The fault is entirely mine but I seldom read The Socialist. Our paths rarely cross but I picked one up on Saturday at the climate change demo and it was as reassuringly familiar as an episode of Porridge. The centre spread is a report on the meeting of the International Executive Committee (IEC) of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) which focused on the political consequences of the financial crisis. Peter Taaffe gave the main introduction and one sentence leaps straight off the page:
“In the next decade the advanced industrial countries will begin to experience what the neo-colonial world is experiencing – and revolution and counter-revolution will be on the agenda.”
He identifies a crisis of over production. That certainly seems to be true. Reductions in the price of oil will adversely affect Venezuela, Russia and many more besides. You can’t argue with that. Iceland has gone bankrupt and a third of the population wants to leave the country. Who could blame them?
On the plus side Peters points to Obama’s election as an indicator that millions of Americans want change and a victory by Irish pensioners. Now earlier this evening I went along to a meeting organised by The Commune at which John Mc Donnell and Jeremy Corbyn very vividly brought to life politics and class struggle in the 1970s. John mentioned an example of a factory in his area in which the management removed the phone from the union office. The shop steward walked to the phone box at the end of the street and brought 250 workers with him. He got his phone back. Jeremy described his time as an organiser for NUPE when he would walk into school kitchens and recruit all the non members into the union. Contrast this to the contemporary situation. The young workers in my local branch of Woolworths yesterday were energetically recreating the 1974 Bulgarian retail experience. It hadn’t crossed their mind to strike, occupy the shop, hold a public meeting. Stoic acceptance that they were losing their jobs and the hope that something else would turn up seemed to be their attitude.
According to Peter Taafe “In Britain one bookmaker, Paddy Power, was taking bets on which city ‘credit crunch’ riots would take place in first.” Paddy Power will take bets on the chance that Elvis Presley will return in a spaceship next Friday or that iguanas will rule the world by 2030 so it’s best not to over-interpret their press releases. A deep economic recession does not give a guarantee of revolution. That is the sort of rhetorical flourish which confuses more than it illuminates but it does fit in nicely with the punchline “there is a rapidly growing minority who can be won to the CWI.” Germany, France and Italy – to take three examples all have right wing governments. Brown is dallying with a very attenuated, neo-liberal kind of Keynsianism while Phil Woolas comes out with the sort of garbage that ten years ago was the prerogative of the neo-fascists. The leap from the passive, fragmented and largely cowed trade union movement of 2008 to pre-revolutionary situation can’t be conjured up by wishful thinking. In Britain you have to look hard for recent successful national disputes other than the POA and the Shell drivers. This is not a combative, confident working class and while there are national variations it’s not easy to find a working class in any developed economy fighting and winning offensive or defensive struggles. And a couple of anecdotes don’t define a period.
Any meaningful analysis of the political situation also has to look at levels of struggle and organisation. Somewhere in The History of The Russian Revolution Trotsky gives a checklist of things to look out for in a pre-revolutionary situation. It includes, if memory serves, numbers of strike days, increased sales of socialist papers, mutiny in the army, more people joining unions and political parties. It’s been a while since I’ve read it but I don’t remember him saying anything about what the bookies are taking bets on.
Liam redux 
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