Unfortunately, the answer is probably yes. Lenin, formulated the requirements of a political revolution as being that the existing rulers cannot continue to rule in the old way, whilst the ruled were no longer prepared to be ruled in the old way. There is certainly plenty of evidence that the latter condition applies. But the Junta has always ruled by means of its physical force, its monopoly of violence. The current situation merely is a heightened expression of that form of rule.
But, Lenin also expressed a further condition. It is not enough that the ruled are no longer prepared to be ruled in the old way, they must have the means of ending that rule, and replacing it with something else. At the moment, there is little evidence that either of these two things exist. It is the classic example, of the inadequacy of anarchistic, and pacifist politics. The references, particularly given the role of the monks in the demonstrations, to Gandhi and India are wide of the mark. They not only totally misunderstand the role of time in such tactics – passive resistance had been going on for years in India prior to Independence it could not possibly work in the space of a few days or weeks – but also misunderstands the real reason for Britain leaving India, which had little to do with Gandhi, whatever the romantic notions of bourgeois ideology might want to depict.
The reason the British left India, as with most of the other colonies was that colonialism was an inefficient means of Capital exploiting foreign labour. It had been introduced to meet the needs not of Industrial Capitalism, but of Merchant Capital, and the old feudal aristocratic classes it was tied to. Colonial countries were rent based economies, where the social surplus was extracted not particularly by the relationship of labour to Capital, but by the ability of Merchant Capital to buy low, and sell high to local producers, and by the ability of large landlords to extract surplus from a largely peasant population. It provided commercial profits to the Merchants, and rent to the landlord classes. Unlike, capitalism proper where the objective dynamic of the system is the inescapable need of Capital to expand via the extraction of surplus value, the only dynamic of Colonialism was a subjective one, the pure greed for wealth, status and power of the ruling class.
Like commercial Capital itself it had little progressive about it in terms of a dynamic leading to a necessary development of the productive forces, indeed it usually had the opposite effect, as the experience of India demonstrated, turning a once powerful and wealthy nation into a poverty stricken and dependent one. It represented the opposite of all the progressive features of industrial capitalism, and its concomitant – imperialism. Industrial capitalism seeks where possible to maximise its rate of profit through the establishment of bourgeois property laws, and the rule of law. These above all else create the conditions of stability necessary for modern Capital to invest the huge sums required for efficient profitable production. If western Capital has withdrawn from Burma – and it has withdrawn large sums over recent years – if it is to withdraw even more, then it will be for this reason, the lack of such conditions for efficient profit creation.
The demands being raised, and the hopes that day after day of aimless street protests bringing down the junta, therefore seem doomed to failure. Only concerted working class action can bring a progressive solution to the present crisis, but as yet the working class in Burma itself appears to weak, and the working class internationally too disorganised, and lacking in self confidence to achieve that. If a solution is found, therefore, it is likely to be one that merely replaces the current regime, and its harsh, but inefficient exploitation of the workers and peasants, with another perhaps more democratic, less harsh regime, but one that exploits the workers and peasants all the more effectively.
The Burmese junta, like all such regimes, exists for the simple reason that the Burmese ruling class is too weak, after centuries of colonial rule, to exercise political rule in its own name. Where capitalist classes, normally, rule through the separation of the political regime from the state power, the state power being directly controlled by the ruling class, the political regime giving the appearance of some form of pluralism or democracy, in Bonapartist regimes like Burma the political regime, and the state power are fused. The result is a regime which rests upon the dominant social class is forced ultimately, in however a distorted form, to act in accordance with the economic dynamic of the mode of production, but where the political regime through the state power achieves a high degree of autonomy from the ruling social class, to the extent of acting in ways that appear contrary to the interests of that class, appear to transform the state power and the political regime into a ruling class in its own right. But such is merely appearance, and not reality. Ultimately, it is the objective reality of which class rules which determines. The stronger the ruling social class becomes in such states, the more ultimately it is able to tighten its grip on political power, the more its interests and ideas become dominant in the state power as its members find their way by a thousand routes into the dominant positions in the state, and political regime. It is why many formerly colonial countries have been able to transform themselves into bourgeois democracies without the need predicted by many orthodox Trotskyists for “Permanent Revolution”.
