A-Infos (en) Britain, Classwar, Unfished business Book - Introduction

•WHY CLASS WAR?
The Class War Federation is not another party seeking to gain
power or a new way of telling you what to do. Class war is what
happens when ordinary people have had enough of being pushed
around and decide to fight back.
We live in a society severely split along the lines of class where
capitalism, the State and the ruling class dominate. Our class, the
working class, are here - at the centre of history. Indeed, all history
to date is that of the conflict between us and our enemies who try to
exploit and dominate us.

• A Sense of Tradition

The Class War Federation in Britain is part of a long and
honourable tradition of working class resistance to oppression. We
stand with the peasant revolts of 1381, 1450 and 1549, the
Edinburgh 'Porteous' rising of 1736, the Levellers in the English
civil war, the 'United Englishmen', the Luddites and 'General Lud',
the East Anglia rising of 1816 and the 1820 Scottish Rising, the
'Captain Swing' rural workers revolts of 1830/31, the Bristol riots of
1831, the Pentridge and Grangemoor uprisings, the naval
mutineers of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries from Spithead to
Invergordon, the army mutinies in India, the London Mob of the
19th century - the most political and feared mob in Europe that kept
the Royal Family off the street! The 'Battle of the Braes' on the Isle
of Skye, Scotland. The miners and railways strikes of 1910 and
1911, the heroic mutinies during and after World War One, the
Glasgow and Luton rioters of 1919 (amongst many others), the
general strikers of 1926, the unemployed workers movement battles
with the police in the 1930's from Glasgow to Belfast to London,
the 'Battle of Cable Street' in the East End of London against the
police and fascists, the volunteers that went to fight fascism in
Spain during the Spanish Civil War, the mutinies and strikes of
World War Two, the soldiers squatting movement immediately
after, the 'teabreak' strikers of the 1960's, the mass strikes of the
1970's and the battle of Saltley
gate of 1972, the Grunwicks strikers of 1977, the 1979 Southall
rising against the fascists and the police, the urban and rural rioters
of the 1980's starting with Bristol in 1980, the great miners and
printers strikes of the 1980's and the poll tax and prisoners revolt of
1990 when the jails and Central London burned! This is our
tradition and our roots and we are proud of it.

We are still here. And until wage labour, capitalism and the State
are destroyed there will always be a working class. The working
class are a varied bunch of people who have certain things in
common - as this book shows. The pathetic attempts to wish us out
of existence by the middle class intellectuals of the Left and Right
only confirm the crisis that their ruling class masters are
experiencing in keeping control of us.

•The Failure of the Left


While there is much that is useful in the works of Marx, the
interpretation that Lenin gave to him has been a complete disaster
for our class here in Britain and around the world. Lenin's
insistence on the Party' taking control of the revolution, the State
and the capitalist economy was completely wrong.


During the early years of this century there was massive and
growing conflict between our class and the capitalists all around the
world. They were far more vulnerable then than they are now. Just
before the First World War many felt we were on the edge of a
Europewide revolution, but that war bought valuable time for the
capitalists. Things came to a dramatic climax in Russia during the
war in 1917. There, Lenin's Bolshevik party hi-jacked a popular
revolt and ruthlessly destroyed opposition by the most advanced
sections of the working class - the sailors of the Baltic fleet at
Krondstat and the Ukrainian peasants movements amongst others.
Lenin and Trotsky even prided themselves on the 'red terror' they
had unleashed.


In our view the Russian revolution did not go wrong when Stalin
seized power. It went wrong when the Bolsheviks seized control of
the Soviets in October 1917, after the popular uprisings of February
that year. The rise of the dictator Stalin was not an accident but a
direct result of the policies of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. The same
disastrous experience has been repeated all round the world where
Lenininspired parties have seized power - in other words all the
countries that have claimed to be 'communist', which is an insult to
the meaning of the word. The tragedy of Russia has cost our class
dear and set back the revolution many years, while the dead hand of
Lenin has stifled development in the Left. Nowhere is this more
true than of the British Left. It is only with the military, economic
and political defeat of the Soviet capitalists by the Western
capitalists that the Left are starting to reconsider what they have
done - hardly inspiring confidence in their future performance.


