nguyen Khoa, a thirty-seven- year-old peasant, told of a thirteen-year-old girl who was raped before being killed. GIs then attacked Khoas wife, tearing off her clothes. Before they could rape her, however, Khoa said, their six-year-old son, riddled with bullets, fell and saturated her with blood. The GIs left her alone . . . . In the early afternoon the men of Charlie Company mopped up to make sure all the houses and goods in My Lai 4 were destroyed. Medina ordered the underground tunnels in the hamlet blown up; most of them already had been blocked. Within another hour My Lai 4 was no more: its red-brick buildings demolished by explosives, its huts burned to the ground, its people dead or dying.10 It later transpired that officers higher up were responsible both for the massacre, and for the attempts to cover it up. However, only four soldiers were brought to trial and only one of them, William Calley, was convicted. After three years of house arrest, he was pardoned by President Nixon and released. The Song My outrage was one of the more brutal events of the war, but the abuse and killing of civilians was commonplace. In for example Operation Speedy Express focused on the Mekong Delta in early 1969, the US army claimed that 10,899 enemies were killed. Yet only 784 weapons were seized.11 It was not until 13 November 1969, more than one and half years after the event, that the true story of what happened at Song My emerged in the American media. As the war continued, American journalists increasingly dared to tell the truth about the Vietnam War. This was because public opinion more and more swung against the war. A few years earlier, journalists would have been fired if they had ventured to report the facts. But by the end of 1969, such persecution would have led to an uproar. US national security adviser Henry Kissinger realised after the Tet Offensive that: Regardless of how effective our actions are, the present strategy can no longer reach its goals within the period or with the level of force that is acceptable to the American Public.12 The US is a highly developed country where the working class makes up the overwhelming bulk of the population. It is the working class that is the American public. Initially, just as at the invasion of Iraq, many workers supported the Vietnam War. However, that declined as the war continued. A look at which groups expressed the greatest dissatisfaction is particularly interesting. A Gallup poll conducted in January 1971 showed that 60% of those with a college education advocated withdrawing the troops from Vietnam and 75% with a high school education supported such a move, while as many as 80% of those with only an elementary education were in favour. These facts have become completely obscured.13 At a popular exhibition entitled Resistance at Stockholms modern art museum, Moderna
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Museet, the only picture showing workers was one of American construction workers in hard hats beating up protesting students. The exhibition was supposed to be about struggle from the 1960s onwards. The impression it gave was that the only Americans principled enough to stand up against US imperialism were students and a handful of courageous individuals. On a number of occasions in the 1990s people were asked to estimate what percentages of people at different educational levels were against the war in 1971. They estimated that 90% of all those with a college education were against the war, and that just 60% of those with only an elementary education were opposed to it.14 An almost complete reversal of the facts. The working class pays, the rich benefit The American workers opposition to the war was based primarily on their own experiences. It was their children who were called on to do the dirty work in Vietnam. And it was their children who came home in a body bag, or maimed or mentally disturbed, because of a war that was not their own a war that in no way benefited them. The children of the rich were often able to avoid being drafted as they were studying at university (students were exempted from the draft), or alternatively they were given comfortable jobs as officers far from the horrors of war. Also, it was the workers who paid for most of the war, via their taxes. A total of 2 590 000 Americans took part in the war at one time or another. Inevitably, there was interaction between them and the working class back home. The soldiers influenced their thinking, and vice versa. Many returning soldiers could doubtless agree with the following description, published in June 1971, of how far resistance had developed within the US military. The morale, discipline and battle worthiness of the U.S. Armed Forces are, with a few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at any time in this century and possibly in the history of the United States. By every conceivable indicator, our army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers and non-commissioned officers, drug-ridden, and dispirited where not near mutinous While no senior officer (especially one on active duty) can openly voice any such assessment, the foregoing conclusions find virtually unanimous support in numerous non-attributable interviews with responsible senior and mid-level officer, as well as career non-commissioned officers and petty officers in all services. () - They have set up separate companies, writes an American soldier from Cu Chi, quoted in the New York Times, for men who refuse to go into the field. It is no big thing to refuse to go. If a man is ordered to go to such and such a place he no longer goes through the hassle of refusing; he just packs his shirt and goes to visit some buddies at another base camp. Operations have become incredibly ragtag. Many guys dont even put on their uniforms any more The American garrison on the larger bases are virtually disarmed. The lifers have taken our weapons from us and put them under lock and keyThere have also been quite a few frag incidents in the battalion. Frag incidents or just fragging is current soldier slang in Vietnam for the murder or attempted murder of strict, unpopular, or just aggressive officers and NCOs.Word of the deaths of officers will bring cheers at troop movies or in bivouacs of certain unitsBounties,
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raised by common subscription in amounts running anywhere from $50 to $1 000, have been widely reported put on the heads of leaders whom the privates and Sp4s want to rub out. Shortly after the costly assault on Hamburger Hill in mid-1969, the GI underground newspaper in Vietnam, G.I. Says, publicly offered a $10 000 bounty on Lt. Col. Weldon Honeycutt, the officer who ordered (and led) the attack. () The issue of combat refusal, an official euphemism for disobedience of orders to fight the soldiers gravest crime, has only recently been again precipitated on the frontier of Laos by Troop B, 1st Cavalrys mass refusal to recapture their captains command vehicle containing communication gear, codes and other secret operation orders. As early as mid-1969, however, an entire company of the 196th Light Infantry Brigade publicly sat down on the battlefield. Later that year, another rifle company, from the famed 1st Air Cavalry Division, flatly refused on CBS-TV to advance down a dangerous trailSearch and evade (meaning tacit avoidance of combat by units in the field) is now virtually a principle of war, vividly expressed by the GI phrase, CYA (cover your ass) and get home! That search-and-evade has not gone unnoticed by the enemy is underscored by the Viet Cong delegations recent statement at the Paris Peace Talks that communist units in Indochina have been ordered not to engage American units which do not molest them. This account was published just six months before the US began withdrawing its ground troops and Nixon initiated his Vietnamisation policy (meaning that American soldiers were no longer to be directly involved in the fighting). The quote is from the Armed Forces Journal, an official army publication, and is included in a book by the eminent military historian Colonel Robert D. Heinl Jr.15 Heinl is not alone in writing about the disintegration of the American military. Such accounts have almost become a genre in their own right.16 Another example: During the years of 1969 down to 1973, we have the rise of fragging that is, shooting or hand-grenading your NCO or your officer who orders you out into the field. () The US Army itself does not know exactly how many officers were murdered. But they know at least 600 were murdered, and then they have another 1 400 that died mysteriously. Consequently, by early 1970, the army [was] at war not with the enemy but with itself.17 It was not the brutality of war as such that led to the disintegration of the US Army. The important thing in war is for soldiers to believe in what they are doing. During the Second World War, many soldiers were willing to fight fascism and defend democracy. However much US propaganda sought to present the Vietnam War as a fight for a better world, it soon became clear to the soldiers involved that this was not what the war was about. At the end of the Second World War, too, American soldiers had reacted rebelliously to government efforts to re-deploy them to fight the Communists in Italy and elsewhere. Back home in the US, ordinary workers were strongly influenced by what their sons and brothers had experienced in Vietnam. And they did not just sit back and await developments. As early as 1965, some 25 000 people gathered in Washington, 20 000 in New York and 15
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000 in Berkeley, California, to protest against the war. In April 1967, as many as 300 000 people demonstrated in New York. A series of moratoriums18 were organised throughout the US by the two largest anti-war organisations. The largest of these protests took place on 15 October 1969. An estimated five million people took part in it in one way or another. They joined demonstrations, sit-ins, teach-ins and other organised activities. Some people did only small things, like lighting a candle or leaving their headlights on. In New York, the mayor proclaimed a day of mourning and ordered public flags to be flown at half-mast. Soldiers in Vietnam also demonstrated their support, by wearing black armbands. The largest demonstrations took place on 24 April 1971. 300 000 people assembled in San Francisco, and in Washington between 500 000 and 700 000. This was probably the largest political demonstration in the history of the country at least up until 15 February 2003 when a million people gathered in New York to protest against the war in Iraq. Protests were also organised at universities. During the post-war economic upswing, US universities and colleges had increasingly opened up, and by the late 1960s the students included millions of young people from working-class backgrounds. Many of the largest and most militant protests took place at universities that were not Ivy League and could hardly be described as the preserve of the rich: Kent State, San Francisco State, and the state-run universities in Michigan, Maryland and Wisconsin. In the early 1970s, however, these protests began to wane. Different left-wing sects came to dominate the student movement and tear it apart with fruitless arguments. The anti-war movement, by contrast, now began to attract a great deal of support from organised workers. The position of the Labour Movement In the 1930s, the US Labour Movement grew in strength and became radicalised at an astonishing speed. In the 1950s, however, union bureaucrats dominated. Ordinary workers were showing less inclination to take part in union activities, partly because their situation had improved but also because of the hysterical anti-Communist mood in the early years of the Cold War. In the 1960s, union activities picked up again. Although the workers were better off financially, they were still doing the same dirty jobs and were still being ordered around by dictatorial managers. Many strikes ensued, not least in heavy industry, and the labour unions launched recruiting drives among farm workers, hospital staff and white-collar workers. But the union bureaucracy was a millstone around the movements neck. The bureaucracy was personified by George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, the largest union confederation in the world. He made no bones about his opinion regarding the Vietnam War. In May 1965, he declared that the AFL-CIO would support the war no matter what the academic do-gooders may say, no matter what the apostles of appeasement may say.19 In August 1966, the Executive Council of the AFL-CIO issued the statement that: Those who would deny our military forces unstinting support are, in effect, aiding the Communist enemy of our country at the very moment when it is bearing the heaviest burdens in the defence of world peace and freedom.20 It is not easy for an opposition to make its voice heard when it is openly harassed and persecuted. In 1967, a resolution opposing the war was brought before the AFL-CIO Congress. 2 000 delegates voted against the resolution, six in favour. But in June 1969 the
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United Auto Workers, UAW, quit the AFL-CIO and set up the Alliance for Labor Action together with the Teamsters (transport workers). The Alliance called for an immediate end to the war. As time passed, a growing number of labour unions came out against the Vietnam War. Individual unions began openly supporting anti-war demonstrations, and new members flocked to join them. By 1972, unions representing 4 million of the countrys 21 million workers had officially declared their opposition to the war. At the 1972 presidential election, half of all union households voted for the Democratic candidate, George McGovern, who was demanding an immediate troop withdrawal from Vietnam. They did so despite the fact that for the first time in the organisations history, Meany had refused to give AFL-CIO support to the Democratic candidate. However, the ground had begun to shake beneath Meanys feet. The number of strikes, including wildcat strikes, increased. Even the traditionally conservative construction workers did not behave the way in which they were usually presented in the media. In June 1970, a reporter accompanied a group of activists visiting building sites in Chicago to distribute antiwar leaflets. He saw that 90% of the workers the activists talked to were against the war, and almost all felt it was really stupid to assault students for their opposition to it.21 The logic of the anti-war movement was such that people began to feel sympathy for the Vietnamese. In July 1977, an opinion poll asked the question: Assuming that the President recommended helping Vietnam, would you like your representative in Congress to approve a plan to send food and medicine there? 60% said yes and only 29% no.22 In the United States, no parliaments were stormed, no barricades were built and no presidents were deposed (at least not until two years after the US military had been pulled out). Nor was the working class well organised and consciously fighting for a new society, such as the Swedish working class when they ended the attempt to go to war in 1905, or the Russian working class in 1917, or the German in 1918. But special circumstances that have existed neither before nor since meant that the Vietnam War was ended nonetheless. The movement of the Vietnamese people was part of the anti-colonial struggle that had successfully swept through the world in previous decades. This gave the Vietnamese people self-confidence and moral support from all who had been through a similar experience. They were strengthened further because they were not only fighting to get rid of something, but were also struggling for a better society. A society that they could see had improved the lot of many poor countries throughout the world. They were prepared to fight to the bitter end. The Cold War meant that they got large supplies of weapons from the Soviet Union. Although Vietnam was a good place for capitalist exploitation, it was not of vital economic importance to US imperialism. A section of the American capitalists therefore began to feel that it might be better to cut their losses, when the war dragged on. The resolve of the American establishment to continue the war was further sapped by international protests. Giant rallies against the US war effort in Vietnam attracted workers and young people throughout the world, not least in Sweden, where the anti-war movement united the left. Olof Palme, then a government minister, caused an international sensation by joining a demonstration alongside the North Vietnamese ambassador. In military terms, American military power was far superior to the Vietnamese. The US
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controlled the air space and could go on bombing for as long as they wished. Although the war was expensive, and was beginning to affect the economy, they still could have gone on for years. But the war could not be financed if the working class refused to pay for it. Nor could it be maintained if the working class refused to fight. The American Labour Movement is, in some respects, different to the European. It is less organised and not as strong, but that also means that the bureaucracy is relatively weak. There is no Labour Party. The Communist Party has hardly any influence. There is no tradition of reformism and Stalinism. In Europe the reformist leadership within the movement has been the main hindrance to the anti-war movement ever since the outbreak of the First World War, and the Stalinist bureaucracies since the degeneration of the Soviet Union. The small bureaucracy in the US Labour Movement is openly pro-capitalist. When American workers began to question official truths, there was almost nobody with authority to get them on track again, i.e. almost nobody who could play the role of an honest broker between the demands of the workers and the wishes of the capitalists. Almost nothing can dampen class conflicts once they break out. Had the American Government sought to press ahead with the war, the US would have been on the brink of revolution. In 1975, after 28 years of war, imperialism was finally forced to leave Vietnam. Once again the independent movement of the working class was decisive for defeating imperialism. Given the heroic struggle of the Vietnamese (backed up by many national liberation struggles throughout the Third World), the protests of the Labour Movement internationally, the weakness of the Labour bureaucracy in the US, the fact that US imperialism could afford to let Vietnam go, meant that the American workers opposition to the war brought the troops home. __________________________________ 1 www.vietnamwar.net/quotations/quotations.htm 2 www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Common_Courage_Press/WhoControlsHeroes.html 3 The memoirs of President Eisenhower: Mandate for Change, 1963 4 Robert K. Brigham: Battlefield Vietnam: A brief history. http://www.pbs.org/battlefieldvietnam/history/index.html 5 US News and World Report, 4 April 1954. www.plp.org/vietnam/vn6.html 6 20 April, 1963. Ibid. 7 Douglas Valentine: Fragging Bob, 2001 8 Steve Forrest: The Tet Offensive. http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~socappeal/1968/vietnam.html 9 Jim Hensman: Vietnam 1945, 1986

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10 Seymour Hirsch: My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath, 1970 11 Christopher Hitchens: The Trial of Henry Kissinger, 2001 12 Steve Forrest: The Tet Offensive, http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~socappeal/1968/vietnam.html 13 BBC: War and protest the US in Vietnam (1971), http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A715051 14 James Loewen: Lies My Teacher Told Me, 1995 15 Robert D. Heinl J: The Collapse of the Armed Forces, 1971 16 See for instance GI Resistance: Soldiers and Veterans Against the Viet Nam War. A Bibliography, 1991 17 http://home.mweb.co.za/re/redcap/vietcrim.htm, unofficial website of the US Armys military police 18 A moratorium is defined in the dictionary as an agreed suspension of activity. 19 http://lists.village.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Texts/Reviews/Smetak_US_ Labor_01.html 20 http://lists.village.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Texts/Reviews/Smetak_US_ Labor_02.html 21 Phillip Foner: US Labor and the Vietnam War, 1989 22 New York Times/CBS News

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11. East Timor's struggle for independence 1975 2002: The UN - a blind alley

How did you arrive at that resolution on Sierra Leone? Id asked an American diplomat on his way out of the UN building in Manhattan. You dont want to know, he replied. Resolutions are like hot dogs. If you knew how they were made, you wouldnt eat them. You just swallow. You dont ask any questions. Linda Polman in the book We Did Nothing Why the truth doesnt always come out when the UN goes in East Timor1 was a Portuguese colony. When Portugals fascist dictator Antnio de Oliviera Salazar was overthrown in a revolution in April 1974, the people of East Timor saw their chance for independence. In November 1975, Fretilin, the leading resistance movement under Portuguese colonialism, declared East Timor an independent state. But imperialist powers were afraid that East Timor might develop into an Asian Cuba. Moreover, there were rich deposits of natural gas and oil in the waters around East Timor that they wanted to get their hands on. The United Nations played an absolutely shameful role in helping them achieve this end. The 1975 massacre no sanctions Within weeks of East Timor being declared independent, the Indonesian military invaded East Timor with the backing of the American and Australian governments. The invasion was launched on the day after US President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger left Indonesia, where they had met General Suharto. We [the US] sent the Indonesian generals everything that you need to fight a major war against somebody who doesnt have any guns. We sent them rifles, ammunition, mortars, grenades, food, helicopters. You name it; they got it. And they got it direct.2 Previously confidential documents from the Department of Foreign Affairs shows that Australia was aware of Indonesian plans to invade East Timor more than a year before the military acted in 1975. Documents from 1974-76 show that Australias former premier Gough Whitlam (Labour!) strongly advocated incorporating East Timor into Indonesia.3 The Indonesian army instigated a bloodbath that was scarcely reported in the Western press. One Timorese in ten 60 000 people were murdered in a matter of weeks. In 1989, Amnesty International estimated that since the invasion, the Indonesian military had killed
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about 200 000 of East Timors population of 600-700 000. Other reports spoke of 300 000.4 Five days after the invasion, the UN denounced it as a typical example of an international act of aggression. The US abstained from voting. No sanctions were imposed and no other action was taken. Time and again, representatives of the East Timorese people appealed to the UN. In 1989, Bishop Belo (the Catholic bishop of East Timor) wrote to the UN Secretary General at the time, Prez de Cullar, begging for help from the outside world. The response came five years later, from the new Secretary General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali. He wrote: The United Nations is determined to do everything in its power to achieve a final, just, comprehensive and internationally acceptable solution.5 Countries such as the US, Australia and Britain continued to supply the Indonesian regime with money, investments and arms up until 1998. The Australian government reached an agreement with Jakarta to exploit the rich reserves of natural gas and oil in the Timor Gap. Oil prospecting contracts were signed with oil companies from Australia, Britain, Japan, the Netherlands and North America.6 Swedish companies, too, have benefited from the oppression, with the approval of the neutral Swedish government. After 1995, sales of Swedish arms and ammunition to Jakarta increased, with exports totalling more than SEK 64 million (about 6.4 million) in 1996. Paul Beijer (head of the division for strategic export control at the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs) said that there was little risk of the arms exported from Sweden being used to violate peoples human rights. Jens Petersson, Secretary General of the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Association, notes that prior to independence Swedish anti-aircraft guns were used to attack the East Timorese guerrilla army.7 Terror and the 1999 referendum In May 1998, Indonesian dictator General Suharto was overthrown by militant students, workers and peasants. The tyranny in East Timor had frequently been a focus of attention for the Indonesian mass movement that was fighting the government. Activists from the Timorese liberation movement took part in mass meetings in Indonesia, and freedom for East Timor was one of the demands of the Indonesian student movement. Suhartos first successor was Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie, a close ally of the ousted dictator and a man of like mind. In January 1999, in an attempt both to appease the masses and to give his regime a more democratic image in the eyes of the world, he offered to hold a referendum in East Timor. The voters were to choose between independence and Timorese autonomy within Indonesias national borders. Habibie was also affected by a change of stance among the leaders of the Timorese liberation movement. Fretilin leader Xanana Gusmo and others had moved to the right and abandoned their Marxist rhetoric in favour of support for a market economy. Habibie doubtless reasoned that a free, capitalist East Timor was far less threatening than a socialist one. The ruling class in Indonesia was apparently not unanimous in its support for this step. Powerful elements in the military were critical of the referendum. A free East Timor would not only mean that Indonesia risked losing access to Timorese natural resources. There was also a danger it might serve as inspiration to the liberation struggle of oppressed people in parts of Indonesia, such as West Papua and Aceh. The divergence of views among the ruling class was not a reflection of any sudden sympathy for the East Timorese cause, but simply of disagreement on how best to maintain exploitation

