The assassination of art (1975)

From issue number 1 (1975) of The Western Socialist

In a democratic society, art is politics in the widest sense, a celebration of common values which sweep away the old and clears the way for the new needs of man.

Victor Jara, Chilean play producer, singer guitarist, was a supporter of the Allende regime. In the military coup that followed he was assassinated on 15th September 1973. They broke his guitar fingers before breaking his spine. Bullets were then shot into his body.

He is one more addition to the many creative people in history who have become too dangerous to live. For the arts are not amusements, ornamental skills, diversions, comforts for tired businessmen or social polish for the pretentious. At least, not to the men who wield political power. The arts communicate and communication is the most potent force for progress and change.

History is full of the power of the arts, not the overt expression of dissatisfaction nor the blatant clarion call to rise and fight but the uniquely potent expression of ideas which show that man is ready for change. Art is a barometer and a celebration, a mirror to the emotional and intellectual development of man. The artist says, “This is man, how he feels, how we feel,” and once said, it can never be repealed. The ideas catch fire in the minds of men, not because they are new and logical but because they express clearly what people feel but cannot quite themselves make known.

George Bernard Shaw provocatively said that art is propaganda. It is this but far more. In a democratic society, art is politics in the widest sense, a celebration of common values which sweeps away the old and clears the way for the new needs of man.

This does not mean that artists are consciously political in the modern use of the term. In fact, the moment an art becomes consciously political, it usually ceases to be art. The pamphleteer is not an artist because he knows rationally exactly what he wants to say before saying it. He may express new values but they are communicated on a mechanically logical level. There is no bridge of feeling between the old and the new for the mass of the people, still struggling to understand their own feelings, to make the crossing. Art does not lead the needs of man; it expresses them and man, whose evolution is on a social and economic level rather than a physical one, can develop further because he then knows clearly where he is. He recognizes as his the values expressed by the artist.

But some artists do not communicate in their own time. They may lead the way for other artists to follow but they themselves may be a little too far ahead of their time. These artists are sometimes called “important” as distinct from “great”, the universally recognized artists who signify a whole epoch or “celebrate” a common feeling.

Both kinds of artists can be dangerous to the established powers but the “important” artists are more easily destroyed than the “great” ones. They are less supported, less recognized and their deaths provoke less reaction.

The Un-American Activities Committee could not destroy Charles Chaplin or Arthur Miller nor could the Soviets destroy Yevtushenko but artists with less recognition, ahead of their time and people, are frequently destroyed in the power struggles of the world.

President Allende did not have the control of the Chilean parliament or of the army and his own political programme did not have the understanding of the peasants. He was supported as a leader and all this suggests that he was not really the spokesman for the people. The intellectuals and artists who supported him were therefore not truly representative of the people; they were a little before their time. Victor Jara died because his death meant a delay in his ideas developing among the people. Had he been expressing true national feelings, his martyrdom would have been too dangerous because of the possible reaction. More importantly, his martyrdom would have been irrelevant because his values would already be held by the majority of people anyway.

Throughout the world, the fate of the Allende administration has been hailed by the left and the right wings as an illustration that a majority of people cannot change society by democratic and constitutional methods. In actual fact it merely illustrates the futility of a vanguard group trying to lead an ignorant mass of followers into a change which the majority do not understand. When you can destroy a leader and destroy a cause, destroying a leader is obviously the best solution.

A second moral can be drawn. We must learn to respect and protect our artists whatever their political opinions. A society which neglects them is destroying its capacity to change.

Mark Fury, 

S. P. of New Zealand

World View: Teetering on the brink (1995)

General Sani Abacha

From the March 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Nigeria is on the threshold. Chaos and the demons of war, of anarchy and hell are gathering imperceptibly . . . the best minds have fled. Hunger wanders the highway. Corruption has become a god. Distrust lurks everywhere and cynicism pollutes the air.”

Thus wrote Ben Okri in the Guardian last 6 September. The image is immediately one of impending doom, a nightmare scenario. Okri’s words, though, were not overly pessimistic, for in the January 1995 issue of New African, they were echoed by Pini Jason who described the situation in Nigeria as a "chillingly frightening regression into absolute despotism".

Okri and Jason were both referring to the terror now felt by tens of millions of Nigerians, a terror made all the worse by a world that watches from die sidelines, as witnessed most recently in Rwanda.

In August 1994, General Sani Abacha, Nigeria's “leader", overturned what legal rights Nigerians had enjoyed by forcing through some of the most repressive decrees ever known in Nigeria. He earned himself the title of dictator (in every sense of the word) by firstly passing a decree that places himself and his regime above the law. He went on to make anti-Abacha opinions illegal, curbed the right to free assembly and abolished several human rights associations. Were that not enough, Abacha banned three opposition newspapers. dissolved the executive bodies of the Nigerian Labour Congress and the oil-workers unions, and lengthened the period a prisoner can be detained without charge to three months.

The decrees were, of course, pathetically justified by Abacha last November. In a broadcast a year after he came to power in November 1993. he declared his intentions were "to halt the drift towards anarchy . . . to strengthen our security system, revitalise respect for law and order and to restore faith among the citizens whose confidence has been stressed by political crisis in the country" (Quoted in West Africa, 28 November/ 4 December 1994.)

Annulled election

Since independence from Britain in October 1960. Nigerians have known nothing but "political crisis". The country has witnessed coups, counter-coups and internal military coups on six occasions: January 1966. July 1966.1975. 1976. 1983 and 1985.

The June 1993 elections, supposedly the fairest ever witnessed in Nigeria, were initiated by General Ibrahim Babanginda who had ruled the country since 1985. However, when only half of the result had been declared, Babanginda had the count stopped and the election annulled. The reason? Opposition leader Chief Moshood Abiola was storming ahead, capitalising on his promises to build more schools and health centres, to provide cleaner drinking water, cheaper food and improved roads. He was detained shortly after the elections. A leaked military statement later declared that Abiola had secured 58 percent of votes cast.

Arguably, the main reason why Abiola is not president is that he is a southerner, for in Nigeria the same north/south hostilities abound that were in existence at the time of the Biafra war.

Babanginda, however, was soon chased out of office. He was replaced by a civilian, Ernest Shonekar, who went a similar way when the state court ruled his office illegal. It was then that Abacha stepped forward and took power and. with it, brought Nigeria to the brink of ruin.

Abacha is guilty of untold human rights violations. But this does not seem to bother the governments of other countries much. The EU and the US might have imposed the token sanctions, but this did not stop Britain selling tanks and other military hardware to Abacha. The fact is that Britain has always sided with such northern tyrants in times of duress. More, the British High Commission have given their blessing to the judiciary set up to try Abiola.

Oil revenues

Between May and June last year Abacha ordered his army into southeastern Nigeria to destroy the villages of and murder, the Ogoni people. The Ogoni people number some 500,000 but it is to their great misfortune that the land they occupy is also the site of 112 of Nigeria’s 138 oilfields.

For years the Ogoni have protested against the environmental pollution caused by oil production, at the smoggy atmosphere they live in. at the contaminated soil they till — they are an agricultural people — and at their rivers choked with oil run-offs. They have every reason to protest. Nigeria is the largest gas-flaring country in the world. Some 16.8 billion cubic metres of natural gas are flared annually. The acid rain this produces is only matched by the region’s oil spills — 573 spills between January 1986 and May 1992.

The protests reached a high point in late 1992 and in reaction Shell Nigeria put a hold on oil production in Ogoniland and pulled out most of its staff.

In retaliation for this sudden loss of vital revenue, a certain Major P. Okunomo called for a “ruthless military operation” against the Ogoni. sending in 400 troops to stifle protests and opposition to oil production. Not only did the soldiers destroy dozens of villages and kill hundreds of the Ogoni people, they carried out military sabotage against various oil installations in the hope that the Ogoni would get the blame.

Oil provides Nigeria with 95 percent of its foreign exchange and has been the stake in Nigeria’s conflicts since 1966. The country makes some $6 billion a year from oil sales. During the Gulf War. the Babanginda regime made a staggering $12 billion from oil sales — money yet to be accounted for. None of it, however, seems to have benefited the people, least of all the Ogoni. At present 85 percent of the Ogoni are unemployed. They have seven doctors between them (remember they number 500000), a literacy rate of 10 percent and infant mortality stands at 40 per 1.000 births.

In the past twelve months there have been strikes by oil workers and medical workers, aimed directly at the Abacha regime, in a country already teetering on the brink of an economic calamity.

