Our time to act has come (2019)

Party News from the May 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘We have reached a point in history when we have the technical capacities to solve poverty, malnutrition, inequality and, of course, global warming. The deciding factors for whether we take advantage of our potential will be our activism and our international unity. We need to start cooperating and sharing the remaining resources of this planet in a fair way.’ So said one of the students involved in the climate change school strikes.

She probably does not regard herself as a socialist, but she echoes the goal pursued by the Socialist Party of Great Britain since it was founded in 1904: the planet owned in common and democratically controlled by the people who live on it, with production for need and not for profit.

Brexit or no Brexit, the market system continues to stand between us and what we need to live a good life: healthy food, good housing, access to health care and a clean environment.

Take the Folkestone seafront redevelopment. A socialist society would freely cooperate to design and build this on a human scale. It would democratically agree to use resources to repair and run the Leas lift without having to beg for funding: in a society of common ownership, finance will no longer be a factor. Compare this with the powerlessness we all feel today, at the mercy of what is profitable for developers.

Voting for the Socialist Party will not of course bring about this society overnight. But it will send a signal that we will no longer tolerate a world run in the profitable, destructive interests of a tiny minority. There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

The Socialist Party candidate is Andy Thomas.

Election leaflet for council election in Folkestone & Hythe District Council and Folkestone Town Council (Harbour ward) on Thursday 2 May.

Local Elections (2019)

Party News from the April 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Voters in the Harbour ward of Folkestone, Kent will have their fourth opportunity in six years to vote for Socialism, when they go to the polls to re-elect the District Council on 2 May. Previously they have been able to vote for Socialist Party candidates for the UK and European parliaments, the last District poll in 2015 and most recently in 2017, when most of Folkestone was contested by the Party in the county council election. In fact, the 4000+ Harbour ward electors will be able to vote twice for Socialism , as we are also standing for the Town Council in the same ward. Andy Thomas is our candidate for both contests.

Afghanistan: the Russian Withdrawal (1988)

From the August 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nine bloody years after their intervention in Afghanistan, the Russian army is finally pulling out. The government of Nahmud Berri is to be left to fend for itself against the Mujahadeen guerrilla alliance, which successfully tied down 155,000 troops for almost a decade. How are we to explain this abandonment of a “communist” ally to such an uncertain fate, given the scale of Moscow’s past support for the Afghan regime? The answer can be found in the operation of economic pressures on Russian decision makers.

In 1978, the government of Muhammed Daoud was overthrown in a coup led by the “Communist” Party of Afghanistan, the PDPA. The party was split into two antagonistic factions, and alarm bells started ringing in Moscow when the more radical wing, the “Kalq”, gained the upper hand and began pushing though far-reaching reforms. They aimed to transform Afghan society into a modern Russian-style state by expropriating the large landlords and attacking feudal social structures. These measures provoked bitter resistance, and within months the country was embroiled in an increasingly savage civil war.

At this point the Russian ruling class became seriously alarmed and tried, without success, to make the President, Hafizulla Amin, soften his position. The Ayatollah Khomeini had just been swept to power in neighbouring Iran, and the Russians were fearful that a similar regime of religious zealots might come to power. At best they would be anti-Russian, and at worst they could ally with Washington. US bases might even follow.

When it became clear that Amin would not be diverted, the Russians sent in their troops, stormed the presidential palace and executed him. In his place they installed Babrak Karmal of the moderate “parcham” faction of the PDPA, and set about trying to win the war. Thus the intervention was about putting a stop to the revolutionary process before it threatened the strategic interests of the Russian Empire.

So why, nine years later and with the war still not won, has the Russian leadership decided on a withdrawal? The dominant factor was the sheer cost of the occupation, not only in maintaining a huge garrison through a war which was unwinable but also in the unseen burdens it was placing on the Russian state.

The process of “Perestroika” is not merely a passing fad of the western media, but involves the very survival of the Russian ruling class. To allow their crumbling economy to stagger on in its present form is to invite relative and eventually absolute decline, which would marginalise the country in the world economy and could prejudice the political and even the territorial integrity of the state. Russian industry simply must become competitive in the world market, and to this end will require vast amounts of capital and new technology, expanding markets and cheap sources of energy and raw materials.

This is the context in which the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan must be seen. As we saw in the case of changing attitudes towards the Korean Peninsula, the primary goal of Russian foreign policy is now regional stability and the reduction of tension. Such a climate is crucial if trade and foreign investment are to be successfully encouraged.

The Afghan war has long been a major source of tension with China, the “third world” and the West. The Chinese government has consistently maintained that the occupation of Afghanistan was one of three obstacles to the normalisation of relations with the Russians {the other two being border disputes and the Vietnamese occupation of Kampuchea). The Afghan withdrawal will significantly speed up the recent rapprochement between the two states, and this will produce immense benefits for the Russian ruling class. Not only will it allow them to make further reductions in their half million strong forces guarding the Chinese border, but it will also help force the pace of growing trading links.

