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My seventy years and an ode to the departed GDR

Victor Grossman on 70 years since his defection to the DDR


01/09/2022

It’s a momentous day! Not for the world – for which it’s nothing special. But for me. Just seventy years ago, in nervous panic, I took off my US Army jacket, shoes and sleeve insignia and stepped into the swift Danube River which, at Linz in still-occupied Austria, divided the USA Zone from the USSR Zone. Although very wet at this short sector, it was part of the long Iron Curtain. And I was swimming across it in what most Americans would consider a very wrong direction!

It was not really my free choice. In 1950 the McCarran Act ruled that all members of a long list of “Communist Front” organizations must immediately register as foreign agents. I had been in a dozen; American Youth for Democracy, the Anti-Fascist Spanish Refugee Committee, the Southern Negro Youth Congress (I gave them a dollar in solidarity), the Sam Adams School, the American Labor Party, Young Progressives and – most heinous of all, the Communist Party. The maximum penalty for not registering could be $10,000 PER DAY and 5 years in prison! Neither I nor anyone else bowed to that monstrosity.

I found neither Utopia nor, back then or ever, the hunger, poverty and general misery the American media might have led me to expect… The GDR lacked the huge investment possibilities by war-criminal monopolies like Krupp, Siemens, Bayer or BASF, whose factories it nationalized, as well as the politically-aimed assistance of the Marshall Plan.

But in January 1951, during the Korean War, I was drafted – and required to sign that I was never in any of those on that long list. Should I risk years in prison by admitting my infamy? Or sign and, by staying mum, hope to survive two army years with no one checking up?

I signed.

However, they did check up. Decades later, thanks to the FOIA, 1100 pages of FBI files about  me (at 10c/page) revealed that J. Edgar Hoover’s boys had watched me closely, as a leftist Harvard student (the names of seven informants were redacted) and as a worker in Buffalo, where I had hoped to help in saving the fighting 1930s character of the CIO unions.

In August 1952 a Pentagon letter listed seven of my memberships and ordered me to “report on Monday to HQ”. The threatened penalty for my perjury: up to 5 years, perhaps in Leavenworth. By then dozens of Communists had been indicted; many were sent to prison. I had luckily been sent not to Korea but to Bavaria, next to Austria. With no-one to advise me, I chose the Danube.

Across the river, in a surprisingly quiet Sunday landscape, in no way like an Iron Curtain, the Soviets kept me two weeks in a barred but polite lock-up, then drove me north to the German Democratic Republic, East Germany. I was lucky again; the GDR was the most successful, most untroubled of all in the “East Bloc”. For the next 38 years, as an American, raised with a broad, varied education (six public schools, Bronx Science, Dalton, Fieldston, Harvard), I watched, with left-leaning but not dogmatically limited eyes, the rise, then fall of this western outpost of socialism (or Communism, “state socialism”, “totalitarianism,” or whatever).

I found neither Utopia nor, back then or ever, the hunger, poverty and general misery the American media might have led me to expect. Even in the crucial, difficult year 1952-1953, less than eight years after the war, while shop offerings were limited, lacking variety, style, and often just that very item you were looking for, they were stocked well enough with the basics. East Germany was much smaller and, in terms of industry and natural resources, far poorer than West Germany. It had borne over 90% of the war reparations burden; the heavily-destroyed USSR did not drop these until 1953. The GDR lacked the huge investment possibilities by war-criminal monopolies like Krupp, Siemens, Bayer or BASF, whose factories it nationalized, as well as the politically-aimed assistance of the Marshall Plan. Large numbers of its scientific, management and academic staffs, mostly pro-Nazi, had fled from the occupying Red Army and the leftist, mostly Communist administrators who came with it, and got jobs with their former bosses who were soon prospering again along the Rhine and Ruhr. This seriously weakened the economic revival, but I felt happy that the war criminals were gone.

As an ardent Jewish anti-fascist, I rejoiced to find that the entire atmosphere was anti-Nazi! Unlike West Germany, the schools, universities, courts, police departments, all were cleansed of the swastika crowd, even when at first this meant new, barely-trained replacements, like my father-in-law, a pro-union carpenter, as village mayor, or my two brothers-in-law as teachers. My wife trembled when she was reminded of her brutal teachers before 1945. Then, in the altered East German schools, corporal punishment was immediately forbidden.

Of course there were countless problems in a country ruled by Hitler & Co. for twelve years, where cynicism was widespread and Stalin’s cultural views and anti-Semitism exerted undue influence until his death in 1953. Luckily, the aged Communist leader Wilhelm Pieck was able to shield the GDR to a large degree in this regard. And from the start anti-Nazi leftists, often returned Jewish exiles, became leaders in the entire cultural scene; theater, music, opera, literature, journalism and film, where true masterpieces were created, often against fascism, but boycotted and hence unknown in West Germany and the USA. In the all-powerful Politburo of the ruling party Hermann Axen had barely survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald (his brother and parents did not). Albert Norden had escaped to the USA; the Nazis killed his father, a rabbi, in Theresienstadt. In the GDR, except for 3 or 4 mild word-clichés, I met no anti-Semitism in all those 38 years. Those still infected with fascist ideology were careful, except with family or buddies, to keep their mouths shut. Which was OK with me!

