Javier Al-Riga, a member of the Zapatista Front’s National Coordination Committee, has answered questions from Comrade Bahram Gadimi while participating in an interview, and Bahram has published this interview in his book “Current Movements in Latin America.” In this relatively short conversation, he expressed his views on issues such as neoliberalism, the existing state, privatization and statehood of industries, “nationalization of resources and wealth,” factions within the bourgeoisie, basic social classes in Mexico, mass organization of movements, phasing of the revolution, and the goals of the Zapatista movement. I do not know to what extent Al-Riga’s words represent the real outlook, principles of analysis, strategies, and solutions of the Zapatista Front, but in any case, what he says is a manifestation of the beliefs, cognitions, and orientations that are dominant or current in the aforementioned movement. The importance of the interview and the necessity of exploring its content also arise from this. It is important and should be important for the workers of the world what the Zapatista movement says, what its goals are, how it sees the way to achieve its goals and where it is looking. Let’s get to the main points of the interview.
Al-Riga begins by introducing neoliberalism. Phrases such as “a new phase in the process of capitalist growth”, “a stage in which the scope of capitalist exploitation encompasses a larger part of the social strata”, “a form of capitalism that is unable to reproduce itself, centralizes production more and more, and instead of involving people in decision-making, it constantly and increasingly excludes more and more strata”, “the world is divided between a few large companies”, “privatizations are increasingly developed” and the like are the signs that the member of the editorial board of the “Rebel DiBa” magazine uses to identify and introduce neoliberalism. Al-Riga’s account of neoliberalism is false, and I will explain below what very wrong effects this false account has on his class approach and political orientation, and perhaps on the entire Zapatista movement. But before that, a fundamental question must be asked. Why does he start with neoliberalism? Why doesn’t he start with capitalism? The appearance of the story is that the interviewer asked for it. But this answer is not convincing. For a man who is an influential activist in a famous labour and social movement, the answer to any question, with any formulation, is given after a real, transparent, honest, and class reconstruction of that question. If we fight against capitalism outside the illusion and with a clear worker’s understanding, when we encounter the question “What does neoliberalism do to the mass movement?”, the first word of the answer should be that the problem is not in the neoliberal nature of capitalism, but in the basis of the existence of capitalism. Just as with the word “masses”, it should be clarified which people it will speak of. Al-Riga does not do this, he takes neoliberalism as the point of departure for his answer, just as his predecessor’s generation and all the left forces in the world took “imperialism” as the starting, returning and concluding point of their analyses, interpretations and manifestos. They spoke of “imperialism” everywhere, and their imperialism, nowhere in reality, at the concrete level of the intrinsic and internal dynamics of the surplus value production relationship, resembled the imperialist phase of the capitalist mode of production. It was a club that came down on the anti-wage labour struggle of the working class, it became a giant that protected the previous forms of production!! The struggle against it became the panacea for the development of capitalism and the prerequisite for the establishment of “independent national industry”!!. The nationalist and camp theory of imperialism brought all the disasters upon the world labour movement for many years and sufficiently protected the system of wage slavery from the danger of its emergence. The nationalist and social-bourgeois interpretation of imperialism has left its period of miracles behind and has now long since given way to a coherent narrative of another period in the history of capitalist life. The nature of capital is such that in each phase of intensifying the furious assault on the existence of the working masses of the world, it also creates all the intellectual, ideological and theoretical mechanisms needed to ground the labour movement and distance the working class from the real field of class struggle against the basis of wage labour. Capitalism has always done this, and the non-labour left of the world, much more Catholic than the Pope, has followed and implemented this same pattern of capital. Does this mean that the labour movement should or can remain oblivious to the process of historical changes in the system of wage slavery and the importance of continuous dissection of any degree of displacement in the process of labour and the reproduction and self-expansion of global capital, or the effects and consequences of these changes on the lives of the working masses?!! Is not the explanation of the imperialist conditions of capitalist production or the phase of capital’s neoliberal assault on the livelihood and welfare of the world’s workers a necessary condition for the conscious and awake struggle of the working class against the system of wage slavery?!! It does not seem that any common-sense human being denies the fundamental importance of this need!! It is an explanation of the obvious that capitalism must be explained in all its threads and fibres. The present objectivity of the social capital of each country and of the whole of world capital is the real mortar and stuff of the class consciousness of the mass of wage slaves. The discussion is absolutely not about any degree of reduction in the importance of understanding imperialism or neoliberalism. The fundamental issue is to correctly explain all this and all ups and downs of the capitalist system on the basis of the Marxian explanation of capital and by referring to the inherent dynamics of the surplus-value production relation. If we do so, we will not empty imperialism, neoliberalism, or any other phase of the transformation and evolution of the capitalist system of its real content, or the relation of buying and selling labour power. The starting point of any talk about any of these and any level of intensity of exploitation or any kind of criminality and savagery of capitalism will still be capital and the surplus-value production relation.