As far as the “third world’. is concerned, recently released Kremlin documents show that some officials appreciated at the time of the invasion the disastrous effects it would have on Russia’s position in the region, particularly with the Islamic nations, whose friendship was necessary for the economy and overall security. These fears proved well founded, particularly in the case of Pakistan and the Arab world.

Finally, the occupation of Afghanistan was one of the factors {along with the imposition of martial law in Poland) which provided the pretext for the United States to launch the “second cold war” of the early 1980s. Most distressing of all to the Russians was the curtailing of trade credits and the tougher restrictions placed on the export of “sensitive” technologies to the Eastern bloc. The recent summit in Moscow demonstrated the value the Russians now place on restoring conditions in which these restrictions can be removed.

It would, however, be wrong to suppose that the Russians are completely abandoning their interests in Afghanistan. They have a large economic stake in the northern oil and gas fields around Jauzan, and army leaders have made a series of agreements with local tribal chiefs {the same “forces of reaction” against whom they are supposedly waging a life or death struggle) to safeguard their interests. Moreover, recent reports suggest that they have pushed the Afghan government into creating what amounts to a buffer state in the north, under the guise of an “administrative reorganisation” , which would serve to protect their real strategic and economic stake in the country should the central government collapse (Guardian, 23 April).

Withdrawal from Afghanistan does not herald a new, more “peaceful” era in international affairs. The foreign policy of the Russian ruling class, like their Western counterparts, cannot afford to renounce war as an instrument for securing their interests. Indeed, they have already warned Pakistan and the United States that the withdrawal will be halted unless they stop supplying arms to the guerrillas. However, economic pressures have proved stronger than the strategic worries which were behind the original invasion and which remain unresolved. This makes the further use of force unlikely, not because Gorbachev is any more pacifically inclined than previous leaders, but because the weakness of the economy leaves him with little real choice.

Andrew Thomas

Merchants of Death (1991)

From the January 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Latest Pentagon estimates of casualties which would follow an assault on Iraqi forces in Kuwait have now risen to at least 50,000 dead and five times that number injured.

Iraqi forces are now dug in behind two defensive lines inside the Kuwaiti border, with tanks buried in up to two feet of sand and extensive trench systems supported by mines, artillery and formidable anti-aircraft arrays. But these forces did not just appear from the desert sands. They were supplied to the dictator Saddam Hussein by 30 countries, and the three biggest were all permanent members of the UN Security Council – Russia, France and China. Others included Sweden and Switzerland, North Korea and South Africa.

The world system of arms production is driven by two main factors: the economic imperative to maintain industrial capacity perceived as strategically vital but commercially obsolete, and the buying of “friends” to protect trade routes, sources of raw materials and markets. The arming of Iraq – which began in earnest during the war with Iran – demonstrates the complete uselessness of programmes designed to control the arms trade by treaties. These are useless since they take no account of the incessant rivalries which arise from the anarchic global state system. When Iraq invaded Iran in September 1980 most military experts predicted the conflict would be very brief as both sides would run out of armaments within a fortnight. Instead there were well over a million casualties, and this sheer volume of firepower was only sustained by arms-producing countries competing with each other to supply weapons to both sides.

Who armed Iraq

Iraq does not have much of a military industry of its own. During the war its main suppliers were France and Russia. The principle motive of the Russian supply effort was to secure the state’s strategic interests in a region vital for raw materials but otherwise dominated by the West.

Russia supplied the bulk of the 2,250 T54’s and T55’s which now form the backbone of the armoured forces ranged against the USSR’s own marines. During the Iran/Iraq war Russia supplied £5.55 million–worth of military exports, including Tupolev bombers, Sukhoi and MIG fighters and Frog and Scud B missiles. Russia is also responsible for one of the biggest military threats now posed by Iraq in the event of a war — a long-range missile attack on oil installations using the 815km range Al’ Abbas surface-to-surface missile, one of two ballistic missiles developed by Iraqi engineers from the Russian Scud B. Loaded with chemical weapons, it is also within range of Tel Aviv in Israel, which Saddam has vowed to take down with him if he is forced into war.

In the case of France, the motive was both commercial and strategic. The French arms industry – like its UK counterpart – is not a commercially viable proposition, but is considered essential to protect the state’s long-term interests. It has to sell its production on world markets to survive domestically. The Iran/lraq war proved a boon for the French armaments industry. Sales to Iraq topped $5.6 billion, or 40 per cent of arms exports for the period of the war, including 328 Dassault Mirage fighters and 848 Exocet missiles which were used to devastating effect against Iran’s Karg Island oil installations.

Now the monster partly created by France has turned on its creators. France is considered a weak link in the military front line, with its pilots faced by Iraqi Force pilots in French Mirages, trained in France on French missile systems. One French Air Force officer was reported as stating that “in some cases Iraqi equipment could be even better. They know our battle methods and have tried them out against the Iranians”.

