Some thoughts on the rising class struggles and how they will develop

Greek workers and youth battle cops

As I recover from my recent health crisis I am reading all sorts of stuff and either going a little crazy or having some possible insights. I have just finished The Many Headed Hydra. It is making me think about the possible ways in which the capitalist offensive will be halted. The nature of the uprising of the masses. The tempo of events. How much time there is left for the working class? Could climatic change, environmental destruction, nuclear war, a victory for reaction wreck everything before the working class is able to change things?

There has been talk of the movement being thrown back one hundred years to the time of the mass social democracy. I am wondering could it be that it might have been thrown back even further. And could it be that the coming working class offensive will be much more violent, fragmented, with dramatic ebbs and flows than maybe we thought. Sort of like the form the movement took in its struggle against the rise of capitalism in the 1600's, 1700's and 1800's.

Look at the movement in the Middle East and North Africa. Is this a possibility for the advanced capitalist countries? That is mass fighting on the streets which are not reflected in the old mass organizations either the trade unions or the social democracies, at least not initially. If this was the case the revolutionary forces might not make much progress by just calling for the mass organizations to act, for patiently explaining a program.

My time in Northern Ireland. I am wondering could we have achieved much more by calling for and organizing combat squads in Northern Ireland in the late 1960's rather than just patiently explaining our ideas. Maybe we did not have the resources. But on the other hand the Derry Labor Party had regular meetings of up to 100 plus and the NILP had a huge increase in votes as part of the civil rights mass upsurge on the streets.I wonder should we not have taken much more direct action against sectarianism and also for working class unity on the streets and against the state and the then very small sectarian forces.

On the eve of the most serious street fighting in Derry in 1969 the Young Socialists talked some Catholic youth out of attacking the Protestant working class ghetto. The next day we were fighting in the Catholic area along with the Catholic masses against the cops and the sectarian Protestant forces that backed them. During this time there were still united working class forces and committees taking a stand in their organizations against sectarianism. I am wondering was it just a question that we had insufficient forces or was it a question that we were too much orientated to patiently explaining our ideas in the mass organizations and build these mass organizations which never did develop. We stepped back from fighting in the streets to defend the areas and oppose sectarianism. Maybe we just did not have the resources and were swept aside by the sectarian and bourgeois forces.

The uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East and also in Greece and the mass movements in Europe and even to an extent in the US such as Wisconsin make me question my old views. The youth who are with the anarchists and fighting on the streets. Are we right about them?  In Seattle in the movement against the WTO a decade ago the anarchist youth and the trade unionists came together due to a blunder by the trade union leadership. This shook the bourgeois and the trade union leadership. They got it under control. Recently there have been one hundred thousand workers marching against an attack on trade union rights in Wisconsin but this looks to have been defeated. There was the huge march in London organized by the trade union leaders to let off steam. This seems to have achieved its aim at least for now. What do we do? As I say do we just patiently explain our ideas? I am not sure any more.

Take the USA for example. When the real economic collapse comes, I think it is 14 trillion the US is in debt and there are over 40 trillion in derivatives. There will be millions starving on the streets, probably tens and tens of millions. In such a scenario, if it were to develop I am not sure that the workers' leaders would be able to keep the workers marching up and down with no results. I am not sure that the workers organizations would be able to absorb and reflect this movement.  In such a situation I think we would have to be careful we were not left behind by the most combative of the forces. By the most desperate of the forces. Yes I believe we have to argue for independent workers organizations, the unions and mass workers parties, yes I believe we have to argue for a program which workers can relate to their conditions and which would include the struggle to make democracy ours and not the property of the bourgeois. All of this I am convinced of. But with millions and tens of millions starving and with uprisings such as in North Africa and the Middle East engulfing the advanced capitalist world and China I think that there might be a danger that we might think this is all that has to be done. The civil rights movement resulted in major advances for black people and women. This was partly due to the mass movement around King and his move to the left and the poor peoples march for jobs etc. But it was also due to the development of armed groups such as the Deacons for Defense, organized around black churches, who armed themselves and took on the Klan and the state. The bourgeois sat up and took notice. Does the workers movement and ourselves not have to be careful it perhaps would find itself on the sidelines.