Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Tariq Ali: The Idea of Communism

Today I'm pleased to welcome Tariq Ali. He joins us today to discuss his newest book the first of a series the idea of communism. What was communism with the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall yesterday. It seems to be an appropriate time to revisit a discussion of communism. All the questions the validity of the argument that communism is a permanently failed and impossible model of government and argues that capitalism is a far more unstable system exploiting the 20th century discusses the drift of practice communism from its original philosophy and goes beyond the Communist Manifesto for answers to Rico he has been a leading figure of the international left since the 1950s. He is a political activist campaigner and commenter a prolific writer he has authored over a dozen historical and political nonfiction books including clash of Fundamentalisms Bush and Babylon Pirates of the Caribbean and the axis of hope and the dual. In addition he has written six novels and the screenplay for the leopard in the box. Mr Lee is a regular broadcaster on BBC radio and contributor to magazines and newspapers including The

Guardian and The London Review for books excuse me. He is editorial director of London publisher versatile and an editor for The New Left Review and you can learn more about your e-coli and his work by visiting his website dot org. And now Would everyone please join me in welcoming Terry Kelly. Thank you. OK thanks for coming. It as the organizers said. It's a good time to be discussing this subject because the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is being observed like the great celebrity media event on your television screens and in your newspapers. So it's quite a good time to discuss what happened what went wrong. But I do note that the celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism are a bit muted that the

triumphalist edge which we've witnessed in the West over the last 20 years or so. It has been blunted and I think there's no doubt that the reason for that is the crisis now which is affecting the capitalist system itself. That it isn't. It's one thing to celebrate the fall of a rival. But you can't exactly hold up the model of the current capitalist system as something to be particularly proud of. In the United States now on employment is reaching virtually 20 percent and probably higher. These figures are replicated elsewhere in the world in large countries like India China and Brazil. You will have a fost Swades of the population who work as informal workers. That means low wages no security no trade

union rights and living from hand to mouth. The Wall Street Journal I noticed occasionally says that globalization has really helped the informal workers well if you look at the figures coming out from India from a large what used to be a large industrial city in Am i doubt about the number of people who could earn a living by going to the rubbish hebes and getting the hair of corpses. And we're earning 200 percent say 10 years ago are now earning 20 percent. So even for the informal workers who do the worst possible jobs to earn a crust the figures are right down. So it's a good time to discuss. And since I notice that there are people in the United States who regard Barack Obama as a communist. It's also worth discussing what what was it what

was the idea that communism left that you know group of people on the right and far right in this country can actually regard any form of intervention by the state including the provision of health care to most Americans as a communist fact it's actually a tribute to communism. As I discuss in a minute but it's not without interest. So let's just discuss briefly how the idea emerged. Where did it come from. And contrary to mythology it wasn't an idea which just emerged from the head of an old or middle aged German intellectual sitting in the British Museum and reading books and suffering from carbuncles. It's an idea which emerged from historic events that had taken place before. What were these events these events were revolutions. The English

revolution of the Dutch revolution of the 16th century the English Revolution of the 17th century you know above all the French Revolution of the 18th century which was preceded by a whole new wave of documents and books and encyclopedias by the thinkers who formed what we now know as the French Enlightenment. So the idea of communism politically grew out of history and politics of the European continent was a European idea that there is no no denying. And it's an idea which emerged from that history. Politically economically it emerged out of the birth of industrial capitalism and Fordism the creation of large factories with millions and millions of workers working in these plants producing goods producing commodity commodities which were

then sent into the market and made or did not make a profit and it was as Marx and the allies did it. A system which put profits before people. A system which was based essentially on the maximize zation of these profits and this meant the exploitation of those who created the wealth of workers and others who worked in this society. And on that you know he's just not been proved wrong. Because we're talking about collapsing walls and celebrating the anniversaries of the of the Berlin wall going down. But one shouldn't forget that there are invisible walls in the societies in which we live. And these walls divide rich from poor. Still. And in a very brutal fashion in some parts of these some parts of the world and so the