The British Connection

As for the smaller players in building up the Iraqi war machine, British salesmen have not been left too much in the shade. Although the British government had a policy of only selling “non-lethal” hardware, this was a fig-leaf which was soon exposed. In 1982, International Military Services Ltd, a company wholly owned by the Ministry of Defence (MOD), was given permission to repair British-made Chieftain tanks captured by Iraq from Iran (and now in the Iraqi front line facing British troops across no-man’s-land). Three years later 300 military landrovers worth £3 million and a large quantity of radar equipment said to be worth much more were sold to Iraq to “balance” the export of ships to Iran.

According to the Financial Times (31 March 1983) contracts for £250 million – worth of “defence related but non-lethal equipment” were signed in 1983, and in 1984 80 Iraqi Air Force pilots were trained at Specialist Flight Training Ltd of Carlisle. Iraq was on the MOD list of countries who received training from the armed forces or at MOD establishments every year of the war, and in 1986 a five-strong Iraqi delegation led by Director of Armaments and Supplies, Major-General Ibrahim Hammadi, attended the British Army Equipment Exhibition at Aldershot.

British firms also had a hand in building up Iraq’s chemical weapon capability. In 1981, with the active support of the MOD’s Defence Sales Organisation (now the Defence Export Services Organisation) Primary Medical Aid Ltd of Fareham, Hampshire, sold 10,000 chemical protection kits to Iraq, in a deal worth $500,000. Such kits are essential protection for people employed in the manufacture of chemicals or the filling of shells, and this order was approved in spite of specific legislation — the Export of Goods (Control) Order — which prohibits the export of nuclear, biological and chemical warfare protective clothing.

This trade continued after the war with Iran was over. Seven months after the ceasefire 13 British companies, including British Aerospace, Racal and GEC, exhibited at the first Baghdad International Exhibition for military production. BAe shortly afterwards announced a £300 million deal for 50 Hawk aircraft and a local production line in Iraq. This was finally vetoed by the British government despite fierce opposition from the MOD and Department of Trade and Industry. They argued – quite validly – that if BAe did not get the order, then another country equally desperate to maintain a military aircraft capability, such as France, most certainly would.

This is, of course, precisely what did happen, with the Dassault/Dornier Alpha jet leaping to the front of the race to rearm a regime which had just been savaged by Amnesty International for torturing and gassing its own people. Interestingly, Iraq also demonstrated a touching example of the truly international nature of the arms production industry by displaying at the Baghdad fair a French Mirage fitted with Russian missiles, and a Russian transport plane with French and British radar.

British companies have also been active, often with the covert support of the military-industrial bureaucracy, in building up Iraq’s indigenous arms production industry. The Supergun fiasco is the latest example. Of particular interest here is that the MOD and DTI both knew about the barrel sections — masquerading as pipes — fully two years ago, yet still granted export licences. Could this have anything to do with the fact that the Defence Export Secretariat — the MOD’s own arms export promotion agency — is an integral part of the “neutral” government body vetting arms exports, the Defence Exports Secretariat?

Despite the Supergun fiasco, as late as July last year — one month before Iraq invaded Kuwait — the newly-appointed British military attaché to Baghdad, Col A. J. Dobson, invited British firms wishing to do business with the Iraqi regime to a cosy briefing on the local opportunities for profitable trade.

Customs officers are now investigating Microwave Modules Ltd of Aintree, Liverpool over the sale to Iraq in December 1988 of surveillance equipment and remote controlled “spy in the sky” aircraft. In its defence the company has claimed that the DTI has always been aware of its dealings and has given them its tacit approval.

So much, then, for the major suppliers of Iraq. But there is also the increasing number of developing countries which are pulling themselves into industrialisation through building up defence industries which also must export or die. Two particular cases in point are China and Brazil, both of whom exhibited at the 1989 Baghdad arms fair.

Following the introduction of the Four Modernisations, the Chinese army has come under pressure to justify itself commercially by finding foreign markets for its military hardware. The effect of this has been a shift towards the familiar commercial/strategic imperatives which have traditionally guided Russian and Western arms suppliers.

During the Iran/Iraq war, China sold between $8-10 billion-worth of arms to both sides, and in July 1988 Deng Xiaoping was forced to admit that freelance marketeering to the Middle East by various military commanders was getting out of hand.

In the case of Brazil, arms production was driven by the same imperatives as the Chinese — to establish a viable domestic armaments industry through foreign sales and to pay back massive foreign currency debts. Production now includes fighter aircraft, helicopters, missiles, armoured vehicles and military avionics, Brazil is now the leading exporter of wheeled armoured personnel carriers to the Middle East. It has been a key supplier of rocket launchers, missiles and howitzers. Thus is exposed the hypocrisy of the United Front of All Peace-loving Nations against the Evil Dictator Saddam Hussein. These same regimes which now claim the moral high ground are the very same ones which have spent the last ten years at least arming his regime.

