He’s interrupted by an old woman knocking at the window of the bar. A curveball crashing through the wall to wall Sting tracks. They love him here. Three guys mass on the other edge of the pavement to watch the bar’s TV, France 0-0 Belarus. Sting burbles on… I’m an Englishman in New York…

Well, not quite right. But my Wales rugby jersey has imbued me with an unwelcome foreign air. The garcon assures me the whisky is “best of distributeur”: perhaps a well meaning attempt to bridge the linguistic divide.

But Montmartre hasn’t sold out to British/American culture just yet. It holds firm to its very own seedy/sexualised traditions, as it has ever since the oldest profession in the world first hit the streets. A sign in the hotel demands a two-hour maximum use of the shower. A strenuous bout, for sure, but nice work if you can get it.

Video Budget across the street offers porn DVDs from a machine, which doubles as an ATM. I bet Reg Varney (you know, On the Buses…) didn’t expect it would come to this when he boldly sallied forth with the first credit card. The shopfront insists “best of distributeur”… so the guy at the bar wasn’t making conversation then, just reading aloud some capital letters he saw grouped together on a nearby wall.

A drunker-than-I Welsh guy shouts something incomprehensible. An allusion to the rugby shirt, I assume. I nod and smile in disavowal – just not the rugger type. But Twickenham’s playing host to the Pope next month. For now he’s busy wearing lipstick as he adorns a poster for an alternative jazz festival covering the crack in the window.

Belarus score. “Oh, catastrophe“. Too bad, but at least the record’s changed. I think Marc Almond is stalking me.

Eat your words hat

However, in my call centre work, I have become rather tired of doing this, so have resorted to designing a deliberately unhelpful alphabet in order to generate confusion. Some are stolen from the ‘Cockney Alphabet’.

A for Aubergine

B for Bee

C for Czar

D for Djibouti

E for Ewe

F for Thoughtful

G for Gnome

H for Honest

I for an Eye

J for Jorge

K for Know

L for Llandudno

M for Mnemonic

N for Nwankwo Kanu

O for Oedipus

P for Psychic

Q for Quay

R for Half

S for Rantzen (say it quickly)

T for Tsar

U for the ‘ump

V for La France (say it quickly)

W for Whom

X for Xavier

Y for You

Z for Zee Germans

It was a more innocent time, with little talk of ‘The Deficit’, still less ‘Bigotgate’, ‘New Politics’ or ‘SamCam’. Was it really just five years ago that we stood on Guildford High Street, the day before the election, chanting ‘Poll Tax’ and ‘Did you threaten to overrule him’ at then-Tory leader Michael Howard?

As it happened the day’s results were mixed. Lib Dem MP Sue Doughty was ousted by the Tories in a tightly-run race. Meanwhile the SA, the fag-end of Trotskyist unity in Britain, achieved a mere 10.3%, even though the RGS has been going for nigh-on 500 years: a vast expanse of time in which a serious left alternative to Labourism really ought to have been built.

I see a lot of today’s problems as rooted in this era. The heckling of Howard, subsequent article on the affair in The Scotsman (an organ not widely read in Surrey) and his downfall did not defeat, but rather sustained Toryism. Just four months later, on the day he launched his Conservative Party leadership campaign, David Cameron handed out the book vouchers at the RGS prize-giving.

In my youthful ardour I said I wouldn’t go: I wouldn’t shake his hand. The AS History prize wasn’t worth it. Had only I known what would later happen, or indeed drawn the full logic of these conclusions (i.e. nothing you do or they say at school matters at all) then I would surely have taken more radical action: gone along and e.g. kissed him, thus bringing suitable embarrassment as to stymie Dave’s forward surge.

As I watch Junior Apprentice I remember my own embarrassing self. Back then it was all Young Enterprise (apols to Amanda…), Scouts and Weekly Worker. People on the cobbled side of the High Street really didn’t care if Saddam got a fair trial, apparently. All of S’ralan Sugar’s boys look about 12, I probably did too then. A toxic cocktail of poshness and excessive concern in failed left electoral initiatives. Like that time I poured ginger beer all over Richard Barnbrook (PhD BNP GLA)

What Would Womack and Womack Do?

The last few years have seen a series of crises for our rulers. Millions of us are angry at the ongoing economic crisis, the scandalous behaviour of ‘our’ MPs and the endless wars in the Middle East.

All of these crises are part and parcel of capitalist rule, but rarely is this system itself challenged. We are constantly told there is no alternative to capitalism. Every day at work and in our communities we live out the same capitalist order, the same hierarchies, the same alienation.

But the spectre of communism has not gone away. The idea of a society fit for human beings lives on. It is an idea raised every time workers demand the living standards we need, not what our rulers are prepared to give us; whenever we reject the state’s oppression and interference in our lives; and whenever we stand up to sexism, homophobia and anti-immigrant hysteria.

We need to build on these acts of resistance. But that is not enough. Our movement needs ideas. We need a clear vision of a communist alternative to the capitalist order, and how we can make it happen.

