[Militant International Review, No. 50, March-April 1993, p. 2-7]
This is the most disturbed period in world relations since that which followed the Versailles treaty at the end of World War One.
The Collapse of the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union has dramatically altered world relations. From 1945 to 1989 the world situation was dominated by the two super-powers of US imperialism and Stalinist Russia. Whilst resting on different and mutually antagonistic social systems, which resulted in intensive competition and clashes mainly in a ‚cold‘ fashion, they nevertheless leaned on one another to bolster their own position. Capitalism used Stalinism as a scarecrow against the threat of revolution. Stalinism, particularly Russian Stalinism, invoked the threat of imperialist invasion to keep in check the movement of the working class. This largely bi-polar world was engulfed in the revolutions of 1989 and the subsequent disintegration of the Stalinist regimes.
Stalinism was the common enemy and the glue that bound world imperialism together.
The Russian revolution, and then following this Stalinism which arose enormously strengthened in the aftermath of World War Two, re-shaped world relations at the cost of undermining the power, incomes and strategic interests of the main imperialist powers. It decisively altered the class balance of forces on a world scale. Without the competition between US imperialism and Stalinist Russia for strategic and other advantages, the colonial bourgeoisie would never have been able to achieve its post-war relative independence. The collapse of Stalinism, together with the effects of the 1980s boom and the seeming triumph of ‚the market‘, has resulted in an increased tendency of the colonial bourgeoisie to abandon this relative independence and become more and more brokers for imperialism.
The collapse of the planned economies was undoubtedly a defeat for the world proletariat. Without in any way diminishing particularly its ideological effects on the workers‘ movement internationally, this development, however, does not signify a great historic setback on the scale, for instance, of the triumph of fascism in the inter-war period.
The strength of the working class and its organisations remain largely intact. Capitalism has undoubtedly scored an ideological victory. But with the onset of a world economic slowdown this victory has been short-lived. Ironically the collapse of Stalinism, rather than strengthening world capitalism economically, has had the opposite result. The need to underwrite the unification of Germany led to the huge German budget deficit, which has in turn been a key factor in the currency chaos and the virtual disintegration of the ERM.
Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union have collapsed into neo-barbarism with the mass pauperisation of the majority of society. Yugoslavia splinters along national, racial and ethnic lines. A national conflagration, to dwarf all others, looms in the ex-USSR.
This chaos unfolds while capitalist spokesmen wring their hands, impotent to prevent the disintegration of societies promised a dazzling future by returning back to capitalism. The strategists of US imperialism envisaged a ‚unipolar‘ post-Stalinist world with the untrammelled rule of capitalism led by one great power (its own), able to impose ‚order throughout the globe. Instead the most disturbed period in world relations, comparable only to that which followed the Versailles treaty after World War One, has been ushered in.
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Stalinism was the common enemy and the glue that bound world imperialism together, acting as a check on inter imperialist rivalries. There is no one power, like US imperialism in the immediate post-war situation, capable of imposing its will on world capitalism. In 1945, the US accounted for more than half of world industrial output. While still the dominant economic power it now accounts for a quarter of world output, being economically challenged by Japan and Europe.
The ‚hardening‘ of the world into three great trading blocs, a process bemoaned by the strategists of capital, is a polite way of saying that a ferocious inter-imperialist struggle, every much as bitter as in the inter-war period, is under way. The whole of the world is being: drawn into either the dollar, the deutschmark, or the yen bloc. And within the blocs there is a jockeying for position and increasing rivalries. The contest between the blocs takes the form, at this stage, of gripes, complaints against one another, and occasionally open trade restrictions, as with the recent US ‘anti-dumping’ measures against foreign steel imports. While shoring up their position in their own ‘backyard’, each of the blocs seeks to steal a march on its rivals. Japan has sought to consolidate its position in the Pacific Rim, battling for supremacy with the US. Trade between Japan and the six nation states of South East Asia has expanded at a phenomenal rate of 20% each year. Japan’s trade in the Asian markets now accounts for 40% of its total trade, with North America – 30%.
Five years ago, both regions accounted for 35% of Japan’s foreign trade. The fear of being shut out of the American market, indicated by the formation of the North American Free Trade Association, has prompted Japan and its Asian satellites to group together in the ‘yen bloc’. Japan is also seeking to use Britain as a backdoor into Europe, with 41% of its total investment in Europe concentrated in Britain. The new Japanese prime minister, Miyazawa, has proclaimed that „Asia will be the brightest spot over the next century’. He perceives this glowing future for the region under the tutelage of Japanese imperialism. The Japanese bourgeois deny any military ambitions. However, the recent controversy over the deployment of the Japanese defence forces, as part of a general strengthening of ‘international order’, indicates a future potentially powerful military role for a rearmed Japanese imperialism.