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there. When Habibie announced the referendum, the Indonesian military immediately began building up, training and arming paramilitary gangs (militias) in East Timor. These gangs had been in existence for some time, but were now extensively reinforced and given a vital role to play. In May 1999, Indonesia, Portugal and the UN signed an agreement scheduling a referendum for August 1999. The vote was to be organized under UN auspices, but controlled by the Indonesian military.8 This was the signal for the second massacre of the East Timorese people. The gangs sought to terrorize them into voting for autonomy and against independence. Defenceless, unarmed people were raped, beaten and murdered by the gangs, under Indonesian army control. During this time, UN observers were in place but did nothing to intervene. They just observed. The referendum was postponed many times by the UN, and the gangs continued to terrorize the population. All the UN managed to do was to lull the East Timorese into a false sense of security, by giving them the impression that they were under the protection of the international community. As part of the May Agreement, the liberation movement was to lay down its arms. The leaders of the independence movement trusted the UN, chose the path of non-violence and disarmed their supporters. This mistake was costly for the people of East Timor. In the absence of armed and organized resistance, the gangs were free to do as they pleased. Xanana Gusmo, head of the National Council for Timorese Resistance, CNRT, an umbrella body for pro-independence groups such as Fretilin, the right-wing UDP and a number of smaller organizations, used his position to urge the people not to make any move to defend themselves against the brutal attacks of the gangs and the Indonesian army. When young Timorese activists wanted to mobilize the people in massive demonstrations against the gangs attacks, Gusmo rejected the idea. In a CNRT statement in May 1999, he declared that such a move would only give the militia further reason to continue murdering the people and called on everyone to follow the UN line in preparing for the referendum.9 The vote was eventually held at the end of August 1999. The people of the region displayed tremendous courage and a clear determination to fight for their freedom. Despite the threats and violence of the gangs, nearly everyone took part, and the result was clear and unequivocal. Almost 80% voted for total independence. Directly after the result became known, the pro-Indonesian paramilitaries exacted terrible retribution. The military and the Indonesian elite wanted to show the Timorese, and the other oppressed peoples of Indonesia, that the price of independence was a heavy one. People were raped, maimed and murdered indiscriminately. Some 200 000 were driven from their homes, and almost all the buildings in the capital of Dili were looted and razed to the ground. Schools, hospitals and other infrastructures were destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of people were forced to flee to Indonesian West Timor. During this horrific wave of terror, the UN appealed to the Indonesian army to pull back the gangs and protect the people of East Timor. The UN did so despite the fact that the Indonesian military had for years been oppressing and murdering the East Timorese and that
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it was they who were ultimately responsible for the paramilitary gangs criminal acts. Xanana Gusmo and the other pro-independence leaders continued to place their trust in the UN. They appealed to the UN to intervene to stop the killings, though for 25 years the UN had been indifferent to the suffering of the East Timorese people. Gusmo also advised the Falintil guerrilla forces not to hit back at the gangs. In the beginning of September 1999, five days after the referendum, a CNRT statement urged the people not to do anything that could be interpreted as starting a civil war.10 In point of fact, a bloody, one-sided civil war was already under way in villages and towns throughout East Timor. 3 000 guerrillas of the Falintil movement, who had been fighting the Indonesian army in the jungle for 24 years, were standing passively by while the paramilitaries were murdering unarmed and defenceless civilians just a few hours journey from their base. In full accordance with the May Agreement, Jos Ramos Horta, another of the independence movements leaders, praised the incredible discipline of these soldiers He added that they had acted on direct orders from Xanana Gusmo.11 It would have been perfectly possible to set up armed self-defence groups based on elected neighbourhood, village and town committees of workers, peasants and young people. Such groups would have been able to organise the majority of the East Timorese people and confront the gangs. Young Timorese in fact made moves in this direction during the final weeks of the terror, but were strongly advised to hold back by the leaders of the freedom movement. Australian workers expressed their solidarity by organizing strikes and boycotts directed against Indonesia. Telecommunications and dock workers organized economic sanctions. All postal deliveries to Indonesian companies and diplomatic bodies were stopped. No repairs of telephone lines to Indonesia were undertaken. At a number of airports, construction workers initiated a blockade against flights from Australia by Garuda, the Indonesian airline. Mass demonstrations drew tens of thousands of students and workers from all over the continent. 40 000 took part in Melbourne and 20 000 in Sydney.12 Protests also broke out in other countries, such as Portugal, Canada and the US. On the American West Coast, dock workers refused to handle Indonesian cargoes. In Canada, postal workers set an example by stopping all deliveries in any way connected with Indonesian interests. We have not the slightest doubt that the Indonesian government can start and stop the violence whenever it likes, declared the head of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Dale Clark. Our action, like the actions of other trade unions, is intended to pressure them into stopping the violence. The Canadian Labour Congress refused to handle goods and services to or from Indonesia. Had the whole international Labour Movement mobilized, the Indonesian regime would have been paralyzed. UN administrators take over Western governments came under pressure, but were not prepared to do anything that might damage their relations with Indonesia. Instead, they waited until the Jakarta regime had achieved its aims, i.e. had lain waste East Timor as a warning to other peoples in Indonesia. In September 1999, eight days after the Indonesian government had agreed to let UN troops into East Timor, the first units of the UNs force arrived on the island. This force was mainly
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comprised of Australian soldiers. The Australian government was anxious to have a say in the new countrys future. In October 1999, the Indonesian parliament formally approved the referendum outcome. But it took another two years, until August 2001, for a constituent assembly to be elected. In the meantime, the UN ruled the country via a transitional administration, the UNTAET, and with the aid of peacekeeping forces and special UN police. Backed by both Gusmo and Horta, UN administrator Sergio Vieiera de Mello13 was invested with powers similar to those of a colonial master. He was authorised to appoint ministries comprising UN officials and handpicked East Timorese. The UN administrators were not keen to hand over community planning and organization to the grassroots bodies of the independence movement, assembled in the CNRT. After the Indonesian troops left the island in September 1999, these organisations had taken over responsibility for local government, the police and the judiciary, and had organised the distribution of emergency food supplies. An internal UNTAET report, leaked to the press, showed that the UNs strategy took power out of the hands of ordinary East Timorese and their organizations. Instead, new structures were erected, led by foreigners. CNRT involvement in the distribution of humanitarian assistance has been extremely important due to the fact that the NGOs have been incapable of organising food distribution CNRT have the strong support and trust of the majority of the population, and are highly coordinated and efficient in their management of programmes. 14 Nonetheless, the report recommended that CNRT involvement be reduced because their direct involvement creates pressure from the population. Another report recommends that the UNTAET take over the CNRTs role as it is essential that UNTAET is seen to be the administrative authority. These reports are in sharp contrast to the claims of the UN administrators that they were in East Timor to help the inhabitants develop basic skills in how to run a country. The East Timorese activists already possessed these skills. What the UN in fact did was to select, train and build up a more trustworthy corps of officials, technicians, police, military and diplomatic staff: a corps that could be counted on to show loyalty to the capitalist system. Another sign that the UN was in practice creating a colonial-style administration was its decision to make Portuguese the official language of the new country despite the fact that only 8% of the population spoke it. Portuguese was the language of the new oligarchy and the East Timorese elite, while the overwhelming bulk of the population spoke Tetum. Moreover, the UNTAET decided that the American dollar was to be the national currency a choice that showed the true nature of Timorese independence. A year after independence, workers, peasants and the poor were still using the Indonesian rupee, which naturally was not accepted in the countrys new restaurants, bars and shops.15 A hollow independence East Timor became a divided country. While UN personnel, business people (mainly Australians) and the Timorese elite lived in luxury, the great majority of peasants and workers had to eke out a living in extreme poverty. The presence of the 10 000 well-paid peacekeepers and other UN staff, most of them earning around USD 50 000 a year, changed the face of the capital, Dili. Just a few months after the Indonesian military, police and gangs
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had totally destroyed and burnt down the city, new luxury hotels, bars, restaurants and other facilities were being built for the rich. Expensive cars plied the streets of the city. East Timor was described in the Australian media as a future tourist and tax haven. A journalist gave a lyrical account of the picturesque attractions that people with money could enjoy in East Timor, and offered the following tip: Do as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan did on his recent visit enjoy good food and wine served in the ruins of a burnt-out house.16 After all these events, ordinary Timorese lived in extreme poverty. In 2002 many could not fill their stomachs. Over 40% lived below the poverty level of 0.55 dollars (55 cents) a day, and over half of the population were illiterate.17 Most Timorese in Dili lived in shacks or the ruins of houses without roofs. No health service worthy of the name was available to ordinary citizens. More than twice as many women died giving birth in East Timor as in the rest of South-East Asia. The countrys only significant export product was coffee, but falling prices in the global market led to a sharp fall in GDP growth in 2002. The difficult conditions under which ordinary workers had to live in East Timor, and the huge wage gap between them and the Timorese employed by the UN, led to worker protests and even instances of open rebellion against discrimination and miserable living standards. As the economy had been destroyed by the rampaging gangs, the main employers were the UN administrative machine, foreign charity organizations and a limited number of foreign companies. When almost a thousand job-seekers gathered in March 2000 to demand information about their job applications from the UN administrators, they were met by UN forces armed with riot shields, batons and tear gas. In August 2001, a constituent assembly was elected in East Timor. The Fretilin Party won a majority of the votes. Mari Alkatari was appointed prime minister and Xanana Gusmo president. When Independence Day was celebrated on 20 May 2002, the poverty of the new state and the hollow nature of its sovereignty became plain to all. The festivities were entirely financed by sponsors, whose names and logos were carried on TV and radio, on banners and even on a memorial to the Heroes of the Resistance that was to be erected in a planned park.18 The biggest sponsors, of course, were the oil and gas companies looking forward to reaping huge profits from the reserves in Timorese waters. Meanwhile, the Australian and Timorese governments were arguing about where to draw the line between their respective territorial waters. On Independence Day, 2002, the UN mandate expired. But the UNTAET was promptly supplanted by a new UN body, UNMISET. This was later replaced by UNOTIL, whose mandate ended in 2006. However,a series of events culminating in a political, humanitarian and security crisis of major dimensions led the [Security] Council to prolong UNOTILs mandate and ultimately in August 2006 to establish a new mission UNMIT.19 All in all, the role of the UN in East Timor is a complete failure. Many, not only in East Timor, have had high hopes that the UN can be an instrument for peace. However, the UNs entire history and organization show that the UN cannot fulfil these hopes, and that what happened in East Timor was no accident. The UN structure

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Prior to the end of the Second World War, representatives of the three strongest Allies Winston Churchill (Britain), Franklin D. Roosevelt (US), and Josef Stalin (Soviet Union) met at Yalta in the Crimea to divide the world into spheres of interest. During the conference, the basic framework for a future international peace organization was drawn up. The United Nations Charter begins by declaring that the organization was founded by the victors in the Second World War in order to save future generations from the scourge of war. It goes on to affirm the goal of social and economic development for all peoples. The UNs Declaration of Human Rights came into being. Most of the UNs power is concentrated in the Security Council. The Council is dominated by five countries with the right of veto. Originally, those were Britain, the US, the Soviet Union, France and Taiwan. Taiwan has since been replaced by China. Only the Security Council may adopt decisions that are binding on the UN member states, including coercive economic and military measures. Thus the vast majority of member states are required to submit to actions that are not of their own making. The General Assembly, at which all the member states are represented, is entitled to discuss all matters that come within the UNs remit with one important restriction: When something is being discussed in the Security Council, the General Assembly is not allowed to submit any proposals concerning that particular issue unless requested to do so by the Council. The US took advantage of this clause when a number of states requested that the Vietnam War be raised. The Council was split and unable to reach a decision, but as the war was on the Council agenda, the General Assembly was not allowed to discuss it.20 The UN structure shows that at best the organization can be a forum for the ventilation of views. But whether anything is actually done about the issues discussed is entirely up to the big powers. If they fail to agree, the UN is paralyzed and disregarded. Sanctions One step the UN can take, other than military intervention, is to introduce sanctions. During the Cold War, the UN Security Council only twice imposed sanctions on an individual country Rhodesia in 1966 and South Africa in 1977. In both cases, the aim was to forcibly bring about the abolition of systematic racial discrimination. The sanctions imposed on Rhodesia had no effect, as South Africa continued to supply the regime with everything needed. The sanctions against South Africa, on the other hand, are often put forward as contributing to the collapse of apartheid in the early 1990s. While the sanctions may have aggravated the situation somewhat for the countrys white leadership, the role played by the black workers and the black youth community was decisive. They fought for years under very difficult conditions to bring down the regime, and it was they who ultimately brought about its downfall. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the UN Security Council has imposed sanctions more often. But only in the case of Libya did these have the desired effect. Libya was the first country to be exposed to UN sanctions aimed at combating international terrorism. After a seven-year embargo on weapons and air flights, Libya agreed in 1999 to hand over two persons suspected of the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. One of them was subsequently acquitted by a panel of three Scottish judges.

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Other UN sanctions said to target terrorism (Afghanistan, Cambodia, Sudan), genocide (Rwanda) or others forms of indiscriminate violence (Angola, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Liberia, Haiti) have had little or no effect.21 In the 1990s, Iraq was subjected to the most wide-ranging sanctions that the UN has ever directed at an individual country. And this time the sanctions had an impact a disastrous one. Estimates show that 400 000 children below the age of five died.22 Saddam, meanwhile, remained in power. The UN Security Council imposed economic sanctions on Milosevics regime on three separate occasions: the arms embargo of 1991-95, when Yugoslavia was torn apart, economic sanctions at the time of the Bosnian war of 1992-95, and finally another arms embargo in the early stages of the Kosovo crisis. The economic sanctions were far-reaching. Under Resolution 757, member states were not allowed to import goods or products from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). No products were allowed to pass the Yugoslav borders, except for certain medicines and other goods approved by a UN committee. This naturally caused suffering among the people of Yugoslavia, but the sanctions had very little effect on the behaviour of the Belgrade regime. Prostitution Dispatching UN forces to different parts of the world has had one clearly perceptible effect: prostitution and violence against women increased.23 In the Cambodian capital of Phnom Phen, for instance, the number of prostitutes increased from 6 000 in 1992 to 20 000 the following year, due to the presence of the UN peacekeeping force, UNCTAC. The demand for prostitutes was high among UN troops. Unemployed or under-paid young women from Romania, Moldavia, Bulgaria and Belarus were lured away by offers of wellpaid jobs, or were quite simply kidnapped and taken away by force. They were then sold from country to country, illegally taken across borders in cars and boats and offered in markets where they were undressed and sold like cattle. They ultimately ended up in brothels in Bosnia and Kosovo, where they were kept confined as debt slaves, forced to sell their bodies day and night. If they tried to escape they risked their lives. There were up to ten brothels in every major Bosnian town or city, concentrated around the bases of the 20 000strong UN-mandated NATO-forces.24 Can the UN be reformed? When confronted with the facts about how the UN works in practice, many in the Labour Movement call for the organization to be reformed and made more democratic. They believe that while the UN may be a tool of imperialism at present, it could become an antiimperialist force for a better, fairer world. The Programme of Principles issued in 1999 by the Young Left in Sweden is a case in point: The UN could become an important international organ for dialogue and conflict resolution. Today, the UN is powerless as it is controlled by the US, which dictates how it is to operate. If the UN is to become a proper instrument for a just world order, the poor countries must be given a greater say and the UN must be made more democratic. This means that the right of veto must be abolished, along with the practice of having permanent members of the Security
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Council. Such changes should be accompanied by an increase in the UNs powers and resources. But who actually represents the poor countries in the UN? The answer is, of course, the governments of the Third World largely dictatorships and quasi-dictatorships the governments of countries where the leaders live in luxury while the people starve. These leaders are economically and militarily dependent on imperialism, and mainly sit docilely on their laps. Some, like the prime minister of Malaysia, occasionally make rhetorical gestures to appease their own people and denounce the ravages of imperialism. Occasionally, too, some unpredictable dictator like Saddam Hussein will act against the interests of the big powers but only to further his own ambitions, not to alleviate poverty in his country. Many of these countries also pursue local imperialist policies with the approval of the big powers. Turkey, for instance, fights the Kurds, and finances and supports rebels and warlords who murder and plunder in northern Iraq. For the most part, such countries willingly allow the imperialists to exploit their natural resources and workers under appalling conditions. In the Sudan, the government attacks and murders its own people so that the big corporations can plunder the countrys oil reserves in peace. Military and paramilitary groups are despatched in Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador to harass, jail and murder organized workers. In India and Brazil, soldiers and riot police are used against workers and poor peasants fighting for better conditions. The leaders of many poor countries are not afraid of using nationalism, racism or ethnic violence to divert attention from the causes of the miserable conditions in which most people are forced to live. The UN would not be more democratic if the governments of Afghanistan, Iran and DR Congo were to be given a greater say, or if more power were placed in the hands of the Indonesian, Pakistani, Nigerian, and Algerian government. These governments are definitely not a part of the solution but a part of the problem, and they must be overthrown. But this is something the UN will not concern itself with. Even in the hypothetical situation that the bulk of Third World governments decide to pursue policies for peace in a democratized UN, what would happen? The UNs day-to-day activities, its officials and its agencies are financed by powerful capitalist countries. Without the money of the imperialist powers, the UN is nothing but a collection of 50 000 or so officials who would not even get paid. The UN would collapse. When the UN was founded in 1945, the Security Council was introduced because of the lessons learned from its predecessor the League of Nations. The US, which took the initiative to start the League, never became a member. The Soviet Union was not allowed to join until the late 1920s, and was expelled a few years later. Germany quit in 1933, because the big powers were not granted the right of veto. The Leagues standing was much reduced as a result. After the Second World War, it was understood that if a United Nations was to be a viable proposition, the big powers would have to be given the right of veto. Principles about democracy and human rights do not govern the world. Nor is it governed by a powerless international gathering of officials in a building in New York. International conflicts have never been resolved and will never be resolved by simply presenting the best arguments. They are decided by the economic and military balance of power that prevails. The UN exists in an imperialist world. It is a part of and a product of it. Reformed or not, the UN has nothing with which to offset the vast military and economic might of the imperialist
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powers, led by the US. The brutal experience of East Timor confirms once again that workers solidarity is shown to be the only realistic alternative. ___________________ 1 After independence East Timor changed its name to Timor-Leste. For the sake of simplicity we use the name East Timor throughout as the chapter in the main takes up East Timors struggle for independence. 2 According to Philip Liechty, the CIAs contact man in Jakarta at the time. See http:// www.medialens.org/articles_2001/silent_democracy.html 3 http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/mar1999/whit-m09.shtml 4 John Pilger: Hidden Agenda, 1999 5 ibid 6 Noam Chomsky: Man kan inte mrda historien, 1995 7 Amnesty Press, No. 4, September 2000 8 Mike Head and Linda Tenenbaum: East Timors Independence: Illusion and Reality, 18 May 2002 9 Jean Duval & Ted Grant: East Timor: Can We Trust the United Nations? September 1999 10 Mike Head and Linda Tenenbaum: East Timors Independence: Illusion and Reality, 18 May 2002 11 Australian Financial Review, 14 September 1999 12 Jean Duval: Referendum in East Timor, 6 September 1999 13 Sergio Vieira de Mello was killed in a bomb attack in Iraq in 2003 14 Sam King: Discrimination in East Timor. www.greenleft.org.au/back/2000/389/389p3.htm 15 Jean Duval: One Year after the Independence Referendum, September 2000 16 http://www.blythe.org/nytransfer-subs/2000pac/Timor_Nows_Suffers_Cultural_ Assault_of_UN_Peacekeepers
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17 The UNs Human Development Report, 2002 18 Mike Head and Linda Tenenbaum: East Timors Independence: Illusion and Reality, 18 May 2002 19 http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unmiset/background.html 20 Segerstedt Wiberg: Mtesplats FN, 1990 21 Eds. David Cortright and George Lopez: The Sanctions Decade, 2000 22 Global Policy Forum: Iraq Sanctions: Humanitarian Implications and Options for the Future, August 2002 23 Louise Olsson: Gendering UN peacekeeping, Dept of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University 24 Amnesty Press: No. 2, April 2001

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12. Wars since 1989: Economic crisis and the fall of the Soviet Union

Whatever has overstepped its due bounds is always in a state of instability.1 Seneca the Younger, Roman philosopher, 1st Century AD The era of the Cold War and the wars of national liberation came to an end in 1989 when the Berlin Wall collapsed. The new world situation did not mean the end of war. The entire world entered a new epoch, one of spiralling instability economic, political, social, diplomatic and military. And the number of casualties increased. However, wars in the new situation had characteristics that were different from those of the 1950s to the 1980s. In the following chapters we look at the three types of wars that developed in the 1990s. 1. The first set of wars was caused directly by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Defence spending in Russia fell by 95% up to 1998.2 The American ruling elite was intoxicated by the power that had come their way and by the opportunities this opened up. Having acquired military superiority, they attempted to redraw the political map by attacking regimes they wished to eliminate in Iraq, Serbia, and Afghanistan. At the same time, wars broke out in the former Soviet Union in Moldavia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Chechnya. 2. Global economic problems and the removal of the Soviet threat meant tougher competition between the big capitalist powers. This led to France and the US supplying arms to different sides in wars in Africa in Rwanda, Congo-Kinshasa, Congo-Brazzaville, and Sudan. It also led to war in Europe for the first time since the Second World War in Yugoslavia. 3. The crisis of the developed countries economies caused the economies of many of the developing countries to go into free fall at the same time as Soviet oriented movements disintegrated at the same pace as the Soviet Union. Africa suffered the most. In the wake of growing poverty, civil wars broke out. These wars began to turn the clock back. In many parts of Africa something approaching barbarism began to spread. The Iraq war begun in 2003 includes elements of all these wars. To understand these types of wars, it is necessary to understand how and why the new world situation developed. The end of the post-war boom in the mid-seventies prepared the ground. The end of Stalinism in Eastern Europe decisively pushed the world into instability. Economic crisis