That is why The Commune is hosting a summer school on Saturday 19th June to discuss what we should be fighting for and how we should fight for it. Join the debate.

Proposed sessions: Britain after the general election; What is capitalism?; Why capitalism is in crisis; The changed shape of the working class; Alienation and the critique of everyday life; How migrant workers fight back; Tenants’ struggles and community organisation; Socialist feminist approach to organisation; Breaking up the UK state;  Communism or representative democracy?; The recomposition of the communist movement. Full agenda shortly.

Click here to buy ticket – pay £5 if waged or £3 for concessions.

Click here for map of venue

Please get in touch at uncaptiveminds@gmail.com if you have any questions about the event or have special requirements.

Nick Rogers is quite wrong to draw an equal sign between the position put forward by Colin Fox and the Republican Communist Network’s Allan Armstrong at the Republican Socialist Convention. For a start because Allan did not call for alliance with the SNP in furtherance of the aim of Scottish independence.

"Scotland is small" - Salmond

Indeed, Nick derides the call for the ’break up of the UK state’ out of the assumption that in reality the Scottish Nationalists could realise this objective. But he also admits Allan’s argument that they would not do so: the SNP in fact favour a Catalunya or Quebec-style independence-lite. And then Nick calls on workers to demand a European republic. That is, a European capitalist state, as opposed to the UK state (or should I say, integrating that state into a larger one): a tighter-knit European Union.

Communists could only advocate the full integration of the EU on the understanding that this would facilitate the workers’ movement uniting more effectively than the capitalist class can – and in a degree that our side could not do anyway. Is this plausible? I think not, and nor does it ‘flow’ merely from the organisation around the demand. Not only do US imperialism and sections of the bourgeoisies of individual states constantly advance the integration and expansion of the EU, but also in the past our movement threw up three (and tonnes of Fourth) internationals outside of any such state bodies. The lack of real workers’ unity across the continent, and indeed across different parts of the UK, is not a facet of our rulers’ petty squabbles in Brussels.

Moreover, the mere fact that it would be the European working class demanding full union of our rulers would not thereby fill this with any social content nor advance our own organisation. Indeed, Nick writes that “the working class across Britain - and preferably across Europe [should raise] the demand for a European republic” which is hardly a strong advocacy that the working class could force this change on our own terms.

I did not say I “could not see why unity with Europeans was more important than, say, with Bolivia, where British multinationals were just as involved as in many European countries”. Which Europeans are these? Who in Bolivia? Someone reading this might be misled to believe that I meant I think ‘we’ (the imperialist UK state) should be nicer to Evo Morales, whereas in fact I meant that ‘we’ (communists and the workers’ movement) should not see the struggles of workers in developing countries as somehow lesser in importance, given that many are fighting multinationals tied to the UK state.

N.B. Nick refers to ‘Commune’. Thus in these theses the ‘the’ is not there in ‘The Commune’. But without the ‘the’ the group’s name is just not the same…

See you in Strasbourg.

But now Michael Schumacher is “back” in a rather more literal sense, since this time he actually went away rather than just drifting off the radar of glory-hunting fans as he had three years hence. Having not raced since the end of the 2006 season, Schumacher will deputise for Felipe Massa, who was struck on the head by a 1kg spring during qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix last week, which tore through his helmet and cracked his skull. Ouch.

Oddly, according to F1 Fanatic, Schumacher commented, ”Though it is true that the chapter Formula 1 has been closed for me since long and completely, it is also true that for loyalty reasons to the team I cannot ignore that unfortunate situation. But as the competitor I am I also very much look forward to facing this challenge”… then again, if you follow their hyperlink, you will find not a garbled machine translation of something Schumacher said about Formula 1, but rather a one-paragraph article “Let our kids be kids”.

Massa’s accident, from which he may never fully recover, was alarming to watch. Seeing the car careering onwards as he was knocked unconscious at the wheel was pretty sickening. It also came just a week after Henry Surtees was killed at the Brands Hatch F2 race when a wheel bouncing across the track smashed into his helmet.

Formula 1 has always been a dangerous activity: in the 1960s and 1970s it could be expected that several drivers would die each season. That this is no longer the case – there not having been a driver fatality since 1994 (people who say this typically neglect to mention the deaths of trackside marshals Paolo Ghislimberti at Monza 2000 and Graham Beveridge at Melbourne 2001) is largely thanks to the efforts of the trade union for Formula 1 drivers, the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association. With particular debt to the campaigning of 1969, 1971 and 1973 world champion Jackie Stewart, who played a leading role in the early years of the GPDA as it sought recognition, workplace safety has improved significantly in the sector.

The GPDA is organised on a highly democratic basis. Few unions could claim the honour of having an average of 100% density, all-members’ meetings every two weeks, and an elected leadership changed every year and no full-time officials. There is almost no need for rank-and-file organisation with such horizontal forms of organisation already enshrined in union structures. Much as the relative democracy of the RMT union on the London Underground is strongly tied to its fighting strength and the resulting high wages many grades now receive, the GPDA has ensured that Formula 1 drivers are among the best paid sections of the proletariat, with some Formula 1 workers earning up to £20 million a year.