America too does not escape the charges of hypocrisy. When it looked as if Iraq might lose to Iran in the later stages of the Gulf war, the CIA supplied Iraq with military intelligence from satellite pictures of Iranian troop movements. Peace-loving Germany was the biggest suppliers of equipment subsequently used to fabricate chemical weapons factories.

Although the Iraqi gold-mine appears temporarily exhausted, the constant conflict generated by inter-state competition continues to open up new doors of opportunity for the sellers of arms. Last September the Bush administration made moves to supply Saudi Arabia with $20 billion-worth of military hardware, although this has now been scaled down to around $7 billion. Some wags on Capitol Hill have already dubbed it Outdoor Relief for the US arms industry. Not to be outdone, Israel has now put in a bid for “balancing” military aid, and so the endless militarisation of the Gulf continues.

British Aerospace meanwhile has compensated for its disappointments in Iraq with a huge deal to sell Tornado fighters to Saudi Arabia, although this might be threatened by the US offer. In anticipation of further fat profits the value of BAe shares has already increased by 10 per cent over this half-year, with defence accounting for 76 percent of the group’s trading profits.

Not far behind BAe was French defence minister Chevènement peddling the wares of his own aerospace industry .Visiting Saudi Arabia last August he baldly announced that France “would take advantage of the Gulf crisis to pursue arms deals with the kingdom . . . ”

Banks and the Third World Elite (1991)

From the July 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the protestors march again into Trafalgar Square this month to demand an end to the massive debt repayments said to be causing Third World poverty, it will be left to Socialists, once again, to point out that you cannot expect the world capitalist system to behave any differently. What strikes the socialist most forcefully is the staggering naivety of the call for banks to be nicer to their Third World clients, to Stamp Out Their Debts, as if the bankers' greed alone is the root cause of the present misery into which the majority of the world's population is sunk.

When the great lending spree to Third World countries began in the early 1970s— taking their collective debt from about $130 billion in 1973 to $612 billion nine years later when the bubble burst—there was a clear and compelling logic driving them relentlessly on.

That was the logic of profit. There was a demand for capital—for grandiose construction projects like dams and new cities to glorify the names of upstart and insecure dictators, for the bribes necessary to bypass planning regulations and plunder forests and raw materials, and for the emerging, thrusting entrepreneurs in the Indias and Brazils anxious to set up their own refining and car businesses and muscle in on the exploitation of the local labour forces previously the sole preserve of foreign multinationals.

So let's have an end to the myths that the evil Western bankers forced their largesse down the throats of innocent and unwilling Third World victims—a typically easy way out for liberal supporters of capitalism, replete with obnoxious racist stereotypes of the cowering slave.

Logic of profit system
And now the banks continue to obey the rules of the profit system by trying to secure some sort of return for their directors and shareholders. Friends of the Earth complain particularly about Lloyds Bank, said to have the largest amount of money tied up in Third World debts:

Although Lloyds could reduce much of the debt using the reserves accumulated with the help of taxpayers, responsibility to shareholders and customers is still wheeled out as an excuse for lack of positive action. (Earth Matters, Summer 1991).

The limit of the reformers' dreams is to pressurise the grasping bankers into reducing “much'' of the helpless Third World's debt, and into the bargain getting Third World countries with any rainforest left to give some of this up to the wise and beneficent West—which has already destroyed its own virgin forests—in return for some further reduction of their debts.

Even assuming this could be achieved, and the banks could be persuaded to relinquish their claim to the money which they (and most of their shareholders) see as rightfully theirs, what effect would it have? Would the local ruling classes in Benin and Argentina immediately plough the money saved into social projects to ease poverty and increase healthcare provision—or into the preservation of those rainforests?

Well, there are two simple ways to answer this question. The first is to ask how they spent the last lot of capital poured into their laps in the great lending boom of the 1970s. And secondly, even if—against all the evidence of those years—they did feel disposed to invest in the well-being of their subjects, there are other tentacles of the world capitalist system which would rapidly smother them.

Local ruling classes

Take the main institutions of global economic management set up by the US and its European, and then Japanese, partners after the war and used to keep Third World ruling classes in their place: the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT).

Loans from the IMF and World Bank are granted on the specific condition that countries cut expenditure on social welfare—in particular food subsidies—in favour of buying Western imports or developing an industrial infrastructure to buy Western know-how and technology. This is backed up by the current round of GATT negotiations which will compel governments to abandon subsidies for farmers and for protecting natural resources like forests. Farmers will be forced from their land, along with all the local knowledge so vital for developing a sustainable agriculture, to make way for giant transnational combines with their well-known concern for sensitive production for local needs in preference to exporting to the highest payer . . .

So even if Lloyds Bank can be persuaded to kindly ‘'reduce” the size of the Third World's tribute allowed it under the rules of the free market, and even if the rulers of Third World countries can be persuaded to kindly spend the proceeds on tackling poverty, and even if the IMF, the World Bank and the GATT negotiators would allow the money to be spent on these purposes, how much of a difference would it make to the millions of starving, homeless, exploited peoples of the world?