Western capitalists can only look on shrug their shoulders and tut; Nigeria, after all is still Africa — "the white man’s burden”. As one New African writer commented last October: “The international community showed with its reluctant response to Rwanda that it is tired of Africa’s problems."

Socialists, on the other hand, can only imagine how “tired" Africa is of capitalism. and how so utterly tired Nigerians must be of the cabal that rules that country in the interests of capitalism. 

John Bissett

Chile: Myth and Reality (1973)

From the October 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

The events in Chile are already a myth. There, according to left and right-wing commentators alike, a democratically-elected Marxist government was overthrown by the armed forces, so proving the impossibility of establishing Socialism peacefully by using the existing machinery of limited political democracy.

Let us try to scotch this myth now by showing that the failure of the so-called Chilean experiment has absolutely no relevance to the question of whether or not Socialism can be established peacefully and democratically.

Allende and his Popular Unity were not Marxists and were not trying to establish Socialism. The programme of the Popular Unity, an alliance whose main elements were the so-called Socialist Party and the so-called Communist Party, was essentially one of state capitalism for Chile. It called for the break-up the big landed estates, for the nationalisation of foreign-owned and some Chilean-owned industry, and for various social reforms. Even if implemented in full this programme would have left the basic position of the working class in Chile unchanged: they would have remained propertyless wage-workers forced to sell their mental and physical energies to an employer (even if the State) in order to live; production would have remained geared to the market; and the government would still, under pressure from the world market, have had to restrict the consumption of the working class in order to allow the maximum amount of surplus value to be extracted for re-investment.

Secondly, not only was the Allende government not trying to establish Socialism, but it did not even have majority support for its programme of state capitalism. Allende was elected President in September 1970 in a three-way contest, but with only 36 per cent of the vote. Subsequent elections showed that his government never did manage to acquire majority support. The last elections in March this year still gave its opponents 55 per cent of the vote.

Thirdly, because of this limited electoral support, the Popular Unity did not completely control the State machine. Parliament remained in the hands of its opponents who, although they did not have the two-thirds majority needed to impeach Allende himself, harassed his Ministers and delayed and altered ills proposed laws.

For three years those whose vested interests were threatened by the coming of state capitalism to Chile—the American corporations, the Chilean landowners and big capitalists—sabotaged and plotted against the Allende government, but the fact remains that the conflict in Chile was between private capitalism and state capitalism, not between capitalism and Socialism.

That the limited democracy that existed in Chile has been a victim of this conflict can only be a matter of regret for Socialists. For, whatever its limitations, capitalist political democracy at least allows the working class to organise to defend its everyday interests and to discuss differing political views, including those of Socialists. Its suppression in Chile by a military junta represents, in this sense, a step backward for the working class of Chile—not that much of it would have survived had the Popular Unity’s full state capitalist programme been implemented, if the experience of Cuba is anything to go by.

But it still remains true that, in the quite different political conditions (which have never yet existed) of .in immense majority of workers in all the industrialized countries of the world being Socialists and organised to win and control political power, Socialism could be established peacefully. The overthrow of a minority state capitalist government in Chile by forces acting on behalf of private capitalist groups will not deflect us from this position into urging the working class to adopt the futile and dangerous policy of armed insurrection.

50 Years Ago: Chile: myth and reality (2023)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The events in Chile are already a myth. There, according to left and right-wing commentators alike, a democratically-elected Marxist government was overthrown by the armed forces, so proving the impossibility of establishing Socialism peacefully by using the existing machinery of limited political democracy.

Let us try to scotch this myth now by showing that the failure of the so-called Chilean experiment has absolutely no relevance to the question of whether or not Socialism can be established peacefully and democratically.

Allende and his Popular Unity were not Marxists and were not trying to establish Socialism. The programme of the Popular Unity, an alliance whose main elements were the so-called Socialist Party and the so-called Communist Party, was essentially one of state capitalism for Chile. It called for the break-up of the big landed estates, for the nationalisation of foreign-owned and some Chilean-owned industry, and for various social reforms. Even if implemented in full this programme would have left the basic position of the working class in Chile unchanged: they would have remained propertyless wage-workers forced to sell their mental and physical energies to an employer (even if the State) in order to live; production would have remained geared to the market; and the government would still, under pressure from the world market, have had to restrict the consumption of the working class in order to allow the maximum amount of surplus value to be extracted for re-investment.

Secondly, not only was the Allende government not trying to establish Socialism, but it did not even have majority support for its programme of state capitalism. Allende was elected President in September 1970 in a three-way contest, but with only 36 per cent of the vote. Subsequent elections showed that his government never did manage to acquire majority support. The last elections in March this year still gave its opponents 55 per cent of the vote.

Thirdly, because of this limited electoral support, the Popular Unity did not completely control the State machine. Parliament remained in the hands of its opponents who, although they did not have the two-thirds majority needed to impeach Allende himself, harassed his Ministers and delayed and altered his proposed laws.

For three years those whose vested interests were threatened by the coming of state capitalism to Chile—the American corporations, the Chilean landowners and big capitalists—sabotaged and plotted against the Allende government, but the fact remains that the conflict in Chile was between private capitalism and state capitalism, not between capitalism and Socialism.

That the limited democracy that existed in Chile has been a victim of this conflict can only be a matter of regret for Socialists. For, whatever its limitations, capitalist political democracy at least allows the working class to organise to defend its everyday interests and to discuss differing political views, including those of Socialists. Its suppression in Chile by a military junta represents, in this sense, a step backward for the working class of Chile—not that much of it would have survived had the Popular Unity’s full state capitalist programme been implemented, if the experience of Cuba is anything to go by.

But it still remains true that, in the quite different political conditions (which have never yet existed) of an immense majority of workers in all the industrialized countries of the world being Socialists and organised to win and control political power, Socialism could be established peacefully. The overthrow of a minority state capitalist government in Chile by forces acting on behalf of private capitalist groups will not deflect us from this position into urging the working class to adopt the futile and dangerous policy of armed insurrection.

(Socialist Standard, October 1973)

Chile during and after Salvador Allende (2023)

From the September 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

September 11 marks 50 years since the violent death of the elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, in 1973, and the overthrowing of his government by a military coup backed by the CIA, establishing a brutal dictatorship presided over by General Augusto Pinochet. This caused the death of thousands of Chilean workers, students, union leaders, political activists, and many were incarcerated, ‘disappeared’, and tortured via electric shock, sexual abuse, beating and waterboarding.

The election and death of President Allende took place in the middle of the Cold War and the struggles for world hegemony between the USA and the Soviet Union and the influence of Cuba in Latin America. Chile was hemmed in by several conservative and military dictatorships in the region backed by the USA government who also protected the economic interest of the US capitalist class, along with the internal ruling class. There was also a huge economic crisis facing Chilean capitalism.

The objective of the US government was to avoid another enclave like Cuba on its own backyard since Cuba had a heavy political influence in Latin America, and the Cuban government had diplomatic, commercial, and military relations with the Soviet Union, and was backing guerrillas in several Latin American countries.

The government of Chile called itself socialist in the same way that the Cuban government called itself socialist or Marxist-Leninist, and Fidel Castro was a close ally of the Chilean government. Moreover, Castro himself visited Chile in 1970 in the middle of the social upheaval caused by miners’ strikes.

The government of Chile proclaimed the so-called ‘Chilean path to socialism’, as Cuba also had proclaimed the Cuban road to socialism. The reality is that neither one of them were establishing a socialist society, but state capitalism as in the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea. The basic principles of a capitalist society were retained, including wage slavery, production for profits and the domination of a state apparatus over the working class.

Allende was elected in 1970 with the support of a coalition of leftist political parties known as the Popular Unity, obtaining one third of the votes with a narrow margin of 36.2 percent over Jorge Alessandri, the former president of Chile who obtained 34.9 percent, and the Christian Social Democrats who got 27.8 percent. As such, Allende was not elected by a majority of votes but, according to the Chilean constitution of the time, if no presidential candidate obtained a majority of the popular vote, Congress would choose one of the two candidates with the highest number of votes as the winner, and the decision was effectively made by the Christian Social Democrats which approved his nomination as president of Chile.