Al-Riga does not do this. Let us see how he explores the way to understand neoliberalism in the absence of this method. The titles “a new phase of capitalist growth”, “exploitation of a larger part of the social classes”, “exclusion of wider social layers from participation in decision-making” and “division of the world among a few large financial trusts” are all the components that he lists in order to explain neoliberalism from their sum. Indicators and factors that are not a distinctive chapter of the current state of capitalism and do not contribute much to understanding the current phase of the developments of this system. Saying “a new phase of growth” does not clarify anything, neither does “a larger exploitation of social classes” firstly. It is an indicator for any period in the history of capitalist development, secondly. The term “social classes” is too ambiguous, misleading and reminiscent of all the nationalist and camp expressions used by previous popular movements. “Excluding a larger portion of people from decision-making” is also fundamentally illusory and deceptive. The basis of the existence of the capital relation is based on the complete exclusion of the mass of the seller of labour power from any kind of intervention in labour, the product of labour, and the fate of their social life. This component, firstly, is not a characteristic of the present period of capitalist life, and secondly, it does not reveal which human beings are the excluded and outcasts that the interviewee is referring to. The factor of “dividing the world among several trusts” is just a kind of generalization to say nothing and to cover up the reality of the present-day system of bloodshed and the horror of wage slavery. The history of capital is the history of uncontrolled concentration and the formation of monopolies, trusts, and cartels. This phenomenon is not at all specific to the present period, and finally, “privatizations” are not a component that can be used to explain neoliberalism. The problem of the international working class is not the state or the privatization of capital and the form of legal identification of capital ownership. The real problem is the existence of capital. Thus, while Al-Riga shouts all the cries not against capital, but against neoliberalism and the neo liberalization phase of capitalism and the bourgeoisie, he does not provide any clear picture of what he himself calls under this name. This short article is not the place to examine this issue, but some points can be made on the occasion and very briefly.
What truly characterizes the current state of capitalism, not the factors mentioned by the member of the General Coordination Committee of the Zapatista Front, but the highest degree of intensification of the inherent contradictions and the unbridled crisis-proneness of capital at the global level. Neoliberalism is the response of the world capitalist class to these insoluble contradictions and unbridled crisis-proneness. No other section of the bourgeoisie has any response other than what neoliberals are doing to moderate the aforementioned catastrophic contradictions. To understand all that is now being said under the headings of neoconservatism, neoliberalism or any other synonymous term, it is necessary to explore the nature and dimensions of these deadly contradictions and unbridled crisis-proneness. Nowhere can one find any statistics to estimate the average organic composition of global capital, but even without statistics one can guess its limits. The level of labour productivity in a large part of the world of wage slavery has exceeded the threshold of a thousand times, and sometimes much more, compared to the early years of the twentieth century.
The capital of the General Motors Automobile Trust has increased today by about 3,300,000 times compared to 100 years ago, but the price of the labour force exploited by this company has not increased by more than 2,000 times throughout the world during the same period. A comparison of the coefficient of increase of the constant part of capital on the one hand and its variable part on the other in the process of work of this industrial unit presents us with an increase of several thousand times in the organic composition of the capital of the company. It is very clear that the occurrence of this transformation cannot be generalized to the whole of world capital, or even to its most important part in the conditions of the present world but let us not forget that in some branches of labour and production we are faced with a much higher coefficient of increase in the average organic composition of capital. In the light of this fabulous increase in the productivity of labour, it is very astonishing that the level of the social product of the world working class has soared from $11.3 trillion to more than $70.7 trillion in just 30 years. To put it more bluntly, the working masses of the world have produced $2 trillion more in profits and capital every year and handed it over to capitalists and the capitalist state. In addition to the above event and as a continuous link of this topic, it should be noted that the capitalist mode of production has long since completed its development and dominance throughout the entire planet. The process of commodification of labour in all parts of the world has passed the final stages of realization. The world is a capitalist world in its entire economic, political, civil, legal and social fabric. When we talk about the average organic composition of global capital in the current situation, we must consider the rate of this composition in the context of such a circuit of the cycle of evolution and dominance of the relationship between the purchase and sale of labour and the production of surplus value. Labor is a commodity throughout the world. Capitalism is the dominant mode of production in all countries, all forms of production and human economic activities, even in the most backward regions of the planet, are organically dissolved in the process of valorisation and reproduction of global capital, and now, in the midst of such a situation, we are dealing with legendary and astonishing rates of organic composition, in the circuit of the organization of international capital. The roots of neoconservatism and neoliberalism and every other bourgeois approach lie right here, deep in this situation.