But, such is not the case in Burma, where the bourgeoisie remain weak, where the economy remains dominated by rent based activities such as oil, and other raw material production largely in the ownership of foreign rather than domestic Capital. The greatest benefit for workers in Burma would in fact be not the calls for an economic boycott, but for a more rapid industrialisation of the economy. For that reason amongst others the demands for such a boycott are reactionary. They represent the petit-bourgeois angst, and lack of faith in direct working-class action that dominate the Left, even its best elements, brought on by twenty years of working class defeats and passivity, let alone the petit-bourgeois politics of the pacifists and anarchists that stand in opposition to real working-class, socialist politics.
A boycott is a form of strike. What more working-class, socialist action can there be than the strike you may retort. But there is nothing socialist about a strike – it is a typically working class method that is true, but nothing socialist about it. There was nothing socialist about the strikes of the Ulster Workers Council, nor of the London dockers in favour of Enoch Powell. There can be strikes by Capital too. In fact, what is being asked for in most economic boycotts is precisely a strike by Capital, not by the working class. A strike can be a most efficient means for workers achieving economic goals, for raising wages etc. But there is nothing socialist about this either. As Marx put it long ago the task of socialist is not an improvement in wages, but abolition of the wage system altogether.
A strike is a very blunt instrument. Although, it may achieve its economic ends by striking directly at the interests of the individual capitalist, it necessarily attacks the interests of others too, including other workers. A strike only begins to take on socialist characteristics when it recognises this, and when it goes way beyond these objectives, and methods. In 1968, whilst French workers brought industry to a standstill, they also began to go way beyond it. Faced with the need to look after the needs of the weak, the sick etc. they ensured that power remained available to hospitals etc., that coal continued to be delivered to workers homes and so on. In short workers went beyond the simple strike, the withdrawal of labour, to a political action designed to meet their needs as opposed to those of the bourgeoisie, were led to adopt not the blunt method of the strike, but the more precise method of control over the means of production.
The demands for boycott are the demands for the blunt method of the strike, not the political method of control over the means of production. They are more likely to harm the workers and peasants of Burma than to help them. If workers internationally want to help the Burmese workers and peasants the means to do that do not run through what are effectively requests to the international bourgeoisie to fight their battles, but rather require that workers themselves take action internationally against the junta, and in support of Burmese workers and peasants. Demands that multinational companies, pay their Burmese workers better wages, provide them with Trade Union rights, and proper education and training as the basis for such workers equipping themselves to fight the junta. Action to black all supplies of arms and other goods and services to the junta etc. Finally, use of the Internet and other means of communication now available to assess in conjunction with Burmese workers inside and out of the country the situation, and to begin to develop an Action programme around which the workers and Peasants can begin to organise as an alternative to simply street demonstrations, which give the junta the opportunity to decapitate the movement, and demoralise it.
Ultimately, the working class must re-learn some of its own history from the last two centuries, and learn from other forces today. In both the 19th and twentieth centuries workers and socialists enlisted in the struggles of their fellow workers in foreign lands. Not for them a call for the bourgeoisie to fight their battles, or even a hope that the bourgeoisie might do something progressive. Today we see forces from the pacifists and humanitarians on the one extreme, to the political Islamists on the other organising to send their own battalions to the front lines. Of all the social forces in the world the one that is best able to be organised, which is organised as a basis of its daily life, the most numerous social force, and the only social force capable of providing a progressive solution – the working class – is the one that is not organised for such action – except when it is workers in uniform marching into battle under the control and in the interests of imperialist Capital.
Only, when the working class internationally reorganises, re-equips and re-arms itself technically and ideologically will a socialist solution to such situations become possible. That is not an argument for supporting some other bourgeois or reactionary solution as the next best option. It is an argument for beginning the process of that re-equipping and re-organising now.
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