In the 1990s there was a big ideological attack from the bourgeoisie with the claim that the working class no longer existed! This ideological attack was a sign of a real process. Before the process of globalisation began, there was the process of deindustrialisation in many countries. In Milan there used to be ten factories of 20,000 workers but there is not one now. The concentration of workers allowed organisation into the trade unions. The problems and difficulties that we have had as revolutionaries but also amongst the reformist left were the result of the deindustrialisation and changes in capitalism in Western European countries. You now have workers in offices of 20 people; there is a different working class. Most of the far left before, such as Lutte Ouvrière in France, was workerist. The industrial workers were the central contingent of the working class and the revolution. What do you think about the transformation and the role of the industrial working class?
It is indisputable that the process of deindustrialisation is common throughout Europe, Japan and the US, and even in the neo-colonial world in countries like Brazil, in Latin America and Africa. Factories are closed and the work outsourced to China, where the labour is cheaper. We have to view this question from an international standpoint. The world working class and the industrial working class on the world scale is still key, although the industrial workers are not necessarily in the ‘industrialised’ countries. That is why China, India and countries where there has been a certain development are so important. The outsourcing of factories to Eastern Europe and Russia will assume importance in the next period, although relocation there is not on the scale of China. Of course, not all value and surplus value is created by the ‘industrial’ workers nor do all these workers reside in China and other parts of Asia. There are new layers of the working class who are also productive and the working class in general is still dominant in Europe, the US and Japan.
But deindustrialisation is a conscious or semi-conscious policy on the part of the bourgeoisie. That was particularly the case in Britain, in which the process of deindustrialisation and the replacement of industrial capitalism by rentier capitalism, as Lenin put it, has gone much further than anywhere else, at least in Europe. The decline of manufacturing and industrial jobs in Britain is much greater than, for instance, in Germany or France, and perhaps even more than in Italy. Industrial workers are a higher percentage of the workforce in Italy than in Britain, where there are only 3.8 million manufacturing workers. We have to include amongst industrial workers those in transport and in extractive industries. Nevertheless, the industrial working class has shrunk.
Thatcher pursued a conscious policy of deindustrialisation that has some similarities to that of the French bourgeoisie following the Paris Commune, After the fright of the Paris Commune, Lenin pointed out, the French bourgeoisie deliberately held back the development of industry in France and developed a rentier capitalism based upon their colonies. It exported capital, extracted the surplus from their colonies but held back the development of industry and, therefore, the proletariat in France because of the social threat that it posed. This lasted for 100 years, Only under de Gaulle in the ten years he was in power did a big industrialisation take place and the agricultural labour reserves of France were used up.
There is an element of this now in the consciousness of the bourgeoisie of Western Europe to try and weaken the proletariat by relocating industry, or threatening to do so. In some countries now, the industrial working class is a minority of the working class, which is the case in Britain. The amount of cars produced in Britain is roughly the same as in the 1970s but this is done with a much smaller workforce and mostly foreign-owned companies. There is no British-owned mass car manufacturer now. On the other hand, the process of neo-liberalism has meant that sections of the workforce who previously did not consider themselves as part of the working class have been proletarianised. Civil servants in Britain, teachers, social workers and other workers of that character have changed their outlook from previous periods. In Britain, one of the most left-wing trade unions is the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) in which the Socialist Party has significant influence on the National Executive Committee and at all levels of the union. Teachers, at the present time, work in schools which are becoming factory-like. Schools used to be collaborative. Teachers would have a vocational attitude. But no more! The head teacher of a school is like the manager of a factory, often with the same kind of brutal attitude towards the workforce. In a broad sense, in the workplace there has been a ‘proletarianisation’ and also from a social point of view.
Therefore, what we are dealing with is a new working class. Industrial workers and transport workers are still a very important component of the working class. But they are complemented by the new sections – white-collar workers and others. Even though the industrial working class can be small in number, its specific weight within industry can be as great if not greater than in the past. One of the biggest labour forces in London is that of the workers at Heathrow airport, made up of many grades but with quite harsh conditions. This is a very important part of the London working class now. Many are migrant workers or former immigrant labour.