Militancy is of course also to some degree a reflection of the behaviour of the cartoonishly grotesque barons of the sport, billionaire TV rights man Bernie Ecclestone and the governing body’s president Max Mosley, son of Oswald. (The ‘alleged’ Nazi fetishism of Mosley made the running as regards F1 headlines in the tabloid front pages for most of 2008, but Ecclestone made his own bid for glory last month by attacking democracy and saying that at least Hitler “got things done”, even if he ended up being “persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not”. Lamely attempting to excuse his remarks, Ecclestone said that he wasn’t praising Nazism, only Hitler’s ability to kick-start the economy, which given that the economic drive was for war production, is a bit like Eichmann saying at his trial that he “only organised the trains”.)

The sole driver who refuses to join the GPDA is Lewis Hamilton. No doubt because Daddy won’t let him, given that the 2008 world champion’s father Anthony is his manager, official spokesperson and publicity bod, which basically means he controls absolutely everything he does. If there was ever a repeat of the one occasion on which F1 drivers went on strike, the 1982 South African Grand Prix (this had nothing to do with apartheid or boycotting the racist regime, it was for higher wages), the sectarian Hamilton would no doubt drive his McLaren Mercedes through the picket line, much as he remained silent when an anti-union witchhunt in the media greeted threats of a drivers’ strike last summer.

Do I like Michael Schumacher? No. Having the old man of the Ferrari stable fill in for the rest of the season when everyone really wants to see what the young buck Massa can do is almost as bad as when the AWL told the CPGB that I would not be speaking at the latter’s summer school when a far better speaker on Iran would be… Sean Matgamna

But do I want to see Schumi smash the wrecker Hamilton, who the seven-time champion never got to race against before? Yes. And, regardless of how he does, it’s nice to have an F1 news story which is about racing and not ‘politics’.

However, while the Venezuelan president is evidently an influential and controversial figure and the focus of much attention, we must go beyond the typical media epithets about his personality – ‘firebrand’, ‘outspoken’, and so on – and ask: what dynamics and social forces do these conflicts represent? Why has Chávism and anti-Chávism generalized across Latin America, how irreconcilable are the divisions, and to what extent are these questions of anti-imperialism and class struggle?

To understand what is taking place, it is important to contextualize the supposed “pink tide” led by Chávez in the history of Latin America, and in particular the continent’s many examples of ‘populist’ governments with supposedly ‘anti-imperialist’ and statist agendas. This article looks in particular at the case of the ‘Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces’, which governed Peru from 1968 to 1975.

Peru’s Revolutionary Government

The Peruvian colonels came to power amidst a period of significant change in US imperialism[2]’s relationship to Latin American countries, almost all of whom had won their independence from Spain (in Brazil’s case, Portugal) in the 1810s-20s. Broadly speaking, the traditional relationship of foreign capital to the continent had been one of “enclaves” of imperialist control of enterprises autonomous from the local ruling class, focused on extracting primary resources such as in the agricultural, mining and oil sectors and based on steeply unequal balance of trade. The 1960s industrialization process demanded state machines play an increasingly important role in building infrastructure and laying the foundations for ‘modernisation’, with US imperialism changing its mechanisms of domination from simple resource-plundering to more complex integration with ‘local’ ruling classes’ development projects and efforts to become ‘equal partners’ rather than simply subordinate agents of US policy . Although not identical, to a certain degree some of the same realignments are being attempted today (where the primary development is certain states’ backtracking from the full-on IMF-backed neo-liberal reforms which characterized the 1990s).

The Peruvian economy was a typical example of this developmentalist dynamic, while the 1968 coup d’état in Lima against centrist president Fernando Belaúnde and the end of civilian rule also ensured the ‘Revolutionary Government’s’ credentials as one of the military juntas presiding across most of the continent. However, the manner in which the Peruvian colonels – led by President General Juan Velasco Alvarado – went about reforming the economy and their relationship with US imperialism, as well as how they presented their actions and how they were received by the left and workers’ movement, is what makes Peru a particularly interesting case study from today’s standpoint.

After its 1968 seizure of power the new régime took sweeping measures to reorganize the economy in its so-called Peruvianisation programme: the ‘revolution’ was to be both anti-capitalist and non-communist but would build a ‘nationalist’, ‘humanist’ and ‘communitarian’ social order. The régime was not afraid to violate the rights to private property even of multinationals, for example the military occupation of the La Brea and Pariñas installations of the International Petroleum Company (a subsidiary of Standard Oil) and the expulsion of the company from the country without compensation; and the expropriation of the British-owned sugar cane plantations of WR Grace & Co..

An April 1970 speech by the president outlined terms whereby all multinational investments would have to proceed via contracts with the Revolutionary Government under strict terms. Contracts would last for a fifteen to twenty-year period, with foreign capital typically limited to 30% of investment in an enterprise and the state taking the bulk of control (less so in the case of supplementary private domestic investment) and then winning full ownership of the company upon the expiry of the contract.

