The ballot strike in Tunisia (2023)

From the March 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 2011, discontent and unrest in Tunisia spread and ignited wider discontent in what became known as the Arab Spring. Now, more than a decade later, protests have returned so that Tunisians may once again put food on their tables.

Tunisia’s president, Kais Saied, assumed almost total power in 2021, having sacked the prime minister, suspended parliament and enacted a constitution that gave him, as the head of state, supreme control and command of the military and granted him the ability to rule by decree.

In December’s election for the new, mostly powerless, legislature most of the opposition political parties announced an election boycott. It resulted in only 8.8 percent of the nine-million-strong electorate voting in the parliamentary elections. A required run-off election was held in January 2023 after only 21 candidates out of 161 Assembly seats were elected in the first round. Just 88,000, or 11 percent of the 7.8 million entitled to vote in the run-offs cast their ballots.

People, rather than feeling cheated of their right to vote, have understood that the election was not a sincere engagement in democracy.

A non-voter explained, ‘He promised serious reforms but we haven’t seen anything. People have had it with these promises and that’s why they boycotted the last two elections. They don’t believe this regime is going to find an answer to their problems, especially their economic problems’ (bit.ly/3ll6WuX).

Another said: ‘We don’t want elections. We want milk and sugar and cooking oil’ (bit.ly/3XipR6Q).

Despite losing legitimacy and credibility, Saied has remained in power, retains the loyalty of the army officers and continues to be recognised as the head of state by foreign governments and international institutions.

For example, he can still negotiate and secure from the International Monetary Fund a $1.9bn loan to finance his 2023 budget and accept the accompanying austerity conditions that will likely lead to ending food and fuel subsidies, cutting public spending on public health, education, social services and the privatisation of state enterprises (bit.ly/3llYbAV).

When in Hong Kong the people were deprived of a say in electing the Legislative Assembly, they saw that the district council elections, previously akin to neighbourhood council elections, offered them an opportunity to express their political preferences. Hong Kong’s pro-democracy candidates won close to 60 percent of the total vote, 347 of the 452 taking control of at least 17 of the city’s 18 district councils.

But once again, as we see with Tunisia, as long as political power is not in the hands of the people of Hong Kong, change will not happen. The election boycott strategy still preserves political power for the government and although its validity is questioned, it remains intact.

There are differences between boycotting elections, abstaining from voting and what is described as the Sinn Fein voting strategy of standing but, if elected, not taking the seat in Parliament.

What is important is capturing political power to exercise the will of the people. Simply abstaining from voting – or not taking the seat – is not sufficient

When there is no genuine socialist candidate, we favour going to the polling station to cast a write-in vote for socialism rather than merely abstaining as this shows that we attach some significance to the existence of the universal suffrage that our antecedents struggled to gain. In this country, where there is a stable political democracy, we favour using it to win political control. In other countries where this is not the case a socialist majority there would be obliged to adopt a different method. There will also be occasions, as in Tunisia, when a parliamentary process will be purposefully gerrymandered to deny the possibility of the people’s will.

We have never held that a merely formal majority at the polls will give the workers the power to achieve socialism. We have always emphasised that our fellow workers must be knowledgeable in the essentials of socialist ideas and be democratically organised.

A socialist party’s role is to strive to be educators, agitators and organisers, to act as catalysts and not to substitute the party for our class. Without an educated and organised working class as the motor for achieving socialism, we cannot have socialism.

William Morris put it well, ’It should be our special aim to make Socialists by putting before people, and especially the working classes, the elementary truths of socialism… before any definite socialist action can be attempted, it must be backed up by a great body of intelligent opinion — the opinion of a great mass of people who are already socialists…’ (bit.ly/3YDLIqs).

It is not just the quantity of the votes but the quality of the voters behind them that will be decisive.

ALJO

The Passing Show: No excuse for less work (1960)

The Passing Show Column from the April 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

No excuse for less work

Religion is one of the chief allies of the ruling class, but as capitalism develops some of the old religious observances become impediments. When that happens, of course, religion has to give way. Even the great usefulness of religion to the ruling class does not compensate for the loss of profits. One example is the Moslem ceremony of Ramadan, in which for thirty days Moslems may not eat or drink during daylight. This means that as soon as dusk falls there is a rush to eat and drink, which often develops into all-night parties. The result is that the workers output, and the employers’ surplus value, declines. As the News Chronicle (5/3/60) puts it:

Up to now, as in the rest of the Moslem world, Tunisia's life came almost to a standstill during Ramadan because of the dawn to dusk fast. In some cases production dropped 70 per cent.

President Bourguiba, who runs the state machine on behalf of the emerging Tunisian capitalist class, could not be expected to tolerate that. Capitalism demands hard, regular toil from its workers, whatever religion may say. So the President acted

Bourguiba has not banned the fast outright. But he has stated firmly that fasting will not be accepted as an excuse for less work.

And, apparently, this warning is having an effect. The article says, “Tunisians are now obeying his order to work as usual during Ramadan.” So Bourguiba justifies his position as Tunisian capitalism's chief executive.

His country

From Tunisian capitalism to the British variety. The status quo here can have few stauncher defenders than some of our trade union leaders. Ore of them is Sir Frederick Burrows, ex-president of the National Union of Railwaymen. Sir Frederick felt moved recently to let the public know his views on the planned railway strike. The paper he chose to write to was The Times (10/2/60). which can be read by only a minority of railwaymen (it costs fourpence a day for a start); its readership is mostly either ruling class or those who like to think that they arc ” top people.” Sir Frederick finished his letter as follows:

If the N.U.R. desire to perpetuate Tory rule for another decade, if they wish to make the very name of railwaymen a scoff and a by-word, then they will strike, but I, personally, have more faith in their judgment. I trust that they will reject the advice of the malcontents in their ranks and act once again the splendid role they played in the war, when one and all stood for England—My Country, right or wrong.

Surely even a member of the ruling class would hesitate these days before trotting out again such hackneyed cliches. Even G. K. Chesterton, who was very far from being a Socialist, said that to say, “My country, right or wrong,” was like saying “My mother, drunk or sober.” But Sir Frederick rushes in with his jingoistic farrago where others might fear to tread. No wonder he chose the ‘‘top people’s” paper to write to.

It’s those foreigners again

From the Guardian of 10/2/60, under a Pretoria date-line:

Police armed with Sten guns, rifles and revolvers stood by today at Mooiplats squatter camp about five miles south-west of here while a bulldozer flattened houses, shanties and hovels from which 300 African families with no other homes are being evicted. The camp has existed since 1926. As walls crashed in clouds of dust lorries piled high with African men. women and children and their possessions left the camp. Mooiplats has been declared an area for Indians. Pretoria City Council's policy is to clear squatter camps. It is stated that most of the evicted Africans arc foreign Africans and will not be given municipal accommodation.

‘‘Foreign Africans”! These people are Africans; they were born in Africa and have spent their lives there; they are earning their livings, such as they are, in Africa; but they are ‘‘foreigners,” because they come from the other side of one of the boundary lines drawn on the map by the European powers who carved Africa up among them. When we have a rational society we will be able to forget the crazy artificiality of the divisions imposed on us by the necessities of private property. Wc will discard the bogies of nationality and race, and remember what we really are—one race, the human.