Social reforms

The government of Allende, immediately after his nomination as President, initiated various social-democratic reforms for the Chilean working class, and the nationalization of large industries such as copper, iron, coal, cement and large extensions of land, the creation of a health and medical program, a food program, and education for the poor. All those reforms were described as the Chilean path to socialism, but in reality, they were reforms made for and within the context of a capitalist society, and they would not have turned Chile into a socialist society run in the name of the workers. Instead, the economic reforms would have established a state-capitalist system of production administered by the state, the same process that took place in Cuba in 1960.

They established diplomatic and commercial relations with countries on which the US had placed embargos and commercial blockades, such as Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea, and several African and Asian countries, and they also became a member of the Non-Aligned countries movement (Third World). They developed a relationship with the Soviet Union but their relations with the US were not of the same order as the previous conservative government who had openly aligned with the US capitalist class. The nationalization of several US corporations created further friction with them.

Strikes

From the very beginning of the Allende government, thousands of mine workers in different parts of the country went on strike for high wages and better working conditions, as their real wages had gone down due to high levels of inflation. The response of the Allende government was to send in the military and police to reprimand them and tell them to make sacrifices to produce for the so-called homeland. Fidel Castro regarded the workers as reactionaries and counter revolutionaries, demagogues, agitators and agents of US imperialism. The Left, instead of supporting the workers, supported the so-called socialist government; the Communist Party which was part of the Popular Unity also supported the actions taken by the military and the police against the workers, and the strikes continued spreading to others sectors of the working class including the transport workers.

The Popular Unity government was obliged to incorporate the military as part of the state administrative apparatus, under the name Popular Army. But the Popular Unity government was no longer able to run an economy based on state control of the means of production, and had weak support. The military duly took the opportunity to execute a bloody coup d’état, and Allende either shot himself or was assassinated.

The Pinochet dictatorship

The subsequent conservative government of Augusto Pinochet (which the leftists often call fascist) lasted for a period of 16 years, and all reforms implemented during the government of Allende were reversed and most sectors of the economy were privatized including workers’ pensions. This is what the leftists wrongly call neo-liberalism, though the reality is probably in some ways more in line with monetarism. The reversal of all those Allende reforms is a clear indication that reforms implemented by leaders can also be reversed, they are not permanent, and sometimes those reforms are implemented in order to try to pacify the working class. There is certainly no guarantee they will succeed, as Allende’s didn’t.

Chile since Pinochet

In 1988 a plebiscite was held and the majority of the Chileans workers voted for the removal of the presidency and dictatorship of Pinochet, and a new election subsequently took place. A Christian Democrat president was elected, and several legal actions brought against Pinochet and the military. He was indicted and placed under house arrest where he died, but the military kept the power of the state and its agencies, despite the fact that various presidents, governments and Congresses from different political tendencies were elected including social democrats and leftists. None of them were able to resolve the underlying problems of the people.

The present government of Boric was elected with a coalition of ‘Communists’ and ‘Socialists’ offering many promises for workers and for women. A new constitution was put to the vote and rejected by the electorate, including the indigenous Mapuches. The government of Boric knew in advance that the new proposal was most likely going to be rejected and they arguably wanted it to be rejected because they knew that most of the constitutional clauses were not going to be implemented due to the fact that the right-wing faction controls the Congress and was not going to allow any drastic economic and political changes.

The case of Chile is a clear indication that the problems facing the working class cannot be resolved by left-wing or right-wing governments and that the problems are not the leaders, political parties, fascism, neoliberalism, or other political tendencies, or the exact implementation of reforms – the real underlying problem, whatever the regime, is capitalism.

MF.

The singularity of a socialist revolution (2023)

From the September 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to the Left there have been multiple socialist revolutions. Or, more precisely, there have been many political dramas that are claimed by both the Left and by the protagonists involved to have been socialist in nature. A great pantheon of heroes has been created to satisfy the Left’s desperate need for messianic figures which include such individuals as Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotsky, Castro, Che Guevara, Nelson Mandela, Hugo Chavez and even the likes of Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin! One thing most of these have in common is failure but can we consider all or any of them to be socialists? We can say that the socialism of Marx and Luxemburg was profoundly different in nature from the political structures favoured, and in some cases created, by the others in the list. Fifty years ago this month is the anniversary of the ‘martyrdom’ of another great hero of the Left – Salvador Allende. Perhaps by considering his ideology and activity we can further explore the profound political divide between his (and the Left’s) notion of a socialist revolution and that of Marx before the subsequent evolution of the theories of ‘state socialism’, Bolshevism and reformism.

The ‘Socialist Party of Chile’ was formed in 1933 as an attempt to unite the various groups that identified as ‘socialist’. Like so many Leftist ‘broad churches’ it was plagued by division and disagreement but by 1967 it had embraced the oxymoron of Marxism/Leninism with its de-rigueur ‘central committee’. Allende managed to get himself elected as president in 1970 through his popularity with wider leftist movements and the formation of a ‘Popular Unity’ coalition. In this way he believed he could create socialism by nationalising the major industries of Chile. Why he believed this, as the Left still do, is primarily down to the influence of the Bolshevik coup of 1917 in Russia. Lenin had transformed Marx’s view, that nationalisation was a good way to accelerate the productive forces and so make socialism possible, into a perverse form of socialism itself. Capitalism was in its infancy in Russia and Lenin knew that there was no chance of creating the mass consciousness and productive forces needed for a socialist revolution so he created the concept of a vanguard who could lead the masses to ‘communism’ via an intermediate stage he called socialism. In the absence of a full understanding of Marxian politics this became the ideological orthodoxy of the Left, showing a callous disregard for the misery and suffering it had caused in Russia and emphasising an unprincipled greed for power that Bolshevism represented. Thus the scene was set for yet another ill-fated episode in the long political tragedy that was state capitalism.

Although we cannot see into the mind of anyone it is quite possible that Salvador Allende was primarily motivated by a real concern for the poor and oppressed among his people, but what we can identify with certainty are the reasons for his failure: calling an economy and society socialist when it is based on wage labour and capital, even when the means of production are owned by the state, is politically incoherent at best and downright duplicitous at worst; socialism can never be created in one country alone since it inherits the global structure that capitalism has instigated and which makes socialism possible; without majority mass consciousness socialism cannot be imposed by any elite, however well intentioned they may be. There can only be one global socialist revolution (in contrast to the Socialist Party of Chile’s Bolshevik-inspired piecemeal concept of a Confederacy of Socialist Republics) and any claim that there have been and will be many socialist revolutions is born of political naivety, egotistical hubris or an opportunist lust for power.

The failure of the Allende regime was inevitable since any kind of capitalism is subject to the same global economic pressures that ensure that the exploitation of labour for profit is foremost. Those who claim that it would have survived without the interference and ideological hostility of the USA are missing the point that state capitalism is just as bad, if not worse in many respects, as is ‘free-market’ capitalism from the perspective of the exploited masses. The moral outrage that masquerades as ‘realpolitik’ among the Left is in reality a mixture of contempt for the intelligence and potential of the working class combined with an elitist idealism which can only be described as bourgeois. They cannot conceive of a moneyless, stateless democratic global society and so they believe no one else can – certainly not the uneducated masses. The Marxian understanding of social revolution is not concerned with the changing identities of governments who attempt to facilitate or control capitalism but with the emergence of a mass consciousness that will replace production for profit with production for need.

It cannot be doubted that the subsequent dictatorship regime led by General Augusto Pinochet and supported by the CIA was a nightmare for the Chilean people. While capitalism lasts there will always be malicious empires like that of the USA whose job it is to destabilise and destroy any regimes that are considered to be against their imperialist interests. While visiting the UK in 1998 Pinochet was arrested on charges of genocide and the British people had to witness his stomach-churning and grotesque defence by Thatcher and his subsequent release from house arrest by Labour’s Jack Straw. Allende was a courageous individual but, in the end, like his fellow Leftists who have achieved power, he changed nothing.

Wez.

Motives in the Middle East (1958)

From the September 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Following the Iraq coup d'etat, the working class has been subjected to a tremendous amount of propaganda. The press and radio have been calling for varying degrees of support or antagonism according to whichever sectional or national interest they represent. It falls to the Socialist Party, with our unqualified opposition to every capitalist faction, to interpret the events objectively and to state the true position of the workers in relation to them.