The scale of the tension between the US and Japan, under past conditions, would have led at a future stage to war. However the existence of nuclear weapons as well as the class balance of world forces, particularly of the working class in both countries, prevents an armed confrontation between US and Japanese imperialism.
In the post-war period the main doctrine governing the military relationship between imperialism and Stalinism was ‘MAD’, Mutually Assured Destruction. The same concept, that the nuclear powers can wipe themselves out in the event of war, underpins the main antagonism which now exists between the three capitalist blocs. War is conducted by the capitalists not for its own sake but for markets, raw materials, for political and strategic purposes. The existence of nuclear weapons ensures that in the event of a war mutual destruction would follow. It would also mean the destruction of the productive forces and above all the most important productive force, the working class.
Only if the working class suffers a decisive defeat and military dictatorships in the main capitalist countries ensue could the conditions be created for a nuclear war. Long before this the working class will have many opportunities to take power. A ‘limited nuclear war’ is a contradiction in terms and, moreover, would result in mass opposition, uprisings and revolutions. In the “Third World’, however, the position is different. War between unstable and increasingly militarised regimes is not only possible but inevitable.
The future then is one of intensified economic conflict between the US and Japan.
The future then is one of intensified economic conflict between the US and Japan. Europe will be drawn into this vortex, the consequence at a certain stage being a contraction of world trade, economic stagnation and slump.
At the same time, in the vacuum created, the appetites of the lesser imperialist powers have been aroused. Thus the Turkish bourgeoisie, shut out of the EC, seeks to bring the ‘lost souls’ of the former Ottoman empire under its sway. The Turkic-speaking peoples of the former USSR, largely repelled by the Islamic fundamentalist regimes, are attracted to the ‘secular’ Muslim state of Turkey, as are the Bosnian Muslims, And as the Gulf war demonstrated, Turkey would not be averse to using Iraq’s difficulties to grab territory there.
Compared to the euphoria of three years ago, ‘We have won’ declared the Wall Street Journal, the world bourgeoisie now stands impotent before political and economic developments. “World growth’ seems elusive, with most serious commentators discounting a return to even the rates of growth of the 1980s. Pessimism and deep foreboding prevails: ‘trade war has replaced nuclear war as the easy way to international suicide’. And yet, notwithstanding these warnings, the GATT negotiations remain stalemated. While it is not excluded that some kind of paper deal can be patched up, the OECD’s chief economist has recently not ruled out a 1930s style slump. An open trade war could precisely plunge world capitalism from a growth slowdown/recession into slump.
Already it is estimated that 34m will be unemployed in the OECD countries by the end of 1993. This will be 10m more than three years previously. Thus, elements of the 1930s have begun to develop on a world scale, with a permanent stagnating pool of mass unemployment, slow, meagre growth and the features of a long, drawn-out world economic depression. Not a single economic problem – of growth, the elimination of unemployment, the huge gap between rich and poor, the tendency towards protectionism – is capable of being solved by decaying capitalism.
The dream of a new period of capitalist prosperity is ruled out.
The dream of a new period of capitalist prosperity where conflict would be muted or even eliminated is ruled out. In fact the world picture is one of disorder and unbearable economic, social and political tensions.
It is also accompanied by the international phenomenon of weak capitalist governments, plagued by doubts, hesitations and retreats in the face of a hostile and disenchanted population. The Reagan-Thatcher era, of seemingly strong governments able to ride rough-shod over the working class, is consigned to history. Their place has been taken by cardboard cut-outs, feeble imitations – Major, Kohl, Mitterrand and the hapless Bush – besieged by their own populations. The near contempt in which all ‚politicians‘ are held, both in Europe and in America (indicated by the 19% protest vote for Perot in the presidential elections) is the first outward expression of what will become in the future a huge revolutionary wave.
The 1990s will be characterised by a reawakening of the European proletariat, already underway, but above all by the decisive entry onto the scene of the German, American and Japanese working class.