Alwyn Edgar

The Change of Rulers in Iran (1979)

From the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is a story said to have circulated in Tehran recently about a meeting between the Shah and the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1963 after the riots which Khomeini had played a prominent part in stirring up. “I’ll pay you $25 million if you leave the country”, said the Shah. To which Khomeini is supposed to have replied, “I’ll give you $50 million if you leave”. In the event Khomeini was forced into exile for nothing. This time it’s the Shah who has left, though no doubt with a lot more than $50 million in his pockets. Of course no such conversation ever took place but the story does neatly illustrate that the social conflict in Iran was essentially between two sections of the propertied class there.

The Shah is the son of a jumped-up army officer who seized power in 1921 and had himself proclaimed Shah, or Emperor, a few years later. He came to the throne in 1941 when his father was deposed by the Allies for his pro-Axis sympathies but only acquired dictatorial powers in 1953 in a coup d’Etat which overthrew the nationalist Prime Minister, Mossadek, who in his day was the bugbear of the British press for having dared to nationalise the British-owned Persian oil industry.

Oil is of course the source of the immense wealth of the Shah and the section of the propertied class he represented. The payments which oil companies pay to the States where oil is produced are a form of ground-rent. The Iranian State receives this rent purely and simply because it happens to monopolise a part of the globe where oil is found. The Shah used this windfall, first, to build up the Iranian armed forces and, secondly, to introduce industrial capitalism into Iran. In doing so brought into being a new class of rich entrepreneurs independent on his State for the capital they invest.

But there already existed in Iran a class of wealthy people, the bazari, the merchants and traders of the bazaars which exist in all the big towns. The bazari existed long before oil was discovered and long before industrial capitalism was introduced. Their economic role in pre-capitalist Persia was to keep the towns supplied with food and other essentials, and this role still survives to a certain extent today although it has been severely reduced by the alternative commercial and banking network that has accompanied the coming of industrial capitalism.

The bazari have always been closely linked to the mullahs and ayatollahs, the priests of the Shi’ite sect of Islam to which most Persians formally belong. The mosque is generally situated in the bazaar area but, more important, the Shi’ite priests are financed by the various payments the merchants are required to make to them under Islamic law:

“The Shi’ite hierarchy, from the simple mullah to the ayatollah also collects a substantial tax, the khoms or ‘fifth’ which consists of taking one fifth of all commercial profits and, generally, on any capital gain as well as on the sale of lands belonging to Muslims to a person of  another religion . . . The amount of the ‘fifth’ is in principle divided in two, one part is normally reserved for the destitute, on condition that they are sayyeds, that is descendants of the prophet. The other part is distributed amongst the mullahs and ayatollahs. These also have the right to a hidden tax, the zahat, which consists in asking every believer to dispose of any ‘wheat, barley, dates, raisins’ but also of any ‘gold, silver, camels, sheep and cattle’ which he does not really need. This zahat is what now permits the church to help a large number of strikers.

“But the Iranian Shi’ite hierarchy has access above all to the immense wealth of the bazari of all the main towns of the country. For centuries, it has forged close links with this little business world, has given the blessing of Allah to certain transactions and has thrown all its weight against the secular power. When this latter became too demanding or when its desire to modernise the country became too restricting, the bazari knew that Shi’itism was behind them and were prepared to do anything for it” (Républicain Lorrain, 14/1/79).

Two Iranian economists writing in the December issue of the monthly Le Monde Diplomatique describe how the Shah’s policy of developing an industrial capitalism in Iran adversely affected the bazari:

“After the 1953 coup d’etat, the re-integration of the Iranian oil economy into the world market and the ‘open doors’ policy led to a change in the pattern of trade, exceeding more and more widely the organisational capabilities of the bazaar. The beginnings of an import-substitution industry afterwards aggravated the difficulties of the bazaar, which was excluded from the new circuit of exchange set up to serve the needs of the new industries. The traditional importing of consumer goods gave way to the importing of capital goods, and the quotas or duties adopted to protect the nascent industries heavily penalised the traditional activities of the bazaar.”

They go on to note how this also hit the finances of the Shi’ite priesthood:

“This economic marginalisation of the bazaar is directly connected with the simultaneous weakening of the network for financing the ‘clerical funds’; these, under the control of the religious leaders known for their moral integrity, receive and distribute various forms of Islamic taxes and alms . . . Today, the inflow of money into these funds controlled by the progressive or combative ayatollahs bears witness to the extent of the struggle of the traditional bourgeoisie against a new class linked to the interest of the multi-national firms. But, in the first phase of industrialisation, the weakening of the bazaar which has historically lived in symbiosis with the religious institutions (financing of clerical funds, legal-religious framework for contracts) considerably reduced the socio-economic effects of the redistribution which the latter assured.”

The Ayatollah Khomeini first came into prominence in 1963 as the instigator of riots centred on the bazaars in Tehran and some other cities, riots which were ruthlessly crushed by the Shah’s armed forces.

It can thus be seen that the conflict in Iran is not, as it is often pictured, between a Westernising ruler and a reactionary priesthood defending old-fashioned values. That particular conflict is only an ideological reflection of the more basic conflict of sectional interest within the Iranian propertied class, between the bazari and the new bourgeoisie brought into being by the Shah. Behind the condemnations on religious grounds of beer and mini-skirts (indeed of any kind of skirts) lies an earthly material interest.

For the time being, against the logic of history, the bazari seem to have come out on top. Through their links with the mullahs and ayatollahs they have been able to control the urban poor, including large sections of the working class, and to use their discontent as a battering ram to overthrow the Shah and his regime. The urban poor of course had plenty to be discontented about. Frequently recent migrants from the countryside, they have been forced to live in disgusting housing conditions, only finding employment, if at all, at starvation wages. Independent trade union activity has been banned and strikes crushed sometimes with loss of life. The notorious secret police, the SAVAK, with its omnipresent system of spies and its torture chambers, has been there to root out all opposition to the Shah’s dictatorship.

It is sad that this discontent should have been directed by the mullahs to defend the sectional class interest of the bazari and towards the chimera of an “Islamic Republic”. But there is a reason for this. The only opposition to the Shah that was able to survive the onslaughts of SAVAK was the bazaar, with its independent economic base, and the Shi’ite priesthood it financed. The mosques thus became the focus of opposition to the Shah, especially as the bulk of the urban poor are first-generation migrants from the countryside where religious sentiments are always stronger.

It now looks as if the people of Iran are to have an “Islamic Republic” inflicted on them. But whatever happens industrial capitalism has come to stay in Iran, whether or not the mullahs like it or what comes with it (consumption of alcohol, a certain freedom for women). The Koran, which originated in a pre-capitalist agricultural and trading society, may lay down rules as to how such a society should work – indeed its rules are merely the reflection of the way such a society did work—but capitalism cannot be run according to them.

What will probably happen is that after an initial attempt to put the clock back for the benefit of the bazari, religious thinkers will be found within the “Islamic Republic” to declare that industrial capitalism is not after all contrary to the Koran. This happened in Tunisia a few years after it got its independence from France, as reported by the old News Chronicle at the time (5/3/1960):

“Up to now, as in the rest of the Moslem world, Tunisia’s life came almost to a standstill during Ramadan because of the dawn to dusk fast. In some cases production dropped 70 per cent. 