question is how are these wards going to be brought down. The big difference between the for all the the revolutions of the Puritans and the Jacobins and the Dutch prior to the 20th century was that these merge semi spontaneously no one knew they were going to happen. They were set about by a chain of circumstances which gradually went out of control. If Cromwell had been told in 16 40 that he would soon be presiding over a court which would decide to kill a king in the 17th century. He would have said you're mad. Likewise the French they had no idea what they were going to do as the revolution began. The big difference between those ideas

and the ideas of the Bolsheviks and Marx and Engels and the thinkers of that period was that socialism was a premeditated project. It was not going to happen accidentally. It had to be fought for and it was the first project universal emancipate tree project which was based on the need to emancipate a vast majority of the population. That is what marked this idea that those who are oppressed will become the rulers because they are the majority. So inherent in the socialist project right from the beginning was a notion of democracy. And this team goes through the writings of the principal irritations of socialism. Marx and Engels and many of their early supporters that socialism was not

possible without democracy. Communism was a later stage Marx said communism was the realm. If socialism was the realm of necessity communism was going to be the realm of freedom the realm of human sovereignty the realm of self emancipation and we never reached that period because of what took place. But what all these thinkers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were agreed on was that socialism as a premeditated project was a project which was only suitable for a country which was a stream advanced economically because in such a country the transition from capitalism to socialism would be relatively brief and the country marks an interesting Lee enough Trotsky had in mind was the United States of America.

They thought this was a country which was most suitable for socialism. And there was a logic to it. I don't know how many if you will recall but that when Marx created his first international grouping of socialists the first international It had 25 or 30 chapters and the United States all the German exiles who were here created them. And some of Marx's closest friends Joseph writer my amongst others was central figures in the American Civil War. I mean Vita Meyer was a staff officer for General Grant teaching him about classmates and explaining why this war had to be won three or four leading members of the first international participated in that way in that. Civil war and these ideas were brought by German migrants

who had come and settled here and for a while there was it was an open question Marx was thinking about moving here as well. Possibly he knew that the facilities of the New York Public Library were not as good as the British Museum but in any case whatever the reason he decided not to move. Interesting Lee enough another pre Marxian person who was thinking of moving to the United States was Oliver Cromwell. At the time at the founding. You know when the first pilgrims were arriving here a lot of them were Puritans and Cromwell was thinking well the repression in this country the situation is getting to worse. Maybe I should move. So there are lots and lots of interesting counterfactuals which arise from that. But the revolution didn't happen in the United States. It didn't happen in Britain. Two of the most advanced countries it happened in the most backward country

in Europe part of European aviation. Russia Czarist Russia and this had not been predicted really seriously predicted by most people that they thought this was extremely unlikely. And what brought it about was the first world war which was such a corrupting war which cost the lives of millions of people. That empire off the Empire collapsed the Hapsburgs collapse the German monarchy collapsed and the Russians are collapsed. And the soldiers who were fighting in these armies went back as carriers of radicalism of revolution they wanted a big change they didn't want this to happen again and had it not been for the first world war. It's an open question whether there would have been a revolution of the sort

we saw in Russia or not. And to be fair to the Bolshevik leaders Lenin and Trotsky and the current snow all the gang. They never thought they could last it out on their own. They assumed that there would be a revolutionary outbreak in Germany which was a much more industrialized country than them and Russia and Germany could probably then transform Europe. But the their enemies weren't waiting. The Russians were virtually destroyed by the 22 Western armies who intervened in that country after the revolution by a civil war which bled the country dry and that made it. We are now coming to why what happened to this revolution. And I would say that it got isolated at a critical point in time and this isolation led to a desperation that come what may they must hang on to power. If you read their writings and by

their biographies they were obsessed by the French Revolution. Days were internationalists they didn't think in terms of countries they thought in terms of continents and Europe was their continent and they thought. That what had happened in the French Revolution with the killings and the final toppling of the Jacobins and the execution of Rob spear and sine issues stem the rise of Napoleon as a military figure and a military dictator had to be prevented at all costs. That was the thinking. But in a situation where they were isolated this thinking led to disasters and early disaster was the crushing of the Kronstadt mutiny by the sailors of Kronstadt who were demanding elementary things trade union rights elections normal things and finally the crime from victory of the most conservative faction within the