The working class is not disappearing but taking on a different form. Increasingly, it is not the classical working class of Marx and Engels, in Europe, Japan and the US. But the working class is a majority of society. In the past, British society was heavily proletarianised. Italy became proletarianised in the post-1945 period. But in the space of two generations, a huge agricultural reserve of labour shifted into industry. The masses were dragged up from the South and forced into great, inhuman factories, into dreary housing blocks, radicalised and revolutionised. Now, workers are thrown out of the factories into other, tertiary occupations. In Britain, car workers ejected from the factories get jobs in the service sector but at half the rates of pay they had before.
There are many factors here which are acting to radicalise, or potentially radicalise, the working class. The industrial working class is smaller but nevertheless can be crucial. We include railway workers amongst the industrial working class. The Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) can bring the whole of London to a halt by a strike on the tubes and trains, which means they occupy a big specific weight. But civil servants can also, by a strike, bring the whole of the government machinery to a halt. There is also the involvement of women who are a majority of the labour force in Britain now, which is a huge, potentially revolutionising factor. There are also new general theoretical questions which are thrown up such as the ideas of Marx on productive and non-productive labour. I think that is an important theoretical issue which has a certain bearing on the world situation today.
Where is the majority of the surplus value now created by world capitalism? Does it still come from industry in Europe, Japan and the US, or has it been transferred to China? What does that mean for the future? At the moment the ‘triad’ of Europe, Japan and the US collectively, because of their technological superiority, especially the US, are able to relocate and extract the surplus from China and Eastern Europe. This is then partly used by the triad to try and stabilise their home bases. British capitalism, for instance, has a deficit on its balance of trade which is the second worst since the 18th century but, because of its investments abroad, the tribute which it extracts from this plugs the gap.
New layers
The working class and proletariat has changed in consciousness, mean not just political consciousness. Today, there is militarisation. There are many unemployed people and some who retire early because of the benefits. Young people work in call centres with low wages. Capitalism has more profits in China but here they demand lower and lower wages. The capitalists introduce new technology but the ability of the working class to buy this falls. How has the ideology of capitalism over the working class changed? The ideology of the ruling class is not just from a political point of view but, through lifestyle. It more and more penetrates different parts of life and not only in production or the relationship to work.
This is an attempt at the ‘individualisation’ of society: each worker becomes an individual and the collective is lost. There is no doubt that there is a conscious policy to ‘atomise’, ideologically at least, the working class. Up to a point, and for a period, that can succeed because there is a problem of huge alienation now. Alienation, as Marx pointed out, is a product of capitalist society. There are few big wets There is the growth of home working. Where do workers come together in common struggle? Psychological and mental problems flow from that, because human beings are social animals. We have to address those difficult issues, But I think there are limits to it as well.
This situation can even produce a certain lumpenisation and disintegration of society, It was expressed by Thatcher, who said, “There is no such thing as society.” That is a conscious ideological approach: to scatter the working class politically and to dissipate its collective force. Perhaps when the system is going ahead, even inching ahead, it can succeed. When it jams and breaks down, when there are wars and ruptures, ‘individuals’ and groups begin to ask questions and that is where the political possibilities come in. By this attempt at individualisation, the bourgeoisie is loosening the bonds which bind the masses to the system; the ship’s moorings have gone, the anchor has been lifted and people are casting around for alternatives, and that produces a crisis of politics as well. ‘There is no alternative, where is the alternative? They are all the same!’ This is the mood of significant sections of workers. It can produce, in the first instance, a kind of nihilism, anarchist ideas and so on amongst young people, but it is a phase. It is the first wave before the working class, or at least sections of it, begin to draw conclusions and then are forced to move, which will have an effect on other sections of workers.