Co-management and ‘Industrial Committees’

Moreover, any workplace with six or more employees (or smaller firms with an annual gross income of at least one million soles) was governed by a corporatist Industrial Committee (IC) whereby all of the personnel – whether managers or employees – were represented on boards in a co-management system. In such cases a full 50% of stock in the firm would be made available to the workforce to buy, each of them as individual shareholders. The IC system also forced companies to reinvest profits (the first 15% tax free), and as with the restrictions on the major landowners, the state sought to force the pace of development by promoting new industries and technological innovation as against the rather more lethargic traditional oligarchic families. Furthermore, since such a ‘nationalist’ system of redistributing ownership supposedly tended to the abolition of classes, workers now became ‘owners’ in their ‘co-operatives’, with the spin that the shares allocated to each ‘worker’ (including management) were tied to their existing salaries.

State interventionism coupled with these elements of ‘workers’ participation’ in management had the clear objective of co-opting the labour movement into the heart of the capitalist apparatus and to muzzle the working class by tying them in to responsibility for profitability. For that very reason, the flip side of ‘co-management’ and the ICs was repression: while the trade union leaderships welcomed the ICs, as did the Peruvian Communist Party, in the agro-industrial co-operatives the unions were abolished and collective bargaining outlawed. There was supposedly no need for workers to organise to defend themselves from their employer, when they themselves were among the ‘co-managers’. The result was that despite sustained high growth rates the state in fact pressured wages downwards relative to inflation – this at the same time as Velasco was denouncing imperialism “sucking money out of our country”, as Quijano explained in 1971[3]:

“The workers of Talara did not get the 25 percent wage increase they demanded and were obliged to accept the mere 12 percent proposed by [state energy controller] PETROPERU, with no pay for days not worked. The workers in factories which closed down did not win any of their demands. The mining workers, too, got only the increases offered by the imperialist Toquepala, Cerro de Pasco, and Marcona companies, and other smaller ones. In all these cases of demands for higher wages the regime argues that the cost of living went up only 5.6 percent in 1970 and that wage increases above this percentage are not justified. It should be remembered, however, that this 5.6 percent comes on top of the rise in the cost of living between 1967 and 1969, and that workers have had their wages practically frozen during all these years, since the only wage increase allowed during this period was a 1969 increase of 10 percent over the 1966 level.”

The workers supposedly represented on ICs and in control thanks to their co-operative status proved to have little opportunity to use such channels to assert their interests, since effectively they operated similarly to any company reacting to market imperatives and with traditional capitalist hierarchy in the workplace and wage differentials kept in force. Such participation and taking responsibility for someone else’s profits is much unlike workers’ control, whereby workers are able to veto management decisions by asserting their strength on the shop-floor, and still less akin to workers’ self-management, when individual workplaces and communities are run collectively with no state apparatus, market relations or managers. The Peruvian experience made clear that the state was not a ‘neutral’ arbiter of relations between the American mining companies and Italian banks and the working class in a ‘humanist’ economy, but in fact was firmly on the side of the former. Precisely the goal of the state-capitalist measures undertaken by the régime was to rationalize the economy to allow more efficient imperialist penetration, state capital and state power guaranteeing profitability in general. The Revolutionary Government’s apparently daring measures to expropriate certain elements of the bourgeoisie in no way implied affinity with the working class or opposition to capitalism.

At this point we might digress and note that the Peruvian colonels’ clever attempt to identify the interests of the working class with that of the benevolent ‘revolutionary’ state machine was far from unique. It has been also been a hallmark of state socialism from the stage in the Russian revolution where it was determined that the working class needed no defence from ‘their’ state and thus no organizing rights were necessary (Lenin’s opposition to Trotsky’s very explicit position on this score in the 1920 ‘trade union debate’ was rather at odds with what had already happened to the factory committees) through to Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela, where another ‘co-operative system’ plays the same role, as Charles Reeve discussed with El Libertario[4]:

“C.R. – Now let’s talk about the co-operatives movement. A Venezuelan friend said that the government’s cooperatives movement, in the last analysis, amounts to a sort of institutionalisation of labour precarity and black market work. He mentioned the recent (2007) strike by dustmen in part of Caracas, during which the strikers asked for Barreto, mayor of Caracas, to intervene – he who quotes Foucault and invited Toni Negri over. The mayor told them that he could do nothing, since they had accepted the transformation of the old company into a co-operative. Which meant that there was no collective bargaining, since the workers were considered to be associates of the co-operative on the same level as the administrators!