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1974/75 saw the deepest downturn in the world economy since the end of the Second World War. Since then, economic development has been increasingly unstable. The recessions that developed in the early 1980s, the early 1990s, and at the beginning of the new century, were all deeper than those that occurred during the post-war upswing. All eighteen major financial crises since the Second World War have occurred after 1974. Although the economy boomed for periods both in the 1980s and the 1990s, recovery was not as complete as before. Class divisions continued to widen and, in most countries, there were cutbacks or stagnation in many areas: the public sector, terms of employment, job availability, pay, and working environment. Workplace stress increased greatly. Between 1947 and 1973, productivity (production output per hour worked) in the OECD countries increased at an average annual rate of 3%. Growth in productivity means that there is more for all to share. Between 1974 and 1991, the increase was only 1% a year. Productivity rose again to an average annual rate of 1.3% between 1992 and 1998, mainly as a result of an intensification of work. The rate then leaped ahead for a few years, which led to hopes that investment in computers and IT would end the economic problems that had started in the mid-1970s. But these predictions proved over-optimistic. As early as 1989, Robert Solow, winner of a Nobel Prize for economics, pointed out: You can see computers everywhere but in the productivity statistics.3 This is a crucial point. Industrial production in the West was computerized in the 1970s, and offices in the 1980s. During the 1990s, peoples homes filled up with computers. Homes, however, are hardly likely to generate much of an increase in productivity. The Internet, which developed rapidly in the late 1990s, may well have a more lasting effect on productivity. It makes the distribution of goods more efficient and makes it easier for companies to purchase what they want. But this process will take time and it will never be enough to bring about any great change in Western economic development. If the rise in productivity in the late 1990s was not caused by the more widespread use of computers, what did cause it? The answer is that it was due to a higher rate of computer production. When the breakthrough came for personal computers, production was moved out of garage workshops, and into hyper-modern factories that cost billions to build. This meant that production became far more rational so efficient that the average productivity rate soared, despite the fact that the rest of the economy was performing poorly. The American economist Robert Gordon spelled it out: The productivity performance of the manufacturing sector of the United States economy since 1995 has been abysmal rather than admirable. Not only has productivity growth in non-durable manufacturing decelerated in 1995-99 compared to 1972-95, but productivity growth in durable manufacturing stripped of computers has decelerated even more. 4 Falling investments The development of productivity is heavily dependent on investments. Investment in new machinery, better buildings and distribution systems, enable goods to be produced more cheaply and efficiently. The big difference between economic activity during the upswing after the Second World War and the situation in later years lay in a decline in investments. In the EU zone, the
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investment rate fell from an average of about 25% of the GDP in the 1950s and 1960s, to about 20% in the 1980s and 1990s. In Japan, it fell from around 35% to 30%, and in the US from 20% to 18%.5 What are the reasons for the low rate of investment since the 1970s compared to the previous period? To understand this, it is first necessary to give an outline of how a business cycle works. The cycle begins with some capitalists investing in new machinery. This allows them to produce the same or better goods cheaper. They do this in order to stay ahead of the competition and earn bigger profits than their rivals. Employers who make machines will have to employ more people. The new people employed will get higher wages than when they were unemployed. Thus demand for consumer goods rises and employers in the consumer goods industries will employ more people as well. This leads to greater demand, and further investment. A spiral of growth, a boom, has begun. However, this cannot go on for ever. The first companies to invest in new machinery make a larger profit than those that come after. Everybody has to follow suit, if they are not going to fall hopelessly behind. When everyone is standing there with large, expensive new machines that churn out any number of goods, all find it harder to sell their goods at a profit. A crisis of over-overproduction develops. According to Marx, the reason for this is that too much money has been invested in new equipment in relation to the size of the workforce. 6 This leads to what he calls the tendency of the profit rate to fall.7 Once profits have fallen to the extent that the least profitable companies no longer have resources to invest, unemployment increases. People buy less and investments dry up. A downward spiral, a recession, begins. However, just like when things go up, when they go down they dont go down for ever. When enough investments have been destroyed to restore the balance between machines and employees, profits will be restored. The machines are seldom destroyed physically. Normally, it is their value that is destroyed. This happens, for instance, when machinery is auctioned off for a fraction of its original price after a bankruptcy. The companies that have not gone bankrupt are strengthened by the disappearance of others. Profits rise and the ground is prepared for another boom. The key question is this: At what level of investment have profits fallen enough for the economy to turn downwards? Why was it at around 27% of GDP in Europe in the 1950s and 1960s but at 22% in the 1970s and 1980s? Economic development can be thought of as a combustion engine, where investment is the petrol. The more petrol you inject, the faster the engine goes but only up to a certain point, after which the engine chokes unless you add more air. It is the growth in world trade that provides the capitalist engine with air. After the Second World War, the rapid growth in world trade that resulted from the economic dominance of the US led to an unprecedented economic upswing. As world trade expanded,
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the benefits of specialization and large-scale production made sure that the value of machines (and wages) could be reduced even during the boom. This kept profits high, even at high levels of investment. Slumps mainly expressed themselves as a fall in the rate of growth, not as contraction of the economy. Since the early seventies, investment levels have declined for three main reasons. 1. Trade conflicts Despite all the talk about globalization, trade barriers made it increasingly difficult for world trade to develop. In time, Germany and Japan rose and began to challenge the US in the economic arena. The world was divided up into three big trade blocs, each of them led by a powerful imperialist state. Tension between the blocs was great. In 1999, it caused the collapse of the trade talks organized by the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle. Nor were later trade talks successful. In North America, the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) zone, including Canada in the north and Mexico in the south, was formed. It was dominated by the US. The US also viewed the whole of South America as its backyard and tried to negotiate a PanAmerican trade bloc that would embrace the whole continent. In Europe, through the European Union, the EU, the European capitalists tried to unite against their competitors. 8 Thirdly, Japan sought to extend its role internationally. While countries within the various blocs have integrated to some extent since the 1970s, the growth in world trade has slowed considerably despite all the talk of globalization. Although it got nowhere near the level of the 1950s and 1960s, world trade picked up a bit in the 1990s. This was due to more trade within the trading blocks. However, the effect on the growth of production was less than previously. The existence of trading blocs has increased the incentive to move factories in search for cheaper labour and bigger subsidies. This appears in the statistics as a growth of world trade, but it does not actually increase the amount of production. During the recession in 2002-2003 world trade actually fell. The following graph shows this, http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/its2006_e/its06_longterm_e.pdf, (Average annual percentage change in volume terms). Relatively unobserved, a qualitative change occurred in trade disputes during the 1990s. Previously, the combatants engaged mostly in a war of words. Now, they began using more painful methods to out-compete one another. To start with, they used non-tariff barriers (import regulations, technical requirements, legal complexities, etc.) as a strategy for impeding world trade, to quote the Office of the US Trade Representatives.9 This led to different systems for DVDs and mobile phones in the US and Europe, for instance, and different environmental provisions. Trade sanctions were also imposed more frequently. As a result of the EUs insistence on limiting the import of dollar bananas, in favour primarily of bananas from the former French colonies, the US imposed trade sanctions on a whole series of European products.
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These included Swedish ginger snaps and sewing machines from the Swedish company Husqvarna. Subsequently, trade sanctions were imposed as a result of the EU refusal to import American meat treated with hormones. Disputes between the US and Japan over the sale of spare vehicle-parts, and between the US and Canada over timber, also resulted in trade sanctions. The steel trade was hit. Even the collective agreement governing the Swedish cinema industry was affected by this trade war. The 2004 agreement was delayed as a result of American objections that Swedish public funding created unfair competition for Hollywood. Which is absurd, as without public funding there would be no films made at all in Swedish, and Swedish films hardly compete with American films outside of Sweden. The EU countries were also feuding with one another. Germany with France. The poorer EU countries with the wealthier. And Britain with everyone else. But they agreed on one thing: Keep out the US and Japan! Increasingly, this became the glue that bound them together. The EU, accordingly, did not back down on the banana issue, despite the fact that the restrictions clearly infringed the WTO regulations they themselves helped to draw up. 2. Speculation and debt The instability caused by the decrease in world trade was compounded by the reappearance of massive speculation. Although a normal part of life under capitalism, speculation had played relative insignificant role during the post-war upswing. Then, high profits could be earned by making investments in production. As world trade declined, it became more profitable to use money for speculation. In 2000, the American Stock Exchange was estimated to be worth 150% of the countrys GDP, which was almost twice as much as in 1929 (the year of the Wall Street Crash). Stock values increasingly lost touch with the actual value of the companies concerned, especially in the IT sector. Money invested in the stock exchange is not translated into investment in actual production.10 Stock-market money is part of a giant pyramid game. There is also a huge trade in derivatives, bonds, art and not least currencies. Before 1973, the US dollar was the world currency. Most other currencies were pegged to the dollar, and the dollar was tied to gold. This ensured financial stability. In those days, 90% of all international monetary transactions were payments for goods and services. Twenty years later, such payments accounted for only 10%. The rest was speculation.11 Debt has the same effect as speculation. In the US, private sector debt was, by 2001, at its highest level since the Second World War 68 % of GDP.12 In many other industrialized countries, the debt rate was even higher. State debt also reached record levels. 3. Cuts and lower living standards Spurred by increased competition on the world market, capitalists tried to compensate themselves by attacking workers pay and working conditions, and the public sector, even during a boom. As living standards declined, the market for many of the capitalists products, and consequently investments, also declined. The capitalists were sawing off the branch they themselves sat on. Thus, the barriers to capitalist development national boundaries and private ownership of the major companies that were partially overcome during the post-war upswing, grew and become more difficult to surmount. A capitalist world economy dominated by the US became
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a thing of the past (although the USAs military dominance was larger than ever). State intervention in the economy and the welfare state eroded. The system had greater difficulty in recovering from each crisis. The fall of Stalinism The other crucial reason for the rising instability in the world was the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Eastern bloc. The collapse was preceded by growing economic problems, but the problems were of a very different kind from those that imperialism has to grapple with. In the Soviet Union, capitalism and the rule of the landlords were abolished, but power was not in the hands of the workers. There was a peculiar combination of economic planning and ruthless dictatorship. Despite the dictatorship, considerable progress was made in a number of fields. In 1917, Russia had been a backward, semi-feudal country with a largely illiterate population. The Soviet Union, however, grew into a modern developed economy with a quarter of the worlds scientists, with health and educational systems that could compete with anything the West could offer, and with the capacity to put the first satellite in orbit and the first man in space. By the late 1970s, the Soviet Union was a powerful industrial nation that in terms of output had overtaken the rest of the world in a number of key sectors, such as oil, steel and cement. All this was achieved without unemployment or inflation. Prior to perestroika (Gorbachovs reform programme), which was launched in the late 1980s, the price of dairy products and meat had not risen since 1962. The price of bread, sugar and most food products had not gone up since 1955. And rents were extremely low.13 After 1965, growth begun to slow. At the end of the Brezhnev era (Brezhnev died in 1982), the Soviet economy was completely stagnant. In 1936, Leon Trotsky wrote: It is possible to build gigantic factories according to a ready-made Western pattern by bureaucratic commandalthough, to be sure, at triple the normal cost. But the farther you go, the more the economy runs into the problem of quality, which slips out of the hands of a bureaucracy like a shadow. The Soviet products are as though branded with the grey label of indifference. Under a nationalized economy, quality demands a democracy of producers and consumers, freedom of criticism and initiative conditions incompatible with a totalitarian regime of fear, lies and flattery.14 During the Stalinist era, the bureaucrats had only been required to take simple decisions, like more steel industry or more agriculture. But when the volume of goods approached the million mark, this small elite of bureaucrats could no longer manage the economy. As there were no broad-based democratic controls to guide them in their work and no profit-hungry market to provide brutal, short-term solutions, the problems piled up. Moreover, the whole system was thoroughly corrupt, which is inevitable in a totalitarian state. Stagnation was unavoidable. As the economy stagnated, dissatisfaction with the system grew. Many people could accept oppression as long as there was a steady improvement in their living standards, but once this was not forthcoming, oppression became intolerable. In many Eastern European states, the general discontent erupted in mass demonstrations. Among the slogans heard from the crowds on the streets of Berlin in 1989 was: Its we who are the people! The bureaucrats in power were not happy with the situation either. In part this was because
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they were feeling the pressure from below, but an economy that did not grow at all also meant bad times for many in the bureaucracy. They began to look for a way out of the crisis. This was during the late 1980s, a period when the fragile boom that had been gathering momentum during the decade reached its peak. Western media proclaimed that all crises were over, and that the economy had entered a new period of long-term growth. Imperialism had already enmeshed many of the Eastern European countries by giving them large loans. When the economic crisis became deeper in Eastern Europe they pushed harder. The resistance of the bureaucracy crumbled. Many also hoped that if they became capitalists they would do well for themselves. The Berlin Wall opens, a new world order is proclaimed On the night of 9 November 1989, the gates in the Berlin Wall were opened. When the astonished Berliners finally realised that the passage between East and West was truly permitted, wild scenes of rejoicing broke out. Young people climbed up on to the hated monument that had divided the city since 1961 and began hacking off pieces of concrete with hammers and chisels. Others played music and danced on top of the Wall. People threw themselves into one anothers arms, laughing and crying, at the place, where in previous years, fleeing East Germans had been caught by the bullets of the border guards. Many people have testified to the sense of release and joy they felt during the spontaneous festivities that would grip Berlin for days. Those who celebrated in Berlin were witness to a turning point in history. It was not just a wall that fell in 1989 the entire Eastern bloc of Communist countries, which had been ruled by dictators since the Second World War, had begun to disintegrate. Two years later, the Soviet Union was no more. We won! trumpeted an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, arguing that the capitalist system had finally defeated all form of socialist experiment. The Cold War era and the balance of terror were a thing of the past. American political economist Francis Fukuyama went so far as to assert that it was not just the end of the Cold War but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankinds ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.15 George Bush the elder, who was US president at the time, promised a future of peace and growing prosperity throughout the world. He called it the New World Order. A new world order did develop. But it was nothing like what Bush had promised. Wider gap By the end of the 1990s the 200 richest people in the world owned as much as the two billion poorest.16 Statistics from the UNs Human Development Report 2002 claim that this was not due to a redistribution from the poor to the rich, but because things got better for everybody, just more so for the rich. The report says that the proportion of the global population living in extreme poverty declined from 29% in 1990 to 23% in 1999. However, the improvement recorded during the decade was almost entirely due to growth in a handful of East Asian countries. By far the largest among them was China, whose economy was to a great extent state-controlled. In China alone, the number of people living under the poverty line declined by 147 million between 1990 and 1998.17 (Over the same period, however, the gap between rich and poor in China widened.) Other countries with growth economies
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included Mongolia and Vietnam that also had mainly state-controlled economies. In the African countries south of the Sahara, the number below the poverty line increased in the 1990s from 242 million to 300 million. In Latin America, too, the number of extremely poor people increased in the 1990s, as it did in Central Asia, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The UNs Human Development Report for 2003 warned that the socioeconomic situation worsened in 21 countries during the decade. UN studies showed that in the 1980s only four countries had experienced such lengthy declines. Furthermore, at the end of the 1990s, the World Bank moved the international poverty line by a few hundredths. In the case of the Middle East and North Africa, this change in how statistics were compiled halved the number of people living in extreme poverty from 4 to 2%. In Latin America, the number was reduced from 24 to 15%.18 Rearmament costs and new wars 1989 was followed by several years of military disarmament around the world. Costs fell globally by about a third, up to 1998.19 This was mainly due to the collapse of Russias planned economy. But by 1996, the US had already begun to increase its defence spending, and after 1998 the overall global curve turned upwards. Since then, rearmament costs have risen every year. The US, which even before 11 September 2001 accounted for 36% of the worlds defence spending, increased its lead further. In 2003, it accounted for 43% of all arms purchasing around the world.20 During the decade, the total number of people killed in wars between states fell by two thirds, to 220 000, compared with the 1980s. (In the 1980s, it was the war between Iraq and Iran that claimed most lives.) But the number of deaths in civil wars increased to 3.6 million. Half of all civilians killed in war were children.21 The wars listed below involve major conflicts that began in the 1990s. Wars that ended before 1994 are not included, and nor are deaths indirectly caused by war, through starvation, disease and the like. Even if the figures may not be totally accurate, they give an idea of the situation. Azerbaijan (22 000 dead), Kashmir (26 000 dead), Sierra Leone (43 000 dead), Chechnya (47 000 dead), Eritrea (50 000 dead), Tajikistan (51 000 dead), Sudan (54 000 dead), Algeria (87 000 dead), Bosnia-Herzegovina (90 000 dead), Afghanistan (90 000 dead), Congo-Kinshasa (109 000 dead), Liberia (150 000 dead), Burundi (212 000 dead), Somalia (359 000 dead), Rwanda (815 000 dead). 22 The New World Order brought a downward spiral of disintegration, chaos and violence, each war serving as a catalyst to further decline. _________________________ 1 http://www.etni.org.il/farside/funquotes.htm 2 Swedish Peace and Arbitration Association (18 December 2003).

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www.svenska-freds.se/konflikthantering/faktablad/militarutgifter.shtml 3 www.guardian.co.uk/online/insideit/story/0,13270,946779,00.html 4 The Economist, 22 July 1999 5 Swedish economic report: LO-ekonomerna: Ekonomiska utsikter, 1997 6 Marx uses the more precise expressions constant capital for machines, factories and raw materials, variable capital for the employees, and organic composition of capital for the relationship between the two. 7 The profit rate is the relationship between, on the one hand, expenditure on labour, raw materials and machinery, and, on the other, profit. Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and John Maynard Keynes also noted the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. 8 http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/its2006_e/its06_longterm_e.pdf, (Average annual percentage change in volume terms) 9 Statement issued on 2 April, 2002 10 Doug Henwood: Wall St.,1998 11 Bror Perjus: Casino Jorden, 1998 12 Michael Roberts: Deflation and Depression, 2002 13 Ted Grant: Russia from Revolution to Counter-Revolution, 1997 14 Leon Trotsky: The Revolution Betrayed, 1936 15 Frances Fukuyama: End of History?, 1989 16 UN Human Development Report, 1999 17 Mats Wingborg and Markus Larsson: Har vrlden blivit bttre? 2003 (www.forumsyd.se) The figures are taken from the World Bank. 18 Sven Lindquist, Dagens Nyheter, 5 november, 2003 19 The data is taken from the 1999 Yearbook of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). 20 Dagens Nyheter, 18 June 2003, quoting the 2003 SIPRI Yearbook. 21 These figures have been taken from the UNs Human Development Balance Sheet 2002 and seem low when compared with other reports. The proportion of civilian war victims increased dramatically during the century as a whole. At the beginning of the 20th century,
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10% of the war dead were civilians, while at the beginning of the 1990 as many as 90 per cent of those killed in war were non-combatants.

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13. The Gulf War in 1990: The New World Order in practice

We really need the Russians. We need someone with as much power as the United States, cos its like a kid with a bomb.1 Neil Young, Canadian rock musician The Gulf War in the early 1990s represented the first demonstration of the United States role in the New World Order. It showed the arrogance that the worlds only superpower had developed, and the brutality it was prepared to use when it was allowed to proceed without constraint. But hidden from most people, another drama unfolded during the Gulf War an uprising of the Iraqi and Kurdish people against Saddam Hussein. It was an uprising that the US and its coalition did not support, on the contrary, they helped Saddam crush it. Background to the Gulf War of 1990-91 After the Mullahs took power in Iran in 1979, the British and US governments increased their support to Saddams Iraq. They encouraged him to attack Iran in 1980. Nominally a border dispute, the war between Iran and Iraq lasted until 1988 and claimed around a million lives.2 During this period, the US and the other Western powers provided support to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the form of huge amounts of weapons (including chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, the WMDs), military training, sophisticated technology, satellite pictures and billions of dollars. In 1987, Iraq imported 40% of its food from the US. In 1989, the US was the largest market for Iraqi oil and Iraq received a billion dollars in loan guarantees. Only Mexico received more credit.3 Iraq was also given extensive support by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, both fearing that the anti-monarchist mood in Iran would spread to their monarchist dictatorships. Meanwhile, the arms industry was busy selling weapons to both sides. The UN did not respond in any way to the Iraqi attack on Iran, neither with condemnation nor with demands. No sanctions were imposed. The Western imperialist powers and their ally, Turkey, sat back and watched as Saddam oppressed Kurds and Shia Muslims inside Iraq, a development that strengthened stability in the region. When the war between Iraq and Iran ended, Saddam Hussein launched an offensive known as Al-Anfal against the Kurds rebelling in the north. According to Human Rights Watch, between 50 000 and 100 000 Kurds were murdered in northern Iraq during this operation.4 Hundreds of thousands were forcibly resettled, Kurdish women were raped and some 4 500 Kurdish villages were destroyed by bombs and bulldozers. When Saddam murdered around 5 000 Kurds in the town of Halabja in northern Iraq in 1988 during the offensive, his forces used chemical weapons produced in the West. A year before the Gulf War began, Kurdish representatives had visited the US to inform the administration about Iraqs repression of the Kurds. The Americans replied that it was in the
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interests of the US to support Saddam as he was an important figure for US policy in the area, and that Saddam looked after Western interests in the region.5 Later the US and other Western powers tried to portray themselves as the protectors of the Kurds in northern Iraq. Saddams atrocities were not revealed to the world until he acted against the interests of US imperialism by invading Kuwait. Suddenly, he was a ruthless dictator, a new Hitler, who had to be stopped at all cost. But Saddam had been a dictator and an oppressor for years. The only difference was that he no longer had the blessing of the Western powers. Saddam Husseins error of judgement The conflict between Iraq and Kuwait stemmed largely from oil-production and the oil-price situation. Iraq came out of the Iran war a wounded country, deeply in debt. Iraq needed a good price for its oil. Immediately after the war, however, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates began exceeding the production quotas set by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), flooding the market and causing oil prices to tumble. Thanks to its enormous investments in the West, totalling over USD 2 billion, Kuwait could afford cheaper oil prices, but for Iraq the loss of oil revenue was disastrous.6 Saddam Hussein denounced Kuwait as conducting economic warfare against Iraq, and claimed that Iraq stood to lose a billion US dollars a year for every dollar that the price of oil fell by. He demanded economic compensation for this loss, as well as the right of ownership to the two islands that blocked Iraqs access to the Persian Gulf and also to the Rumalia oil fields in Kuwait. In July 1990, when Kuwait continued to reject Iraqs economic and territorial demands and to deny OPECs request that it keep within the production quota set for it, Iraq began to concentrate troops on the border. It seems unlikely that Iraq would have dared move into Kuwait unless it had received permission from Washington, or at least had not been forbidden to move in. In fact, the US ambassador in Baghdad, April Glaspie, had expressed herself in a way that could be interpreted as an OK. In a reply to Saddam Hussein in July 1990, she stated: I have direct instructions from the President to seek better relations with Iraq. [] Our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on inter-Arab conflicts like your border disagreement with Kuwait.7 The Iraqi regime may well have thought it had the continued backing of the US for this war, just as it had for the war against Iran. This, however, was a bad mistake. Allowing Iraq to become a major power in the region was not at all in Washingtons interests. The US preferred to divide and rule. It had no wish to let Saddam Hussein gain control of Kuwaiti oil, which was of vital strategic importance to the US. It also wanted to protect Saudi Arabias territory and oil, as it had been doing since the 1930s. Saudi Arabia could be the next in line for Saddams aspirations. Moreover, in the months prior to the Kuwait crisis, the US senate had been demanding cuts in the military budget. The Cold War was over and some senators argued that the US no longer needed to spend so much money on arms. But General Norman Schwarzkopf believed that the US should establish a permanent presence in the Gulf, and in a White Book he identified Iraq and Saddam Hussein as the optimum contenders to replace the Warsaw Pact.8 In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. The White House immediately denounced the invasion as a blatant use of military aggression, demanded the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all Iraqi forces, and announced that it was considering all options.9 Within 24 hours, a US warship loaded with a special task force, fighter jets and bombers was on its way to the Gulf. Within a few days, thousands of US soldiers and an armoured brigade were
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stationed in Saudi Arabia, the Americans closest ally, after Israel, in the Middle East. UN Resolution 678 While Iraq plundered Kuwait and turned the country into its 19th province, the US built up its forces in Saudi Arabia. The US worked hard to put together an international coalition in order to push through resolutions and sanctions against Iraq in the UN Security Council, and to finally win backing for the forthcoming war. The new global situation with the Soviet Union in crisis and disintegrating enabled the US and its allies to persuade the UN Security Council and the General Assembly to lend the US their moral authority. The Security Council introduced tough and wide-ranging economic sanctions against Iraq. A trade and arms embargo was imposed and all Iraqi assets abroad were frozen. The US and its allies also wanted the UN to accept a resolution that would give the coalition free rein. This freedom was achieved by means of the remarkable Resolution 678 adopted by the UN Security Council at the end of November 1990. The document gave a group of unnamed member states the right to use armed force at a time of their own choosing, against targets that they themselves choose, to visit upon the Iraqis whatever degree of death and destruction they considered appropriate, and not to end the attack until they themselves felt the time had come to do so. All this in the name of the United Nations.10 It was adopted by 12 votes (the US, Soviet Union, Britain, France, Canada, Colombia, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Finland, Malaysia, Romania and Zaire) to 2 (Cuba and Yemen), with one abstention (China). The methods used by a rich imperialist country to enlist support for the war provides an insight into how it can get its way in the UN and other international forums. The US and its allies quite simply bought off, bribed or threatened other countries, both within the Security Council and outside it, in order to gain the necessary backing. The crisis-hit Soviet Union was given USD 3 billion. Egyptian and Syrian participation in the coalition was ensured by means of debt write-offs worth USD 25 billion in Egypts case and USD 2 million in Syrias.11 Military aid to Kenya was resumed. Yemen, on the other hand, which had voted against the resolution, was punished severely. That was the most expensive no vote you ever cast, Thomas Pickering, the American ambassador to the UN, told the Yemeni ambassador, Abdallah Saleh al-Ashtol. An American aid package of USD 70 million was cancelled the following day, and 900 000 Yemeni guest workers were ejected from Saudi Arabia.12 The UN resolution gave Saddam an ultimatum to pull out his forces before 15 January 1991. In all likelihood, the Iraqi regime was taken by surprise by the US response. Saddam was forced to realise that by invading Kuwait, he had bitten off more than he could chew. Already in early August and again in October 1990, Iraq had signalled its willingness to pull its troops out. In return, it wanted sole rights to the Rumalia oilfield, guaranteed access to the Gulf, an end to the sanctions and a solution of the problems concerning oil prices and oil production. The US, however, was unmoved by these approaches. At first, it even denied their existence. All alternatives that offered a diplomatic way out of the crisis were obstructed by the Americans. As the 15 January deadline neared, Iraq made its first offer to negotiate. On 11 January, Arab diplomats at the UN said they had received reports from the pro-Iraqi countries of Algeria, Yemen and Jordan indicating that Saddam was prepared to withdraw from Kuwait if he received guarantees that Iraq would not be attacked. He also wanted an international conference to discuss Palestinian grievances and the border disputes between Iraq and Kuwait. According to the diplomats, the Iraqi dictator wanted to
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wait for a day or two after the deadline to show that he had not been afraid. He was of course very frightened indeed. For the first time since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the US was now in a position to flex its muscles as the only remaining superpower. At last, the American establishment had the chance to avenge both its defeat in Vietnam and everything it had been obliged to tolerate since. It wanted to crush Iraq, using overwhelming force. Thereby the American public was going to be convinced that interventions abroad should again be undertaken, as this could be done without incurring any substantial loss of American lives. The display of total military superiority was also a warning to leaders and peoples in the former colonial territories of the world. 90 000 tons of bombs on fleeing soldiers At midnight on 15 January, the US-led coalition attacked Iraq. The war lasted for more than 40 days. To avoid mass protests at home, the true motives for the war and what actually went on had to be hidden behind a wall of lies and distortions. Eye-witnesses described in live interviews on American TV how they had seen Iraqi troops pull babies out of hospital incubators and leave them to die on the floor. There were also stories of raped and murdered women, and men whose tongues had been cut out. It subsequently turned out that these accounts had been made up by an American public relations firm paid for the task by wealthy Kuwaitis. Those who had given their tearful accounts on TV had never set foot in occupied Kuwait.13 The American coalition quickly gained air supremacy, and after knocking out the Iraqi antiaircraft batteries, was able freely to bomb Iraqi armed forces, as well as infrastructure, industry and other civilian targets. The smart bombs were by no means as smart as they were claimed to be. Not that it would have made much of a difference if they had been, as less than 7% of the bombs used in the Gulf War were of the smart type. This was admitted by the Pentagon long afterwards. There were massive carpet-bombing raids across the country. 70% of the 90 000 tons of bombs dropped on Iraq and Kuwait equivalent to seven Hiroshima bombs missed their military targets. Many of them landed in built-up areas and caused what in military jargon is termed collateral damage.14 After a month of fighting, Baghdad announced again that Iraq was prepared to withdraw from Kuwait. This prompted Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet president at the time, to present a peace plan. It was rejected by the United States. When the Iraqi economy had been destroyed and Iraqi military resistance broken, it was time for the US ground offensive. The demoralised Iranian forces, shattered by incessant bombing, had no chance. US ground troops moved into Iraq and Kuwait, and attacked the fleeing soldiers, who were disoriented and in disarray. Tens of thousands were killed. Tanks hauling giant snowploughs drove alongside the Iraqi trenches, shooting into them, whereupon the ploughs covered them over with heaps of sand. Thousands were buried, dead or alive, along the Iraqi front line, which stretched for more than 110 kilometres. These tanks and bulldozers were then used to bury dead and wounded Iraqi soldiers before the media was allowed access to the battlefield. Not a single armoured vehicle from the coalition was hit by Iraqi fire. The officer who led the Desert Storm operations later admitted that most of the Iraqi vehicles had been shot to pieces from behind.15 A month after the offensive against Iraq begun, the Soviet Union proposed a new peace plan. Saddam Hussein accepted it and ordered his troops to withdraw to the positions they had held
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prior to the invasion, in full accordance with UN resolution 660. The US replied that no retreat was in evidence. It maintained that the Iraqi forces were fighting on, and that American forces therefore intended to continue the war. On the following day, Saddam announced on Baghdad radio that Iraqi troops had begun to withdraw from Kuwait and that the withdrawal would be completed the same day. The US called this a scandal and a cruel deception. Eye-witnesses in Kuwait confirmed that the withdrawal had in fact begun the day after Saddam had accepted the Soviet peace plan and was in full swing by evening.16 The retreat began 36 hours before the allies reached Kuwait City.17 When Iraqi forces were in full retreat on the two motorways leading from Kuwait to Basra in southern Iraq, US planes bombed the defenceless columns of vehicles. The first attacks came at roughly the same time as White House spokesman Martin Fitzwater was promising that the coalition would not attack Iraqi forces leaving Kuwait. Almost every vehicle on these two roads was destroyed: tanks, armoured vehicles, lorries and ordinary cars. The planes fired a wide range of missiles, splinter bombs and napalm B, the type that sticks to your skin and goes on burning. Returning pilots boastfully described it to the pool reporters as duck-hunting and a turkey hunt. Others compared it to fishing in a barrel. Defenceless people had been burned alive in their vehicles or shot when they ran for cover.18 Among the dead were many civilians, most of them Iraqi guest workers who had been left in Kuwait and were now trying to get home. While the elite soldiers of the Republican Guard, most of whom were strongly pro-Saddam, got away, Iraqs demoralised conscript army, largely comprising oppressed Kurds and Shia Muslims, was slaughtered. The allies entered Kuwait City, now abandoned by the Iraqis. The following day, Bush ordered a ceasefire and Iraq accepted the terms of the truce. But the massacre of Iraqi soldiers and civilians continued. A column of soldiers and civilians was attacked en route from Basra to Baghdad. The killings were the work of the 24th Division led by General Barry McCaffrey. Seymour Hersh, who won the Pulitzer Prize for revealing the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, showed how the 24th Division bombed an eight-kilometre long Iraqi column for hours, destroying some 700 Iraqi tanks, armoured vehicles and lorries.19 Soldiers, civilians and children alike were killed. McCaffrey later described the bloodbath as one of the most amazing scenes of destruction I have ever been involved in. There were no serious American losses. This was not war, but wholesale, one-sided butchery. Up to half a million Iraqi men, women and children were killed or died as a direct result of the US-led UN attack on Iraq in 1991. According to the US administration, 148 Americans were killed in the war. And in many cases US losses were due to friendly fire from coalition troops. 20 The disaster continues after the war The Gulf War left almost two million people homeless. Iraqs electricity grid, water supply, sanitation facilities, telecommunications, healthcare, agriculture and industrial infrastructure had largely been destroyed, paving the way for epidemics and famine. The type of warfare practised in the Gulf contravened the 1949 Geneva Convention, which explicitly prohibits attacks on targets that cause widespread civilian losses. On the other hand, no war has ever been conducted in accordance with the Geneva Convention since the time it was introduced. During the Gulf War, the US forces used depleted uranium for the first time in their grenades,
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missiles and rockets. These left behind tons of radioactive and toxic waste in Iraq and Kuwait, causing a six-fold increase in leukaemia and lymphoma cancers, and a major increase in birth deformities. Because of the sanctions, children had no access to the medicines and radiotherapy that could have saved their lives, or even to painkillers. Since 1991, the annual cancer rate in Iraq has doubled, and the situation has been particularly severe in southern parts of the country bordering on Kuwait. Certain types of extremely lethal cancer have multiplied. These include breast cancer in girls as young as twelve, bone cancer in young children, cancer of the urinary tract in teenagers and nasal tumours among infants. Such cancer cases were not previously found in Iraq. By 2000, grave deformities afflicted 2%, compared with 0.01% before the war, of all newborn babies in southern Iraq. Many of these children are born with several deformities and die within a month.21 NATO denies that the deformities and increased cancer rate in Iraq are due to depleted uranium. As early as April 1991, however, Britains Atomic Energy Authority warned in a secret report that if depleted uranium enters the food chain or the water, this will cause potential health problems.22 During the 1990s, the US and Britain continued to take advantage of the UN mandate, and bombed Iraq. The UNs harsh sanctions against Iraq remained in place throughout the period between the first US invasion and the second, in 2003. As early as 1995, the UNs Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reported that the bombings and sanctions had caused the death of 560 000 Iraqi children.23 Children died from malnourishment, diarrhoea and dehydration due to the lack of clean water and good food. They died of infections that could easily be cleared up with ordinary penicillin. Denis Haliday, the UNs coordinator of humanitarian relief to Iraq, resigned in 1998 in protest, after 34 years with the agency. He explained why: Most importantly, I have found that the impact of the sanctions is simply incompatible with the spirit and the word of the United Nations Charter. Almost a third of the Iraqi people were suffering from malnutrition, he added, the education system had largely collapsed and schools had neither water nor sanitation. We are in the process of destroying an entire society.24 In the space of a decade, the war and the sanctions transformed one of the Arab worlds most highly developed countries into an impoverished Third World country, without deposing Saddam Hussein or ending his life of luxury. The unwanted fight against Saddam During the Gulf War, the imperialist powers had urged the Iraqi people and oppressed groups such as the Kurds and the Shia Muslims to rise in revolt. After years of persecution, they were ready. Yet when it began, the US did not support it all. They did not want a popular revolution, in Iraq or elsewhere. A revolution in Iraq would have inspired people to rise up in other parts of the Middle East, which would have been disastrous for the USs New World Order. In Britain, representatives of the Iraqi opposition were put in jail during the run-up to the Gulf War. A report written after a study trip to northern Iraq in 1994, excerpts of which we republish below, gives a vivid account of how the uprising began in Southern Iraq, how this inspired Kurds in Suleymania to rise and take things much further, how this in turn spread to other Kurdish towns, and how it was finally crushed. The workers performed miracles. Despite the very limited size of the working class, they
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managed to defeat Saddams troops in a matter of hours with hardly any loss of life, something neither thepeshmerga25 guerrillas nor the coalition troops had managed. Shoras, workers councils, were set up to democratically run society. It was a heroic uprising, but it failed. The report provides a clear picture of what happened. The workers had power in their hands, they could have organised a massive popular struggle against Saddam, but instead the leadership of the Iraqi Kurdistan Front, IFK,26 sat down to negotiate with Baghdad. They gave up the fight before it had barely started. Tragically, people were urged to flee up into the mountains, where tens of thousands died of cold and starvation, while the IFK attacked the only bodies that could have organised the struggle against Saddam the shoras. On February 29 1991, when the ground offensive had forced the Iraqi military to retreat, large sections of the Iraqi army turned against Saddam Hussein. Reports say that the rebellion began in Basra in south-eastern Iraq after a tank had driven around the city shooting portraits of Saddam to pieces. The rebellion then spread rapidly to other towns in southern Iraq, such as Koot, Omura, Nasria, Samawa, Najaf, Kurbala, Hilla and Mosaib. When the people rose in southern Iraq, various groups prepared to follow suit and began to arm themselves in parts of northern Iraq. Many Kurdish towns were liberated without the Iraqi army offering any great resistance. The shora movement in Suleymania On the morning of 7 March 1991, everything happened spontaneously.. Small groups were beginning to take to the streets by eight oclock in the morning, shouting slogans. These groups swelled as men, women and children joined them. They began collecting weapons, then attacked official buildings around the town. Within a few hours, most of the city was in the hands of these armed citizens. On 8 March, thousands paraded through the streets of Suleymania under banners proclaiming Revolutionaries, set up your own shoras!, Women are vital to the revolution! and Towards Kurdish autonomy!. The uprising heightened the general political consciousness, among women, men and children alike. People immediately began setting up shoras (workers councils) throughout Suleymania. Most were in the form of neighbourhood committees: people organised where they lived. A few took the form of workers councils at important workplaces. Among the first groups to be organised were mobile paramedics, who collected blood donations for those injured in the fighting. Others repaired the towns water and electricity supplies, which had been out of order for some time. Around 12 March, two delegates were sent to Hawlir (Erbil) to spread the news so that the movement was not confined to Suleymania. Five meetings were held in three days, and led to the establishment of 35 shoras there. This number later increased to 42. Each shora had committees or working groups responsible for food distribution, medical care, radio stations, newspapers, defence and administrative matters. The shora movement organised its own milita or peshmergas to protect themselves from attack or counterrevolution. When Saddams troops advanced on the Kurdish areas of Iraq, the neighbourhood
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committees in Suleymania sent two peshmerga units to Kalar, and a symbolic troop of 80 peshmergas was dispatched to help the people of Kirkut. The conflict between the shoras and the Iraqi Kurdistan Front On the morning of 8 March, the PUKs 7th battalion, comprising 200 peshmergas, entered Suleymania. On arrival, they were totally unaware that the town had been almost completely liberated. The IKF arrived the following day. On 12 March, however, they began publicly attacking the shora movement. On 16 March, the anniversary of Halabja, the shoras and the IKF both staged big demonstrations around town, and on the following day a Supreme Shora was elected for Suleymania as a whole. This supreme authority was not allowed to make decisions itself but only to draft proposals that were then sent to all the shoras for a vote. On 18 March, the IKF declared all shoras illegal and ordered them to disband. Thus, after just nine days in the town, the IKF demanded an end to the spontaneous self-organisation of the people. It viewed the Supreme Shora as a threat. It planned to rebuild the towns institutions and re-install both the old administration and the factory managers that the workers councils had ousted. On 20 March, an anti-IKF demonstration paraded through the streets of the town. Nawshiwan, second-in-command of the PUK and leader of its left tendency, declared that We must crush the movement that has raised the red flag. The IKF used its radio station as a propaganda mouthpiece to berate the neighbourhood committees. The conflict remained unresolved until the town once again fell into Saddams hands on 3 April. The IKF dared not take up arms against the neighbourhood committees, and the committees for their part could not agree internally how to approach the IKF. On at least one occasion, a former manager called in IKF peshmergas to stop a mass meeting at a workplace, in a bid to physically break up a shora. When the neighbourhood committees sent armed militia to confront Saddams troops, the IKF refused to provide them with weapons. Instead, PUK leader Talabani flew to Baghdad to negotiate. This came to be known as the kisses in Baghdad, as TV pictures of Talabani kissing Saddam on both cheeks were cabled out to the world. The inner workings of the neighbourhood committees The committees had a number of internal disagreements. One of these concerned what position they should take in relation to the political parties in the Kurdistan Front. Some wanted to attack the parties, arguing that they functioned as external bodies of authority pursuing their own special interests. Some wanted to negotiate with them and reach compromises, which would have weakened the power of the councils. Many others were unwilling to concede that the IKF had a social base, and thought the front could just be ignored. The more militant tendency called for the committees to be turned into autonomous revolutionary units, an armed people ready to defend the authority of the shoras. A further source of conflict within the shora movement was the question of whether the neighbourhood committees were a working-class organisation or whether all citizens should be allowed to join, whatever their class affiliation. Three days after the IKF had declared
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the shoras illegal and called on them to disband, only one of 50 in the town had complied. An example of the contradictions that existed within the neighbourhood committees was that while their practical actions were revolutionary and socialist, they nevertheless demanded liberal rights and bourgeois democracy.27 And strangely enough, it was the MarxistLeninists28 who were the driving force behind this. They argued that a bourgeois revolution was necessary before there could be a socialist revolution. From this viewpoint, allying oneself with bourgeois elements is totally logical. Saddam regains control On 2 April, Saddams troops advanced on Suleymania and shelled the town. Kirkut had fallen a few days earlier. The leaders of the IKF had already left for the Iranian border, but their peshmergas were still in the town and declared their willingness to help defend it. After midnight, the PUK leader, Talabani, went on the radio and urged everyone to flee into the mountains. He painted a terrifying scenario, saying Saddam would use chemical weapons, as he had in Halabja in 1988. When Saddams troops rolled into town 12 hours later, more than 90 per cent of the population had already fled and the streets were still full of people on their way out of town. After two weeks, people began returning from the mountain. During the ensuing months, negotiations took place between the Iraqi Kurdistan Front and Saddam Husseins regime. But this was largely a facade, part of Saddams strategy to play for time. The July uprising On 18 July, the people of Suleymania rose again and ousted Saddams troops from the town, in little more than an hour. All that was left were eleven wrecked tanks. The same thing had happened in Hawlir the previous day. During the 18 July uprising, the IKF drove around the streets of Suleymania with loudspeaker cars, urging people to go home. The shora movement was a social uprising with a high level of popular participation, but it never extended beyond the towns of Suleymania, Hawlir and Kirkuk. In all, some 95shoras were established there. The popular uprising in Suleymania was a social revolution in that all workplaces and factories of any size were expropriated by the workers and run by the workers councils and mass meetings. All this is taken from the report.29 The US regime had no doubts about which side to support in the conflict. The American forces broke off their advance on Baghdad when the popular uprising began: Commanding General Norman Schwartzkopf allowed Iraqi helicopters to fly across U.S. lines to attack and destroy rebelling Shiites and Kurds in the north and south, but then refused to allow Republican Guard units who had risen up against Hussein to reach their stores of weapons.30 Information about the Kurdish revolt never reached the general public while the fighting was in progress. In 1991, the American Government had all the cards in its hand. It hardly met any resistance at all. Most of those who saw the TV version of the war accepted that the US, fighting under the UN flag, had been the liberator of Kuwait. It was the beginning of an unbridled, and stupidly short-sighted, US arrogance, which has been an important factor in world politics and war since then. Just a few months after the ceasefire in Iraq, it was time for the next war. The dissolution of
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Yugoslavia and the subsequent war were not something the US or any other imperialist power wanted, but war broke out because the interests of different imperialist powers collided. _____________________ 1 Uncut magazine 2 John Pilger: Hidden Agenda, 1999 3 Noam Chomsky: Man kan inte mrda historien, 1995 4 Human Rights Watch Commentary, 22 March 2002. http://hrw.org/editorials/2002/iraq_032202.htm 5 Magnus Hrnquist, Torfi Magnusson and Rikard Warlenius: Kurdistan, 1994 6 E. Childers and B. Urquhart: Renewing the UN System, 1994 7 James Ridgeway: The March to War, 1991 8 John Pilger: Distant Voice Books, 1992. Quoted at http://www.firethistime.org/linesscript.htm 9 William Blum: Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (2000) 10 E. Childers and B. Urquhart: Renewing the UN System, 1994 11 ibid 12 www.firethistime.org/quotes.htm 13 Dagens Nyheter, 19 January 2003 14 John Pilger: Hidden Agenda, 1999 15 ibid 16 Washington Post, 3 March 1991 17 J. Chediac: The Massacre of Withdrawing Soldiers on The Highway of Death, 1992 18 John Pilger: Hidden Agenda, 1999 19 Seymour Hersh: Annals of War: Overwhelming Force, published in The New Yorker, 22 April 2000 20 John Pilger: Hidden Agenda, 1999 21 Dagens Nyheter, 3 March 2001 22 William Blum: Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (2000) 23 Sarah Zaidi and Mary C. Smith-Fawzi, Health of Bagdads Children, The Lancet 346, no. 8988 (2 December 1995): p. 1485; See also the editorial in the same issue, Health Effects of Sanctions on Iraq, p. 1439. 24 www.columbia.edu/cu/sipa/PUBS/SLANT/FALL98/p12.html 25 The peshmergas were guerrilla fighters. 26 The Iraqi Kurdistan Front (IKF) was an alliance of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (DPK) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and a number of smaller parties. The DPK is the oldest guerrilla group in Kurdistan, dating back to the 1920s. Its leader Massoud Barzini inherited the position from his father, Mustafa Barzani. Clan loyalty still plays an important role in Kurdistan, especially in rural areas, where the DPK are active. The PUK is a breakaway group from the DPK but is also a clan-based party. 27 This sentence shows the political confusion of the authors. There is in fact no
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contradiction between fighting for bourgeois democracy the right to vote, freedom of speech and assembly, and so on and revolutionary socialism. However, there is a contradiction between fighting to put the bourgeoisie into power and letting the workers and peasants themselves run society. 28 The Marxist-Leninists comprised the remnants of the Maoist movement of the 1970s. In other words, they were supporters of the Stalinist regime in China. 29 Magnus Hrnquist, Torfi Magnusson and Rikard Warlenius: Kurdistan, 1994. The authors went to Iraq on a study trip sponsored by the Swedish Governments Agency for development projects in the Third World, SIDA. 30William Rivers Pitt: War on Iraq, 2002