The entry of capital into this phase means that capital has transformed all the conditions necessary for the continuous and continuous overtaking of the rate of accumulation by the rate of surplus value production into a permanent and ever-present component in the structure of its existence. This does not mean that no component of world capital can escape the storm of crisis for any period of time, but it precisely implies the fact that the global and international process of capital valorisation is exposed to the most devastating waves of crises without interruption. The galactic level of concentration of capital and the gigantic growth of labour productivity and the organic combination corresponding to it have practically made the achievement of the minimum rate of profit required by the process of its reproduction and self-expansion dependent on the achievement and realization of extremely terrifying rates of surplus value of a thousand percent and sometimes several thousand percent. This phase of the organic combination of capital and labour productivity forcibly imposes consequences and complications on the system of wage slavery and places the bourgeoisie in a historically special position. The existence of a billion unemployed workers worldwide is the inevitable product of these conditions. A phenomenon that, under the conditions of capitalist domination, is not only not amenable to any degree of reduction or adjustment, but quite the contrary, is on the rise moment by moment and with the greatest acceleration. Historically, and from the very beginning, capital has reduced its variable part of the production process in comparison with the fixed part, in parallel with any degree of technical development. The direct result of this process in the current situation of capitalism, in conditions where the world is saturated with capital and the possibility of opening up new areas of accumulation has largely disappeared, is the uninterrupted increase in unemployment. The outbreak of the wave of unemployment in our era is absolutely not specific to explosive moments of crises. Crises only magnify the dimensions of this outbreak.
Another consequence of the moderate explosive and leapfrog state of the organic composition of capitals and the ever-present danger of the actualization of the downward trend in the rate of profit is the constantly intensifying, deepening and expanding assault of the capitalist system on the real value of labour power and the standard of living and social facilities of the entire working masses everywhere in the world. This assault is not limited to the spontaneous and constant dynamic function of the capitalist mode of production to achieve a greater relative surplus value. It is also the emergency and forced reaction of capital to the inevitable dangers of crisis and the inevitable actualization of the downward trend in the rate of profit. In other words, its implementation is the basic and vital condition for the survival of the capitalist mode of production, and any degree of inability or delay in its organization is a serious and actual threat to the collapse of capital into the abyss of crisis. Another dimension of this assault is the continuous slaughter of the means of subsistence of the working class throughout the world. A terrible storm that has arisen from the depths of the unruly and uncontrollable contradictions of capital has, to this day, destroyed the greatest part of the working masses of the world. It rushes forward more violently and powerfully with every step and with every passing day and exposes the lives of ever-widening sections of the wage slaves of countries to serious destruction. The true philosophy of poverty, hunger, and the deprivation of several billion inhabitants of the planet from food, clothing, housing, and basic necessities of life must be sought directly in the specific historical and internal constraints of the inevitable return of the capitalist mode of production. Here, the discussion is not only about the exploitation or further exploitation of the working class by capital, but also not just about the fact that capital, in order to obtain a greater relative surplus value, increases the intensity of exploitation of workers and constantly intensifies this increase. The discussion is not about the conventional way of functioning of capital or the relation of production of surplus value. The discussion is about the specific historical condition that the capitalist system has achieved under the pressure of its inherent constraints and contradictions. The constraints that force capital, while it has increased the average productivity of labour of the international working class by 7 times over the course of 30 years, while it extracts 7 times more labour from the working masses of the world, exploits them 7 times more and more deeply, and reaps 7 times more profit and capital from the places where they are exploited, still at every moment depends on the unemployment of the working masses.