“M. – Of course, we have a totally different idea of cooperatives. For us, a co-operative is an initiative which comes from below. For the Chavistas, on the contrary, enterprises in what they now call the “social economy sector” must operate in the form of state-aided cooperatives. Every day people start organising cooperatives – people who are totally foreign to the spirit and practice of co-operativism… because it is the quickest way of getting contracts and state credit! In many industries the law obliges the state to give priority of tenders to “co-operatives” above private enterprises. So many malign people have started creating cooperatives in order to win contracts with government bodies. That was the case with the public roads initiative. A private enterprise was thus transformed into a co-operative to win the tender, and at a stroke the workers lost all their rights and bonuses. They now have three-month renewable contracts, such that the “co-operativist” (in reality, the new name for the boss!) has no duties towards them. Thanks to this lie, after a few months it could be said that there were 200,000 co-operatives… All this in order to make propaganda showing that society has changed. But it is all artificial, created by decree.

“I. – I would add that, after the oil workers’ strike, the government learned that it had to control the world of work. First it explained that the state would create a new form of organisation based on solidarity and where all workers would benefit from the same privileges. The co-operatives! At a stroke the government broke the services contracts it had with private companies (particularly for cleaning), which by law had to pay workers ‘social bonuses’. The workers were laid off and forced to seek temporary work with these co-operatives now dealing with the state. They lost the bonuses and rights which they had previously (in theory at least) had. Moreover, many of these co-operatives disappeared as soon as they were created. So we are witnessing, as your friend is right to emphasise, the casualisation of work.”

State capitalism and development

Indeed, in the summer 1971 edition of  Monthly Review referred to above, devoted entirely to Peru, Quijano’s study basically asserts that the populist and left-nationalist rhetoric used to generate support for ‘Peruvianisation’ was shallow, with the régime not even following a consistent course of taking over multinational interests: the ‘Peruvianisation’ of the wholly-foreign-owned car industry, which saw price controls and restrictions on importing locally available materials, along with the new structures of finance via the establishment of state holding firm COFIDE, could not and did not seek to actually push back imperialist ownership as such but all the better to integrate it with state capital while modernizing industry. The Peruvian colonels were ‘anti-imperialist’ only in the sense that they wanted to establish a more equal status in partnership with US capital rather than serve as its direct agents.

Some Trotskyists in Latin America might criticize such leaders, as well as the likes of Chávez in Venezuela or Evo Morales in Bolivia for ‘not going far enough’ – being reticent or unwilling to carry through ‘the revolution’ to its full course, they vacillate and accommodate to imperialist interests, and have to be pushed further. This type of analysis of left nationalists as an ally who need to be pressured along (as put into action with disastrous effect by the mass Partido Obrero Revolucionario in the 1952 Bolivian revolution) has two central flaws conceptually speaking. Firstly, we would of course object to any notion that the state machine can implement socialism from above given sufficient determination to carry out a reform process, an idea clearly counterposed to the working class overthrowing the state apparatus via their own self-activity (to which many such left nationalists are overtly hostile). Secondly, it misunderstands the project of the partisans of statified capitalism, which is not a ‘mistaken’ or ‘misdirected’ attempt to abolish capitalism but rather to rationalize and re-organise it in the interests of different sectors (e.g. the prioritization of light industry as against agriculture under Velasco), combat underdevelopment and to support domestic capital, even if these things may cause some degree of antagonism with US capital.

Surely, however, when we say that state capitalism in Latin America in fact rationalizes investment and develops infrastructure for the sake of serving the interests of capital in general, this merely begs the question: why is it so polarizing, and why does it provoke such strife within the bourgeoisie itself? If the nationalization of most of the Chilean economy by Salvador Allende in 1970-73 only had the intention of better organizing the exploitation of the working class, or if the Peruvian colonels were laying the basis for greater profitability (and if Chávez, Morales, Zelaya and Correa are doing the same today), why such strong opposition from the majority of the capitalist class? Why did it take so long for ‘ordinary’ parliamentary-civilian rule to stabilize in almost every country in Latin America, and why does that seem under threat today?

Clearly underlying class relations in a country like Peru is the importance of foreign investment and imbalance of trade, the dependence of the whole economy on the United States (including the orientation of production and technology to the demands of western capital) and therefore a relatively small, super-rich and ‘outward-facing’ domestic bourgeoisie desperate to hold onto an alliance which guarantees its own privileges and at the same time subordinates the interests of the national economy’s development to those of imperialist exploitation. Although there is a ‘local’ bourgeoisie with different objectives than the working class, it appears that across the 19th and 20th centuries underdevelopment has been the direct product of the domination of foreign capital:

“In Latin America, the international monopoly corporation uses [its] technology to compete with and eliminate or absorb local rivals, who lack the funds or suppliers to buy, or cannot get import licences for similar equipment… The international corporation which controls this technology thus increases its monopoly power over its Latin American associates in their common mixed firms, over its Latin American rivals in other firms, and over the Latin American economy in general. In the latter, as a result, the capital/labour ratio rises, excess capacity grows, and the general wage level declines. Fore these reasons and because this foreign investment has a largely foreign multiplier and does not increase domestic purchasing power correspondingly, periodic over-investment crises become more frequent and prolonged, while cyclical and structural unemployment increases in Latin America.”[5]