Step by step our living standard – of my very dear wife, who saved me from homesickness, our two sons, and myself, kept improving, like that of nearly everyone in the GDR, as it pulled itself up by its own thin bootstraps. What impressed me most as an American: no layoffs, no unemployment; there were jobs for everyone. Rents averaged less than 10% of most incomes and evictions were forbidden by law. In the early years large apartments were divided up when needed, no-one slept in the streets or went begging. Food pantries were unneeded, even the word was unknown. So was student debt. All education was free and monthly stipends covered basic costs, making all jobbing while at college unnecessary.

A monthly medical tax on wages or fees (max. 10%) covered everything; in my case, nine (free) hospital weeks with hepatitis plus four weeks at a health spa to recuperate and four more a year later in Karlsbad. My wife had three rheumatism cures, four weeks each, in the Polish and Harz mountains. All costs were covered and we also got 90% of our salaries. Prescribed drugs were fully covered, also dental care, glasses, hearing aids; I had no need of my wallet or checkbook to pay for my daily insulin shots or my ten-year active pace-maker. Nor for my wife’s two maternal leaves (six months paid, the rest, if wanted, with guaranteed job ). No charge for full child care, participation in sports, summer camps, for contraception aid nor for free abortions after a new law was passed in 1982. So many fears were gone – so many were totally unknown.

While GDR leaders, in full power, did aim at noble goals, how could such elderly men, hardened by years of life-and-death struggle against Nazi murderers but usually trained with Stalinist clichés, grow flexible enough to find rapport in printed or spoken word with the average, changeable citizen?

I participated fully in the generally very normal life. First as a factory worker, an apprentice lathe operator, then a student, editor, director of a new Paul and Eslanda Robeson archive, finally as a freelance journalist, lecturer and author. I was not treated as a privileged “American”, as some assume, but my last three occupations meant that – in my series of four little two-stroke Trabant cars I really “got around”- to nearly all areas, with all age levels, in all possible milieus.

This may really seem almost Utopian. Then why did some risk their lives to leave? Why was a wall built to keep them in? Why did they vote to join West Germany – and ditch the GDR? Why did it fail?

There were all too many reasons. East Germany was occupied by a country it had been taught to hate, whose soldiers had fought it hardest, were often violent in the first weeks, and were poorer and more difficult to love than prosperous, hence generous, gum-chewing GI’s, who came from a wealthy, undamaged homeland. Many but certainly not all East Germans appreciated the Soviets’ major role in defeating the Nazis. Their pressure and guidance in confiscating major industry and breaking the power of those worst enemies of the world and the Germans: the Krupps, Siemens and IG Farbens, in addition to the ousting of giant Prussian landowners, the Junckers, who so often officered Germany into mass bloodshed and disaster.

The Russians offered lots of good culture, such as Tolstoy and Dostoevski, top quality dancing, “Peter and the Wolf” and “The Cranes Are Flying”. But these could rarely compete in mass popularity with the Beatles and Stones, Elvin Presley and suspense-laden Hollywood B-films.

Such enticements, which included some of high quality, based on an unusual American mix of Anglo-Scot, Irish, Jewish, Italian and especially Black cultures, were cleverly misused to increase political and economic influence and power in the world, especially in the East Bloc. They were paired, above all in Germany, with clever propaganda adapted from both Goebbels and that master peddler-publicist of anything from toothpaste to capitalism, Edward L. Bernays. They threaten the great old cultures of France, Italy, India, even China. While GDR leaders, in full power, did aim at noble goals, how could such elderly men, hardened by years of life-and-death struggle against Nazi murderers but usually trained with Stalinist clichés, grow flexible enough to find rapport in printed or spoken word with the average, changeable citizen? There were indeed successes – but too few and far between.

The GDR citizenry took all its amazing social advantages for granted and dreamt of scarce bananas and unavailable VWs, of Golden Arch and Golden Gate, without realizing that these are largely available and affordable due to the poverty of children in West Africa or Brazil, of exploited pickers in Andalusian or Californian fields and orchards.

In the 1980s difficulties increased, upward trends slowed and slipped downward. The USSR, with its own problems, offered no assistance. Such problems were difficult but, in a changing world, hardly rare or insurmountable – except that here every problem was utilized in the unceasing attempts to retake East Germany, use its skilled but exploitable working class and move eastwards from there. The State Security or “Stasi,” created to oppose such doings, was crude enough to make the situation worse.