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14. Civil War in Yugoslavia 1991-2001: Imperialist discord and ethnic cleansing

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.1 Mark Twain The ethnic cleansing that took place in Yugoslavia is often put down to ancient hatreds resurfacing. However, over the centuries, the southern Slavs (Yugoslavia means the country of the southern Slavs) have been subjected to a number of foreign occupations, and have frequently joined together to fight the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires.2 Likewise Josip Tito, president of Yugoslavia until 1980, united Yugoslavs of all nationalities in a struggle against Hitlers Germany. It was the bureaucratic rulers of various Yugoslav republics, who after Titos death, laid the basis for destroying this traditional unity. But the decisive reason for ethnic cleansing was disagreements among greedy imperialist powers. This has been effectively hidden by a veil of lies about the civil war in Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav bureaucracy brings nationalism to life In 1989, Milosevic reduced the autonomy of two of Serbias regions Voyvodina and Kosovo. This ran counter to Titos policies. By ensuring that the various republics were all kept strong, Tito had sought to guarantee equality between nationalities. This policy was now turned on its head. The Serbian leaders, in claiming their republics right to absorb these two autonomous provinces, had dealt the federation a death-blow. The main reason for this madness was that the economies of Eastern Europe began to experience severe problems in the 1980s. After the Second World War the state-controlled planned economy led to rapid economic development. Growth at 11-13% a year was higher than any West European country, despite the absence of democracy. But the bureaucratic nature of the plan lead to greater and greater problems, especially after 1973 when Yugoslavia was forced to borrow from the IMF as a result of the oil crisis. The IMF demanded and got a decade of frugality during the 1980s. The bureaucracy desperately cast around for ways of rescuing themselves and their privileges. As Serbia played a key role in the federation, bureaucrats in other parts of Yugoslavia started to feel threatened. In response to Serbian nationalism, they began developing a Slovenian, Croatian, Macedonian, and in time a Bosnian nationalism. They had some popular support for this policy as people saw how badly Milosevic had begun to treat the Albanian minority living mainly in Kosovo. In May 1990, Franjo Tudjman was elected president of Croatia. Of the 4.7 million people living in the republic at the time, 600 000 were Serbs. Even before the election, Tudjman had declared that one of his first priorities on taking office would be to remove a number of Serbs employed in the Croatian civil service, the police and the media. There are five or six times as many as there should be, he said. He dreamed not only of cleansing Croatia of
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Serbs but also of extending Croatias borders. Bosnia, he argued, was an essential part of a geopolitical unit with Croatia. At the time, Croats made up just 20% of the Bosnian population; 30% were Serbs and 40% Muslims. Like Tito, Tudjman enjoyed appearing in public in a white uniform with oversized epaulettes, and he was happy to have compliments heaped on him by Croatian public officials, such as the Prometheus of Croatia and Reviver of Croatias Patriotic Spirit. He took a firm hold on the Croatian media. He also praised the Ustase government of the 1940s as a manifestation of the Croatian peoples yearning for a sovereign state. 3 Tudjman denied the Holocaust, and claimed that only 900 000 Jews died. He took the view that these deaths would not have occurred had the German army triumphed over the Soviet Union, which would have paved the way for a geographical solution of the Jewish question. A reserve could have been established in eastern Poland or in Madagascar.4 There was no great difference between Tudjman and Milosevic (or for that matter between Tudjman and Slovenian leader Milan Kucan or Bosnian leader Alija Izetbegovic). Tudjman and Milosevic were equally responsible for the war that broke out between Serbia and Croatia following the latters declaration of independence. Later, Tudjman and Milosevic made a secret deal in 1991 to divide Bosnia between them.5 Germany goes its own way Neither the EU nor the US was prepared to recognise Croatian sovereignty, but Germany did, and eventually got the EU to do so too. This revealed another dimension of the new world order. While the United States military might is greater than ever, its political superiority is no longer of the same magnitude. During the Cold War, the US was the undisputed leader of the capitalist world. The big Western powers stood united under American leadership against their common enemy. But following the collapse of the Soviet Union, imperialist powers became increasingly split. The fact that American political supremacy is being called into question by other imperialist powers is due not only to the fall of the Soviet Union, but also to the United States weakening grip on the world economy. Although the US is still a heavyweight, its share of world production has declined since 1945. In 1950, the country accounted for 40% of the worlds GDI (Gross Domestic Income), while in 1990 the figure was down to 23.5%.6 For the first time since the Second World War, Germany decided not to adopt the same stance as the other imperialist powers on an important issue in the international arena. The country had undergone a period of rapid economic growth, East and West Germany were reunified, and via the EU the country dominated Europe. Germany had traditionally regarded Croatia and Slovenia as part of its sphere of influence, while Serbia mainly belonged to the Russian sphere. The German government wanted to regain its influence in Croatia and Slovenia. Former German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher describes in his memoirs a meeting he had with Slovenian president Milan Kucan. When Kucan spoke of Slovenias drive for independence, Genscher had not opposed the idea, but simply urged him to proceed slowly.7 Both before and after this meeting the EU had officially expressed its opposition to the partitioning of Yugoslavia. Nascent trade wars tend to express themselves in political conflict. In June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence. This immediately led to
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armed clashes with Yugoslav government forces as Belgrade refused to recognise the breakaway. In December 1991, Germany became the first country to recognise the two as independent states. The commission that the EU had set up to examine the Yugoslavia question had not even had time to present its report. The German government swiftly declared the Croatian regime to be champions of democracy in Yugoslavia. The fact that Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman was a known denier of the Holocaust was not considered relevant. The true nature of the regime was concealed. A German committee of inquiry led by Christian Tomaschat concluded that the way Croatia protected minorities was of exemplary importance for the continuing protection of minorities in Europe.8 Once it had recognised Croatia and Slovenia, Germany worked hard to persuade other countries to follow suit. A breakthrough came when it managed to get Britain to recognise Croatia in exchange for British exemption from the social chapters in the EUs Maastricht treaty.9 Once Britain had swung behind Germany, the rest of the EU and the US reluctantly gave their support as well. Britain, France and the US were not opposed to the government in Serbia, although they since then have portrayed Milosevic as the greatest villain imaginable. They considered him the best guarantee of stability in Yugoslavia, as he was the regional strongman. In point of fact, these big powers gave him a certain amount of support, by introducing an arms embargo under UN auspices against all the federal republics. Serbia controlled most of the old Yugoslav army, and as no-one was to be supplied with new weapons (although in practice weapons poured into both Croatia and Serbia), it held an advantage. Serbia eventually defeated Croatia. By the time an UN-sponsored ceasefire was agreed in 1992, Serbia had taken over a third of Croatias territory. The UN stepped in with a peacekeeping force, but did little more than patrol the new borders. In contrast to their mission in Iraq, the UN troops were not there as peacemakers, but as peacekeepers. Everything they did was to have the consent of all parties involved. It was an impossible task, but how could it be otherwise when the United Nations was anything but united? Inevitable ethnic cleansing The next step in the escalation of ethnic conflict came in March 1992 when Bosnias leading bureaucrat, Alija Izetbegovic, proclaimed Bosnia an independent state. He did this partly because he feared growing Serbian dominance, but he also hoped to exploit the fact that the war had weakened both Serbia and Croatia, enabling the Bosnian establishment to take a larger slice of the cake. Izetbegovic was an Islamist. As a 22-year-old, he had published a newspaper entitled Mujahid (The Warrior), and in 1983 he had been jailed for writing The Islamic Declaration, which included the statement: Peace or coexistence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic institutions is not possible. During the 1990s, his partys slogan was In our country, with our faith, and he accused Western financiers of diluting the Islamic essence in Bosnia. When he died in October 2003, the International War Crimes Tribunal was investigating the extent of his responsibility for the intern ment and murder of civilians during the war.10 Bosnia was not a nation. There were no linguistic, religious, or historical grounds. Nor was there a national consciousness. Ethnic groups were closely integrated. Most were good neighbours and celebrated one anothers religious holidays. The Muslims were highly secularised. They drank alcohol and dressed as Europeans. When fundamentalists arrived from Iran and Libya at the beginning of the war to support their Muslim brethren, the
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Bosnian Muslims found their behaviour totally unacceptable. This time the German government was not as anxious, as in the case of Croatia and Slovenia, to defend the right of nations to self-determination. This time it was the United States that acted hastily, despite the fact that American intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that if the US recognised Bosnia, it would explode.11 Hans-Dietrich Genscher comments sourly: The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina the second Yugoslav war began later, and it was not Germany that initiated recognition of Bosnia-Herzegovina. On the contrary. In early March 1992, Washington proposed that the US and the EU act in unison. The US government did not wish to be left without a voice in a crumbling Yugoslavia, and was therefore prepared to take the risk that Bosnia would indeed explode.12 The US and the EU recognised Bosnian independence. The new state immediately began to fall apart. Those parts of the old Yugoslav army that were stationed in Bosnia stayed there, re-named themselves the Bosnian-Serbian Army and proclaimed an independent Serbian republic, Republika Srpska. Serbia immediately attacked Bosnia. At first, Croatia provided support to Bosnian Croatian armed groups in Bosnia, but in 1993 it attacked Bosnia directly. The UN arms embargo made it impossible for the Bosnian government to defend itself. In contrast to Croatia and Serbia, it had little opportunity to breach the embargo. The country was surrounded by Croatia and Serbia, and had very limited economic resources. In the space of 60 days following independence, tens of thousands of people died, mostly Muslims, and a million people were forced to flee. The civilian population lived under constant threat, and the only defence they could count on was that of their nations army. In such circumstances, nationalist sentiment spread like wildfire. By the time peace arrived, over two million people had fled, half the Bosnian population. The imperialist powers disagreed on how to handle Bosnia. This dissension was reflected in a number of votes at the United Nations. In 1993, for instance, the US (and a number of Muslim countries) sought to lift the arms embargo against Bosnia, but not against Croatia and Serbia. The proposal was rejected by the Security Council due to the opposition of Britain, France, Russia, China, and others. Because of these differences, the UN managed to produce a record amount of documentation about the conflict. During the 18-months period from the outbreak of hostilities in Bosnia, the Security Council adopted 47 resolutions, and the Council President issued 42 written statements. It was an attempt to paper over the differences between the imperialist powers. One plan after another was put forward in search of peace. These ranged from proposals to separate the ethnic groups to proposals to force them to live together. Both methods would have simply fostered further antagonism, the first by legitimising the split into ethnic groups, and the second by forcing one ethnic group to accept the rule of another groups powercrazed leaders. The UN could not suggest any other alternative. The UN betrays Srebrenica The UN established a number of safe areas. These were towns, such as Srebrenica, where Bosnian Muslims were in a majority, but where the surrounding population comprised Bosnian Serbs. Under an agreement between all parties, these areas were to be demilitarised and left in peace. In August 1993, a new plan was presented the Union of Three Republics Plan. Bosnia was to be partitioned into a Muslim, a Croatian and a Serbian republic. Amazingly, in order to
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make the borders straighter, the UN was prepared to hand over some of the safe areas to the Serbs, and other areas to the Bosnian Muslims. The plan was rejected by Izetbegovic. The Bosnian Serb leaders decided to implement the plan themselves, in their own brutal fashion. Srebrenica was a Muslim enclave in an area dominated by Serbs. When it was captured by Serbian forces, unarmed Bosnian Muslim men and boys were abused and killed indiscriminately. The soldiers hit them with cudgels, forced them to kneel in prayer in the Muslim fashion, and then shot them.13 Srebrenica had been designated a safe area by the UN, which was thus obligated to protect its inhabitants. But the small, lightly armed Dutch UN force stationed there, Dutchbat, had no chance, and repeated requests for air support were denied at various levels of command. As the UN had disarmed the local people, they were unable to defend themselves. Around 6 000 were executed in Srebrenica.14 The UN itself estimates that up to 20 000 people died in or around its safe areas. A tragic and monumental fiasco. The imperialist powers exploited and reinforced the nationalist monster unleashed in Yugoslavia. They were unable to agree on how to return the beast to its cage, so things were simply allowed to run their course. Ethnically cleansed, geographically integrated areas were the inevitable result. Reading between the lines, it is clear that the UN report on Srebrenica agrees that it that the catastrophe was due to disagreements among imperialist powers: There are occasions when Member States cannot achieve consensus on a particular response to active military conflicts, or do not have the will to pursue what many might consider to be an appropriate course of action. The first of the general lessons is that when peacekeeping operations are used as a substitute for such political consensus they are likely to fail.15 Croatia attacks Serbia Shortly after the Srebrenica massacre in August 1995, another war broke out. Croatia had been massively rearming since the 1992 truce with Serbia. Germany had made sure that Croatia did not suffer from the sanctions that afflicted Serbia when the two states jointly attacked Bosnia in 1993-94. So Croatia had never had trouble raising loans to finance its arms purchases. It now attacked Serbia and succeeded in driving hundreds of thousands of Serbs out of their homes in the province of Krajina. Croatia thereby acquired an ethnically cleansed, geographically cohesive area (Croatia and Slovenia are today the ethnically cleanest republics in former Yugoslavia). When the Croatians sought to press on to Banja Luka, a Bosnian Serbian town in a Bosnian Serbian area, the Americans stopped them in their tracks. This is how Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy in the region, described a meeting he had with Croatias president Tudjman on 17 September 1995: I told Tudjman the [Croatian] offensive had great value to the negotiations. It would be much easier to retain at the table what had been won on the battlefield than to get the Serbs to give up territory they had controlled for several years. I urged Tudjman to take Sanski Most, Prijedor, and Bosanski Novi, all important towns that had become worldwide symbols of ethnic cleansing. . . . Banja Luka , I said, was a different matter. As we spoke, the road to this largest Bosnian Serb city appeared to lie open to the Croatian offensive, although it was not at all certain whether the city could be taken. We knew that [Croatian Defence Minister] Susak wanted to go for it as quickly as possible. On the other
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hand, I told Tudjman, the city was unquestionably within the Serb portion of Bosnia. Even if it were captured, the Federation would have to return it to the Serbs in any peace negotiation. Finally, capturing Banja Luka would generate over 200 000 additional refugees. I did not think that the United States should encourage an action that would create so many more refugees. I concluded my comments with a blunt statement: Mr. President, I urge you to go as far as you can, but not to take Banja Luka. 16 In November 1995, all parties signed the Dayton Agreement to end the war. The Security Council approved the agreement. The UN forces were pulled out, and tens of thousands of NATO-led troops took their place. A fragile federation of Croatian, Serbian and Muslim areas was established in Bosnia. A period of relative stability followed until the next major conflict arrived, this time centring on Kosovo. NATO bombs Serbia Milosevics persecution of the Kosovo Albanians was pushing them into an armed struggle for Kosovan independence. The imperialists, therefore, had no choice but to clamp down on Milosevic, as an independent Kosovo could have had disastrous consequences. As Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov put it: If a fire burns in Kosovo and spreads to Macedonia and Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina, a major war could erupt in the Balkans.17 An independent Kosovo would be able to link with Albania and form a Greater Albania. This in turn would split Macedonia, where the population was 40% Albanian. Greece had claims on Macedonia, as did Bulgaria. Turkey, on the other hand, was on the side of Albania against its old arch-rival, Greece. A war might pit two NATO nations, Turkey and Greece, against each other. There was also another reason for the bombing campaign. The US welcomed a chance to seize the initiative in the Balkans. Previously, it had tended to lag behind Germany and Russia, and to some extent behind France as well. Since the Gulf War, US arrogance had grown considerably. Now the Americans were prepared to act without the cover of the UN. However, these were not the reason given for bombing Serbia. Instead, the media in the west suddenly placed Milosevic on a par with Hitler. Yugoslav and NATO representatives met at the palace of Rambouillet in France. NATOs demands on the Yugoslav regime were nothing less than a complete provocation. They required NATO occupation, not just of Kosovo, but of the whole of Yugoslavia. NATO troops were to have access to the entire country, with no legal restrictions. NATO personnel were to be immune from legal process, and NATO was to have access to all telecommunications, including TV broadcasts, free of charge. No government of a sovereign state would countenance such demands. Furthermore, the proposed agreement stated that: The economy of Kosovo shall function in accordance with free market principles.18 So Milosevic rejected the demands and NATO dispatched its bomb planes to Yugoslavia. For 77 days, NATO bombed Serbia. Swedish Social Democratic MPs Karin Wegerstl and Bengt Silfverstrand visited the war-torn country shortly after the bombing stopped. We have seen totally bombed-out factories, oil depots blown apart, ruined roads, railways and bridges. We have spoken to engineers who have described the difficulty of keeping Belgrades power supply going after all the bombing. We have spoken to parents about how they tried to allay their childrens terror during the attacks. In Nis, we saw what remained of the bombed-out university, the effects of splinter bombs (!)
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on an emergency clinic at the local hospital, the vegetable market that had been bombed in full daylight, a bombed-out tobacco factory, a bombed-out oil depot and so on. Some 40 000 workplaces had been totally destroyed in this city alone.19 The US and NATO cited humanitarian grounds for the destruction the need to protect the Kosovo Albanians from Serbian terror. But Karin Wegerstl and Bengt Silfverstand noted: The overwhelming bulk of the human suffering and material destruction that can be seen in Kosovo occurred after 24 March (1999). This has been suppressed, to justify NATOs war of aggression. What the bombing was supposed to prevent, it caused instead, in infinite measure. This view is confirmed by Colonel Bo Pellns, a Swedish peace negotiator in the Balkans and the Belgrade representative of the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe). Despite the massacre in Racak20, it would be wrong to claim that mass expulsions were taking place in Kosovo, or acts of genocide, before the war broke out. Such claims are patently absurd as the OSCE had twelve hundred observers stationed there.21 Despite NATOs superiority in terms of resources, the outcome was hardly what US president Bill Clinton had foreseen. For a start, Milosevics position in Yugoslavia was strengthened during the actual bombing. The opposition, which had previously been very active, came out in support of him. Those who did not were forced to remain silent. A Serbian journalist, Dejan Lukic, put it like this: Were all behind Milosevic now, whether you like it or not. Thanks to your bombs, he has become a national hero, to the opposition as well.22 Colonel Pellns shares this assessment. It could be argued that the bombing imposed a severe mental strain on the Serbs, who up to then had not been directly affected by the fighting in the Balkans, and that it consequently hastened the transfer of power in Serbia. But you could equally well argue and perhaps to better effect that Milosevic would have been removed from office even earlier if the war had not come along and actually strengthened his position for quite some time.23 NATO propaganda sought to portray the Serbian people as a whole as brutes. In the final stages of the war, NATO probably realised that it could not be won, and the bombing degenerated into a campaign of terror against the civilian population. The aim was to punish the people for their unwillingness to obey NATO and get rid of Milosevic. Moreover, NATO planes failed to crush the Yugoslav army. They bombed both the Swedish and the Chinese embassies, Kosovo Albanian refugees and Bulgaria, but were still unable to get at the Serbian forces. NATO did not dare bring in ground troops, partly because they feared becoming embroiled in a new Vietnam War and partly because the NATO countries could not agree. The alliance was already split. In Greece and Italy in particular, both of which were NATO members, there were massive protests against the bombing war. It was Russia that finally ensured Yugoslavias surrender in the negotiations to end the war. Without Russian backing, Milosevic realised he could not continue fighting. The US for its part was not yet prepared to go it alone. Milosevic remained in power. It was not until the working class took matters in its own hands that Milosevic was removed. And they accomplished it swiftly. The working class brings down Milosevic without bombs At the elections held in September 2000, opposition leader Vojislav Kostunica triumphed.
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Milosevic, however, refused to concede the election and step down. The following eyewitness report explains what happened next. From the early morning hours, one could hear the sound of numerous horns from cars, trucks and buses pouring into downtown Belgrade from every highway. Apart from national symbols and anti-Milosevic slogans, many of them proudly waved their trade union flags. Word on the street was that they came to the capital in order to finish up what they had started a few days earlier, when most of the factories in Serbia had been shut down and a general strike announced. In 1996, people had also flowed into the squares in all the big cities across the country, demanding justice and calling for all-out civil disobedience. Then, middle class professionals and the student movement were at the core of events. Local small businesses, cinemas, theatres, schools and universities responded to the opposition calls and went on strike immediately, but industry remained untouched by these movements. This time the wave of strikes went deeper. Fewer than 100 factories were working across the state. It started with public transport and garbage collectors and culminated in the countrys most important coal mines in the Kolubara district. This particular strike threatened to leave half of the country without electricity. Everything that happened that day grew directly out of the general atmosphere and the initiative came from the people. Opposition leaders got caught off guard and were pretty hesitant and got left behind in the beginning. The masses probably made them go further than they imagined in their wildest dreams. People organised spontaneously and took over crucial buildings. Most private TV stations and newspapers that were also controlled by the regime were freed without much trouble. National Television was guarded by the police for a short period of time, after which they scattered. Many of them took off their uniforms and joined the masses, others desperately tried to stop the crowd with tear gas and rubber bullets (real shoot-outs were also reported). Rioting and looting was reported all around, however the targets were obviously not chosen according to the level of material gain. Foreign observers may not understand this, but each object that was torn down had some kind of symbolic significance. For example an exclusive perfume shop in the centre of the city was looted because it is believed that it belongs to Milosevics son. The parliament represented political oppression, and the National TV building represented media propaganda and lies upon which this system had laid its foundations. They were both burned to the ground. The local police station was not spared either. Unknown quantities of weapons were taken from this station before it was set on fire. By the evening most of the battles had already been won. Belgrade is ours! could be heard from thousands of throats. Anger slowly transformed into happiness and rioting into celebration. People started to debate and organise among themselves spontaneously. Some of them took things out of the parliament and TV building and continued to destroy what was left of it; others claimed that things should be collected in one place and saved because they are all our things and were going to need them in the future. Opposition organisers and politicians finally re-appeared and started to make speeches to calm down the masses. Vojislav Kostunica (the opposition presidential candidate) was announced as the new president of the country and people greeted him with cheers. During his speech a spontaneous chant started to come from the crowd: Lets go to Dedinje! (Dedinje is a residential area where most of the high profile bureaucrats and army generals live, including Milosevic). The people felt that it was time to seize the moment and go all the
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way while the enemy was still breathless. Kostunica assured the crowd that it was all over; that there was no need for further fighting and that the police wouldnt intervene.24 Other eye-witnesses have reported the similar things. A revolutionary crowd with its spirit up can do anything, and policemen or soldiers, who are merely armed with guns, quickly understand that they cant do much against that kind of thing. I first guessed that the revolution would succeed when I saw a line of 13 armed policemen trooping nervously into the offices of an opposition party and being greeted with cheers and back-slapping after theyd decided to come over to the demonstrators.25 These accounts show that it was through the determination of the workers that Milosevic was removed in a matter of days. They did what the Western powers had been unable to do in spite of their more or less unlimited military resources and the billions they had paid out in bribes. These days in Belgrade show something else as well. A handful of opposition politicians can kidnap a movement they played little part in, and they themselves were afraid of. Their first task was to remove the working class from the stage of history and to salvage the substance of the old order after the working class had destroyed its symbols and removed Milosevic. Had the power of the working class instead been harnessed to achieve a socialist society it would have put an end to ethnic violence in Yugoslavia, just like the coming to power of Tito after the Second World War had. The first and deadliest ethnic conflict in the region was during the Second World War, when the German Nazis established a vassal state, Croatia. The Croatian Nazi organisation Ustase was allowed to do as it wished. Its goal was a Greater Croatia, and its members were prepared to kill all Serbs and (what are now) Bosnians who stood in their way. Their actions and ideas were paralleled by the Chetniks, former soldiers of the old Serbdominated royalist army who established guerrilla bands, and whose goal was an ethnically pure Greater Serbia. An estimated 1.7 million people died in Yugoslavia during the Second World War, most of them as a result of the crimes committed by these two organisations in their sectarian struggle. Yet in the middle of this bloodbath, unity developed across ethnic lines. By 1945, Titos forces were victorious because they also offered an ideal a dream of brotherhood and unity that would link the nations or peoples of Yugoslavia. 26 After the war, Yugoslavia became a federation comprising the republics of Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Montenegro. The Yugoslav population became increasingly inter-ethnic. Serbs, Croats, Albanians, Slovenians and other ethnic groups lived as neighbours, and inter-married. To ensure that the Serbs did not dominate the country, Tito saw to it that economic resources were channelled fairly to all republics. Croatia and Slovenia became the most developed regions of Yugoslavia. National conflicts were confined to squabbles between different sections of the bureaucracy, as they sought to assert themselves within the federation. However, Yugoslavia was never a socialist state. Tito came to power not at the head of a democratically organised working-class, but an undemocratic guerrilla army drawn from the peasantry. He had a great deal of support and he broke with capitalism and nationalised the means of production, but control of economic planning and workplaces was firmly in the hands of a privileged bureaucracy. This left open the possibility of ethnic hatred re-emerging. The international working class acts

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The leaders of the international labour movement fell in line behind the imperialists. Social Democratic governments in Europe gave their backing to NATOs bombing of Serbia, just as they had earlier supported the bombing of Iraq. Nonetheless, compared to during the Gulf War, the rank-and-file of the Labour Movement protested strongly in many parts of Europe. In Greece, which is a NATO member, 97% of the population opposed the bombing despite the fact that 55% were against Milosevic. Daily demonstrations were held around the country. The Greek Trade Union Confederation organised a four-hour strike in protest against the war. The Railway Workers Union publicly declared that if NATO intended sending ground troops and war materials to Yugoslavia, its members would make sure the Greek railways were not used for the purpose.27 Protests were also widespread in the port city of Salonika, which is used as a base for NATO operations. Several NATO convoys on their way to Macedonia were halted by angry demonstrators. In early May, demonstrators changed road signs so that a NATO convoy en route to Macedonia ended up in a vegetable market on the outskirts of Salonika. There, it was showered with tomatoes and other vegetables. In one district in Crete, where the Suba NATO base is situated, the local county council leader declared that he could not be responsible for the physical well-being of the US soldiers.28 In Germany, the powerful IG Metall union declared its opposition to the bombing. In Sweden, a campaign was launched by leading Social Democrats and party activists. Other parties and organisations were also involved, but Social Democratic rebel MPs Karin Wegestl and Bengt Silverstrand lent the campaign weight. A demonstration in Stockholm in May drew 2 500 participants at short notice. All this showed that the potential exists. It shows that the internationalism of the working class is a force to count on, even when the Social Democratic party leaders are moving in another direction. In addition, the protests of the European working class and its relatively close links to Yugoslavia had a further effect. Although discord among imperialist powers bares the main responsibility for the wars in Yugoslavia, they felt obliged to supply considerable resources to stabilise the situation in former Yugoslavia. After all, Yugoslavia is in Europe, close to the home base of several imperialist powers. In Africa things have been different. Although Africa is also the victim of imperialism and imperialist discord, it has been allowed to sink into a modern form of barbarism. ____________________ 1 www.quotegallery.com/asp/ccategories.asp?parent=Truth 2 Jasminka Udovicki and James Ridgeway: Burn this house, 1997 3 Washington Post, 30 April 1990 4 The New Republic, 25 November 1991 5 Financial Times: Slicing Up the Bosnian Cake, 8 August 1995 6 Penn World Table 5.6, National Bureau for Economic Research, March 1997 7 Hans-Dietrich Genscher: Erinnerungen, 1995 8 ibid 9 Financial Times, 14 August 1999 10 The Economist, 25 October 2003 11 George Kenney, a senior official in the US State Department, in an interview in the documentary, Yugoslavia the Avoidable War, 2002 12 Washington would later repeat this tactic in Macedonia. The EU expressed opposition
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to independence on the grounds that democracy in Macedonia was flawed, but was unable to stop it. Instead, the EU had to content itself with forcing upon Macedonia the absurd name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM. 13 The UN Special Report on Srebrenica 14 The Netherlands institute for war documentation,http://www.srebrenica.nl 15 www.un.org/peace/srebrenica.pdf 16 Quoted in www.un.org/peace/srebrenica.pdf 17 Financial Times, 24 mars 1999 18 Se article 11 19 Svenska Dagbladet, 12 July 1999 20 In January 1991, about 40 Kosovo Albanians had been massacred in the village of Racak. Some died fighting, but 23 were found executed in a ravine outside the village. 21 Dagens Nyheter, 8 February 2004. The observers were withdrawn three days before the bombing began. 22 Guardian, 3 April 1999 23 Dagens Nyheter, 8 February 2004 24 Excerpts from an eye-witness account of the events of 5 October 2000 published on www.marxist.com/Europe/eyewitnesses_yug_oct00.html 25 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/959484.stm, World Affairs Editor John Simpson, 6 October 2000 26 BBC: Titos Yugoslavia, 5 April 2003. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/ yugoslavia_03.shtml 27 www.marxist.com/Europe/kosovo6.html 28 www.marxist.com/Europe/kosovo7.html

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15. Wars in Africa since 1989: Slavery, colonisation and plunder