Bourguiba has not banned the fast outright. But he has stated firmly that fasting will not be accepted as an excuse for less work” (quoted in the Socialist Standard, April 1960)

As for the workers and peasants of Iran, they will rapidly find that they have just changed one set of rulers for another.

Adam Buick

Editorial: Resistance is not enough (2021)

Editorial from the March 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

A decade has passed since a tidal wave of revolt swept across the Middle East and North Africa washing away autocratic regimes in its wake. That this happened seemed to have not only taken the local dictators by surprise, but also the rest of the world. And yet it should not have done. After years of state repression combined with economic hardship that had been made worse by the 2008 financial crisis, working people had had enough and rose up to fight for political democracy. High unemployment, especially among young workers, and poor economic prospects were the tinderbox. The suicide of a street seller in Tunisia was the spark.

We can see similar dynamics recently working themselves out in Russia and Myanmar. In January, Alexey Navalny, a long-time opponent of Putin, returned to Russia after being treated for nerve agent poisoning in Berlin. He was arrested and imprisoned on a charge of violating his parole conditions relating to a suspended sentence he received in 2014 for embezzlement. This sparked rallies and protests across Russia. Some have descended into violence as the police cracked down heavily on the demonstrators.

On 1st February in Myanmar, the military, after alleging that voter fraud had helped the National League of Democracy (Aung San Suu Kyi’s party) to secure a landslide victory in the November 2020 general election, deposed and detained the elected civilian rulers, including Suu Kyi, and declared direct military rule for one year. In response mass protests have erupted, which have elicited a severe crackdown by the police and the military. Public servants, health workers, teachers and other workers have gone on strike in an attempt to end military rule and restore civilian government.

What is common to these protests is the deteriorating living standards suffered by workers which has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and popular disenchantment with the corrupt capitalist rulers who have been accumulating greater amounts of wealth. We can only sympathise with these workers struggling to obtain democratic rights. However, we believe it would be a mistake for them to put their trust in political leaders such Navalny and Aung San Suu Kyi. Notwithstanding their particular flaws – Navalny is a Russian nationalist and harbours anti-immigrant positions, and Suu Kyi, while in power, has defended the state persecution of the Rohingya Muslims – they are both committed to upholding the capitalist system which is the source of workers’ social problems. They would be overseeing the exploitation of the working class.

Sadly, the uprising of the Arab Spring ten years ago did not bring about democracy for the workers. With the possible exception of Tunisia, autocratic dictatorships still prevail in the region. This does not mean that workers should give up the political fight. On the contrary, we urge workers to fight not just for political democracy but for a fundamental change in how we organise society. What is needed is a class-conscious working class to organise globally to capture political power democratically to rid the planet of capitalism and establish genuine socialism, a worldwide society without national borders, money or social classes, where everyone can participate equally and enjoy free access to social wealth.

Reflections on revolution (2011)

From the April 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

What are the lessons of recent events in North Africa?

Revolution is in the air, or at least the word is. The media talked of a “Tunisian Revolution” in January and of an “Egyptian Revolution” in February. In a weak, narrow sense of the word this could be said to be true. In both countries a long-established dictator was overthrown as a first step towards establishing political democracy, the only kind of democracy that capitalism can offer.

Already some changes have been made, even though many of the personnel of the old regime are still in place. There is less arbitrary police repression. There is freedom of speech and to organise into trade unions independent of employers and the government. If this is consolidated it will represent an advantage from a working-class and socialist viewpoint. Workers will have more elbow-room to fight the class struggle and it will be much easier for socialists to express their views.

But it is still only a political change, at most a political revolution, that leaves unchanged the capitalist basis of society. Any more representative government that emerges will be no more able to make capitalism work in the interests of all than can the elected governments of countries where political democracy has long existed.

Political revolution

In his 1970 book on Revolution in the “Key Concepts in Political Science” series Peter Calvert defined ‘revolution’ as “referring to events in which physical force (or the convincing threat of it) has actually been used successfully to overthrow a government or regime”. He concluded by advising political science to retain the word “as a political term covering all forms of violent change of government or regime originating internally”.

This fits in with the popular concept of revolution as a violent act. But it rules out calling a revolution the sort of non-violent overthrow of a government that occurred in Tunisia and Egypt. And not just the changes there but also those in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s where it was also determined but peaceful mass demonstrations that brought about a change of political system.

Calvert’s definition of political revolution would seem to need refining, to take into account such non-violent changes of political system. Not of course any non-violent change of government as the leader of the Fine Gael party in Ireland (now the Prime Minister) absurdly claimed when he described his party’s electoral victory in February as a “democratic revolution at the ballot box” in which “people didn’t take to the streets, they took to the ballot boxes”. The change of government in Ireland was not a revolution in any sense of the term, merely a change of capitalist government brought about through the normal constitutional procedures in a capitalist political democracy.

But even if the concept of political revolution is extended to include a change of government brought about by essentially peaceful but non-constitutional means this still limits the definition of revolution to a political change only.

Social revolution

Socialists too want a revolution but one involving much more than a change of political control. We want a social revolution, a revolution in the basis of society. In that sense our conception of revolution is nearer to that accepted by Martin Oppenheimer (as formulated by Chalmers Johnson) in his 1969 book Urban Guerrilla:

  “A sweeping, fundamental change in political organization, social structure, economic property control, and the predominant myth of social order, thus indicating a major break in the continuity of development.”

On this definition there was no revolution in Tunisia or Egypt, nor in Eastern Europe. But events there are still relevant to the concept of socialist revolution as we see the first step in this revolution as being a political revolution in the sense of a change in who controls the state. We also think that, in established political democracies, this could be done non-violently through the ballot box.

This has been challenged by others, who have argued that the entrenched ruling class would never allow this to happen and that the only way they can be dislodged is through civil war and violent insurrection. Faced with an impending socialist election victory, their argument goes, the capitalist ruling class would abolish political democracy and, even if they let things go so far as an actual socialist election victory, would not respect it and would carry on ruling regardless.

The overthrow of the democratically-elected Allende government in Chile by a military coup in 1973 always used to be cited as confirmation of this. Quite apart from the fact that Allende and his government were not socialist, they never had the electoral, let alone the active, support of a majority of the population – which in our view is an essential condition for the establishment and functioning of socialism.

This is a view our critics do not share. They are not thinking, as we are, in terms of a majoritarian revolution, one involving the active and democratic participation of a majority of the population. They envisage only a minority-led revolution, with an active minority leading a mass of merely discontented but not socialist-minded workers. It is quite true that, faced with such an attempted revolution, the ruling class is likely to resist violently, with a reasonable chance of success.

Even if such a revolution were to succeed it would not, and could not, lead to socialism. As Martin Oppenheimer pointed out, with regard to the majority class of industrial and white collar workers:

 “The revolution rules in their name, but they do not rule. In their absence from effective participation in the revolution, the same thing happens that happens in a peasant-based revolution: gradually the leaders of a minority-led revolution become a new bureaucracy, a new class of rulers… Modern society is ripe for the domination of bureaucracy, in the absence of a revolutionary working class. Perhaps the leader of a minority revolution is not himself irrevocably lost, but his revolution is.”