And yet the GDR had probably come closer than any country in the world to achieving that legendary goal of abolishing poverty, while sharply decreasing the frightful, growing rich-poor gap based on an obscene profit system. But it could not afford the immense assortment of goods – foods, apparel,  appliances, electronics, vehicles and travel which the West offered, above all the USA and West Germany. The GDR citizenry took all its amazing social advantages for granted and dreamt of scarce bananas and unavailable VWs, of Golden Arch and Golden Gate, without realizing that these are largely available and affordable due to the poverty of children in West Africa or Brazil, of exploited pickers in Andalusian or Californian fields and orchards. Some are just now beginning to realize that those billionaire giants, after cheating so many people of color, wrecking world climate and wielding ever deadlier weapons of annihilation, may soon feel impelled to squeeze and break the comfortable middle classes in their own countries. The start is already felt by many families.

I look back at my seventy years as an expat, and still consider myself a patriotic American – never for the USA of Morgan or Rockefeller but for that of John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Eugene Debs and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, DuBois, Robeson, Malcolm and Martin.

I also love and admire great Germans: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Karl Liebknecht, the great Polish-German Rosa Luxemburg, or great writers as Lessing, Goethe, Heinrich Heine, Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht. And I respect and empathize with people from all lands, my brothers and sisters, from Guam to Guatemala – and Gaza.

I can only hope that new generations learn from the GDR, and not only from its blunders, nasty habits and limitations, born of its history and all too realistic fears of being overthrown.

It was finally overthrown and stands no longer as a barrier to renewed billionaire expansion – economic, political and military – to the south and east. It is still being belittled or maligned – largely out of fear that it has not yet been sufficiently erased and forgotten. Despite my sometime feelings in those years of despair, even anger at mistaken paths or missed opportunities, I still look back with a mixture of nostalgia, regret and also pride at its many hard-won achievements, in culture, in living together, in partly overcoming the cult of greed and rivalry, in unflinching GDR support for the Mandelas, the Allendes and Ho Chi Minhs, for Angela Davis, too – and not, like its ultimately stronger and victorious opponents in Bonn, for the Pinochets, Francos, racists and apartheid tyrants. I recall our achievements in avoiding war and striving for lives without fear or hatred. By and large they were good years. I am glad I lived through them.

Victor Grossman, Karl-Marx-Allee, Berlin, August 2022

Dekoloniale Festival 2022

Memory culture in the city


Although not always visible, the colonial past is omnipresent. This can also be said about the reverberations of the colonialism that emanated from Germany into the world. Berlin wants to face its responsibility as former colonial metropolis and capital of the German Reich. This is the reason why we have started the Dekoloniale Memory Culture in the City in January 2020 as cultural project to critically deal with the history of colonialism and its consequences.

The model project traces back to an initiative of four member organisations of the civic alliance Decolonize Berlin e.V. and the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe. The Stadtmuseum Berlin Foundation could be attracted as a cooperation partner. The project is thus significantly upheld by stakeholders who for years have been committed to achieving a critical appraisal of colonialism by the city of Berlin.

Dekoloniale Memory Culture in the City perceives colonialism as a system of injustice, which always met with the resistance of the colonised people. The project picks up on the ever louder demands for a consistent change of perspective in the post-colonial memory culture. Instead of colonial and colonial-racist stakeholders, from now on the victims and opponents of colonial racism and exploitation are to receive attention and appreciation.

As a participatory solidarity project of historical-political education, we have set ourselves the goal of working with experts and activists worldwide to explore the past and present of the (anti-)colonial in Berlin, in the rest of Germany and in Germany’s former colonies explore and make visible online. Colonial history is always also a global history of entanglements: histories of life, places, objects and institutions connect Europe with Africa, Asia, Oceania, Australia and America.

Using the example of Berlin, Dekoloniale of Memory Culture in the City tests how a metropolis, its space, its institutions and its society can be examined on a broad level for (post-)colonial effects, how the invisible can be experienced and the visible can be irritated. The participatory cultural project is aimed at a broad and diverse urban society. It not only questions individual actors or fields – such as museums – about their (post-)colonial realities. During the project period, Dekoloniale mobilizes the entire city with its own activities and supporting cooperation.

Dekoloniale Memory Culture in the City is a joint project of Berlin Postkolonial eV , Each One Teach One – EOTO eV , Initiative Black People in Germany – ISD-Bund eV and the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin . The state network Berlin Development Policy Advice – BER eV supports the project as a partner. In addition, we cooperate closely with the German Museum of Technology and the Berlin district museums in Treptow-Köpenick, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf and Berlin-Mitte. The project is funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe and the German Federal Cultural Foundation.

The Dekoloniale Festival 2022 takes place from 1st – 4th September around Mariannenplatz. You can see the full programme in English here.

Where to now with the €9 travel ticket?

