Despite the pessimism peddled in the mainstream media, 2024 was a year of resistance to the increasing barbarism of capitalism. Yes, we have the continuing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, both claiming thousands of victims, 45,000 and rising for Palestinian fatalities. We have the election of Trump in the USA, and the threat of the far right in Spain, France, Italy, Germany and here. We have the cyclone that hit the island of Mayotte, the extreme flooding in Spain, and more recently in the Midlands and Wales, events triggered by the worsening climate crisis.
All of this indicates that capitalism, which puts greed before general welfare, generates war after war, and is responsible for climate disaster, must go. It must be replaced by a new society based on the collective ownership of the means of production and distribution, the land and housing, the end of the class system and the overthrow of the State. Only this can end war, exploitation, and the destruction of the planet.
Despite the gloomy scenario that the media pushes, designed to lead to despair and helplessness, resistance is there and it can be seen in the events in Bangladesh, in South Korea, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Kenya. A 24 hour general strike in Greece challenged austerity programmes and the Greek state’s support for NATO, which involved maintaining a frigate in the Red Sea to protect Israel from the Houthis. Large demonstrations with the possibility of a general strike are looming in Belgium over austerity measures and attacks on pensions. Here in the UK, we had huge numbers turning out on demonstrations against the Israeli attacks on Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, and the large numbers who turned out at short notice to counter far-right mobilisations.
The Tories suffered a severe blow at the last election when they were booted out. They were replaced by a Labour administration that has carried on with policies previously applied by the Tories. Labour won many seats, mainly due to anti-Tory revulsion, but their foundations are flimsy. Starmer’s approval rating is the lowest for any party leader in the last half century.
This indicates that resistance can win concessions. Anger at the cutting of winter fuel payments and the maintenance of the two child benefit cap is the tip of the iceberg. There is a much deeper anger at the social conditions in this country that could explode at any time in the future. This should not be diverted by the fake anti-establishment credentials of Reform UK, a far right formation funded by a gang of billionaires and millionaires.
Putting Communism Back on the Agenda
The Starmer government has already shown that it means to continue with the austerity policies of previous Labour and Tory governments. It has attacked pensioners and means to continue the dismantling of the NHS. We must move from an anti-capitalism that is too often reduced to vague slogans to a strong defence of communism as the only credible alternative to capitalist globalisation and the wars between major imperialist powers that threaten us, as in Ukraine and the Middle East. This communism has nothing to do with Lenin, Stalin and Mao and the deplorable experience of the Soviet Union and China. It is a free, stateless, communism that must be re-introduced into the dreams and the aspirations of the working class.
Anarchist communists must more than ever hold high their social project: socialisation of the means of production and self-organisation of society through a system of workplace and neighbourhood councils.
Resistance
Trump will now intensify support for attacks on Palestine and the Lebanon, and indeed throughout the Middle East. This requires an international movement against war, with practical support given to war resisters, conscientious objectors, draft dodgers, and deserters, whether in Israel or Russia and Ukraine. It requires the development of an internationalist anti-war position, at the moment voiced by small numbers of revolutionaries, including the Anarchist Communist Group. This is vital and we shall continue to defend these positions and attempt to enlarge their audience.
At home we must encourage opposition to the Labour government and to capitalism in general. We must get involved in local and national campaigns around housing, support for strikers, and against attacks on the environment. Recent events have seen support for the London Renters Union and for rank and file base unions organising workers who have been ignored by the mainstream unions, like security guards at London museums and workers at Harrods. Elsewhere we have seen strikes by workers at sixth form colleges and the NHS. All of these strikes must be supported. We must develop local strike support committees and organisation in the local communities, around evictions, landlords’ treatment of renters, and against the closure of social facilities like libraries, youth and community centres, creches, and nurseries, etc. by local councils.
In order to resist we must build alternative structures both in the workplaces and in the neighbourhoods. We must emphasise mutual aid and direct action, against the manipulations and betrayals by Labour and the union bureaucrats. That is the only effective opposition.
Resistance is fertile!