Soviet Communist Party led by Joseph Stalin which crushed every possible opponent because there's a lot to appease things. If you'll ban other political parties parties which have not taken up arms against you then the logic is not to permit dissent inside your own ranks. Because dissent in your own ranks could always at some point lead to the formation of a new political party. So if you're battling political parties that awful logic is to ban dissent inside your own ranks and so you have this refrig situation that virtually the cream of the Bolshevik Party was destroyed not by the US are not by the civil war but by Stalin 90 percent of the Central Committee of the party from Lenin Stein and more can't be denounced as traitors.

Old German agents. And finally Trotsky himself who had been exiled was murdered and assassinated in his Mexican retreat because he never gave up writing in pointing out what was going on. And there's a very moving episode in his life where he was visited by Dewey the great American philosopher. Who went to see him in Mexico or with their tribunals to judge whether he was guilty of the crimes with which he was charged in Moscow and they came to the conclusion that he was not. And at the end of it. Dewey said to Trotsky If only all marxists were like you Mr. Trotsky we wouldn't have had too many problems and Trotsky turned to Dewey and said if all American liberals were like you Mr. DEWEY the United States would be where head of what it is now. So each appreciated each appreciated

the other. But inside the Soviet Union you had an iron dictatorship. Mass repressions collectivize zation that was carried out without any thought of the lives it was costing and millions you know the figures are disputed but that's accept the lowest figure 2 million which is the lowest It's horrific horrific and unacceptable. But nonetheless the one thing that revolution did even under Stalin was to transform the country from essentially an agrarian country into an industrialised state. And the fact that this state was the first state to send. People human beings into space these first the Sputnik and then Yuri Gagarin. And the fact that it educated its people that education was free that you had a free health system that you had subsidized

homes that you had very you know most people paid virtually nothing for public utilities etc.. This also happened so this wasn't it was what many of the social democrats in Europe did after the Second World War. But this wasn't a social democracy but it was a social dictatorship and after Stalin's death a discussion opened up within the upper reaches of the party what are we going to do guys. And the first thing Nikita Khrushchev the leader decided was we have to denounce the crimes of Starr and he stood up and made an amazing speech which shocked the world because these were things which were being said by critics from outside. Now it was coming right from the heart of the Soviet apparatus itself. What we did in the past was a disaster. Too many innocents have died and have been killed. And it must not be repeated.

And these are great Soviet Boycie have Gainey have to Schenkel row to a point called Babi Yar commemorating the Jewish dead after a big fascist massacre during the Second World War. But ending by reminding people also of Stalin and saying I remember I contra member the exact point now we used to know that in the old days. Doubled trebled the guard outside his grave so that the ghost dust not to scape because they knew what they had been through. And they were determined that that should not happen again. Absolutely determined that they shouldn't. So a big discussions but again but they never have the energy or the self-confidence to push it through to its logical conclusion. The idea that socialism did not have to be what Stalinist Russia was because this was the model given to the workers of the

world that this is socialism one party state one leader one voice one view and it had disastrous impact all over the world not just in the communist world but elsewhere. I mean every idiot who came to power in many parts of the third world assumed automatically that the way to be radical was to run a one party state and become a dictator because that was the model that was created. And many communist parties all over the world like that model frowned on dissent. Didn't didn't permit the discussions that are necessary for a party for a political organization to be created or for a country to be created. And that had you know even though Russia under Khrushchev or even under oppression it was not the Russia it was under Stalin. The structure wasn't altered. People weren't killed

but the structure wasn't altered and so when we had a revolution of the shores of this great country the Cuban revolution and the United States imposed and the embargo forcing Castro to seek help from the Russians the Russians insisted that the model be only suitable model was their model. So the Cuban revolution which had begun is a very open revolution. I mean if you look at the Cuban press in the early days Cuban magazines Cuban cinema the discussions were quite astonishing. But in 69 this process began to be reversed and I remember talking with lots of Cuban friends Castro supporters of PETA and saying guys this is not the way to move forward because the health of the revolution demands free discussion and debate. Without it how can you move forward. And these are people on your