It provided brief opportunities, but we need more fundamental change to protect the environment and provide better services for the poor


31/08/2022

If you’re on English-speaking social media, you probably know the meme. It had a large picture of an ICE train and says “Germany is slashing public transit fares by 90% to encourage people to ditch their cars and save energy amid high gas prices.” It was very compelling. Even Tariq Ali shared it. It was also complete bullshit.

Here’s what really happened. In September 2021, Germany voted in a “traffic light” (SPD-Green-Liberal) coalition. This coalition became very unpopular very quickly, not least because one of its first acts was to double the military budget. Inflation was also rising to worrying levels, and Russia’s war with Ukraine had led to an increase in petrol prices.

This is not what is supposed to happen to new governments, which often start with a few reforms before disappointing their voters after a couple of years. The German government needed a populist policy. Enter the €9 ticket.

For three months, from June till August, people in Germany could buy a one-off travel ticket for €9, which entitled them to free transport throughout the country. It wasn’t eligible for all transport – the rich were still able to travel on their ICE and IC trains without being bothered by plebs who could not afford the posh trains. But it was still a real benefit for those of us for whom rail travel was becoming prohibitively expensive.

Writing in the Guardian in July, Melissa and Chris Bruntlett called the introduction of the €9 ticket a “bold and decisive” response to the Covid pandemic and climate change. They went on to argue that “after just one month, the success of the scheme appears to make a compelling case for other countries to follow suit.”

In this article, I want to argue two main points. Firstly, the €9 ticket has been a huge benefit, if not to the environment, then at least to transport users. If introduced properly, it could make a significant contribution to the reduction of car travel, and the pollution that comes with it. And yet, the ticket was never intended to bring long term change, and therefore we must demand much more than what is currently on offer.

What benefits did the €9 ticket bring?

I believe that the €9 ticket was issued in bad faith, and was not a serious attempt to deal with the catastrophic threat to the environment. Nonetheless, it has brought real changes, at the very least in the short term. In just the first month of June, over 30 million tickets were sold. Car usage in city centres dropped dramatically, leading to fewer traffic jams. 23 of 26 examined cities reported a decrease in congestion – up to 14% in cities like Hamburg and Wiesbaden.

The number of flights taken inside Germany sank by 31% compared to pre-pandemic levels. Researchers at the University of Potsdam recorded a 6% to 7% decrease in air pollution levels across Germany. In a poll by Civey, 55% of those asked called for the ticket to be continued. Only 34% were against.

And yet, all of these benefits are likely to disappear in September, when the ticket runs out and travellers return to their cars.

Not just environmental benefits

In its application as a temporary measure, the €9 ticket’s effectiveness in protecting the environment was only ever going to be limited. But, it was still of great benefit to the poor – people who usually can’t afford to leave the city by car or train. As such, it played a small part in redistributing wealth towards those who need the money the most.

Don’t believe the moaners in Ex-Pat chat groups (most of whom never use the cheap trains anyway). When they talk of overcrowded trains and people sitting in the aisles, they’re not entirely wrong, but even on the busiest Saturday, the conditions in German trains have been considerably better than those I’ve experienced on an average day travelling in the UK.

Besides which, to complain that too many people are using trains is a little perverse. This is something which can be solved with a little extra investment – by scheduling more trains, or adding extra carriages. Such investment could also be used to guarantee rail workers a decent wage, and to overcome reservations of the trade unions to fully support the ticket.

Even under the current limitations, the €9 ticket has enabled people in Germany to do all sorts of things that they previously couldn’t afford. The LINKE Berlin Internationals, a group of non-German Berlin activists, of which I am the speaker, organised a series of five separate day trips to visit parts of Germany which many people have not seen before.

In June, July and August, we visited Eisenhüttenstadt, the DDR’s first planned city, Dessau, home of the Bauhaus art movement, the Brecht-Weigel Haus in Buckow, the DDR art archive in Beeskow, and the former concentration camp in Sachsenhausen. These trips provided the ability not just to expand our experiences, but also to discuss important parts of Germany’s political and cultural history.

There were more fundamental savings. To travel around in Berlin, you need a Monatskarte, a monthly travel pass. A Monatskarte currently costs between €86 and €107. And yet in June, July and August, you could travel within Berlin for just €9 for the whole month. On top of this, you could travel outside the city boundaries whenever you want, a benefit not contained in the Monatskarte.

What the €9 ticket did not change

Today, 31st August, 2022, is the last day for which the tickets are valid. After that, we are going back to the old prices for rail travel. There are even reports that tickets will cost more than before.

This means that suggestions that the tickets would encourage car drivers to start using public transport are largely fanciful. You don’t sell your car if you know that in 3 months’ time, train tickets will cost more than ever. What is required is a well-funded public transport system, and increased investment, with the full cooperation of affected trade unions.

This investment is just not happening in Germany. In Berlin, the transport minister Regine Günther (Green Party) has been trying to privatise the S-Bahn (local train line). This would mean diverting money that could be used to make the transport system cheaper and more environmentally friendly into the pockets of shareholders.

