God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East.1
George W. Bush, June 2003
In March 2003, the United States and the ”Coalition of the Willing” invaded Iraq. Five years later, at least one hundred thousand people, but maybe up to a million, had died and many more had been injured.2 Over four million people had become refugees, half of them in Iraq and half outside. Little remains of what was once one of the most prosperous and developed countries of the Middle East. Those parts of Iraq that are not controlled by the US army are run by sectarian gangs.
The 1920s were good years for the world economy. They were years of boom. Boom and speculation go together like strawberries and cream, and there was speculation aplenty as well. In such a period of ‘irrational exuberance’ the illusion spreads that the good times will go on for ever. Sound familiar? On the eve of the great 1929 stock exchange collapse, a journalist asked a speculator how so much money was being made on the market. This was the reply: “One investor buys General Motors at $100″ (he meant a GM share) “sells to another at $150, who sells it to a third at $200. Everyone makes money”. This seems pure magic, but for a while it can work. In a ‘bull market’ as in 1925-29 nearly all share prices go up and up. Over those years US industrial shares trebled in price! We all know what happened next.
Another feature of the 1920s boom was the massive global imbalances. Briefly Anglo-French imperialism had emerged militarily victorious from the First World War, but economically wounded and forced to borrow from the USA to cover their war debts. The only real victor was the USA, which had showed itself to be the mightiest economic and military power in the world. American bankers, as creditors to the British and French, demanded their pound of flesh. These governments in turn decided the only way to pay the USA was by squeezing defeated German capitalism, demanding war reparations from the stricken German economy. Read the rest of this entry »
We want the president’s trip to turn the spotlight on the other Africa,
the new forward-looking Africa,
the Africa that is eager to play a full part in the global economy.1
Madeleine Albright
US Secretary of State (1997-2001)
on President Bill Clinton’s trip to Africa in 1998
For those who live in areas where the state has lost control, most of the things associated with civilisation cease to work. The electricity grid collapses, roads fall into disrepair, drains become blocked (and often contaminate fresh drinking water in the process), schools close down, and healthcare becomes a distant dream for most people. Brutality takes the place of civilisation. Between March and September 2003 alone, some 7 000 women were brutally raped by roving bands of militiamen and soldiers in South Kivu, an eastern province in Congo-Kinshasa.2
To understand Sweden of today one has to start by looking backwards in history. Many people view our country as somewhat of a socialist paradise, and at the same time hardly as a place of big class struggles. What is true is that during the post-war boom, the workers movement in Sweden managed to achieve major welfare reforms based on its massive level of organization.
The threat by Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin in the US, to end collective bargaining arrangements with public sector workers in that state is the nastiest move yet by the ‘free market’ Republicans as a response to the slump in US capitalism. The governor is trying to portray the very victims of the banking collapse and the subsequent Great Recession as the villains. For him, the crisis was not the fault of reckless bankers, a corrupt financial sector and their grotesquely overpaid executives, but the fault of teachers, health workers, refuse cleaners and other public servants who are paid too much! Read the rest of this entry »
In his previous article Jamil has shown that, far from standing for a unified secular democratic India, the bourgeois leaders of the independence movement based themselves on communalist appeals to the Muslims (Muslim League) and Hindus (Congress). This led directly to the catastrophe of partition.
Could the Communist Party of India (CPI) have made a decisive difference? Here Jamil shows they had their own organisational weaknesses. Above all they were prisoners of the policies imposed by Stalin on the international communist movement. In backward and colonial countries, Stalin decreed, the movement had to go through two stages – democracy, then socialism. In Russia this had actually been the policy of the Mensheviks, successfully overcome by the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution. Jamil has demonstrated that, in India as everywhere else, the ‘progressive national bourgeoisie’ was a myth. Yet this was the non-existent class the CPI proposed to march behind in a ‘Popular Front’.
The policies imposed on the international communist movement by Stalin were normally reformist, indeed counter-revolutionary. But occasionally he lurched into an ultra-left phase as in 1947-48, called the ‘Zhdanov offensive.’ In lurching from right to left, a drunk will at one point be found upright. That is the significance of the correct perception of what was happening in India by the Moscow commentators Dyakov and Zhukov. Read the rest of this entry »
When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land.
They said: “Let us pray”. We closed our eyes.
When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.1
Desmond Tutu
Africa is a seething cauldron of desperation. Hunger, disease, plunder and tyranny are generating wars and perpetual flows of refugees. But the wars are no longer between different nation-states. In the 1990s, people in many countries have had to rely on armed gangs to ‘protect’ them against other armed gangs. The central machinery of state has crumbled and lost control. In practice, many governments have become gangs just like any other. The term ‘failed states’ has been coined to describe this condition. “A failed state is defined as a state whose structures and institutions have broken down to such a degree that it is no longer possible to identify any overall, generally recognised authority.”2 Africa is a continent torn to shreds. In this chapter we explain how this is rooted in Africa’s colonial past. In the following chapter we take a closer look at the anatomy of barbarism and some of the wars in Africa in the 1990’s.
Text of a speech delivered at the national conference of the Cadres, Engineer and Services Workers Union, affiliated to the Belgian socialist confederation of trade unions, on October 21, 2010 at Blankenberge, by Stephen Bouquin, Professor of Sociology at the University of Evry in France and a leading activist of Sp.a Rood the left tendency of the Flemish Socialist Party.
Dear comrades, dear friends,
We are currently facing a difficult and complex situation. Many trade union and leftist militants are puzzled and some get discouraged. We feel that our certainties are not worth much anymore. We feel confused and that we no longer have a hold on events. In these tumultuous times it is important to stay on track and especially in the right direction. A conference is a great opportunity to do that. It allows us to examine the situation in which we find ourselves. A conference allows us to outline future perspectives, to agree on objectives and on the actions to be taken. I am very pleased to be able to make a contribution to your conference. It is truly a pleasure and an honor.
A video interview with Marxist economist Mick Brooks speaking about the world crisis. Made by TANIT member and host of the Speakers’ Corners Show Heiko Khoo.
The partition of India in 1947 cut through the living body of whole communities, leading to untold death and misery. This was all part of the tried and tested method of ‘divide and rule’ and behind it lay the interests of privileged ruling elites, not those of the poor masses.
“Leave India to God. If that is too much, then leave her to anarchy.” – Gandhi, May 1942
After World War II the British imperialists were in a hurry to leave India. The Partition of British India in 1947, which created the two independent states of India and Pakistan, was followed by one of the cruellest and bloodiest migrations and “ethnic cleansings” in history. The religious fury and violence that it unleashed caused the deaths of some two million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. An estimated 12 to 15 million people were forcibly transferred between the two countries. At least 75,000 women were raped.
Pakistan was made up of two regions: West Pakistan on the Indus River plain, and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), more than 1,100 miles apart. Important parts of what was once considered India were now part of other nations. The Indus River, after which the subcontinent is named, became part of Pakistan after the partition. Read the rest of this entry »
TANIT has been created as a forum to openly discuss the issues facing the working class and the left internationally today. Our aim is to reach agreement on the central issues within the coming year and then hold the founding congress of a new international tendency. All views expressed are solely the authors'.