side who are offering constructive criticisms. But that was the model that was imposed and the results were tragic. But the idea and the hope and the desire for reform of that system didn't die. The Czechs tried it in 68. Socialism with a human face bringing in ideas of democracy the Czechoslovak press during 1968 after the April programme of the Czech Communist Party was the Prius press in Europe. The debates that took place quite staggering. Czech television. You had people who had been political prisoners under Stalin confronting their borders their prison warders or party leaders who had accepted all this and saying why did you do it. And when that happens then the political consciousness of ordinary people rises sky high.

Just imagine if all the prisoners innocents locked up in Guantanamo but were allowed primetime television to confront the United States politicians or people who had them locked up and tortured. It would actually educate American citizens because that's the way it happens. People see God. This has been happening. Why. Let's hear them debating it out what happened and why it happened in Czechoslovakia and that model was about was becoming extremely popular. So Brezhnev invaded Czechoslovakia to crush it because he was fearful that if it was allowed to exist there it would spread to the rest of Eastern Europe and Russia itself. But that would have been a very good thing because they needn't have collapsed so miserably and shamefully the way they did had they allowed that. And you know

someone who is regarded as the most famous anti-communist in literary history Alexander Solzhenitsyn. When asked when did you realize that the system was dead. He said on the 21st of August 1968 that was the day Russian troops moved into Czechoslovakia Solzhenitsyn said. That was the day I realized that this system could not be reformed it would have to go. So it's the latest that people like him and many others like him in the Soviet intelligentsia had real hopes that the system could be transformed. But it wasn't transformed. It imploded. And you know those people who made facile comparisons and claim that Hitler's Germany and Russia are one and the same thing have a lot of explaining to do. Because Hitler's Germany did not implode nor did Miscellanies Italy.

They had to be fought and they were defeated. And one reason they were defeated was because the Russian army. The red army smashed their two key sort of divisions in Stalin Groton course the largest tank battle of the Second World War was fought in the Soviet Union and had it not been for the Soviet Union and the resistance of that country to the Third Reich would have taken the whole of Europe and Europe and and it's it's an interesting point to this because my Israeli friends tell me that the jewels in Israel who don't feel defeated unlike the Jews who've moved from Europe are the Russian Jews. Because they say we want defeated we actually defeated him. And that gives them a slightly different way of looking at the world in many ways.

So that sort of pivotal role played by the Red Army in defeating Hitler is underplayed. It's hardly mentioned now in popular histories of the Second World War and this miseducation which is going on really needs to be corrected but that fascism had to be defeated by a world war. This system whatever you want to call it deform socialism social dictatorships imploded. It made attempts at reform but it imploded and reverted to a restoration of capitalism in its own peculiar way in Russia. And the United States and its ideologues took over the country for a while and punished it immediately after the 90s. Russia was broken up. Divided split and the most appalling neo liberal economic

policies what they called Shock Therapy was imposed on it so that for four years I mean one has to say that the Russian people probably have suffered more than any other European people over the 20th century the horrors of Stalin fascism two world wars and then finally as they were beginning to relax shock therapy which reduced the country took buffeting and people relating to each other via barter primitive forms of economics developed and then ultimately the Mafia which controlled the country and politics. And that a large chunk of that Mafia is now a broad much of it in the United States not far from Coney Island. But quite a lot of it here Europe quite a lot of it in Europe. And some of it still in Russia working with the current rulers. Putin in Cannes. So capitalism

is being restored in Russia but at a very high price. Likewise China now in China and what is interesting is that capitalism has come into creation by an all by a premeditated decision by the Chinese Communist Party so they control it. There is they have not allowed any foreign country to determine the way they will do it but they are now creating I mean there are 20 million unemployed workers in China at the present moment. If you want to understand what's going on in China read the novels of Charles Dickens. That is what it's like. You know very dynamic on one level in terms of statistics and motors going on but essentially China is playing a role not