In recent months, rail workers in Hessen have organised 5 warning strikes demanding more pay, fair conditions of employment, and that their demands be taken seriously. Other trade unions have been reluctant to support the €9 tickets, reporting that “elevators are broken, toilets on trains no longer work, everything is simply put under a lot of strain.” Claus Weselsky from the GdL union blamed this on “years of broken savings.”

As long ago as 2019, Politico reported that “Germany’s railways are creaking from years of underinvestment.” The article quotes Markus Sievers from Allianz Pro Schiene (alliance for rail) as saying that “Germany even lags behind Italy on investment per head”. In 2017, €66 per German citizen was invested in track infrastructure, compared to €165 in Britain, €128 in the Netherlands and €362 in Switzerland.

Complaints made about the €9 ticket were really about more systemic problems in the under-financed German transport system. We need a fundamental increase in the level of government investment. This requires working with trade unions, not using benefits for passengers to attack pay and working conditions. We also need more public transport in rural areas, where people were least likely to buy the €9 ticket.

What are the demands?

The €9 ticket was seriously popular, so naturally campaigns for its retention have sprung up. The civil movement campact has launched the campaign 9-Euro-Ticket retten! (save the €9 ticket) with the following demands:

  • Extend the €9 ticket until the end of the year and provide a permanent solution: a climate ticket which costs a maximum of €1 per day.

  • Invest in the expansion of the rail and regional transport offers, particularly in the countryside, so that public transport will be more attractive.

  • Finance this by reducing subsidies which damage the climate, such as tax advantages for company cars.

Similarly, a petition launched by the broad-based campaign 9 Euro Ticket weiterfahren (continue with the €9 ticket) has already received 14,000 signatories. This petition makes the following demands:

  • We want to permanently retain the €9 ticket, for public transport in the whole country.

  • We want the government to massively invest in bus and rail, and in more workers with good conditions.

  • We want to restructure the budget: finance mobility for all, instead of encouraging car traffic.

The campaign says the following: “the €9 Ticket costs €12 billion a year. The environmentally harmful subsidies and tax concessions from the Federal government amount to €65 billion every year. Both inexpensive tickets and the expansion of buses and trains are financeable, if the political will is there.”

Build political power

Germany’s neoliberal finance minister Christian Lindner has refused to consider continuing the ticket, arguing that it is “not fair”. Lindner also suggested that the €9 ticket was suspect because it was “supported by Antifa”. Although Chancellor Olaf Scholz has called the €9 ticket a “great success”, Lindner is an important coalition partner for him. The pressure for change must come from outside parliament.

The rail strikes in Britain have shown that the fight for public transport can inspire public support. 58% of Britons say that rail strikes are justified. Even the Church Times is reporting that rail union leader Mick Lynch is “suddenly popular”, while over half of people polled consistently believe that Labour leader Keir Starmer is doing badly in his job. A campaign for the €9 ticket which involves rail unions could be both popular and effective.

In a recent paper for the rosa luxemburg stiftung, Mario Candeias argued: “an expansion of public transport would ensure more social justice because it is precisely the poorer sections of the population that are most dependent on public transport, as they cannot afford cars.” An extension of the €9 ticket, combined with increased investment in transport infrastructure would benefit both the environment and the everyday lives of people who are not super-rich.

What now?

Despite all of this, there is still no offer of extending the ticket. There are rumours of some variation of an extension, from a €365 yearly ticket to a €69 monthly ticket, both significantly more expensive than what has been on offer for the last 3 months.

In Berlin, there has been speculation of even more on a local level. SPD mayor Franziska Giffey is considering continuing the ticket within Berlin’s AB zones, although she has not committed herself to a price. DGB (trade union confederation) leader Katja Karger has gone further, suggesting a ticket which covers both Berlin and Brandenburg. But still nothing concrete is on the table.

How likely is a solution? On the national level, things don’t look hopeful. The SPD and Greens are happy to claim credit for the scheme while blaming the FDP for Lindner’s opposition. That way they gain the political benefits without having to pay anything.

On a local level, the chance of change is higher. Giffey recently experienced a turbulent party conference, where she was re-elected as SPD leader, but only with 59% of the vote, despite there being no challenger. This is an incredibly low vote, and she needs to offer something to restore her popularity. Together with growing discontent, and talk of a “hot Autumn” of protests, she may just be forced to deliver.

Jean Luc Mélenchon and the France Insoumise

Where is the French New Left going?


30/08/2022

Around five thousand people attended the radical left summer school of the France Insoumise (FI), held at the end of August at Valence in the South of France. Three days of discussion and education ended with a rousing call for immediate action against Macron, and for far higher taxes on excessive profits.