Throughout history the Middle East has been invaded or dominated, due to its location as the bridge between Europe, Africa and the Far East. Since the demand for oil has arisen, its strategic importance has been almost eclipsed by this most essential of fuels. These are the causes of the struggle for supremacy in this area. The conflict between American and British oil interests has been overshadowed now by the threat of Russian encroachment. In 1950 the U.S. controlled only 44 per cent. of production against 53 per cent. by Britain and Holland (in Royal Dutch Shell), but by 1956 the American percentage had grown to 57 per cent, while the U.K.'s share had fallen to 35 per cent. The outstanding example is Iran. Before the Abadan incident, all Iranian oil passed through British hands. The agreement reached after the failure of out-and-out nationalisation saw the establishment of an International Consortium to buy the oil from the Iranian Government. The Consortium is divided as between Britain 54 per cent., U.S. 40 per cent., France 6 per cent. Production throughout the Middle East has doubled since 1950 so that U.K. companies are showing increased profits, but this only masks the real decline of British holdings.

In keeping with its status as a world power, the Soviet Union is greatly interested in the Middle East. As with all capitalist states, Russian foreign policy is directed at seizure of the fields. This aim—an extension of Czarist policies—came close to partial achievement following the Second World War. In 1946 a treaty was forced on the Iranian Government, forming a Soviet dominated company with concessions in Northern Iran—this area still being under Russian military occupation. After the troops withdrew Iran, with Anglo-U.S. backing, repudiated the agreement. Now posing as the Arabs' friend, Russia has increased its propaganda in the hope of building Communist parties capable of taking over and attaching the oil nations to the Soviet bloc.

The Egyptian capitalist class, spear-headed by Nasser, is also trying to gain access to the oil sources. To gain this object they have some indisputable advantages over their rivals. Most Arab workers feel that the sole barrier to better conditions is the dominance of Western nations. Exploiting this conviction, Nasser has persuaded many Arabs that he is the only man capable of obtaining and maintaining their departure. He has been greatly assisted by Russia, which has supplied arms and money, and by the abortive Anglo-French Suez landing. Although Russia and Egypt are momentarily allied doubtless time will generate the usual frictions

Although Egyptian policy has won many supporters among the Arab workers, the capitalists of the Middle East oil producing nations are not enthusiastic about coming under Egyptian dominance. This lack of enthusiasm has led to a reluctance to join the United Arab Republic and so share the revenues with the Egyptians. Even the new Iraq Government shows no desire for integration.

Against this sordid background, shorn of the normal camouflage about “safeguarding our national livelihood” or “safeguarding the political independence of the Arab peoples,” the Iraqi rising and the subsequent manoeuvring can be seen in their true perspective. At the overthrow of the monarchy, agreements between the Royal Government and the oil companies were on the standard 50/50 basis. This 50/50 division of the spoils has recently been cracking. Earlier this year contracts between the Japanese and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait led to the Arab States receiving a 56 per cent. and 57 per cent. share respectively. Much speculation has been aroused on the outcome of these and similar agreements. In its March publication the Petroleum Press Service asked, “Are we going to see governments of some of the main producing countries seeking changes in the existing agreements?” Shortly before the revolution the Iraq Minister of Economics held talks with the Iraq Petroleum Co., after which it was announced that the Iraq Petroleum Co. would surrender certain areas held under concession. No doubt Feisal’s Government intended to lease these areas to other companies in keeping with the new rates, but as the 50/50 still applied to the I.P.C., which controls the majority of the output, the net gain was somewhat niggardly. The report on these talks was announced on the 13th July— the coup began on the 14th! Though reports suggest that the revolution was planned in advance, the timing appears more than coincidental. The rebels felt, no doubt, that Feisal and Nuri-es-Said were too bound by their earlier agreements to obtain better terms and a completely new government would have more success. Premier Kassen has stated “the new Iraqi Government would be able better to safeguard oil interests than previous governments.” We can now expect the Republicans to negotiate a fresh agreement with the I.P.C. on a par with the recent precedents.

Western capitalism is probably resigned to this course in moderation (“any Iraq Government will make greater demands on the producing companies" — Financial Times, 16/7/58), but exorbitant demands will be strongly resisted. The landings in Lebanon and Jordan after the revolt were ostensibly to bolster friendly governments, but it has not escaped the attention of the U.K. and U.S. authorities that there are advantages in controlling these countries should discussions break down. The head of the main pipeline from Iraq is situated in Lebanon and could be closed to impede any attempt by the Iraqis to market the oil themselves. And the British troops in Jordan are on hand should intervention be deemed necessary. The stakes are high enough for our masters to contemplate it!

The turnover has been approximately £150 million annually and attempts are being made to double production by 1960. As has been stated, the overwhelming proportion of Iraki oil passes through the Irak Petroleum Co. and its subsidiaries. 95 per cent. of the I.P.C.’s shares are divided equally between British Petroleum, Shell, the Cie. Francaise de Petroles (in which the French Government has a large interest), and the North Eastern Development Corporation—an American company controlled by Socony Mobil Oil and Esso. The remaining 5 per cent. is owned by the Gulkenkian Foundation, although negotiations are afoot to buy 1¼ per cent. of these by the C. F. de P. This would then make the French organisation the largest individual shareholder. The interest of the West in the welfare of the I.P.C. is evident.

Previous examples have shown that when nations are competing for such a richprize open hostilities can result. Although it is by no means certain that armed conflict, either local or world-wide, will immediately arise out of the present situation, it IS certain it will be the working class who will bear the brunt of any fighting—AND FOR NOTHING! It will make no difference to the working class whichever capitalist group controls the oil fields. Arabs, who believe that complete national control of a country’s resources will benefit the workers, are advised to study the contemporary histories of the Sudan, Indonesia, etc. Supporters of the Communist Party should compare current Russian Middle East behaviour with the Soviet/Persian Treaty of Friendship of 1921, before lending support to its imperialist policy. Article 8 of this treaty contains the following: “Federal Russia finally renounces the economic policy pursued in the East by the Czarist Government, which consisted in lending money to the Persian Government, not with a view to the economic development of the country, but rather for the purposes of political subjugation.” Western workers, instead of being bellicose on the masters’ behalf, should be concerned with the struggle against both Eastern and Western capitalism and for the establishment of Socialism; only then will oil cease to feed the flames of hatred.

Essig.

Marxism and Leninism in Myanmar (2022)

From the July 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

A sympathiser sets out the history of ‘socialism’ in Myanmar.

Myanmar is a ‘Global South’ country with long borders shared with India and China. Before its independence, it was ruled by the colonial British as a province of British India. It was also known as Burma.

The earliest record of Marxism in Myanmar is 1923, long after the death of Marx and Engels. The Second International had already been replaced by the Third International. Most of the writers who represented orthodox Marxism were no longer alive or active. It was a time when most of the most talented scholars of Marxism had lost their influence and Marxism was being dictated by Stalin under the name ‘Marxism-Leninism’. Leon Trotsky also started the left opposition to the Bolshevik government in that year.

The very first localised literature of Marxism in Myanmar was Das Kapital in a misleading translation inspired by nationalism. Since then, ‘Bolsheviks’ and ‘communism’ were the kind of keywords that could be seen in some of the publicity released. In 1930, Dr Thein Maung brought back some left-wing books from London to Myanmar. Those were the first books the radical youths in Myanmar encountered about Western communism. They influenced Thakin Nu, who later became the Prime Minister of Burma, and Thakin Soe, who founded both the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) and the Red Flag Communist Party; together they founded the ‘Nagani book club’ for distributing left-wing books and articles. Dagon Taya, later a renowned writer, was one of the chairmen of the Rangoon University Student Union and once wrote a slogan on a wall claiming ‘Long Live Soviet Myanmar’ while he was travelling in 1939.

In 1939, a new chapter was opened for ‘Communism’ (‘Marxism-Leninism’) in Myanmar. Aung San (the ‘father of the nation’), Thakin Soe, a handful of Chittagong radicals and some other leftists together founded the Communist Party of Burma. The CPB managed to link with the Third International as soon as it was founded because of the link between the Chittagonian Bengali founders such as H. N. Goshal and the Indian Communist Party. At that time in 1939, the Third International had already become a tool of Russian foreign policy, under the leadership of Stalin, and had successfully sabotaged strikes under the Popular Front government in France and the social struggles of the CNT-FAI in Spain. The CPB was thus also bound to adopt disastrous tactics, including a series of mistakes that even orthodox Bolshevik leaders like Lenin and Trotsky had described as ‘ultra-left’, ie, the CPB chose not to take part in elections, but instead to wage war against the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League which was the acting government at that time. Later, the CPB didn’t stop with Stalinism; it went further to Maoism which had rejected the class struggle and advocated the alliance of four nationalist classes. It ended up killing its own founders like H. N. Goshal in 1967 during the cultural revolution era.