When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said: Let us pray. We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.1 Desmond Tutu Africa is a seething cauldron of desperation. Hunger, disease, plunder and tyranny are generating wars and perpetual flows of refugees. But the wars are no longer between different nation-states. In the 1990s, people in many countries have had to rely on armed gangs to protect them against other armed gangs. The central machinery of state has crumbled and lost control. In practice, many governments have become gangs just like any other. The term failed states has been coined to describe this condition. A failed state is defined as a state whose structures and institutions have broken down to such a degree that it is no longer possible to identify any overall, generally recognised authority.2 Africa is a continent torn to shreds. In this chapter we explain how this is rooted in Africas colonial past. In the following chapter we take a closer look at the anatomy of barbarism and some of the wars in Africa in the 1990s. Africa, a rich continent now devastated During the Iron Age in Ghana, royal power was rooted in Stone Age communal husbandry. The kings were obliged to distribute the surplus, and take responsibility for the welfare of all. Al-Idrisi, who wrote extensively about Africa in the 12th century, described how the rulers of Ghana had a thousand guests, and served food and drink on a scale never previously witnessed. Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan scholar and writer who travelled in Africa in the 14th century, visited the East African city of Kilwa in 1331 and described it as one of the most beautiful and well-built cities in the world. And in the early 16th century, Moroccan writer Leo Africanus portrayed Timbuktu as a seat of learning. The market for handwritten books was so great, he wrote, that the merchants made a greater profit on books than on any other wares.3 In 1497, three Portuguese ships rounded the Cape of Good Hope under the captaincy of Vasco da Gama. Imperialist powers began establishing trading posts along the African coast en route to China and India. At first, no attempt was made to penetrate the inland. There were few roads, the rivers had perilous waterfalls and the white newcomers frequently died of fever. But when the slave trade got under way, traders began conducting raids along the rivers. Between 1600 and 1867, at least 11 million people were sold as slaves, primarily to America.4 Millions more were forced into slavery in Africa itself. Then came colonisation. Belgium was first. Following his extensive travels up the Congo River, Henry Morton Stanley had long sought to persuade the British to colonise the region. But it was King Leopold of Belgium who first reacted to Stanleys accounts of the riches in the Congo. Stanley returned to Africa in 1878 on a Belgian royal commission. On his previous trips, he had forcibly recruited local natives as bearers and guides. Now he began to introduce slave labour on a major scale.
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At the end of the 19th century, this was a fairly simple task. The larger kingdoms in the rainforest region around the Congo River had been decimated during a 200-year Portuguese reign of terror. What remained of the old kingdoms had withdrawn along the Congos tributaries, and had tried to reconstruct functioning communities. They were unable to defend themselves against the machine-guns of raiding parties. Stanleys commission was to persuade the local kings to surrender their wealth to Leopold. He achieved this by deception, threat and terror. The colonisers seized the local populations food supplies. Women were systematically taken hostage to force men to work for expedition parties, in the rubber plantations, or in other forms of slave labour. Terrified of the advancing Europeans, people fled from their villages and fields. Those who survived the gruelling work, or escaped being shot, often starved to death. Over a 30-year period in the late 19th and early 20th century, almost ten million people died in the Congo. The process was portrayed as a commendable exercise in free enterprise, aimed at putting an end to the Arab slave trade.5 The imperialists carve up Africa When other states saw Belgian imperialism enriching itself in the Congo, the scramble for Africa began. The British and the French were the most successful. At the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, six Western powers Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain had divided Africa between them. Borders were drawn as straight lines on the map with no consideration whatsoever for how people or ethnic groups lived. Thirty years later, when the First World War broke out, Ethiopia and Liberia were the only African countries not to have been transformed into colonies. The Berlin Conference did not spell the end of big-power conflicts. The French dominated West Africa, and wanted to open up a route to East Africa. The British controlled territory from Egypt in the north down to South Africa. In 1898 these two lines of expansion intersected on the Nile River in southern Sudan. The troops clashed at the village of Foshada. For weeks, Britain and France were on the brink of war. Frantic negotiations in Paris and London ended in a French withdrawal in exchange for certain other African regions. France had been weakened internally by the Dreyfuss affair, and was also anxious to enlist the support of the British in the forthcoming war against Germany, which it knew was inevitable. Britain in turn was not prepared to relinquish any part of the Nile as its entire Egyptian colony was dependent on the river. Africa was the last of the worlds continents to be colonised. This was not because it was uninteresting from an economic viewpoint. Africa possesses enormous riches gold, diamonds, copper, and, of more recent discovery, oil. Also, the continent has huge fertile tracts. But Africa lacked the infrastructure and centralised rule found in China and India. Adam Smith has observed that in many respects 18th century China was economically superior to Britain, although it was not a capitalist country. The poverty of the lower ranks of people in China far surpasses that of the most beggarly nations in Europe.6 China had governments that levied taxes, financed armies, and maintained roads and navigable channels. The Chinese state built giant edifices such as the Great Wall. India, too, had a central government. In China and India, the colonisers, by means of enforced compromises with the ruling elite,
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were able to get their hands on more or less complete systems of exploitation, despite China never having been formally colonized. In Africa, they usually had to create a privileged class. To achieve this, they often played off one community against another. If you help us enslave village X, well leave you in peace. If a conflict already existed between different groups, the colonisers took over by arming one of them. In Rwanda and Burundi, the Tutsis in the region were traditionally cattle herders, while the Hutus were peasants. The Tutsis developed a military that enabled them to conquer and control large areas of grazing for their herds. They subdued peasants and forced them into economic dependence by hiring out livestock to them. But the dividing line between Tutsi herders and Hutu farmers was not a rigid one. Intermarriage was not uncommon, and people could swap ethnic affiliation. A Hutu who acquired a cow could build up a herd of his own and become a Tutsi (if you had more than ten head of cattle, you were a Tutsi), and vice versa.7 Also, some clans contained members of both groups. Colonial rule deepened the difference between the two. Only Tutsis were allowed an education, and they were taught that they belonged to a superior race. Ethnic separation was consolidated by introducing ID cards showing which group each person belonged to. This was particularly absurd in view of the fact that the two groups shared the same language, culture and predominantly Christian religious beliefs. Once the imperialists had established their rule in Africa, plunder could begin in earnest. One of the first to realise what was going on was Edmund Morel, a shipping agent. During the late 1890s, he regularly supervised the loading and unloading of cargo ships on the Congo trade route. He noticed that every ship arriving at the port of Antwerp was packed with precious commodities such as rubber and ivory. The ships that returned to Africa contained only soldiers, arms and ammunition.8 The colonial scramble had a profound effect on Africa. People starved, because imperialism robbed them of the possibility of growing food for themselves. Africa is a large continent with a widely varied climate and different natural resources, vegetation and types of rainfall. The colonial masters saw to it that each country developed its special potential, not in terms of what benefited the population most, but in terms of what could be sold cheaply on the world market. Various exploitation models emerged. Countries like Zambia and Congo were above all copper producers. Ghana (known prior to independence as the Gold Coast) mined gold. Sierra Leone specialised in diamonds. In these countries, various coercive measures were employed to turn peasants into mineworkers. In recent years, oil production has also become important, in countries such as Nigeria, Gabon, Angola and Sudan. In eastern and western Africa, both of which have climates that suit European immigrants, the Africans were first driven off the land, and then employed as plantation workers. Coffee was produced in Angola, and tea and coffee in Kenya. In Zimbabwe, the colonisers invested in tobacco growing and cattle breeding. Most African countries, however, had neither access to mineral deposits of any great size nor a climate that European immigrants found congenial. By demanding that taxes be paid in cash, there the colonial regimes forced people to produce crops that could be exported. This model is called cash crop production. It was put into practice at the expense of food
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production for the countrys own population. In Senegal, half of all the arable land is used to produce peanuts for margarine factories in the West; in Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda the cash crop is coffee; in Ghana, Togo and Ivory Coast, cocoa; in Mali, Niger and Sudan, cotton; and in Malawi, tobacco. All these crops, whether farmed on large-scale or small-scale holdings, required intensive use of the soil and lead to soil depletion. The response was to import chemical fertiliser (which of course entailed additional cost). Most cash crops are also sensitive to drought. Countries with few natural resources were forced to supply labour instead. Mine and plantation owners used the colonial administrations in Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and parts of Mozambique and Malawi as employment offices. Most paid a fee to the colonial government, which saw to it that the workers were transported far away from their homes. Imperialism succeeded in totally destroying the social and economic fabric of African society. Africa has become a place where 75-80% of the population lives off the land, and the bulk of the GDP come from farming, but where a third of the continents food supply has to be imported. 80% of all malnourished children in the Third World live in countries where most of the soil is used for the cultivation of export products for the industrialised countries.9 The post-colonial era The majority of African countries gained political independence in the 1950s and 1960s. But economically they remained in the grip of the imperialist states, which hampered their progress. Many African leaders turned to the Soviet Union and its planned economy. Several countries began labelling themselves as socialist states. The former Portuguese colonies of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau abolished capitalism in 1975, following the revolution in Portugal, and established Stalinist dictatorships. Later, they were followed by Ethiopia. Many more nationalised at least parts of their industry. In doing so, they managed for a while to erect limited protective walls around their economies. The rapid rate of economic growth in the West at that time helped stabilise the economic situation in Africa, at least in the 1950s and 1960s. The people also benefited. But the continent was not peaceful even in this period. The apartheid regime in South Africa supported the UNITA terror group against the Angolan regime, and RENAMO against the government of Mozambique. The Angolan government in turn sought help from Cuba, whose troops fought off UNITAs attacks. Between 1975 and 1991, this war cost the lives of 1.5 million people.10 In Uganda, Idi Amin organised massacres. In Congo, Ethiopia and Nigeria, parts of the population tried to break away and were brutally dealt with. But although barbarism showed its face from time to time during this period, it was not until the 1990s that it spread throughout the continent. The WTO, IMF and World Bank paved the way In their infancy, the industries of all the big powers had been carefully protected by trade barriers, to allow them to grow strong. The story was the same in South Korea, one of the few ex-colonial countries that managed to develop into an industrial nation. For the developing countries, the collapse of the Soviet Union reduced their choices. Left to stand alone against the forces of imperialism, they had to abandon their policies of state ownership and import controls. Advances were reversed. The IMF (International Monetary Fund), the WTO (World Trade Organisation), and the
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World Bank were the main tools for opening up the developing countries to international corporations. These institutions are a part of the UN system, and they are supposed to help former colonial states with loans and advice. The WTO was founded in 1995, and drew up a set of global regulations governing such matters as trade, investment and patent rights. While all member countries have a vote and decisions are taken by consensus, the WTO itself has noted on its own website that Some of the most difficult negotiations have needed an initial breakthrough in talks among the four largest members. Until recently, these quadrilaterals or quads (the EU, US, Canada and Japan) usually decided the direction of the WTO. However, they do not always get things all their own way. At the WTO meeting in Cancn in Mexico in 2003, the talks broke down after 21 of the strongest developing countries jointly opposed the imperialist states. The IMF and the World Bank are reliable tools of imperialism. A member states share of the vote is determined by how much its government has invested. In the IMF, representatives of seven countries Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the US have 48% of the votes between them, and in the World Bank they have 46%.11 The IMFs Structural Adjustment Plans, SAPs, forced countries to transform themselves into neo-liberal deregulated economies. Even before the fall of the Soviet Union, some countries had to submit to structural adjustment. After 1989, almost none of the poor countries managed to evade the SAPs. Around a hundred states were drawn into these programmes. As leverage to help enforce their plans, the IMF took advantage of the developing countries extensive debts. When the post-war economic upswing in the imperialist states came to an end in the mid-1970s, the problems of the developing countries worsened. In the 1980s, they sought to compensate for this by borrowing money from private banks, governments and international institutions. But the growth that was supposed to pay for these loans failed to materialise. Instead, interest rates went up, while the prices of raw material exports from the developing countries went down. The debts grew dramatically. According to UNICEF, the worlds poorest countries, those in sub-Saharan Africa, paid USD 12 billion a year in interest charges on loans in 1997 (and should have paid a further USD 8 billion, but quite simply lacked the means to do so). For between a third and a sixth of the amount they paid in debt service charges, they could have placed all children in the region in school.12 The SAP approach was to attack union rights, privatise, cut back welfare safety nets, abolish government grants for water, food, electricity and other essentials, let in the big international corporations, encourage the one-sided production of cash crops, and peg the local currency to the US dollar.13 If it failed to introduce structural adjustments, a country could not expect to be granted loans by the World Bank or the IMF, nor in many cases could it expect any further development aid from the industrialised countries. Not that aid amounted to much. Annually, it was a mere tenth of the sum of money that flowed out of Africa into the pockets of finance capital.14 A growing number of poor Nowhere have the SAPs benefited workers or poor peasants. Unemployment has increased. The price of public services such as healthcare and education has gone up, income gaps have widened, and small and medium sized business have been eliminated by competition from the
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trans-national companies that have entered the market.15 Numerous domestic companies (often state-owned) have gone bankrupt as a result of IMF requirements. One of many places where this happened was Zimbabwe. After it fell into the IMFs clutches in 1990 the production of goods declined by 40% within five years.16 In Pakistan, the governments compliance with the demands of the IMF and the World Bank resulted in 7 200 factories closing down between 1998 and 2002.17 Peter Griffiths described his experiences as a World Bank consultant in Sierra Leone in the early 1990s.18 The oil refinery there had just been privatised when he arrived. This resulted in power cuts in most parts of the country, despite an increase in oil consumption. The reason was that the private refinery would only accept payment in dollars, something that the oilfired power station supplying most of the country with electricity lacked. It was closed down. As a result, the sound of thousands of small diesel generators was heard from the richer areas of the capital, Freetown. Together these generators consumed more oil than the power station. Peter Griffiths describes how an attempt to privatise the state-owned centre for food imports brought Sierra Leone to the brink of mass starvation. The World Bank claimed that it wanted to encourage local producers by abolishing imports of subsidised food. The problem was that an increase in domestic food production would take years to achieve. In the interim, hundreds of thousands of people, most of them already under-nourished, would be denied access to cheap imported food. They would quite simply die. Only at the last moment was the World Banks insane project called off. There are different ways of presenting statistics on poverty in the world, and different results can be obtained depending on what criteria you use. Whichever way you count, however, Africa south of the Sahara is the poorest region of all. Today, Africa as a whole, with a population of 600 million, has a smaller GDP than the Netherlands. Most countries are in a worse shape today than in the 1960s.19 The poorest countries are in a worse state than in 1820.20 War and barbarism have developed out of this miserable situation. The way barbarism works, what drives it, and how it is financed are described in the next chapter. _____________ 1 www.creativequotations.com/one/1455.htm 2 Caroline Holmqvist in Axess, September 2002 3 Basil Davidson: Africa in History, 1969 4 Populr historia, No. 1/97. Statistics on the slave trade. 5 Adarn Hochschild: Kung Leopolds vlnad, 2000 6 http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adam_Smith#China 7 Lnder i fickformat, No. 213, 1999 8 Adarn Hochschild: Kung Leopolds vlnad, 2000 9 T.P. Tomich, P. Kilby and B.F. Johnston: Transforming agrarian economics, 1995 10 IISS, Military Balance 2002, 2003 11 United Nations Development Programme 2002 12 UNICEF, State of the Worlds Children 1997, quoted at www.bread.org/hungerbasics/ debtrelief.html 13 www.theecologist.org The IMF formula: generating poverty 14 United Nations: Human Development Report, 1992 15 On 10 April 2002, the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter described a report (The Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative) on the outcome of the World Banks and the
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IMFs policies. The headline was World Bank policies a fiasco. The report had been compiled by governments and a large number of organisations, and had taken four years to assemble. The SAPRI report is at http://www.saprin.org/global_rpt.htm 16 Lnder i fickformat, Zimbabwe, 1999 17 Manzoor Ahmed: Speech in London, January 2003, www.ptudc.org 18 Peter Griffiths: The Economists Tale, 2003 19 Steven Metz: Refining American Strategy in Africa, 2000
20 United Nations: Human Development Report, 1999

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16. Wars in Africa since 1989: A continent crumbles

We want the presidents trip to turn the spotlight on the other Africa, the new forward-looking Africa, the Africa that is eager to play a full part in the global economy.1 Madeleine Albright US Secretary of State (1997-2001) on President Bill Clintons trip to Africa in 1998 For those who live in areas where the state has lost control, most of the things associated with civilisation cease to work. The electricity grid collapses, roads fall into disrepair, drains become blocked (and often contaminate fresh drinking water in the process), schools close down, and healthcare becomes a distant dream for most people. Brutality takes the place of civilisation. Between March and September 2003 alone, some 7 000 women were brutally raped by roving bands of militiamen and soldiers in South Kivu, an eastern province in Congo-Kinshasa.2 Im in pain all the time, says Yvette Bukuru in a low voice, almost a whisper. I cant sleep, I cant sit down and I can hardly walk. I cant even cook for the family. Ive no hope left. And yet perhaps there is still hope. If she could only reach the hospital in Bukavu. We passed five roadblocks on the 60 kilometre journey between Bukavu and Kamanyolo. Five separate negotiations and demands for permits and papers. In fact, it was money they wanted ultimately, it was all about dollars. How on earth is Yvette going to cope with the journey to Bukavu, lying up there on sacks of cassava and miscellaneous boxes and bundles together with twenty or thirty other passengers on the back of a swaying, clapped-out pick-up truck that veers along heavily pitted, winding roads overlooking steep slopes and precipices? In these areas there are no laws, no courts, no administration. Gang leaders (or warlords, as they are usually called) rule according to their whims. They are constantly fighting one another for control of raw materials, smuggling operations and the local population. Those with the guns call the shots openly and without shame. Wars have ethnic, national or religious labels attached to them, and they grind on for year after year with no solution in sight. In places where social structures have disintegrated, disease spreads epidemically. The victims of war, starvation and disease have become so numerous that there seems little point in trying to determine the actual figures. The old and the new barbarians History shows that progress is not automatic. Here, it is as though these societies have been pitched back hundreds or thousands of years into a state of barbarism. Not just in the usual sense of the word, meaning that people live in terrible conditions. Rather, the armed gangs can be compared with Genghis Khans hordes of barbarians who killed, raped and pillaged wherever they rode. The earliest human societies were classless. People helped one another to gather food, hunt, and at a later stage, to till the soil. There was no need for any machinery of state
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(government, police, law courts, prisons, soldiers). Conflicts were resolved by means of discussion, and through the natural authority of the elders. With the emergence of private ownership of livestock and later of farmland, the old way of solving problems came under attack. During famines, cattle-herding nomads the forerunners of Genghis Khan and his men lived by looting and plundering instead of by herding cattle. These communities were hierarchical in structure, but they were not class societies in the Marxist sense. The chiefs were not an elite group which, through ownership of the means of production, lived off the labour of others. Rather, these were societies in which privileged individuals were able to acquire the bulk of what had been stolen from others. The similarity with todays failed states is striking, although modern robber states incorporate elements from all of human history slavery, feudalism and capitalism. Not until some 5 000 years ago, following the establishment of private property in land, did communities begin to split up into classes with conflicting interests. Slaves worked, while the rest of society lived off what they produced. It was at this time that the state emerged as a separate armed force in society. It took upon itself the task of managing the rules of human coexistence for better or for worse. It is often claimed that Marxists believe the state exists in order to keep the underclass in check. This is correct, but it is a simplification. The state is also needed to sort out conflicts within the ruling class in a peaceful manner, via laws and courts. When the state disappears without the working class assuming power and abolishing private property and class society, the conflicts of the elite result in total chaos, and it is this we see in Africa (and Afghanistan). One of the best analyses of the new barbarians is provided by a World Bank report.3 It makes clear that such gangs are primarily to be found in the poorest countries of the world. Poverty is the decisive reason for gangs, not religion, nationality or ethnic origin. There is a statistical correlation between ethnic origin and the existence of gangs, but the opposite of what could be expected the greater the number of ethnic groups in a given country, the fewer gangbased civil wars there are. Ethnically speaking, Somalia is one of the most homogenous societies in Africa, yet it was the first country to descend into barbarism in the early 1990s. Gang leaders are not motivated by political or ideological goals, although they often dress their real aims in such clothing (and some warlords may once have cherished political ideals), and nor are their motives ethnic, religious or national. They do, however, use ethnicity, religion and nationalism to create a sense of affiliation. In northern Uganda, Joseph Konys child army, the Lords Resistance Army (LRA), has been wreaking havoc since the late 1980s. The LRA originally presented themselves as Christian fundamentalists. Each member was to abide by the Ten Commandments to the exclusion of all else. But when the Islamic government in Sudan began financing the LRA (because the Ugandan government supported the Christian warlords in southern Sudan), they stopped eating pork and began turning towards Mecca to pray. According to the World Bank report, the warlords prime reasons for behaving as they do are that they fear the potential consequences of structural exclusion or are tempted by imagined wealth. In plain English, this means that as the trough grows smaller, those with their snouts in it are scared of being pushed away, and seek to improve their competitive position by arming themselves. Either that, or they are simply greedy. For most workers and peasants, however, life is mainly about getting at staples like rice, cassava and millet. Whenever an economy is in crisis, the divisions in the upper class also tend to deepen in the most highly developed countries. In 2007, it took 196 days for a new Belgian government to be formed after the elections. Debate may rage, but the machinery of state the civil service, the law courts, the police, and the military is expected to be above these conflicts, view
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them objectively and seek to maintain stability. For the weaker economies in the Third World, however, the machinery of state itself is one of the stages on which the various factions act out their battles. In Pakistan, for instance, there is a power struggle between those that earn a fortune in the illegal economy and those that have to make do with the smaller legal economy. This has been seen as a struggle between Islamic fundamentalists and liberals, but in fact it is a struggle between thieves of different kinds over the share-out of the plunder. The fundamentalists control the ISI, Pakistans secret police, and the liberals the parliament. But the fundamentalists are deeply split internally, as are the landowners and business leaders who oppose them. Consequently, the state is more or less powerless, and lurches from one crisis to another. In the poorest countries of the world, the struggle is so fierce among the elite that they actually tear apart the machinery of state. Barbarism develops when all the ties holding together the elite are cut. How private armies are created and armed Those sections of the elite that do not control the army or parts of the army are forced to put together armed gangs of their own. Most of the recruits in these gangs are young, uneducated men. They differ markedly from their leaders. Strikingly many warlords were educated in the West. Charles Taylor, ex-president of Sierra Leone, studied in the US. Ahmed Tejan Kabbar, his successor, trained as a lawyer in Britain, and Johnny Koroma, former head of the Sierra Leone junta, attended Britains prestigious Sandhurst Military Academy. In southern Sudan, gang leader John Garang took his doctors degree in the US, while his rival, Riek TenyDhurgon, acquired a doctorate in Britain. The poor foot-soldiers who join the gangs do so for different reasons. In Nigeria, a prophetic leader, Marwa, deliberately turned to the homeless and the displaced, whose upkeep he guaranteed. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone, on the other hand, recruited drug addicts as it considered them easier to control. One way of holding on to these recruits is to force them to commit atrocities where they were born. This means they can never return home. Children are easiest of all to recruit by force. The LRA in Uganda kidnaps children; many of them are under ten. They are taken from their homes at gunpoint. The boys are given weapons and forced to fight against the Ugandan army. Girls become the sex slaves of the LRA leaders.4 Where extreme poverty is present, the children do not even have to be kidnapped. They are easily purchased. Street children can be bought for 500 dollars in Kenya. Many, both children and adults, join voluntarily. A career with one or other of the gangs is preferable to starving to death or dying of a disease that can be easily treated. One alternative to scraping together a gang of your own is to hire an international company. Private Military Firms (PMFs) are a phenomenon that gained in popularity in the early 1990s. The employees in these firms are ex-officers and soldiers who lost their jobs during the 1990s, when, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, disarmament was widespread. States and companies are customers, and the demand for PMFs appears to be substantial. The US government has used them in both Krajina and Colombia. In Sierra Leone, two PMFs were involved in the conflicts. The first was the South African mercenary group Executive Outcomes. Their role was to fight on the side of President Ahmed Kabbah against the RUF rebels, and they in fact managed to keep him in power in 1996 and 1997. Once they left the country, he was rapidly deposed. The British PMF