On the summer school programme were debates and lectures about all the key political questions of today: Green planning, sexism in politics, Palestine, how to defend our hospitals, racism, strikes, public health, Ukraine, Marxism, secularism, feminism, homophobia, the French revolution, neofascism, housing, animal welfare, the Yellow Vest revolt, education policy, police violence, France in Africa, and the South American Left, to name about half the subjects discussed. There were one hundred and ten meetings in all. Films about working class resistance and about the Algerian war, and a handful of concerts, completed the event. Intellectuals, trade unionists and campaigners were invited to speak, and there were even three (very stormy) debates with ministers of Macron’s government. Four hundred and fifty activists under 25 had attended a three day youth camp just before, and the younger generation of activists was very much visible at the summer school. Many of the meetings were recorded and are available on the YouTube channel of the France Insoumise.

Of course it is always more enjoyable to attend a summer school of a movement on the rise! Since last year, the FI has moved from 17 MPs to 75, obtained 7.7 million votes at the presidential elections, and built an electoral alliance on a radical programme which now represents the only visible left opposition to Macron. 

The rise of the France Insoumise as a confident and radical mass left-wing force was made possible by twenty years of mass struggle during which millions of class-conscious workers on the streets opposed the slashing of pensions, the tearing up of labour protection laws and cuts in public services. This combativity needed a political representation, and the team around Jean-Luc Mélenchon, realizing that even the left wing of the Socialist Party would never break fully with neoliberalism, built the France Insoumise to fill this need. They now call for a “citizens’ revolution”, a new constitution ( “the sixth republic”) and “spectacular change”.

Useful 

How effective is this new force and what future does it have? It is certainly useful to have a few dozen radical Left MPs who are ready to fight. The France Insoumise MPs were the only ones, along with some Communists, to vote against the recent extension of NATO to Sweden and Finland and to point out that NATO does not defend freedom. FI MPs condemned Israeli apartheid this summer (and were promptly accused of antisemitism by a government minister). A parliamentary fight to impose price freezes on basic foods is underway, and a bill to make all school meals free is in the offing. Indeed, the usefulness of the FI MPs to the working class has been highlighted recently by a series of predictable smear campaigns against three of its best-known leaders.

A huge fight outside parliament is on the cards. Macron, re-elected this year, is determined to spread misery and pain. His plan to make people retire later and on less money was defeated two years ago by mass strikes and millions on the streets. This plan is back on the table. New measures to reduce unemployment benefits will come into effect this Autumn.

Government islamophobia is ever more vicious. Last month there were attempts to expel Muslim Imams from the country without a trial, on the vague excuse that they “do not adhere to French values”. This is despite the fact that the Imams have lived in France all their lives.

Although the main meeting of the weekend was entitled “For a citizens’ revolution!”, and though it is common to hear speakers here talk of “a people’s revolution like 1789”, of “breaking with capitalism” and of “class struggle”, the France Insoumise must be considered a left reformist force. This is not an insult – it simply indicates that the central strategy is to win governmental power through elections and use the State to serve the interests of the people. If one looks carefully, it is clear that this also means using the French police and the French army differently at home and abroad, to defend “the interests of France” in a new way. It is not unreasonable to be sceptical about such possibilities.

Structure

A series of key discussions are underway about how to win. One is on the question of structuring the movement. The France Insoumise is not a political party. There are no membership cards, no subs (supporters give donations), no traditional conference with motions, factions and leadership elections. The idea was to allow people different levels of involvement, to include hundreds of members of other parties, and to avoid the heavy traditions of faction fighting on the radical left in France. It was also thought that traditional party meetings, committees and structures were less important in the digital age where information can be circulated, and even votes held, in other ways.

This loose method of organization has advantages for revolutionaries inside the FI. You can sell your own paper and have Marxist meetings without it becoming a problem of party discipline. A couple of hundred Marxists do this, but most Marxist groupings have stayed outside the FI, stood candidates against it, and often followed a “red professor” sectarian line, simply giving the FI marks out of ten at the end of each term.

Is this loose structure going to change now the FI is stronger and has a permanent presence? Some of the leaders would like it to. Manuel Bompard insisted that what is needed is “an organized political force which can fight the battle of ideas, which can support the different struggles going on in society, which can push forward people’s self-organization and educate the activists of the future”.

Some activists are pushing for “more democracy” in the movement: elected committees and delegate conferences in a more traditional party mould. These include many who believe this would ensure a leadership more responsive to grassroots opinions, and allow more discussion on tactics and communication between the different local groups. It would also, insists MP Clementine Autain, help train many hundreds of local leaders and reduce the domination of MPs in the decision making processes. These voices for structural change in the organization are joined by some who are simply nostalgic for the faction fighting of their swiftly disappearing youth. Some changes are probable, but the more important question is “democracy in order to do what?”