unlike that of Britain in the late 18th and 19th century as China is today the workshop of the world you can go to any country and not buy goods made in China. But how are they being made and what in under what conditions are they being made in. Do we think it's such a positive thing that 9 10 11 12 year olds are now working in factories again. Things which are illegal in most of the Western world. And yet this model is a claimed publicly supported people are sort of bowing before the Chinese model. But it is totally contradictory. On the one hand they've been big advances in these advances are only possible because of what they're trying is revolution had achieved and what it did achieve was universal literacy. Free education and the creation of a very large

layer of scientists of economists often intelligentsia which then could actually work. The new system that had been put into place. That's the big contrast with India by the way that that form of development didn't take place in India. And if it's one reason why the Chinese are far more demands of the moment in their terms of their economic development and are controlling controlling the world. What happened after the fall of communism is also now it's time to. Discuss that what happened was that the West imposed a model of capitalism called neo liberalism the neo liberal model under which any intervention by the state was considered improper

and acceptable and interference with the normal functioning of the market. We had an ideology that was developed incredibly dogmatically which said that the market was the answer to everything. Just as the most dogmatic communists it said the total planning was the answer to everything. Their opponents now said the market is the answer to everything we've been proved right because look communism which believed in state planning has collapsed and so this is the only way to go. So state provision in virtually the entire advanced capitalist world was frowned upon privatization began in dead earnest and industry after industry if it didn't collapse was privatized. With what results with the results that the location of production moved away from the advanced Western world to

the east to Japan new technology China virtually everything else Korea Singapore Taiwan this se station in far eastern bloc became in terms of economic production. The center of capitalist production on a global scale. So what was left in the West the Rust Belt. True the fact the the rust belts the collapse of the working class movement the weakening total weakening of the trade unions and a triumphal Islam which brocht little or no dissent. Because this new liberal system at its heart was a political ideology which said there is no other alternative. And that meant that democracy and its functioning was beginning to be hollowed

out. Because if you say there is no other alternative then what is the point of having different political parties. I mean in the United States of course this symmetrical character of the two parties except on cultural issues and now even on that there are doubts. It has you know reached a particular form. People talk about the new deal but the New Deal was a very different period in American history. And one reason the New Deal happened for two reasons the New Deal happened. One was that there was a strong and militant labor movement where workers were confident in occupying their factories in parts of the country. The car workers in particular. And another reason was that the Soviet Union and that world existed and it hadn't been discredited at that time. And the combination of these two things gave Roosevelt

Democrats the strength to do what they did at that time and have a big state intervention in the social democrats in Europe and the social democratic parties did the same thing. Because there was the perception that there was an alternative. After 89 that perception disappeared in correctly so and so began the long period if you like of the hollowing out of the democratic process in the United States and in Western Europe. The differences between the center left and the center right in most parts of Europe are minimal minimal and so minimal in Germany that they have coalition governments all the time because it doesn't matter between the two big parties. In Britain the Labor party once a social democratic party was made into new labor a Thatcherite party and today the conservatives are on the verge of winning the

elections on some issues stationed themselves to the left of Labor on certain issues like civil liberties for instance. So what is going to be the end result the economic result we've seen that the system collapsed and had to be bailed out by a bought by the state by taxpayers money in its billions in virtually every European country and in North America. And naturally the more logical of the right wing ideologues scream blue murder because they saw the danger in this that if the state can intervene to bail out rogues and crooks who have been whose greed has led them to make a fortune at the expense of people less well-off than them then the logic was that if it collapsed again perhaps the state might intervene again for a

different form of intervention create a public utility capitalism. And that of course is the logical need of the moment not bailing out these guys or fighting wars which cost billions and billions each month. But actually creating a system for the benefit of the majority of the population that lives in these countries the United States but not just here elsewhere. So you saw in 2002 and it the collapse of the Wall Street system a system based on financial capital and a system based on financial speculation of the most grotesque soul. I mean Harvard and MIT departments and Harvard and MIT invested in made up for God's sake. What were they thinking of these are people. In commune of the people in