Unless a majority of industrial and white collar workers want socialism and organise themselves without leaders to get it then socialism is impossible. On the other hand, if they do want it, nothing can stop them getting it, not even a hypothetical abolition of political democracy by a recalcitrant capitalist government. It is this that the recent events in North Africa confirm. Capitalist political dictatorships there couldn’t even stop a determined majority that wanted limited, political democracy. How much less would a capitalist political dictatorship be able to stop the more determined and more organised majority that one wanting socialism would be?

Pro-capitalist coup?

No government can continue to govern in the face of active opposition from those they govern. Answering a question from a correspondent who asked what we would do if, faced with a socialist election victory, the pro-capitalist government suspended the constitution and attempted to rule by decree, the Socialist Standard of November 1933 reformulated the question as “Can a capitalist minority which happens to have control of the machinery of Government continue indefinitely to govern and make capitalism function, in the face of the organised opposition of a majority of Socialists?” and answered:

  “It is not possible for a minority to maintain its hold in those circumstances. Faced with the hostility of a majority of workers (including, of course, workers in the civil and armed forces, as well as workers in productive and distributive occupations), the capitalist minority would be unable, in the long run, to enforce its commands and the workers would be able to dislocate production and transport. In such circumstances the capitalists would themselves be divided. Not all of them would be disposed to provoke chaotic conditions in an heroic last-ditch struggle.”

The reply went on to make the point that “a look at the way in which governments do behave in face of a hostile majority under existing conditions will show how impossible it is for any minority to retain cohesion and to act decisively when it is conscious of being actively opposed by the majority”. And invited the correspondent “to name a single instance of a capitalist minority managing to maintain its hold on the machinery of government for any length of time in face of the organised and united opposition of a majority of the population”, adding “We know of no such instance.”

The recent events in North Africa, like those in Eastern Europe twenty or so years ago, confirm this. Faced with the active opposition of the population of their countries the Tunisian and Egyptian dictators quit. The governments there were divided and did at first try violent repression (hundreds were killed) but, faced with the continued courageous determination of the demonstrators, they were not prepared to provoke the chaos that violent repression would have entailed,  especially not mutinies in the armed forces as their members refused to shoot down unarmed demonstrators. Ceausescu in Rumania and Gaddafi in Libya were exceptions that proved the rule. They did stage a last-ditch stand and duly provoked the mutinies and defections and chaos.

We take comfort from these events as they show that, once there is a socialist majority, socialism will be inevitable. Even if a pro-capitalist minority somewhere were to try to prevent a change of political control via the ballot box, the socialist majority will still be able to impose its will by other means, such as street demonstrations and strikes. But we doubt that it will come to that. But if it did, it wouldn’t stop socialism being eventually established, one way or another.

Tunisia – people power, but . . . (2011)

From the March 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

The new regime won’t be able to improve the lot of the population.

The lightning rapidity and relative ease with which Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was chased out of Tunisia in January, is a clear testimony not only of the power of the masses but also (though unknown to many) how vulnerable and cowardly many a dictator is. Hours before his ignominious flight, Ben Ali appeared on television visibly shaken and pleading with the people to give him time to address their problems. Too late; the masses were already up in arms. It is said that the capitalist system digs its own grave. But it does not do so willingly. It is an inevitable fate that it must fulfil; it developed the internet to enhance its insatiable crave for profits but, ironically, it is the same internet that the masses will use as a collective organiser to mobilise the exploited to bury the system. The present upheavals in the Arab countries are one such example.

Elsewhere in the Arab lands, this defiant action of the Tunisians sent frosty shivers down the spines of the other dictators and, apprehensive of a possible domino effect, some of these rulers started making jittery reforms to avert a similar (and deserved) fall.

In Tunisia, discontent with the government was deep and widespread, cutting across class lines. The low income earners had no hope of escaping poverty because the government had no way of providing them with jobs. The middle income earners had little chance to improve its lot because the government had so badly sapped the economy that there were few government services and the development of business was virtually impossible except for the few who had close ties with top officials. Many of those who did no more than merely question or complain about injustice were thrown into jail. Many useful people were turned into beggars.

Pernicious adulation
These dramatic events in the Arab lands (and they are still unfolding) also reveal, in black and white, the negative role that the corporate media play in the struggle for the emancipation of mankind. On the eve of the uprising, one would have thought, going by what the media wanted the world to believe, that Tunisia was a kind of heaven-on-earth. For instance, in 2002, a number of ‘Special Reports’ on Tunisia were published in New African – so far the leading English language magazine in continental Africa –  that need some paraphrasing and scrutiny here. They were, in the main, prepared by one, Anver Versi.

According to him, visionary political leaders like Ben Ali are saviours and so when Ben Ali took charge of the country 15 years ago, he called the process The Change. Many at that time took the words at their literal value; most at that time did not fully grasp what he meant. When one looks at Tunisia at that time and what it has become today, one feels the full, stunning impact of the words,

The Change:

“These 15 years have seen one of the most remarkable transformations in modern history of the world. From a country teetering on the brink of social economic and political collapse, Tunisia today is on the threshold of entering developed world status. And this was achieved without any miraculous discovery of gold or oil. The country has also not borrowed heavily to finance its growth, neither has there been any ‘Marshall Aid’ from wealthy nations. Growth has been maintained at a steady 5% per annum despite a four-year drought. Industrial efficiency has been gained without the loss of employment. The infrastructure has quadrupled. Education is universal and incomes have increased by 400%. Eight out of ten households own their homes and there is hardly any poverty. The rights of children are protected by law. An advanced social security programme is in place.”

Versi wrote further that “in Tunisia the term ‘solidarity’ is not a political slogan for organised groups. It stands for the principle ‘one for all and all for one’. ‘Solidarity’ means that you are never alone; your problems are not yours only; you are not isolated but part of an intricate chain. Since a chain is as weak as its weakest link, it is everybody’s duty to ensure that the weak links become stronger with each passing day.” Versi added that according to Ben Ali, the National Solidarity Fund, which is the vehicle used to reintegrate marginalised groups, has been so spectacularly successful that delegations from virtually all corners of the globe arrive almost every week to study how it works. It is a remarkable journey undertaken at a dizzying speed. A miracle indeed!

The above pernicious adulation typifies the mercenary media’s manipulation of public opinion which, unfortunately, is swallowed hook, line and sinker by many. But even if that was actually the reality in Tunisia only a few years ago, how could the situation of the majority of the people be so messy today? To be able to reconcile this rather bizarre equation, one needs to consider the inner workings of the trap set for Tunisia (and indeed all peripheral states) by the capitalist system..

Free trade with the EU
Tunisia was the first country to sign an Association Agreement with the European Union. According to the terms of the Agreement, the EU and its Association partners would introduce a Free Trade Zone in 2010. This would mean that tariffs and other protective barriers would be eliminated. This was way back in July 1995. The Agreement provided that Tunisia would be given enough time and room to adjust its national structures to fit into the partnership. It would also not surrender its competitive advantages, such as its cheap labour. Naturally, a less developed nation joining an advanced economic market such as the EU has as many advantages accruing from it as there are dangerous pitfalls. One thing, however, is clear: removal of tariffs and deregulation always leads to the importing of cheap goods from the West which greatly damages local production.