France
New layers of the working class have arrived in the last period. There is no more work in big factories. There are many difficulties in organising and fighting. There were two different interesting situations in France: the riots in November and the battle against the CPE (Contrat Première Embauche – first employment contract) in the spring. What do you think about these struggles and is it possible to see similar struggles in other countries? What was your view of the riots because there are very different positions inside the revolutionary left. For example, Lutte Ouvrière (LO) said the youth were not proletarians, they burn the cars of the proletariat; LO was outside and had no relationship with this rebellion. The Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR) had quite a different position but was in many ways reformist. So would like your judgement of this rebellion. Secondly, can the movement against the CPE be repeated in other countries?
The events in France are very important, not just for the French labour movement and the working class, but for Europe and the world. It is highly symptomatic of the general situation that is developing throughout the continent. In eight days at the end of March and beginning of April, there were two national demonstrations of three million people! That is extremely significant. The second point is that in the movement of the students and young people against the CPE, it was notable that the students, despite their lack of a revolutionary consciousness in general, instinctively turned towards the working class. The working class also understood the importance of this movement.
In these events, it was not 1968 per se but there was an element of 1968. In a way, it was more advanced than 1968 in the initial period. In 1968, there was the movement of the students, which came into collision with the Gaullist state. Despite the Communist Party, the working class linked up, defended the students from the police and then independently occupied the factories. This smashed a lot of the theories which were circulating in the far left at that time. In particular, the theory of the students as the ‘detonator’, put forward by ultra-left groups and even by some of the Trotskyists, such as the USFI, was erroneous. The student movements were symptomatic of the situation developing in French society but they were not an independent factor. You only have to compare France in 1968 to Germany. The extra-parliamentary movement in Germany was on a higher plane and more developed than in France but it did not have the same echo amongst the working class in Germany as in France because the conditions were different.
The whole situation in France had matured under Gaullism and those events culminated in the greatest general strike in history with ten million workers occupying the factories. It did not happen like this in 2006 largely because of the leadership of the students and the workers, and also because of their undeveloped consciousness. There was a lack of a general socialist alternative unlike the broad socialist consciousness of 1968. This was not present in the movement of Spring 2006. But there were two mass demonstrations of three million people. The students linked up with the working class and the working class understood that the attack on the students was an attack on them and their conditions. These were indications of the enormous potential.
Also important is the way that these events in France were understood internation ally and were taken up. In Chile, in the movement of the school and university students, it was understood that the reason why the movement in France forced a government to step back, temporarily at least, was the involvement of the working class, So they turned to the Chilean working class and the unions. We have a section of the CWI in Chile which participated in these events. In Greece, where the CWI has an important presence amongst the school and university students, and has developed significantly in the course of the last few years, the New Democracy government had got away with so many attacks on the working class. But like the bourgeois generally everywhere in a situation like this, they overreached themselves. They launched a vicious attack on education, the students reacted and began to push aside the conservative student leadership. We posed the need to tun towards the working class, which they did, the question of the general strike was put on the agenda and a public-sector strike did take place.
So those two movements showed the colossal importance of the developments in France which is still, from the point of view of the class struggle, the most developed political situation in Europe at this stage. This is because of the objective situation but also because of the traditions and role of the French working class. The revolt of March and April forced the bourgeoisie to step back and there is a bubbling discontent that could break out again.
The upheavals in the banlieues, the suburbs, were an extremely important movement as well. There is endemic, mass unemployment of the young people, particularly in these areas. Those French youth in the banlieues are the sons and daughters of immigrants from North and sub-Saharan Africa in the main though not exclusively. Given that ‘ghettoes’ exist, it is inevitable that flare-ups of this character will take place. The role of Marxists is not to hold up our hands in horror because this is not a perfect movement. This is a symptom of the incapacity of capitalism to absorb the most important productive force, which is the working class. It is compounded by the vicious racism against these youth and their parents, and the repression by the police and the bourgeois state in these areas.