One Party Rule

On 2 March 1962, a coup d’état took place which heralded the commencement of one-party rule in Myanmar and the army’s political supremacy. The military who attempted the coup called themselves the Union Revolutionary Council (URC) and introduced a programme called ‘The Burmese Way to Socialism’. The CPB denied the ‘socialist’ credentials of URC, however, the URC shared a lot of similar characteristics with Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, and Tito’s Yugoslavia. The first of these was one-party rule with strong state power and hostility towards opposition. As Yugoslav dissident Milovan Djilas mentioned in his The New Class, ‘modern Communism is a modern despotism which cannot help but aspire towards totalitarianism’. In terms of Marxism, such one-party totalitarianism has nothing to do with the dictatorship of the proletariat. As Rosa Luxemburg wrote once, ‘Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only of the members of one party, however numerous they may be, is no freedom at all’. Equating one-party totalitarianism with the dictatorship of the proletariat shows a lack of understanding of Marxism. Marx and Engels identified the act of ‘raising the proletariat to a ruling class’ as ‘the conquest of democracy’.

The second characteristic was the act of strengthening the state, which confirms the claim of Milovan Djilas which states: ‘there is no doubt that a national communist bureaucracy aspires to more complete authority for itself’. Thirdly, Ne Win, chairman of the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) was anti-union just like Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Tito. The BSPP faced much opposition from every side including student unions, workers’ unions, political armed groups, and the government-in-exile.

Student Uprising

The best example of this was the ‘7th July Student Uprising’ which was a series of marches, rallies, and protests against stricter campus regulations and the policies of General Ne Win’s BSPP regime. The BSPP responded to the uprising by violently attacking the students, shooting them with machine guns and using explosives to blow up the whole student union building in University of Yangon, resulting in the deaths of more than a hundred, and the arrest of more than 6,000 students. The BSPP accused the students of being counter-revolutionary and reactionary because they were protesting against the ‘socialist’ state in the BSPP’s view. After that incident, the BSPP attacked the very existence of the unions.

Furthermore, the BSPP implemented a programme like the ‘war-communism’ of Lenin’s time. The BSPP-led Socialist Economy Construction Committee introduced an economic policy aimed at nationalising all businesses across the board, similar to what Milovan Djilas had described the self-styled Communists (Marxist-Leninists) as doing. According to Djilas, the communists wanted to ban strikes because in their view the working class was already in power and owned the means of production via the state. So if there was a strike of workers or students, it meant workers were striking against themselves. Through this tyrannical self-delusion the BSPP, along with all the communist regimes who claimed to follow Marxism-Leninism, responded violently to workers’ strikes. A few international examples would include the Kronstadt rebellion against the Bolshevik government and the Georgian Mensheviks’ soviet rebellion against the Bolshevik government. The CPB argued that the BSPP didn’t represent the legacy of Marxism-Leninism, yet ironically the CPB claimed to follow Maoism while Mao Zedong himself was on excellent terms with Ne Win and his regime. The role of the CPB was ended by a series of battles with the military as well as internal coups resulting from their own inefficient revolutionary strategies and tactics.

Ultra-nationalism

After 1988, a lot of regimes had come and gone, and Myanmar was on the way back to globalisation from ‘socialism’. From 1988 to 2010, Myanmar was governed by purely repressive regimes with no ideological background. However, after the 2007 Saffron revolution, the military regime had to acknowledge the revolutionary potential of the Buddhist monks, students, workers, and the public. So they tried to create an ideological fantasy based on ultra-nationalism, Buddhist supremacy and crony capitalism. From 2010 to 2021 most of the public were under the illusion of living in a democratic nation while minority ethnic groups were being bombed and killed. The oligarchs managed to accumulate capital which was more than enough for three to five successive generations while working-class people struggled to make ends meet. That was when the public enjoyed the illusion of liberal democracy and was the least revolutionary period, until some students chose to protest with an agenda for educational reforms in 2014. During that decade, the military had successfully radicalised the majority of the Buddhist monks with their self-serving ultra-nationalism and Buddhist supremacy. As Myanmar has a unique culture of monks being important (too important) when it comes to social values, a fraction of the working class also chose to give support to the successors of the military regime, bolstered by irrational fear of minority groups and other religions. Such a political agenda recalls Daniel De Leon’s remark that ‘the capitalist class is interested in keeping the working men divided among themselves’.

The National League for Democracy (NLD) was founded by ex-communists, ex-military officers and left-leaning social democrats in 1988. Aung San Suu Kyi, the ‘democracy idol’ of Myanmar, forged a de facto alliance with the military to attain governmental status. Since then, not only did the NLD not achieve its goal of kicking the military out of politics but they also failed to protect minority ethnic groups like the Rohingya from genocide. Under the leadership of ‘the lady’ Suu Kyi, the NLD changed its political ideology from social democracy to liberalism. This was not apparent at first, but as soon as they were elected as an acting government, they failed to implement all the social democratic policies. The NLD lost their social democratic connections with the interests of the working class and with the national self-determinism of ethnic groups. Such reactionary behaviour resulted in some far-left and centre-left youths losing their trust in the NLD, and searching for a third alternative either in some social democratic reformist party or a revolutionary socialist party.

Another military coup

In February 2021, the military decided to stage another coup to restore their former golden days and to protect family members who had become oligarchs and cronies. The public at first was hesitant to react with strikes and protests. But the coup sparked enormous protests and dissent which were brutally suppressed by the military, with about 1,500 people dead, either shot in the streets, tortured and murdered in detention, or just disappeared. Even though the military managed to seize power and arrest some influential political leaders like Suu Kyi and Mya Aye, some of the NLD members escaped and formed a National Unity Government (NUG) in exile, in alliance with some ethnic leaders and other small political groups taking the role of consultative council. Even today, the NUG fails to grasp the opportunity to radicalise the public, even for reformist social democratic values. The NUG still acts like a parallel government. Yet third-party alternatives such as the Maoist CPB, Trotskyist organisations and social democratic reformists also failed to radicalise the public for a socialist revolution.

Theo Maung, who describes himself as a libertarian socialist and one of the founders of the Burmese Atheists Association, said that he was expecting a more progressive and secular society from the revolt against the coup. He was confident that people were turning away from authoritarianism and racial and religious discrimination as a result of their struggles against the junta. He pointed out that the CPB managed to recover again after the coup but that the new generation of leftists like him didn’t accept the authoritarian communists. He also said that if there was to be another communist party in Myanmar, he expected a more libertarian-leaning one with little influence from Marxism-Leninism and Maoism. Yoe Thit Aung, an anarchist, also had a view on the revolution: ‘I personally don’t see the revolution as a class struggle but rather a transformation of crony capitalism into corporate capitalism. Traditionally the NLD is a populist and conservative party. NUG is trying their best for more progressive reforms, but they will never go for radical ends’. He thinks that the old bourgeois crony class will be useful as a national bourgeois class in the post-revolutionary period.

To sum up, Myanmar has a lot of experience of Marxism-Leninism (so-called communism) and military dictatorships. It’s unfortunate that Myanmar was never influenced by the internationalist and revolutionary socialism (Marxist) tradition of Georgi Plekhanov, Julius Martov, Rosa Luxemburg and others, which represents the Marxism of Marx and Engels in seeking the democratic emancipation of the working class.

Hein Htet Kyaw

News in Review: Greece—What Democracy? (1967)

The News in Review column from the June 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Greece—What Democracy?

We are of course concerned that the already limited trade union and democratic rights of workers in Greece have been suppressed. But an awful lot of nonsense is talked about “democracy” in Greece.

Of course, most of this came from the Left Wing, so many of whom are highly selective in their denunciation of dictatorships, and whose names appear monotonously and inevitably at such times on numerous petitions, motions and letters to the press.

On the Right, too, there were protests. In a letter to The Times of 10 May Sir John Foster, Conservative M.P. for Northwich, wrote:

. . . it must be a matter of anxiety that these reprehensible features, such as the death penalty for political crimes, which were abolished by Article 18 (of the Greek Constitution) are now restored.

It would be interesting to know why these take-overs, of which there have been so many in recent years, always produce the same reaction. It is predictable that a government which comes out of a coup will clamp down hard, because for a time it is bound to feel itself insecure. And all the protesters are in favour of firm government, aren’t they?

Apart from this, all the protests overlook a basic, important question. What sort of “democracy” is it which can overwhelmed by a coup?