Struggles

FI activists want Macron out soon. For this, the question of the links with extra-parliamentary struggle is crucial. The vocal support of FI for the Yellow Vests and for the fight to defend pensions, as well as its key role in the occasional mass mobilizations against racism and the far right have been very useful. Aurélie Trouvé , previously chair of Attac and newly elected FI MP, declared that we need “unity from below with all those who are resisting, in whatever sphere: in trade unions, in culture or science, or in various campaigns. We needed to bring people together, and not only party activists.”

Nevertheless the general priority of the France Insoumise is winning elections, and the main thrust of much of the summer school was “What new laws are needed?” and “What kind of new constitution is needed in France?”  The FI leadership insists that supporting strikes and struggles is important, but the practical work of supporting struggles is generally left to local FI groups, and many of these do little in that area.

There are no more elections for some time, and Macron wants to move quickly. In his latest speech he insisted arrogantly that “the time of abundance is over”. Meanwhile use of food banks has risen by 12% in a year, and the very richest have seen their fortunes rocket.

This summer has already seen a number of strikes in local transport and refuse collection. Macron’s attacks, and the effects of inflation on family budgets, mean that mass resistance could easily spark up this autumn. A trade union day of action is set for 29th  September. Meanwhile, Jean-Luc Mélenchon announced at the summer school that the main Autumn campaign will be around the demand to tax the excessive profits of big companies. This will involve mass petitioning, “people’s assemblies” in every town, and a monster demonstration mid-October, in cooperation with the main trade unions.

Combativity is definitely in fashion in FI. It is important to note in passing the tremendous progress made in FI on a key question and historical weakness of the French Left – that of Islamophobia. Four years ago, the FI summer school invited well-known “left” Islamophobe Henri Peña Ruiz, who declared “I have the right to be Islamophobic”. Now, after several years in which Mélenchon has repeatedly and vocally defended Muslims against prejudice, the atmosphere is different: a number of invited speakers and FI MPs spoke of the importance of fighting Islamophobia. More progress is needed, certainly: most FI MPs, like the rest of the Left, said little concerning recent Islamophobic expulsions.

In conclusion, the France Insoumise is by far the most exciting place to be on the French Left. It is still on the rise, and the wave of struggles emerging will be a chance for it to show its worth. Marxist activists should work inside this “movement for spectacular change”, building the organization, and at the same time spreading Marxist understandings of how to move forward.

The Internationalist Position on the war in Ukraine

A reply to Ali Khan’s analysis of the war in Ukraine


29/08/2022

The war in Ukraine poses a unique challenge for the left and the working class. As comrade Ali rightly points out, the international character of the conflict cannot be disputed. It has disrupted essential food networks around the globe; amplifed its horror beyond the immediate shock of mutilated bodies; and displaced people. However, I disagree that the left ought to take the measures that the comrade prescribes in favour of maintaining an internationalist approach. Specifically, I contest that we ought to support the Ukranian state in bringing about a swift end to the war.

More than a century ago, the Second International was faced with a pivotal crisis regarding the split between those who supported their respective country’s entry into war and those which opposed it. Between the theoretical and pragmatic failures abound during this pandemonium, the subsequent crisis led to a destruction of leftism across Europe, enabling counter-revolution. This is felt in the Soviet Union’s degeneration into Stalinism, and in the seeds of Nazism at the hands of Ebert and Freikorps thugs.

Every subsequent war reignites and illuminates the failures of radicals past. When we begin to examine the struggles of labour among parties involved in the war in Ukraine, we see exactly what the fervour of Russian imperialism and its bourgeois opposition has wrought. Once again it has unleashed the beast of reaction and has forced workers into the corner.

Already across Eastern Europe we are starting to see what powers are granted to the bourgeoisie under the premise of war. In Ukraine, as comrade Ali pointed out, the bourgeoisie are on the offensive, pushing aggressive pro-capitalist legislation. However, the analysis offered by Peter Korotaev demands a closer examination of what the liberalisation of labour laws spells for Ukrainian workers.

Vitaly Dudin shows that the force majeure exception caused by the Russian invasion, enables a very wide attack on the legal rights of the working class. These involve: exempting employers from liability for late payment of wages; moratoriums on labour inspections; as well as exclusions from wartime stipends for workers not located directly in a war-zone. Even as the Ukranian economy is liquidated by Russian fire.

In addition, Law No. 2136 enables the transfer of employees without their consent to another job (Article 3); dismissal while on sick leave, paid and unpaid leave, as well as without the consent of trade unions (Article 5); the increase of the maximum duration of the working week to 60 hours (Article 6); suspension of legislation and collective agreements, which provided for deductions to trade unions for physical culture and mass work (Article 14).

The Ukranian state is therefore waging two wars – one against Russian imperialism, and a second against its working class. Furthermore, it is unlikely that this second conflict would cease upon the termination of the first conflict. The post-war reconstruction is imagined by Ukranian prime minister Denis Shmyhal as an international investment project, champing at the bit to welcome Western conglomerates. The end of the war on the terms of the Ukranian government – without an eye on class struggle – leaves us to be outmaneuvered for the crackdowns to come.