It is not the first time nor will it be the last, when the working-class movement does not show a way forward, that inchoate, almost nihilistic, anarchistic moods will develop. Even in the Russian Revolution prior to October, when the Bolsheviks were becoming the majority in Petrograd, Trotsky made the point that there was a mood of impatience growing amongst a section of the working class. If the working class had not taken power – in the window of opportunity roughly between September and November 1917 – then the anarchists would have grown and the Bolsheviks would have fallen back. Ultra-leftism, anarchist and nihilistic moods are always payment for the opportunism of the leaders of the labour and trade union movement, and this movement was no different.
We have had experience of this in Britain. We had the uprisings, because that is what they were, of the populations of Brixton and then Liverpool 8, Toxteth, in 1981. We were involved in the sense that we tried to give it a positive direction. In the Brixton riots of 1981, Clare Doyle became a major spokesperson, known as ‘red Clare’ in the media. Our attitude was to say that the reason for that uprising was the neglect of these areas, the discrimination, the role of the police and so on. We demanded certain reforms in the area. We also pointed out to the youth that this was not the way to fight: ‘Don’t fight individually in single combat against the capitalist state. You should get organised and link up with us, with the working class and the labour movement in a conscious struggle against capitalism.’
The same approach should have been adopted by the far left in France. Lutte Ouvrière took a ‘purist’ and, therefore, erroneous position. It is entirely wrong to think that everything outside of a movement of the industrial working class in its ‘pure’ form is unimportant. What about white-collar workers? In the process of the decay of capitalism, déclassé layers can grow, even semi-lumpen layers like in the US in the 1960s in the conditions that existed amongst the black population. Nevertheless, we saw the rise of the Black Panthers, the anniversary of whom we are now marking. It was a marvellous testimony to socialism and Marxism that Huey Newton, Bobby Seale and others organised about one million people who considered themselves revolutionaries. These were not classical industrial workers in the main but they could have been an important lever for developing a base amongst the working class movement.
We do not stand aside from the youth in the French banlieues. We say to them that cars should not be burned, nor should white youth who are sympathetic to you be mugged and attacked. That is nihilism which will alienate other workers. But our first duty is to criticise the bourgeois state and police for their repressive methods and not to stand aside from the movement. Lutte Ouvrière was entirely wrong in their stance but even the LCR were passive in the first period and did not intervene in the areas to criticise the police, probably because the bourgeois press presented it as a dangerous movement threatening ordinary working-class people, their cars and property. We intervened to demand a withdrawal of the police from the areas and came out sharply against Sarkozy and the bourgeois state who were calling these youth ‘scum’ Even black footballers like Lilian Thuram, the Juventus player at the time, reacted, saying: ‘I come from these areas – what right has Sarkozy to intervene and condemn people like me who come from these areas as scum?’
If capitalist society goes into crisis and there is not a conscious organisation of the working class, including unemployed layers, there could be uprisings of this character taking place again. What should our attitude be? We have to try and base ourselves on the working class involved in production, it is true, because from here will come the main forces. But it would be absolutely fatal to ignore these other layers. If they are white, they can be open to exploitation by the fascists; and if they are the descendants of North African immigrants, they can be open to the ideas of right-wing political Islam. It is the duty of Marxists, Trotskyists and the labour Movement to intervene and to try and reach them with our ideas.
Bob Labi: “There are two other things. If the workers’ movement does not actually provide a lead to some of these youth, as we saw, unfortunately, in some of the student demonstrations attacks can take place on them by lumpenised youth. The police allow these attacks to take place – how much they were provoked and instigated is a different question – by mainly immigrant youth simply to rob some of the school students who were on the demonstrations. And that is a warning, a small warning, that if the workers’ movement does not offer a way out, some of these youth could end in a cul-de-sac. It is a generalised situation because if you look at the present economic boom in most countries of Western Europe, let alone Eastern Europe, there are very high levels of youth unemployment, high levels of youth in temporary precarious jobs; all of which could fuel this element of frustration.