Of course, this is not uniformly the case on the continent, particular in the wealthier south. Chile until 1973 was a longstanding bastion of parliamentary democracy, “from the beginning the republic was ruled by a domestic ruling class, that of the great conservative landowners like Portales and then the industrial bourgeoisie from Manuel Montt onwards. A country of mining enclaves, Chile was nonetheless ruled by a united ruling class with a strong capacity for integration. By the early 20th century the separation between finance and rural capital had almost disappeared.”[6]

For the most part, however, the local ruling classes in the region are highly vulnerable both to struggle by an immiserated working class with no stake in the dependent bourgeoisie’s profits, and to crises in the world’s main capitalist centres. For their part, state capitalists prioritise economic development, seeking to build ‘national unity’ and blunt class antagonisms by sinking roots in society for domestic capital. But an effort to rationalize ‘ordinary’ ‘national’ class relations would mean curbing the monopoly of power belonging to oligarchs and the dependent ruling class. Although such a path may assist capital accumulation in general terms, the old oligarchic families are forced to confront the would-be state capitalist ruling class for fear of not being integrated into the new order.

Nationalist movements in Latin America who set themselves against oligarchs and US imperialism – or ‘populists’ – have long been able to find support among the working class and peasantry but also significant sections of the administrative and professional middle class and the non-dependent ‘national’ bourgeoisie’. Because they rest on more than one class force, such régimes talk out of both sides of their mouth, insisting on their ability to manage capitalism (we need only recall Chávez’s “I will deactivate the bomb of revolution” speech[7]) at the same time as denouncing imperialists and oligarchs. They do however have a contradictory relationship with the workers’ movement: breaking down the old state apparatus and economic hierarchies, and indeed splits in the military, may rouse the working class into more assertive action, as has undoubtedly taken place in Venezuela since the defeat of the 2002 coup against Chávez. Moreover, for want of the support of a socially weighty domestic ruling class, such ‘populists’ may desire to harness the strength of the working class via co-option of trade unions and leftist rhetoric. Zelaya, upon coming to power in Honduras 2005 – much like Chávez in Venezuela in 1999 – was a Third Way centrist, and yet thanks to the vociferous opposition of much of the traditional ruling class, was pushed to the left. Zelaya, leader of the long-standing major conservative force, the Partido Liberal, was faced with crisis as oil prices soared and the IMF exerted pressure, and therefore he adopted a ‘populist’ course:

“…a classic situation started to come about: a bourgeois government, which is opposed by the majority of the bourgeoisie, tries to survive on the basis of mass-movement support. In Honduras the rise of struggles led by the [Coordinadora Nacional de Resistencia Popular] gave substance to this option.

“This “left turn”, seeking support among the mass movement, was done without making significant material concessions to the working class or peasantry. Beyond small increases in the minimum wage, suspension of water privatisation and other small concessions, Mel [Zelaya’s] populist turn was more a matter of speeches, embracing Chávez and the Castro brothers and meetings with the CNRP.”[8]

Ultimately, the aforementioned behaviour towards the working class of Peruvian Revolutionary Government type régimes and machine politicians pushed to the left, like Chávez and Zelaya, is not substantially different to those populists with origins in the traditional left – like Salvador Allende in Chile, 1970-73 or Evo Morales today. In each one of these cases the government at once tries to elicit mass support and at the same time smother working-class forces by integrating them into the state and breaking up autonomous movements which go too far. Throughout his rule Allende repeatedly attempted to broker compromise with the military, bringing numerous officers into his cabinet and sending soldiers into factories and poor barrios in weapons raids to stop revolutionary organization on the part of the working class, which culminated in a right-wing coup. In August 2008, at the same time as the Bolivian oligarchy’s forces were marching through the streets of provinces like Beni, Pando and Santa Cruz in an effort to split the country in two and re-establish their cosy relations with western energy firms, Evo Morales, proclaiming the need for national unity, sent police to break up miners’ picket lines near Oruro as evidence of his ability to keep the working class in line (he calls his desired system ‘Andean capitalism’).

Such opposition to revolutionary working-class struggle is not in itself a sufficient guarantee of the stability of any given government, since the ruling class is sharply differentiated amongst itself. Other elements of the ruling class may well be wary of moves which create space for the workers’ movement or threaten alliance with US capital even if they are not anti-capitalist as such; as we have seen, that in no way implies that the working class has a particular interest in supporting the ‘left-nationalist’ section of the ruling class or that it can use state channels to advance resistance to capitalist austerity.

Conclusion

Populism in Latin America has continually re-emerged, expressing the desire of certain local ruling classes to build ‘indigenous’ economic development and lessen dependence on US imperialism and also relying on a warped attempt at resistance to the traditional structures of capitalist rule. In certain ways the struggle between state capitalists basing themselves on popular movements hostile to oligarchs and US imperialism, and traditional conservative forces has in some countries substituted itself for direct struggle between classes with clearly delineated interests. For want of an ‘independent’ domestic bourgeoisie class lines can be blurred and left nationalists are able to position themselves as if advocates of the masses, whether from a traditional left background, forced to seek working-class support by the resistance of oligarchs or determined agents of state-capitalist development. Superfically radical measures may thus be taken to restrict the power of certain elements of the bourgeoisie. Yet it is clear that whatever the importance of ‘populism’ in the context of a Latin America dominated by foreign capital, it is illusory to believe that the working class can develop its own fight for socialism via alliance with such forces: in fact, to back state-capitalist development is precisely to support the project with the strongest strategy for rationalizing the rule of the domestic bourgeoisie and battening down the hatches of class struggle.