The real value of the labour power of the entire working class is horribly slaughtered and degraded. It massacres and destroys schools, hospitals, and existing social facilities with increasing haste. It makes the work pressure of the entire working masses more severe and exhausting, drowns or threatens to drown millions of workers in the swamp of poverty and deprivation, hunger, homelessness, lack of medicine, lack of water, and displacement. These bottlenecks, on these enormous historical dimensions, cannot be removed or adjusted at all by the conventional and hitherto existing mechanisms of capital, even with the help of the newly created and gradually discovered mechanisms of the wage slavery system. The world is saturated with capital. The average organic composition of capital has reached its peak at the global level and is rising higher every day. The rate of exploitation is moving in the highest orbits, and yet the huge and galactic items of surplus value are not at all sufficient for the desired rate of profit of capital and for the various sections of world capital to achieve the requirements of its own reproduction. Global capital has sufficiently limited the real sources of its production, reproduction, and self-expansion, and has advanced the process of this limitation to the point where it has minimized the possibility of distancing itself from the risk of the rate of accumulation surpassing the rate of surplus value production. In a word, the capitalist system must disappear from the face of life and cut off its evil from the heads of humans forever, but in the absence of a strong anti-wage labour movement, the global working class still remains. In such a situation, the capitalist mode of production has no other way forward for its survival. The continuous reduction of real wages and the uncontrolled attack on the living standards and the remnants of the welfare and social facilities of the workers are the only levers it can resort to and through its intensified and more effective application, it can rediscover its path to survival. For many years, while resorting to all other mechanisms for dealing with the crisis, capitalism has found clinging to the latter solution as its only real refuge and the only sure rope of salvation. Let us not forget that enduring every crisis is, in its essence, the threshold for organizing the fiercest and most brutal attacks of capital on the lives of the working masses, and every step of capital’s purification from the crisis is a mountain of misery, misery, misery and blackness that falls on the working masses of the world.
The wage slavery system has developed or even created various mechanisms to deal with the rebellious and rebellious state of its dynamic crisis over the past century, whether from within the dynamic of reproduction or at the level of civil, political, legal and social institutions. These mechanisms include solutions such as the stock market, the reconstruction and expansion of the octopus’s role of the state and the civil structure, the completion of the globalization process, and the like. Although all of these have increased the power of capitalism to confront the explosive situation affecting this system in the absence of a strong anti-wage labour movement, each of them has, in turn and in further steps, led to a further deepening of the inherent contradictions of capital. In this regard, capitalism has expanded its relentless assault on the price of labour and the standard of living and welfare of the working masses to an increasingly intensification and unbridled massacre of political freedoms and basic social rights of people, and in this transition has advanced to the point where it has even attacked the embankments of right-wing syndicalist reformism that has preserved its existence. It has not hesitated to weaken the union movement. It has also dismantled many civil institutions that neutralized workers’ protests, and in short, what it once paid in compensation for the horror of the powerful anti-capitalist movements of the working class and with the aim of freeing itself from the dangers of these movements, is now being taken back one by one with all its ferocity and ferocity.
Neoliberalism, neoconservatism and every other rabid approach of capital are the coercive force of these special and irreversible historical conditions of the capitalist mode of production. The question is absolutely not whether this or that faction of the political power of capital in this or that country, or this or that section of the world bourgeoisie has become neoliberal and neoconservative, and so on. It is capital as a mode of production, or a social and international relation, that in the process of its historical self-expansion has led the bourgeoisie to organize the most terrible and ferocious attacks against the value of labour power and every form of social existence of the working masses. It is capital that determines the thoughts, policies, horizons, solutions, strategies and everything of the bourgeoisie. The opposite is not the case. If here and there, different parties of the capitalist class, under the name of social democrat, conservative, liberal, neoliberal or neoconservative, use different formulations to express their policies and social practices of the day, it does not mean that they have very distinct solutions and strategies in response to the requirements of capital’s survival and the imposition of these requirements on the international working class!! They all do what capital needs in its spiral of insoluble contradictions and to moderate these rebellious contradictions, and all of them, albeit with different methods, make the imposition of these forced and historically inevitable needs of the wage slavery system on the working class the content of their economic, political and social policies and planning of the day. To be honest, if those who wish to draw a line of distinction between these approaches and Egyptian parties, perhaps they can find this distinction in the division of these brutal attacks of capital into different social democratic, liberal, neoconservative, neoliberal, and so on, to satisfy themselves!!
Javier Al-Riga does not see neoliberalism in this way and does not explore its roots in the depths of the historical existence of capitalism in this context and with the perspective of Marx. On the contrary, he borrows the false statements of the popular, nationalist, and camp left of the Soviet Union and the current world about the imperialist conditions of capitalist production to create a mechanism for understanding neoliberalism, and it is clear that in this passage he encounters the same slips and distortions that the global labour movement has been trapped in for more than a century under the influence of camp and nationalist narratives of imperialism. He speaks of the division of the world between several companies as an important indicator of neoliberalism and remains oblivious to the reality of the internal and historical transformations of capitalist production that have created the current situation. He seeks the problem in the undisputed power of a few large global monopolies and turns away from what capital has established as the relation of surplus value production in the historical conditions of the day and in the form of its own institutional and irreversible movement. The depth of the disaster is traced not in the inner workings of the capital relationship, but in the multiplicity of legal aspects of ownership, the exclusivity and non-exclusivity of possession, or its capacity for competitiveness and invincibility. In this regard, and with this understanding of capital and the neo liberalization of capitalism, when Al-Riga comes to the issue of the state, he is caught in a big and dangerous problem. He says, “This state serves the interests of global capital and not the interests of the country or its own state”!!! Is this really the problem of the working class of the world and the problem of the mass of wage slaves united within the Zapatista movement in relation to the phenomenon of the state!!! That this state prefers the interests of global capital to the interests of its own countries and states!!! What is meant by the interests of the country, state and nation?!!! Aren’t all the countries of the world capitalist countries, aren’t all the states, provinces, cities and villages, with their entire economic, political and social fabric, connected and organic cells of the capitalist system. Doesn’t the relationship of buying and selling labour power determine the dominant mode of production and the political, legal, civil, state and everything that governs human life at every point in this world??!! Don’t the working and capitalist classes constitute two fundamental classes at every point in this world? If this is the case, which it certainly is, what does it mean for governments to be accountable to the interests of their country and state?!!
