Internationalist Perspective

The following post contains excepts from a document on the electoral victory of Syriza in Greece written by the comrades of the TPTG group. Since the document is too long to post in its entirety here, we have chosen to reprint the opening paragraph and the appendix. To read the entire document, please visit our site here.

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On the 25th of January of 2015, for the first time in Greek history, a left-wing party, SYRIZA, won the general elections with a majority of 36.34%, 8.5 percentage points above Nea Dimokratia (“New Democracy”), the traditional right-wing party and the main force of the departing government coalition. However, SYRIZA didn’t win an absolute majority since it gained 149 seats in the parliament (a minimum of 151 seats is needed to win a vote of confidence). In consequence, they formed a coalition with “Anexartitoi Ellines” (“Independent Greeks”), a right-wing nationalist populist party which gained 4.75% of the votes and 13 seats in the parliament. Such a collaboration became possible due to the firm opposition of “Anexartitoi Ellines” to the memoranda austerity programs in the previous years despite the great differences in issues like immigration and foreign policy between the two parties…

Appendix: On some theoretical debates inside SYRIZA that were quickly
put aside

The anti-state communist minority in Europe and elsewhere, who still concern themselves with issues of communization, the capitalist state and value theory might be interested to know that one of the main architects of SYRIZA’s program - and a member of the negotiating team of the new government with the rest of the EU member-states- was, until some years ago, the main theoretician of the Althusserian faction of SYRIZA and a leading critic of the neo-gramscian state theory and the left ricardian labour theory of value!

Here are some interesting quotes from his texts:

It’s the parliamentary “filtering” of the different class practices (the practices not only of the bourgeoisie and its allies but also of the working class and its allies) that makes their “representation” inside the state feasible; that makes their subsumption to the general capitalist interest practicable… It’s not a particular party but the whole parliamentary system that ties the lower classes to the “political class” of capitalist rule. It’s not a particular party but the capitalist state as a whole that constitutes the real “party”, the real “representative” of capital, the political condensation of capitalist rule. That’s why, since the era of Marx, all the “visions” and the attempts of the reformist political vehicles to “conquer” and socialize the state have ended to the nationalization of the visionaries and a rude awakening.

Classical political economy was an embodied labour theory of value and a theory of the exploitation of wage labourers by propertied classes. The main currents of Marxism adopted this classical theory of value and exploitation by removing Marx’s critique of it. This theoretical mutation is closely connected to the ideological and political mutation of the Left from a movement of radical contestation to a power of management and reform of the capitalist system… In its “conservative” version this problematic raises the issues of the “fair” pay of the worker, her “dignified living conditions”, pay rises in accordance to productivity of labour etc. In other words, the immediate demands of the workers in their conflict with capital are raised to the status of a “social ideal”, since the forms of capitalist relations of power are taken as a “necessary fact”. In its “radical” version this classical theory of value and exploitation envisages a “capitalism without private capitalists”: “socialization”, i.e. public property of means of production goes hand in hand with the maintenance of all forms of capitalist economy and the capitalist state… The transition from capitalism to communism is necessarily related to the abolition of value form, i.e. money and
commodity, and the form of enterprise.

Fair enough, Dr. Milios! Thanks for this excellent critique of reformist politics! But what has this self-understanding got to do with SYRIZA’s program? Absolutely nothing! The problem of disconnection of theory and practice is well known in the revolutionary movement ever since the era of German social democracy. Many decades ago, Paul Mattick had criticized Kautsky for his inability to imagine that a Marxist theory should be supplemented by an adequate Marxist practice. So, his understanding “that for Marx, value is a strictly historical category; that neither before nor after capitalism did there exist or could there exist a value production which differed only in form from that of capitalism” was totally useless.