[2] The United States of America had been the dominant power in its ‘backyard’ ever since the 19th century collapse of Spanish colonialism – culminating in the 1898 Spanish-American War – and to a certain extent, thanks to the early 20^th century decline of the long-time British influence over Argentina and Chile. It was also the case that this period saw re-emerging European interests in much of the continent, as well as the rise of Japanese finance projects, and therefore a “multi-lateralisation” of foreign investment.

[3] Aníbal Quijano, ‘Nationalism and capitalism in Peru’, Monthly Review July-August 1971, p. 113

[4] ‘Charles Reeve interviews El Libertario’, The revolution delayed: a decade of Hugo Chávez, The Commune, February 2009, pp. 13-15

[5] Capitalism and underdevelopment in Latin America, Andre Gunder Frank, Pelican, London, 1973, pp. 332-333

[6] Vie et Mort du Chili Populaire, Alain Touraine, Seuil, Paris, 1973, pp. 64-65

[7] “I said this before becoming president: Venezuela is a kind of bomb. We are going to begin to deactivate the mechanism of that bomb. And today, it’s not that it is totally deactivated, but I am sure that it is much less likely that this bomb will explode today.” – Hugo Chávez speaking to a conference of US and Venezuelan business leaders, 2005

[8]‘¡Movilización de masas hasta derrotar a “Pinocheletti”!’, Roberto Ramírez, http://socialismo-o-barbarie.org/centroamerica_y_caribe/090702_entre_consolidacion_y_rebelion.htm

Well, not quite a new face. David Van Day, front man of 1980s pop duo Dollar and one-time member of Bucks Fizz, has announced his plans to challenge outspoken anti-abortionist Tory MP Nadine Dorries in her Mid Bedfordshire consistuency at the next general election.

Van Day had earlier put himself forward to the public vote in two previous ballots, namely the 2007 council election in East Brighton and the 2008 edition of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!

Standing as a Conservative (in the council elections, that is – I’m a Celebrity…, like the Libyan state, doesn’t allow political parties) Van Day found himself in hot water when he gave a speech after a performance by The Brighton and Hove Actually Gay Men’s Chorus. He commented that the members of the choir “bend over backwards for anybody” and that he didn’t want to “be behind them at the time.”

This type of comment detracts from the good work done by many in the ’80s pop restorationist movement, already long ignored by the left despite the strong correlation between militant strike action and the playing of the hits of Spandau Ballet (the figures for working days lost to strike action and the sales numbers for the cassette single of Gold both having declined by over 90% since the release of the latter on the eve of the 1984-5 Miners’ Strike).

Nonetheless, it is clear that communists can place no faith in the likes of Van Day – not only a one-time member of the Tories and apparent homophobe, but an unreconstructed apologist for Bucks Fizz.

Furthermore, we should realise that the problem with ’80s pop legends is not only that some are ‘corrupt’ ‘bad eggs’ and thus likely to fiddle their expenses, but that its representatives are tied by a thousand strings to the state bureaucracy, British capital and the standing army. They legislate in the interests of their corporate backers, not the movement as a whole, and are thus bound to let down their fans. The problem is not only Van Day himself – we could expect the same sort of behaviour from a Midge Ure or Tony Hadley if they are elected as No2EU members of the European parliament (*).

At best Parliament can be used for propaganda purposes, but it will never be the case that any viable form of ’80s pop will be introduced by predominantly Parliamentary methods – the kind of ’80s pop we envisage can only arise from below, through mass collective action (e.g. singing True Colors by Cyndi Lauper en masse at karaoke nights, as some of us encouraged during the Lindsey Oil Refinery wildcats despite protests from carping sectarian Trotskyites).

As Bucks Fizz themselves sang in their 1981 Eurovision-winning song Making Your Mind Up, we can rely on no heroes and leaders, but ourselves and our own organisations alone, “Trust your inner vision/Dont’ let others change your mind/Do not let your subjectivity succumb to the interference of reactionaries/Basically they’re just paper tigers anyway”.

(*) At the time of going to press, rumours that the two were standing for the RMT-Morning Star-Socialist Party electoral alliance were still unconfirmed.

Communists argue that the struggle to revolutionise society is not only a ‘political’ affair at the level of the state or an ‘economic’ struggle in industry, but also a thoroughgoing ideological battle against the ruling class. It is in this sense that we should welcome the publication The London Drinker, organ of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA). Marxists should take ideas seriously, and such a publication can facilitate communication between the class and vanguard elements well-schooled in our collective tradition.