But the Tunisian rulers, and that is always the bait, were made to believe that with time they could compete on an equal footing with their European counterparts. The Agreement also provided for a 12-year transition period after which it would come into force for the implementation of the free trade arrangement. However, Tunisia had started dismantling tariffs on industrial goods in 1996, two years before the agreement came into force in 1998. It would therefore be able to enter the Free Trade Zone by 2008.

The EU opened an office in Tunis and the grants started flowing in. A 40-strong team from the European Commission flew in. Its function was to carry out EU policies and co-ordinate with Tunisian authorities. They would work together with the Tunisian Ministry of Co-operation and Investment and provide technical management assistance to improve productivity. They were also to budget aid money against reforms and disburse funds after checking that targets had been met. They would also link with lending institutions like the World Bank for more loans. The office then proceeded to open up trade services such as insurance, banking and other commercial and professional set-ups.

That marked the beginning of the end. The government failed to understand that the tighter the grip of the capitalists on industry, the more intense is the poverty of the masses and the more marked are the riches of the few.

Decorated donkeys
Coming back to the crisis, the demonstrations continued in spite of the ignominious flight of Ben Ali. This is understandable because those individuals who, in one way or the other, helped mess up the lives of the ordinary people were the same who came back as the interim government; a clear case of the decorated donkey still being an ass.

But one thing is obvious; no matter who are brought in to assume leadership of the country, the plight of the ordinary Tunisian will not see any significant improvement. The so-called opposition are no better than the likes of Ben Ali. At the beginning of 2002, for instance, the opposition parties and some civil organisations were invited to contribute to the framing of a draft constitution before it was put to the public to vote on. Later, the secretary-general of the Popular Unity Party (PUP) one of the six opposition parties, Mohammed Bouchiha, gleefully commented that the reforms marked the crossing of the Rubicon and signified a point of no return in the development of modern Tunisia. “The system has now been changed as we demanded,” he said.

On the issue of the reforms dropping the limitation on presidential terms, Bouchiha said, defending the open system, “That was an irrelevancy; the clause was brought in when President Ben Ali revoked the President-for-Life system introduced in the latter stages of Habib Bourghiba’s administration. But if the electoral system is fair, why should the public be denied the opportunity to vote in the candidate of their choice as many times as possible?”

Now, observers across the anti-capitalist spectrum may enthusiastically welcome the courageous action of the people but the fact is that the opposition is not a unified ideological entity. It is a random collection of (often irreconcilable) groups whose interest in getting rid of the government only happens to coincide now. Though such an amorphous group may be able to seize power, they can hardly help the masses as they do not have any common and well-thought-out agenda except that they want to see the back of the leader. And even if they are able to hammer out some sort of radical programme, they will soon be forced to make concessions to the same ruinous capitalist world around them as there is virtually no possibility that massive foreign aid will be offered them to alleviate the poverty of the populace.

Thus, the untold hardship visited on the masses and which necessitated the mass action can only be possible (and will always be so) under the capitalist system. This system is based on an insignificant minority of the world owning all the means of production and distribution of wealth i.e. land, factories, transport and communication networks, the media, etc. These few individuals control all the wealth of the world whereas the majority have nothing and have to work for the owning class to continue making their profits. It is this sort of relations that is the source of all the suffering in the world.

Therefore, it is only when this profit-driven system is abolished and replaced with a system that is operated on the basis of ownership of the world’s resources by the whole of humanity that such uncalled for situations in society can be done away with. But this cannot be achieved except when there is a concerted action on a global scale. Individual countries may rise up and chase away their leaders but it does not solve the problem. It is only when the majority of mankind and in particular the working class understand the capitalist system and, based upon this understanding, decide to do away with capitalism and replace it with a better mode of organising society (call it socialism) that the human race will be really human. For, such a socialist system will be run on the basis of collective ownership of the world’s resources for the use and benefit of all.

Suhuyini

2011 – A Year of Change (2011)

From the December 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

As another year in the capitalist madhouse comes to a close it’s time to review the maladies, and some of the medicine its inmates have had to stomach

January marked the beginning of the end for a trio of North African leaders in what has been dubbed the “Arab Spring”. Just a few months earlier these men where embraced and cosseted by Western leaders and their docile media. Transformation can happen quickly inside the madhouse. Our erstwhile friends and allies once considered sane have now been diagnosed as mad dogs, tyrannical torturers, and despotic murderers.

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia was the first on his toes. Once a beloved partner of the EU, now just another fallen idol. The aftermath of the fall of Ben Ali culminated in the Islamist Ennahda party winning 41.47 per cent of votes. Rioting followed in Sidi Bouzid, the site of the uprising that deposed Ben Ali. The Daily Mail (24 October) reported the insights of ‘Belhussein al-Maliki, 27, who said that he’d fought in the January uprising. “We are jobless, we have nothing and we won’t vote.  Everything is the same, the world is the way it is, and the world will stay the way it is.”  

Next it was Egypt’s turn. Egyptians in their tens of thousands took to the streets, perhaps, encouraged by the speed and unambiguous exit of Ben Ali.  What is certain is that they’d had enough of Mubarak and his “Clan”. Like leaders before him Mubarak turned Egypt into his own personal thiefdom.  And it wasn’t just those on the streets that resented this. Obama and his cronies, who dispensed the aid that Mubarak pilfered, dithered, waiting to see which way the wind was blowing. But the hurricane from the street proved too powerful and Mubarak fled to his villa in Sharm el-Sheikh. An inconclusive trial, of sorts, followed. The aftermath once again was violent and began in Tahrir Square: “bloody scenes prompted fears that Egypt is drawing ever closer to a sustained religious conflict that cannot be controlled. There were reports of violence erupting in several Egyptian towns and cities with large Christian populations in the aftermath of the pandemonium in Cairo” (Daily Telegraph, 9 October). Divide and conquer? Election dates are still under discussion. The time-frame to elect a president put forward by the ruling military council remains nebulous: “perhaps the end of 2012, or early 2013”.

Regime-change in Libya came next. The same socio/economic reasons underpinned the uprising by Libyans but in contrast to Tunisia and Egypt the conclusion didn’t look so clear cut to Western leaders. Thus, under the charade of a humanitarian mission Western planes and missiles bombed General Gaddafi’s forces so that the outcome would become predictable. Another example of  how quickly a friend becomes your foe under capitalism—and why—was when the BBC reported (25 March 2004) the amicable meeting between Qaddafi and Tony Blair in 2004, supposedly for Qaddafi to join the West in its fight against terrorism. However, as discussions took place “it was announced Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell had signed a deal worth up to £550m for gas exploration rights off the Libyan coast.”

On September 8, Naji Barakat, the Health Minister of the National Transitional Council, stated “that about 30,000 people were killed during the war. At least 50,000 war-wounded, about 20,000 with serious injuries . . . but this estimate was expected to rise” (Wikipedia). Six weeks later the New Statesman reported that “running up the Stars and Stripes in “liberated” Tripoli last month, US ambassador Gene Cretz blurted out: “We know that oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural resources!”. Not wanting to miss out on the profits scramble Philip Hammond, British Defence Secretary advised that, “British executives should be “packing their suitcases” and heading to Libya to win contracts” (Daily Telegraph, 4 November). The ongoing conflicts in Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen didn’t warrant humanitarian intervention. However, intervention carries on unabated in Afghanistan. IPS (2 November) reports that: “US Special Operations Forces (SOF) killed well over 1,500 civilians in night raids in less than 10 months in 2010 and early 2011”. That’s just SOF. And at night.