charge of all this are meant to be intelligent. And what were they doing spending university money on on speculating with results which are not being felt by the students and also employees in these places. So the capitalist system as functioning at the moment is not going to deliver the goods isn't delivering the goods. And you have a fifth and in some places a quarter of the population which is really in very dire straits. And unless it changes something will happen that I've when I say something I don't predict that it will be a return to socialism. The trend in Europe is very ugly at the moment. It's a shift to the right. You have a situation in Italy where they've been gypsies travelling people are burnt because they are regarded as outsiders where there is a wave of

Islamophobia which is very reminiscent of the anti-Semitism which tainted Europe and North America one shouldn't forget about what was going on here in the 20s and 30s and early 40s. So there are unpleasant developments because when people are atomized when they have nowhere else to go when there's no collective organizations when there are no political parties which offer them anything people are either retreat into their identities retreat into religion or retreat into looking for scapegoats. Who's to blame. Who's to blame it's like you know on a different level. All this coverage I've read since I arrived in the United States of the psycho analyst at Fort Hood who killed all these soldiers and the big sort of screaming bad going on is he was in touch with some cleric for heaven's sake you know

think about why this happened. It's not religion it's the war in Iraq which is wrecking American lives as well. It's killed a million Iraqis made two and a half million of them refugees that no one talks about or thinks about but it's having a deep impact on young Americans who are sent there to fight like the Vietnam War did. Vietnam war trauma existed for years now you have Iraq war trauma and Afghan war trauma going on and foretold is we know a number of Hispanic soldiers Catholics I assume came back and shot themselves one guy shot his wife another guy took potshots at other people for shooting himself. This guy killed other people. So I understand why this is happening in the United States. But these are crazy wars which have no justification no motivation whatsoever.

No reason to be happening but they are happening because the leaders of the United States Republican and Democrats think of themselves as Imperial leaders and feel that anything that changes perceptions of the United States is bad for the United States without realizing that what has to change perceptions all over the world is the way the United States behaved after 9/11. It had a lot of sympathy after 9/11 in the weeks then the war started and that sympathy evaporated because people felt this was not the way to deal with the situation. Now in my opinion as long as capitalism exists you will always have sooner or later the emergence of alternatives. What name still come under whether it'll be socialism or communism. I do not know but they will come. And one. One small start. You can see it in

South America. Where they call it Bolivarian isn't but what his bowl of Aryanism but a form of social democracy and New Deal politics in which the state uses the wealth it that is accruing to it to help the poor. And they are doing it and this is why the countries are extremely unpopular in Washington. Chavez is being demonized much more almost more than Castro was. Castro didn't have the euro U.S. and Venezuela as the richest oil producing country in South America and that oil is being used not simply to help Venezuelans but to help the Libyans Ecuadorians Paraguayans and other parts of South America who need it. And Bolivia. As got the largest reserves of lift here which are critically important for new technology.

Large large fields of people live here. And this is a country which for the first time in its entire history has elected an indigenous leader. Eighty percent of the population is indigenous This is the first time the country has elected an indigenous leader who like Chavez in Venezuela is using the wealth of that country to help its people. Denounced produced by the oligarchs in his own country and by most of the media in the West. Why because they are saying there is a different way. We've just made a start. They don't know how it's going to end. And they want the whole continent to go that way. And that is south of the border from here where these changes are taking place. So maybe with a bit of luck these ideas will begin to float around again. But do not imagine that the bailout is going to work. How could it. It's not going to work. It's not

just people on the left who say this if you read Paul Krugman in The New York Times if you read Frank Rich if you read Joe's statelets the Nobel Prize is never given to people who are radical but it is sometimes given to people who are intelligent and Stiglitz and program and both have been saying that these bailouts. It's a wrong way of going about it that they're not going to work that trying to shore up the capitalist system with this very expensive sticking plaster which is going to come unstuck sooner or later is going to create an even worse disaster and the same in Britain and the same in other parts of Europe. I mean all these Eastern European countries which were sent which were passed to create this model are in severe crisis I mean Estonia Latvia Lithuania virtually in a state of economic collapse. Poland isn't doing too well either. Rumania Bulgaria are in trouble because