“The other point which I think is important about France is that the movement which started this year actually came from below. If it had been left to the workers’ leaders, nothing would have happened. Last year, in the summer of 2005, the French government passed a similar law, the CNE (Contrat Nouvelle Embauche – New Employment Contract), for all workplaces. Workers who started a job in any small workplace with less than 20 workers could be sacked at any time in the first year of employment. This year’s new legislation was to extend the law from just small workplaces to youth under 25. What happened last year was that, when the first law was passed, the trade union leaders protested but did absolutely nothing and the law was put into effect. A layer of the youth drew the conclusion that they had to actually start from below if they were to stop the CPE. Many workers had seen what happened in 2005 and they were especially receptive to the idea of action from below, not just on this measure against the youth but also against the other measure, the CNE. So an important demand was raised in the movement, not just to stop the CPE aimed at the under-25s, but also to end the CNE passed in 2005.
“What was significant is that the trade union leaders fought against including the issue of the CNE in the demands. They deliberately acted to prevent it being included with the result that, while the French government retreated on the CPE, the CNE law is still in place. But the important thing is that youth and elements of working-class activists saw the need for spontaneous action because they could not rely just on the leaders of the trade unions.”
Another point which is important is the consciousness of the young people and of the working class. The leaders of the youth and student movement, many of whom are influenced by the French Socialist Party, at least at an official, national level, made a point of saying that they were not revolutionary, they were not Marxists. They were not like the leaders of 1968 such as Krivine and Cohn-Bendit, who declared that they were revolutionaries. In the recent movement, the young people and the working class as well know what they do not want: neo-liberal capitalism, especially when it affects them in such a sharp fashion. But they are not clear as to the alternative.
The alternative model is not there as it was in the sense of the broad socialist consciousness which existed in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. In our opinion, that is linked to the collapse of Stalinism and the ideological offensive that the bourgeoisie has conducted for the last 15 years. It will take a combination of events and big events, and the conscious intervention of what hopefully will be a growing Marxist,Trotskyist force before that consciousness begins to change decisively as far as the mass is concerned. That does not mean to say there is not a layer of advanced, more developed younger people and workers who are open and receptive today to the ideas of Marxism and Trotskyism.
Relationship of class forces
The next question is about Europe in general. In our discussions in Italy, we have begun to discuss in the last year or two the general situation of the relationship of our forces in Europe and we have the impression that in the last 20 to 25 years there has been a retreat of the working class amongst the bigger sections of the working class in Europe. There have been other big movements, but in general the relationship of forces was not so bad, for instance, at the beginning of this century. There were defeats for the working class in England and in other countries. But there were many social-democratic and centre-left governments which opened the road to imperialist positions, but in general we always had big resistance movements against neo-liberalism’s plans – for example, the movements in France and Italy. The irony is that there were big struggles against centre-right governments but not against centre-left governments. We think the relationship of forces between the classes has not changed deeply and the working class has not suffered a strong defeat as in the 1930s. Of course, the far right has made some gains but have never presented themselves as traditional fascists, so we have the possibility of thinking hard about how to change the relationship to new and fresh layers of the working class. What do you think of our position?
I think there are many aspects of that which we would agree with. But we have to try as far as possible to situate our conclusions in a general historical framework and stage through which the labour movement passes at certain periods. For instance, it is quite clear that there was enormous radicalisation, let us put it no more than that – elements of a pre-revolutionary situation – in the 1970s in Italy and in France in 1968. In Britain, the miners defeated the Tories in 1972 and 1974; industrial action led to a general election in 1974 which brought down Heath’s Tory government.
But we disagree with the analysis that has been made by some who try to neatly compartmentalise historical periods and misread, in the process, what took place. For instance, if you look at the analysis of the International Socialist Tendency (IST) they say there was a generally favourable situation between 1968 and 1976: France 1968; Italy; the overthrow of Franco, the collapse of the Caetano regime in Portugal and of the Greek colonels’ regime. It was a favourable period for Marxists. But that does not mean to say that, following 1976, there was a period of quiescence or defeat of the movement. We saw in Britain, for instance, the defeat of Labour in 1979 and the coming to power of the Thatcher government. In the words of Karl Marx, this was the whip of the counter-revolution which stirred up a huge revolt of the British working class.