With the academicization and professionalization of Marxist theory in the last decades things have become even worse. In public political meetings, conferences, reading groups, summercamps, demos etc. one constantly comes upon hundreds of leftist PhD students, researchers, journalists etc. Most of the times one finds herself wondering whether it is a genuine interest in anti-capitalist politics that brought them there or if this involvement is just a necessary step towards a profession guaranteed by the capitalist state, a capitalist enterprise or a reformist party

To the obscene spectacle of dozens of the leaders of world capital celebrating democratic freedom in Paris last Sunday, one must now add the determination of many of those same leaders (Cameron and Merkel for example) to provide their governments with enhanced powers of surveillance and control of social media in the name of the defense of “freedom,” as well as the ramping up of police and military power on the streets of Western cities. The danger of Islamist terrorism (not unlike the danger of “communism” in the 1950’s) will be used by the capitalist state in the West (“democratic” to be sure) to mobilize the population behind new witch hunts and xenophobic reactions directed against the Muslim population of the West, and to justify expanded military action in the Muslim world in the name of “self-defense.” The danger represented by capital and its state power in the West, abetted by the mass media (the capitalist organs of mass manipulation), is growing by the day, as recent events in both the Middle East, and Western Europe have demonstrated. But it is not the danger represented by capitalism and its social relations, but the danger of the eponymous “Muslim” or potential terrorist next door, from whom the capitalist state must protect us, that is increasingly targeted as the imminent threat to which we must respond.

But no less real is the danger of Islamism both as an increasingly powerful reactionary ideology, and a political and even military challenge to the core states of capital in the West and their partners in the Muslim world, and of course to the civilian populations in the West who are also targeted by the Jihadists whether Jews, apostate Muslims, or the editors of secular publications that have offended the faith. In the Islamic world too an ideological and military mobilization is underway, from ISIS to AQAP, from Boko Haram, and the Taliban to al Nusra. The mass victims of these movements, armies, and proto states, in the first instance are the Muslim population of the Islamic world (and of course the non-Muslim minorities that still remain there). The social roots of Islamism lie not in deeply rooted tradition and still tribal societies, but rather in the social decay wrought by the destruction of traditional social patterns, themselves the outcome of the global spread of capitalism. In the first instance the emigration of large numbers of people from the Arab and North African world over the past half century escaping poverty and seeking jobs in the Western world, and now facing both unemployment, marginalization, and growing hostility there as capitalism’s economic crisis in the “metropoles” deepens. And in the second instance, the effects of Western military intervention, war, and occupation, and the concomitant spread of impoverishment and desperation in the Muslim world itself, and the hopelessness and resentment that it has created. That very hopelessness and resentment then feeds the xenophobic ideologies of Islamism and its “promise” of resistance by the Muslim “nation” (the Ummah), providing a mass base and source of recruits for the “jihad” that these political movements are waging.

The military struggles in Syria, Iraq, Libya, the whole of the Sahel, Afghanistan and Pakistan, are intra-capitalist struggles, struggles between rival factions of the capitalist class. Whether the West and its local allies solidly reestablishes it rule over the Muslim world or Islamist (Jihadist) states emerge, the power of capitalism will be consolidated. Social existence in the capitalist West will become increasingly militarized, increasingly subject to censorship and surveillance. Social existence wherever Islamist factions gain power will see the imposition of total control over the lives of its subjects, material, economic, cultural, and “private” in the name of their vision of Sharia law. Western democracy and Islamism, seemingly mortal enemies on the inter-imperialist battlefield, both constitute bulwarks of the social relations that condemn the mass of their populations to increasing misery and human degradation, the differences between their specific ideological or legal forms, paling in comparison with the same reactionary social system that each seeks to protect and perpetuate.

Mac Intosh

Charlie-Hebdo saw it as its mission to ridicule all forms of hypocrisy, demagoguery, obscurantism, doublespeak and scumbaggery, without respect for any authority. Capitalists and Stalinists, Muslims, Christians and Jews, they all were dragged through the mud. Sometimes in very funny ways, sometimes it was just “stupid and mean” (“bête et méchante” was its slogan), always it was merciless. The French state banned its predecessor (Hara Kiri-Hebdo). Both the right and the left detested the paper. The big media regarded it as a mangy, mentally disturbed little brother.