A set up which deserves the name democratic is not just a matter of people going to vote at specified times, though this is important. It also entails free access to information, and a conscious participation in the organising of society.

At the moment, what is called democracy consists of a politically apathetic working class occasionally having a say in which type of private property government shall run the coercive state machine of capitalism for the next few years.

Even by the standards of political activity in this country, the “democracy” in Greece was a very frail flower, with roots unnourished by working class enlightenment It is not surprising that it was so vulnerable.

The Common Market

It was no surprise that Harold Wilson described the British application to join the Common Market as a “great turning point in history.” Politicians, especially politicians like Wilson, are fond of such phrases; they know that while the working class have their attention focussed on the horizons of history they are not likely to be worrying so much about their immediate problems like frozen wages. 

Of course Wilson is not interested in fundamental changes in history; a turning point from capitalism to Socialism would be altogether too great for him.

His business is to manage the affairs of the British capitalist class as a whole, and it necessary to sacrifice some industries in the interests of others.

This will probably be one result, if Britain joins Europe. Wilson expects British agriculture to suffer; “Undoubtedly,” he said, “the community's policy will create problems for some of our smaller farmers.” But he also hopes for an “. . . enormous and growing market for our own more sophisticated and technological products. . . .”

This rosy picture of Europe as an ever-expanding market takes no account of the fact that the countries already in the EEC are by no means free of economic troubles.

West Germany, for example, has just come through a sombre winter in which, although it was not as bad as many observers were expecting a few months back, unemploymfent rose from 216,000 in November last to 673,600 in February this year, falling to 501,303 in April.

The Common Market cannot solve capitalism's built-in contradictions. Neither can it ease the problems of the working class. Whether it causes a rise in the cost of living, whether it is Wilson's great occasion or Michael Foot's disaster, the workers in this country will not need long to discover what their counterparts on the Continent have had to face.

It will make no difference to them at all.

Election Results

In both local and Parliamentary by-elections, the Labour Party is taking a hammering. It was apt comment on the present government, that their policies should be responsible for losing the apparently impregnable fortress of Inner London to the Tories, after over thirty years of Labour rule.

Whatever excuses may be offered, the fact is that the voters were all expressing an opinion on Harold Wilson’s heaven.

They don’t like it.

They were also telling the world what they think of Labour's promises.

They don't believe them.

Labour said, in October 1964 and again in March 1966, that they would bring in an era of dynamic expansion; it was all a simple matter of planning. In the event they brought industrial stagnation, unemployment, the wage freeze.

In the GLC election they said they would guide us onto “The Best Way” — to get more homes, to get out of traffic chaos, to have more fun.

The voters did not think these promises were any more likely to be kept than those of 1964 and 1966, and there was no reason for them to do so.

The Labour Party are exposed as a political fraud, all over the country and at all levels of political control. The tragedy, though, is that the voters have turned from them to another, equally discredited and futile, party of capitalism.

The Tories make the same sort of promises as Labour, and their record of breaking their word is as bad. Presumably, when the inevitable disillusionment comes, the voters will turn back to the Labour Party once more.

This is what is called the swing of the pendulum. But watching a pendulum incessantly swinging can bring on something like hypnosis. It is time the workers came out of their trance.

Running Commentary: Too old at 35 (1985)

The Running Commentary column from the June 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Too old at 35

Capitalist ideology is underpinned by many lies and delusions. Expressed simply, this is one of them: "If you work hard at passing your exams and at your job, security and prosperity will be yours". Along with this delusion goes the notion that a worker can somehow be elevated by passing exams, into an imaginary "middle-class" status. In fact there is no middle-class; anyone who faces the indignity of having to sell their labour power for a wage or a salary is in the working class, no matter what their educational qualifications. A particularly cruel reminder of this appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 25 March 1985:

Fifty advanced computer scientists and technicians carrying out research for Philips Electronics have lost their jobs because "they are too old at 50". The management of Philips Research Laboratories at Redhill. Surrey, are taking on young graduates to replace them. They [union officials] accused the company of following the example of the Japanese electrical firm Hitachi, which tried last December to get all workers over 35 at its Hirwaun colour TV plant in South Wales to take redundancy.

Hitachi said in a letter to all employees that staff over 35 were slow, prone to sickness, had poor eyesight and were more resistant to change.

The article went on to say that "graduates cost less than older staff' — one more example of the ruthless, cost-cutting nature of capitalism.

How inconvenient to the capitalist class that workers still want to go on living — with the expense of redundancy pay, unemployment benefit and pensions this entails — after their abilities have been consumed and they find themselves discarded.

Price of gold

The South African government has recently offered a sop to reform by committing itself to abolition of the obnoxious laws which prohibit sex and marriage between men and women of different racial origin. This reform is rendered virtually meaningless by other laws on racial segregation which remain, such as the Group Areas Act, which segregates residential and business areas along racial lines. This means that despite the abolition of the "immorality" laws, a man and a woman of different races involved in a sexual relationship will still be unable to set up home together.

Those people who see this legal change as the first step towards liberalisation of South African society must surely have had their hopes dashed by another event in South Africa last month which demonstrated yet again the odious policies of the South African ruling class.

The event was the dismissal of 17,000 black gold miners who were sacked by their employers. Anglo-American Corporation, for causing stoppages and disruption in protest at the sacking of trade union officials. Not only have these workers lost their jobs; they have also been transported back to various "tribal homelands". Under South African law the majority of black gold miners are forced to live as migrants, without their families, in work camps close to the mines.

These gold mines produce the commodity that is the basis of the enormous wealth of the South African ruling class. One of the mines where workers have been sacked — the Vaal Reefs mine in the western Transvaal — is the biggest gold mine in the world and produces 13 per cent of South African gold. In a situation where there are many poor workers, mostly black but increasingly white too. desperate to work, it is only too easy for the capitalist class to replace sacked miners with others who they hope will be less militant.

It is the grossest form of hypocrisy for the South African ruling class to talk of liberalisation in a society in which workers continue to be repressed in this way. No one should be taken in by the cosmetic changes taking place in South Africa at the moment which are intended to appease international opinion and so open up more markets for South African goods. The oppressive structures of both apartheid and capitalism remain intact.

Coup in Sudan

While President Nimeiri was busy trying to rally support for his regime among American leaders the Sudanese army, supported by other sections of the Sudanese ruling class, seized governmental power in a manner that is only too familiar in countries where the absence of democratic institutions means that the only way of changing government personnel is through a coup d'état. Of course this military government, like many others, is promising a quick return to civilian rule as soon as conditions permit the holding of elections.

The complaint of the army and its supporters was that Nimeiri, after sixteen years in power, was mismanaging the economy. The ruling class was also angry at the way in which Nimeiri had imposed the barbaric Islamic code of law in order to secure his own political ends by courting the support of the fundamentalist Moslem Brotherhood. This marriage of convenience was. however, short-lived. Fearing a challenge to his power from Islamic leaders, Nimeiri had purged the Moslem Brotherhood and imprisoned its leaders, blaming them for unpopular policies. As a result Nimeiri lost his only real power base in Sudanese society, leaving him vulnerable to a coup from rival sections of the Sudanese ruling class.

Sudan is a desperately poor country currently ravaged by widespread drought which has exacerbated agricultural policies intended to produce quick profits for the landowners at the expense of both land and people. Its scarce food resources are under increasing pressure due to the huge influx of refugees from Ethiopia, themselves trying to escape famine. In the south of the country there has been a civil war in progress led by a rival Christian army officer. The majority of the population are totally dependent on American grain shipments if they are to avoid starvation. This American "aid" is granted in return for Sudan maintaining a pro-western stance in an area that is of great strategic importance because of its proximity to important oil supplies.

What is certain in these murky waters of political intrigue and double-dealing is that the lives of the vast majority of Sudan’s 22 million people will be largely unaffected by these shufflings of official positions among the Sudanese ruling class. Drought now affects 4 million native farmers and relief workers are currently predicting that one million people will die in Sudan in the coming year (The Times, 9 April 1985). It matters not one jot to them, nor will it affect their chances of survival, that they are now being ruled by a military rather than a civilian government.

World View: The world crisis spreads (1998)

From the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The dominoes are falling all around: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Korea, Japan, Russia, and now Latin America. “On Wednesday, Colombia became the first Latin American country in the region to devalue its currency following weeks of intensive pressure, sparking a slide in bond and stock markets in Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina. Venezuela, whose currency has been under intense pressure for weeks, launched an immediate round of public spending cuts” (Observer, 6 September).