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The promise of a capitalist El Dorado in Eastern Europe and the former USSR has turned to ashes. The drop in production in Russia has far outstripped that which took place in America during the 1929-33 crash. There is in fact a combination of 1929-33, a massive drop in production, with elements of Germany 1923, that is, hyper-inflation. The majority of the population have been pauperised.
The countries of Eastern Europe, although not yet having experienced a drop on the scale of Russia, are not far behind. The proletariat is in a stunned and semi-demoralised state. Nevertheless a recoil will take place once the masses perceive that their sufferings are not at all ‚temporary‘ but will become their normal state on the basis of capitalism.
The strikes of the Polish miners and the Kiev arsenal workers are an anticipation of what is likely in the coming period. In the latter case the workers marched on the Ukraine parliament after a 300% hike in prices. The government, afraid that the arms workers could trigger a more general! uprising, hastily retreated and doubled the minimum wage.
Profound disillusionment with the consequences of the market, if not completely with the concept of ‚the market‘, has set in. It is those who were first in the queue who express the greatest disenchantment. Thus, a bare 6% of Hungarians – the fat cats who plundered state property – say that conditions have improved since the ‚demise of communism‘: 73% think that the system they now have is completely ‚misconceived‘.
An even greater disenchantment exists in Poland. The seeming deadlock in society, with a myriad of small parties competing for power, the unbearable social tensions and the resulting weak government, has put the spectre of authoritananism, of coups, or Bonapartist regimes, onto the agenda.
‚Democracy is not an abstract ideal for the masses.. It is perceived as the acquisition of democratic rights, to vote, freedom of assembly, to form trade unions etc., not as an end in itself, but as a means to a better life. And when the results of ‚democracy‘ are the bitter fruits currently being reaped, it is not unexpected that deep despair should set in, leading to the rejection of ‚democracy‘ by a layer of the masses.
Alongside of this is the first signs that the masses‘ rejection of ‚wild capitalism‘ has taken the form of looking back to some of the ‚certainties‘ of the past. A mood of rejection of the most brutal representatives of renascent capitalism has also emerged. Thus, in Lithuania, which probably went further down the road to the market than any of the states of the former USSR, plummeting production and living standards resulted in the rejection of the bourgeois Sajudis leadership of Landsbergis in favour of the former Communist Party, now re-christened the ‚Democratic Labour Party‘.
These developments, with similar processes in Bulgaria and Romania, do not indicate a return to Stalinism. The victors promise a more ‚humane‘ progress to ‚the market‘. They nevertheless anticipate a future class polarisation in all the societies of Eastern Europe and the former USSR. This will ineluctably lead to the creation of separate, class-based parties of the proletariat.
However it will take a further period of painful experiences before first of all the advanced workers and through them the masses begin to reject the idea of capitalism and the gross inequalities, poverty and unemployment which is it’s consequence today. In the course of such a movement a new generation will arise, not yet even involved or contemplating political ingenuine Marxism, purged of its Stalinist excrescence.
Consequently, while the medium and long-term perspective will be for an inevitable resurgence of a regrouped workers’ movement, the possibility of military-police dictatorships in Eastern Europe and the states which formerly made up the USSR, should not be excluded.
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The collapse of former multi-national states, a little taste of which has been given in the bloody conflagration in Yugoslavia, on a capitalist basis necessarily involves a nightmare scenario for the masses. The processes are indicated by the military picture following the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. In 1989 six members adhered to the pact, Following the recent split and Slovakia, there are now 21 separate armies in the region. Moreover, ancient ethnic and national tensions which lay dormant or were suppressed under Stalinism have been resurrected.
The ‘little entente’, the pre-war agreement between Romania and Czechoslovakia against Hungary, has once more been floated, this time involving Romania and Slovakia. Hungary, leaning on the Ukraine, is arming to the teeth, with ‘weapons It has bartered with Russia in payment for debts outstanding from the latter. Hungarian ‘minorities exist in both Romania and Slovakia as well as former Yugoslavia. They will be a bone of contention between the new capitalist states which at a certain stage could result in armed clashes.
Indeed, Yugoslavia could merely be a dress rehearsal for a new Balkan war. And the upheavals in Yugoslavia are nothing compared to the looming clashes which could develop in the former USSR. On the fringes of the former Soviet Union war or armed conflicts already affect Georgia, Moldavia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan,
Enormously weakened economically, Russia still possesses a formidable military machine, whose specific weight within the population is undiminished. The power of the generals was revealed in their virtual public countermanding of Yeltsin’s offer to cut down Russia’s nuclear arsenal. A total of 36 million people, a quarter of the entire population, live off arms production. Despite recent reductions, Russia will still have an army of 1.5 million and has enough long-range nuclear weapons, 3,000 by the last count, to destroy the planet many times over.