But now, it seems, we’re all Charlie. The entire “civilized” world embraces the little paper which only yesterday was so despised. The next issue of Charlie will be subsidized to print 3 million copies, in order to show the terrorists the finger. And of course, it will have a caricature of the prophet Muhammad on its cover.

What a spectacle it was last Sunday, these gigantic demonstrations in France and beyond, united behind the cry “Je suis Charlie” – “I am Charlie”. What a patriotic feast it was in France, as if “les bleus” (the national soccer team) had won the world cup. Tricolores everywhere and people singing the Marseillaise, that bloodthirsty racist national anthem:

Aux armes citoyens
Formez vos bataillons
Marchons, marchons
Qu’un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons

(“to arms citizens, form your battalions, let’s march, let’s march so that impure blood waters our furrows”)

Leading the parade were prime ministers and other dignitaries of more than forty countries. In short, the whole civilized world, united in its resistance to barbarism: among them the leader of Israel and his Palestinian vassal, the foreign secretaries of Russia and Turkey, the German chancellor, high representatives of the US, Egypt and so on. People on whose hands there’s far more blood than on those of the terrorists. Blood of anonymous civilians in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Palestine, Afghanistan, Ukraine and many other places were the media don’t bother to send reporters to. And in their prisons, there is no shortage of journalists and other people locked up for saying or writing what they think. But such details could not spoil the fun in Paris. Here in the French capital, in the glaring spotlights of the world’s media, we’re all for freedom of expression, we’re all for a world without violence, a world without hate. Nous sommes tous Charlie!

Today that is. Tomorrow we go home and it’s back to business. Tear-gassing demonstrations in Istanbul, locking up journalists in Moscow, whipping and killing dissidents in Cairo and Riyadh, shooting kids in Cleveland and dropping bombs on Gaza… and everywhere, cutting pensions and wages and health care to spend more on armaments to fight barbarism.., and everywhere, militarizing the police and spying on everybody to protect us from terrorists… and everywhere, closing down newspapers because they don’t make enough profit for capital, so that most media are concentrated in very few hands, while shouting: “Long live the freedom of the press!”

And when soon the entire world economy suffers another deep dip those same representatives of the civilized world will ask us for more sacrifices to shore up capital’s profitability and French prime minster Hollande will repeat what he said last week: “Nous sommes tous ensemble. Francais, serrez les rangs. Nous sommes tous Charlie!”

And other world leaders will repeat it the world over: we’re all in the same boat, support your local capital, look how bad our enemies are. Don’t fight us, even though we attack you, fight with us against them, the forces of barbarism. “Nous sommes tous Charlie!”

All this makes us quite curious about the content of the next issue of Charlie-Hebdo. If the paper remains true to its mission, it will point out the irony of the whole spectacle. The crocodile tears, the phony solidarity, the disgusting operation of ideological recuperation. If it doesn’t , Wolinski will turn over in his fresh grave.

Meanwhile, there was a lot less solidarity with the victims of Boko Haram in northern Nigeria. For the media, this was but a footnote, even though many more people died than in Paris. But wait, these were black people, right? And this happened in Africa? Then it’s normal that our media paid little attention to it. What are you saying? That our media are racist? How dare you!

Of course “our” media are nationalist and implicitly racist. That is the window through which they want us to see the world. There is a logic to its selection of what’s important and what’s not, and it’s the logic of capital. The “freedom of the press” celebrated in Paris, does not exist. The media have perverted “Je suis Charlie!” to an imperialist slogan, perfectly fitting capitalism’s course towards more violence, more misery and war.

Sander

The new issue of Internationalist Perspective is now available.

Download the PDF here.

The issue features articles on crisis theory, Michael Heinrich, Ebola, ISIS, Imperialism and much more.

Individual articles will be available shortly.

In 2011, the Greek communist group TPTG publicized the fact that a member of the collective which publishes the journal Aufheben , J.D., was also a signature on articles on crowd control which were commissioned by the police. This class-collaborationist act was the subject of much heated discussion within the milieu.

