VISITORS from Ireland and Sri Lanka were among those attending another successful Socialist Outlook residential Summer School in Aberystwyth during the August bank holiday week.
This year's school, extended to five full days, the only event of its kind on the British left, took as its theme the continuity and development of revolutionary programme and politics from the earty days of the Bolshevik Party through to the present day.
Lively plenary sessions, notably those on the national question and socialism, women's liberation and 'socialism after the fall of the wall' were complemented by a full programme of over 30 workshop discussions.
In addition to daily eductionals, those attending managed to consume large enough quantities of beer, wine and spirits to cover all the overhead costs and produce a small surplus for the Emest Mandel Memorial Fund launched by Socialist This speech by BALA KUMAR, of the Liberation! editorial board, closed the school with an overview of the key questions of socialist intemationalism today.
Several more of the keynote contributions to the school will be published in coming issues of Socialist Outlook Video tapes of some of the main discussions will shortly also be available. THIS SCHOOL has reminded me of why I joined one of the smaller organisations on the British Left - and why I remain in it.
CLR James in an interview once commented "1 learsed my Marxism in the Trotskyist movement". I certainly learned how, in concert with co-thinkers. to use it to understand, and act upon The writings, the dives, the activities of generations of Marxists opened up for me a universe of ideas, possibilities. experiences and friendships, I had never known existed. I am and will always be graterur for dide What'd like to do is to isolate some defining trends in late capitalism and to explore how revolutionary Marxists can overcome the crisis of credibility of socialism. I have drawn heavily from the writings of Emest Mandel for what follows, which is no bad thing for a school being held to honour his memory. CONSIDER THE following facts. 40 million poople are unemployed in the advanced capitalist countries. Across much of the Third World there has ben a decline in living standards, not a stagnation but a regression. All the hard won gains of the anti-colonial struggles increases in literacy rates, health standards -are being eroded. This of course has a tremendous negative impact on the working class and oppressed sectors of society on which our movement bases itself, and which we believe will be the motor force of revolu. tionary change for the better.
15 million children die each year from poverty related illnesses. Toxic waste produced to satisfy over-consumpcon in the nch countries floats about on our oceans looking for some poor country on whose people it can be dumped. That soon, unless an imperial power can be stopped in its tracks, nuclear testing will resume in the South Pacific against the will of the people of those countries and when the senous health risks are well known. That food mountains exist in Europe and yet there are manufactured food shortages in other places.
There are two processes at work. On the one hand we see an integration of the economies of the advanced capital. ist countries. This can be deduced from studying trade flows, their origin and destination. Most world trade now takes place between the advanced capitalist countries. The share of world trade of these economies has risen from 60 per cent in the carly 1980's to 75 per cent That latter figure is also about the average of the share of export from the rich countries to other rich countries. Vast sections of the world are simply excluded from these trade movements. The business press crows on about the large middle class consumer markets in some poor countries, For exampic, # dia's is estimated at 150 million but they ignore the 700 million others!
So on the other hand, the world market is not exploiting but abandoning billions of people. It's a cruel joke which contains a brutal truth, that there's only one thing worse than being exploited by capitalism - and that is NOT to be exploited by it! There are only consumers in this society, not citizens: and if you are not a consumer you might as well not exist.
The second process seems to contra. diet my carlier point. There is also a binding together of the fortunes and lives of people across the world. Global capitalism is not about to break the chains on the dominated countries.
Samir Amin among others has suggested that poor countries may be able to delink themselves from the tyranny of imperialism, and by integrating the dominated world make their economies serve their peoples. not the other way around. I applaud the sentiment but fear that he is mistaken. Dependence THERE IS NO sign that the depend.
ence of the poor countries on the rich is being weakened, in fact the reverse is true.
The issue of Third World debt is a case in point. Every year without excep tion larger and larger sums are transferred from the Third World to the First.
in excess of the paltry sums being invested or loaned of granted. Without scrykie the interest on this oct, kave alone repaying it, no new funds are disbursed to these countries. Yet to pay the debt when the low value of your exports and devaluation of your currency makes for a trade balance deficit.
encourages social sector spending to be cut.