However, communists also realise that their role is not merely to highlight a variety of campaigns or class battles, but to point to the movement as a whole a strategy for moving forward to create a different form of societal organisation. For this very reason, when reading The London Drinker we can discern the fundamentally sectarian mores of CAMRA, who seek not to advance the wider movement but rather to promote their own particular shibboleths and to build their own organisation.The London Drinker may well be the only publication on the left which has argued that pub closures are a more important threat to the working class in the economic crisis than mass redundancies. Arguing that the communist movement should not limit itself to the domain of the workplace – when in fact we ought to seek to abolish work – CAMRA point to the fact that “the economic downturn has seen a marked increase in pubs closing because of insolvency – 74 in the final quarter of 2008″. To their credit, the comrades argue not for the intervention of a benevolent state, but the building of a movement from below to oppose these cuts, including forums “which will allow people from all over the country to talk to each other about local campaigns, share techniques and tips and make it easier for all involved to become activists”.

Unfortunately, rather than offering any substantive way forward politically for the movement, the group remains mired in reactionary nostalgia for the working class culture of the post-WWII Keynesian consensus, bemoaning the fact that “Frosty Jack white cider (7.5% ABV)… is looking to replace Buckfast Wine as the choice of Scottish urban youth”.

Alongside the typical exaggerated anarchist compaints about excessive use of CCTV and surveillance of drinkers, CAMRA echoed many petit-bourgeois elements on the Trotskyist left by refusing to extend support to Oz and James Drink to Britain on BBC2, failing to realise that – whatever the problems of its slogans – this offered a real answer to the crisis of confidence which has affected the real ale movement in the UK over the last three decades of defeat. Despite the nationalist rhetoric of Top Gear presenter James May, this put the movement to defend real ale back on the political agenda and showed that effective collective action is still possible.

And yet Roger Protz – who was 35 years ago a member of the executive of the International Socialists, now the SWP – uses The London Drinker to bemoan the BBC’s alleged failure to sufficiently adverise the activities of CAMRA,

“In the episode broadcast on 10 February, the pair went to a beer festival. No mention however was made of where the event was – it was in Worcester – let alone which organisation was staging the event… the only CAMRA view was on someone’s shirt… when it coms to real ale, CAMRA is the story, so why did the BBC not want to acknowledge CAMRA’s existence?”

Coming from Protz, this was a typical example of Leninist substitutionism, where a self-appointed leadership sees its own vanguard role – justified by a false tradition of leaders and holy texts – as more important than the existence of a real movement from below which might actually break real ale “out of the ghetto”.

An even worse example of this attitude – socialism-from-above if ever it existed – came in one report’s outrageous statement that “a dedicated contingent from CAMRA braved [!] a demonstration by Sri Lankan Tamils and sallied forth to host a successful parliamentary reception in the Houses of Parliament”. Cut off from grassroots anti-imperialist activists after their shoddy role in the Respect debacle and looking to the left of the labour bureaucracy to enact ‘reforms’, The London Drinker even urges its readers to “contact our local MPs, as nothing works better for them than a bulging post bag from local constituents”. It is quite clear that such tactics will do nothing to advance the Tamil cause, to which CAMRA clearly have no serious orientation.

The obituaries section offers some insights into the life of the movement, but they are of a rather superficial character. We learn that David Humphreys “was among those who helped gain SW London Branch [of CAMRA] as ‘an awkward squad’. He had strong ideas about how CAMRA should be run, and these often conflicted with the conventional wisdom… by the late 70s David had become somewhat disillusioned with CAMRA for what he saw as a lack of real campaigning zeal and his involvement tailed off. He turned his attention to the SPBW (hardly a campaigning organisation!) and over the years occupied various offices, including that of national chairman.” Similarly, we are  told about  Bert Field “an ASLEF shop steward who was given the nickname ‘Keyhole Kate’ for his campaign to have cab keyholes that caused draughts covered over”. Yet for all of these points on ‘campaigning’ leaders and attacking rival groups like SPBW, we are not given any critique of the overall role of such organisations – in reality, no ‘awkward squad’ of ‘left’ bureaucrats can break with their fundamental and structural link to capitalism.

Admittedly, it is impressive that CAMRA can advertise activities for no less than 13 London geographical branches – having overtaken the SWP and Socialist Party in recent years – but this is at the expense of the quality of analysis produced in The London Drinker. Basic Marxist categories and words like ‘communism’, ‘class struggle’ and ‘rank-and-filism’ are missing from the magazine. It is well-known among real ale activists in Surrey public schools that the main attraction of The Star on Church Street in Godalming is that you can get served easily even if you are only 14 years old, yet this goes unmentioned in The London Drinker‘s basically economistic review of the pub.

Therefore it is only proper to class The London Drinker among the ranks of the traditional left press – forever willing to extol the virtues of their own organisation, never able to offer a viable alternative for the movement as a whole. The Campaign for Real Ale epitomise sectarianism – and when you’re in the swamp there’s nothing to throw but mud.