Only an insane profit-driven system would site nuclear plants in an area prone to earthquakes. In March an earthquake and tsunami devastated the north-eastern coast of Honshu, Japan, killing tens of thousands. Six months on and the Mayor of Rikuzentakata, one of the towns to feel the full force of the tsunami could state that, “the government has said it will give us funds for reconstruction, but we haven’t received any money yet” (BBC, 12 September). More inmates reduced to begging from their political masters.

On 1 May the world was notified that it could sleep easily in its bed with the assassination of the world’s number one bogeyman: Bin Laden. America was deliriously happy, Pakistan less so. Throughout the year stories of phone hacking by Murdoch’s hacks continually made the front pages. Newsnight was besotted by it. The broadsheets wrote piously about it. On 11 July that citadel of great British hackery, The News of the World, ceased printing. Then came the pantomime of the big bad wolf, Murdoch himself, and his slavering young cub of a son having to appear in front of a flock of pious MPs. Liars, cheats, fraudsters and hypocrites have been implicated in these revelations – and that’s just the police involvement.  How long before the Sun on Sunday appears?

The police were also involved in August in ‘The Riots’. Yes, surprise, surprise, we had rioting in London. Must have been our turn. LA next? Chicago? Paris?  The media has been hard at work trying to uncover why. Perhaps the risibly named Ministry of Justice figures might help: “90% of those brought before the courts were aged under 21. Only 5% were over the age of 40. Thirty-five percent were claiming out-of-work benefits, which compares to a national average of 12%. Of the young people involved, 42% were in receipt of free school meals compared to an average of 16%. Three-quarters of all those who appeared in court had a previous conviction or caution. For adults the figure was 80% and for juveniles it was 62%. Seventy-five percent of the young people in court were classed as having some form of special educational need, compared to 21% for the national average”. What the capitalist asylum excels at is converting children into criminals.

Famine in Africa was once again worth some newsprint and the usual pleas for money. Absurdly, reformers beg for money to alleviate poverty when its existence is the root cause of poverty. On September 25th the good King Abdullah, of that bastion of freedom and justice, Saudi Arabia, granted women the right to vote. However, they’ll still need to be driven to the polling station as its illegal for them to drive or to be seen in public without a male chaperone watching over them.

Very little ink has been wasted on climate change. But Reuters (23 October) provided this snippet: “global temperature rise could exceed “safe” levels of two degrees Celsius in some parts of the world in many of our lifetimes, if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, two research papers published in the journal Nature warned”.   Got kids? Grandkids? Content to sit on your arse?

As a backdrop to the above events we have “The Crisis”, which is gaining momentum, rather than abating as most of capitalism’s gurus envisaged. Bank of England governor Mervyn King said, “this is the most serious financial crisis we’ve seen at least since the 1930s, if not ever” (BBC, 7 October). And nearly “15% of the US population relied on food stamps in August, as the number of recipients hit 45.8 million” (Wall Street Journal, 1 November). People in every country are struggling with the repercussions of “The Crisis”. This has led to class conflict – the dynamic of change. What began in Tunisia in January has evolved in to a different type of struggle – one that is still evolving. It’s a struggle to see through the bourgeois opacity that Anton Pannekoek described as: “the power of the inherited and confused ideas, the formidable spiritual power of the middle-class world, enveloping their minds into a thick cloud of beliefs and ideologies, dividing them, and making them uncertain and confused”.

If a fiction writer had to plot a path to socialism, Chapter One might include: a socio/economic backdrop that exacerbates the gulf between the classes; a growing distrust, dislike and willingness to take on politicians, and those that enforce the states’ laws; an embryonic distrust of academia and the media; a generalised growth of discontent with the status quo; a meeting-up of people with divergent ideas in a central area where discussion could take place; the technology to instantly exchange ideas and arrange meetings locally and globally; an exponential growth of these leaderless movements across continents; the veil of morality that bourgeois ideology hides behind falling ever further to reveal more and more of its contradictions and hypocrisies.  Chapter Two—Reclamation.  Understanding socialism is relatively easy. Understanding capitalism, first, is the hard part. All socialists had to undergo that process.

The New York Times (26 November 2006) reported Warren Buffet as saying, “there’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning”. And he’s right. We are losing. But only a battle, in a war of ideas. 2011 has been memorable. Those actively engaged in the struggle deserve our respect and admiration. Perhaps 2012 could be the year that we can puncture Warren Buffet and his class’s smugness. A year to give our class cause for optimism. There isn’t an infinite amount of time in which to win this war. The madhouse is becoming increasingly mad. Now is the time for those who’ve been content to sit on the sidelines to become active. If not, then the war could be lost. And the mad will have won.

Andy Matthews

The Barbary Coast (1943)

From the January 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is much in the saying, one thing leads to another. When Wellington’s military alliance knocked out Napoleon they ended one thing and laid the foundations of another. French capitalism, new and vigorously youthful, lost for all time it’s hope of becoming the dominant power in Europe. Being young and healthy, it soon recovered from its fall and set out to become a colonial power with an Empire outside Europe in place of the once dreamed of one inside Europe. It was now a question of where? Capitalism always seeks to advance its expansion as cheaply and with as little conflict as possible. French capitalism had to take into account the wisdom of not muscling in on any other powerful capitalist power's preserves. In addition to this, her Napoleonic venture had left her weak and in consequence the founding of an Empire must not put too big a strain on her resources in man power or money. This meant grabbing territory within striking distance without dangerous opposition from other powers. All the fore-mentioned factors favoured her in one part only—the tip of North Africa, which was accessible from her Southern ports (Marseilles, etc.), and where the only opposition that could come (Spain or Italy) did not count. At this period the whole of North Africa, from Tangier to Egypt, was "nominally" part of the Turkish (Ottoman) Empire.

In Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia there was a limited form of "independence" under Turkish appointed vassal rulers (Beys), but conquest would not entail much trouble in this ramshackle Empire. For a couple of centuries this coast had been the regular haunt of the Arab slaver and Moorish pirate, and Christian Europe found no cause for its suppression; in fact, they joined in the merry game and shared the spoils, building the city of Bristol out of the profits. When capitalism, however, chooses to make a move it can always find a good slogan. One time it is “freedom of the seas," another time it is "democracy," and this time the slogan suited to French capitalism was the “suppression of piracy."

In the early years of the nineteenth century there lived in Algeria a firm of financiers—Bacri. This firm lent money to Europeans just as Europeans lent money to them. During the Napoleonic wars the French Government borrowed large sums of money from the Bacri firm to pay for the army's supplies in Africa. When the wars ended the money was not repaid, and the debt owed by a “civilised" government to an "uncivilised" financier was allowed to lie in cold storage. It was the custom in later times for European States to see that Europeans got any money they lent repaid to them by threats of force. The Bey of Algeria (Hussein), as ruler of his country, tried to do the same on behalf of one of his firms. Repeated evasions of the subject by the French Government so exasperated this tin-pot ruler that he struck the French Consul in the face. That settled it! That smack not only cost him the 13,000,000 francs owing, but his kingdom as well.