There were people who saw the Bolsheviks and Lenin for what they
were and suffered the organised wrath of the Communist Party
such as John Maclean of Scotland. Later, the better members of the
Party, such as Harry McShane, left after becoming aware that it
was nothing more than a tool of Soviet foreign policy. Since then
the British Communist Party has dissolved, changing its name and
saying that class is no longer an issue.


From the tragedy of the USSR and Marxist-Leninism we move on
to the farce of the British Left in the 1990's. This sorry collection
does not make a pretty sight! The organised Left parties have all but
collapsed in the face of the recent attacks of capitalism. This has
been paralleled by a retreat of the 'intellectual' Left. Their main
activity is now selfindulgent and obscure investigations into the
meaning of capitalist culture. The end result of this long road of
shame is the Left asserting that the working class either no longer
exists or is of no importance. It's a strange coincidence that this is
happening at the same time our society is becoming increasingly
split along the lines of class and when attacks by the ruling class on
us are becoming more and more savage, with resulting large
increases in unemployment, homelessness and old-fashioned
poverty.


We believe that one of the reasons for this failure of the Left lies in
the fact that they are either composed of, or are controlled by,
middle class people. A typical failing of the middle class (due to
their conditioning) is to be unable to see beyond the end of their
noses: they see the world as a reflection. of themselves, and their
hopes and concerns as the reality for others. To them the working
class are merely stage props for their plans to "save the world" or
reform capitalism. As a class they are encouraged to see themselves
as 'the conscience of capitalism' - poor sods! Thus they approach
left-wing groups with the same zeal and cruelty that their earlier
generations took up missionary work in Africa

.
The new concerns of the British Left now reflect the political,
economic and cultural aspirations of the middle class more than
ever before. Within the Left, and liberal movements such as ecology
and feminism, debate is conducted within a narrow band of
'acceptable' options. This is hardly surprising. The privileged
intellectual elites that compose these groups possess the means to
make life uncomfortable for their ruling class masters but lack the
will; their self-interest and laziness condone the misery and
exploitation of others.


This explains why the choices the Left present to us are useless
whether it is "Vote Labour Without illusions" - by the Socialist
Workers Party or support dictators like Saddam Hussein - by the
Revolutionary Communist Party. Both are equally wrong and more
importantly, equally harmless to capitalism.


Despite all this we acknowledge that there are many fine people
doing good work in the Left and the anarchist movement who have
a genuine commitment to the working class and revolution. We
want to show them that there is another way and a better way.

•The Middle Class: An Important Warning


With all we have said so far you might think we hate all middle
class people. Not so. Their class has a history of producing
courageous fighters against oppression that they can be well proud
of. While there is much that is distasteful about the activities of the
middle class as a whole we recognise the fact that before and during
a revolution the middle class will split and part of it will side with
our class. Just as we know that the working class will split during a
revolution and part of it will side with the bosses.


Just promoting hatred for the middle classes obscures the real
target of our anger - the ruling class. It is no coincidence that the
fascists do exactly that, at the bidding of their ruling class masters.
The middle class concern us as just another obstacle on the road to
revolution, no more, no less.


We know only too well that revolution means civil war. If you are
looking for Mickey Mouse politics you had better go elsewhere.

• The Class War Around the World


All over the world capitalism is running into huge problems and
becoming increasingly unstable. The massive amount of debt in the
world economy is like a time bomb ticking away. The three major
trade blocs of North America, Europe and Japan are increasingly in
competition with each other for markets and resources. They in
turn are in conflict with the rest of the world for access to cheap
resources and labour. The developing world is going to continue to
get a hammering from the so-called First World nations both
economically and militarily. Famine and desperate poverty are what
many of our class are experiencing there. On top of this huge sums
of money or to use the correct term - capital - are now moving
around the world by electronic means in search of the quickest
biggest profit. This is adding to the tendency of chaos in the
capitalist system that many of us experience in our day to day lives.