they adopted this system just as they adopted the previous one which they were handed from above. So these are the problems which have meant that the celebrations of the fall of the Berlin wall have been somewhat muted. And and that's and that's as it should be. Meanwhile people will carry on thinking about alternatives. If not here certainly in other parts of the world and it will finally seep down here as well. And the lesson of that is that you know one can give up even in critical times in bad times you have to fight for an alternative because the present system is so blatantly in Batan plea. I'm just and based on the needs of a minority and that is what gave birth to the idea of communism in the first place.

Thanks Ira. I attack. When you look. I mean if you look at what's happened to trade unions in the United States here they were never as strong as they were in Europe. The war has happened in Europe is not dissimilar. I mean in Britain where the trade unions were the strongest probably of any European country in the number in terms of the numbers of people unionized there's been a sharp sharp decline. And that has been the effect of the end of that system with you know intellectually one can talk about it but the emotionally millions and millions of people felt that there now was no alternative and that they had to make do the best they could with this system. The question which is interesting me now is whether the collapse of the severe crisis of the Wall Street system

is going to revive some thinking I mean of all the European countries the French. The trade union movement has not totally died down you know. It has been it has organized public sector strikes it forced its government to retreat. It can BellSouth cosey who wanted to go totally down the near liberal road before the crisis struck to back down. So the situation is not as bad in France on the level of trade unions as it is in other bars and even in Germany the trade union movement has never been defeated in Germany is also the other country where the party to the left of the Social Democrats the left party has made big gains in recent elections but overall I think we have not come out from the defeat of 1989 90 that is. Goes without saying. But what will happen over the next 20 years now is very crucial in terms of what can be recovered or what can't you know and whether the left will be able to regroup at the moment it

suffered severe defeats not just the the old left but the center left. Well look I'll give a very brief answer because it's a long subject but in my last book on Pakistan the dual Pakistan on the flight path of American power. There's a whole chapter on Afghanistan which I wrote a year and a half ago and I hate to say this but it's been vindicated by what's been going on. In which I try and analyze the situation and explain why the United States is not going to win that particular war and sending in more troops as many of Obama's own advisors have said to him behind the scenes and if some of them have even said in public it's not not the solution it's part of the problem. I mean this is a country of 24 million people. How many more troops are you going to send. You know you prepared to kill four million Afghans a million in Iraq is bad enough.

And are you then going to expand the war and extended into Pakistan which you've already done which is creating havoc inside that country. And the fact that Obama hasn't even been able to pull out of Iraq which we were promised and then no plans to pull out by the way all of that is being planned is to move the U.S. troops from the cities into solid bases in the interior of the country and keep them there and reduced as always and to keep them bad just like the British Empire did in the 30s and 40s. That's what the Brits did. And then they had they were removed by a revolution which took place in Iraq in 1958 and that's exactly what the United States is planning to do. There is no plan to pull out and it's a big tragedy in my opinion that this has been the lie enough for Obama who raised the hopes of many young people the mobilization of young people in this country I was here during the election campaign was standing like nothing we've seen in Europe

for a very long time. Move on dog massive number of young people at all is gathering who says he's going to tell them now that we lied or that I'm too weak or I can't take this all know that my own political party is rotten to the Cole. I think so. So it's not a good thing. Yeah. Well you know the figures the statistical figures I mean I talked about in particular because I know that part of India. But we can talk about the statistical development in the rest of the country. I mean what should we talk about money. Not very good. Carola always had a very high level of education. You're from time a lot. OK I thought you were from Korea. Look I you know obviously I'm talking now about the vast majority as I know that there's been some development but I think for the vast majority of Indians you know if there had been more