Socialists are often accused of being unrealistic in our demand for an end to the profit system as the only way of ending mass poverty. We are told that we must live in the Real World, where we must proceed One Step At A Time, and support causes like the Stamp Out the Debt campaign. But to support a movement which will not even acknowledge—let alone begin to think about challenging— the root cause of world poverty, is to make sure that the “real world” continues to be one in which human beings needlessly die and the Earth is systematically ravaged in the name of profit.

Andrew Thomas

Nationalism and economic collapse (1990)

From the February 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is still the conventional wisdom for members of the peace movement to equate the end of the military blocs partitioning Europe with a new era of peace. Individual nations, it is said, freed from the super-powers' endless games of brinkmanship and mad arms-racing will establish a new era of peaceful co-operation.

This ignores the fact that the Cold War of the last forty or so years simply froze into place the nationalist rivalries between states which had torn Europe apart in two world wars. Now the blocs are crumbling these dangerous rivalries are thrusting themselves once more on to the centre stage.

Poland and Germany

Poland had its western boundaries arbitrarily redrawn along the Oder-Neisse river lines, including the former German city of Danzig, now Gdansk. Fully one-third of Poland is former German territory, and the substantial German minority is now beginning to make itself known again.

When Chancellor Kohl paid an official visit to Poland early in November, he was forced to cancel plans to attend a German-language mass in the country after a furious outburst by the Polish media. The venue was to have been Annaberg in Silesia, which just happened to be the site of the brutal repression by the rightwing Freikorps of a Polish uprising against German rule in 1921. It is now a rallying point for the German-speaking minority in Silesia. Germany has still not renounced its claims to the “lost territories" and has never signed a peace treaty with Poland or Russia recognising the validity of the Oder-Neisse line.

Meanwhile the pent-up frustration of East Germans over economic conditions their side of the border is spilling over into calls for German reunification, while a recent East German law forbids Poles from buying subsidised goods in East German shops. A member of the East German parliament was loudly booed when he warned East Germans to "beware of putting an invisible yellow mark on the backs of our Polish friends"—a reference to the marking of the Jews under Nazism.

The Poles have looked at these developments with increasing nervousness. Polish officials recently met with Gorbachev and displayed a sudden keenness for stressing that Russia remain the most important external guarantee of the security of the Polish state.

Polish fears were put by Russian foreign minister Shevardnadze to the European Parliament in December. Questions remained about the German commitment to its present borders, he said, “will a reunified Germany be ready to accept the existing borders in Europe and renounce any territorial claim? The Federal Republic of Germany has avoided answering that".

On 3 December the Prussian Iron Cross and Eagle were returned to the Goddess of Victory statue atop of the Brandenburg gate in Berlin for the first time since 1958. In that year they were pulled down as being a “symbol of Prussian-German militarism”.

Hungary and Rumania

To the south of Poland, historic rivalries between the rulers of Rumania and Hungary were also frozen by the Cold War. Two and a half million Hungarian-speakers were locked into the western Rumanian province of Transylvania, where ever more desperate attempts were made by Ceausescu forcibly to integrate them, culminating in the notorious plan for forced resettlement into "model" towns after the razing of the Hungarian-Rumanian villages.

After the fall of Ceausescu there are already signs that the leaders of the ruling National Salvation Front share his views on integration. Istvan Pap. a Transylvanian Hungarian who fled Rumania three years ago. calls the leaders of the Front "little Ceausescus", while the father of the dissident priest Pastor Laszlo Tokes. whose persecution sparked the anti-Ceausescu uprising, warned recently: "After all that has happened the old way of thinking will go on. The people are demonstrating for democracy now. but I fear it may not last".

One particularly ominous sign is the creation of the National Christian Peasants Party, a religious and conservative oriented party with echoes of the crypto-fascist National Christian Party of the 1930s which had a pronounced anti-semitic programme and established its own para-military organisation.

The newly-formed Democratic Federation of Rumanian Hungarians is now pressing for laws on the rights of minorities to be debated by a democratically-elected government. But the fears of "liberal” Rumanians were summed up by the dissident Hungarian playwright and regional head of the Rumanian National Salvation Front. Andreas Suto: “If Ceausescus policy of romanisation of national minorities is not reversed it will be bad not only for Transylvania but also for the whole of East and Central Europe".

The Hungarian government also remains fiercely nationalistic towards the border issue. When Ceausescu's persecution of the Transylvanian Hungarians was at its height last year, it sent furious protests and broke off diplomatic relations, leading the Economist (2 September 1989) to speculate that “if this had been 1914 it would have been war" It should be remembered that it was precisely the pursuit of territorial claims against Rumania which led Hungary to disaster in the Second World War.