The Ukraine, on the other hand, has 700,000 troops. Even with big reductions promised, the Ukraine has more tanks, armoured vehicles and combat aircraft than any other country in Europe after Russia. The seeds of future conflict, which could result in devastating armed clashes, were shown in the squabble over the Crimea. Economic collapse and with it the threat of an uprising of the discontented masses, means that the fledgling capitalist classes in these states are already edging towards a form of Bonapartism, in the case of Yeltsin of parliamentary Bonapartism.
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In the colonial world, while there is a disparity between regions and between different countries within the same region, the general picture is of stagnation and even regression, with Africa facing a catastrophe. With economic collapse has come intensified racial, religious and tribal divisions, which in parts of Africa have all but wiped out the very concept of the ‘nation’.
The collapse of Stalinism had a more profound effect in the colonial and semi-colonial world than in the advanced industrial countries. The colonial bourgeoisie has increasingly abandoned any pretence to independence with the loss of its ability to manoeuvre between the great powers. Imperialism has undoubtedly been given a freer hand to intervene and subdue the colonial masses by the collapse of Stalinism. Without the support of the former Stalinist states Bush’s deployment of such massive military might in the Gulf war would have been extremely difficult.
At the same time, this intervention starkly revealed the severe limitations imposed on even the strongest imperialist power. It showed the difficulty of any long-term occupation of decisive areas of the colonial and semi-colonial world. This lesson has been underscored by events in Yugoslavia and will be further demonstrated by the experience of US imperialism in Somalia.
It is above all the class balance of forces, particularly in its own domestic sphere, that conditions the limited character of US imperialism’s incursions abroad. The memory of Vietnam still weighs in the national psyche of the American people. Short-term ‘police operations’ can be tolerated, but only on condition that not too many body-bags come home. This was a factor in preventing the US from completing the Gulf war by occupying the cities of Iraq and overthrowing Saddam. It was one thing to bomb an already retreating army out in the desert. It was another thing to become embroiled in occupying the urban areas of Iraq.
Even in a largely rural environment, Somalia, US imperialism could suffer heavy losses with the inevitable rejection of the Somali workers and peasants of their ‘liberators’. Already significant support for Islamic fundamentalism has been witnessed, taking the place, temporarily, of the ‘Somali nation’.
It is the fear of Islamic fundamentalism which also explains the limited character of the measures taken against Saddam. Saddam is bad enough. What could follow his forcible overthrow could be even worse as far as the US is concerned. The policy of the US then is to wound but not to kill. Hence the limited ‘no fly zones’ in the north and south.
The Saddam regime is based on the Sunni minority in the central area around Baghdad.
The majority of the population, 55%, are Shia Muslims, largely concentrated in the south. It is true that the Iran-Iraq war demonstrated that it was the concept of belonging to the Iraqi or Iranian nation which was primary rather than religious allegiances. However, Iranian Shiite Islamic fundamentalism still exercises a powerful attractive force for the impoverished Iraqi masses, as it does throughout the whole of the Middle East. Imperialism would prefer a regime other than Saddam’s but in the final analysis would tolerate and even support a Saddam-dominated Iraq rather than an Islamic fundamentalist regime.
It is the morbid fear of such a development throughout the Middle East that forms an axis of US imperialism’s policies in the region. The vacuum which exists, following the collapse of Stalinism, has been partially filled by Islamic fundamentalism. In Algeria, Egypt and Jordan, as well as amongst the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, a big increase for these ideas has been witnessed recently. So rotten is the former alleged ‘socialist’ regime of the FLN in Algeria that a real possibility of an Islamic fundamentalist regime taking power in the next few years is posed.
The vacuum which exists, following the collapse of Stalinism, has been partially filled by Islamic fundamentalism.
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The workers and peasants of the colonial world the regimes of Eastern Europe and the USSR did provide to some extent a ‘model’ of how to escape from imperialist domination and its attendant poverty and deprivation. They did at least provide the basics of food, shelter. social services etc. despite their authoritarian one-party regimes. Their collapse undoubtedly exercised a more disorientating effect ideologically than in the West.