Venezuela is particularly vulnerable at the present time. It is one of the world’s leading oil producers; it also has vast deposits of iron ore and gold, much of which including other mineral resources have yet to be explored. Twenty years ago, when the price of oil plummeted on the international exchange, Venezuela suffered mass unemployment as well as inflation. In 1988, the price of oil went down further; and in February 1989, the government introduced austerity measures which severely cut working-class incomes. The result was mass rioting, which caused millions of dollars in property damage and the loss of 300 lives.

The 1990s, therefore, opened with Venezuela teetering on the edge of total instability. On February 2 1992, a faction of middle-rank officers tried to overthrow the government in a coup. The army, however, backed the President and soon regained control. On 27 November the same year, another coup was attempted, this time by junior officers of the air force; again it was unsuccessful. Nevertheless, many people wanted change, if only to end the cycle of corruption and instability.

In January I 994, Venezuela’s second largest bank, the Banco Latino, collapsed, and the government had to nationalise it. It had to pump in two billion dollars to cover its losses.The government began an enquiry, but the bank’s assets had been relocated overseas, and it proved almost impossible to get the money back. This caused panic among depositors, and most tried to withdraw their money without success. The effect was to undermine the economy and drain Venezuela’s already dwindling cash reserves. The Venezuelan economy has never really recovered.

What of the working class? It can only get worse for them. And they have always existed in poverty. Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, is a huge city of modern high rise buildings, mixed with many building which are in desperate need of repair. But even the people who live in these dilapidated apartments are “lucky” compared with the people who reside in the ranchos ringing the city, and in the mountains around the city. They only have run-down shacks. As in most of the world, the majority of the people in Caracas are poor.

The present, and the future, is indeed grim unless the workers of Venezuela, as elsewhere, rouse themselves and organise for the replacement of the present system by a new world-wide system of production for use and the satisfaction of individual and social needs. There really is no viable alternative.

Peter E. Newell

The Future of the Sudan (1959)

From the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Commentary on the recent coup d'état in the Sudan has been curiously limited. It is true that the seizure of power in mid-November by a military council was accomplished in unspectacular bloodless fashion; nevertheless, the overthrow of a government in so close proximity to the centre of recent world troubles ought, one thinks, to have made bigger news. Even the serious informational papers had not much to say. The Observer provided only 26 column-inches about it in two issues and the Manchester Guardian, though it gave most of all, did so largely in reference to the northern cotton market.

The reason is not hard to see. Events are quickly told, but the commentary on them must depend chiefly on their consequences—and the consequences of the Sudan happening are not yet apparent. The new government is politically unrevealed so far, and what fresh relationship may arise between the Sudan and the western world is still unknown. General Abboud may take the stage as a second Nasser to be hissed for a foxy schemer from the galleries of the west, or contrariwise as the golden-haired lad bearing freedom’s banner. For that, we must wait and see.

What is much more to the point is to ask what has happened and why. Briefly to go over recent events, the coup was announced on November 17th. The coalition government of Abdullah Khalil was known to be on its way out. Its two factors, the People’s Democratic Party and the Umma party, were in disagreement over the Sudan’s relations with Egypt: mainly, it is said, over fresh Egyptian plans for the Aswan High Dam made in the light of the proferred Russian loan. The new régime, in which General Abboud holds supreme power, announced itself as working “in the interest of no party or group” but aiming at “the elimination of incompetence and corruption among politicians in general,” with a hint about knowing the way to good terms with Egypt (Manchester Guardian, 18th November, 1958).

This has come in the face not only of Egyptian pressure, however, but also of economic troubles. The Sudan is a cotton-producing country. Eighty per cent of its exports are of cotton (largely to Lancashire), and the present condition of the world’s cotton markets has meant a huge unsaleable surplus, stated by the Observer correspondent in Khartoum to include 48.000 tons left over from 1957. Under the Anglo-Egyptian regime big sums were invested in irrigation projects and plans for government-assisted peasant production to develop the cotton yield, so that the Sudan is dependent always on world prices for its staple crop. Before the war the Sudanese people were considered better-off than the natives of most other colonized parts of Africa; now the country’s economy is in a critical phase without much prospect of improvement.

The growth and the varied outlooks of the Sudanese political parties have come partly through economic development and partly from the patterns set by the fifty-eight years of joint British and Egyptian rule which ended in 1956. The history of this companionate rule is in fact a series of quarrels over who should really rule a country which bordered the Suez canal and enclosed the upper Nile. The existence of pro-British and pro-Egyptian parties comes from this period, when each of the dual rulers tried to create its own body of support in the Sudan. The Umma is descended from the Mahdi’s followers who drove out Turco-Egyptian rule and is thus traditionally anti-Egyptian; the P.D.P., on the other hand, is an offshoot of the National Unity Party which has always seen advantage in alliance with Egypt.

As in all other colonial countries, a powerful vein of nationalism appeared with the vista of economic independence that the development schemes afforded. (It is an irony of imperialism that the leaders of nationalist movements are produced by the imperialists’ own needs for officials, technical assistants and the rest of the new “middle classes” which this stage of economic progress must turn out.) All the Sudanese parties, including the “Socialist” National Unity Party and the Anti-Imperialist Front (the Communists) are shot through with this strong desire for “national independence,” and the new military government lost no time in stating that it did not differ from them. The day after assuming power. General Abboud said his regime would “accept anything it considered in the interests of the country, but would reject anything which might harm its independence and sovereignty.”

The truth is, however, that the Sudan cannot be independent except in the nominal sense of not being any other nation’s colony. The change which has just taken place was forced by external conditions and happenings, and the policies of the Abboud government—even the vague ones which were immediately announced—are bound to be determined almost wholly from outside. The resuscitation of the limping Sudanese economy depends on, more than anything else at the present time, the government’s negotiations with Egypt and (a not-unconnected matter) its success in playing-off America and Russia to attract loans from either or both. On November 30th the Foreign Minister announced that “foreign capital without strings would be welcomed.” and that his government had already taken 15 million dollars' worth of foreign exchange from America (Manchester Guardian, 1st December. 1958).

The outstanding questions between Egypt and the Sudan are the Aswan Dam project and the frontiers. To the Egyptian government the Dam, with its promise of irrigation and electric power, is vital for maintaining the economy (with its already desperate population problem) and making the economy maintain the army. Now, with the promise of Russian aid. it appears within reach, but there must first be agreement with the government of Sudan. From Egypt’s point of view a compliant Sudan would be the answer; Mr. Khalil, indeed, alleged in London last September that there were forces working to this end within the Sudanese government. For the Sudan, on the other hand, agreement can only mean a share in the benefits of the Dam.

What of the Sudanese people? Here, when one asks this question, stands forth a remarkable example of the stupidity and cruelty of commercialism and nationalism. For the Sudanese people are desperately, pitifully poor. In nearly three years of “independence” they have been governed by the National Unity “Socialists,” a coalition, and now the military—and none has made a scrap of difference to their poverty. It is worth pointing out that the Egyptian people have had the same experience: they were poverty-stricken under fat Farouk, and are equally so under Nasser. What have the political pretensions of their government done for them?

Assuming, however, that the building of the new High Dam would lighten these peoples’ burdens, the approaches to it have been made entirely in terms of not those but the rulers’ interests. First, there has to be money—obvious enough, but in itself a condemnation of the entire modern world where the need is pressing, the materials and labour plentiful, yet the fulfilment must wait on the djinn of this idiotic Aladdin’s lamp. When it was offered to Egypt by the West, the offer was based and then foundered on considerations of political advantage in the cold war. Now it appears again from Russia, with similar considerations in view (while a team of “American aid experts ” descends on the Sudan).

Who, then, cares about the Sudanese people? It is not that this or the preceding governments, or the government of Egypt, is deliberately negligent; on the contrary, it would be to the rulers’ benefit to have the support of prosperous and satisfied populations. The Sudan, however, has been pulled into the whirlpool of Capitalist world politics. From a colony in the once-majestic scheme of British imperialism, developed to make its cotton contribution to British trade, it has become another nation forced to struggle for advantage in the pitiless dogfights of world markets and big politics.