The French capitalists now had two slogans to work upon : (1) The suppression of piracy; (2) their “National honour". How swiftly they discovered their "honour" except when it came to paying their debts! In a memorandum read to the Council of the King (Charles X) reference was made by the Minister of War, De-Tonnere to "all the advantages France might derive from the conquest of a fertile country whose mountains contained mines." The projected seizure of Algeria led to a lot of hot air on the part of Wellington, Lord Aberdeen, etc. The Times of May 23, 1830, remarked as follows: "The French Government cannot seriously think of forming colonies on the coast of Africa, for a war would break out between France and England." This was followed by an ultimatum from the British Government; however, on May 25, 1830, the French army sailed from Toulon. Algeria was conquered. The English Press yelled for blood, the Balance of Power was upset, the status quo disturbed, the French King driven from his throne, and—retired to England! (Some 90 years later the Kaiser settled in Holland after they were going to hang him.) French capitalism was now on the march; she had acquired her first colony in Africa.

The acquisition of Tunis (1881) was the next point of penetration in the Imperialist programme of French capitalism. The seizure of Algeria now brought colonial France to the border of Tunis—a Moslem kingdom, and therefore ripe for conversion. Tunisia is very rich in phosphates, iron-ore, copper, lead and mercury, and these were also ripe for conversion. In 1857 Tunis was ruled by a Bey— Muhammed. According to these Moslems blasphemy and adultery is punishable by death. In the sixties a young Italian was convicted of adultery with a Moslem woman. The woman was thrown into a lake, and the Italian executed. Here was the excuse! Under pressure from the European Powers the Bey signed a declaration of "rights" for Jews and Christians. French capitalism obtained concessions in the form of (1) Control of all telegraphic services; (2) The reconstruction of aqueducts and supplying of water. British capitalism obtained the "right" to construct a railway from Tunis to Goleta.

There now descended on Tunis a storm of traders, financiers and speculators from Europe. They lent money to the Bey on ruinous terms. In payment of interest they extorted further concessions for opening up unexploited mines. Under threats the Bey made the concessions exempt from taxation. An era of rapacity set in for the speculators, money-lenders, and joint stock companies of Paris, London and Rome. To do this the Tunisian peasant and craftsman was bled white. Hunger, misery and starvation led to numerous revolts, all brutally suppressed. About this time France had to face the opposition of Italy, now a fully-fledged capitalist power geographically nearer to Tunis.

At the beginning of the eighties France had become financially interested in Egypt and the Suez Canal. Smashed in the Franco-Prussian war the loss of her rich Alsace and Lorraine iron and coal compelled her to seek elsewhere for them. Now firmly settled in Algeria she sought to extend eastward. Bismarck said at the Congress of Berlin (1878), "England should let Russia have Constantinople and should take Egypt in return. France might be given Syria or Tunis." All nicely arranged! Britain agreed that France should have Tunis as long as she was blind when Britain took Cyprus. One good turn deserves another. Using as an excuse a petty raiding border tribe, France in 1881 invaded the province and forced a "protectorate” on the Bey, disclaiming all attempts at annexation, but has been there ever since. As one thing leads to another, this was the decisive factor which forced Italy into the Austro-German alliance until the war of 1914-18. Italy, through the medium of her Blackshirt shouters, still calls in slogan form for Nice, Savoy and Tunis. Not Rome or Carthage, but Rome—Paris—or New York. Not negro slaves this time, but the exploitation of wage-slaves and the seizing of mineral resources from the land where Carthage ruled.

Lew Jones

News in Review: Bizerta (1961)

The News in Review column from the September 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bizerta
Patriotic Frenchmen like to regard themselves as a civilised race, who know all about the finer points of living like making love and drinking the right wine with their food.

They have also showed, in the long Algerian conflict, that they know all about making war and using the right weapons in battle. And if there was any doubt about this, it must have been removed by the short, gory struggle over Bizerta.

Basically, the dispute was simple enough. The French ruling class wanted to keep the base, to help them look after the commercial interests which they are hanging onto in North Africa, not forgetting the oil in the Sahara.

The Tunisian ruling class wanted the French to leave because they did not want to get involved in any trouble which might follow the breakdown of the negotiations between the French government and the Algerian rebel leaders.

Perhaps the Tunisians did not play their hand as well as they might. Perhaps the French were overhasty. These are the common excuses for the sort of dreadful slaughter which happened when the paras went in. They always ignore the real reason for capitalism's horrors. It must be revolting to smash human beings, some of them children, into destruction. But that is what the French soldiers, with their mortars and their guns, did at Bizerta—and all in the interests of their masters.

Which goes to show just how much civilised instincts are worth to the barbaric capitalist social system.


Little Budget
Many big-time financial editors applauded Mr. Selwyn Lloyd's second attempt at producing a Budget for 1961/2. Here, they said, was the strong medicine which was needed to sort out our troubles once and for all.

This was the sort of comment which greeted Mr. Butler's autumn Budget in 1957, when Bank Rate last went up to seven per cent It is what is always being said about the so-called remedies for the economic and financial crises of capitalism.

The trouble this time, said Fleet Street, is that we are all living too well. Agricultural workers, who are getting by on an average wage of £10 11s. a week and local government employees who are somehow making do on an average of £10 16s a week, must have been very surprised to hear that nowadays their life is one long spree of opulence.

Whatever measures successive Chancellors may impose, the economy keeps on staggering from boom to recession, from expansion to retrenchment. One budget (often at election time) knocks a couple of pennies off beer, a couple of shillings off income tax. Another puts them back on, or onto something else.

The workers end up where they started, with a personal budget which is very finely balanced, often on a tightrope supplied by the hire purchase companies. Yet they keep their faith with capitalism—if they blame anything, it is the planners, or their plans. But capitalism—unplannable, chaotic, unbudgetable —is always doing its best to teach them better.


Common Market
The British capitalist class are gingerly easing themselves into the European Common Market. As they do so, they are full of doubts and hopes.

On one hand, firms in, for example, the car and electric domestic appliance industries, lick their lips at the prospect of easier access to Europe's nearly 300 million customers. Many of these firms have spent a lot of time in summing up their chances in Europe, and are convinced that they will be able to cut a fine dash against their foreign rivals in the Common Market.

On the other hand, industries like agriculture quake with fear at the thought of a flood of cheap Continental produce washing them out of their traditional markets and sweeping away the protection of government guaranteed prices.

Similarly, the Commonwealth countries which sell a lot of agricultural produce to this country are anxious about losing the advantages of Imperial Preference.

These doubts are reflected in the splits in British political parties. Not only the Tories have their doubts; on the Opposition benches, Lord Morrison speaks in favour of the Common Market while Mr. Shinwell and Earl Attlee oppose it. Officially, the Labour Party have no policy in the matter—they abstain from votes in the House.

Some industries may thrive, and others may suffer, because Britain joins the EEC. This often happens when capitalist industry is reaching for its markets. But nothing is certain. The Common Market could be a costly flop for Britain —it could turn out, on the whole, to be unprofitable. This is the core of the dispute over Britain's application to join.

For nobody has yet discovered a certain method of guaranteeing industries' prosperity under capitalism. That, in the end, is why the Government have dithered for so long and then gone almost unwillingly to Rome.