How these events, particularly the collapse of Stalinism, have affected the consciousness of the masses – of its different layers which draw different conclusions at different stages – how it is viewed in the colonial and semi-colonial world and in the advanced industrial countries, and above all how consciousness will develop in the future, is a key question.
World relations encompasses the class balance of world forces. The collapse of Stalinism does represent an ideological victory for the bourgeois. Taken together with the shift to the right at the tops of the workers’ organisations during the 1980s boom, it complicates the working class’s ability to draw clear Marxist conclusions. It would be entirely wrong to brush aside the effects on workers’ consciousness of these developments.
Equally it would be false to also exaggerate their effect. It would leave the most conscious workers unprepared for the sharp, abrupt changes that could develop in the immediate period ahead.
The collapse of Stalinism was most keenly felt in 1989 and 1990, before the onset of the world economic slowdown. It was possible then for the strategists of capital to point to the alleged ‘successes’ of the market in contrast to the slothful, dislocated Stalinist societies. However, events since then, the economic slowdown of western capitalism and the devastation wreaked by the attempt to return to the market in the ex-Stalinist states, has undermined this offensive.
It is true that the tops of the labour movement and the liberal intelligentsia, under the sway of bourgeois ideas, slavishly worship at the shrine of capitalism. The gist of their argument is that despite all its imperfections capitalism is the only viable system. This is the guiding philosophy not just of the right but also at the present time of the majority of the ‘lefts’ in the workers’ organisations. They are quite unprepared for the sharp turns in economics, social relations and politics which will be the hallmark of the coming decade.
The outlook of the proletariat is, however, entirely different to this layer. In a period of upswing the failure of the planned economies of Eastern Europe and the USSR can be primary, at least in the consciousness of the older layers of the proletariat. The youth, the new layers, as shown by the poll tax struggle in Britain, drew the conclusion that mass movements could overthrow despotic governments. However, even amongst a layer of the youth, the attraction of ‘socialism’
was dimmed by the collapse of these regimes.
However, ultimately, social conditions determine consciousness. This basic proposition of Marxism is our anchor in the present complicated situation. It is mass unemployment, social deprivation, increasing poverty, which will become primary in the outlook of the proletariat, above all of its new, fresh layers.
The working class can be compelled to go into action in the next period conscious of what it does not want but not clearly comprehending the alternative. Nevertheless, events would teach the advanced workers, who will seek out the necessary historical precedents to develop the outline of an alternative, even if the organised forces of Marxism, represented in Britain by Militant, did not exist.
We should never forget that the basic ideas of socialism existed in a rudimentary form in the proletariat – in the French working class soon after the French revolution, in the English workers summed up in the Chartist movement, and in the socialist sects in Germany – even before Marx or Engels came onto the scene.
Marxism generalised the experience of the proletariat, summing this up in the ideas of scientific socialism. Time and experience, the big events that loom, will be a great teacher of the working class. Without a conscious mass Marxist organisation it will undoubtedly take longer for the proletariat to draw all the necessary conclusions from its experience. It can take a circuitous route. But it is already clear that the pendulum which swung towards the right, primarily at the top of the labour and trade union movement, is already beginning to swing back under the pressure of events in the opposite direction.
The time scale, in the present complicated international situation, is the most difficult to predict. Yet such is the accumulated bitterness of a broad swathe of the population in the advanced industrial countries, stoked up during the 1980s boom, that mass social eruptions on the scale of May 1968, of Portugal and Greece in 1974, and Italy in the late 1960s and early 1970s, are not only possible but inevitable.
The demise of Stalinism, and of the mass Stalinist parties in western Europe and the colonial and semi-colonial world, has removed an obstacle to the growth of genuine Marxism. The ideas of reformism, which for us are part of the objective situation, can only be overcome by a combination of big events and the work of Marxists within the workers’ organisations.
The general conclusion to be drawn from the processes on a world scale is that the future is not one of a revitalised, stabilised epoch of capitalist expansion but an unparalleled period of social upheaval and disturbances. But there is no such thing as a ‘final crisis’ of capitalism. Without the working class taking power capitalism will always find a way out, albeit on the bones of the working class. Because of the absence of an authoritative Marxist leadership, capitalism’s demise will take, as Leon Trotsky pointed out, the form of a drawn-out death agony, However, this will be punctuated by the process of revolution and of counter-revolution. Many opportunities will be presented for linking the ideas of genuine Trotskyism with the mass movement and establishing for the first time since the Russian revolution genuine mass Marxist forces in all countries of the globe.
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