One of the most important events in British history, without a doubt, was the miners’ strike of 1984-85. We participated fully in that and we made big gains. We recruited 500 miners to Militant in the course of that battle. We led the battle in Liverpool. The whole of the 1970s and 1980s were a period of enormous ferment. There was the beginning of the neo-liberal phase of capitalism. This did not develop as a conscious policy of the bourgeoisie but arose out of capitalist developments at the time. There was a boom following the crisis of 1979-81. We adjusted our political perspectives. But in general it was a very radical period. In this period, the
SWP/IST argued that it was not a favourable period and, consequently, they largely stood aside and waited on events. We fully participated in the miners’ strike, which was defeated but has left its stamp on the consciousness of the British working class right up to today. The defeat, in the main, arose from the role of the Labour and trade union leaders. We had the expulsion of the Militant Editorial Board and the Liverpool Militants from the Labour Party. But notwithstanding this, we had the massive poll tax battle in which we defeated the government and Thatcher herself. She admitted that it was the defeat of the poll tax which brought her down. Eighteen million people refused to pay the poll tax. This was organised by Militant, through the All-Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation.
I think that your analysis is basically correct about the current situation. But we also have to see what the basis is for this. It comes back to the question of 1989-90. For those who have a state capitalist position in relation to the regimes of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, their collapse was not a historic defeat for the working class but a ‘sideways move’. We think that planned economies, bureaucratically managed, did exist. Only the outlines of a planned economy remained at the end but its liquidation was a historic defeat because these states represented an anticipation of what could be possible on the basis of workers’ democracy after pushing aside the bureaucracy. Their collapse gave the bourgeoisie the opportunity to conduct a huge ideological campaign which had a big effect.
The SWP/IST position was that it was a ‘sideways move‘; that another form of capitalism had merely taken over. This embroils them in all kinds of contradictions. Cliff came forward with the idea that this was a radical revolutionary period. It did give the opportunity for Marxists, following the discrediting of the communist parties, to make gains. But it was not the ‘1930s in slow motion’ as he claimed! To describe the 1990s in this way is like the fool in a Russian proverb who sings a wedding song at a funeral and a funeral dirge at a wedding! The 1990s was a period of ideological reaction, which witnessed an orgy of pro-capitalist, pro-market, anti-working class and anti-socialist propaganda. It had a detrimental effect on the class struggle and the workers’ movement, to put it mildly. It was not the most favourable period for Marxists. In fact, the SWP/IST is now in practice in the process of jettisoning that idea because they have come up against reality and have consequently moved rightwards. Temporarily, it gave their cadres a kind of fanatical energy to recruit very quickly a layer of young people who were soon lost. But they came up against a brick wall, as inevitably happens in politics if you have a wrong perspective and your cadres are not prepared.
We have to call things by their right names. We said that the working class worldwide had experienced a big defeat. When there is a defeat, recognise it. By all means do not draw unduly pessimistic conclusions for the future. If it had been a defeat like the triumph of Mussolini, Hitler and fascism in the interwar period, we would have said so, and we would have then concluded that we were in for a long period of difficulties. That was not the case. The organisations of the working class were not crushed but basically remained intact. The potential power of the working class, their ability to struggle, was retained. But their political outlook was confused. The bourgeoisie launched an ideological barrage. The Wall Street Journal had a heading at the beginning of the 1990s: “We won!” Capitalism, they maintained, had defeated ‘socialism’ and the idea of a planned economy. This coalesced with the beginning of a boom and the effects of neo-liberalism. This had an important effect.