The fall of Ceausescu was precipitated by the Hungarian minority in Timisoara defending one of "their" priests against persecution. before being joined by Rumanian workers, and there is growing evidence that a new Hungarian government to be elected later this year will not let the border dispute rest. One of the leading contenders in the elections scheduled for April, the populist and patriotic “Democratic Forum", has already begun spouting anti- Rumanian. anti-semitic and anti-gypsy propaganda. At the end of December Dr Csba Vass. a founder member of the Forum, visited Transylvania, telling correspondents he hoped to "bring back on to the political agenda the question of the rights of the ethnic Hungarians there".

Instability and the rise of xenophobic nationalism also marks the border between Turkey and Bulgaria. In the middle of last year one third of a million ethnic Turks in Bulgaria fled the country after an attempt to forcibly assimilate them into the Bulgarian language and suppress their Islamic religion. Bulgaria's former dictator. Todor Zhikov. actively encouraged anti-Turkish sentiment to bolster his unpopular rule, forcing Turks to adopt Bulgarian names in 1984-5 for example. After his fall, the new government met mass opposition when it tried to restore the Turkish minority's rights.

"Neo-Monetarist Dictatorship"

No-one is suggesting that all this will lead to renewed hostilities in Eastern Europe—yet. The central point is that a severe economic crisis now threatens to engulf Eastern Europe, creating an explosive situation of social disintegration in which appeals to nationalism are often the last resort of a beleaguered ruling class.

The Hungarian parliament, for example, has just endorsed Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth’s austerity budget which aims to hasten the transition from a state capitalist to a free market capitalist economy. The package aims to cut the budget deficit by one-fifth from its current level of about £500m. The IMF has insisted on at least this before it will release $350m in standby credits and $1 billion in EC funds. The Finance Minister Laszlo Bekesi pulled no punches: “There is no alternative to our programme. What is at stake is the complete collapse of the economy"

In Poland the IMF-sponsored "rescue" package aims to slash inflation from 50 per cent a month to 5 per cent by April, while government subsidies on consumer goods will be cut from 31 to 14 per cent. All wages will be frozen. Unemployment is forecast to rise from virtually zero to 400,000 while the standard of living drops 20 per cent. Already about one million of the 37 million population are acknowledged to be not earning enough to live on, and officials say the figure is probably 10 times as many (Guardian, 18 December). According to the government, "social discipline" is already in disarray, and crime is on the increase: there are rumblings of union discontent and sporadic strikes. Recent reports cite Polish workers complaining that the "Proletarian (Party) Dictatorship" is simply being replaced by the "neo-monetarist dictatorship"

The situation looks as bad in Bulgaria. Although figures are hard to come by, estimates of the country's foreign debts are as high as $10 billion. The Rumanian government has a little more leeway owing to the former dictator's fanatical policy of debt repayment. but the underlying economy is in deep trouble.

So we have an explosive mixture of economic collapse and a resurgent nationalism. This feeds on historical divisions and the need of the new ruling classes in alliance with the remnants of the old to legitimise their rule through appeals to xenophobic and racist ideologies.

These ideologies gain their strength through the hard struggle for survival experienced by workers in everyday life under state capitalism, and these struggles are set to become even harsher under the lash of free market forces now being unleashed. East Europe, now manifested in newly assertive, separate states and pulled towards conflict by the capitalist economic development they serve, looks set to enter yet another grim cycle of violence and despair.

Andrew Thomas

South Korea: behind the mask (1988)

From the October 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Before the first Olympic spectator had arrived in South Korea, the police had swept over sixteen thousand "criminals" — drug addicts, prostitutes, beggars and petty thieves — from the streets of the capital city. No more than a quarter were formally charged, the rest either spirited away by summary courts or detained pending further "investigations". Meanwhile, the tens of thousands of slum dwellers evicted to make way for the Olympic stadium are now living in tents. They received no compensation, but they have been invited to the rehearsals of the opening and closing ceremonies; "We want them to feel it's everybody's Olympics", said Mr Yi Dong, the city's senior planner (Guardian, 30 August).

The South Korean state spared little expense to ensure that the world's media got the "right" impression of their country. In a highly symbolic act, a wall was constructed along the hundred mile Olympic torch route to spare TV viewers the sight of the slums which infest the poorer parts of the Olympic city. This all helps build the myth that the Free Market can deliver social justice and permanently rising living standards for the vast majority. How closely does this tie in with the reality of life in South Korea today?

The South Korean economy was built on the ruthless exploitation of the working class: long hours and low wages were the hallmark of this economic "miracle". South Koreans still work the longest hours in the world, and 12.3 per cent of the population live below the poverty line; the bottom 40 per cent own little more than 17 per cent of the country's wealth . . . (M. Smith et al. Asia's New Industrial World, 1985, p. 52).

The education system is strictly geared towards the needs of the economy. As a recent study concluded, "the rote learning type of education that Korean children receive is conducive to producing an efficient and well qualified labour force" (B. Bridges. Korea and the West. 1986. p.28). In the "company cities", which were built to service key industries, the schools and colleges are actually financed and run by the local employers. School leavers in the "motor city" of Ulsan, for example, will have those skills, and only those skills, which are deemed useful to the local car industry. Even this "education" does not come cheap: all schooling above primary school level must be paid for, and 40 per cent of the average family's income is needed to finance a student up to degree level.