The future of the Sudan is bound up in the future of the world. Economic development and political contact have opened the windows for this country on the amenities of modern civilization, hence the nationalism, the reformist politics, and the anxiety to benefit by “getting in” on the bigger powers’ calculated generosity. Ideally, the Sudanese people stand to gain in every way from contact and interchange—in a word, “progress.” But modern civilization is far from ideal. Whatever progress is made will be directed at furthering only the interests of the property-owners of the Sudan: the important thing to recognize about the Abboud regime is that, whatever is said about ending corruption and the rest, this is its prime aim. However good a proportion of the High Dam potentialities is obtained for the Sudan, the sad fact is that the Dam is really wanted as a source of power and profits for the commercial class.

There is no sanity in this. It is not only in the Sudan, but everywhere; this small flare-up illumines a little more of what is going on all over the world. Nationalism and the political game are impediments to genuine productive development, standing in the way of what could be done by man for man—but they are parts of the superstructure of Capitalist society, which limits human activity to what will yield the best profits. The real trouble for the people of the Sudan is the profit system, and the only future which can hold anything worth while for them—and for everyone else—is Socialism all over the world.

Robert Barltrop

Perspective on Guatemala (1954)

From the August 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is called the land of eternal spring and appropriately so, for Guatemala does not know the changes of season such as we have in England. It is a country in which you are almost always in sight of a mountain or a volcano. It is the land of the marimba and the quetzal bird and of ancient intricately ornate architecture. Of dictatorship and malnutrition. Of lemongrass and citronella oil, quinine and cinnamon. Of cotton, chicle, coffee—and bananas. It is also a country regarded by United States Secretary of State John Foster Dulles as a possible danger to the peace of America.

Guatemala lies on the narrow connection between the land masses of North and South America. It is bordered by Mexico, British Honduras, Honduras and El Salvador. The Caribbean Sea lies to the east and southwards is the Pacific Ocean. It is a country about as large as England with a population of 3½ million—roughly the same as Yorkshire. Over two million of these are the religious, superstitious Maya Indians, who are unable to read or write, and live on maize, kidney beans and dried fish. The climate is agreeable enough to have attracted many American vacationists. The main port is Puerto Barrios, situated on the eastern coast and connected by an important railway to the capital Guatemala City. Through the country runs the Pan American Highway, which ribbons along the entire isthmus of Central America. A fertile plain stretches for about 40 miles inland from the Pacific; here are rich banana farms, cornfields and grazing lands.

The country's chief exports are coffee, bananas, chicle, essential oils and honey, of which coffee is the most valuable. Chicle is a latex which is bled from wild sapota trees and forms the basic ingredient of chewing gum. Guatemala has little mineral resources and so is not an industrial nation. Her principal imports are machinery, textiles, petroleum and vehicles. Most of her trade is with the United States.

The early history of Guatemala has been obscured by the passing centuries and the destruction of records in the Spanish conquest of the 16th century. We do know that by about three thousand years ago an advanced civilisation had cleared the jungle, raised crops and built splendid cities, which have left their ruins as evidence of greater days. Over two thousand years ago the Mayas had developed a calendar as accurate as the Gregorian (adopted by Great Britain in 1752) and were working a mathematical system which was the first to use the concept of zero. Around the year 900 the Indians for some reason emigrated to the Guatemalan highlands and the jungle overgrew the deserted cities. The civilisation declined and the Mayas split into warring tribes.

In 1523 the Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez sent a small band of conquistadors under his lieutenant Don Pedro de Alvarado from Mexico into Guatemala. There was little in the divided native tribes to resist the Spaniards’ superior equipment and military technique and by 1524 the country was under Spanish control. With the conquistadors came Roman Catholicism and the Inquisition. The Catholic Church assisted in the suppression of the country. In 1593 Pope Alexander VI issued a bull giving Spain sovereignty over Central America, including Guatemala. When the Spaniards found the resistance of the Rabinal Indians too fierce for them. Padre Bartelome de las Casas and other priests penetrated the Indians and won them over by missionary work. Incidentally, it was agriculturally-inclined Padre Tomas de Berlanga who introduced the first rootstocks of the banana plant from which have grown the huge plantations of the United Fruit Company of Boston, U.S.A.

The story of the Spanish conquest is re-told at the Maya fiestas, when masked Indians perform the Dance of the Conquistadors. The dance, to the music of the marimba—an instrument like an outsize xylophone—is an endurance test lasting for several hours. It represents the 1523 hand-to-hand battle between Alvarado and the Maya chief Tecum Uman, in which the Indian lost his life. This was a crucial victory for Alvarado.

The decline of Spain loosened its hold upon the Americas and in 1821 Guatemala was able, like other South American countries, to declare her independence. Then followed a succession of revolutions and presidencies, each relying upon bloodshed and tyranny for its position. In 1873 Justo Rufina Barrios deposed the ruling president and established a dictatorial government. Barrios did much to develop the resources of Guatemala and when he was killed in 1885 he was a national hero. The port of Puerto Barrios is named after him. His death was followed by more revolutions and a procession into and out of the presidential chair. In 1931 General Jorge Ubico was elected to power.

Ubico led a pitiless dictatorship which dissolved the trade unions and gave power to the landowners, greatest of which is the United Fruit Company. When he was forced to resign in 1944, Ubico left less than two per cent. of the population owning 78 per cent. of the land. For six years Guatemala was ruled by three army officers headed by Dr. Juan Arevalo, until in 1950 Jacob Arbenz was elected president Now, in face of the invasion, Arbenz has fallen and the presidential procession has started again.

The invasion came after several weeks of pressure from the U.S.A. The resolution sponsored by Mr. Dulles at the Caracas conference last March was directed against the Arbenz government and provided a legal weapon for future use. More essentially, America has for some years refused to sell arms to Guatemala, who not unnaturally took her custom elsewhere. The arrival at Puerto Bgrrios of weapons from Poland touched off a fine panic in the State Department and provoked the American request to Britain and other countries to allow the right to search their ships. Thus was quietly buried the traditional American lip-service to the freedom of the seas. When Guatemala was attacked America, tongue in cheek, denied the evidence of an invasion. On the other side of the table Russia forgot about Eastern Europe and came out in defence of the rights of small nations. As The Economist put it, rather neatly, it was “war through the looking glass . . .” with “. . . all the words . . . the wrong way round.” But that is nothing new.

What are the reasons for the conflict in the little Central American state? Well, first there’s the Panama Canal, the vital snip of the scissors which cuts America in two. A glance at a map will show the importance of the canal as the short cut between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. As the quetzal bird flies, Guatemala is 800 miles from Panama and is separated from it by several countries which are friendly to the United States.

Then there’s the United Fruit Company, which owns most of the banana plantations of Guatemala. The company says that it has lost control of 400,000 acres in the recent land nationalisation; it is in dispute with the government over the scale of compensation. Its local legal representative is Dr. Juan Manuel Galvez, President of Honduras, whence came the invaders of Guatemala. Apart from its landholdings, the United Fruit Company owns the dock and harbour installations at Puerto Barrios. Through International Railways of Central America it has virtual control of the entire Guatemalan railway system, including the busy line from Puerto Barrios to Guatemala City. It is noteworthy that the first warnings about Guatemala came from the State Department at the same time as the early expropriation of United Fruit Company land. Foreign control is also strong in the field of electric power, four-fifths being supplied by a company subsidiary to an American firm.

What about Russian interference? Well, the Arbenz government could not be described as a follower of Moscow, although it did suffer the influence of Guatemalan Communists. There was in Guatemala an active opposition with its own newspapers. The Arbenz regime was crudely nationalist—an outlook bred from its attempts to break the American near-monopoly of the country’s wealth and develop a modern industrial state from a semi-feudal country. In competition with the foreign companies the government was building its own wharves at Puerto Barrios and, with the help of a United Nations Technical Assistance scholarship in highway construction, had commenced work on a heavy-duty road from the port to Guatemala City. A state-controlled power station costing nearly £2 million is also under construction.

It is a story by now familiar enough. Along with the bananas and coffee Guatemala has grown its own exploiting class who aspire to own their country’s wealth free from foreign interference. They expressed themselves in a nationalist party which found the American companies as the first obstacle to its plans. So it ran foul of the U.S. State Department. For Central America has for a long time been dominated' by American investment and influence. And in her conflict with Russia the United States cannot allow this power to be challenged and the security of the Panama Canal threatened. An. unfriendly Guatemala was bound to suffer the attention of Mr. Dulles. The Land of Eternal Spring has felt the first wintry blast of the cold war.

Ivan

Blogger's Note:

The original map from the August Socialist Standard was a bit basic, so I grabbed a replacement. In the 1954 map, Belize was still known as British Honduras.