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Sandline International moved in and made sure that he was reinstated in 1998. Although Sandline thereby breached the UNs weapons embargo, the action had the tacit support of both the British ambassador in Sierra Leone and individuals in the British Foreign Office. Sandlines bills were paid by the Sierra Leone government, and there is speculation as to how large a share was paid in the form of mining shares. The mines in question are diamond mines.5 If the gangs did not begin as breakaway groups from the army, they faced the problem of finding guns. In Somalia, where the government was weak, the gangs managed to loot military supply depots. But the bulk of the weapons that have fallen into the hands of African gangs came from Eastern Europe. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, arms have been freely exported. In some African countries, a Kalashnikov the classic weapon of the guerrilla fighter costs just six US dollars. The number of small arms such as Kalashnikovs has grown exponentially in recent years, as has the number of landmines. Africa has the greatest concentration of landmines, totalling more than 30 million. They have killed and maimed countless people, many of them children. But advanced technology is not needed to commit genocide. Machetes will do. Purchases by African states of heavy equipment such as attack jets, helicopters and tanks, fell from USD 4 270 million in 1988 to USD 270 million in 1995. Most gangs cannot afford such hardware. Prices, therefore, have tumbled. When Ugandan president Museveni wanted to buy tanks in 1999, he found that T-55s were available for USD 30 000 apiece, which was less than the cost of a Land Rover.6 Funding Maintaining an army is an expensive business. A private army cannot levy taxes to raise money for equipment, clothing, food and lodging for its soldiers. In the poorest countries, not even the state can afford the cost. Then there are the soldiers wages. Some choose not to pay their soldiers at all, but to let them live on whatever they can loot. This, however, makes soldiers less reliable. Armies must therefore become what the World Bank calls business organisations to finance their activities. The question then arises, what type of business activity can rebel organisations compete with? Unfortunately, rebel groups have only one competitive advantage, which is their usually extensive capacity for violence. As a result, the business activity to which they are best suited is blackmail of different kinds, or activities that only require them to maintain military control over a certain area. These business affairs are usually linked to the exploitation of raw materials. Examples include timber in Liberia, diamonds in Sierra Leone, oil in Congo-Brazzaville and coltan7 in Congo-Kinshasa. In Afghanistan, opium has been the warlords business choice. Following the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan has been restored to its position as the worlds leading producer. The market for all these products is in the rich countries. In one way or another, therefore, the warlords have to link up with the major international corporations.8 For example, coltan is taken from the Congo-Kinshasa under the protection partly of the Rwandan army (which thus helps finance its presence in Congo) and partly of Congolese warlords. Then coltan is shifted via numerous go-betweens in the US, Kazakhstan, China, Germany and other countries to the factories making Ericssons mobile phones, Intels computer chips, Hewlett Packards
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printers and Sonys Playstations. Communication between the gangs and the multinational corporations is more or less direct. Some gangs have learnt from the international finance market and sell future rights to their booty. In Congo-Brazzaville, ex-president Denis Sassou-Nguesso was able to finance his private army thanks to the USD 150 million paid to him by the French oil company ElfAquitaine for the future rights to his countrys oil reserves.9 The fact that the US company Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) already had an agreement with the government of the current president, Pascal Lissouba, made no difference to them. Laurent Kabila, who succeeded Mobuto Sese Seko as president of Congo-Kinshasa, once boasted that all he needed to take power was ten thousand US dollars and a satellite phone.10 The dollars were needed to recruit a small army. This cost little, as Congo-Kinshasa was one of the poorest countries in the world. The satellite phone was needed to do business with foreign companies. In point of fact, he signed a contract with American Mineral Fields Inc. (AMF) in April 1997 worth a billion US dollars. The contract was for copper and cobalt, and the modernisation of a zinc mine in Kipushi in the south-east of the country, where AMF wanted to build the worlds largest zinc smelting plant. In exchange, the company lent Kabila a private jet, a satellite phone and a million US dollars in cash. A month later, he had seized power. International business is not alone in supporting the gangs. The governments of neighbouring countries, which are often on the brink of barbarism, also want a chance to get rich. They can either finance and arm gangs to further their influence, or they can intervene themselves. Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Libya, Burundi and Chad have all been involved in the Congo-Kinshasa. Such interventions tend to suck surrounding countries into the barbarism. Armies in occupied areas of Congo have transformed themselves into gangs who do business with multinational corporations on a more or less independent basis.11 Barbarism is competition with gun in hand, which leads to wars that never seem to end. Inevitably, the number of casualties increased in the 1990s. While much of the World Banks analysis of the mechanisms behind civil war and the growth of the gangs is astute, their report does contain some fundamental flaws. Firstly, the authors have no perception of the role of imperialism (and their own role) in creating the poverty that caused the collapse of one society after another. They ignore the fact that the warlords were supported not just by international corporations, but also by imperialist governments. Nor do they mention that competing imperialist countries were supporting competing warlords. Imperialism not only deepened the various crises, but also prolonged them and made barbarism inevitable. The countries principally responsible for this were France and the US. Former colonial masters: France Africas share in world merchandise exports fell from 6.3% in 1980 to 2.5% in 2000. 12 Its share of global foreign direct investment, FDI, remained at about 3% in 2005. 13 In other words, Africa is an insignificant part of the global economy. However, for France, Africa is important. In contrast to Britain, it has kept a grip on almost all its former African colonies following independence. In addition, it has taken over Belgiums role as the major influence in the former Belgian colonies. France is the country that invests most in Africa.14 Jacques Chirac, when he was President of France, described Frances role in Africa in the following terms: France is not one of those countries that rediscovers Africa from time to time. We dont suddenly drop in when theres a political or economic crisis, or when theres a
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natural disaster. For an extremely long time now, France has been a caring partner Let there be no misunderstanding: France will not abandon Africa, were in for the long run.15 In practice, this long-term commitment has been a case of France supporting its protgs in Africa through thick and thin. It has not mattered how corrupt, unpopular, or tyrannical the governments in question have been France has backed them to the end. The regime in the small, oil-rich republic of Gabon on the African west coast is one such protg. Although most of the houses in the capital of Libreville lack running water, and one child in seven dies before the age of seven, Gabon has the highest consumption of champagne per capita in the world. Omar Bongo, the countrys leader for three decades, was handpicked by the advisors of French president de Gaulle. When forced to stand for election for the first time, in 1993, he lost. He travelled to Paris to seek guidance, and was instructed to simply ignore the elections results in the capital Libreville, and only count those in rural parts. He got the result he was looking for.16 Another of Frances protgs for three decades was Mobutu Sese Seko in Congo-Kinshasa (previously known as Zaire). In the 1960s and in 1977 and 1978, French troops were dispatched to the country to save Mobutu. His regime was one of the most hated in Africa. Mobutu and his cronies were masters at feathering their nests. In fact, a new phrase was coined to describe his rule kleptocracy (rule by theft). Congo-Kinshasa could be one of the richest countries in Africa. Besides coltan, the country is a world leader in the production of industrial diamonds. A quarter of the worlds cobalt is produced there, and the country has 80% of the worlds cobalt reserves. Congo-Kinshasa is also the sixth largest copper producer in the world. It possesses 13% of the worlds hydroelectric power potential, as well as oil reserves and coal deposits. The countrys natural resources are yielding colossal returns. The Mbuji May diamond mine alone has annual profits of USD 450 million. Mobutu amassed a personal fortune of USD 5 000 million. In 1994, the Congo-Kinshasa had a national budget of USD 300 million, while Mobutus income was USD 327 million.17 Frances strategy of selecting its leaders and then supporting them by all means created a degree of stability in the 1950s and 1960s. Other sections of the elite usually played a subordinate role, albeit reluctantly. Economies grew and created the means for a larger shareout among the privileged upper classes. The alternative was being deprived of their fortunes by Soviet-backed rebels. In the 1990s, everything changed, and the French strategy led to the worst case of genocide since the Second World War. The word genocide is often used casually to describe attacks on a particular ethnic group. But genocide is not simply a case of killing a large number of people. Genocide is the deliberate extermination of a race, nation etc.18 This means it makes no difference if one submits, if one is four years old or seventy, or if one changes ones religion or nationality one is murdered all the same. That is what happened in Rwanda in 1994. The Rwanda genocide When Rwanda gained independence in 1962, the Hutus Freedom Party came to power. The Freedom Party introduced a form of apartheid, openly discriminating against the other main ethnic group, the Tutsis. Economic growth was sluggish. Most people tried to live off the land, but agricultural plots were too small. Bloody clashes occurred time and again. In 1973, Juvnal Habyarimana seized power in a coup. Right until the genocide began,
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he had powerful friends and champions throughout the western world. The most steadfast were from France, and included President Mitterrand, his son, and many other important diplomats, politicians, officers and senior civil servants. In Kigali, Habyarimana had a strong, loyal ally in French Ambassador Georges Martres, whose dedication to the interests of the regime led to the joke in local diplomatic circles that he was really the Rwandan ambassador to France.19 French troops assisted in the expansion of the Rwandan army from about 6 000 on the eve of the invasion to some 35 000 three years later. French troops interrogated military prisoners, engaged in counter-insurgency, provided military intelligence, advised FAR20 officers, and offered indispensable training to the Presidential Guard and other troops, many of whom became leading genocidaires. Throughout this period, the French army worked closely with Rwandans widely known to be associated with, if not guilty of, murder and other human rights abuses.21 In 1991, the Tutsi-led Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) launched an invasion from bases it had built up in Uganda. French troops played a key role in preventing a RPF victory. After the invasion attempt, the leaders of the Hutus decided to put an end to the rivalry once and for all. This was to be achieved by exterminating the Tutsis. The French were fully aware of the careful planning that preceded the genocide. A commission of inquiry in the Belgian senate concluded that the Belgian authorities had known of these preparations as early as 1992, and had informed France. But the French government had continued to arm Habyarimanas troops. In January 1994, the UN Peacekeeping Office in New York had been warned by its own forces in Rwanda that training and planning for the murder of 1 000 Tutsis every 20 minutes had now been completed.22 But the UN made no move. The head of the Rwandan UN office was Kofi Annan. Nor was the US willing to back UN intervention, having just burnt its fingers in Somalia. Instead, following the deaths of ten of its troops, the UN reduced its force in Rwanda from 2 500 men to 270. When President Habyarimanas plane was shot down in April 1994, the presidential guard and Hutu militiamen launched their massacre of the countrys Tutsis.The Hutu militiamen were able to attract others to help them. This can partly be explained by the desperate lack of food and supplies. In 1989, American coffee wholesalers, aided by the US administration, successfully lobbied for the abolition of the International Coffee Agreement. This agreement had kept prices up. When it was terminated, prices tumbled to half their former level, and remained there for the next four years. Rwandas export income was also halved, as coffee made up 60% of the countrys exports. At the same time, the World Bank and the IMF forced upon Rwanda one of their Structural Adjustment Plans.23 Malnourishment increased in the country and only two thirds of the population had access to clean water. Almost one child in five died before the age of five. According to the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, the Hutu militias hoped that they would be given land, if they exterminated or chased out the Tutsis. Mass murders with machetes and knives spread rapidly. Many were forced to kill their neighbours. Panic-stricken Tutsis fled to Christian churches, but were caught in death-traps when the Hutu clergy let the killers enter. Not even young children were spared. After three months, almost a million people had been killed, and some 220 000 children had been orphaned. Even after the genocide had begun, France secretly continued to supply the Rwandan government with arms for at least a month.24
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Stephen Lewis, former Canadian ambassador to the UN, declared himself amazed at Frances involvement from beginning of the genocide to the end. We repudiate the position of the government of France, the position that asserts they had no responsibility, he said. They were closer in every way to the Habyarimana regime than any other government. They could have stopped the genocide before it began. They knew exactly what was happening. Worse, he said, the French peacekeeping mission eventually sent to the region allowed a huge number of Hutu attackers to flee the country to neighbouring Congo-Kinshasa, thereby ushering in the larger Great Lakes catastrophe. There is almost no redemptive feature to the conduct of the government of France.25 All this took place while France was ruled by a socialist president Franois Mitterand. The Hutu militias were finally put to flight. Following their departure, the French army, with the support of the UN Security Council, established a protected zone in the south-west of Rwanda where many of those responsible for the genocide took refuge. Several hundred thousand Hutus subsequently fled via the French zone into Congo-Kinshasa. The Hutu militiamen who were principally responsible for the attacks took control of refugee camps in Congo, and used them as military bases for raids against the new Tutsi-dominated Rwandan government. After a while, the refugees became hostages. The Hutu militia prevented them from returning to Rwanda once the situation had calmed down, using them instead them as human shields. They also attacked the Banyamulenge ethnic group in Congo-Kinshasa. The Banyamulenges were Tutsis who had been living in Congo-Kinshasa for centuries. This development led to what has been called Africas First World War. The US enters the fray Before discussing that war, another actor has to be introduced on the African stage the United States. Africa has always been at the bottom of the list of regions that the US was interested in. In 1996, while Europe had investments totalling USD 400 billion in Africa, American investments there were worth only USD 8 billion. In the latter part of the 1990s, the US began to display a growing interest in Africa. A comparison between US investment in 1983-87 and in 1993-97 shows a five-fold increase. The greatest magnet was the discovery of oil. In 2000, about 14% of US crude oil came from Africa, against 18% from the Middle East.26 Compared to their positions on Iraq, the US and France could be said to have more or less changed roles in Africa. In Africa, it is the French who behave arrogantly and are openly brutal in their actions, while the Americans have been more cautious and sought to present themselves as peace brokers. In practice, however, the US has been as cold-blooded as France. The US has lent support to various dictatorships and gangs in order to strike at others, and improve its position. Washingtons closest ally in Africa has been Yoweri Museveni in Uganda. His economic reforms have been held up as a model for other countries to follow. Museveni took power in 1986 on the back of a civil war. Ten years passed before he held his first elections. When he finally did so, he only allowed candidates from his own party. It was scarcely surprising that he won almost 70% of the vote.27 The Americans awakened interest in Africa set them on a collision course with France. Eduard Balladur was the French prime minister at the time of the Rwandan genocide. When discussing the atrocity with a French parliamentary committee of inquiry, he noted that key figures in the Tutsi-led RPF troops had received American military training, while serving in the Ugandan army. RPF leader Paul Kagame had also been trained in the US. In several cases, the US and France have ended up on opposite sides in African armed conflicts. Such a
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confrontation between different imperialist powers had not been seen since the Second World War. It was the RPF that took control in Rwanda once the killers in the Hutu regime had been overthrown, although formally speaking the country was ruled by a coalition. The RPF enjoyed good relations with the US. So, despite investing heavily in Rwanda, both economically and militarily, France has lost ground. Bernard Debre, a minister in Balladurs government, could not disguise his bitterness at this development: This must be said: if France was on one side, the Americans were on the other. They armed the Ugandans, who armed the Tutsis. I dont wish to present it (the genocide authors note) as a power struggle between the French and the Anglo-Saxons, but the truth must be told.28 Africas first great war In Congo-Kinshasa, Mobutus French-backed regime was in a state of collapse. To divert attention from his corrupt rule, Mobutu decided to ally himself with the Hutu militia controlling the refugee camps in the east of the country. Together, they began driving all members of the Banyamulenge ethnic group into Rwanda. The Banyamulenges defended themselves, and an alliance was formed bringing together a broad spectrum of opposition groups of differing ethnic origins. The leader of this coalition, the ADFL, was Laurent Kabila. The alliance was supported by the Rwandan government, which wanted to put an end to the attacks launched by the Hutu militia from Congo-Kinshasa. Uganda, too, supported the ADFL, as Mobutu had backed Islamic rebels in that country. And backing Uganda and Rwanda was the US, anxious to curtail French influence in the region. Angola also lent its support as UNITA had bases in Congo. UNITA was a bandit gang originally financed by South Africa to fight against the Stalinist regime in Angola. Its leader, Jonas Savimbi, managed to become one of the richest men in the world. Kabilas alliance crossed the whole of Congo-Kinshasa, from the border with Rwanda in the east to Kinshasa in the west, in just seven months. Mobutus ill-paid and corrupt army collapsed like a house of cards once Kinshasa had been captured in May 1997. But Kabila scarcely had time to change the countrys name from Zaire to the Democratic Republic Congo, before the alliance foundered. Kabila (who had fought with Che Guevera in Congo) established friendly relations with the leaders of Cuba and China, and talked about nationalising parts of the economy. This caused the Banyamulenges to revolt. They swiftly won the backing of both the US and France, who had no problems uniting against any attempts to remove the possibility of nationalisation. Kabila lost control of the situation, and began to support the Hutus instead. Namibia, Zimbabwe, Libya, Burundi and Chad all entered the conflict, as did mercenaries on both sides. In addition, the Sudanese government has sent troops to the Congo-Kinshasa to fight Uganda, which supports the guerrillas in southern Sudan. Complete chaos. The various alliances were fragile, and the various groups in them changed sides whenever it suited them. Laurent Kabila was eventually murdered and replaced by his son, Joseph Kabila. Rwanda and Uganda, who both helped start the bloodshed, later began warring with each other in pursuit of greater influence in the region. Then Congo-Kinshasa fell apart. 5.4 million died according to one estimate.29The largest amount of casualties for any single war since the Second World War. Barbarism or socialism? These wars are by no means exceptions in Africa, there have been many more involving
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Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Burundi and others. In most conflicts, the same ingredients recur: imperialisms destruction of the economy and society, desperation born out of extreme poverty, battles for control of raw materials, barbaric tendencies, and conflicts between various imperialist powers. Also present are such nightmare elements as child armies, mutilation and huge numbers of destitute refugees. If you want to know the value of a diamond, you should take all the arms and legs they have cut off and place them on one side, and all the diamonds that have been dug up over the past ten years and place them on the other side. Then you divide one by the other, and that is the price of a diamond in Sierra Leone.30 Barbarism does not benefit imperialism, even if it is imperialism that is responsible for its development. Imperialists would prefer to exploit the Third World in peaceful, controlled circumstances. So they became increasingly obliged to intervene militarily in Africa. The British military moved into Freetown (Sierra Leone), the French into Abidjan (Ivory Coast), and the Americans into Djibouti, as though establishing a succession of colonial trading posts. They more or less managed to quell the gangs within these cities, but rarely outside them. Thus Africa began to be re-colonised. It has become more and more difficult for the major powers to rule by proxy. They are no longer able to trust local rulers, but are obliged to step in and exercise power themselves. This is hardly likely to lead to peace. People hope to receive protection as a result of their ethnic, religious or national affiliation, and their leaders seek to build on this and exploit it only to betray their supporters whenever there is the slightest chance of lining their own pockets. To place ones faith in a better life on affiliation to a group, which has no capacity for constructing a non-exploitative society is to fall into a deadly trap. But what is the alternative? In South Africa, people of all races, religion and ethnic affiliation were organised by the COSATU union movement, by the ANC national liberation movement, and by the Communist Party. All listed socialism as an objective. The successful struggle against apartheid was waged principally by the working class, by means of a series of bitter strikes and protests. The South African regime sought to split people up into races and ethnic groups. That was the whole point of the apartheid system. Blacks were not the citizens of a unified South Africa, but had their own homelands based on their tribal affiliation. In these Bantustans, blacks were to develop separately and decide their destinies for themselves without any interference from the whites, who would decide over their own country. The South African apartheid government also encouraged violence between different ethnic groups, using Zulu Chief Buthulezi and his Inkatha movement to try and provoke tribal conflict. This tactic failed. The only reason why apartheid collapsed was that the working class was strong in South Africa. The need for solidarity is not a matter of taste or a moral question for the working class, but is built into the material fabric of society. United we stand, divided we fall. In the rest of Africa, the working class is very weak, excepting Nigeria and Egypt. But by uniting the working class throughout Africa behind the goal of a socialist federation, this problem can be overcome. Such a strategy would result in the working class receiving the support of Africas farmers and peasants, who are the majority of the population, and who would for the first time be given an alternative to meaningless slaughter. It was this that the Bolsheviks managed to achieve in Russia in 1917. Rosa Luxemburg wrote the following in The Junius Pamphlet31 midway through the First World War.
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Friedrich Engels once said: Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism. What does regression into barbarism mean to our lofty European civilization? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world war is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. At first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses towards its inevitable consequences. Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration a great cemetery. Or the victory of socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism and its method of war. Unfortunately, the choice has already been made in large parts of Africa, but not by the people. The inevitable consequences of imperialism have been forced upon them: depopulation, desolation, degeneration, and societies that are beginning to resemble great cemeteries. ___________________ 1 Time, Classroom Edition, 30 March 1998. 2 Dagens Nyheter, 2 November 2003. Congo was divided into two nations. Both have changed names many times. To make things simple we follow the custom of identifying them by the names of their capitals. Thus we call the Democratic Republic of Congo: Congo-Kinshasa. And the Republic of Congo: Congo-Brazzaville. 3 World Bank: Breaking the Conflict Trap, 2003 4 The Economist, 6 September 2003 5 Axess, September 2002 6 Steven Metz: Refining American Strategy in Africa, 2000 7 Coltan is a mineral combining two metals, columbite and tantalite, and is used in mobile phones and computer chips. 8 International Peace Information Service, Supporting the War Economy in the DRC, 2002 9 World Bank Report: Breaking the Conflict Trap, 2003 10 www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/motherlode/gold/fried.html 11 IPIS: Supporting the War Economy in the DR Congo, 2002 12 http://www.europaworld.org/week179/africacalls28504.htm 13 http://www.unctad.org/TEMPLATES/webflyer.asp?docid=7460&intIt emID=1465&lang=1 14 www.arabic.news.com 11 November 1998 15 BBC special report, December 1998 16 Ibid. 17 Jordi Martorell: Mobutu Overthrown: What next for the new Congo? 1997 18 The Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 1977
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19 http://www.visiontv.ca/RememberRwanda/Report.pdf 20 Forces Armees Rwandaises (Armed Forces of Rwanda) 21 http://www.visiontv.ca/RememberRwanda/Report.pdf 22 Lnder i fickformat, Rwanda Burundi, 1999 23 Website of the International Coffee Organisation, and the Michigan State University Agricultural Economics departments special website on Rwanda Food Security Research, quoted in Internationalen, 5/04. 24 Reports in the conservative French daily, Le Figaro, cited on the BBC, 21 April 1998 25 New York Times, July 8, 2000 26 Steven Metz: Refining American Strategy in Africa, 2000 27 www.afrik.com/article2401.html 28 Therese LeClerc: Who is responsible for the genocide in Rwanda? 1998 29 Washington Post, January 23, 2008 30 Socialist Appeal: Sierra Leone: The nightmare legacy of imperialism, 19 May 1998 31 Also known as The Crisis of Social Democracy