In similar fashion. South Korean culture supports the production of a disciplined labour force. Confusianism, the dominant pre-capitalist ideology, contained a strong work ethic based on a strict duty towards the family. Today's young Koreans are taught that the state and the company are simply extended parts of that family, and are thus owed the same respect, loyalty and self-sacrifice. Just to make the point, all work stops at five pm each day while workers stand for the national anthem.

In spite of these pressures, however, the very speed of South Korea's economic development is undermining the hold of traditional ideas, particularly among the young. An example of this is to be found in the university system. In her study of Korean society, Jane McLoughlin notes that more autonomy has had to be granted to colleges and universities in order to turn out "the sort of personnel capable of achieving technological equality with competitors" (Asia's New Industrial World, p.50). This has fuelled the militancy seen in recent anti-government disturbances. as students use their new-found freedom for purposes not intended by their masters.

On the industrial front, a rising tide of dissatisfaction has expressed itself in the fight against company unions which embody the "one happy family" ethos. At present only one union is allowed in each company, and these must belong to one of sixteen government-controlled national union federations. They are banned from political action and must register any intended strikes. If a strike is deemed illegal, factory owners are empowered to call in the riot police, whose notorious brutality is reflected in in their nickname — "Kusaden" or "bully boys". Notwithstanding legal obstacles, however, workers have fought bitterly to establish their own autonomous unions.

In the course of this struggle, the state has openly supported the employers, dashing the hopes of many Koreans for a new deal following the collapse of the military regime of General Chun in June 1987. In fact, the government which emerged from that upsurge of violent mass protest was still run by the same old gang. President Roh Tae Woo. himself a former military man. retained seven ministers from the previous junta and kept on military personnel who had been implicated in the notorious massacre of unarmed protesters at Gwangju in 1980. As one civil rights activist put it, "for all the talk of democracy, nothing has really changed in this country. Every step to improve workers' rights is a hard struggle" (Guardian, 23 April). Even if the newly-tolerated political opposition came to power, it would not run the state machine much differently. Although its present leader. Kim Dae Jung, has managed single-handedly to wipe 25 points from the Seoul stock exchange by his advocacy of workers "rights", he and his followers are in general agreement with "the broad continuation of the present economic system" (Korea and the West. p.15).

There can be no doubt that the militancy of South Korean workers has brought substantial material gains over the past few years. Last Autumn alone they staged 3,800 strikes, most of them illegal, which virtually shut down South Korean industry. This action brought wage increases of 22 per cent, and the threat of similar action this year has forced employers to concede rises of up to 15 per cent (Economist, 23 July). In reality, however, the strike weapon has very serious limitations as an instrument for making permanent gains for South Korean workers. Most importantly, it has not even begun to tackle the endemic poverty of the low wage sectors of the economy, such as the textile and electronics industries in Asia. South Korean business has been forced to restructure towards more capital and technology intensive industries. This has increased the bargaining power of some groups of skilled workers, enabling them to squeeze more from their bosses. The supply of cheap labour for the sweated industries has been maintained, however, by recruiting women into the workforce. They now form 38 per cent of the labour market, and suffer highly discriminatory wage levels — usually half the rates paid to male workers.

The relative poverty suffered by all workers in South Korea, no matter how "well" paid, has had a disturbing impact on the way they view the world. Protests are taking a more stridently nationalist tone, denouncing the regime for being under the control of "foreigners". Increasing numbers of dissidents have taken to seeing the "communist" North as the more truly "patriotic" of the two Koreas because it is supposedly independent of the world market and has no foreign troops on its soil. This was behind the wave of student-led protest which aimed to get the Olympics co-hosted by the North.

The United States has become the main focus for this opposition, particularly since Congress forced through a package of restrictive measures designed to cut South Korea's $10bn trade surplus. The fact that the US also maintains 40,000 troops on the border with the North has further enraged many "radicals", who see American imperialism as the cause of the division of the peninsula and the economic injustice in the South.

This upsurge in vitriolic patriotism can be linked directly to the present state of economic development in South Korea. Traditional values of family solidarity are coming under sustained pressure from several sources linked to the evolution of the economy: the growth of the alienated, consumerist culture needed to market commodities; the needs of the system for the free movement of workers; the increasing use of women workers in labour intensive industries. At the same time, the company is losing its mystical attraction as the focus for workers' loyalty, as the growing strength and militancy of the Free Trade Union movement shows.

For the South Korean capitalist nationalism is the cement which will hold this imploding structure together. The attempts to present the Olympic Games as a triumph of South Korean solidarity and achievement were not aimed only at foreign tourists and investors. They were also intended to pull workers into line behind the economic and social system of South Korean capitalism—to convince them that further sacrifices would be necessary if “their country" was to survive and prosper in a competitive world.