Death on an empty stomach (1984)

From the April 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

RESULT OF RIOTS IN TUNISIA: AT LEAST 120 DEAD (Headline in Libération, 11 January).

MOROCCO: 150 to 200 DEAD ACCORDING TO SPANISH RADIO (Libération, 23 January).

How is it possible, in an age of potential plenty, when Common Market Ministers are discussing how to get rid of butter mountains, milk lakes and other food “surpluses", that on the other side of the Mediterranean people are rioting against increases in the prices of basic foodstuffs and being shot down for doing so?

The answer is that we are living in a society which is geared not to serving human needs but to producing goods, or rather commodities, to be sold on a market with a view to profit. In these circumstances food, and indeed everything else, can only be obtained in exchange for money. Until now the governments of the countries of North Africa have heavily subsidised food prices as a means of keeping the cost of living — and so wages — down. But. in the current world capitalist crisis, this has become too expensive and the International Monetary Fund has put pressure on these governments to economise as a condition for continuing to bail them out. The governments of Tunisia and Morocco — and indeed of other countries subject to similar pressures, such as Brazil and Egypt — have thus been faced with the problem of how to further decrease the already low standard of living of the mass of their populations.

The Tunisian government chose to try to increase basic food prices in one sweep: prices of bread and other cereal products were to be doubled from 1 January 1984. It is doubtful whether the government really believed they could get away with this, since a similar austerity programme had already led to riots and deaths in January 1978. In other words, they were testing the situation. If the price increases were accepted without too much trouble, then so much the better; but if the protests proved to be too strong then, after shooting down some rioters, they could be withdrawn and re-introduced gradually over a longer period. In the event this was what happened, leaving, according to a provisional estimate of the Tunisian Human Rights Defence League, at least 120 people dead. Naturally the members of the government who decided and carried out this cynical test remain in their comfortable villas enjoying the best things in life.

Not that a more gradualist approach would necessarily have avoided riots (or will in the future) since this was the policy adopted by the Moroccan government, to no avail since riots broke out there too. The petty king of Morocco, Hassan II, was particularly upset by these riots in the Northern part of his kingdom as they coincided with the Conference of Islamic Heads of State in Rabat at which emirs, sheiks, tin-pot dictators and other nonentities were entertained in an extravagant style which reflected the contempt in which they hold the people they exploit and oppress.

Riots are endemic in this and similar relatively underdeveloped parts of the world. In May and April 1980 there were riots and deaths in Tizi-Ouzou in neighbouring Algeria and in June 1981 hundreds of people were shot down in Casablanca, the economic capital of Morocco. Rioting is in fact one of the few means of defence that these populations have against their repressive governments, be they republics (like Tunisia) or monarchies (like Morocco). But it is clear that all this does is slow a downward movement. In the end they cannot win. For them, as for workers in other more developed countries, the only way out is the establishment of world socialism.

Adam Buick

Editorial: Libya: brutality and hypocrisy (2011)

Editorial from the April 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the popular movements against long-standing despots in the Arab world spread from Tunisia and Egypt to Libya the Western powers thought that something they had long wanted – regime-change in Libya – was about to be handed them on a plate. But they didn’t have the same control over Gaddafi as they did over Moubarak and Ben Ali and so could not arrange for him to bow out. His own man, and true to form, Gaddafi chose to try to brutally repress the movement. With the support of mercenaries and some sections of the population armed with superior military power, it was looking as if he might succeed.

Faced with this prospect, the Western capitalist powers have decided to play the military card too and have launched a series of bombing and missile raids against the armed forces loyal to Gaddafi. Since, under the UN charter, wars not authorised by the UN are “illegal”, they have had to present their action as being to protect the civilian population against the very real exactions of the Gaddafi regime. Even so, when claiming that the military intervention is motivated by humanitarian concerns, British Prime Minister Cameron has always added that it was also in the “national interest”.

The “national interest” is in fact that the interest of the capitalist class of a country, not of its population. Their interest in this instance is, as in Iraq eight years ago, to have a friendly and reliable regime in an important oil-producing country. That’s what the bombings are really about.

If a desire to protect civilians from being shot down by governments was the real motive, why are the Western capitalist powers not also intervening to stop the despots in Yemen, Bahrain and now Syria from doing this (as they have done)? And why did they not intervene to stop Israel slaughtering civilians in Gaza three years ago?

At least they haven’t had the effrontery to claim that their aim is to bring political democracy. How could they when their bombing campaign is being partly funded by the despotic regime in Saudi Arabia? And in which war planes from the hereditary despots who rule Qatar are taking part?

It is not so much that the Western powers have double standards as that the foreign policy of capitalist states is not conducted according to any abstract standard. There is no such thing as an “ethical foreign policy”. What motivates their diplomatic and military activity abroad is a desire to protect and promote the economic interests of their capitalist class.

Some are urging support for the Gaddafi regime on the ground that, despite everything else, it is “anti-imperialist”. Not us. As Socialists, we naturally sympathise with workers anywhere struggling to get the added elbow-room to wage the class struggle that political democracy represents, but we denounce the hypocrisy and cynicism of the ruling classes of the Western powers in invoking humanitarianism to once again resort to killing and destruction in pursuit of their sordid “national” interests.

Editorial: The power to change the world (2011)

Editorial from the February 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is always inspiring to see people power in action, as in Tunisia last month, where it forced the local dictator to flee after twenty-three years in power. It shows that people are not always passive victims but have the potential to topple capitalism not just dictators.

In all countries society is divided into two classes: those who own and control productive resources and want them operated to bring them a financial profit and the rest of the population who depend on them to live.

All governments have to give priority to profits and profit-making as this is what drives the capitalist economy. When profits are under pressure, as at present, they have to impose an added austerity on the population which inevitably brings them into conflict with them.

One of the key jobs of any government is to keep the population quiet, basically to avoid them rioting. In a developing capitalist country such as Tunisia this can’t be done without regular recourse to brute force. Which is why most of the governments of such countries are more or less authoritarian, compared, that is, with those of the more developed countries where lies and trickery generally do the job.

This situation is tacitly accepted by Western governments as they want social peace, however obtained, in the countries where they have profit-seeking investments. They need governments there that keep the people down. As long as a government does this they can expect support, as Ben Ali got from France for years. But woe betide a dictator unable to stop the population getting out of hand. He may initially continue to be supported but eventually an exit strategy will be prepared for him – exile in a country where he and his family can live off the loot all far-seeing dictators stash away.

When a dictatorship is toppled people feel empowered by what they have done but that is not enough. One demonstrator in Tunisia, asked what he expected to happen next, replied simply “I don’t care. I’m just glad to see the back of him”. But “what next?” is the key question as kicking out a dictator does not change the economic realities of capitalism – nor the repressive role of governments.

We take no pleasure in pointing out that any new government in Tunisia, even though less corrupt (or not corrupt at all) and enjoying more legitimacy, will still have to keep the population down in the interests of capitalism.

The only way the population in Tunisia, and elsewhere, can avoid having to protest at an artificial scarcity being imposed on them in a world of potential plenty is to join with workers in the rest of the world to get rid of capitalism, its class rule and its production for profit. This means making the natural and industrial resources of the Earth the common heritage of humanity. It means establishing a world without borders where the resources which already exist can be used to provide plenty for all