Further to the north, we see how warfare spreads bourgeois crackdowns among Ukranian allies. The Lithuanian chemical plant ‘Achema’, a sizeable producer of nitrogen-based fertiliser, saw a strike organised by more than 100 workers on February 8th . That saw wide support from unions in and outside of the country. It was the first strike of its kind in a private enterprise since the country’s withdrawal from the Soviet Union, and at its peak was considered to set a precedent for strikes in other industries such as Lithuanian Rail.

The terms of the strike concerned a plethora of grievances – from demands to increase stagnant wages; proper compensation for overtime (which became more frequent and worse from the pressure of shortages caused by the pandemic); to the formalisation of existing contracts. Chief among them was a demand for a collective agreement between the workers and the owners of the plant, which the general director dismisses as ‘a little piece of paper’.

However, the strike was suddenly terminated by the anti-labour wartime measures imposed following the Russian invasion. Specifically, it was through the “Emergency Situation” decree, which grants the federal government extensive powers. It is intentionally legislated to be anti-labour, with one provision involving a ban on all strikes in the country, as specified in the Lithuanian labour codex. It has seen extensive use in the past few years due to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the recent Belarus border refugee crisis.

Unsurprisingly, the suspension of the ‘Achema’ strike extinguished the momentum of the movement. With the termination of the strike came the forced expulsion of the trade union from the plant’s grounds, a common tactic to separate representatives from workers. In addition, in the past few weeks, the plant has announced mass layoffs, blamed in part on the increased costs for natural gas required to produce fertilizer.

However, the owners of the parent company still boast having one of the richest women in the country at the helm. The disguise of increased production costs creates a two-pronged attack on local workers – who are kept captive by a shortage of labour opportunities in the nearby town. This allows management to fire workers with impunity while they are at their most vulnerable, and to write it off because of war.

The consequence of the Emergency Situation decree also halted another famous strike waged by the Public Transport of Vilnius (VVT) trade union. The strike was spurred on in part by ‘Achema’ strikers, giving transport workers greater courage to act. It primarily concerned a failure of the municipal government to uphold the collective agreement reached in 2018.

However, the VVT union has been at the forefront of long-standing disputes for close to a decade. Despite the flourishing Vilnius economy, drivers were often left to foot the bill of municipal mismanagement and neo-liberal city planning. The militancy of the union was a thorn in the municipality’s backside for a while. Now the Emergency Situation decree strips them of their most effective means of enforcing demands.

Between ‘Achema’ and the VVT dispute – the Lithuanian bourgeoisie, just like the Ukranian bourgeoisie – are exploiting the wartime opportunity to assault the working class. Regardless of whether workers are blown to bits by bombs or starved out by soaring inflation and energy costs, the bourgeoisie retain their solidarity in brutalising the dominated class.

On the other side of the conflict, Russia has been seeing labour crackdowns as well. The Ural Compressor Plant in Yekaterinburg has been experiencing growing worker discontent since the outbreak of the war. Workers have not received their wages for neither April nor May. It is safe to assume that wages will likely be postponed for the subsequent months as well.

In June, the figure for the unpaid salaries of 300 workers was estimated to be more than 20 million rubles. In response, 50 of the 370 workers at the factory initiated a strike, to which the general director of the plant, Denis Tasakov responded by invoking the spirit of Stalinism, claiming that ‘no one went on strike during the Great Patriotic War (WWII)’.

Closer to the frontlines, in the Russian-occupied Donbas, 430 miners in the town of Dovzhanska have been conscripted to fill the front lines. Serhyi Haidai, the governor of Luhansk proudly deployed the same chauvinist rhetoric in announcing this initiative. Even behind the information blockade and language barrier, it is clear that the Russian bourgeoisie are in international solidarity with their western foes – boasting wartime spirit whilst collecting a dragon’s horde of surplus value at the end of legislation.

The picture is clear. Workers are sent to the front line to massacre other workers. Those that are put to work back home lose their basic rights and are re-moulded to make up for lost profits. The war in Ukraine sets the precedent for a generalised conflict, with imperialism as the sign of global carnage yet to come.

What is required is support for the working class as a whole. This means recognising the class conflict brewing in capitalism generally, and especially its character under warfare. As leftists, we owe our focus not to the assurance of arming the Ukrainian state, but to the strength of the working class. Nowhere is this best exemplified than in the railway sabotage by Belarus rail workers. Shortly after the strikes and attacks were conducted, the Russian offensive was crippled, and the front lines began to shift. This was done without coordination by NATO and without weapons shipments to Ukraine.

Just as the Petrograd sailor’s mutiny put the brakes on the Eastern Front and on Czarism, and the Kiel revolt launched Germany into revolution, so too can an organised working class banish the specter of imperialism. Only through class solidarity can we truly ever contest eternal wars, and we must do this by supporting workers directly.