Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 08:41:50 +1000
Subject: AUT: editorial of new aufheben 8




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Editorial

 For the first time in more than half a century, the
main Western powers have been conducting a war in
Europe. The tragedy of the Kosovo war was the sheer
absence of an adequate internationalist response. The
war itself and the paucity of opposition can both be
understood in terms of the current state of the class
struggle. For bourgeois ideologues, the ‘defeat of
socialism’ (in actual fact the retreat of social
democracy and the collapse of Stalinism) was supposed
to usher in a new golden age of free trade and
economic growth. Yet only just over a year ago the
financial crisis originating from the Far East sparked
fears among the bourgeoisie that a world slump and
even the collapse of the world financial system was in
the offing. The crisis spread, but the US economy has
so far proved able to withstand the pressures. Indeed,
since then, with the continued recession in Japan and
with Germany still in the doldrums, it is only the
strong growth in the USA that has kept the rest of the
world economy afloat.
A world financial crisis would have seen a return to
austerity and mass unemployment in the USA and
Britain. But the fading of the imminent threat of
crisis has instead allowed the continued
implementation of ‘Third Way’ policies in Britain and
America, and their ‘new reformist’ equivalents in
Europe. As we discuss in our latest article on the
retreat of social democracy, at the heart of the Third
Way is a relatively expensive ideological offensive
intended to drive into the labour-market many
categories of people that have hitherto subsisted
outside it. This form of re-imposing work is different
from the old social democratic ‘concession’ of full
employment. Unlike the ‘gains’ of social democracy,
the policies of the Third Way and the new reformism
reflect the weakness rather than the strength of the
working class.
The limits of the opposition to the war can likewise
be attributed to the retreat of social democracy and
the chronic weakness of the working class. Whereas in
the past a broad anti-war movement could have been be
expected in Britain, on this occasion many of the kind
of people that would have comprised such a movement -
‘Old Labour’ socialists, pacifists, CND-types etc. -
have lined up behind the New Labour Government.
Sharing Third Way and new reformist values of
‘fairness’ and ‘justice’, the NATO nations' expressed
rationale for the bombing was ‘humanitarian
intervention’. In the absence of any obvious vested
material interest to explain the war, the only choice
that disillusioned leftists and confused liberals
could therefore recognize was between the Third Way
and barbarism. Of course, as the war proves, the Third
Way simply is barbarism: it has served to legitimize a
war in a way that traditional appeals to ‘the national
interest’ would have found impossible.
However, the absence of an adequate opposition to the
war does not reflect a general acquiescence, an
absence of overt antagonism. Only a few weeks after
the war ended, London witnessed the most impressive
outbreak of mass ‘public disorder’ since the 1990 poll
tax riot. Despite the eclecticism and the one-sided
equation of capital with the financial markets in the
June 18th publicity, the event itself was
uncompromising. It provided a superb opportunity for
antagonistic tendencies to express themselves - which
they did in exemplary fashion by smashing the
properties of the financial centre and bricking the
cops. The resistance simply asserted itself without
permission or mediation from anyone. Those
‘revolutionary’ critiques of June 18th which focus
only on its literature and prior ideology miss the
point; criticisms of the ideas might be correct in
themselves, but they are only at the level of ideas.
The action was considerably more eloquent and
articulate than the leaflets in its critique of
capital.
Thus June 18th was far beyond the imagination of the
depressing and leftist-dominated national
demonstrations against the war. Yet if the war was a
function of the current state of the class struggle,
why didn't those involved in the ‘carnival’ turn their
energies towards fighting the war? No doubt most of
those at the June 18th event in London felt opposed to
the war, but it is apparent that few of them regarded
the war as the central and most pressing crisis of the
moment.  We must acknowledge and welcome the fact that
this co-ordination strove for a greater coherence than
past anti-car Reclaim the Streets events by turning
its attention to what it understands as the source:
capital. But there is an issue of what capital is. If
we are fighting ‘capital’ then we must constitute
ourselves as the proletariat. From a proletarian
perspective, the war should have been the central
concern rather than one issue amongst others.
While the triumph of social democracy demobilized the
working class as the agent embodying and linking
struggles over bread-and-butter issues (such as wages)
with ‘utopian’ desires (such as revolution), the
decline of social democracy has seen no organic
re-linking of the different moments of resistance to
capital in a single practical critique: no re-born
proletarian movement. The antagonistic tendencies
remain fragmented. June 18th at least offered a forum
for unity through shared practical opposition to the
G8 and capital. Yet it was a formal unity which
pre-supposed the existing fragmentation of the
struggle against capital into different ‘issues’.
A recurrent theme in both our articles on the retreat
of social democracy and our series on the nature of
the USSR, is that it is not markets that define
capitalism, but wage-labour: markets only realize
value; they do not produce it. Yet, of course,
capital, as self-expanding value, seeks to extend and
realize itself; it seeks markets even where
state-forms and class struggle restricts it. War and
G8 summits are both means of achieving this extension
and realization. Capital is not a thing but a social
relationship that develops and takes different forms.
Recognizing capital and its moments is to recognize
ourselves as the proletariat.

September 1999




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