As this article is written, all the indications are that the shabby appeal to Korean patriotism has been successful in relieving the pressure on employers and the state — nobody wants to rock the boat while the country basks under the lights of the world's TV cameras. Whether this new found solidarity will outlast the end of the Games is a different question altogether. The antagonism between workers and employers cannot be wished away, and a resurgence in union militancy seems inevitable. When the media circus has left town, and there is no longer the need to show a smiling face to the world, the South Korean state is likely to turn against its subjects with the more brutal and trusted methods it has favoured in the past.

Andrew Thomas

The Gorbachev cuts (1989)

From the March 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

When Mikhail Gorbachev offered to cut Soviet forces in Europe by half a million, there was an enormous surge in the dollar on world stockmarkets. The cold war is no longer good business.

This thought was uppermost in the minds of the Politburo when they decided on their change in policy. The Soviet economy is in serious difficulties, and spending on arms is throttling the profitable redevelopment of civilian production. Officials concede that military spending is over 2£0bn, but it is probably lose to five times that amount, or 16 per cent of Gross National Product. Their total does not include the cost of weapons research, development and production, and fails to take into account the cost to the rest of the economy of the diversion of scientific personnel and the priority allocation of scarce material resources to the military sector. This should be set against an expected budget deficit of £33.3bn next year. The Russian press is openly calling for reductions in defence spending to arrest the continued decline in living standards. Cuts in nuclear forces of the sort envisaged in the START talks will have only limited benefits for the civilian economy. Large-scale cuts in the more expensive conventional sector can be expected to show immediate and tangible results, particularly in the release of skilled labour power.

The result of these economic pressures has been a shift in the basis of Soviet military strategy. After the Second World War emphasis was on the primacy of attack, and the building up of sufficient forces in East Europe and the western USSR to overwhelm NATO in the event of a war. The NATO countries meanwhile exploited their superior technological/economic base to counter the larger but cruder Soviet forces. Today, the Soviet economy can no longer support the scale of production required to maintain that numerical advantage. As a result, the doctrine of attack has been replaced by the defensive doctrine of "Reasonable Sufficiency".

And this is not just a personal whim of Gorbachev. Military leaders are becoming concerned at the decreasing numbers of eighteen year-olds available for military service. There is also an increasingly vocal opposition to conscription in the turbulent Baltic republics and among university students, and the army is having increasingly to rely on "non-Russian" youths from Central Asia whose loyalty to the state cannot be guaranteed. When the Defence minister, Dmitri Yazov, addressed the armed forces in Red Square in November, he emphasised the need for a smaller, more professional and better equipped army along Western lines.

This is the background to cutbacks outlined by Gorbachev at the UN in December. He pledged to remove 10,000 tanks, 8,500 artillery pieces, 800 combat aircraft and 500,000 troops from eastern Europe and the Western military districts of the USSR within two years. Of particular significance is the decision to scrap six of the fifteen forward-based tank divisions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. This will remove 5,000 tanks, or 40 per cent of Soviet strike potential on the Central Front. Assault crossing troops will also be withdrawn, along with their combat equipment. The cumulative effect of these measures will be to curtail severely the ability of Soviet forces to attack NATO from a standing start, especially in view of the series of river barriers which would have to be crossed. Furthermore, a reduction in forces in the western USSR would deprive an attack of critical reserves. Gorbachev has promised that the forces which remain would take up a defensive posture.

In political terms, this marks an important transition. The Cold War confrontation is being transformed, as the superpowers wrestle with declining economies and seek to consolidate their international positions by negotiating agreed spheres of influence which can be held at an acceptable cost. The Soviet state now accepts that the priority must be domestic reconstruction, which requires capital and technology from the West. It wants, therefore, to see a stable balance of power in Europe at much lower levels of force, while it pursues closer economic ties with the EEC; Gorbachev has called this the construction of a "common European House". Last summer the Soviet state officially recognised the existence of the EEC, and despatched an ambassadorial team to talk about trade deals. At the end of October a German delegation packed with businessmen and bankers visited Moscow to put the finishing touches to a £1bn credit agreement to modernise Soviet light industry. Thirteen joint industrial ventures are already under way and thirty-five more were discussed during the talks.

The consequences of the new Soviet strategic thinking will be keenly felt in Eastern Europe. Gorbachev has explicitly renounced the so-called "Brezhnev doctrine" which committed the Soviet Union to intervene militarily if Moscow's clients were in danger, as they were in Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979. The troop cuts give substance to his assertion that military force cannot solve the economic problems faced by the Soviet Empire at this historical juncture.

In sum, we can say that the Soviet retreat from its garrison positions in east Europe and its reduced capacity for offensive conventional warfare have come about, not because Gorbachev is an overwhelmingly pacific character, but as a result of the economic weakness of the Soviet state. It should also be noted that this is not disarmament; the Soviet Union will still retain a formidable armed capability. The thrust of the present policy is to bring the structure of the armed forces into line with the capabilities of the economy and a growing crisis of labour power.

Andrew Thomas