The rise of the super trade blocs and 'loose' money means the
nation-state is no longer as important for the capitalists as it once
was - indeed it is now an obstruction. It is an obstruction because
the capitalists want to move to ever larger forms of social and
economic organisation. This rapid change around has left many of
the European ruling classes behind, especially those involved in
running the State such as senior politicians. Their solution is a
wave of nationalism encouraged by these upper class groups who
are scared of losing their sacred nation-state in the EEC. This is one
of the reasons that ex-Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher got-the
boot from her mates. This wave of nationalism (Britain, France and
Germany as well as that in Eastern Europe where it is leading
headlong into bloody conflict) and its accompanying racism is also
serving to distract us from the rapid reorganisation that the EEC is
undergoing. It is going to be a super State with super-exploitation
for our class, with the capitalists playing off one region against
another for low wages. Whether this re-organisation of capitalism
will go smoothly or disintergrate into chaos and war as in the USSR
we cannot foretell.

•Imperialism Is Alive and Well


Now, more than ever, the major capitalist powers and States, also
called the "First World" or the "Developed World", need to
intervene economically and militarily in other areas of the
developing world where people and countries show any signs of
breaking with or bypassing their control of the global economy.
Some examples include; the United States in South America,
Belgium and France in Africa, Britain in South Africa and the
Falkland/Malvinas Islands. No area of the world can be allowed to
go its own way. .If it does it becomes a dangerous threat to the
"world order" of capitalism. The stakes for the capitalists are huge.
They desperately need to keep access to the markets and resources
of the developing world.


"Between 25% and 33% of the exports of developed countries, and
nearly 40% of US exports, go to the Third World. The major banks
have lent many times their capital base to Third World countries
and have made a fat profit in the process. Now the banks want their
money back or at least to carry on making fat profits."
"AID - the West's False Handout" - Teresa Hayter, in New
Socialist February 1985.


The so-called First World States are increasingly having to struggle
to control and contain the economic changes in the developing
world. This growing conflict is another source of instability and
chaos in capitalism. To keep the upper hand in the world economy
the First World will do nearly anything, and it is their actions here
that give us the clearest picture of what we are up against. Famine,
war, genocide, death squads and more, are what are people are
facing around the world at the hands of the international ruling
class and their regional supporters. Among the many examples that
come to mind of this whole process are Ethiopia, Eritrea, Vietnam,
Cambodia, East Timor, El Salvador and Nicaragua.


Here, in countries like Britain, our biggest problem is ignorance,
largely due to the media's distortions. Taking Vietnam and
Nicaragua as examples the journalist John Pilger makes a good
point;
"The United States gained a significant if partial victory [in
Vietnam]. As Noam Chomsky has pointed out, American policy
was never concerned with Vietnam alone, just as it was not
concerned with Nicaragua alone. In Vietnam the short term
"threat" came from a nationalist leadership concerned with
domestic needs rather than with the demands of the United States.
The long-term threat to America was that of a development model
which other countries might have followed; and exactly the same
was true of the Nicaraguan "threat". Far from being beaten in South
East Asia, the United States has devastated, blockaded and isolated
Vietnam and its "virus" and has subordinated to American interests
almost every regime in the region."
"Heroes" - John Pilger.

When we say the choice facing us is barbarism or revolution we are
quite serious.