TPTG for its part also proposed a “proletarian counter-inquiry.” In November 2011, we published a short article on our blog entitled “On Aufhebengate” which condemned the actions of J.D., but also rejected TPTG’s proposal for a commission into such actions.

Since we published our position, we have pursued this discussion further with both Aufheben and TPTG. In the case of Aufheben we stand by our original assessment, but we now recognize that our assessment of TPTG’s position was inaccurate.

Rather than an inquiry to investigate the behavior of a particular person, TPTG’s proposal was directed at police methods in general, and the thinking behind it, including the use of crowd psychology. That is indeed a worthwhile research-project, and while it has so far yielded little in the way of concrete results, we have written to TPTG to offer our support and participation.

Internationalist Perspective

The following is a response to the posting by Mac Intosh.

None of the articles I linked to in my Ukraine piece (No Jack Straw there:-)) deny the role of fascists in Maidan, some in fact are quite alarmed by that role.

In terms of how the left is taking on the matter, you should get around more, Mac Intosh. KPFA News, and in particular members of the “more radical” faction at KPFA, are quite antagonistic to the Kyiv government, the latter for all intents and purposes cheerleading for Putin, bringing on people to interview who are all but supporting that regime. Likewise even with Democracy Now. WSWS, while claiming to be anti-Putin, and it has posted articles critical of him in the past, has blamed the US/EU at every turn, and has excused the Russian government’s every move, in fact not posting any article critical of its policies overall, outside of the Ukraine matter, as if not wishing to undermine it. Global Research/Voltaire Net pretty totally pro-Putin.

When all is said and done, Mac Intosh, I agree with you, any support for nationalism of any sort is support for barbarism.

Jeff

From an internet discussion list

Anyone who had any doubt that the mass media (from CNBC to Fox, from CNN to public television) constitutes the organ of mass manipulation of capital, needs to seriously consider the coverage of events in Ukraine. They are “All In” from Fox to the Nation. The government in Kiev (or Kyiv) — even how you pronounce or spell the name of the capital city is politicized today — is presented as a democratic redoubt vainly struggling against the Stalino-fascist and thuggish Putin regime in Moscow, determined to crush a weak democracy in a valiant Ukraine. Meanwhile, not a word about the power of the oligarchs in Kiev, who prefer Exxon to Gazprom, and NATO to the Kremlin, in a geopolitical struggle between capitalist states and blocs. Not a word about Svoboda or the Right Sector, who control the Maidan in Kiev, and who are the lineal descendants of Stefan Bandera, and the fascists who sought an alliance with Nazi Germany in June 1941, and assisted in the mass murder of Jews, and who today wrap themselves in the mantle of “democracy” and Western values (weren’t they the same values that Hitler defended as his armies swept through Ukraine in 1941, killing Jews and “communists”?), even as they demand a racially pure Ukraine? But this is not just about the deceitful role of journalists and the mass media in the West. It’s really about the fact, which “progressives” cannot accept, that nationalism in all its ideological forms today is reactionary; that in the present epoch nationalism – like democracy – is the watch-word, the clarion call, of capitalism as it seeks to generate mass support for its underlying social and production relations. And beyond Ukraine, that clarion call evokes a response on the “left” as anyone who has watched Al Sharpton or Ariana Huffington over the past several weeks can attest: a call that seconds the efforts of the Obama administration to build popular support for a tough sanctions regime, and arms for Kiev. We may not be on the brink of war, nuclear or otherwise, in Ukraine, but we are certainly seeing a significant heightening of inter-imperialist tensions, even as the left seems to be only choosing sides over who is the real aggressor.

Mac Intosh

Almost 130 years ago on May 4 1986, socialists, anarchists and labour supporters gathered in Haymarket Square in Chicago to protest for and support the eight-hour work day, and to protest the killing of strikers by police at a demonstration the day before. The events of the day are well known. An explosion at the end of the rally, the deaths of seven police officers and four demonstration participants, followed by a witch hunt and arrest of eight anarchists, and the execution of four (one militant committed suicide in prison).