Why is it in this period that the bourgeois workers’ parties have largely disappeared from the map? Why has it had the effect of confusing the consciousness of the proletariat? Why were Marxist forces thrown back in numbers, influence and so on? We think we have maintained a very important position but this was a difficult historical situation. This was the result of the ideological campaign. But Marxists have to have a sense of proportion. The conclusion we came to was not that we had to pull up the drawbridge, retreat to the study, go ‘underground’ and wait for a new favourable situation in the future. We had a dual task of continuing to put forward the revolutionary programme but, at the same time, seeking to rehabilitate in a broad sense the ideas of socialism, Marxism and Trotskyism. One was directed at the advanced layer, the other for the broad mass.
With the political decay of the mass workers’ parties, we very quickly said the Labour Party was finished as such a party, although that was not our position when we came out of the Labour Party. The same process of bourgeoisification would take place within other social-democratic parties in Europe. The Socialist Party in Italy under Craxi became completely bourgeoisified earlier than the rest – in fact it was in many ways a model for New Labour – before finally disappearing from the map, in the early 1990s. This process has now affected the DS and the social democracy, without exception, in Europe. There are communist parties that maintain a Stalinist position which are still not open bourgeois formations, for instance in Greece and Portugal.
There was working-class resistance to neo-liberalism: the 1993 Belgian general strike, the big movements in the public sector in Britain, the movement of 1995 against the Juppé plan – a huge movement. In all of these, it was very clear that there was Opposition, but the alternative, the alternative government even, was not obvious to the masses. How can we in France put forward a Socialist-Comment government as an alternative to the right in the context of the Socialist Party adapting to the situation and, in effect, giving support to the ideas of neo-liberalism? That raised in our minds the need for new workers’ parties. France was different because there was an opportunity for Trotskyists, especially after the 2002 election, to create the basis of a left revolutionary party if the LO and the LCR had come together. But that was not the case in the rest of Europe.
What is the relationship of forces now? The bourgeoisie has had one of its best opportunities in history to underline the advantages of their system. They have had no real opposition from the political leaders or former leaders of the organised working class. All the main parties – from right to ‘left’ – have collaborated in neoliberalism. Francis Fukuyama said that the collapse of the Berlin Wall represented the ‘end of history’. He did not mean that history had ended but that the most finished form for humanity in its long historical ladder of ascent was bourgeois democracy, with the US at the centre of this idea. It is not an accident that Fukuyama has, in effect, abandoned the ideas of neo-conservatism in the last couple of months, particularly the world hegemony of US imperialism.
There are now enormous doubts and hesitations as the European bourgeoisie’ project for European unity has stalled. The Bolkestein services directive has not gone through in its original form; the European constitution is blocked and stalled at the present time. The bourgeoisie will come back to this but will meet resistance. So the relationship of forces is potentially favourable to the working class. A key question is whether the subjective factor will develop in the broad sense of the term, a broad party within which Trotskyists and Marxists could participate. One of the reasons why the bourgeoisie has got away with what it has in the last 15 years is the fact that on the political and trade union planes there has been no effective check to its untrammelled rule. When there were ‘bourgeois’ workers’ parties, the capitalists at least had to look over their shoulders before they could consider taking action against the working class because these parties, with one foot in the camp of the working class, were forced to respond to the movement from below.
This decade then is potentially a favourable period. We have a certain equilibrium now in the relationship of forces. It develops in a very contradictory way. The movement in France temporarily demoralised the bourgeoisie, there is no doubt. The European bourgeoisie is also semi-demoralised because its ‘project’ for Europe has not been implemented. The American ruling class jeers: ‘Europe cannot compete with us, it is now just a museum.‘ Italy is extremely symptomatic of this.
However, the European bourgeoisie will not forever accept their second-rate status easily. They will be prepared to take action to attack the working class. Italy is one of the most important countries in Europe now. The offensive against the living standards of the working class has to be much sharper and deeper from a bourgeois point of view in Italy than is the case perhaps in other European countries. Despite the weaknesses of the leadership, the Italian working class checked up to a point some of the worst attacks that Berlusconi was proposing. So that gives a breathing space for a certain political regroupment, especially for the conscious Marxist and St revolutionary forces, and the opportunity for the new generation to begin to move into action under the impact of events.
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