Isn’t it true that the state everywhere is the state of capital and must plan the productive, political, civil, cultural and ideological order of capital and impose it on the working class? If this harsh social reality is not in doubt, then the question before Al-Riga is whether the problem of the global working class, including the Zapatista wage slaves, is only a differentiation between the interests of the Mexican capitalist class and the global capitalist class and the defence of the former’s privacy against the latter?!! If this state, instead of focusing on the interests of all international capital, wants all the profits for Mexican social capital, would the problem of the millions of hungry and destitute workers, lacking water, bread, school, medicine and Mexican or Zapatista healthcare be alleviated a little?!!! It is expected that Al-Riga or any Zapatista would not think so, but for this expectation to be real, they must view capitalism, neoliberalism and the capitalist state, not from the current perspective, but from a Marxist and anti-wage labour perspective. The government of today in any form and under any name and title is the government of capital, a government that uses the power of capital and the mechanism of the wage slavery system to plan and implement all the barbaric attacks of capital against workers, a government that, according to the conditions of today’s capitalism, must adjust the scope of these attacks and how they are applied to the working class with the nature of the continuous dynamic crisis of capital and the uncontrollable pressure of the rebellious internal contradictions of the capitalist production method. If this government prioritizes responding to the expectations and interests of global capital over respecting the interests of the country’s social capital, it is not because its “nationality” has been damaged!! Rather, it is only because the government is capital. This is because the “nationality” of capital and the capitalist state is a myth.
The social capital of each country is an organic link in the fabric of the existence of global capital. The surplus value produced by the international working class throughout the world is distributed among the social capital of countries and the various sectors of global capital within the framework of the laws of the general rate of profit of capital. It is not the capitalist states of the various societies of the world that decide how surplus values are distributed. On the contrary, it is the place and position of the social capital of each country and the conditions of valuation of each sector of capital in the structure of valuation and division of labour of global capital that form the basis of this distribution. States are under the control of the constraints, decrees and laws of the self-governing capital that they play, and it is under the pressure of these functions that their responsiveness to the interests of international capital and the social capital of each country is determined. Putting forward the argument that states can be anything other than this is a clear seduction of the working masses and a conscious or unconscious attempt to align them to replace one state of capital with another state of the bourgeoisie. This narrative of capital and the capitalist state is at the same time instilling this catastrophic illusion in the minds of wage slaves that their interests are intertwined with the interests of sections of the bourgeoisie!! As if one should join this or that section of the bourgeoisie in the war against neoliberalism and the neoliberal state and set about replacing the ruling dictatorship with democracy!! The non-worker and non-Marxist explanation of capitalism will have all these and many other terrible consequences. The traces of which are clearly palpable in this brief interview with a member of the Coordination Committee of the Zapatista Front. In the next part of his talk, Al-Riga turns to the privatization issue. The main point of his talk in this part is that a fundamental axis of the problem of Mexican workers seems to be the change in the legal form of ownership of social capital from the state to the private sector!! He says: “For 20 years, we have witnessed the first wave of privatization in our country, a wave in which all strategic industries such as telecommunications, electricity, oil, etc., which were the legacy of the classic role of the national government, were transferred to the sphere of private capital…. We are currently entering the second phase of privatization. This period includes the privatization of public (state) lands and all types of services that were part of the government’s duties, such as education, health care, pensions, water, road construction, etc. Now that they have completed the privatization of large industries, they are moving on to services. Therefore, the government is being reduced to a legal-political and repressive institution that, by adding appropriate laws, guarantees the interests of a few global companies.”