While May Day was being celebrated within a few years of the Haymarket Massacre, its true history is largely unknown. In North America May Day is virtually unknown. (Its pallid cousin Labor Day merely signifies the last long weekend of summer). For much of the Twentieth Century May Day was seen as a military celebration of the State-capitalist regimes in Eastern Europe and Asia.

Yet, amnesia and misdirection have not buried that dream of a better world. And it is still necessary to recall and to loudly proclaim the worlds of the Internationale,

The world is about to change its foundation
We are nothing, let us be all.

Posted by a member of IP on an internet discussion list.

The chorus that demands that Ukraine be defended, now taken up by a large part of the left in the “West,” apes the calls from Washington and the Obama administration, and is simply the mirror image of Russia’s demand that the interests of ethnic Russians in Ukraine warrants Putin’s intervention, beginning in the Crimea. For both positions, what is at issue is the defense of capitalism, and the imperialist and economic interests of capitalist states, which progressives in the West, in their rush to defend the new regime in Kiev, dress up in the language of democracy and nationalism, the twin ideologies which permit the left to defend capitalism. Putin is a Russian chauvinist, while the new regime in Kiev is backed by Svoboda, whose electoral success in the Western Ukraine, and whose role in the Maidan, has now made it a force in the new Ukrainian regime, with respect to which our progressives are prepared to overlook Svoboda’s calls for resistance to the “Muscovite-Jewish mafia,” and to Svoboda’s openly fascist politics. Meanwhile that same new regime in Kiev has named several of Ukraine ’s most powerful oligarchs to be the new governors of its Eastern provinces, even as it seeks vast loans from the EU and the IMF, which will then impose new and even greater draconian austerity on the collective worker of Ukraine . What began in Ukraine as a social struggle, a response to a deepening economic crisis, has fast become both an intra-capitalist conflict, and an inter-imperialist one as well.

Mac Intosh

It should be noted that this declaration was written by a Russian group. It may have appeared that this was a statement by IP. We regret this mistaken impression

WAR ON WAR!
NOT A SINGLE DROP A BLOOD FOR THE “NATION”!

The power struggle between oligarchic clans in Ukraine threatens to escalate into an international armed conflict. Russian capitalism intends to use redistribution of Ukrainian state power in order to implement their long-standing imperial and expansionist aspirations in the Crimea and eastern Ukraine where it has strong economic, financial and political interests.

On the background of the next round of the impending economic crisis in Russia, the regime is trying to stoking Russian nationalism to divert attention from the growing workers’ socio-economic problems: poverty wages and pensions, dismantling of available health care, education and other social services. In the thunder of the nationalist and militant rhetoric it is easier to complete the formation of a corporate, authoritarian state based on reactionary conservative values and repressive policies.

In Ukraine, the acute economic and political crisis has led to increased confrontation between “old” and “new” oligarchic clans, and the first used including ultra-rightist and ultra-nationalist formations for making a state coup in Kiev. The political elite of Crimea and eastern Ukraine does not intend to share their power and property with the next in turn Kiev rulers and trying to rely on help from the Russian government. Both sides resorted to rampant nationalist hysteria: respectively, Ukrainian and Russian. There are armed clashes, bloodshed. The Western powers have their own interests and aspirations, and their intervention in the conflict could lead to World War III.

Warring cliques of bosses force, as usual, force to fight for their interests us, ordinary people: wage workers, unemployed, students, pensioners… Making us drunkards of nationalist drug, they set us against each other, causing us forget about our real needs and interests: we don`t and can`t care about their “nations” where we are now concerned more vital and pressing problems – how to make ends meet in the system which they found to enslave and oppress us.

We will not succumb to nationalist intoxication. To hell with their state and “nations”, their flags and offices! This is not our war, and we should not go on it, paying with our blood their palaces, bank accounts and the pleasure to sit in soft chairs of authorities. And if the bosses in Moscow, Kiev, Lviv, Kharkiv, Donetsk and Simferopol start this war, our duty is to resist it by all available means!

NO WAR BETWEEN “NATIONS” – NO PEACE BETWEEN CLASSES!

The statement is open for signature

http://www.aitrus.info/node/3608