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17. The Iraq War: A strategy for world dominance

God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East.1 George W. Bush, June 2003 In March 2003, the United States and the Coalition of the Willing invaded Iraq. Five years later, at least one hundred thousand people, but maybe up to a million, had died and many more had been injured.2 Over four million people had become refugees, half of them in Iraq and half outside. Little remains of what was once one of the most prosperous and developed countries of the Middle East. Those parts of Iraq that are not controlled by the US army are run by sectarian gangs. Today almost everybody understands that the official reasons given for the war weapons of mass destruction, war against terror, axis of evil, introduction of democracy do not amount to a row of beans. 9/11 and the rapid victory in Afghanistan provided the American government with the opportunity it needed to break Americans deep-seated distrust, which had endured since the Vietnam War, of using ground troops to invade another country. But neither were the real reason. To say, as has become common, that the real cause of the war was oil is correct. However, at the same time it is not a sufficient explanation. There has always been oil in Iraq, what was it specifically in 2003 that drove the US to invade Iraq? a. The Saudi royal family was tottering Growing instability in Saudi Arabia was one of the chief reasons why the US was in such a hurry. 66% of all proven oil reserves recoverable with present technology at current prices are in the Middle East. This compares with 9% in Latin America and 6% in North America.3 The largest reserves are in Saudi Arabia, and the second largest in Iraq. Predictions have been made that the demand for oil will increase by 40-50% up to 2025. Whether or not this prediction proves accurate, oil is a crucial raw material for the global economy, and Saudi Arabia plays a key role in the oil market. The country has functioned as a tap that can be turned on or off to reduce or raise the price of oil. Saudi Arabia is an out-and-out dictatorship. Political parties are forbidden, the press is censored, and no democratic elections have ever been held there. There are frequent reports of torture, and dissidents are jailed or executed. Thieves risk having their hands chopped off. Women are not allowed to drive cars. But the White House has had no objections. The US regime has long enjoyed excellent relations with the Saudi royal family. For decades, the Saudi regime had seemed rock solid. Massive amounts of oil revenue had raised living standards for the population as a whole, despite the absurdly large share that the royal family and their intimates had taken for themselves. Education and health-care were free of charge. No tax was levied on private income. There was a social insurance system.
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Petrol, electricity, gas as well as air tickets were extensively subsidised by the state. The country attracted large numbers of guest workers from poorer countries in Asia.4 However, in 2003 the official unemployment rate was 25% among men.5 Unemployment among women was not counted: most women are not allowed to work. Native Saudis had to fight for jobs, such as that of receptionist and security guard, that a few years earlier were performed only by immigrant labour. Income calculated as GDP per capita fell from USD 16 650 in 1981 to a record low of USD 6 527 in 1998. This meant that while GDP per capita in Saudi Arabia was on a par with the US earlier, by 1998 it was only a quarter of the American level. In 1999, the national debt amounted to 120% of national income.6 Discontent with the resultant budget cuts led to revolts and even to cases of mutiny in the army. Criticism was so widespread that the regime could no longer silence its troublemakers completely. The unrest was openly discussed in a number of royal speeches, exposing a political divide in the royal family. The regime also tried to reduce the number of immigrants by imposing an extra 10% tax on their wages. The Saudi establishment was split on the question of the royal family. A large faction took the view that the parasitic regime must be removed in order to prevent a grassroots uprising that could lead anywhere. Supporters of the monarchy, on the other hand, argued that a change at the top would open the floodgates, and the resultant drive for improvements would sweep away a great deal more than just the royal family. In the shadow of this conflict among the elite, the fundamentalist Wahabi movement flourished. The ultra-orthodox sect was no new phenomenon in Saudi Arabia. For 250 years it has been closely allied to the al-Saud royal family.7 The Wahabi movement conferred religious legitimacy on the al-Sauds in exchange for being given a free hand to wage its holy war, or jihad. The movement was also in charge of education, the media, the vice squad and other administrative areas. The Wahabi manifesto, which states that one must never support the infidels, is compulsory reading in Saudi schools. Also drummed into young Saudis is the Prophet Mohammeds message, I will drive out the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and leave none but Muslims. As long as the Cold War was under way and the Saudi Islamists were directing their jihad at the Soviet Union and its allies, the US was happy not to interfere. The fundamentalists advances in Nassers Egypt, Afghanistan, the Balkans and Central Asia had US backing. When these fundamentalists turned against their former allies, however, it was a different matter. By criticising the corrupt practices of the ruling clique and American interests in the oil fields, and also by stirring up opposition to the US military presence in the Holy Land, the Wahabi movement exploited deep-rooted popular discontent in Saudi Arabia for its own ends. In August 2002, excerpts from a report brought before the Pentagons Defence Policy Board (a consultative assembly of prominent figures, including Henry Kissinger and former vice president Dan Quayle) were leaked. There, Saudi Arabia is described outright as an enemy of the US and as the kernel of evil. The report goes on: The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader.8 The report ends with a recommendation that the al-Saud family be given an ultimatum: Stop backing terrorism or face seizure of your oil fields and your financial assets in the US! Other confidential US government papers claim that a break-up of Saudi Arabia would benefit US interests, and should therefore be encouraged.9 The US was particularly interested
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to see the oil-rich Shia Muslim provinces in the shore region closest to Iraq break away. The Saudi regime could have been swept away at any time by internal forces of a less proAmerican disposition. A pro-American puppet government in oil-rich Iraq would make it easier for the United States to deal with a crisis in Saudi Arabia. b. Bushs unpopular domestic policies Another reason for invading Iraq as soon as possible was the situation in the US. Opinion surveys in January 2003 showed Bushs policies to be highly unpopular.10 The budget deficit was substantial and social welfare programs were either being cut back or only keeping pace with inflation.11 Even his drastic tax cuts failed to find favour with the voters. To win the next election, Bush would have to divert the attention of the voters from class divisions, the budget deficit, unemployment, the healthcare crisis and corporate fraud. He needed an external enemy that could unite the American people. When the war began, some critics fell silent (or were refused media exposure) and many people rallied around the Commander-inChief. To win the next election, Bush would have to divert the attention of the voters from class divisions, the budget deficit, unemployment, the healthcare crisis and corporate fraud. Bush also had other reasons for going ahead with his war plans. He would have been pilloried by his neo-conservative backers if he had opted out. To get some idea of this groups outlook on the world it is worth looking at a meeting in Virginia attended by 4 000 neo-conservatives. The gathering seethed with hatred of the liberal establishment, of professors who indoctrinated the countrys youth with black Marxism and taught them to become faggots. There were calls for income tax to be totally abolished and that Ariel Sharon, Israeli Prime Minister at the time, should be given a free rein. Arabs and Muslims had taken the Communists place as the main enemy, the meeting was told. Posters carried the message Give war a chance peace through greater force of arms. There were badges inscribed Fight crime shoot back!, car stickers declared No Muslims = No Terrorism, and Tshirts labelled Pray for him. The extreme right had taken Bush to its heart. And one of the speakers at the meeting was Vice President Dick Cheney. 12 c. Scaring others into line A greater threat to US power-holders than Saddam Husseins regime was the revolts, protests and revolutionary movements that spread from country to country in Latin America. Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador all experienced strong leftist currents and open, simmering discontent with capitalism and imperialism. It was impossible for the US to invade these countries. Hitting Iraq would sound a warning to others. A massive show of strength will help bring about a rapid Iraqi surrender and demonstrate Americas power to all other potential foes.13 Contrary to the claims of the hawks in Washington, it was precisely the fact that Saddam Husseins regime had already been disarmed that caused the US to declare war on Iraq and launch an invasion. Iraqs military strength had been halved since 1991.14 Bushs strategists counted on American military superiority to keep the war short. Following an overwhelming American victory in Iraq, they thought, trouble spots around the world would calm down and we would see a Pax Americana, a global peace wholly on American terms. d. The oil companies and the war industry

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Previous American presidents have sought to maintain a reasonable distance to the countrys major corporations. The American people on both right and left have always mistrusted big business. But with the kind of over-confidence that comes from dominating more than half of the world, the Bush administration was the first to be so open in taking the side of big business, and especially the big oil companies and the war industry. For these corporations, the war was about landing lucrative contracts and making billion-dollar profits. Vice President Cheney and leading representatives of the ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips oil giants met secretly to discuss the war. Also at the meetings was the worlds largest supplier of services to the oil industry, Halliburton, whose chief executive used to be Dick Cheney himself. Cheney is also involved in Unocal (which has major interests in Afghanistan), ExxonMobil, Shell and ChevronTexaco.15 Other leading figures in the US administration with links to the oil industry included President George W. Bush himself, who is the son of oil magnate George Bush Sr (a former president) and the founder of the Arbusto oil company. (Arbusto is Spanish for bush). He is also a previous chairman of Spectrum 7 Energy and a former advisor to the Harken Energy Corporation. Ex-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, was a member of the ChevronTexaco board.16 A look at the Carlyle Group, an investment firm that managed almost USD 14 billion and invested enormous sums in the defence industry, exposes the links between the Bushs government and the war industry. The former board chairman of the Carlyle Group was Frank Carlucci, previously head of the CIA and secretary of defence in Ronald Reagans cabinet. Carlucci was chairman emeritus of the Carlyle board and closely connected to Donald Rumsfeld. George Bush Sr worked for the company as a senior advisor, along with former secretary of state James Baker. The Carlyle executive board included a large number of George Bush Srs old colleagues, including Richard Darman, a former budget director in the White House. Colin Powell had been engaged as a speaker, and the groups European activities were led by the former British Prime Minister John Major.17 The war had only been under way for a few days when the battle for reconstruction contracts began. The US leadership took the view that American companies should be given priority. Huge sums were at stake. Estimates of the value of these contracts varied from USD 25 billion to 100 billion. They involved the reconstruction both of the oil industry and of Iraqs infrastructure. Electricity and water supplies, roads, power transmission, schools, hospitals and communications were to be restored. The more was destroyed in the war, the more would have be to restored afterwards. In March 2003, the agencies of the US Department of Defence and the Pentagon were already dealing with bids. The bidders included Halliburton, its subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root (who built the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba), and the giant Bechtel construction company (whose executives included Caspar Weinberger, formerly Reagans secretary of defence), as well as Schlumberg, Flour and others. All American. In Britain, the news that US companies were being given priority aroused considerable anger. As British soldiers were taking part in the war, British companies should also be awarded contracts this, it was thought, was only logical. The fact that it was not the same Britons that were risking their lives was not mentioned. What infuriated the British in particular was the revelation that under US rules, the American aid agency, USAID, which was to finance the construction of roads, bridges, ports and other infrastructure, was required to award the contracts to American companies first. British aid, on the other hand, went via the UN and the EU, which do not accord British companies special treatment. As a result, the British
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company, P&O Ports, lost the contract for the reconstruction of the port in Umm Qasr. Aid agencies were not, of course, supposed to pay the bulk of the costs. The US administration had come up with a much better way of financing Iraqs reconstruction without burdening the American taxpayer. When Clare Short, the British Secretary of State for International Development, resigned her post in May 2003 in protest at the war, she revealed that the US had demanded that Iraqs oil revenue should be placed in a fund which the American-led coalition, not the UN, would preside over.18 Strategy for world dominance As can be seen from the above, the US administration had a number of good reasons for going to war with Iraq precisely when it did, in March 2003. However, there was also a more long-term strategic interest in getting control over Iraq. Already in 1997, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, President Bushs brother, Jeb, and others signed a Statement of Principles issued by the neo-conservative think-tank called Project for the New American Century (PNAC).19 Several of its founders were given prominent US government positions when George W. Bush was elected. The PNAC tried to define the path the US should pursue following the demise of the Soviet Union: As the 20th century draws to a close, the United States stands as the worlds pre-eminent power [What is now needed is] a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States global responsibilities.20 The PNAC writes about building up American power more or less everywhere even in space and on being prepared to intervene in a range of countries. It also stresses the need to keep US troops in northern and central Europe, despite the stability there. The document expresses concern lest some alternative to the American military presence might evolve and leave the US without a voice in European security affairs. 21 In other words, the PNAC presents a recipe for world dominance.22 The acquisition of Iraq was an important part of this strategy. The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein. 23 In fact, as far back as during the oil crisis of 1973-74, the idea that the US must dominate Iraq took root among people like Rumsfeld and Cheney. They both worked for the Ford administration, which was ousted as a result of the oil crisis.24