•Ireland


Nationalism is one of the key ways of keeping our class divided. At
the moment Britain is fighting an extremely dirty colonial war in
Ireland that any banana republic could be proud of. That this war
has gone on so long is a measure of the strength and arrogance of
British nationalism. The scale and courage of the resistance to the
British State in Ireland is massive. The response of much of the
Left and anarchists is shameful. On one hand there is the cynical
opportunism of groups like the Revolutionary Communist Party
(RCP), while on the other hand groups like Militant and some of
the anarchists just splutter a load of reactionary, moralistic
nonsense at every outbreak of violence. Ireland is a classic case of
the false choices that the Left present our class with. One is that the
IRA, INLA etc. should have our unconditional support, the other is
that they are just evil murdering scum! We are not impressed with
this. The IRA, Sinn Fein, INLA etc. do not have unconditional
support in Ireland from their own supporters - there is criticism,
naturally. As for viewing the Republicans as evil, murdering scum,
we suppose those groups that take this view would say the same of
anybody who uses violence against oppression.

To those that say the struggle in Ireland is merely a nationalist one
we say no. Of course nationalism is present (as it is in every
struggle against the occupying forces of imperialism) but it is not
the only element involved. We have much to learn from the Irish
struggle against the British State and from similar struggles
elsewhere. Please see Chapter One and the Irish appendix for
further discussion.


•MOVEMENTS ORGANISATIONS AND
REVOLUTIONARIES


These things mean many different things to many people. Its best
to be clear about what we mean right at the start.

• Movements

When we say create a "working class movement" we are not talking
about the Class War Federation or any other political group. The
"movement" we have in mind is a large and growing number of
people that come from very different backgrounds, experiences and
places to work together to destroy capitalism and the State. This
movement will be very diverse in nature yet it will have clear
agreement on basic ideas. Within this movement there will be a
variety of organisations reflecting different backgrounds and needs.
The control of this movement will not lie in any party, central
committee or group of intellectuals, power will lie in the hands of
people themselves. Such a movement is far from being a pipe
dream. It is the engine that drives the revolution, history is full of
examples (Russia, Spain, Nicaragua, Cuba, Portugal.)


•Organisations


Political organisations exist to achieve certain objectives. One of the
objectives of the Class War Federation is to help in the creation of
an international working class movement as outlined above. As far
as we are concerned the more organisations that exist to further
these kind of basic objectives the better.


• Revolutionaries


There is no such thing as a full-time 'professional' revolutionary,
although there are people who think they are! We are 'amateurs'
and combine revolutionary work with everyday life. In the process
we change and so do our lives. Revolutionaries are ordinary people
who do extraordinary things.

•The Class War Federation

The Federation contains people who may describe themselves as
anarchist, communists or socialist. More important than these 'off
the shelf labels' is what these people really think and what brings
them together. We believe that the ideas and politics you have are
more important than what you call them. There are no pure
traditions. Anarchism was a split from the communist movement as
a reaction to authoritarian Marxism. It is important that we should
learn from the past to make the 'politics of today'. We feel that the
Left, including the anarchists, have forgotten some of the basics
that earlier generations of revolutionaries and class warriors knew
so well. We don't intend to allow ourselves to forget the two most
basic tools that a good revolutionary needs; firstly, is to be able to
communicate clearly with other working class people in every
possible way. As an older revolutionary pointed out when looking at
the Left in the 1970's;
'The intellectuals are writing for one another instead of for working
class people; they seem to think that workers can't read!"
Harry McShane

.
Secondly is the need to care about people - and each other. And,
just to set the record straight: the Class War Federation does not
think that music, drugs or fashion will change the world. The
Federation has no links with, or interest in, the animal rights
movement.


Throughout this book there are quotations from past and present
writers. These are intended to help illustrate our ideas and show
some of the sources and traditions we draw on as inspiration. They
do not indicate complete agreement with that authors ideas.


We hope that after reading this book you will be stirred to
participate in the fight against oppression and that questions will be
raised that you will have to find answers to. Of course we would like
you to get involved with the Class War Federation but more than
that we hope that you and others get together to fight back in your
own ways.
================================
From http://www.londonclasswar.org/unfinishedbusiness.htm



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