farmer suicides in India than in any other third world country. Well I know but that doesn't mean that these suicides didn't happen before globalization did they. That's the point I'm making. And if you think that this is the answer because a relatively small number of people are now better off which is quote fine. Well I but you know the statistics times I'm sorry prove otherwise that the entry of large corporations into the Indian countryside I mean how can you explain the suicide statistics in India of farmers who just take their own lives because they can't make ends meet. You know look I don't want to argue spend the whole evening I only read John Berman's work be R.E.M. and type out his name. He has done more work on India on this field than anyone else. Jan Braman He's a Dutch scholar and you'll get the figures you want. Well the fact that you're from India doesn't interest me greatly you know so

what. Why would he want you within this now just to mock an event. It's not such a big deal. It's a tiny book. It's not Das Kapital. You can. Tell me what you want to be like. Now. You focus a lot on how the European sphere is becoming for the right and how the North Americans here is doing things wrong economically but what do you think is going to change in the geo political situation when we have the rise in seven nations like Brazil India and China and Brazil in particular are shown by the last leg and China of course is still nominally communist So what do you think they're going to play in going to the future's not sure about that because the big huge discussion that has been taking place. It is not so. I mean Brazil and India mentioned but China is the main power economically. And is this power ever going to be strong enough to challenge

the United States. I don't know to be honest but I doubt it because the Chinese economy is totally dependent at the moment on exports to the United States it's the largest creditor country of the United States and it is not going to be able to let's say if the Chinese withdrew from the dollar system. Yeah. What it won't happen because the U.S. economy would collapse but so would the Chinese economy so that it's this entire dependence an interrelationship between the two economies the synergy that is going to make the Chinese very careful and they are extremely careful and though they are an extremely large market that to do it the Chinese domestic market isn't developed enough to absorb the slack were they to lose the export facilities to the United States. So I think that the idea that these concretes particularly I mean Brazil and India are a long way behind but the Chinese are going to somehow

overtake the United States is not on at the moment OK and the other thing you have to understand is that the U.S. has economic weakness is it. Totally displaced by its military strength. The United States now is not just the strongest military power in the world but it is stronger than the next the military budgets of the next 10 countries put together. And there's a reason for that is that they are determined to use military power to preserve global her game and they come what may. Which is one reason why we're seeing these wars by the way. And if you read what people in the nature review it said try writing as I've outlined it in my book. They're saying the reason we're in Afghanistan is nothing to do with the crime this town or their people but it is to make sure that we have large military bases

on the edge of China because the center of the economic world is moving eastwards. So you know they are thinking like that but I don't think the Chinese are going to give them too much trouble not at the moment and not unless they provoke them. Last question. I heard one moment from the fury of him simply for his what are you going to Marxism. Is it possible that my phrase or whatever to be proved right now. It was written off three years ago. You know the reason why you are a fan of Noam Chomsky. I'm very happy if you are well know it maybe it maybe I mean something different will have to emerge. But I do not think that the state can be displaced or will disappear as soon as quickly as in thought You know I mean I think that is the key thing you have to understand the key point of difference is on the question of the state.

And on this I personally think that mouse was was correct you can't do anything on this you have stayed about and with the authoritarian model isn't embedded in the idea. I mean if you look for instance of the writings of Marx and the big upheaval in France in 1871 the Paris Commune he said of the model of the Paris Commune and the political demands put forward in the commune of the demands of communism you know where before democracy rights and all that sort of stuff. It's the tragedy is that it happened this whole process took place at a very bad time in a the most backward state in Europe and even if by Coonan had let that revolution I honestly don't think it would have been any different. I mean they wouldn't have been the mass killings and all that. Yeah and that would but you know even if a different wing of the Bolsheviks aday Kampar and not this particular ultra The National faction

things might have been different. But this is a debate which we can't solve because it's a debate of counterfactuals you know I mean. Robert service's new biography of Trotsky's a travesty. No no no I mean I think that model is strange. Yeah I think it be which is why it's very interesting that in all these Latin American countries nobody but no one they're quite proud to call these leaders a story of a one party state. No one. So people are learning in different ways of what not to do when you take part. And interesting Lee as I said suggested in my top the way in which the Western world is functioning. You might as well have one party. Arab.