The above speech has raised some points that are important and worthy of reflection in all respects. First, from the perspective of Al-Riga, the state ownership of factories, mines, and industrial and financial centres implies that these institutions belong to the sphere of public interest!! and the privatization process indicates their transfer from the sphere of “public interest”!! to the sphere of power of private capital. This type of perception of the legal form of capital ownership is rooted precisely in the completely bourgeois narrative of the state issue. A narrative that Al-Riga certainly does not accept, but unfortunately, under the pressure of ignoring the Marxian dissection of capital and not paying attention to the real content of the surplus value production relationship as a social relationship, he unintentionally falls into its trap. Capital makes everything appear upside down from the bottom up, and the political and intellectual representatives of the bourgeoisie have historically tried to introduce the state not in its true form, not as it is, not the state of the capitalist class, but rather as a “representative of the general interest”, a supra-class category and an “institution guaranteeing the common rights and national interests of all classes”!!! I repeat again that the spokesperson for the Zapatista movement is definitely against this deeply reactionary narrative of the state phenomenon, but mere doctrinal and theoretical demarcation is not enough for a real, class, practical and movement-based separation from one perspective. The problem of the proletariat anywhere in the world is not whether capital is state-owned or private. The fundamental and real problem is the existence of capital and the capitalist system in every form of production, political and civil planning, and the exercise of its ownership or sovereignty. Where in this world has the state-owned nature of capital been the solution to any of the infinite problems of the working class, by which workers would seek a reason to prefer the state form of ownership of capital over the private form of this ownership?!!
The second point in this passage is that Al-Riga considers the state ownership of strategic industries, institutions and centres of capitalist work and production as “the legacy of the classical role of the national state” and considers the privatization process as the product of the invasion of neoliberalism and the retreat of the first type of state!! With this statement, he once again insists on his commitment to the “national state”!! And he considers the end of its life as a disaster for the working masses!! Here too, he considers the problem of the workers not to be the foundation of the existence of wage labour but the replacement of its “classical national” form with the neoliberal form!! What he forgets is that the course of the current invasions of capital into the lives of the working masses is not the result of the extinction of the “national state” and the neo liberalization of states but is the direct product of the historically unprecedented rebellion of the inherent contradictions of capital, the downward trend in the rate of profit and the uncontrolled intensification of the grounds for the crisis of capital throughout the world. The third point that is presented in Al-Riga’s speech in a completely false and illusory and inevitably illusory way is the position and manner of playing the role of the current bourgeois state. He has believed the words of the intellectual representatives and statesmen of capital that the world’s capitalist class really wants to limit the power structure, the field of intervention and the influence of the states more and more, and that the bourgeoisie’s job is to tear apart a new corner of the sphere of authority of its class state every day and reduce the costs of maintaining it!! The matter is completely the opposite. There is no country in the world where the scope of intervention and influence of the states and the length and breadth of their annual budgets have not increased much each year. The reality is that what is being implemented under this name is not reducing the dimensions of the power, influence and influence of the states, but simply slaughtering without any limits the livelihood and welfare facilities of the international working class. Al-Riga sees the problem in the opposite way to what it is and what has happened. In the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, the state was mostly an institution of police and military coercion and repression, and an institution responsible for customs and tax affairs of the capitalist class, but in today’s conditions it is a huge octopus organization involved in planning the productive, political, civil and social order of capital, along with all the mechanisms of military and police brutality against every breath of the working masses and the workers’ movement. The role of the state in this way and at this level is absolutely not unique to the rabid and predatory dictatorships of the bourgeoisie. The most decorated democracies of today’s capital also shoulder exactly the same task. The Swedish government’s annual budget has not only not decreased compared to 20 years ago but has more than doubled. This is despite the fact that during this same period, hundreds of primary and secondary schools in the country have been closed, the number of hospital beds has decreased by 30%, the number of nurses and nursing assistants has decreased drastically compared to the beginning of the 1990s, and nursing homes for the elderly have been dismantled on a significant scale.
Unemployment insurance has been reduced from 100% to 65%. Sickness insurance has suffered the same fate. The real unemployment rate has risen from 1% to over 15%, and thousands of other brutal attacks by capital against the lives of workers have been planned and carried out. Thus, there is absolutely no question of reducing the role of the state. The bourgeoisie is not and cannot be preparing to do this. What has been done and is being done is the slaughter of the lives of the working masses, and this is what we discussed above as the imperative need for the survival of capitalism in the midst of the historical conditions of the day.