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18. The causes of war, and how to stop it: Big business and the struggle for socialism

We did not conquer India for the benefit of the Indians. We conquered India as the outlet for the goods of Great Britain. We conquered India by the sword, and by the sword we should hold it.1 Lord Brentford, former British government minister, speaking in 1930 It must be clear from everything that we have written in this book that we think that imperialism is the fundamental cause of war in the 20th and 21th century. Of course, there are many different factors behind every individual war, but imperialism underlies them all. Yet, so far we have not defined what exactly we mean by the term imperialism. In this concluding chapter we want explain what we mean by imperialism. And what the alternative is. Imperialism At the end of the 19th century capitalism entered a new stage, which it has not surpassed yet. It is this new stage that we call imperialism. Important contributions about what distinguished imperialism were made by a liberal, J A Hobson, and a social democrat, Rudolf Hilferding. In 1916, Lenin made a thorough analysis of the statistics and other evidence on the development of capitalism.2 Here we concentrate on three of the main features that he analysed. Together they are the economic driving forces behind colonisation, the struggle for the division and redivision of the world by the major powers, and war. Firstly, the development of finance capital is a defining feature of imperialism In the capitalist economies Marx described in the mid-19th century, there was more or less free competition between many capitalists. Most companies were small. But in the Communist Manifesto, as early as 1848, Marx and Engels foresaw that competition would inevitably lead to a concentration of capital. Some businesses succeed better than others. Small businesses are swallowed up or eliminated by larger ones; companies join forces in order to maximize their impact. Mergers and acquisitions result in a few dominating giant companies. Lenin wrote about the strikingly high degree of concentration that occurred in the international electrical industry between 1900 and 1912. At the turn of the century, there were 28 electrical companies in Germany, divided among 7-8 different groups. Twelve years later, the industry was completely dominated by AEG (Allgemeine Elektrizitts-Gesellschaft). A similar development in the US gave General Electric total control of the American electricity industry. Other key industries such as oil, coal, steel and chemicals underwent similar processes. As large sums of money were needed for investment in the means of production factories, machinery, raw materials the banking system developed rapidly. Banks, too, became larger and fewer. Bank savings were lent to companies wishing to invest. Thus the capitalists who controlled the banks acquired ever greater power. In exchange for providing credit, they were
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able to command seats on company boards, shares, and agreements to enter into a partnership with other companies controlled by the bank. Banking capital merged with industrial capital and became finance capital. Giant conglomerates, or syndicates as they used to be called, concentrated enormous sums of money and numerous industries in the hands of the finance capitalists. In 1912, for instance, John D Rockefeller and J P Morgan dominated the entire American banking system. Even today, big companies are constantly merging or buying one another. Volvo, for instance, the flagship of Swedish industry, has been part of the Ford group. Ericssons mobile phones are made by a company set up in partnership with the Japanese electronics giant, Sony. These mergers and acquisitions achieve benefits of scale and specialisation, commonly referred to nowadays as synergy effects and focusing on core activities. The larger the company, the better it is able to dominate the market, as do Microsoft, Intel and Cisco. Economic concentration can be seen everywhere. 51 of the 100 largest economies in the world are not nation-states but companies.3 The 500 largest companies control about half of world trade and about 90% of foreign investment.4 A few people at the top of these giant companies wield enormous economic power. They do not hesitate to use this power to influence and blackmail elected governments. If they want war, they can get it. Secondly, the concentration of money and power meant that the national market became too small. Competition ascended to the international level. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels wrote: The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. Competition between capitalists from different countries led to power struggles, the prize being the division of the world and the redistribution of its wealth. Imperialists competed to acquire colonies. The French historian Driault wrote in 1907: In recent years, all free territories in the world, with the exception of China, have been occupied by the European and North American powers. Several conflicts and shifts of influence and power have already occurred, and these presage more violent upheavals in the near future. For haste is of the essence: those nations that have not yet seized a share risk never being able to do so and thus missing out on the prodigious exploitation of the earth.5 As capitalism did not develop simultaneously or equally around the globe, there was never any fair fight for markets between capitalists of various countries. Britain was the first country to be industrialised and therefore the first to become a major capitalist power. In the mid-19th century, when the British government introduced free trade, the country was seen as the workshop of the world. British capitalists imported raw materials from other countries and sold them finished industrial products at a sizeable profit. However, neither the US nor other European states (especially France and Germany) was happy about this arrangement. Protected by customs barriers, they built up their own industries and were soon capable of competing with Britain. By the end of the 19th century there were several major capitalist powers. Every shift in the balance of economic strength between the great powers meant that political power had to be re-aligned globally. Some labour leaders, such as Karl Kautsky in Germany argued that what he termed ultra-imperialism could bring about stability and peace. Giant
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companies would enter into agreements with one another and therefore be more interested in peace than in war. Kautsky launched this theory in an article written a few weeks before the First World War.6 By the time it was published, in September 1914, it had already been overtaken by events. Agreements on prices or the carving up of markets never last long. Changes in power relations constantly lead to new showdowns. This struggle is sometimes conducted peacefully and sometimes by violent means. Any country, anywhere in the world, can become a scene of conflict, as competition is truly global. Thirdly, imperialism leads to and thrives on the export of capital. In the rich countries a surplus of capital arose.7 This capital was exported. Today such exports are called foreign direct investments. Economists estimate that foreign direct investments by the most developed countries prior to the First World War were at least as extensive as they are in the modern globalised world. The proportion of GDP exported by the developed countries may even have been larger then than it was at the end of 20th century.8 Most capital was invested in other imperialist countries, thus challenging other imperialists on their home turf. But there was also a strong incentive to invest in the Third World. Wages and other costs were (and are) lower there, and companies were able to squeeze even more profit out of the workers. Africa, Asia and Latin America could also supply them with cheap raw materials. Foreign direct investments was the principal means by which imperialism exploited so called underdeveloped countries, whether they were colonies or not. The fact that most colonies became independent by the end of the Second World War did not change the basic character of imperialism. When capital is exported from one developed industrial country to another, this contributes to trade and growth. However, export of capital to Third World countries normally leads to poverty and distress. How come it can make such a difference whether factories are built by domestic or foreign capital in the Third World? Capitalism in the rich European countries emerged as a result of interaction between agrarian and industrial development. The agricultural revolution in 18th century Britain paved the way for the industrial revolution of the 19th century. Rural labour, food and capital was freed to build towns. The towns in turn mechanised agriculture. A super-modern factory (that exports its products mainly to the developed countries), operating in a feudal or even more backward environment, is simply a solitary island in a sea of poverty and under-development. And actually reinforces backwardness. The Mexican case Mexico is a recent example of this kind of development. Since signing the NAFTA free trade agreement with the US and Canada in 1993, Mexico has seen capital flood across its borders as never before, drawn by the promise of cheap labour. Previously the fifteenth largest economy in the world, Mexico became the ninth largest by 2003. So far, it sounds good. But 85% of all foreign investment has ended up in the six Mexican states closest to the American border. There, in what are called maquiladora industries, workers assemble components made in the US or Canada, and finished products are re-exported. Only 3% of the components come from Mexican subcontractors. Infrastructure and education have hardly developed at all.9 Goods followed the influx of American capital into Mexico. Mexican import of pork, for
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instance, increased by more than 700% between 1993 and 2003. Mexican agriculture suffered badly from the avalanche of imported American produce, delivered by giant farms equipped with the latest technology and heavily subsidised by the US state. Mexican rural areas have been devastated. Even domestic producers of toys, shoes and other industrial goods have had difficulty surviving. Yet, Mexico has been in a relatively privileged position compared with other countries of the Third World. It has been able to export freely to the US and to Canada, with easy access to their markets. In spite of this, only a few of the very largest Mexican companies have benefited from the situation.10 In 1999, the total number of employees in the Mexican industrial sector was slightly lower than in 1985, and after 1999 the situation deteriorated further.11 During the first few years of the new century, 850maquiladora factories closed down, and employment elsewhere in the industrial sector fell as a result of the general downturn in the world economy and the switch to factories in China.12 As large numbers of unemployed and desperate people are constantly available for employment, wages in the maquiladoras remained low. After ten years of investment, wage costs were still USD 1.47 an hour for a worker on an assembly line in maquiladora industry, which was a tenth of the wage costs in the US.13 Other workers have fared even worse. Average pay fell by almost 70% between 1980 and 2001. And during the first two years of the pro-business Fox regime, between 2001 and 2003, wages declined further.14 The working environment and job security are in a miserable state. Almost a million Mexicans have left their homes and found work in these maquiladores. In the process, they have lost all legal protection. One tragic effect is the creation of a large-scale murder industry. Since 1993, four thousand women and girls have disappeared in Ciudad Juarez, one of the new industrial towns on the American border. Many of them have been found raped, tortured and murdered. Some were as young as six. Newly arrived women have been systematically singled out, because their disappearance often passes virtually unnoticed. Far from pursuing the matter through the courts, their impoverished families in other parts of Mexico have usually not even had the means to collect the bodies. This is not the work of one or several serial killers. When murder is committed on such a scale, and only one person is prosecuted (despite the fact that many of the women disappeared in the town centre in broad daylight), a lot of money is clearly involved. Journalists and independent investigators have begun to detect the outline of a cartel of rich businessmen, politicians at all levels, police officers and drug rings. They have organised themselves systematically to supply those with the right amount of money with the means to vent their hatred of women without fear of reprisal.15 In order to get away from the appalling situation, many in Mexico have taken advantage of an opportunity that most people in the Third World do not have they leave. In the 1990s, three and a half million Mexicans emigrated legally to the US. At least a further four million moved there illegally. Thanks to these emigrants, imperialism has not proved a complete disaster for Mexico. Despite having the worst jobs in the US, the migrants managed to send home more money in 2003 than foreign investors spent in Mexico that year USD 14 billion as against USD 10 billion.16 In India the same imperialist processes have been at work. Despite foreign investments and a relatively rapid growth rate for some time, poverty has increased. From 1981 to 2004 the

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number of people in abject poverty (on less than USD 2 a day) increased by 242 million.17 The picture is clear. In the Third World, imperialism creates industrial enclaves while ransacking the rest of the country. It either creates huge slum areas where jobless people try to eke out a living for themselves in one way or another as in large parts of Latin America or locks countless people into an ancient feudal system, as in India and Pakistan. Or both. The domestic bourgeoisie in Third World countries is so weak that it neither can nor wants to struggle for land reform. Nor do they want to challenge foreign capital, on which they have become dependent. The imperialists themselves do not want to see progress in rural areas. Under-development is one of the reasons why they can pay low wages. Loans, aid, and import controls as imperialism There are others forms of capital exportation, besides direct investment, that can enslave poor countries credit for example. In the early 20th century, it was France in particular that lent money internationally, primarily to Russia, and profited from the interest. In 1913, a banking magazine, Die Bank, wrote: In such international business dealings, the lender always gets something back, whether it is a trade policy advantage or a coal station, the construction of a harbour, a fat concession or an order for artillery.18 In the 1990s, the IMF and the World Bank adopted the same approach. They have lent huge sums to developing countries and then used the debt as a lever to get economic policies that benefit imperialism. Aid is also export of capital. Economic assistance to the Third World may be tied or not tied. Tied aid programmes oblige recipient countries to spend their money on equipment and expertise from the donor countries. In practice, this means giving big companies export assistance. In the 1990s, tied aid comprised about 65% of the total volume of aid.19 The industrialised countries have erected trade barriers to protect themselves from those goods that the developing countries are able to export. At the same time as they insist that poor countries dismantle their import controls. The rich world subsidises its farmers to the tune of USD 300 billion every year while charging import duty on agricultural products from developing countries. Japan, for example, has imposed a 1 000% import charge on rice. And although it is more expensive to produce cotton in the US than in Africa, it is the Americans who export most. The reason is that American cotton growers received USD 4 billion in government subsidies. Likewise, import charges on articles like shoes and textiles are high. On average, tariffs applied by rich countries on the types of goods that poor countries produce are four or five times higher than the tariffs on goods usually imported from other rich countries. 20 To sum up, the concentration and integration of industrial and banking capital into finance capital, the internationalisation of capital and the export of capital these three developments began to exert their influence at the end of the 19th century. Capitalism entered its imperialist phase, distinguished by cut-throat international competition and the plunder of weaker countries. This was the principal cause of war during the last century. Who rules? Ultimately, it might be argued, it is governments that rule, not big business. Whether governments come to power by democratic or other means, surely it is governments who make the decisions about taxes, laws, and war and peace? The question is, however, who or what decides the decisions a government ultimately makes?
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Who influences whom? Who controls whom? Rudolf Hilferding argued that as imperialism developed, the captains of industry acquired a new view of the state.21 Previously they had embraced liberalism, arguing in favour of minimal state intervention in order to encourage competition. But now they needed state machinery to help them fight foreign competitors, protect domestic markets, and pave the way for exports. They also wanted the state to be strong enough to protect their interests abroad and intervene abroad to create investment opportunities, even at the risk of conflict. Although most big companies operate globally nowadays, they have usually not severed their ties with their own country. There are of course some more or less stateless companies, particularly in small countries like Sweden, Switzerland and the Netherlands (but also in Britain, where few large companies survived the Thatcher years). However, on average two thirds of the sales and assets of the largest companies in the world are to be found in their country of origin. Furthermore, almost all of them have their head offices, their research and development facilities and their core production at home.22 This is not due to any loyalty to their country of origin: it is useful to have a government behind one nationally as well as internationally. That the US government acts in the interests of American big business is hardly a secret after George W. Bushs government, but that the Swedish government also acts in the interest of imperialism may come as a surprise. Swedish imperialism Internationally, Sweden has a reputation of being an anti-imperialist force. Some people even believe it to be a socialist country. Although ex-Prime Minister Gran Persson supported the USA during the Afghanistan War and refused to openly criticize the Iraq War that began in 2003, the myth has survived. The truth is that Sweden is still what the Swedish Left used to call a small but hungry imperialist nation. Capital is so concentrated in Sweden that one family, the Wallenbergs, own most of what is worth owning. In 1997, the Swedish business daily Dagens Industri explained: The Wallenberg sphere has never had such a big influence on Swedish business as it has today. By means of multiple voting rights, control over blocks of shares, and loyal managers, it has built up an impregnable power base. Just a few years ago, there were those who ventured to challenge this business empire, but today the Wallenbergs are in complete control.23 Whatever the politics of the government, it has to come to terms with this fact unless it is prepared to break with capitalism. More than half of everything produced in Sweden is exported. Wallenbergs companies have three quarters of their sales outside Sweden. Exerting a decisive influence on conditions and policies in Sweden, they seek to gain the same kind of control in other countries. This is usually more difficult. Internationally they have considerably less clout than in Sweden. They may be able to exert a degree of influence on policies in small neighbouring countries such as the Baltic States, but their influence in countries like Germany, the US and Japan is almost negligible. The Wallenbergs and other Swedish capitalists depend on the Swedish state to promote and defend their economic interests in the outside world. And in Sweden it is hardly a secret that the government adjusts its policies to market demands, not only domestically but also abroad. The Social Democratic leadership helped Wallenberg by manoeuvring Sweden into
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the EU, despite widespread opposition from rank-and-file party members. The Wallenbergs most important markets are in the EU. In addition, the Wallenbergs wanted to join the EU to gain allies. Together with other European capitalists, particularly the German capitalists, they are stronger in the global struggle over markets against American and Japanese capitalists. The Swedish bourgeoisie has traditionally had strong ties to Germany. The previous Social Democratic government have also organised major trade-delegations to strategic markets such as Indonesia, South Africa and China. It was not by chance that Gran Persson praised Chinese stability when he visited the country. Trade visits to China are backed up by export funding programmes and foreign aid. In November 2003, Stockholms Social Democratic Finance Commissioner Annika Billstrm visited Shanghai. She was there as an expert aide to financier Jacob Wallenberg.24 After meeting with top executives in Shanghai, she travelled with Jacob Wallenberg to a conference in Beijing for Swedish companies with interests in China, among them Ericsson, Volvo and Investor. Successive Swedish governments, unlike, say, US governments, have long dressed up their foreign policies in internationalist clothing, but that does not hide the fact that they end up acting in the interests of Swedish imperialism. Transform the Labour Movement With an enemy as mighty as imperialism, the struggle for peace is not for the feint-hearted. But the problem is not one of strength and courage. The international working class is stronger today than ever before. It includes not only those who work in factories, but also those employed in service occupations of various kinds, in both the private and public sectors. Countless white-collar workers are labouring under the same pressures and are paid the same low wages as traditional blue-collar groups. All are wage-earners. Industrial workers alone numbered 115 million in the richest countries of the world in 1994, according to the OECD definition of a worker. That is three million more than in 1973, despite the oft-cited de-industrialisation process. In the Third World (including the former Stalinist countries), the number of industrial workers rose from 285 million in 1980 to 407 million in 1994!25 Before or during every war described in this book, the working class has shown itself prepared to take action against warmongers. In Sweden during the Union crisis, in Russia during the First World War, in Germany in the thirties, in Italy and Greece during the Second World War, in India in the struggle for independence, in the US during the Vietnam War, in South Africa in the fight against apartheid, in northern Iraq during the Gulf War, and all over the world prior to the Iraq War. But the story of the workers own struggle has been concealed, because it was most often betrayed by its leadership. There is no point in hoping that the leadership of the Labour Movement will go away, if one simply ignores it and organizes the struggle for peace outside the Movement. Any successful struggle must involve the Labour Movement the workers parties and the trade unions. Otherwise it will not acquire any real strength. It is necessary to understand that despite the many betrayals, the working class has consistently gone back to its organisations. Not because of its leaders but despite its leaders, and against them. Unions and workers parties are the instruments whereby the working class can change society, and a tug-of-war between right and left is constantly in progress in these
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organisations. Individuals cannot push the Labour Movement to the left, but a radical youth movement or a union movement can. Those young people who were at the head of the anti-war protests in 2003 could have played a key role in the radicalisation of the Labour Movement. Just as young people did in 1905. An independent united working class But waging a struggle against the leadership of the Labour Movement in order to be able to unite the working class across national borders both ideologically and organisationally is not enough. The peace program of the working class must be completely independent for the movement to succeed. What does that mean for all those who took to the streets to demonstrate against the war on Iraq in 2003 and all those who since then want to struggle for peace? To be independent it is necessary not to fall into the trap of choosing between evils, which have been formulated by our enemies. In a TV broadcast from the giant anti-war demonstration in February 2003, a reporter stuck a microphone in a young girls face and demanded that she choose between George Bush and Saddam Hussein. After some hesitation, she said Saddam Hussein. She probably chose him because he represented Iraq, and it was Iraq that was under threat from American bombs. In point of fact, however, the reporters question was absurd. One does not have to support Saddam Hussein (or Usama bin Ladin or the North Korean regime, for that matter) simply because one distrusts Bush. When oppressed people fight for national and social freedom, one must of course take their side. But this does not mean supporting those in power in any way (capitalists, generals and other members of the elite), since they represent an obstacle to the liberation of the working class and landless peasants. As it is almost always those in power who set the agenda and whose propaganda gets through, there is a strong pressure to take positions on artificial grounds. For or against. Good or evil. A favourite trick of the elite in their attempts to place people in one fold or another is to mix incompatible concepts: red-and-brown, Islamic Communists, Trotskyite Nazis, and so on. Also, by demanding in practice that those who criticise must be prepared to take responsibility for everything that other critics stand for, they try to silence the debate. It was perfectly possible to oppose the war in Iraq without supporting Saddam Hussein. In fact, Saddams dictatorship made it much easier for US imperialism to lay its hands on Iraqi oil. Resistance against the US invasion disintegrated because he was in power. In the end, nobody thought he was worth defending. Socialism Our goal has never been to stop just one war. Millions of people are dying, still more are suffering and the environment is being destroyed on a monstrous scale. Immense sums that could be channelled into healthcare, education and food production are being squandered on weapons. But things dont have to be this way. If the working class manages to revitalise the Labour Movement, it can take power in society, abolish imperialism and end all wars. Time and again, working class people in different countries have joined together to throw off the yoke of capitalist oppression and exploitation. Often, young people have been the most enthusiastic and most active participants in the struggle for a better and fairer world.
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But outbreaks of struggle occur suddenly and do not last for ever. As a rule, most people consider themselves fairly powerless in society. For how much power does an individual citizen have compared with the business leaders, media magnates and elite politicians of this world? In everyday life, it is difficult to feel that one is part of a wider collective or that workers together have enormous power. But that power is always present, and sometimes, when strikes or large demonstrations take place, those who are involved come into contact with it. When groups of workers begin to move in a certain direction, defying all obstacles placed in their way, things begin to happen fast. A socialist revolution in one country could count on an enormous amount of support from the working classes in other countries. It would awaken hope and inspire others to join the struggle and bring about a similar development in country after country. It would pave the way for a democratic federation of socialist countries throughout the world. This would put an end to imperialism and to war. For there is no reason why workers around the world should come into conflict with one another when they have the opportunity to make use of all the technological gains and all the fantastic resources that the earth has to offer to satisfy all human needs in harmony with nature. An International Labour Movement which engages in active struggle, which is democratic, and which pursues a socialist course can provide the answer in humanitys search for justice, peace and a better life. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Proletarians of all countries, unite! Concluding words of the Communist Manifesto 1848 ______________________________ 1 Michael Nicholson: Mahatma Gandhi, 1991 2 Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1916 3 Joseph J. Savitsky and Shahid Javed Burki: Globalization and the Multinational Corporation, 2001 4 Dr Graham Lister: Global Health and Development, 2000. This is a UK government review commissioned by the Department of Health. 5 Quoted in V. I. Lenin, Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1916 6 Karl Kautsky, Ultra-imperialism, 1914, http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1914/ 09/ultra-imp.htm 7 V. I. Lenin, Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1916 8 Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson, Globalisation in Question, 1996 9 Business Week, 22 December 2003 10 ibid 11 www.macroscan.com/fet/apr02/chart/Continuing_Paradox/chart4.gif 12 Business Week, 22 December 2003 13 ibid 14 According to a study by Universidad Obrera de Mxico (UOM). 15 Norma Edith Ramrez: Ciudad Juarez: Rich, Corrupt and Murderers, 2003 16 ibid 17 World Bank: Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion: Absolute Poverty Measure for the
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Developing World 1981-2004, 2007 18 Quoted in V. I. Lenin, Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1916 19 E. Childers: Demokratisera FN, 1998 20 The Economist ,4 September 2003 21 Das Finanzkapital, 1910 22 Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson: Globalisation in Question, 1996 23 Dagens Industri, 5 February 1997 24 Dagens Nyheter, 2 November 2003 25 Kim Moody: Workers in a Lean World, 1997 About the authors Kerstin Alfredsson joined the Young Social Democrats (SSU) in Jmtland, northern Sweden, in 1970, at the age of 14. She has been active in the Swedish Labour Movement ever since. Today, she belongs to the local branch of the Social Democratic party in Gubbngen, Stockholm. She has worked for many years as a librarian and has two children. Jonathan Clyne became politically active at the age of 15, in the Italian movement against the Vietnam War. After moving to England in 1975, he joined the Labour Party Young Socialists. In 1980, he moved to Sweden and joined the Young Social Democrats. Today, he is a member of the Social Democratic Party in Stockholm. He worked as a chef for ten years before becoming the editor of the Marxist paper Socialisten. He has three children. Lena Ericson Hijer joined the Young Social Democrats in Stockholm in 1972, at the age of 16. She began working as a home help and became a local shop steward with the General and Municipal Workers Union in 1979. She has since held a number of union posts including editor of MT, the union journal in Stockholm with a circulation of 90 000. She is an active member of her local Social Democratic branch and also of the local Social Democratic Womens Association. She has one child. As the authors of this book, we welcome a dialogue with our readers. Please send us your views, whether favourable or unfavourable. We would also be happy to help organise study circles based on the books theme, or to give talks, or to put you in touch with others who share the ideas in the book. Send a mail to bretorp@gmail.com or phone Jonathan Clyne at +46 707 600508.

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