While we support democratisat on in all sectors, what does it matter if where unre was one party bere are now fitteen but regardless of which comes ic government they all have the same cco.
nomic programme: lochocal Docause regardless of whether one is in Buenos Aires, Jakarta, Warsaw or Dar Es SaI3am. it has been drafted for them in Washington D.C. by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
Here are some of the features of late capitalism which are of particular inter1. Growing concentration and centralisation of capital within some countries and regions IN OUR DISCUSSION of the national question in the British state attention has been drawn to the peripheralisation of Scotland and Wales in capital investment projects. The number of building societies on our High Streets is dwindling with mergers and takeovers.
In the US Walt Disney - a giant in itself - has bought Capital Cities/ABC which owns the largest Network station ABC, for USS19 billion. In contrast USSI billion.
While trans-national corporations mushroomed in the past, it is questionable how long they can survive today wiloat fusing wah ocher companics removing competitors. 2. Intensification and extension of capitalist exploitation INCOMES ARE FALLING, working hours grow longer, attacks are made by both conservative and social democratic goverments on social welfare provisions like free education and health care, pensions and benefits. Every gain and victory of the working class this century is under daily siege. This is one reason why aerenoing the weware state nas and will continue to be a priority in our political work.
The average US worker was working 163 hours more in 1987 than her coun terpart would have twenty years before It is no longer simply the Japanese SINCE THE first generalised worker who is forced to work more. take fewer holidays and do overtime to maintain international competitiveness. This trend is being generalised even across the advanced capitalist countries. 3. Class inequalities widen THE RICH GET richer and the poor theory+pracice 10 • Fighting back for socialism • Hunger and under-development are creations of the imperialist carve-up of the world's resources get poorer. Remember when in Latin America we were told that capitalism could work and Brazil and Mexico were cited in proof? Interesting how no one mentions them any longer. Instead the new 'miracle' economy is Chile. However the noo-liberal ideologues cannot explain away the fact that the poorest 20 per cent of people are subsisting on 70 per cent of what they had in 1970 and they face growing immiseration. an attempt to boost the economy. 4. Crisis, slumps and recession DE-INDUSTRIALISATION has thrown millions of the most stable and best unionised workers on the scrap-heap, destroying entire communities in the process. Services and financial capital dwarf industrial capital in the rich countries.
The Mexican financial crisis over December 1994 and the massive bailout that the US had to organise to protect its holdings in Mexico are an expression of this. A financier called George Soros makes one bilhon dollars in one day from currency speculation following the withdrawal of the pound sterling from the Exchange Rate Mechanism. in the West as the growth rates of even the more dynamic economies such as Germany's is below two percent. While capital investments in a year in Fastern Europe are measured in the low billions. every day hundreds of billions of dollars change hands in currency conversions in icacing tinanciar markets The upturn in the economies decreases each time from the preceding cycle and it becomes more difficult to 5. Inter-imperialist rivalries THE EMERGENCE and develop. ment of trade blocs centred around one or more imperialist power and the rivalries between them which came to the fore during the GATT negotations reveal the tensions among the brotherhood of thieves.
A US-Japan trade war always seems imminent only to be narrowly averted. We are not in a Kautskyist ultra-imperialist age. Meanwhile neither does the US appear to be the super-imperialist power that some foresaw in the aftermath of the the 1992 Gulf War and the break up of the Soviet Union.
its economic difficulties will compel the would be Colossus to moderate its ambitions. Its fiasco in Somalia and vaccilations in ex-Yugoslavia indicate competing pulls in its foreign policy.
Further, there is not only competition for the world and regional markets between the trade blocs but also within know whether to stick with its Atlantisubordinate to Germany within the European Union. And this tug of war could yet rip the Conservative Party apart.
Meanwhile the countries of the Third rise of unemployment-especially in Europe.
FAMINEAFRICA CANCE 1991 London demonstration for cancellation of third world debt won widespread labour movement sponsorship