The result of Al-Riga’s view of capital, of the capitalist system, of the historical development of this mode of production, and of neoliberalism is already very clear. He has no choice but to deny, whether he likes it or not, the capitalist basis of Mexico and the comprehensive domination of the capitalist system over this country. He does not do this explicitly and directly. He does not mention the concrete formula of the dominance of “pre-capitalist” relations in Mexico or any other Latin American country, but his perspective of analysis of society, of capitalism, of the worker and the working class, of the class struggle of the day and of the prospects of this struggle, all revolve around the negation of the dominance of wage labour relations in Mexico. He says: “Here the majority is not with the workers”!! Let us assume that by the word “here” Al-Riga means the region of “Jiapas” and the area of struggle of the Zapatista front. Even in this case, why should he not see the majority of the population as workers?!! Why should this large population under the pressure of exploitation and brutality of capital be called “native peoples”?!! Why should they not be considered an organic and integral part of the working class of Mexico? Why should he evaluate the economic and social relations that dominate Jiapas as something other than the relationship of surplus value production and the economic, political and social order of capitalism?!! In explaining the relationship between the remnants of previous forms of production and the mode of production that dominates the entire society, Marx states that: “… among people who, like the ancient times and the feudal system, engage in sedentary agriculture, even industry with its organization and forms of ownership is more or less influenced by land ownership… Even capital itself in the Middle Ages, when it does not have the aspect of pure money capital and is in the form of traditional industrial production tools, is completely influenced by the character of land ownership. In bourgeois society, the opposite is true. Agriculture becomes a simple branch of industry and is completely dominated by capital. The same is the case with land rent. In all social forms that are under the domination of land ownership, the natural relationship still prevails. Whereas in the forms under the rule of capital, the social element is dominant, created in the course of history. Land rent without capital is meaningless, but capital can be understood without resorting to land rent. Capital is the all-pervading economic force of bourgeois society. Capital is both the starting point and the ending point…” Marx (Grund Riese)
Chiapas is a point in the capitalist world and a region of the accumulation, valorisation and organization of Mexican social capital and all international capital. The obvious explanation is that Mexico is a capitalist country and, accordingly, Chiapas and every other point in this country is also a point in the sphere of capitalist domination, domination and rule. If the masses of cursed and damned people living in this land work on the land, if the number of giant industries is limited, if agriculture is not industrialized and mechanized on a significant scale, if elements of the population do not sell their labour to the owners of large industrial enterprises, all this is a coercive decree of the dominance of the capitalist mode of production and an obligatory requirement of the division of labour of Mexican social capital and all world capital. The problem is not that Chiapas has not had a strange industrial development. Capitalism has not grown fabulously there or that its inhabitants are “native peoples”!! Quite the opposite, the problem is that here, like all other parts of Mexico and the entire world today, it is the centre of the monotony of exploitation and savagery and barbarism of the capitalist system. Here too, capital is the starting point, the turning point and the end point of every calamity. Let us assume that a large number of the people of this state are dispossessed, jobless and unemployed. Perhaps some are captives of a humble piece of land that, even with their hard workday and night, is still unable to provide bread for their families, why should these people be cut off from the mass of labourers who sell their labour force next to them, from the body of the Mexican labour movement and from the entire body of the world working class? Why should they be branded as indigenous peoples, why should their daily struggle be separated from the anti-capitalist class struggle of the workers of Mexico and the world, why should their current movement be hung on the gallows of the movement for autonomy of the indigenous peoples??!! Autonomy and democracy and the mere implementation of the San Andrés Peace Agreement, what fundamental pain will this huge population, under the brutal pressure of capital exploitation and captive to the hellfire of filth, blood and terror of capitalism, cure?!! Al-Riga says that the workers are not the majority here!! This is the worst sentence that a member of the Coordination Committee of the Zapatista Movement practically issues in favour of capital and against the working class.
According to this verdict, in Mexican society, or at least in the state of Chiapas, the real root of exploitation, dictatorship, oppression, lack of rights and all the misery affecting millions of wage slaves lies not in the existence of capital but in the pre-capitalist forms of production or in the neoliberal policy of a few large financial corporations!! Al-Riga created a world about small and large neoliberalism to, in their twists and turns, issue the same verdict that the former camps and leaders of the popular movements and nationalist anti-imperialist movements were issuing. They were delivering the worst lies to the working masses. They were humming the confrontation of imperialism with the development and expansion of capitalism in the ears of the workers!! And they were calling on the workers to fight alongside the bourgeoisie against the imperialist invasion and, with the victory of this war, establish independent national industry!! and free capitalism!!! The result of Al Riga’s speech, regardless of how much he is aware of the depth of his analyses and statements, will in any case be that the target of the Workers’ Day war is not capitalism but neoliberalism with the current strata narrative of the bourgeoisie or reformism within the labour movement!!! The editorial board member of the Rebel DiBa magazine may not want to or think so, but his emphasis on the non-capitalism of society and his reference to the working class to neoliberalism is anti-people and off the direct track of the struggle against wage labour, a sledgehammer that targets the vast masses of the exploited and the downtrodden of Chiapas and the entire Mexican labour movement.
Al-Riga denies the rule of capitalism over the working and living conditions of millions of workers and the underclass and its oppression. He writes down the class struggle against the relationship of buying and selling labour power, albeit implicitly, but to some extent practically. He makes the struggle with the neoliberal policies of “a few big companies”!!! an alternative to the anti-capitalist struggle of the working masses and finally, in this regard, he puts the path of democratic revolution before the workers. What to do? The answer is clear. Replace the rabid neoliberal dictatorship of capital with democracy!!! Establish another form of capitalist work and production planning in place of the current form!! Implement the “autonomy of indigenous peoples”. What to do? Again, the answer is simple. That the day after the revolution and the establishment of the new political power of capital and the establishment of the “autonomy of indigenous peoples”, they will continue to sell their labour power to the owners of capital, be exploited, be exhausted, and by depreciating themselves, make the high mountaineers of capital even higher. On the advice of Al-Riga, they demand the “nationalization of the oil industry” and other key and strategic industries. By “nationalizing” these industries, they will increase as much as possible the current share of domestic capitalists in the total surplus value produced by Mexican workers and the entire international working class, increase the power of capital, and make every sacrifice for the development of industrial accumulation. With all this, they will make capital stronger and stronger and themselves and their class more and more worn out. The end result of the “nationalization” recommended by Al-Riga cannot be anything else. Again, there is no doubt that Al-Riga does not have such a goal and sees the prospect of his current war and the Zapatista movement as the establishment of a free society, free from exploitation and oppression, classes and the state. There is no doubt about his good intentions but let us not forget that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” The discussion is not about intentions, formulations and ideological beliefs. The whole point is where do we see the real roots of exploitation, misery, and wretchedness? What horizon of liberation do we have in mind? How do we explore and unearth the spiral of struggle for a radical change in the existing reality? What solutions and strategies do we find useful in this transition? Al-Riga states that he wants to create a free society where “the marginalized, the worker, the teacher and the student are equally important.” This idea is undoubtedly sacred, but simply carrying sacred ideas, simply fighting, even the bloodiest wars with the world of sacrifices, still does not necessarily solve the problem of any exploited and oppressed human being. If we consider the marginalized as marginalized, the unemployed as unemployed, the teacher as a teacher, the shoemaker as a shoemaker, the carpenter as a carpenter, the nurse as a nurse, the journalist as a journalist and the writer as a writer!! If we do not consider all of these to be wage slaves of capital and members of the class of labour sellers!! If we do not explore the roots of exploitation, suffering, inferiority, sexual discrimination, child abuse, addiction, and prostitution that surround these in the depths of capital’s existence, if we do not recognize the force of struggle to overthrow capitalism as the united anti-wage labour power of the working class, if we do not organize this movement in a soviet and anti-capitalist manner, if we do not pursue the struggle to overthrow the ruling political regime from the trenches of the war against capital, then all of our pure intentions, sacred goals, and glittering human prospects will be merely tools for consolidating the foundations of capital’s power and the mechanism of increasingly catastrophic enslavement of people in the mire of the perpetuation of the wage slavery system. Al-Riga rightly emphasizes the organization from below of the masses, but the fundamental issue is not this, but the organization of a nationwide anti-wage labour movement of the masses of the Mexican working class. The vast masses of exploited and subordinated people united in the Zapatista movement are an inseparable part of the Mexican labour movement. The Zapatistas will not achieve any success without determining their place in the depths of this movement, without being organically present in the turbulent struggle and protest and struggle of their entire Mexican and international chain, without shedding the garb of “indigenous people” and putting on the garb of the working class and anti-wage labour, without becoming the companions, comrades and comrades of all the chain in a nationwide anti-capitalist council movement united and organized. Success is offered! They will be prisoners of the same fate that previous “anti-imperialist” popular movements have become. The widespread mass organization and the exercise of mass organized power are among the most brilliant, most glorious and magnificent works of the Zapatista movement in recent years. The problem is that the activists, leaders and operatives of the Zapatista Front do not see these brilliant strategies for organizing and exercising power as weapons of war for the working and subordinate masses of Chiapas and the Mexican labour movement against the system of wage slavery, but as mechanisms for the “autonomy of indigenous peoples” or a democratic state!!! The Zapatista movement can and does have the capacity to be a very effective and influential part of the entire Mexican labour movement. The necessary condition for this is the Marxist view of this movement on capital and the capitalist system, on the socialist and anti-wage labour alternative to the hell of wage slavery, and on the correct way of fighting to get rid of the former and establish the latter.
May 2011, Nasser Paydar